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BovineFury posted:Yeah. It is in no way pleasant and I don't generally tell people I know I have a problem. I get around pretty well and while people may realize something is wrong, they can't quite put their finger on it. I've had migraines or something akin to them where I suddenly go 'blind' on my right hand-side and it's seems as if this is very like what you describe here, but like you say it's not as if it goes black or anything like that, it's just that the right-hand side of things isn't there. I can look at a printed word on a page and only see the first three letters, or if it's really bad, the first half of the first letter until I move my eye and can see the next letter and so on, but it makes me extremely dizzy and nauseous and I have to go lie down with my eyes shut until it passes. quote:Does what is behind you exist in a visual sense? Do you know what is happening behind you? This is a perfect way of describing it, at least for me. I can't see what's behind me, or just outside of my peripheral vision unless I turn my head or move my eye. When I get these weird migraine things it's like my field of vision narrows almost, but exclusively on the right-hand side, in both eyes. Do you find it makes you feel dizzy on occasion or have you gotten more-or-less accustomed to it? Are you able to, for example, type relatively normally? (This isn't meant to sound patronising in any way, sorry, I'm genuinely curious!)
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 09:57 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 09:22 |
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Anybody who is interested in any of this visual loss and neurology stuff should pick up Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks. His other neurology books are good, too, but that one specifically examines visual neurology.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 16:29 |
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Gloomiebat posted:
I've been dealing with it for ten years and have become somewhat accustomed. Learned the tricks like putting my hand I can see on things, hugging the right side of walls, etc. Lots of movement, things popping into view, used to cause seizures. That doesn't happen much anymore. It was really weird seeing only part of people, but now I don't even notice. What reminds me the most is looking for something on my desk and not finding it, then remembering I have to check the other side. When I look straight at text I only see the right half. This means I had to relearn how to read. I also tilt my head to the side when I need to see more of what is in front of me.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 17:53 |
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I got a small blind spot out of nowhere once, for an hour or two. Scared the hell out of me until I looked it up and found out that that's something that just happens once in a great while. So I started playing with it... it's interesting seeing your brains "error correction" in action, when you try really hard to see what you can't see. If I put it over the end of my finger, it looked like I had half a finger. But if I put it over the middle of my finger, my brain tried to "fill in" the missing part and it looked like a blurry spot in the middle of a normal finger. It reminded me of video game antialiasing, my brain looked at the surrounding area and just kinda averaged it into a blurry patch of color. Weirdest drat thing. Content: You can spend a fascinating day reading about breathing. It's interesting how breathing is regulated by CO2, not O2, because we actually use very little of the oxygen we breathe. That can cause physiological gently caress-ups like shallow water blackout which has killed many a free diver. When you hyperventilate prior to holding your breath, you can drive your CO2 levels down so low that you'll run out of oxygen before feeling the need to breathe again. So it's lights out. Its frustrating to see quacks like Dr Oz promote horseshit like an alkaline diet once you know that your body regulates its acidity by breathing. You wouldn't think people could gently caress up something that simple but there you go. Its a shame that people trust assholes like that, when even their bodily organs know he's full of poo poo.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 19:23 |
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RevSyd posted:Its frustrating to see quacks like Dr Oz promote horseshit like an alkaline diet once you know that your body regulates its acidity by breathing. You wouldn't think people could gently caress up something that simple but there you go. Its a shame that people trust assholes like that, when even their bodily organs know he's full of poo poo. Unfortunately, many people let their emotions override their intellect and common sense goes out the window. People like Dr. Oz, Oprah, Glenn Beck, et al are experts at using this to make tons of money. Content: Drivers who sit at a green arrow that is only going to let three cars through. It's green, you know you only have a limited amount of time to turn left, WTF are you waiting for?
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 19:56 |
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RevSyd posted:I got a small blind spot out of nowhere once, for an hour or two. Scared the hell out of me until I looked it up and found out that that's something that just happens once in a great while. So I started playing with it... it's interesting seeing your brains "error correction" in action, when you try really hard to see what you can't see. If I put it over the end of my finger, it looked like I had half a finger. But if I put it over the middle of my finger, my brain tried to "fill in" the missing part and it looked like a blurry spot in the middle of a normal finger. It reminded me of video game antialiasing, my brain looked at the surrounding area and just kinda averaged it into a blurry patch of color. Weirdest drat thing. Isn't that basically how vision works? We can't actually process everything our eyes "see" so our brain just uses past experience to fill in the gaps so our eyes can "focus" on the important things? So your brain fills in the gap between both ends of your finger and produces an approximation of what it would expect to be there.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 20:03 |
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MightyJoe36 posted:
Yeah, that's the scariest Wikipedia page.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 20:35 |
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Sorry to bring back funeralchat, but I had to bring this up:MAKE NO BABBYS posted:wake is a specific form of joyful party post-burial, IE Finnegan's Wake. Back on-topic, and speaking of brain fuckery, psychedelic drugs creep me out. I mean, to each his own, and I hear sometimes it's pretty fun, but personally I don't trust my own subconscious enough to try 'em. Has prosopagnosia been mentioned yet? Oliver Sacks has it, and has written about it in one of his books. Short version: we're hardwired to recognize human faces more than any similarly complex non-face object. In people with prosopagnosia, that ability is broken: an individual human face is no more distinctive than an individual rock. They mostly get by on recognizing voices and memorizing individual features -- this person has this hairstyle, this person has a big nose, etc. My partner has prosopagnosia; he has asked me to point out his parents in pictures of a crowd, and once momentarily panicked when I shaved my beard without warning. It's sort of like the "all [people of other race] look alike" thing, but with people in general. Fun tangential anecdote: my Army JROTC instructor did several tours in Korea when he was active-duty, and when he came back, couldn't tell one white person from another for a few months, because he was used to dealing with Asians. WastedJoker posted:Isn't that basically how vision works? We can't actually process everything our eyes "see" so our brain just uses past experience to fill in the gaps so our eyes can "focus" on the important things?
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 21:26 |
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Delivery McGee posted:Back on-topic, and speaking of brain fuckery, psychedelic drugs creep me out. I mean, to each his own, and I hear sometimes it's pretty fun, but personally I don't trust my own subconscious enough to try 'em. I got a dose of Ketamine once (after a dislocated kneecap). Apparently I reacted so badly to it that they followed it up with some Valium. I only remember the pretty colored lights, and not giving a gently caress about what was happening to me afterwards. That one experience will be enough - I really don't want to take something that can make me not care if I live or die.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 21:33 |
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BovineFury posted:Yeah. It is in no way pleasant and I don't generally tell people I know I have a problem. I get around pretty well and while people may realize something is wrong, they can't quite put their finger on it. Hugs I have no idea what your experience must be like (on a personal level/emotional level). I hope its not too offensive for us to talk about it in a not-so-personal sense. I know I get frustrated when people talk about depression and BPD in really... well. Depersonalizing terms. I do really appreciate you sharing your experience though. <3 Brainbread has a new favorite as of 21:47 on Oct 18, 2014 |
# ? Oct 18, 2014 21:38 |
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RevSyd posted:Content: You can spend a fascinating day reading about breathing. It's interesting how breathing is regulated by CO2, not O2, because we actually use very little of the oxygen we breathe. This also explains Ladislas Meduna's experiments with "carbogen" gas, which was a mixture of 30% CO2 and 70% O2, which tricks the brain into thinking the body is suffocating while still providing adequate oxygen: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2506300115.html quote:Later in his career he devised carbon dioxide therapy as a course of therapy for schizophrenics. His formula of 30 percent carbon dioxide and 70 percent oxygen was known as the “Meduna mix,” and caused unconsciousness and in some cases near-death experiences reported later by patients, who reported feeling a sensation of moving through a tunnel toward a light source while under the influence. quote:Carbogen was once used in psychology and psychedelic psychotherapy to determine how a patient would react to an altered state of consciousness or to a sensation of loss of control.[4] Individuals who reacted especially negatively to carbogen were generally not administered other psychotherapeutic drugs for fear of similar reactions. Meduna administered carbogen to his patients to induce abreaction, which, with proper preparation and administration, he found could help clients become free of their neuroses. Carbogen users are said to have discovered unconscious contents of their mind, with the experience clearing away repressed material and freeing the subject for a smoother, more profound psychedelic experience.[3]
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 21:50 |
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Tibor posted:Yeah, that's the scariest Wikipedia page. Wrong thread. It probably would be though if it were a page.
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# ? Oct 18, 2014 21:51 |
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RevSyd posted:I got a small blind spot out of nowhere once, for an hour or two. Scared the hell out of me until I looked it up and found out that that's something that just happens once in a great while. So I started playing with it... it's interesting seeing your brains "error correction" in action, when you try really hard to see what you can't see. If I put it over the end of my finger, it looked like I had half a finger. But if I put it over the middle of my finger, my brain tried to "fill in" the missing part and it looked like a blurry spot in the middle of a normal finger. It reminded me of video game antialiasing, my brain looked at the surrounding area and just kinda averaged it into a blurry patch of color. Weirdest drat thing. This happens to me about once every month or so, as a symptom that I'm about to have a migraine attack. It's a pretty reliable sign that I have to find a dark room and lay down for a couple of hours. It's sometimes referred to as a migraine aura or optical migraine, and it's pretty weird. The first time it happened, I was terrified that something had happened to one of my eyes until I noticed both eyes were affected in the exact same way. Then I realized it was my brain (Which it actually was, but not in a harmful way)
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 19:15 |
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Delivery McGee posted:Has prosopagnosia been mentioned yet? Oliver Sacks has it, and has written about it in one of his books. Short version: we're hardwired to recognize human faces more than any similarly complex non-face object. In people with prosopagnosia, that ability is broken: an individual human face is no more distinctive than an individual rock. They mostly get by on recognizing voices and memorizing individual features -- this person has this hairstyle, this person has a big nose, etc. Last time it was brought up a bunch of goons claimed to have it, much like synaesthesia before that and whatever was before that
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 19:40 |
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Jose posted:Last time it was brought up a bunch of goons claimed to have it, much like synaesthesia before that and whatever was before that Lots of brain disorders have a spectrum of symptoms. Someone who is "bad at faces" probably has some sort of issue in the same area of the brain as someone who can't recognize people, but only one is aversely affected enough to warrant diagnosis and treatment.
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 21:26 |
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Jose posted:Last time it was brought up a bunch of goons claimed to have it, much like synaesthesia before that and whatever was before that Nah, when prosopagnosia was the latest Awful BuzzwordTM, a bunch of goons claimed other goons had it whenever they made any sort of comment on any person resembling some other person, regardless of how much of a resemblance or lack thereof those two people actually had.
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 22:08 |
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Brainbread posted:Psych talk! The interesting part about Anton's syndrome is, like you said, how they can describe something that "isn't" there so well. The reason being that they are seeing their own internal representation of the world. For whatever reason, their phenomenal self model hasn't or isn't able to update (cars are good example. How long does it take you to realize you have no oil if the engine light never comes on?). Sometimes they'll realize after a while that they've been blind the whole time (which then those experiences prior rush back to them, and they understand that they were blind then as well). Do they still think they experience sight, though? Like, to them, is there a constant visual hallucination going on 24/7? Because it seems like it'd be pretty easy to go, 'hey genius, ever wonder why everything seems dark constantly, even when others are telling you you're standing in a brightly-lit room?' Or would they just accuse that person of placing a towel over their eyes or something?
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# ? Oct 19, 2014 23:39 |
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That was justified - it coincided with a goon trend of responding to every god drat picture by pointing out how they very slightly resembled a c list celebrity. In a lot o cases the person making the comparison was the only one who thought they were similar at all. I genuinely think I have some degree of propoagnosia. I have on three occasions failed to realise that someone I hit on via grindr was someone I'd met in real life (one time we'd left a party five minutes earlier). Every time a TV character makes a shocking return, it's with a silent dramatic shot and they have new hair so I have no goddamn idea who they are. I actually did this with a real-life friend for three while days because I happened to keep seeing him on campus but he didn't speak. to me. Haircut = oh god who are you I've done those psych tests where they take out colour and hair and ask you 'have you seen this face before' and I have 0% idea and have to blindly guess. Its main effect on my life is a series of awkward moments where I try to convey that I actually like you even though I appear to have utterly forgotten that you exist. Generally hearing your voice or being explicitly being told your name will trigger a lit of memories that your face just doesn't. The worst part is I'm visually distinct (ginger) and so I've never, ever been in the scenario where they're the one who can't recognise me. Buh has a new favorite as of 23:51 on Oct 19, 2014 |
# ? Oct 19, 2014 23:46 |
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Delivery McGee posted:Has prosopagnosia been mentioned yet? Oliver Sacks has it, and has written about it in one of his books. Short version: we're hardwired to recognize human faces more than any similarly complex non-face object. In people with prosopagnosia, that ability is broken: an individual human face is no more distinctive than an individual rock. They mostly get by on recognizing voices and memorizing individual features -- this person has this hairstyle, this person has a big nose, etc. Chuck Close, the portrait artist, has prosopagnosia. Even before he was partially paralyzed in 1988, he divided his pictures into grids and did them just a bit at a time. Here's an episode of RadioLab where he and Oliver Sacks talk about it: http://www.radiolab.org/story/121383-about-face/
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# ? Oct 20, 2014 00:23 |
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Astrofig posted:Do they still think they experience sight, though? Like, to them, is there a constant visual hallucination going on 24/7? Because it seems like it'd be pretty easy to go, 'hey genius, ever wonder why everything seems dark constantly, even when others are telling you you're standing in a brightly-lit room?' Or would they just accuse that person of placing a towel over their eyes or something? From my understanding, yes. The occipital lobe is chugging away nicely and the brain is interpreting the signals from it as stuff around them. If something is red and people are constantly telling you its blue but its seriously red I'M LOOKING RIGHT AT IT, you'd probably think they're assholes full of poo poo. Brains aren't logic machines, and you'd be arguing against what they're experiencing right then and now.
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# ? Oct 20, 2014 02:27 |
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If you don't know anything about In Cold Blood, just get it and read it. That's what I did and the book was the most scary and unnerving stuff I read in a decade. I didn't know that it was non-fiction. I learned about that only after completing the book, and seeing killer's real faces after reading about their hanging made it even more unnerving. http://www.amazon.com/In-Cold-Blood-Truman-Capote/dp/0679745580 If you're lazy, here's wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood However I had a great time with this thread since we moved away from murderers and I invite everyone to keep it that way.
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# ? Oct 22, 2014 00:40 |
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Doctor Malaver posted:I didn't know that it was non-fiction. I learned about that only after completing the book, and seeing killer's real faces after reading about their hanging made it even more unnerving. That's debatable.
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# ? Oct 22, 2014 03:35 |
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Hey guys! I got a few messages about my posts in the last thread (my grandfather may possibly be responsible for the Tylenol deaths) and I don't have much of an update, unfortunately. Life got very stressful, my husband developed mental illness and we lost our house so I just couldn't open this can of worms until I wasn't worried about being homeless/feeding my kids. I talked to my best friend's dad who is FBI and he knew my family because my friend and I have known each other since we were 8. He had even met my grandfather. You'd expect at this point for him to say something like, "No way, that's odd, where did you hear that?" or "Your Papa didn't seem like that kind of person!" Nope. Both of them said, "That kinda makes sense." And told me to call the Chicago FBI branch. Which freaked me out a little. I know it seems easy to make a phone call but I worry about things like, will somebody bother my grandmother (who had been divorced from him for 25+ years)? She's such a good person i don't want anyone questioning her or making her feel like she had a part in anything. If this comes out, will my family disown me for bringing this to light? What if I'm wrong and in the end I lose friends and family for stirring up poo poo that wasn't even true? I mean, the guy is dead and no one liked him but sometimes people can be weird about family. However, I am still going to make the call. Now that life has leveled out and I'm in a new city with a stable residence, I'm not stressed out of my mind. Even if i lose family over this, I can't just not do anything. I'm not going to be of much help to the FBI; my grandfather never talked about his job to us grandkids and we were forbidden from learning German (his mother language) because he said he had phone calls we were not allowed to listen in on. He lived a very strange life (he later claimed to be CIA). So...I apologize for the lack of followup. Hopefully i will have time to make that call and hope they don't laugh me off the line.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 11:07 |
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Doctor Malaver posted:If you don't know anything about In Cold Blood, just get it and read it. That's what I did and the book was the most scary and unnerving stuff I read in a decade. I didn't know that it was non-fiction. I learned about that only after completing the book, and seeing killer's real faces after reading about their hanging made it even more unnerving. I never worked out if "In Cold Blood" referred to the hanging or the murders, really. Or is it supposed to be an exercise for the reader?
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 11:12 |
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Noisycat posted:Hey guys! I got a few messages about my posts in the last thread (my grandfather may possibly be responsible for the Tylenol deaths) and I don't have much of an update, unfortunately. Life got very stressful, my husband developed mental illness and we lost our house so I just couldn't open this can of worms until I wasn't worried about being homeless/feeding my kids. I have no idea what you're talking about but maybe it's for the best. This post read without context is probably more unnerving than if I knew the whole story. Jonathan Yeah! posted:I never worked out if "In Cold Blood" referred to the hanging or the murders, really. Or is it supposed to be an exercise for the reader? The latter. It's a (disputed) quote by one of the cops or townspeople - can't remember exactly.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 12:28 |
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Noisycat, I am proud of you for going ahead with this. Solving unsolved serious crimes is worth the risk. Integrity rules.Doctor Malaver posted:I have no idea what you're talking about but maybe it's for the best. This post read without context is probably more unnerving than if I knew the whole story. Noisycat had ostensibly fairly compelling reasons to believe her grandfather was the person who poisoned a batch of Tylenol in the 1980s and killed several people, and since he is dead she figured she might as well talk to the FBI anyway
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 13:23 |
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Jonathan Yeah! posted:I never worked out if "In Cold Blood" referred to the hanging or the murders, really. Or is it supposed to be an exercise for the reader? It's the latter, if you go by the movie that was based on the book. It was part of a line spoken by one of the characters. "Who would kill four people in cold blood for a radio, a pair of binoculars and forty dollars in cash?". MightyJoe36 has a new favorite as of 14:15 on Oct 23, 2014 |
# ? Oct 23, 2014 14:13 |
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Doctor Malaver posted:I have no idea what you're talking about but maybe it's for the best. This post read without context is probably more unnerving than if I knew the whole story. Find the previous thread in archives and search out Noisycat's posts to be even more unnerved with context.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 14:17 |
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Click here for her posts from previous thread. And thanks for the update, Noisycat.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 15:00 |
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Noisycat posted:
Good for you for making the decision to call, the bottom line is its the right thing to do. If you find yourself hesitating because you're worried about how your grandmother will be treated, think about the families of the people that were poisoned, and how they have never had any answers as to what happened. Don't use the fact that he's dead as an excuse not to call, because there are people still alive who suffer because they don't know what happened to their loved one. Sorry if that comes of as judgmental, and it sounds like you've arrived at the right decision, but please follow through.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 15:20 |
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Thats gonna be an extremely cold case for the FBI to follow up on, but who knows, maybe something you tell them connects the last piece they need and they can finally close the case and give closure to all those who lost someone. Also, its pretty drat brave to do something you know is right when you have a fear of losing friends and family. I hope if I ever have to do something like that I can be as courageous.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 16:05 |
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Well, I think I read somewhere that they have DNA or something. I don't know if they could test me to see if anything matched.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 18:59 |
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Noisycat posted:Well, I think I read somewhere that they have DNA or something. I don't know if they could test me to see if anything matched. If they have actual DNA from the perp, then it'd be pretty easy for them to confirm with just a cheek swab from you.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 19:43 |
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Getting tested is one thing, paying for it is another.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 21:21 |
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Sad Mammal posted:Getting tested is one thing, paying for it is another. I assume the police department would pay for it in this case.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 21:21 |
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I would imagine the FBI would be fine paying for it, I mean other than the anecdotal evidence, the first death was in the same small community he lived in.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 22:33 |
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I wonder how far back things like phone records and flight records go. Like could they go back and see what numbers he was calling on all those German phone calls or where he was going in Europe. Probably not, it being 30 years on and such. But that all makes it sound like some cold war poo poo.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 22:52 |
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BovineFury posted:Yeah. It is in no way pleasant and I don't generally tell people I know I have a problem. I get around pretty well and while people may realize something is wrong, they can't quite put their finger on it. Have you ever done an A/T about this? It seems fascinating
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 22:56 |
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Noisycat posted:I would imagine the FBI would be fine paying for it, I mean other than the anecdotal evidence, the first death was in the same small community he lived in. Call me cynical, but, considering rape victims have to pay for their own DNA testing, I don't see feds going out of their way to foot the bill.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 23:22 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 09:22 |
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Sad Mammal posted:Call me cynical, but, considering rape victims have to pay for their own DNA testing, I don't see feds going out of their way to foot the bill. The FBI has their own labs, and if they think the evidence is enough to warrant it, they'll request a sample and do their thing.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 23:56 |