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frankly the VA has been chill with covering me even when my wife got more money and they have not asked how much money I make when that is public tax knowledge
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Feb 18, 2023 08:56
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I think this one might be a stretch. It's less an unnerving story as it is a small mound of death bracketed by a possible archeological hoax. Nevertheless, I have crafted this loose connection of tragic stories into something in the shape of a narrative that I have broken up as 5 or 6 parts. Part 1  The Handsome Family posted:The sunset’s a bird with wings made out of fire Spanning two counties in central New Mexico, the Sandia Mountains rise up from the high desert floor to a peak of over 10,600 feet above sea level at their tallest. This 17 mile long range comprised primarily of granite and limestone is believed to have been named without regard to the many existing indigenous names for the range by Spanish settlers noting that the towering range appears as a striking mix of reds, pinks and oranges in the light of sunset; sandia being the Spanish word for watermelon. More likely, it was named for gourds that indigenous people were growing in the area that the Spanish mistook for watermelons in the 1500s, and naming something after erroneous information is a time-honored colonizer tradition.  Not my photo, just demonstrating how utterly dramatic this mountain can be. On the northeastern side of the range, almost at the border of Bernalillo and Sandoval counties sits a small cave opening in Las Huertas canyon, now off the exceptionally difficult terrain of NM 165 as it snakes around ravines on a largely unmaintained dirt road. The cave sits up a limestone cliff wall, and in the late 1920s, a man, Kenneth Davis, was exploring the canyon and ‘discovered’ the cave and a curious fossil remnant inside, which had apparently been dug up previously local boy scout troops that had ‘discovered’ the cave without fanfare other than scooping out some sediment while they explored. Davis took this fossil to the University of New Mexico, where it caught the attention of archaeologist and graduate student Frank Hibben. The materials found were identified as faunal remains from the Pleistocene era, the most recognizable piece being the claw of a giant sloth. Starting in 1936, Frank Hibben would lead excavations of this cave that, due to the unreliable nature of funding and a pervasive, soft yellow ochre dust that covered the entire cave and threatened the archeologists with silicosis, would occur over the next 4 years. This small, geologically unremarkable cave would reveal one of the most important archeological finds of the 20th century: a unique stone tool buried in a strata of dirt that was about to not only cement Frank Hibben’s legacy in archeology, but would disrupt modern understanding of early indigenous civilizations for decades. Later, the question would be raised: Was Hibben a fraud? More recently, a question would be asked of anyone visiting this archeological site: Who Killed Carla?  Photo by Droogie, 2/20/23 from NM165 Sandia Man Cave was declared a national landmark in 1961 and in subsequent years the trail to the site of the cave was further developed, a small parking area was carved out of the forest right off of NM165 and a tight, dizzying staircase was built into the cliff to allow visitors into the small cave. While NM165 is off the beaten path, it still hosts access to a few developed picnic areas maintained by the National Parks Service, and curious day trippers are lured by the moderate half-mile hike to the cave itself. The Sandia Mountains are also host to a wide array of environmental biomes, ranging from high desert scrub brush of the Sonoran Desert with thriving yucca and numerous cacti species to a cold, spruce and fir dominated level of elevation. During the harsh summer temperatures, the mountains offer a cool, shaded respite, and the winters bear the brunt of storms coming from the east, making the mountain passes snow blown and the roads treacherous. NM165 is an odd little stretch of road, it juts off of one of New Mexico’s main highways, I25, at the edge of the town of Bernalillo and meanders through a small desert village of Placitas at the northern edge of the Sandias. It winds south into the mountain, and the asphalt abruptly ends 9 miles after the road begins, giving way to pitted washboard dirt roads that test most vehicles, even commercial 4 by 4s. The road can be in such disrepair that as it climbs into the mountain to meet up with the road to Sandia Crest, signs warn that the pass is technically closed between November and to as late as May.  Photo by Droogie 2/20/23. Where the paving ends. Sandia Cave is 2.4 miles up a road that I sank into just standing to take a photo. While the road itself is a fun and challenging diversion approaching from the eastern side of the mountain, the road to Sandia Man Cave from the north is short, mostly paved, and has little grade to it, although heavy snow accumulation makes it either too icy or too slick with mud to pass easily.. The parking lot for the cave trail would be easy to overlook were it not for a few cement Jersey barriers on the side of the road, and starting in the year 2000 and until only a few short years ago, those barriers were made difficult to miss as they had been adorned with photos, articles, and most prominently a question posed to all driving by: Who Killed Carla?  Not mine, but from 2012. I have photos of this somewhere. On the morning of November 30th, 1999, two joggers found a body on the road adjacent to the Sandia Man Cave parking lot wearing nothing but a pair of underpants and a single blue sock on her right foot. Carla, a busy, married mother of two, lived in Carnuel with her family. Investigation would reveal many small, odd details- Carla had been beaten and strangled, but the injuries sustained in the attack did not kill her, but it was brutal enough that her death is to this day considered a homicide officially. Her minivan was stuck in a culvert, a rear tire nearly bald from failed efforts to extract it. A cigarette butt was found in her vehicle. Blood on a hubcap. Carla’s missing clothes in a pile nearby. A few strands of a man’s hair were found on her hand, a half-drunk bottle of wine. A grocery receipt with a license plate number written on it. Carla’s autopsy revealed no signs of sexual assault and that she had apparently sustained abrasions to her feet and back post-mortem. Carla, described by people who knew her well, was a very sensitive person, but in recent months, she had started to show outward signs of some sort of disruption to her fragile mental state. A coworker at a French café she worked at said that in August of 1999, Carla had started to noticeably lose weight from her already slight frame, noting that “She was not the same person. Something was wrong.” Carla’s brother described her as someone that was exceptionally hard on herself, holding her self-expectations to a level of perfection she did not feel she attained. Her husband, Rik Simmons, had expressed that Carla was often upset that she was not as good a mother as she thought she could be, and that she wished she got along better with her own children. Rik indicated in a 2000 interview with the now defunct Albuquerque Tribune that Carla’s stress over the relationship she had with her children would frequently result in “damages that were not meant to be” and that the allusion to this sort of argument or disruption in their home was not infrequent, Carla choosing to “disappear and regroup” for a couple of hours when such events unfolded. In times of crisis or in need of comfort, it was likely that Carla could be found seeking out time with her best friend, Margaret Johnson. Margaret and Carla grew up together, next door neighbors in Albuquerque’s northeast heights. The two were inseparable and had been a major part of each other’s lives consistently for nearly as long as they both had lived. While Carla’s life had taken her to Carnuel, a small mountain village just minutes east of Albuquerque and nestled in a mountain pass of the Sandias, Margaret lived in the village of Placitas Just on the northern slope of the Sandias, only a distance of about 30 miles. It was Margaret’s house that was likely Carla’s destination on the night of November 29th, 1999. Rik called Carla at their home at 6:30 that night to tell her he was on her way home. Carla told him that she wouldn’t be home when he arrived. Just 30 minutes later, it was plain to Rik that there had been an argument between Carla and the children when he arrived home. Later that night, as Rik’s concern turned to worry, Margaret’s phone in Placitas would ring. Rik’s would not. Just in September of that year, Margaret and Carla had their only true fight over something undisclosed from their past, but by Margaret’s retelling of that night, it was put to rest over a bottle of wine and their friendship was renewed and everything settled. Margaret likened it to when a relationship with a loved one was cleared and at peace on a deathbed. Margaret joked to Carla after that night, “Well, it looks like one of us is going to die soon.” Droogie has a new favorite as of 16:23 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 01:37
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Droogie, I love your ABQ stuff. It's startling how different the "back" side of Sandia is ecologically than the city side. The east side is "lush" for lack of a more descriptive word, while the west is scrubby and gets scrubbier the closer you get to the city. Related, here's my favorite pic from the top of the tramway: 
spookykid has a new favorite as of 03:12 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 03:09
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Part 2 George McJunkin was born to slaves in Midway, Texas, in 1856 and was only 9 at the end of the civil war. George, by all accounts, had a brilliant mind, insatiable in his pursuit of knowledge. A young free man, he worked as a cowboy and with some help from other cow punchers, taught himself how to read and write, how to speak Spanish, and taught himself both fiddle and guitar. Naturally talented with all aspects of cowboying, he moved to New Mexico at a very young age and labor laws being what they were in the 1800s, worked for multiple ranches in the area of Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. He eventually settled on a ranch as the foreman in Folsom, New Mexico, a village only half a mile square in size near Raton New Mexico and roughly 15 miles from the Colorado border. Fascinated with history, McJunkin made a remarkable discovery on the back of tragedy. On August 27th, 1908, a flash flood ripped through Folsom, powerful enough that 18 people died as a result. While inspecting a damaged fence on the ranch he was the foreman for, he dropped down into an arroyo, taking in everything the water had washed away. While exploring, he located the remains of several prehistoric buffalo newly exposed by the eroded arroyo walls. Mixed in with the bones, McJunkin found several stone tools that he knew were significant. Taking with him only a couple of the exposed stone points, George left the site otherwise untouched and spent another decade attempting to garner any academic interest in the site. While he was able to take part in an exploratory dig in 1918, George McJunkin would pass away in 1922, 4 years before the Folsom site was fully excavated. George was positive there was a major importance to this site, and he would be proven right in 1926 when a thorough investigation revealed that these stone tools George discovered were the first tools directly associated with the remains of Pleistocene era animals, and challenged the then accepted theory that human migration to North America had only occurred as recently as 3000 years prior to the 1900s. Folsom culture stone tools would shortly be recognized as one of the earliest examples of paleo-indigenous cultures in North America, placing habitation of this culture at between 8000 and 10000 BCE. New Mexico has an embarrassment of important archeological sites. While archeologists and paleontologists argued over whether or not Folsom Points were real or not, another breakthrough was officially recognized just a few years later. For decades, residents of the small, eastern town of Clovis New Mexico had been collecting pieces of bone and interesting rocks that surfaced near Blackwater Draw, a small desert stream that like most small desert streams, is described as “intermittent.” Archaeological explorations started at the site in 1929, and by 1936, findings were published that the remains of megafauna present in North America at the end of the last ice age, predominantly mammoths. More notably, this site indicated stratified layers showing that the site had been used as a hunting camp for years, and an older, technologically distinct stone tool, the Clovis point, was also present at this site. In only 10 years, the thought that paleo-indigenous culture was only 3000 years old had been shown to be wrong- it had moved to as far back as 10,000 years at the Folsom site and the Clovis site moved that timeline further back, to as long as 13,400 years ago. It was then a stroke of remarkable luck in more ways than one that Frank Hibben, upon excavating this small cave in the Sandias, just the same year that evidence of Clovis Culture were published, that he would discover a Folsom layer of stratification in this small, dusty cave with artifacts, followed by a barren layer of sediment, followed again by something remarkable: An older layer that was replete with nearly complete stone tools older that Folsom, even older than Clovis tools. These now named “Sandia Points” were found in a stratified layer of deposits that would date them to from between 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and represented a nearly perfect melding of European projectile points of that era and the fluting detail found in Folsom and Clovis projectile points found first in New Mexico and later in multiple sites all over North America. In Hibben’s published findings, he posits that they are as old as 25,000 years old, throwing out established paleo-human timelines. What were the odds that a third archeological site with a third, distinct technology was found in the same state within 20 years, and that it would shatter what had been theorized about early human culture, again? Furthermore, what were the odds that this site would yield 19 nearly perfect examples of this technology, none of which were broken beyond visual identification? While megafauna remains were also found during the dig, there would be no discoveries of early human remains at the site. On May 17th, 2001, a small group of hikers made their own archeological discovery at the cave: A backpack containing several papers and at least a set of clothes neatly folded and stacked next to it. One of the hikers, Demetrio Crespin, turned to his friends and joked, “What if we also find a dead body with all this?” Then he looked down from the cave entrance. Droogie has a new favorite as of 04:42 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 03:12
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Droogie, let me state for the trillionth time on record — your research and writing styles are SO GOOD. I forward your work to friends who aren’t into true crime or sad stories, and they’re just as hooked as us creeps in this thread. 🫡 Thank you for your service.
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Feb 22, 2023 14:08
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Seconded. I opened this thread and started reading their first post. When I realised it was a Droogie post I had to stop, go get a fresh coffee and just settle in for some good loving content.
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Feb 22, 2023 14:17
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Very hyped for more Droogie posts
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Feb 22, 2023 15:34
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Feb 22, 2023 16:14
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Part 3 On May 16th, 2001, a woman was seen wandering near the Las Huertas Creek picnic grounds, notable only because the woman appeared weak and malnourished. The woman had long blonde hair, wore a white shirt, and red sweatpants. She was then seen again early Thursday, May 17th, kneeling on the side of NM165 between Las Huertas and Sandia Man Cave, which are about a mile apart. A passer-by stopped to pick up the woman, seeing that she needed some sort of help. She was driven into Placitas, about 6 miles to the nearest convenience store and given a few spare dollars that the driver had. The woman entered the convenience store, the clerk noting that she appeared despondent. The woman dropped off the money given to her and several other unspecified personal items and told the clerk that if she didn’t return, it was because she was dead. With that, she left the store and started walking back on NM165, back to the mountain. Upon walking the 6 miles back to the parking lot of the cave trail, the unidentified woman hiked the additional half mile to the cave entrance, where she removed and neatly stacked her remaining belongings before jumping off from approximately 300 feet to the limestone ground below. Police were able to make an initial identification based on the contents of her backpack, personal writings indicating that she was severely depressed because of a terminal diagnosis, supported by the addition of paperwork from a cancer treatment center. Her writings indicated that she was considering taking her own life. Investigators were able to determine that no foul play had been involved in the woman’s death, but were still at the point of having to fingerprint her for final confirmation of her identity. The area surrounding Sandia Man Cave is not particularly out of the way or desolate, the road, though basically requiring a high-clearance vehicle, is, especially during warmer months, busy enough that vehicles have to make right-of-way choices. The picnic grounds within a mile of the caves are frequently packed with people escaping the heat of the city and looking for easily accessible outings. The village of Placitas ends only two miles before the cave and is full of observant homesteaders and physically active hikers and joggers. Anything happening in the vicinity is almost certain to be found with expediency. For whatever reason, it has had a magnetic draw for people seeking to conceal death. In the early morning hours of June 9th, 2012, a resident of Placitas reported that they smelled smoke nearby, a prudent step for a state frequently ravaged by forest fires. At 5 am that Saturday, the Sandoval County Fire Department investigated and found a sedan fully engulfed in flames on the dirt road next to Sandia Man Cave. The fire raged and had set fire to nearby brush as well, but the fires were quickly contained. With the fires out, the fire department contacted the Sandoval County Deputies after discovering the remains of a body in the car. The remains were identified relatively quickly due to vehicle information, and it was found to be a woman named Olivia Lovato, who family said struggled with drug addiction. The autopsy results of the remains indicated that Lovato had elevated levels of methamphetamine in her system at the time of her death. Lovato was attempting to return to her home in Rio Rancho from Albuquerque, but likely due to her impaired state, took a very wrong turn and ended up on NM165 somehow. Due to the pitted nature of the dirt road, investigators found that Lovato had managed to damage the car’s fuel line, sparking a fire that she did not escape from, investigation details stating that she apparently never attempted to do so.  A wrong turn. Valencia County Sheriff’s Department, in spite of asking for information about both of these incidents at the time, have claimed that they do not maintain any records of these instances. Perhaps a jurisdictional distinction, but attempts were unsuccessful. On May 26, 2020, 18 year old Isaiah Hill was reported missing after last being seen by his grandmother on May 22nd. She had driven him to the apartment of Brandi Lucero, his girlfriend. Isaiah would be found later that same day on NM165, right by Sandia Man Cave by a hiker and her dog. Isaiah had been hogtied and lay face down, a gunshot wound to the back of his head. In a convoluted series of events, Brandi recounted to investigators that Isaiah had left her apartment with two individuals- Angel Ochoa and Julio Rascon shortly after. She also told investigators that Isaiah had raped her. She also told this to a third man, her husband, Marcos Macias. This story, which Isaiah Hill’s family denies the allegations of, also happened to coincide with the apparently unknown husband’s release from jail. A second unknown woman was asked to pick up Ochoa and Rascon from a house in the northeast heights. She stopped in to use the restroom and upon returning to her vehicle, found the two men already inside, Rascon at the wheel. This woman was allegedly unaware that while she was inside the home, the husband, Macias, had loaded a bound Isaiah into the trunk of the vehicle and instructed Rascon to drive to the dirt road past Placitas. Once by the entrance to Sandia Man Cave, Rascon and Ochoa removed Isaiah from the trunk, shot him, and got back into the vehicle with Isaiah’s shoes. The unnamed woman stated that she heard the single gunshot but “did not know what was going on.” All of this came to light just a month later, when on June 27th, Julio Rascon was questioned while in immigration and Customs custody on vehicle theft charges. Angel Ochoa, Brandi Lucero, and her husband Marcos Macias were all then arrested and charged each with an open count of murder, aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and tampering with evidence. In academia, Frank Hibben had also been accused of tampering with archeological evidence. His legacy secured, Hibben was a rockstar of archeology and anthropology. While there had been grumblings of inconsistencies in his findings, all of it was compounding, and in the 90’s, Hiben would see his work removed from books as questions about his methods lingered.
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Feb 22, 2023 18:34
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Part 4 “Beneath the yellow ochre is another layer of cave debris. This represents the lowermost or earliest occupation of Sandia Cave. The material of this layer is more finely divided and less consolidated than that of the Folsom. It is composed of rock fragments, finely divided rock dust, bones, artifacts, charcoal, crinoid stems, and brownish colored dirt, evidently wind-blown and mixed with vegetable and animal material. This stratum, because of the cultural items included,and its lower and distinct position in this cave, has been termed the Sandia level.” -Frank Hibben, EVIDENCES OF EARLY OCCUPATION IN SANDIA CAVE, NEW MEXICO, AND OTHER SITES IN THE SANDIA-MANZANO REGION; 1941 Frank Hibben was a man known for being larger than life. Those that worked with him, those he taught were known to tell that Hibben was quite a story teller, and he was not above stretching the details of a story for impact and dramatic effect, with some of his writing has been described as lurid and captivating. Starting in the late 1950’s others in similar fields started to question whether or not Hibben had done the same with his discoveries. It was more than suspicious that a young archeologist would start an excavation of a site just as details of a culture older than Folsom was emerging in the same region. Starting in the 1960’s C. Vance Haynes, Jr. and George A. Agogino would start a further investigation into the geological chronology of Sandia Man Cave, an academic paper questioning Hibben’s results that wouldn’t be published until 1986. What were seen as inconsistencies in Hibben’s findings didn’t sit right with many, and with technological advances in dating materials, there was more ability to compare results and reinterpret what had already been found. Initial dating of “cultural material,” animal bone fragments, and the sediment layers in which they recovered at the time of Hibben’s writings were in a range starting at approximately 15,000 BCE and ranged as far back as 33,000 BCE. Unfortunately for Hibben’s findings, he adamantly argued that artifacts recovered from his now termed Sandia Culture were located under the prominent yellow ochre layer towards the bottom of the cave itself. Hibben himself uses the term “sterile” to describe the layer, noting it was absent any artifact, paleo human or animal. Modern estimates have placed the silica-rich ochre level as having been deposited as long as 300,000 years BCE, requiring still, bacteria-laden waters to be present at a level consistent with the cave opening and for the cave to have received enough light to sustain the life that would eventually become this layer of ochre. Worse still, the over 20 year re-examination of the geological layers of the cave and refinement of carbon dating found that the oldest recovered animal remains still found in the cave, showing a period in which the cave was first open enough to allow rodent habitation to be at the very oldest 14,000 BCE with more remains consistent with an age of 11,000 BCE. Hibben further wrote in 1955 of his remarkable discoveries at Sandia Man Cave, pointing out that laboratory dating had again shown artifacts to be from a period 20,000 years BCE, including samples of fire charcoal Hibben refers to having been submitted for testing by Kirk Bryan of Harvard. The lab mentioned never received any samples by Bryan of any such material. Troubling, too, was the fact that the lab received one megafauna sample that was tagged with another site’s information as part of the materials from Sandia Mountain, which Hibben stated must have been in error. Another such thing happened with a recovered mammoth tooth sent for testing, labeled as recovered from Sandia Man Cave, but the lab noted that the tooth was encrusted with specific sediment and gravel not found in any other samples from the cave or noted in the reports. Hibben stated this artifact was likely incorrectly labeled. Hibben also never requested these samples returned, seemingly abandoned as they were shown to be falsely attributed to the Sandia Mountain range. Most damning of all, however, are the numerous inconsistencies with the recovered “Sandia points” The 1986 report on the cave notes that they are most likely a modified version of a Folsom or Clovis point tool if they are anything at all, and are likely from a period contemporaneous with the already now established cultures. The distinct-looking Sandia Point has only ever been found in one other archeological site, a layer that has shown several cultural stone tool points of multiple eras mixed together in a single layer.  Folsom, Clovis and Sandia Points Cave-recovered points also have apparent inconsistent weathering, material usage, mixed techniques of refinements to the edge, and at least two points have evidence of then-modern tampering, one has a refined edge that is consistent with a grinding wheel, another still with signs that a metal tool was used to refine an edge. These, along with almost no evidence of tool shards, discarded pieces from the creation or refinement of blades being found at the site cast a long shadow of doubt over the entire discovery. Only a few short years after the discovery of evidence of a far more ancient culture than had previously been theorized, 8 of the 19 points that had redefined archeological timelines would simply disappear from the collection, along with a large chunk of original notes and photography from the site. At least one other site Hibben had excavated in Cook Inlet in Alaska was re-explored using his notes and data to pinpoint where he had recovered mammoth remains and myriad stone points and tools. This examination found that, geologically speaking, there was no possibility that paleo human stone tools were associated with the site. Were these finds archeological oddities, or were they the attempt of a man to create a name for himself in a rapidly changing historical timeline? Hibben maintained that his discoveries were true until his death in 2002, although the entire concept of “Sandia Man” or even a theorized “Sandia Culture” is no longer taught or referred to outside of the context of it being questionable at best, a scandalous hoax at worst.
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Feb 23, 2023 02:33
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Section 5 In Carnuel, Rik Simmons was growing concerned. He had not heard from Carla in hours, and the dark was night and cold. He put his children to bed and tried to watch television until he dozed off. Waking later, he looked around his home. Carla was still missing. It was at midnight he called Carla’s cell phone, which they had just purchased for emergencies, Carla not in the habit of using or keeping a cell phone at hand. Rik called the number, listened to it ring, and heard it click to life, a connection made and answered. There was no one on the other end. Silence. The call disconnected. Rik would make the call over and over, each time the phone was answered, but silence was all he got back. Phone records as part of the investigation would later reveal that the calls were physically answered on Carla’s phone each time. They would also show a desperate flurry of outgoing calls that same night. Earlier, just before 10PM that night, Carla’s friend Margaret received a phone call. It was 9:57 and she let the answering machine pick up. What she described was an unsettling sound of gurgling and crackling coming through the answering machine’s speaker. Margaret would shudder at the unknown sound. The call ended. At 9:58, Margaret’s phone rang again. Again it was answered by the machine, again the strained gurgling and electronic crackling recorded. Margaret’s phone rang again at 9:59. Margaret yanked the phone connection. The noises and sudden influx “weirding her out.” The phone records would show that all the calls to Margaret’s house came from Carla’s cell phone, including a fourth at 10:01PM, one digit off from Margaret’s phone number. Rik tried to sleep after his failed calls, rising again in the early morning hours to spend a couple hours looking for Carla’s van in the area before having to wake his children for school. He returned, unsuccessful and informed his now worried children that Carla was doing some early morning shopping. After the kids went to school, he spent the rest of the morning and afternoon searching for Carla and calling police departments, who told him that it was too early to file a missing person report. Rik was panicked. He couldn’t even remember what he told his children when they arrived back home from school that day. He was trying to not appear upset, he knew that much. At 4:30PM on November 30th, 1999, FBI agents arrived at the Simmons household and informed Rik that his wife was deceased. Later, he would learn from his children that Carla frequently used the treacherous mountain road she was found on. Margaret too was unsurprised that Carla would be found on that stretch of road. Only Rik was unaware of her preference for this road. In the months that followed Carla’s discovery, Rik was cleared by the FBI as a potential suspect. In 2003, all DNA collected from the scene of Carla’s death had been processed. The odd cigarette butt, the man’s hair on one of her hands. No matches were found and no prospects surfaced. Occasional tips would filter in, odd men in notable vehicles seen in the area. The license plate written on a receipt yielded nothing and the prospects of new information dropping ever lower with each passing year. After Carla’s death, Margaret and Rik would hang signs through Placitas, through Carual, through Tijeras and Albuquerque seeking any information. WHO KILLED CARLA? Sometime around 15 years after Carla’s death, the main location for these posts, the side of the road at Sandia Man Cave, would start to disappear. They wouldn’t be put back up. A decorated descanso also sat away from the road, removed at least once; it has come back in a more understated marker of memorial. Legacies Frank Hibben sought to make a name for himself. He succeeded, co-founding the internationally renowned Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. A millionaire later in his life, Hibben almost certainly did not lose sleep over his divisive history. His name was secure, and he left a considerable endowment to UNM upon his death, a legacy that remains in place to this day, especially with the named Hibben Center for Archaeology Research at UNM, named in 2003, now serving as not only memorial, but cautionary tale. Whether Hibben faked Sandia Man or not, he wanted to believe it was the truth in either case. While the world of archeology moved on from Hibben’s defining work, other sites in North America would be found that chipped away at the earliest evidence of paleoindians, although the prospect of Hibben’s 20 to 25,000 year mark were often regarded as wishful thinking. In a very modern twist, researchers near White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico had been aware of preserved evidence of paleoindian evidence around the site for years, but in 2018, a perfectly preserved set of human footprints, mingled with prints of megafauna. Radiocarbon dating of preserved seed flora seed material compressed by these footprints have returned results showing that the material dates back as far as 23,000 years- precisely in line with Hibben’s research and approximately 160 miles south of Sandia Man Cave. Later still, a hiker in Rio Puerco Canyon, approximately 70 miles north from Sandia Man Cave discovered the remains of a mammoth. Excavation of the site revealed something more startling than what was allegedly found by Hibben: The site dates back as far as 37,000 years and the mammoth bones show evidence of field dressing, and several small stone cherts indicative of rudimentary stone tool use were found at the site. The paper written about the discovery of this site asks the question, how do we catalog early humans that may have branched off of larger migrations and had no elaborate stone tools to enter into the record? If Hibben faked his discoveries, was he accidentally correct in his assertions? Only time will tell, but both sites have been careful to say the results warrant caution and further study before we can no for certain. The cave now sits as a hiking destination, a diversion, the history of the archeological site fading, an anomaly. Below that cave, Carla Simmons had been beaten and strangled, stripped of her clothes. She sat alone on an empty dirt road below Sandia Man Cave. She was alive, but barely, the distant stars shimmering through boughs of unconcerned pine trees as the night grew colder. When Carla was 24, she was introduced to an artist, Steve Hanks, via Hanks’ wife who was a waitress along with one of Carla’s sisters. Steve asked Carla to pose for a painting. The painting, a watercolor titled “Autumn Breeze” would forever immortalize Carla as those that loved her remembered her, and will continue to keep her, frozen forever in time defying yet part of a breeze made visible by the sheer material of a white shawl. Carla would close her eyes on the mountain she loved some time after midnight. They never opened again.  End. Droogie has a new favorite as of 02:21 on Feb 24, 2023 |
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Feb 23, 2023 16:23
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spookykid posted:Droogie, I love your ABQ stuff. It's startling how different the "back" side of Sandia is ecologically than the city side. The east side is "lush" for lack of a more descriptive word, while the west is scrubby and gets scrubbier the closer you get to the city. Yay! I was just there last June on a tour of New Mexico, nice state.
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Feb 23, 2023 19:41
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Wow what a story! I was enthralled throughout, great writing 
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Feb 23, 2023 21:53
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Thanks for writing all of that up, Droogie: I was fascinated and enthralled. I do love reading your writing, and this was no exception.
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Feb 23, 2023 22:50
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That was fantastic, thank you.
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Feb 24, 2023 00:32
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Droogie posted:
This doesn't seem to make sense, Droogie. Do you mean that Margaret would shudder?
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Feb 24, 2023 01:43
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Jedit posted:This doesn't seem to make sense, Droogie. Do you mean that Margaret would shudder? My mistake. You are correct and it is fixed.
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Feb 24, 2023 02:22
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Good read, in regards to the "tool shards" you talk about, they should probably be called flaked stone debitage, which is the modern term we use for bits of flaked stone that are the by-product of flaked stone tool production.
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Feb 24, 2023 20:11
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Telsa Cola posted:Good read, in regards to the "tool shards" you talk about, they should probably be called flaked stone debitage, which is the modern term we use for bits of flaked stone that are the by-product of flaked stone tool production. I'm no archeologist, but know a fair few, it just seemed like the easiest way to explain that to anyone unfamiliar with the process of stone tool making and the debris it leaves behind. I also just make mention of 'differing techniques' of the points found in the cave rather than go into it, but with someone familiar, Sandia points and 'Folsom like' tools all had an odd mix of random percussion flaking as well as fine antler pressure flaking. But that's also if you ignore the evidence of then-modern alterations and take it at face value.
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Feb 24, 2023 21:04
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As a Wisconsinite, I couldn’t stop reading this story. It’s a state-wide joke that, anywhere you go, you can “smell our dairy air”, but I didn’t realize how much human trafficking and exploitation is maintaining the current industry. Death on a dairy farm: What really happened to 8-year-old Jefferson Rodríguez Tl;dr or in case there’s a paywall: The Wisconsin dairy industry is staffed primarily with undocumented immigrants from Central and South America, and the farm owners have a very “don’t ask don’t tell” attitude toward their authorization to work. So they cram as many people as possible into small outbuildings (and call that a “free housing” benefit), pay below minimum wage without overtime because farms are exempt from both those things, and the state and federal governments don’t seem to consider the working conditions or human rights violations worth their time. Specifically in this story, a police officer arrives on the scene of a young boy’s death and, rather than calling an interpreter in the giant city close by (since she was the only self-reported Spanish speaker in the department) figures she’ll be just fine with her high-school Spanish. It got worse from there. The owner of the farm, who lied about knowing the boy was living on the property, faced no charges. Not even an OSHA complaint, because the boy was a “non-employee”. A child died due to the lovely working conditions and routine cruelty of the dairy industry and it changed nothing.
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Feb 28, 2023 01:30
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Don't look up child labor in recent news if you don't want to actively find reasons to burn American society to the ground!
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Feb 28, 2023 09:21
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Pretty convinced that we hate kids, as a society Barricaded Siblings Turn to TikTok While Defying Court Order to Return to Father They Say Abused Them https://www.propublica.org/article/parental-alienation-utah-livestream-siblings  : CSA is mentioned, and explicitly so. quote:Mainstream scientific groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, which compiles the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the World Health Organization, which publishes the International Classification of Diseases list, have rejected the theory and said it [parental alienation] is not a legitimate diagnosis. It has also been shunned by the National Center for Juvenile Justice for failing to meet court evidentiary standards.
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Mar 7, 2023 11:34
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that's so hosed up what the actual fuckkkkkkkkkkkk building a whole rear end industry around transparently abusing children
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Mar 7, 2023 11:36
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teen witch posted:Pretty convinced that we hate kids, as a society The I’m glad they’re livestreaming so they can’t just be disappeared during the night.
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Mar 7, 2023 21:12
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I was just scrolling through Instagram and a post of a toddler getting injured popped up and apparently it’s an account specifically made for that type of content. What the actual gently caress is wrong with people??
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Mar 7, 2023 21:39
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remigious posted:I was just scrolling through Instagram and a post of a toddler getting injured popped up and apparently it’s an account specifically made for that type of content. What the actual gently caress is wrong with people?? America's Funniest Home Videos are a classic though! For real though what the gently caress? I assume it's like, seriously injured and not just 'kid does something dumb and bonks their noggin' which is yikes as hell
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Mar 8, 2023 01:56
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Speaking of exploitation and exposing people to traumatic imagery: Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.” The work’s traumatic nature eventually led Sama to cancel all its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned. … Agents, the most junior data labelers who made up the majority of the three teams, were paid a basic salary of 21,000 Kenyan shillings ($170) per month, according to three Sama employees. They also received monthly bonuses worth around $70 due to the explicit nature of their work, and would receive commission for meeting key performance indicators like accuracy and speed. An agent working nine-hour shifts could expect to take home a total of at least $1.32 per hour after tax, rising to as high as $1.44 per hour if they exceeded all their targets. Quality analysts—more senior labelers whose job was to check the work of agents—could take home up to $2 per hour if they met all their targets. … In February 2022, Sama and OpenAI’s relationship briefly deepened, only to falter. That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI. The work of labeling images appears to be unrelated to ChatGPT. In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson did not specify the purpose of the images the company sought from Sama, but said labeling harmful images was “a necessary step” in making its AI tools safer. (OpenAI also builds image-generation technology.) In February, according to one billing document reviewed by TIME, Sama delivered OpenAI a sample batch of 1,400 images. Some of those images were categorized as “C4”—OpenAI’s internal label denoting child sexual abuse—according to the document. Also included in the batch were “C3” images (including bestiality, rape, and sexual slavery,) and “V3” images depicting graphic detail of death, violence or serious physical injury, according to the billing document. … Sama’s decision to end its work with OpenAI meant Sama employees no longer had to deal with disturbing text and imagery, but it also had a big impact on their livelihoods. Sama workers say that in late February 2022 they were called into a meeting with members of the company’s human resources team, where they were told the news. “We were told that they [Sama] didn’t want to expose their employees to such [dangerous] content again,” one Sama employee on the text-labeling projects said. “We replied that for us, it was a way to provide for our families.” Most of the roughly three dozen workers were moved onto other lower-paying workstreams without the $70 explicit content bonus per month; others lost their jobs.
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Mar 8, 2023 16:22
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Kitfox88 posted:America's Funniest Home Videos are a classic though! Yeah that is a fair point. I may have been overreacting a bit. The video that popped up on my feed wasn’t graphic but the hashtags really creeped me out, stuff like Ihatetoddlers, kidsgettinghurt, etc. It reminded me of stories about Reddit boards called kids getting burned and the like. I hope those types of boards are urban legends but I’m not 100% sure.
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Mar 8, 2023 17:08
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remigious posted:Yeah that is a fair point. I may have been overreacting a bit. The video that popped up on my feed wasn’t graphic but the hashtags really creeped me out, stuff like Ihatetoddlers, kidsgettinghurt, etc. It reminded me of stories about Reddit boards called kids getting burned and the like. I hope those types of boards are urban legends but I’m not 100% sure. Oh, yeah that's 
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Mar 8, 2023 18:17
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:Was there ever a serial killer or someone who kept 20-30 heads inside the walls of their house in Kansas?? I was just told that and I'm very skeptical... Glenn Danzig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFZqbh7TaU
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Mar 8, 2023 18:58
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remigious posted:I hope those types of boards are urban legends but Im not 100% sure. It's Reddit, so nah
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Mar 8, 2023 19:53
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teen witch posted:Pretty convinced that we hate kids, as a society I'm reading the judge's ruling from Jan 23 (hyperlinked in the article under the phrase "The judge criticized Zahrt") and it's breaking my heart for a few reasons. 1. The main reasoning seems to be "X behavior doesn't make sense coming from an abuse victim, so I'd conclude that they weren't abused," but the thing is... PTSD and the behavior of abuse victims often doesn't seem to make sense. This is like how cops treat rape victims as unreliable when they're unable to present a coherent timeline for their attack when they are actually demonstrating how traumatic memories stay in the brain. And, generally speaking, the whole "thing" with lawyers and judges and whatnot is that they need everything to fit together logically. It makes sense, but presents soooo many problems when it comes to violent crime and abuse, which often has several illogical elements. 2. Despite the purported cold logic of law professionals, it is so clear that the judge is creating a narrative in favor of the father here. There are qualifications made to excuse his shady behavior, but no such grace is given to the mother. They're just not being treated the same. 3. Tbh I don't not believe in parental alienation! But I doubt that it would be the only thing wrong with someone's parenting style, if that makes sense. Jessica Zahrt seems to be an otherwise normal parent besides this judge's claim. But if you look at someone like Larry Ray, the Sarah Lawrence College cult dad, he successfully alienated his daughter against her mother while carrying out a whole bunch of other atrocities.
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Mar 10, 2023 16:44
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Oh hey, I was almost implanted with a useless piece of plastic, but my insurance at the time wouldn’t cover it because there was no evidence it helped! [worst_industry_you_know_just_made_a_great_point.bmp] People Were Unwittingly Implanted With Fake Devices in Medical Scam, FBI Alleges Chronic pain patients were implanted with “dummy” pieces of plastic and told it would ease their pain, according to an indictment charging the former CEO of the firm that made the fake devices with fraud. … When doctors told Stimwave that the long receiver was difficult to place in some patients, Perryman allegedly created the “White Stylet,” a receiver that doctors could cut to be smaller and easier to implant—but was actually just a piece of plastic that did nothing. “To perpetuate the lie that the White Stylet was functional, Perryman oversaw training that suggested to doctors that the White Stylet was a ‘receiver,’ when, in fact, it was made entirely of plastic, contained no copper, and therefore had no conductivity,” the FBI stated. “In addition, Perryman directed other Stimwave employees to vouch for the efficacy of the White Stylet, when she knew that the White Stylet was actually non-functional.” Stimwave charged doctors and medical providers approximately $16,000 for the device, which medical insurance providers, including Medicare, would reimburse the doctors’ offices for.
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Mar 11, 2023 00:44
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Rondette posted:I have a completely baseless suspicion that tubers often do this on purpose to get the Comments section going. I can say first hand I've gotten a shitload of comments about mispronouncing John Leguizamo on my Steven Seagal video (I genuinely didn't know who the man was much less how to say his name). Now for something truly nutty. A woman named Romana Didulo started calling herself Queen of Canada back in 2021 and built a cult of followers who do everything for her. She's obsessed with Boney M and once had her supporters bumrush a police department in Ontario, attempting to arrest all of them in one fell swoop because of vaccines or something. These people truly believe that Romana stopped a Chinese invasion of Canada and have started printing their own money with her face on it. Romana has a history of trying to start up businesses, failing, then not paying taxes so they go defunct. She also tried grifting a couple million dollars for "police dog vests". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2IvHrsHFJg
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Mar 13, 2023 15:07
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The Golden Gael posted:I can say first hand I've gotten a shitload of comments about mispronouncing John Leguizamo on my Steven Seagal video (I genuinely didn't know who the man was much less how to say his name). Crazy is as crazy does Good for her on abusing the certain type of crazy that comes from the vaccine debate though. On both sides of the fence before someone calls for my death , pro vaccine and anti vaccine folks can both be equally crazy She could run for parliament at this point and be as successful as other politicians
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Mar 13, 2023 15:27
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Forgive me for asking but what are pro vax people known to be crazy about?
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Mar 13, 2023 16:13
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:Forgive me for asking but what are pro vax people known to be crazy about? Openly wishing for the death of the unvaxed and gloating when they die?
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Mar 13, 2023 16:20
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Openly wishing for the death of the unvaxed and gloating when they die? Thinking that vaccines work seems kind of incidental to that position, to be honest.
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Mar 13, 2023 16:55
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there was that whole Tuskegee experiment thing
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Mar 13, 2023 18:43
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