trees in your eyes; stars in your heart

Not all of the advice in every book is going to help; there are some aspects of grief I doubt any book can actually help with. But the recommendations are successful, I'd guess, because a) reading can occupy your mind when you're grieving (and you might as well read about grief because you're not going to be distracted from it), b) learning something new helps people feel more in control of their life & environment and can offer a sense of hope, c) even if the recipient never reads any of the books, being given a book list is a way to say "I care about you and want to help" which is a good message to send. From my own grief experience I also think it's especially powerful to hear "I went through something similar to you and this is what helped me" - it's proof there's life on the other side.

Anyway, 2 more book recs for 2 quite different end-of-life outcomes, which I think you should ideally read before any of your loved ones die so you can actually use the information (also, honestly? Very helpful writing research):

Final Journeys and Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan -- a hospice nurse's guide to the kinds of decisions, conflicts, and sometimes puzzling behavior and experiences encountered when a loved one is in palliative care. Journeys is the more broadly practical book (from the 'writing research' perspective, it also offers some great examples of conflict, memorable scenes, and psychology insights); Gifts looks particularly at spiritual experiences at the end of life, including end of life visions (which happen to all kinds of people and can be a good thing to be prepared for regardless of your own spiritual beliefs). If Gifts proves fascinating, a more recent book on the subject of end of life experiences is Death is But a Dream.

> ask the people if it's objects or gambling

> they don't understand

> pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is objects and what is gambling

> they laugh and say "it's a good collectible sir"

> look up how to buy a collectible

Labubus are blind bags but they're also blind bags with some of the most insane dark patterns stacked on top. The online store for them has a thing where they tell you what you got the second you order it online so that you can immediately try again if you didn't get the thing you wanted.

i speak english the most in day to day life and also think in english sometimes. my accent in english is americanized, pretty indistinguishable from a native (excluding sets of certain phonemes like /rl/) .

but if i’m really tired or spending time just around my wife (with whom i speak english), i sometimes switch to what i call ‘lazy english’.

what this usually consists of is i allow myself to speak english with the russian /r/ phoneme that is more natural for me, i drop articles, replace continuous and future tense with simple present, use the ‘….,yes?’ construct, avoid contractions (bc the verb ‘to be’ is dropped/implied in russian, so contractions aren’t always natural)

for example, when i’m in ‘lazy english’ mode, this is how my speech varies:

‘i’m making the bed’ = ‘i make bed’.

‘you’ll help me later, right?’ = ‘you help me later, yes?’ (for this one, in russian, the same phrasal construct ends with the word ‘yes’ instead of the word ‘right’)

‘can you give me a tissue?’ = can you give me tissue?’

‘where’s the pen? do you have it?’ = ‘where is pen? you have?’

if you pay attention, you’ll notice that a lot of these patterns also occur in ilya’s speech, especially earlier on. that’s why i’m particularly impressed with the writing of his dialogue — it doesn’t come across as stereotyping/caricatural because the way he speaks english is consistent with russian linguistic/grammatical rules. this is often how russian-speaking people speak english when it is their second language and they’re still learning.

During the stop, Lorenzo had 3 coworkers with him in his truck who have all been taken into ICE custody.

His family described Lorenzo as a hardworking family man who didn’t deserve to be killed. All he wanted was to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people. His eldest son recognized his father by his cries and pleas when trying to identify who the victim was.

The Salgado Araujo family has set up a gofundme to help with funeral and legal costs, and to help keep their family supported since Lorenzo was the sole provider.

Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone

“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’