Unless you're very good at using a hot composting system, animal waste should NOT go in your compost. You run the risk of contaminating your soil with pathogens and parasites.

Clearly the people to blame here are your parents, who said one thing but did another. Unless you and your other sibling's family are willing to gift your shares of the estate over to this sibling, I don't see how you have much of a choice here. You're stuck with what the will actually says. It's not as though the will is unfair in some way - "split the property evenly" is about as fair as it gets!

First of all, if your DH is concerned about what your garbagemen think he ought to call them up and ask. The provider should be able to tell you whether or not it's a big deal. (You can do the same thing, of course, or both of you can stand outside one morning and ask them to settle this for you.) Alternatively, he can take over handling ALL the litter box issues, or else commit to putting a big liner in your bin and tying it up on garbage nights. He doesn't need to make a fight over what he imagines your sanitation workers think.

While I still think that a simple apology for not giving her a fair advance warning was called for (note: that's ONE apology, not repeated apologies, and for the lack of warning, not for moving the stuff), the fact that you just feel "extremely guilty" whenever people are angry, and then go out of your way to apologize is also not okay. Upthread I said that while she's entitled to her feelings, the way she's acting is not acceptable. That goes for you too. It's one thing to feel guilty when people are angry. It's another to act on that feeling in a way that's harmful to you and others. Your daughter may not be able to help feeling anxiety, but she certainly can learn not to act like this, with therapy and maybe medication. You may not be able to help feeling guilty, but honestly, if it's affecting your life and relationships with others, you need to learn how to cope with it better than saying "That's how I am, I can't help it". That's the *exact same thing* we're saying your daughter needs to do: find a better way of handling her negative emotions. I asked before if you're also getting therapy, either individually or with her. Therapy might help you learn how to react appropriately to her behavior when it's exacerbated by her anxiety.

SKL, do you think that your experience as a child was... normal? Because I gotta say, it does sound like you were faced with a lot of violence *using weapons* as a child, just from these few posts.

I think this is something you really have to ask your optometrist. They know you and your eyes. We really don't.

So there's clearly a lot going on. You really *should* have given her a firm deadline as to when she had to move her stuff herself or else you'd pack it for her. On that *particular* claim she is correct. However, everything else - no. You have other children who need that room, and she did know that you planned to move her stuff out. And her spouse *really* should not be playing emotional go-between for you guys - if she's not ready and able to tell you how she feels then she shouldn't be putting that on him to do, nor should he be taking it upon himself. She's seeing a therapist. Are you seeing one, alone or with her?

Many people think lots of things. However, whether or not you think a BB gun is a weapon, it's still an escalation from punching and kicking. This kid is ALREADY escalating. That suggests he's likely to continue escalating in the face of a violent reaction, not back off.

You're probably right, SKL, that it's rare for people to escalate to deadly weapons after getting punched, or even without getting punched. I have no data on this, and neither do you, but lacking data I'll say that seems plausible. People generally don't use deadly weapons. But this kid is ALREADY using weapons, albeit weapons that are less likely to be deadly - hand-thrown rocks and a BB gun. I don't think we ever really expect children to turn to unprovoked violence, but inasmuch as we DO expect it we don't expect to see this level of escalation at the age of 12. His young age is pretty alarming. (I'm trying to find out where I saw this, but right now I'm only digging up stats specifically on gun violence. Still, if we can extrapolate from that, we wouldn't expect weapons earlier than the mid-teens. And that tracks with what I've read before that I am not finding.) There aren't many good options here. I agree that we don't really *want* to call the police, because the American criminal justice system is screwed up - but honestly, I'm not seeing any better choices, not given the information we already have on hand. I am certain that encouraging other children to use physical violence to defend themselves is the second-worst option, right above "do nothing". Admittedly I'm basing this on the same thing you are, personal experience, but - again, this kid is ALREADY using weapons. He is ALREADY escalating.

Note: For some of you who haven't eaten Brussels sprouts in many years because they're too bitter, you may be interested to know that the past several decades have been spent breeding less-bitter varieties. You'd still want to avoid heirlooms, I guess, but modern varieties might be more palatable to you.

If it's been two years since you brought this up, he may have actually forgotten he's not supposed to make comments. I'd just give him a reminder and also talk about the right and wrong way to respond to people on the internet.

Not me, but somewhere else: "The cover of this book was REALLY good, like, it looked like something you'd post on Instagram or something!" The person saying that clearly meant it as a huge compliment, but all I could think was "You mean it doesn't look like a professional artist drew it and got paid?" (Not to rag on artists who do it for love and never expect payment, of course, but...!)

I don't know your life, SKL, but you're certainly not describing mine, so I guess the answer to your question is "no, we don't all have numerous examples of that".

You know, what really gets me is not that you're so predictable, or even so boring, but that it's all so low-effort. You post a video and you don't even offer any sort of insight or commentary.

Jonagold is Jonathon crossed with Golden Delicious, and I'm not a huge fan of Golden Delicious. Too much of that comes out in the Jonagolds. But you reminded me of Winesap, and I *do* like those an awful lot!

"Learned something" like what? To use a more powerful weapon and to be certain to get the drop on his victims so they don't have a chance to defend themselves? I would not trust that "no marks" is accurate. Lots of ways to bruise somebody under the clothes.

There are two different varietals of Red Delicious. One actually tastes like something. The other has been overbred for appearance and long-distance shipping, and is a far cry from its ancestral variety. "Organic" or not has nothing to do with it. But either variety is nothing compared to Johnathon.

I would like to believe that nobody is a lost cause, no matter how old they are. However, that belief does not mean that you cannot take positive steps to protect your child - THAT is where your responsibility lies, not with this other child. How long are you going to wait until you call the authorities? He's been doing this for years. He's recently escalating. Do you really think it'll be easier for him to get the help he needs *after* he goes too far, and assaults somebody past the point of recovery? He is ALREADY using weapons - rocks, a bb gun - to assault people who have done nothing to him, other children. Things could very easily turn the wrong way, with somebody permanently injured or killed. You don't want that on your conscience and, I think, you don't want that on his either. I agree that calling the police is a last resort, for a lot of reasons. But - listen, sometimes you gotta do it, and this is that time. Things are not getting better. This situation is not going to resolve itself. Statistically speaking, 12 is already pretty young for this sort of violent misbehavior. It's only going to get worse as adolescence kicks in.

A couple of cherry-picked quotes sure are interesting - but real people don't just say the occasional insightful-sounding thing to a probing question. The fact that the various articles about this I've read all seem to show the *same* few quotes does not inspire confidence. I think the odds that LaMDA has developed true sentience are pretty low, and I'm pretty sure asking it directly about its inner experiences is actually the *worst* possible way to test to see if it's actually sentient or just a really sophisticated "chinese room". A better test would be to start typing up nonsense and seeing if the program can keep up, or instructing it in words (not programming) that it might be talking to a bot and asking it to say something specific if it thinks the interlocuter is a bot, and then *testing it on a less sophisticated chatbot*, the sort of thing that any human would say "Oh, yeah, that's not a person"... kinda like a reverse Turing test. If your chatbot cannot detect that it's chatting with another chatbot, even a really obvious one, then it's probably not conscious. But asking about hopes and dreams? C'mon. It can respond to those using the same exact algorithms it uses to generate other text in response to prompts.

Kareni, if it makes her feel better, I'm also fascinated by banks of lockers. They're not a staple in NYC schools, I don't think - certainly not the high schools my sister and I attended! Stuy actually does have lockers, but iirc we had to share and anyway, with ten floors and a 3 minute passing period between classes, there was no time to actually *use* them to store things other than maybe your coat. I'm actually continually confused as to what parts of TV and movie high school is made up and what's normal in other parts of the country....

Oh, I hope the next update is a good one.

Don't say anything about volunteer hours. That's not your business. Let whoever's job it is to handle this handle it. As for you being offered up to host a random sleepover - I get that you didn't want to say no in what was a messy social situation, especially with the kids involved, so you're going to need to say no now. Tell your BIL and SIL two things: First, that you simply cannot host any sleepovers, dinners, etc for the forseeable future. You just can't. Don't give a reason, just reiterate that it won't work. Secondly, that if you do make any plans involving them, you'll be certain to text BOTH of them to confirm it. If they did not BOTH receive a text from you saying "Oh, yes, I would in fact love to have you all over next week!" then it's not happening, it's just wishful thinking. Frame this carefully - you want to suggest that this is your new policy for all plans you make with anybody at all so as to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding, and NOT that it's special for them because your SIL is a presumptuous liar. Edit: And to be clear, as far as I am concerned, BIL is almost equally at fault here. He must know that your relationship with his wife is rocky at best. He definitely should have double-checked with you. With that said, you need to be VERY CLEAR about your new double-confirmation policy, because if not, the next time this goes down you can just bet she'll claim that you definitely DID make plans with her and are only canceling last minute to be spiteful, or because you're totally scattered and incompetent, or because you're both scattered AND spiteful.

Extremely reasonable. It is for this reason that phrases like "I'm sorry, that won't work for me, I already have plans" are made. But I guess by the time you were there it was too late for that.

Of course not, because no reasonable person would consider that those things inherently affect your ability to enjoy your own home. But endless noise? People taking it upon themselves to damage your property, and then patting themselves on the back afterwards? There's a difference, and he darn well knows it too.

It certainly can happen. You can present it to him like you did here - "It's possible to outgrow an allergy, but I don't know how likely it is that YOU have outgrown yours. I want to get you tested, but let's not get our hopes up". Or you can just say he should be regularly tested in case any new allergies have snuck in (happens all the time) and then see what you see.