Hopes Notes

Yesterday was June 12th, the thirtieth anniversary of Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman’s murder. I was 11, when that happened in 1994. Before this, I did not follow many news events if any. I was too busy being a kid.
This case, is what actually changed my interest. I started following trials at 11. After Simpson, I took a long break, only to return to following cases in my adult life.
In 2022, I decided to go back, and revisit the Simpson case. Only because I had not seen a good portion of it. This is because I was in school, and doing things after school. I did so, and what I thought at the time was that everyone presented their cases to the best of their abilities. I found the case to be a complete mess! It isn’t the nicest thing to have to say in this moment. We want to look back and have a happy ending, but the Simpson case doesn’t.
Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the trial. There are a whole lot of people who don’t understand it, don’t know about it, haven’t heard of it etc. I’m not sure if I’m going to fix that. However, I’d like to play a small part. Right now, my plan is to blog through the entire trial archive. Not on this domain, a different one. It’s going to be interesting, because there are a lot of things I only saw back in 2022, and then some things I did in fact see both times, and remember doing so. I haven’t logistically worked all this out on how it’s going to look as of yet, but this is my plan so far.
May Ron and Nicole forever rest in Piece!

Julian #Assange was granted appeal on grounds related to the first amendment and free expression!! I was praying for this, but it was not something I was expecting! That may be a statement about my faith, but for three years, we’ve had the UK courts not except the defense’s arguments. It’s the best day we’ve had since 2021, when a district court judge said extraditing him would be unfair, because of his mental health.

Julian Assange has his final extradition hearing in London tonight/tomorrow morning. Despite having bad migrains over the weekend, I slept for a few hours, and managed to wake up around a half hour ago, so I’ll be up for the hearing.

O is for OJ Simpson.
Well… so after last week, I decided to put this in. Simpson was my first case. I started following in February 1995, and continued following cases to this day, with quite a long break in between. I did follow the civil trial, but without cameras, that was harder to do back then.
I only got to watch about 30-35% of the case back in 1995, because well… I’m a blind person. OK OK, I know that’s a strange way of putting it. I had to stay after school to do mobility lessons. I won’t talk about that here because it isn’t relevant, but I have a lot to say on why that whole thing mostly didn’t work for me.
I also had to go on a family trip to Hawaii during the trial, and stay at a resort with no TVS in the rooms. Before I found out that slight fact, about the TVS, I wanted to go, after that, not so much. Not at all, actually. I got to go back in 2003, when I wasn’t following a case, and it was much more fun for me!
During the innitial pendency of the case, I was 11, turning 12. Given that fact, and the fact that I only saw around 30-35% of it, or it was a fairly small portion, I decided to go back and revit Simpson. I knew the trial was long, and that it would be quite an undertaking.
I did this in 2022, while following Depp V Heard. That took place in Virginia, which was in the Eastern timezone. After that was over each day, I wasn’t following anything else, so I didn’t have much anything going on after that. It took me 5 months to complete the entire Simpson trial. Breaks were taken out in Court TV’s archive, and in the recorded version I was watching on Youtube, which is surprisingly good quality, but has major gaps. I did not do this straight through. I put the trial on pause to follow a couple 2022 cases. Had I not done that, I probably would’ve gotten through it in 3-4 months.
I won’t talk much about what I found, but the thing was a mess, and it was made that way by both sides. No, the media was not complicit in that one. both sides definitely made it worse by talking to the press, but that’s their choice. I continue to research to this day. We’re very close to the 30th anniversary of June 12th, which is the date the murders happened.
After I found out Simpson died a week ago today, I went to the trial subreddit, and noticed that it was having an influx of users join.
Since 2022, I’ve thought about doing something with the case. It’s my belief that all original court documents need to be released, in both cases. In order to more effectively advocate for this, I’m thinking about blogging through the entire archive next year. This will likely take more than 5 months. In order to more effectively do so, I would set up a domain that I’m not using right now, but when I registered it, I intended to use it for purposes like these..

N is for names. Or more aptly, the name change process, I suppose. I’ll be talking about names though too, so both things. I tend to obsess over them. Does this one illiterate with that one. This is strange, I know. I also have had an interest in what people were naming babies. I mean it’s kind of a passing interest, but it’s something I like to check up on once in a while.
I’m not sure how much research into the numerology behind names there is, but some people really do believe in it. I had a caregiver that did. In fact, she changed her name based on this:
[www.kabalarians.com/cfm/Your….](https://www.kabalarians.com/cfm/Your.cfm) She wanted her name to be balanced, and this is what they say about that:
[www.kabalarians.com/cfm/balan…](https://www.kabalarians.com/cfm/balanced-name-recommendation.cfm)
I think it’s interesting. When I did mine, I just went with what I had. I suppose this is what took me so long to actually do it. I had to go through a decision making process. I knew i wanted Hope, but I didn’t have a middle name for years. Finally I decided on something scriptural.
The name change process is easy here. It may not be easy in all states. I didn’t even have to have a court hearing, I just had to file a petition form. In a lot of states, you do have to go in front of a judge. It’s mostly to make sure that your changing your name for ligitimate reasons. In other words, you aren’t in legal trouble, or have a whole bunch of debt that your trying to avoid.

M is for Mastodon, and Memes.
Mastodon is a decentralized and fedderated social media protocol, for anyone not living in the 2020s, or like 2017, for that matter. It’s had an influx of users over the past year in particular, because X ended free API access. I joined last year, when X didn’t make an exception for clients like TWBlue, and Tweesecake, which are accessibility-focused programs for blind people.
I would have to say I like it most of all, because it supports RSS, which X didn’t, and still doesn’t. The way I describe Mastodon, is like early Twitter, because most people don’t know what it is. Early 2007 Twitter still supported RSS. Of course, I also say, it’s decentralized and federated. Most of the people I’m around don’t have an understanding of what that means when it comes to social media though.
The other thing is Memes. No, I’m not talking bout the newer definition, image macros. I’m talking about blog memes. Here’s something that explains what they are.
[www.chrisg.com/what-is-a…](https://www.chrisg.com/what-is-a-blog-meme/)
There are two kinds of blog memes, the ones you get tagged in, and things like Wednesday Hodgepodge, which I’m surprised but very glad is still around, I think I’ll do one one of these days.
[http://www.fromthissideofthepond.com/2024/04/hodgepodge-questions-volume-546.html]
Sunday Stealing is also still around, and a great place for collecting questions, which I’ve done many times! [http://sundaystealing.blogspot.com/]This is also one of them.
[newthursday13.blogspot.com](http://newthursday13.blogspot.com/)
There used to be more of these things, in the earlier days of blogging. They’re definitely fun. There used to be a directory that cattaloged these called the daily meme, but the domain was for sale when I last visited. Now it looks like it’s experiencing technical difficulties.
[http://thedailymeme.com/] I used to participate in these things, for some fun. Now I wish there were more.

L is for well… uh… long post! This is going to be pretty long, because I have four things to write about. I had five, but I decided to take one out, and put it into another post coming up next week. I’m going to start with a list, I think that would be the easy way of doing things. then, I’ll take them, in the order I listed them.
1. Lavabit.
2. Libertarianism.
3. Life-long learning.
4. Lists.
I’ll start with Lavabit, I think I’ve explained here before, so I don’t really want to go into the really long case explanation. It was Edward Snowden’s email service in 2013. It was shut down by it’s founder, in order to avoid turning over private encryption keys to the government. After the service was shut down, Ladar Levison, Lavabit’s creator, was found in contempt by a district court judge for not complying with the court orders to turn over SSl keys. I will link to the article from Wikipedia here so that anyone reading who isn’t familiar with the case can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit]
April 16th, is the tenth anniversary of the Lavabit loss. It is the tenth anniversary of the fourth circuit ruling. I didn’t particularly like reading that document. I went back to read it in 2016, when quite a tranch was unsealed in that case, there were two one in 2013, and the big one in 2016. The redaction error in 2016, was when Snowden’s email got left in.
I’m pretty sure I saw it before everyone else, and I have the tweet, because that’s what it was called back then, to prove it. I couldn’t tweet anything, because I was so shocked at what I was reading! I just tweeted, “I saw the confirmation, the thing that confirms it. Unfortunately I just spent a whole lot of time trying to find that particular thing, but the way X works now, it’s impossible to find anything there.
After the Lavabit case was lost, I began to study libertarianism. I never consider myself libertarian before. If anything, I was slightly left of center. However I was starting to become a bit more conservative at the time. I find that in the past decade, the two major parties have merged more, and become more like each other. Of course this isn’t something they’ll ever say when they’re campaigning. However it’s something they do when they’re on the floor, legislating. Just yesterday, we all got stuck with FISA again, because a lot of people in the house seem to vote down all the good amendments, and like all the bad ones. OK OK, most of the bad ones failed. There was a tie vote on an amendment requiring a warrant, and unfortunately, the speaker decided he just had to break the tie.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/12/fisa-surveillance-house-republicans/]
[https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/tyranny-house-passes-bill-renew-fisa-warrantless-spy/]
Explaining libertarianism would take me a really long time though. Here’s a fairly short article on what it is:
[https://www.cato.org/commentary/key-concepts-libertarianism]
I’ve always considered myself a learner. School wasn’t always easy for me, because between my teachers and parents well… the correct term is placing demands on me, but I was about to write giving me orders, all! the! time!!! It seemed like I never really got to do much kid stuff. I did like certain subjects in school though. I really appreciated biology in high school. I also liked high school history, and definitely government class.
When I was younger, I liked art a lot. I did a lot of pottery. Today, I like to do a whole lot of research. It doesn’t really matter what the subject is either. Well I mean, there are certain subjects that may not interest me, but if you can get me interested, you probably won’t get me to give it up anytime soon. I kind of think that’s how school should be, actually. Just learn what your interested in, and discard the rest. I mean, if your really interested in something, things will come naturally. I wasn’t interested in reading children’s literature in school, like we did in the 90s, in like 3rd or fourth grade. However when we got to high school, and I got to read books on 1st aid, it was more interesting to me. When I was growing up, I didn’t have access to the internet, until like 2000. When I finally did, it took me a bit to understand what was going on with everything of course. Not too long, because in hopes of me having access to the internet, I was already preparing for that eventuality. I was doing so, by consuming TV programs on internet-related things, yeah, those were a thing back then, and reading articles that my teachers had prepared for me.
I really enjoy making lists! I probably like it too much! I think I have one for most everything, well not everything you could ever come up with, because I haven’t thought about it all yet, that’s God’s job. My thing is, where do I keep the lists? I would rather not keep a whole bunch of files cluttering up the documents folder, I’ve tested a couple things, and I really liked the micro.blog notes feature! I like to do an extensive amount of testing too though, so I’m open to any suggestions. I can’t use things like notion or obsidian though, or at least I haven’t tried with obsidian. I’ve definitely looked at some notion things, and I would say that I probably wouldn’t be able to. Also, I just need a place to drop lists with automatic ordering.
I’m starting to use more reminders in my phone, but it’s not the most efficient thing in the world for me. I mostly use it for texting, some music here and there, to set timers, and as a phone hah.

K is for Kung Pao Shrimp. I got to K, and could only think of my mom’s name to talk about. A while ago I had decided I was not going to mention any family at length in this challenge. In the past I’ve been well ya know, I’ll just say “talked to” about mentioning my family on my blogs, so I try to avoid that as best I can. I never mentioned any names, just parents, mom dad etc.
KungPao Shrimp and chicken is one of my favorite chinese dishes, when I don’t have a migrain. Spicy foods tend to trigger them, I still like to eat it anyway though.
Here’s the recipe for Kung Pao Shrimp, found from here:
[www.spendwithpennies.com/kung-pao-…](https://www.spendwithpennies.com/kung-pao-shrimp/)
#### Marinade
 ¾ pound shrimp peeled and deveined

1 tablespoon soy sauce

 2 teaspoons cornstarch▢
#### StirFry
 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
 1 small onion chopped
 1 red bell pepper cut into chunks 1 green bell pepper cut into chunks▢1 green bell pepper cut into chunks
 1 tablespoon garlic grated
 1 tablespoon ginger grated
 ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes more if desired
 3 green onions thinly sliced
 ¼ cup dry roasted peanuts
#### Sauce
 ⅓ cup low sodium chicken stock
 ¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
 1 tablespoon dry sherry
 1 teaspoon brown sugar
 1 teaspoon sesame oil
 1 teaspoon cornstarch
#### Instructions 
1
Combine shrimp, soy sauce, and cornstarch in a small bowl. Let marinate 10 minutes (while prepping the other vegetables). Combine sauce ingredients and set aside.
2
Heat vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.
3
Add shrimp and stir-fry 2-3 minutes or just until it turns pink (it will continue to cook in the sauce). Remove from the pan and set aside.
4
Add more oil to the pan if needed and add onions. Cook 2-3 minutes or until they start to soften.
5
Add in the red and green bell pepper, garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Cook for about 5 minutes or just until the vegetables start to soften.
6
Add the sauce and cook until it begins to thicken. Stir in the shrimp and simmer 1 minute more or just until cooked through.
7
Stir in green onions and peanuts and serve over rice.
#### Notes
Leftovers can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. 

Reheat in the microwave or in a pan until heated through. 

J is for joyful, and journaling.
I consider myself to be a ffairly joyful person most of the time. My favorite scripture verse is Philippians 4:4.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
This particular one was ESV. I really do enjoy dancing in worship during church! Yes, I go to that kind of church, hah! You’ll often find me doing some strange version of the twists, that probably looks like I just showed up from who knows what decade? I also used to sing in choir, both in elementary in middle school, so I do have some choir training. I would like to sing in one, if our church decides to get one going.
J is also for journaling. I probably put this last, because I really, really do want to do this, but I can’t seem to keep up with one. You would think, with all the questions I have lifted from various places, I’d have enough to keep me writing for quite a few years. I would say I probably do, but for some reason I just can’t seem to get on the journaling regularly thing. I think I need to remind myself more often to do so. I started medication reminders in my phone, and they seemed to have worked for me, so maybe a journaling reminder a couple times a week will get me writing. I don’t think I could do a daily one..

I is for internet, and Indieweb. Why both of those things? because after all these years I still believe there’s something cool about the internet, and I believe the Indieweb is it.
In other words, small, personal sites. It’s why I hate Google so much. Mostly because blogging is all about SEO these days. I refuse to participate!
Sure there are a set of protocols for the Indieweb, including Webmention, but it can also just be the directories of personal blogs and/or pages out there.
You might ask, why I believe the internet is still cool, after all these years of censorship, centeralization , and surveillance? I suppose the answer is that if you rely on it every day you would want to take measures to protect it. However the other answer is that I enjoy doing emmense amounts of research, that I could never do without the internet. I do rely on open standards like RSS, although I’m still looking for good RSS hosting.