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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   26665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Was the prisoner a heavy smoker? The details are hazy, but I remember reading that the respiratory system of a smoker is so accustomed to high CO2 levels in the lungs that it uses O2 leves to drive the breathing cycle instead.

No, he's been in prison for 35 years. If he was a heavy smoker beforehand(very plausible) he's been clean for decades.

You can't smoke in American prisons? TIL

Not officially, no. All American prisons are- I think the Russian term is ‘red prisons’, where they’re controlled by the gangs, so some do anyways- but death row inmates are highly monitored and separated from the general population.

It's the other way around. "Black prisons" are those where the wardens let the prisoners manage themselves as long as a semblance of discipline is maintained, "red prisons" are those where the wardens manage everything by the book.

However, smoking isn't banned in Russian prisons no matter their color. It's banned in control units of various kinds, but if your specific punishment type includes a walk, you are allowed to smoke during it.

The "red" ones are cop prisons. Gang prisons are "black".

Oh, then they’re black prisons.

If pop culture has taught me anything, they're too busy using them as currency to actually smoke them.

CO2 is not relevant in this case. Death is due to hypoxia, not CO2 poisoning.

Yes, but the gasping reflex is driven by CO2 levels in healthy humans and O2 levels in smokers.

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