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In the News (#1612)

February 11, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

Federal authorities should not be able to turn civil commitment into a life sentence for anyone the government deems inconvenient.  –  Matt Cavedon

Schadenfreude

It’s heartening to see so many rescue industry profiteers exposed as the sociopaths they are:

A multimillionaire British businessman [on the board of a rescue industry outfit was cozy with]…Jeffrey Epstein [for years] after [Epstein was a] convicted sex offender…Lyndon Lea…visited Epstein in Palm Beach and attended [at least one of Epstein’s wild] part[ies]…Lea…[is on] the board of Not For Sale, which aims to [profit from the 2010s era hysteria over]…commercial sex…the men…spoke regularly in 2010, had contact in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 and were last in touch in April 2016…

If Men Were Angels

You’d think “youth pastor” would be a big red flag by now:

A[n Idaho] youth pastor [named Isaiah Teague has been] sentenced to life in prison for…sexually abusi[ng a]…14-year-old…for over a year…he [gained her compliance by repeatedly]…threaten[ing to]…make her “disappear” if she told anyone…the victim’s mother…found messages on her daughter’s phone discussing the assaults with a friend…Teague [pretended to be] a close friend of the victim’s family and…[often molested her] while his wife and child were sleeping nearby…The court also imposed a 50-year no-contact order between Teague and all minors…

Banishment (#1587)

It only starts with people the government has demonized:

[The] Trump [regime wants to]…involuntarily commit…more Americans with mental illnesses [by barfing] “restore public order” [at useful idiots]…The government argues that it can seek to involuntarily commit anyone within its physical custody, even after losing any legal basis for holding them…Why bother going through the hassle of due process when the government could just arrest someone, identify a mental illness, dismiss the charges, and then seek commitment?  After all…nearly half of all jail inmates have mental health problems…replacing the constitutional rights of accused Americans with a shadow system of federal involuntary commitment is a haunting prospect when so many people are diagnosable as mentally ill and so many federal crimes exist to detain them for…

The Last Shall Be First (#1588) 

These lunatics will not stop until they are forced to stop:

…[an] Arizona [politician wants to invent]…a…new criminal offense [called] “unlawful exposure to drag show performances”…a…felony…[equal to] robbery, forgery…and…aggravated assault…[sponsor Michael] Way’s bill would define…[this so loosely a parent could be convicted for lett]ing a 16-year-old [watch old Bosom Buddies reruns]…or…a show that merely featured a transgender person…

Perhaps we need to make it a felony to propose a bill that is facially unconstitutional.

No Escape (#1598)

An unusually-blatant case of extremely typical screw behavior:

In leaked videos from California’s largest women’s prison, guards stand in a line facing dozens of [helpless, many disabled] women gathered around cafeteria tables.  Suddenly, a guard fires [pepper] spray from a long red canister.  Other guards join in, [also]…throwing…smoke grenades…[at] women [who] had been rounded up…in retaliation for [report]ing s[screws who raped and otherwise sexually assaulted them]…The leaked videos were posted by [a former screw named] Hector Ferrel, [not because he cares about the women but rather in furtherance of his own]…lawsuit…A…federal lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed on behalf of the nearly 160 [victims]…the [attack]…came in retaliation against the women of Delta Yard cell block…[after a screw named] Isidro Arroyo, [who]…is the leader of the “Delta Dogs,” a gang…of…[rapist screws, tried to intimidate the victims into withdrawing their complaints by steal]ing [and destroying] their property..a means of…control [commonly used by abusive men]…

Mad Libs (#1604)

Tech journalists are complicit in selling this dangerous fantasy to fools:

A growing number of [fools] are asking…chatbots [medical advice, thanks to sleazy tech companies lying that they can “]provide remarkably useful medical insights[“]…Lotus Health AI…[wants] to facilitate actual medical care, including diagnosis, prescriptions, and specialist referrals…Since [the company knows full well that LLMs] models are…prone to [what are being called “]hallucinations[“, it plans to cover its butt by having] board-certified human doctors…review the final diagnoses, lab orders, and medical prescriptions…

Shame, Shame (#1605)

It’s good to see politicians attacking an actual evil for a change:

T[witter’s] French offices…have been raided by the Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit, as part of an investigation into…child pornography…both [Elon] Musk and former [Twitter boss] Linda Yaccarino ha[ve] been su[bpoenaed] to appear at hearings in April…French prosecutors say they are [also] investigating…[Musk’s] infringement of people’s image rights [by allowing MechaHitler to create] sexual deepfakes…Meanwhile, UK authorities… [at the censorship bureau] Ofcom [have] launched [their own] investigations…[in]to…the creation of illegal images by [MechaHitler]…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Diary #815

February 10, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

As I mentioned last week, CenturyLink finally got around to fixing my internet problem; the main issue was a corroded wire in the node near my house which was causing a series of errors that eventually caused my modem to “time out”.  The technician said having an older modem, while not the actual cause of the issue, was exacerbating the problem, so he gave me a new one, and everything has been fine since.  However, two other tech problems have now materialized, and with Grace gone I have nobody here who knows about this stuff enough to help me.  So I figured I’d ask my many tech-savvy readers for help.

The first issue is that the PDF Architect software I bought in 2014 and have built seven books on suddenly decided that my copy was not “authenticated” and refuses to function without a new key PDF Architect will not give because they conveniently no longer “support” the software I bought and paid for which still perfectly fulfilled my needs up until now, and want me to pay for their fancy new subscription-based service over and over again each month, though I only use the software when I’m publishing books.  Frank found me free software that will run on my XP machine, but he has never used it himself, so I’d like recommendations; all I need is resident software (not web-based) that will run on XP and combine multiple Word files into a PDF.  That’s it; no bells & whistles are necessary, and free is good but inexpensive is also OK.

The other is that on Saturday evening my TV, which has been unhealthy for a few years,  did something really strange: I was watching a show and a sharply-delineated vertical white band, bounded by several alternating bands of grey and black, suddenly appeared in the exact center of the screen.  Stopping the disc had no effect so it was obviously the TV rather than the disc; I turned it off and turned it back on, and the problem vanished for the rest of the evening.  But this smells like a harbinger of imminent catastrophic failure, so I’m going to replace it.  Given that the last attempt at replacement was a failure, I should probably get either a newish low-end Samsung (to be compatible with the DVD players) or a 7-8 year old refurbished something else.  But again, I don’t need bells & whistles, and I don’t even really want it to connect to the internet; I want the closest thing to a dumb monitor that will simply allow me to play DVDs that I can get.  Any advice?

Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, Q & A | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Smoke Screen

February 9, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

I’m currently re-watching The Fugitive, one of the high points of 20th-century television drama.  Like many of the shows I enjoy, I was too young to remember the show in its initial run (1963-67), but when our local PBS station, WYES, picked it up in syndication in the mid-’80s, I watched it every Sunday night and enjoyed it thoroughly; though most of the shows I watched then, as now, were science fiction or fantasy, “the characters who interested me most were always outsiders, weirdos, and outlaws such as vigilantes, monster-hunters, and fugitives“.  For those unfamiliar with the premise, Dr. Richard Kimble is wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife, but on his way to death row by train, “Fate moves its huge hand” and a derailment allows him to escape.  For four years, Dr. Kimble, engagingly portrayed by David Janssen, moved around the country, trying to hide from the relentless Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse), the Inspector Javert-like cop obsessed with his recapture, while himself hunting the real murderer, a one-armed man he saw fleeing his house just before discovering his wife’s body.  The show was the first one on US television to pay close attention to continuity, and the first to feature a concluding episode:  that episode, in which Kimble finally catches the one-armed man and proves his innocence, was the highest-rated television episode of all time for decades.

One of the things I enjoy about watching classic TV shows is playing “Spot the Actor“; in this show I’m also recognizing musical cues in every episode, because the show drew on the CBS music library and featured many of the pieces Bernard Herrmann and others wrote for The Twilight Zone.  But one of the most striking things for me is seeing just how much attitudes have changed in the past 60 years.  Overall, there’s the fact that for four years, one of the highest-rated series in a country now in love with cop glorification shows was one in which the cops were the bad guys in every single episode, and the hero regularly assaulted them and escaped from their clutches, often with the help of people he’d met who saw his innate goodness and nobility (especially because that nobility often got him into trouble when he felt compelled to stick his neck out to help people instead of just not getting involved).

An episode I saw last week, however, was even more striking.  In “Smoke Screen“, Kimble is working as a field hand in California (because obviously he can’t do any job requiring papers or references) and his work crew is asked to volunteer to help fight a wildfire.  One of the laborers he has befriended is undocumented, and he and his pregnant wife are terrified of being caught and deported before the birth of their baby, whom they want born as a US citizen.  The woman goes into labor, and though there is a problem requiring an emergency C-section, they can’t get her to a hospital because of the fires.  So Kimble, ever the humanitarian, is forced to reveal to the camp nurse that he is a doctor and can save mother and child; when the cops come snooping, the nurse, the father and another laborer who was a veterinarian in Mexico make up a story to cover for him.  And all of this is portrayed as positive.  Compare this with the current toxic zeitgeist:  a fugitive from the law helps undocumented migrants to deliver what nativist authoritarians now disgustingly dehumanize as an “anchor baby”, and everyone goes away satisfied.  Look, I fully recognize that there were just as many racists, xenophobes, and badge-lickers in the Sixties as there are now.  But it’s nice to recognize that in extremely popular entertainment of that time, those were typically being portrayed as the villains they are instead of lionized and given positive attention, money, and political power.

 

Posted in Fiction, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Links #814

February 8, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

For weeks, Democrats have pushed to require ICE agents to obtain the necessary judicial warrants ahead of any murders they plan to commit.  –  Hakeem Jeffries, sort of

Though most of y’all probably recognized the tune of the intro to last week’s video as “La Marseillaise”, you might not have recognized the melody of the main song as that of a jazz standard which was recorded many times in the 1950s, including this performance which appeared in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  The links above it were provided by Ryan Marino, Dan Savage, Phoenix Calida, Jesse Walker, The Onion, and IncarcerNation (x2), in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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In the News (#1611)

February 7, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

George Orwell told us about thought crime as a cautionary fable…this…seems like an attempt to put it into action.  –  Micah Kubic

Chauvinism (#1421)

The Olympics always provide an excuse for governments to “clean things up” in the host cities before the guests arrive:

LA County…plans to remove…thousands of unhoused people from areas around sports venues ahead of the Olympic games in 2028.  [Bureaucrats] issued a strategy report last week advising local governments on how to [abduct] people from encampments…and [force] them into temporary housing.  However, the same report notes that…there [are not] enough beds and there’s no new funding for such an effort…

Eavesdropping (#1503)

Google still claims this doesn’t happen:

Google has agreed to pay $68 million to settle a class-action lawsuit [over its] voice assistant…illegally record[ing] users and…shar[ing] their private conversations with advertisers…Google [pretends] that its voice assistant w[ill] only register people’s speech when [they] utter…an activation phrase, such as “Hey Google,” [but this is a lie and]…the Google devices [have] recorded private conversations about financial issues, personal decisions and employment…[Victims] will be able to submit claims for up to three Google devices, although…individuals [will] receive…[a paltry] $8 to $40 per person…

Walled Garden (#1570)

The internet’s global scope is the main reason politicians hate it and want to destroy it:

The Online Safety Act grants the U.K.’s online [cens]or, Ofcom, sweeping authority to…censor online content under the guise of protecting children.  The results have been disastrous…and…Ofcom…[has] quietly been pressuring U.S. companies to comply with their orders…lawyer Preston Byrne…represents four U.S. websites targeted by Ofcom: 4chan, Gab…Kiwi Farms, and Personal Autonomy LLC (the provider of the forum Sanctioned Suicide)…In one email response to Ofcom, he [wrote that] their demands on 4chan were “legally void” and would make “excellent bedding” for his “pet hamster”…but…if Ofcom keeps pressuring people…the risk is that…people will…comply because the letters are scary…The Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny & Extortion (GRANITE) Act, which was originally proposed on Byrne’s blog, would allow U.S. companies and individuals to sue foreign governments that attempt to censor Americans.  If the U.S. successfully sued a foreign government in a U.S. court, the foreign country’s assets could be forfeited…Wyoming has become the first to formally introduce the legislation…but Byrne thinks federal legislation would be more effective…

Panopticon (#1587)

Cops are trying to hide their 4th Amendment violations:

[Cop]s are being told to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not le[t the public discover illegal snooping] via public records requests…police [incompetent]ly leak[ed] the details of millions of surveillance targets nationwide due to public records redaction errors…[and] rather than looking at this…as a huge operational security failure associated with…a [fascist]…surveillance system, police [fantasize] that [they rather than their victims are in danger]…highlight[ing] how [cops irrationally and pathologically imagine] themselves as being consistently and universally under threat from the people [they want to dominate]…

Panopticon (#1594)

Cops will invariably use warrantless surveillance to harass people:

On Oct. 21 the entire Lenexa, Kansas [cop shop] was hunting Canyen Ashworth…[because a pig decided without evidence that he must be the guy who put up]…posters on city property…[since he wrote] a guest column critical of Lenexa Police…for the Kansas City Star…The [anti-ICE] poster [infuriated the pig herd so bureaucrats claimed they were]…“in violation of Lenexa city ordinances”…[even though] posters about lost pets and community events were generally not removed.  The [cops didn’t know who posted them, but boss hog Dawn] Layman [was pissed off about the column, so]…Ashworth…was [targeted for police violence by]…tracking [hi]s movement around Lenexa using the city’s license plate reader system.  [Pigs were told he]…was…“MYOC”…shorthand for “make your own case.”  [In other words, cops were being ordered to frame] Ashworth…for [whatever] reason [they could dream up]…

I Spy (#1604)

In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

ICE has vastly expanded its tech tools over the last year after an [obscene] influx of cash…[from the] Trump [regime.  Father]land Security…awarded Palantir a nearly $30 million contract to build a system backed by artificial [stupidity to target]…individuals for [violence.  Another]…tool…built by Paragon…lets [goons] take control of phones or remotely hack into them…The others were built by Penlink…[to exploit]…data scraped from the web and information from data brokers…ICE…[also] use[s a facial recognition app called]…Mobile Fortify…[when it was pointed out to Father]land Security officials [that these tools flagrantly violate Constitutional rights, they moronically babbled]…“lawful law…lawfully…legal authorities”…

I Spy (#1610)

The rise of prosocial surveillance:

In recent weeks, efforts to track ICE [goon]s’ movements and identities have exploded online, including sites to report ICE raid locations.  Even prolific cybercriminal collectives — better known for their ransomware attacks on luxury carmakers — are joining the fray by releasing the names and personal information of hundreds of ICE [goons] and [DFS spooks] online…“Even when the government pushes to block high-profile apps or webpages, people will continue to share information with their community to keep each other safe,” said Mario Trujilo [of EFF]…Residents in communities targeted by the [regime for pogroms]…have also built tools to…map Flock…cameras and detect [porcine] surveillance devices…through Bluetooth signals…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Violent Abstractions

February 6, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

I’ve noticed a growing tendency for politicians, bureaucrats, and complicit “journalists” to say “law enforcement” (not “law enforcement personnel” or whatever) instead of “cops”, “a cop”, “a gang of cops”, “a gang of goons”, etc.  “Law enforcement” is a concept, not a person or persons.  After the recent murder of Alex Pretti by ICE goons, Trumpist henchwoman Noem claimed he had “attacked law enforcement”; I was very impressed with this man’s magical power to attack abstractions, and wondered if he also had the ability to attack, say, “representative democracy”, “higher education”, or “Elizabethan drama”.  In the real world, as opposed to the one inhabited by apologists for state violence where people randomly drop dead near cops and cops’ guns regularly fire on their own, “law enforcement” can only be “attacked” by politicians (at least in theory; it never happens in actuality).

You may wonder why this matters to anyone who isn’t a pathological pedant, but when the phrase “law enforcement” is used to mean individual humans, any resistance to the human behavior of those humans is equated to resistance to the concept of law, i.e. anarchism (which authoritarians use to mean “criminality”), and defending oneself against violence perpetrated by employees of the state is painted as an attack on all of society; it’s nothing but another version of “l’état, c’est moi”, but extended to every brain-damaged goon instead of being reserved for the head of state.  That’s why Trumpists love it; you should not ape them.  And it’s especially hypocritical coming from people who are fully capable of understanding why equating individual humans with concepts is bad when it’s politicians equating themselves with the concept of “democracy” or health bureaucrats equating themselves with the concept of “science”.

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The Crypt of Throwback Thursday

February 5, 2026 by Maggie McNeill


The self-appointed TV watchdogs who were so common in the late ’70s and early ’80s…raised a huge public stink about any show that might be too intense for a timid 6-year-old with a nervous disorder.
–  “Diary #605”

 

It’s sad to see how many people still want to believe that actual sex workers with individual human personalities could be replaced by plastic dolls or computer-generated images without minds.  –  “The Pygmalion Fallacy (#1310)”

 

Millions of people in the developed world, acting individually or collectively, feel completely justified in digging into the affairs of those who have different beliefs from them, in hope of discovering some transgression or mistake that can be used to destroy the victim’s life with the help of faceless, merciless corporations and institutions.  –  “O.B.I.T.”

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In the News (#1610)

February 4, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

Nuance doesn’t make for good headlines or popular books.  –  Mike Masnick

To Molest and Rape (#1335)

The UK is just as dedicated to protecting rapist cops as the US is:

When Ruth walked into a police station to [report her cop ex-boyfriend for] rape…she did not think that she…would later be accused by [his fellow gang members] of making a false rape allegation, charged and put on trial.  It led to a years-long struggle to clear her name, before she was eventually acquitted…her…ex-partner[‘s “defense”]…was…an audio file he had secretly recorded on his mobile phone [without her consent] during the sex, which he [pretended] proved Ruth was lying…[the pig herd] agreed with him that they could hear her “laughing and consenting”…but [when her defense] chose…to play the audio to the jury…[she] could be heard saying she was in pain and telling her [rapist] “no” and “get it out”.  The sounds of laughter and enjoyment…had in fact been made by actors in a porn film that was playing in the background…The [rapist] is currently s[till enjoying a paid vacation but]…faces a misconduct hearing later this year into whether making the audio recording of the sexual act without her knowledge breached the police code of ethics…The jury took just over an hour to find Ruth not guilty of perverting the course of justice…

Part of the Picture (#1349)

Puritanware has a long history of security issues:

An app that purports to help people stop [looking at] pornography has exposed highly sensitive data, including its users’ masturbation habits…We’re not naming the app because the developer has not fixed the issue, which was discovered by an independent security researcher who asked to remain anonymous…The issue is a misconfiguration in the app’s usage of the mobile app development platform Google Firebase…the creator of the app…[called the issue “]fake[” and]…“a joke”…[but when 404 Media] created an account on the app…the researcher was able to see [it] appear in the misconfigured Google Firebase, showing that user information is still exposed.  This…Firebase misconfiguration issue has been known and discussed by security researchers for years…

Panopticon (#1471)

As surveillance technology becomes ubiquitous along the U.S.-Mexico border, the equipment is still sometimes unknown or invisible to even the activists, humanitarians, researchers, and journalists working everyday in the borderlands.  Based on public records research, open source intelligence, and fact-finding trips, EFF has compiled this zine to serve as an illustrated guide to border security technology…

Censor Chic (#1598)

Civil rights mean nothing if fascist corporations eagerly dance to the government’s tune:

M[ark Zuckerberg] has started blocking [his subject]s from sharing links to ICE List, a website that has compiled the names of…Department of [Father]land Security employees…[in an effort] to hold th[em] accountable.  Dominick Skinner, the creator of ICE List [says] links to the website have been shared without issue on [Zuckerberg]’s platforms for more than six months [but that changed on January 26th].  “I think it’s no surprise that a…man who sat behind Trump at his inauguration …[is helping] ICE [goons] retain anonymity”…posting links to the site [is now] blocked on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads…[but] can still be sent on WhatsApp…[the excuse is Facebook’s go-to for all of its censorship,] “Community Standards”…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1603)

More studies prove censorious politicians are full of shit:

For years now, we’ve been repeatedly pointing out that the “social media is destroying kids” narrative…has been built on a foundation of shaky, often contradictory research…and that policy responses built on that panic might end up causing more harm than they prevent.  Well, here come two massive new studies—one from Australia, one from the UK—that land like a sledgehammer on…social media ban[s]…The Australian study…followed over 100,000…adolescents across three years and found…the relationship between social media use and well-being isn’t linear.  It’s U-shaped…kids who use social media moderately have the best outcomes. Kids who use it excessively…[or] don’t use it at all…have worse outcomes…Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Manchester just published a separate study that followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years.  Their conclusion?  Screen time spent on social media or gaming does not cause mental health problems in teenagers.  At all…Zero.  Not “small.”  Not “modest.”  Zero…

Other studies have demonstrated that soaring rates of depression and mental disorders are actually caused by pervasive infantilization and surveillance of young adults, including laws banning them from social media.

Shame, Shame (#1605)

It’s good to see ambulance-chasing politicians attacking an actual evil for a change:

At least 37 attorneys general for US states and territories are t[hreaten]ing action against [Elon Musk] after people used [hi]s chatbot, [MechaHitler], to generate a flood of sexualized images earlier this year…during an 11-day period starting on December 29, [the MechaHitler Twitter] account…generated around 3 million photorealistic sexualized images, including around 23,000 sexualized images of [legal minors]…people were [also] generating far more explicit videos using the…Imagine model available on the [dedicated MechaHitler] website…[without] any sort of age verification…[though Musk] claims [MechaHitler] has [been] stopped…from undressing people, th[at is a lie]…the [politicians threatened Musk with a]…non[existent]…federal law…[and demanded Musk] remove [MechaHitler]’s ability to depict people in revealing clothing or suggestive poses [entirely, plus act as a fascist collaborator by]…report[ing anyone who even tries] to [pigs]…

Mad Libs (#1609)

A perfect storm of stupidity, gullibility, and greed:

…the [Irish] Department of Justice [is using chatbots]  programmed to answer asylum and citizenship queries.  And [predictably,] its bots sometimes got it wrong, throwing up misleading or inaccurate responses. It has since retired its asylum chatbot, Erin, but has [“]upgraded[“] its citizenship chatbot, Tara, with [equally-error prone but more expensive software.  Politician]…Gary Gannon…said he has immense concerns about the use of chatbots…in serving up legal counselling to people seeking sanctuary…It all feels “dystopian”, he said…[but] the Minister for Justice…Jim O’Callaghan…continues to stay vague on what legal counselling is and how it’s going to be offered…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Diary #814

February 3, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

Axel has been slowly improving where Speck is concerned; if she crosses the floor while I’m in the room, he just watches her intently but doesn’t move toward her.  And every time she completes a back-and-forth I tell him he’s a good boy and give him a treat.  But it’s much harder to train a dog to refrain from doing something than it is to train him to do something, so progress has been slow.  But last week, we hit three landmarks.  On Tuesday, CenturyLink finally sent someone to fix my internet (it was a corroded wire in the node out in the lane), and when the technician came into the house Axel barked at him once, smelled him, and then was calm for the rest of the time.  Then on Wednesday, I had to go to Seattle; I left him outside when I left at 11 AM, had Chekhov come by about 4 to feed the farm animals and let Axel into the house, and then he was alone until I got home about 11 PM.  He was pretty excited when I got back, but I was able to calm him quickly and there were no signs he had acted up (chased Speck or torn anything up) while I was gone for about 4x as long as I’ve ever left him before.

But the best was late Friday night; he was with me on the sofa while I was watching my show, then around midnight he had to go out.  He was gone for a while, probably doing poo-poo, and while he was out Speck came and sat on my lap, then moved to the arm of the sofa.  When he came back in, he got back in his spot, and though he kept looking at her he didn’t lunge or growl or anything else.  I stayed there a while between them, petting them both, then eventually got up to check my social media one last time before bed, and took this picture during that time.  He kept looking at her and occasionally at me, but did nothing bad for about an hour, at which point Speck decided to go back into Grace’s room.  And of course I praised and rewarded him.  Then Sunday night they got even closer; Speck came to cuddle with me on the sofa while Axel was right next to me, less than an arm’s length away.  So I think we’re getting there; as of Sunday I’ve lowered his trazodone to 75mg/day, and I’ll keep it there until the beginning of March.  And within a few more months I think he will complete his transition from nervous wreck to happy, well-adjusted puppy dog.

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Imbolc 2026

February 2, 2026 by Maggie McNeill

May the reawakening of the world bring with it the reawakening of good things you thought gone forever.  Blessed Be!

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