La Maja Oscura

(Source) August 2nd, 2026.

One of her family told us that she had given birth yesterday evening, but that Child Protection services had taken her baby away with no warning, claiming that she wasnt prepared to look after him. What had happened, is that she'd literally only just given birth -- hadn't even passed the afterbirth yet, is holding her blood-coated, crying, newborn baby to her chest -- and a nurse asked what her feeding plan was. She was tired from the birth and distracted by the brand new baby in her arms and thrown off by the timing of the question, but still, she managed to answer, and said she planned to breastfeed him whenever he was hungry.

Well apparently that wasn't enough of a plan for the hospital staff, who reported her and claimed that she was unprepared to look after the child, and claimed that had no social supports, and that the baby was at risk if left with her. All because a brand new mother, 30 seconds after giving birth, didn't have a PowerPoint presentation ready to go that cited the timing cycle she would feed her kid on, and instead simply said that she would feed him when he was hungry.

Child Protection services showed up, took her kid, and she was told to show up to court the next day to contest custody if she wanted her baby back.

So a woman who had given birth less than 24 hours prior was forced to rally her family and show up to court to prove that she a) had a feeding plan for the child, and b) had enough social supports to justify reclaiming her baby.

It was one of the most appalling things I'd ever seen. I don't even know if she won her case. They didn't know at the time we saw them, and after that brief interaction on the stairs, i never saw them again. I sincerely hope she got her newborn baby back.

That was about 5 years ago. And the exact same kind of thing is still happening today.

News broke today from a South Australian whistle-blower of the appalling treatment new mothers frequently receive, including hospital staff taking the baby away from the mother "for medical tests," only for the mother to then be told, with absolutely no prior warning, that the baby was not going to be returned to her.

Here's the article, and here are some excerpts:

I have a direct ancestor

called

saga: that's true. and we didn't even know why. we just called you 'the wiggler.'

me: the HUH??? yall called me the WHAT

One phone call = 100-1,000 angry voters.

One personal email = 10-50 voters.

One form letter = maybe 1 voter, if they even count it.

This is the economy of political pressure. Individualized contact influences 94% of congressional offices on undecided issues. Mass email campaigns? 18%. Petitions? Worthless.

But here's the secret that changes everything: State officials are sitting ducks.

State Comptrollers generally receive 5-10 constituent calls per month. State Treasurers? Many have never experienced a coordinated campaign. District Attorneys? Only hear from victims and lawyers, not voters. State Legislators? They average 20-30 contacts per week.

The magic happens at these thresholds:

10 calls in an hour = staff notices.

50 calls in a day = emergency meeting.

100 calls in a day = office shuts down to handle it.

500 calls in a week = policy change consideration.

1,000 calls = historical precedent shows this forces action.

Constituent contact increases legislator support probability by 12-20%. The Net Neutrality campaign's 1.3 million calls changed federal policy. The ACA defense campaign's 6,000 calls prevented repeal. At the state level, you need 100x fewer calls for the same impact.

this fantastic article has sample scripts for what to say about ICE in your state and city, as well as what to ask for to help your city and state fight federal over-reach where you live

114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.

I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.

Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.

There are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:

1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.

2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.

3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.

The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.

Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.

A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.

We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.

Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:

"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."

The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.

I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.

We had some absolutely criminal negligence in the building of the Quebec Bridge, with multiple engineering firms ignoring real signs of structural issues.

There is some debate about this, but most engineers in Canada agree this started a new ritual upon graduation with a B. Eng from any Canadian university. You attend a ceremony upon graduation and are given an Iron Ring.

You wear it on the pinky of your dominant hand, so it touches any paper you are asked to sign. Every time you sign off on something in your capacity as an engineer, you are reminded of your duties and obligations.

I have engineers in my family, and it is considered a sacred oath. Much like doctors, Canadian engineers have an ethos to do no harm.

This was the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea.

This happened due to a series of incidents that all came back to the same thing: the owner was not an engineer and made his own modifications to change the building from apartments into a mall and maximize floor space, a sentence that here means "removed a shitload of necessary visible support structures and weakened the remaining ones while skimping on or even skipping necessary interior structures."

The building collapsed only five years after completion.

There was a meeting going on during the collapse as to whether the mall should be evacuated, with its owner-slash-"designer" saying no because he didn't want to lose the sales revenue. He and the other executives, of course, left before terminal collapse. If you're wondering how they pulled that off: the warning signs started in April. The building collapsed on 29 June. The terminal collapse began circa 5p KST and became complete at 5:52p. In between those two times, the owner still refused to close the mall.

502 people died.

This is the second-deadliest non-deliberate building collapse in recorded history.

This is what happens when a greedy person who doesn't know engineering design is allowed to build and own a mall.

Something something Cybertruck....

Something something data center....

Something something AI.

An engineer DID actually try to stop the owner from doing this. He got fired for his pains, although when the courts got involved he was able to show he had no responsibility for the collapse.

On the other hand, pileated woodpeckers

My classmates and I had such a terrible reaction to the information because you could tell that,

a.) the teachers were uncomfortable and b.) it was explained to us in a very dramatic and grotesque way.

This is a perfect example of how censorship and mishandling information can cause reactions that specific groups of people claim are accurate for all children. It was almost comical how when we reached middle school sex ed, you could tell which of us had that experience and who didn't.

Fast forward to when I worked as a babysitter, the 6 and 3 year olds I was caring for asked me to read them a book on where babies come from.

It was how i learned the reason why my teacher made me feel so uncomfortable. He liked to out his hand on the but of every girl and woman in my school, rub circles and pat it. I understood this wasn't normal, and called him out on it the next time he did it to me. I got in trouble with the school counselor, who told me this is fine, it's just how some men are. i got upset, told her it's wrong, and she called my mom. She arrives and tears this counselor apart, had the enabler crying. A couple days later. He stopped touching us. I wouldn't have known this was bad, that i should tell someone this was happening. He would have continued molesting students.

In middle school (age 12-13), the health teacher who was supposed to teach us about puberty and sex ed decided to cover ever picture and diagram explaining the anatomy. She painted over all of them in the books and on the posters. She was also very wrong on a lot of things, and i was sent to the principal's office for detention. when i explained what happened, detention was cancelled. Next day, the biology teacher is in there, new books, new posters, and she is explaining things correctly and thoroughly. When the boys got grossed out and started saying girls are disgusting and dirty, she told them to stfu and listen. When she had her baby, she had the entire process recorded so she could use it to explain pregnancies and labor. It was extremely helpful!

Then my dad got orders for us to move (military) when i was 14, and the new hs started sex ed at age 17. I had classmates who had children. One of them was pregnant with her second child. The girl was 15 years old and expect a second child. When i graduated, a full third of my class had children. They had zero knowledge about sex except from experience until 17.

Late sex education leads to teen pregnancies. Teaching only abstinance does not prevent this from happening. This shit has been proven over and over again. Places that forbid sex ed at school are leaving it up to parents, but many of them don't know shit either.