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Essay: The Weight of Poverty | San Diego Magazine

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Essay: The Weight of Poverty | San Diego Magazine


Recently, I met someone and shared with them that I grew up in a single-wide trailer. He acted surprised. He said I didn’t look like I had.

I was immediately defensive. What exactly does a person raised in a trailer park look like? I wanted to ask. But I already knew the idea he had in his head: Chain-smoking in clothes that haven’t fit right in five years, dollar-store eyeshadow, and a sweat-slick messy bun in a yard littered with trash. This low-income white persona is one I often fear emulating.

And while this image is nothing like my quiet trailer park back home in Big Bear, people have ideas, and I’m painfully aware of them.

We live in a society that hates poor people. We also live in a society that hates fat people, and since I grew up checking both of these boxes, I have often felt the need to overcompensate to avoid being stereotyped.

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I wish I had the privilege thinner women have of showing up to work with no makeup on, in jeans and a t-shirt. But I’m terrified of being seen as lazy or unkept. I overwork to the point of burnout out of a fear of being perceived as careless. My love for makeup doesn’t stem from some artistic appreciation, but from the dread of being read as messy.

Courtesy of Katy Stegall

It all adds up. It’s expensive to look good when you’re overweight.

Because let me tell you, clothes for fat women aren’t cheap—even if the material they’re made from is. The most size-accessible stores are usually a few trend cycles behind. Some of the options are actually horrific. Shops like Torrid, the plus-size clothing store that holds the monopoly in this market, are still trying to sell us cold-shoulder tops. The trend died over 10 years ago in straight-sized fashion, but I have yet to escape it.

Since I can’t afford the overpriced choices, I add them to the wish list, wait, then hope a major sale comes along before the few items I want are sold out.

It’s worth it for the consistent compliments I receive on my cute dresses and flawless makeup, but I wish all this overthinking and overspending wasn’t necessary.

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I have spent an egregious amount of money to avoid looking like I didn’t have money, and that comment—that I don’t match someone’s idea of what a trailer park kid looks like—had me feeling proud… while simultaneously being embarrassed for feeling that pride.

I wish I could just live like everyone else. Some days looking good, and some days just getting out the door. But that’s not an option for someone like me.



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Police searching for suspect after Bay Terraces Jack in the Box robbed at gunpoint

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Police searching for suspect after Bay Terraces Jack in the Box robbed at gunpoint


SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — San Diego Police are searching for a suspect after a Jack in the Box fast food restaurant was robbed at gunpoint Saturday morning.

The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) reports a male suspect pointed a handgun at a cashier and took an undisclosed amount of money from the register at a Jack in the Box on Alta View Drive in the Bay Terraces neighborhood at 9:51 a.m. on Saturday.

There is currently no suspect in custody, according to SDPD. They are describing the suspect as a white man in his 30s, who is 5’11”, with a full beard and mustache. Police say he was wearing a green beanie/ski mask, khaki jacket, and brown pants.

Police confirmed no employees or customers were injured during the incident.

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SDPD Robbery Unit Detectives are investigating.

Anyone with information is asked to call the SDPD non-emergency line or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.



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Honduras plans to build a 20,000-capacity ‘megaprison’ for gang members as part of a crackdown

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Honduras plans to build a 20,000-capacity ‘megaprison’ for gang members as part of a crackdown


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The president of Honduras has announced the creation of a new 20,000-capacity “megaprison,” part of the government’s larger crackdown on gang violence and efforts to overhaul its long-troubled prison system.

President Xiomara Castro unveiled a series of emergency measures in a nationally televised address early Saturday, including plans to strengthen the military’s role in fighting organized crime, prosecute drug traffickers as terrorists and build new facilities to ease overcrowding as narcoviolence and other crimes mount in the nation of 10 million.

Left-wing Castro’s “megaprison” ambitions mirror those of President Nayib Bukele in neighboring El Salvador, who has built the largest prison in Latin America — a 40,000-capacity facility to house a surging number of detainees swept up in the president’s campaign of mass arrests.

Honduran security forces must “urgently carry out interventions” in all parts of the country now witnessing “the highest rates of gang violence, drug trafficking, money laundering” and other crimes, Castro said in her midnight address.

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Authorities plan to immediately construct and send dangerous gangsters to a 20,000-capacity prison near the rural province of Olancho, in the country’s east, said Maj. Gen. Roosevelt Hernández, the army chief of staff.

Escalated police raids have driven up the Honduran prison population to 19,500 inmates, crammed into a system designed for 13,000, the Honduran national committee against torture, or CONAPREV, reported last year.

The government has rushed to build new detention facilities. Last year, Castro announced plans to construct the only island prison colony in the Western Hemisphere — an isolated 2,000-capacity prison on the Islas del Cisne archipelago about 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the country’s coast.

The Honduran defense council also demanded that Congress change the penal code to allow authorities to detain suspected gang leaders without filing charges and carry out mass trials, as they do for alleged terrorists.

The raft of measures marked the latest example of Castro’s hard-line stance on security that intensified amid a surge of narcoviolence in 2022, when she imposed a state of emergency to combat the bloodshed and suspended part of the constitution — a page straight from the playbook of Bukele in El Salvador.

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Like Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown that has restricted civil liberties in El Salvador, Castro’s tactics have drawn criticism from human rights groups that accuse her government of taking its tough-on-crime tactics too far.

But Bukele’s success in eradicating gangs that once terrorized large swaths of El Salvador has won him admiration across the region, including in Honduras, where a weary public wants to see results.

Last week, Honduran Security Minister Gustavo Sánchez announced that the government recorded 20% fewer homicides in the first five months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

Yet critics remain skeptical that the Bukele model can deliver results in Honduras, where gangs remain powerful and corruption entrenched, despite the recent drop in homicides.

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Quadriplegic among first users of tongue-driven trackpad invented by San Diego native

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Quadriplegic among first users of tongue-driven trackpad invented by San Diego native


SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Have you ever controlled a tech device using your tongue? It’s now a reality and is changing lives for those who are paralyzed.

The device, MouthPad, by the company Augmental, is co-founded by Corten Singer, a San Diego native and Point Loma High School’s Class of 2012 Valedictorian and co-captain of the school’s surf team.

The device, first brainstormed in 2019 after Corten and his co-founder had graduated from UC Berkley, officially launched in 2023. It’s now in the mouths of a few dozen people, including Clairemont Resident Mike Hastings.

“Humans are remarkably adaptable,” Hastings said.

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He’s had to adapt after diving into a swimming pool at 20 years old and hitting the bottom, paralyzing him from the neck down.

“I can’t move from the neck down, just my shoulder, my fingers and hands, I cannot move,” he said.

Over the last 26 years, he’s tried ways to make his daily tasks easier, and through the decades, he’s seen a lot of technology change.

“Alexa, set volume to 4,” Hastings said Amazon’s voice command system is the best he’s used and he’s used nearly all of them.

The thermostat and lights in his garage, which turned into an adaptive place for him to work and hangout with his friends, are also voice-controlled.

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While certain things have become easier thanks to technology, the way he’s used his computer hasn’t changed since he came home from the hospital in 1999.

He’s used a “mouth stick,” it’s a device that looks like a bite guard, attached to a stick that he uses to peck a keyboard and swipe on a trackpad. He said he helped him graduate with two degrees, one in Physics and one in Computer Science, and it’s been the only way for him to do his job in cyber security, because voice commands don’t typically work when you are writing the “gibberish” that brilliant minds call computer coding.

“This stick I have to sit up right to use it,” Hastings explained that if he sits upright, it negatively impacts his blood pressure, and he could only be on the computer for about 45 minutes at a time. He said he has always been worried that he would drop the stick out of his mouth and would have to call someone to pick it up for him. But, it’s been his way of life for years.

And 25 years later, there’s finally something easier.

“Lots of things have come across my work station, but nothing has got me to change from the ‘mouth stick,’ and then the MouthPad came,” Hastings added.

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The MouthPad is a track pad on a mouth, which is molded to the user, letting users control devices with their tongue or with their head movements.

Hastings is one of the first 40 people to test it out.

“You can use the computer just as well as anyone else who can use the computer with their fingers and keyboard,” he explained.

“Think of this just like the trackpad on your laptop except this has been transformed into a smaller form factor that rests on the rood of your mouth, so instead of your finger it’s actually the tongue,” Singer said. “A lot of it stars with its roots in accessibility and basically improving quality of life and providing universal and equitable access to the digital world that has grown to be such a huge part of our lives.”

Mike Hastings also helps other quadriplegics and trains them on how to use adaptive equipment, and he said he can’t wait to recommend the MouthPad so more people can use it.

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“Humans are very remarkable and the face that they can adapt to any situation so the fact that my body doesn’t move is kind of irrelevant now,” he added.

Augmental is going through a waitlist determining the most needed users first. The cost is around $1,500, but hope to work with insurance companies to get it covered under healthcare policies.



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