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There is a specific kind of person who looks at a narrow cave, a hole in the earth roughly the diameter of an expired can of Chef Boyardee, and thinks, Yes. I should put my body inside that. These are not reckless people, not in the traditional sense. They are not leaping off cliffs or outrunning bulls. They are doing something far stranger: attempting to fit their entire personhood into a space that appears incompatible with the dimensions of a human ribcage.

[Read more…] about A Meditation on People Who Think Tight, Dark Spaces Are Recreational

The sea is gray and cold and endless. The sky a wound of smoke and iron. The men go forward through the surf, bent under their packs, rifles held high like relics. They do not speak. The waves speak for them. The surf folds and breaks and folds again, indifferent to courage or fear.

The ramp has fallen. The world narrows to a strip of wet sand and the black mouths of the guns beyond it. Some men will make it to that sand. Some will not. The sea takes both the same way — without ceremony, without memory.

This was June 6th, 1944. But it could be any day that men are sent to die for something they can barely name. They move not out of madness or glory but because the man beside them moves. Because history pushes from behind and there is no way but forward.

We call them veterans now. We build monuments, lay wreaths, speak of valor. But none of it captures the sound of the ramp falling or the slow, deliberate step into the water. The world they knew was made of consequence. Theirs was a time when the cost of freedom had a body and a face and a name that could be lost forever beneath the tide.

On this day we remember them, though remembrance is a poor thing. We speak softly because the dead are listening. And if they could answer, they might say only this: that the world is built on the bones of those who walked into the storm and did not return.

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A 19-year-old convicted killer flew into a rage in a Houston courtroom after a Harris County jury sentenced him to death.

Dexter Johnson was one of five men who carjacked 23-year-old Maria Aparece and her boyfriend Huy Ngo as they sat in their chatting on a summer night more than ten years ago. Prosecutors during his trial alleged Johnson had “fun” when he and his friends carjacked the couple and drove them around town demanding money, credit cards and ATM access. 

Then, they parked near a patch of thick woods and forced Ngo to listen as Johnson raped Aparece in the backseat.  Afterward, Johnson shot Ngo in the side of the head execution-style before slaughtering Aparece with a shot to the top of the head.

 

[Read more…] about 10 Videos Of Convicts Freaking Out After Being Sentenced To Prison

If you’ve ever wandered through a museum staring at a 14th-century tapestry and thought, “Why does everyone look so chill while being stabbed in the neck?” — congratulations, you’ve noticed one of history’s weirdest aesthetic consistencies. Medieval art is full of people getting absolutely wrecked — spears through torsos, swords in skulls, arrows everywhere — and nobody seems remotely concerned. It’s like the entire population of the Middle Ages was collectively dosed with Xanax before every battle, martyrdom, and beheading.

[Read more…] about People In Medieval Art Getting Murdered And Who Just Don’t Give A Damn

[Read more…] about You Can Learn A Lot About Recovering Addicts By The Memes They Post Online

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