What a difference a few days can make! I returned to Sunset last Friday, and within an hour was removing the braces from the posts. Chekhov was already working on temporarily rerouting the paddock fence to keep the animals away from the construction site; I helped him move the gate, then on Monday we extended the fence east of the buildings so as to create more grazing area. On Saturday I put down plastic and spread gravel over the phase 2 area just as I did with phase 1 at the beginning of June; the reason for that bare path to your right is that it’s where the new French drain will go. Later Saturday afternoon Grace directed Chekhov and me in marking all the posts at cutoff height, then we cut them all level. Even one of the old square posts holding up the back porch awning was cut down to size after we installed a steel support Grace fabricated to do the post’s job until the awning comes down. On Sunday we measured out the locations for the phase 3 posts and dug ten of the post holes; we also built a handrail for the ramp and planned the construction of the deck around the tub itself. This weekend, we’ll put in all the remaining posts; I want the concrete to have time to fully cure before we start the second guest cottage, which we currently plan for August 23rd. And Grace wants the joists for this section of deck built before she puts in the main cable, so that’ll be in the next few days as well. And I’ll show you as much of it next week as I can get into the shot!
Archive for July, 2020
Bathhouse 10
Posted in Diary, tagged Sunset on July 31, 2020| 1 Comment »
Back Issue #85
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging on July 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Making wildly exaggerated Criswell-like predictions of the number of hookers who will descend upon a major sporting event has become a popular pastime of prohibitionists. – “Hidden Hordes of Hookers”
- Whatever a sex worker does later, they’ll always be a whore to the media.
- Cops keep pretending they want to “help” the women they stalk & harass.
- Campaigns against sex work are part of a war against all sexual behavior.
- Despite this fantasy’s popularity with UK cops, none has ever been found.
- Adult man wearing a costume mansplains professionals’ own job to them.
- Critical thinking skills are not a prerequisite for nursing or medical school.
- Surveillance weapons are often tested on whores, but never stop with us.
- Politicians can’t grasp that whores might be neither criminals nor victims.
- Another crime victim caged to force participation in a state morality play.
- Soi-disant ally thinks we’re childlike morons in need of licensed handlers.
- Massage parlor licensing is widely touted as a way to “fight prostitution”.
- My dominatrix is ignoring me for accidentally offending her. Any advice?
- And the next time they broaden the definition, it will “grow” even more!
- That vile use of “safer neighborhood team” to mean “vice squad” again.
- This woman reminds me very much of Annie Lobert of “Liars for Jesus”.
- This in a mainstream mag like Glamour is an extremely promising sign.
- We may have a winner in the “stupidest gypsy whore magnet” contest.
- Just in case you think owning a “legal” sex work business protects you.
- Even for the prohibitionist New York Times, this is pretty jaw-dropping.
- Seattle cops & prosecutors destroy more men’s lives for fun and profit.
- Another chapter in this grotesque campaign to intimidate sex workers.
- The fanatically-prohibitionist Seattle Times again revisits the TRB raid.
- Historians will view this propaganda as our era’s Malleus Maleficarum.
- Small cities’ ludicrous concepts for supposed “gypsy whore” magnets.
- Only another month or so before the “creepy clown” hysteria returns!
- Watching “sex trafficking” hysteria spin out of control of “authorities”.
- Reporters are stupid enough to keep giving Dennis Hof free publicity.
- Because Agatha Christie novels & TV cop shows increase real crimes.
- Some cops just can’t stick with the “all whores are victims” program.
- Another amateur profiting from sex workers while giving us nothing.
- Please don’t use my escort email unless you want to book a session.
- Remember this when you hear pigs oinking about arresting “pimps”.
- A live-action version of that moronic “escape the pimp” video game.
- Another dumb, sensationalized article, now with added whorearchy.
- A watered-down disease culture, but a disease culture nonetheless.
- Another vile apology for evil policies that enable uniformed rapists.
- “Hi, I’m interested in buying sex from a potential trafficking victim.”
- Picket-fence gays have become an active threat to sexual freedom.
- Prosecutors’ magic Shazam power can turn “children” into “adults”.
- Fetishists expend so much energy on something that doesn’t exist.
- Why don’t actresses who play sex workers actually learn about us?
- Just in case you didn’t think you were spied on enough in airports.
- Your regular reminder that a child-shaped toaster is still a toaster.
- This dude’s clutching his pearls so hard, he’s starting to turn blue.
- Is it “sexist” for a sex worker’s client to request a custom service?
- This dude must’ve pissed off somebody well above his pay grade.
- Another interview with Dr. Agustín about The Three-Headed Dog.
- “Sex trafficking” hysteria spins out of control of the “authorities”.
- Alas, “creepy clown” panic can’t derail “sex trafficking” hysteria.
- A politician describes my flexible, lucrative job as “undesirable”.
- I love seeing “authorities” caught up in their own moral panic.
- When it’s a cop, sexual coercion magically becomes “bribery”.
- Using “sex trafficking” hysteria as anti-American propaganda.
- Fanatics are recycling old “sex trafficking awareness” stunts.
- Still more victims of the Satanic panic released from prison.
- This scam has existed for as long as there have been cities.
- Do they even think about the words they’re vomiting out?
- One wonders if this loon asks her vibrator for its consent.
- And people wonder why I’m critical of “child porn” laws.
- I hope none of you find these even remotely surprising.
- Naturally, Cassandra McNeill was saying this years ago.
- Lorelei and I travel to Ireland; here are some pictures.
- Dick is not in any way an equal or fair trade for pussy.
- On the humorous, adventurous rapists of Disneyland.
- Another creepy cop entrapment & surveillance game.
- Loon claims NASA is sex trafficking children to Mars.
- Sex work criminalization under repressive regimes.
- No doubt caused by the presence of corn and I-35.
- Another episode in the demonization of Backpage.
- My very first column on the “gypsy whores” myth.
- Debunking the “average age of debut is 13” myth.
- No cops. No cages. No shaming or brainwashing.
- A promising start for decrim in South Australia.
- I gave an interview to Dr. Heather Branstetter.
- Lorelei and I prepare to depart for Ireland.
- How Taiwanese police harass sex workers.
- Another dumb “awareness-raising” stunt.
- Pigs claim sexting is a “gateway” to rape.
- “Crime”: stillbirth. Penalty: life in a cage.
- Another bogus “super gonorrhea” scare.
- Lorelei, Ghost Rider and I visit Ireland.
- Long-time readers already know this.
- Doesn’t monogamy get old for you?
- Did you ever have a condom break?
- Not a good move on Deen’s part.
- How old are these idiots, eight?
- This was only a matter of time.
- The history of harm reduction.
- French colonial concubines.
- Pride and Wonder Woman.
- Rapist cops of July 2017.
- No More Sex Shame.
- Moving troubles.
- Halfway whores.
In the News (#1059)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged advertising, agency denial, Amsterdam, Checklist, condoms, contraception, Counterfeit Comfort, Dirty Amateurs, disease, Dutch Threat, fantasy, hysteria, Italy, Netherlands, New York, Nigeria, prisons, racism, red-light districts, Rooted in Racism, Rotting Fruit, sex offender registry, sex rays, Sex Rays (updates), sex work is work, Social Distancing, Texas, That Old Black Magic, The Immunity Syndrome, The Last Shall Be First, The Spiral of Absurdity, transgender on July 29, 2020| 2 Comments »
We put incredibly onerous restrictions on them that are…des[igned] to…make them fail. – Daniel Lambright
New York increases “indefinite imprisonment” to “death sentence”:
On March 4, Hector Rodriguez was sent to Rikers Island because he failed to log his address with state’s sex offender registry — even though he had been homeless for years. Rodriguez died June 21 on his jail bed, while struggling to breathe during a severe asthma attack…he was 60 years old and had contracted COVID-19 in April…Rodriguez was convicted of raping a woman…in 1979, when he was a teenager. He spent 23 years in prison and has been on the Sex Offender Registry since his release…“He died in a jail where he was put because he didn’t tell someone he was homeless? What kind of society does that?” asked Vincent Schiraldi, who served as probation commissioner during the Giuliani administration…
Where “bad vibes” is used to mean “sex rays”:
At the posh 75 Main in Southampton [New York], owner Zach Erdem…[publicly] chopped up and torched Table 1 — the favorite of onetime regular Jeffrey Epstein, and occasionally, Harvey Weinstein…“I’m sick of the bad energy of this table,…Every time I see it I think of that sicko.” The bustling brunch crowd left their tables to gawk at the bonfire in progress, whooping and chanting, “Burn, Epstein, burn!” as Erdem hacked at the cursed table and burned it into oblivion. Renee Downing, a Miami native who summers in the Hamptons, toasted the roasting. “I think this sends a strong statement”…
Said statement being, “I figured out a way to turn last year’s news into an ad for my overpriced hipster restaurant, because if Gwyneth Paltrow can profit from a bunch of superstitious snobs with far more money than cognitive development, so can I.”
The result of “abstinence only sex education”:
Plastic wrap. Plastic bags. These are some of the workarounds teens use to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, pediatrician Dr. Laura Grubb, a specialist in adolescent medicine…published…in the journal Pediatrics…Grubb said…”I’ve heard so many teens tell me that they don’t need contraception or they don’t need condoms because they don’t plan on being sexually active. And then a couple weeks later they’re back in the office and we’re running a pregnancy test or we’re testing for sexually transmitted infections.” Recent rates of sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, have been skyrocketing among teens and young adults, at the same time that the number of teen pregnancies and births has declined…Adolescents and young adults account for more than 50% of new STI diagnoses, despite being only about 25% of the sexually active population…they [also] account for 1 in 5 of all new HIV…diagnoses in the United States…
The Last Shall Be First (#768)
Politicians’ potty obsession goes federal:
A copy of the new rule that will allow homeless shelters to refuse transgender people has been leaked to the media, and it contains instructions on how to spot transgender women to target them for discrimination…the Obama-era Equal Access Rule…required homeless shelters that receive HUD funding to house transgender people with the gender they identify as. The rollback…allows single-gender homeless shelters to decide if they want a housing policy based on sex assigned at birth or gender identity, effectively allowing shelters…to determine who is transgender…the rule [says]…a shelter…may use “factors such as height, the presence…of facial hair, the presence of an Adam’s apple, and other physical characteristics”…if a homeless person appears…transgender…the shelter is allowed to ask them for proof of “biological sex”…[but stops short of allowing] shelters [to] forc[e] suspected transgender people to strip in front of them…
A Black social worker is suing American Airlines…[after] airline employees [accused] her of kidnapping a white toddler whom she was accompanying during a flight last fall. Shannon Murphy, a social worker with Riverside County, California…was pulled off a plane in October and airline employees [temporarily abducted] the…toddler [she was bringing] back from a court-mandated two-week visit with his father in Arkansas. While [she] was waiting for the second leg of a flight [at] Dallas-Fort Worth [a racist passenger]…told a flight attendant that they [fantasized] Murphy [was] holding a kidnap victim…Airline employees [forced] Murphy…[off] the plane…and took the child from her…she had paperwork…including her work ID, the child’s birth certificate, and a signed copy of the court order for the trip…but the…[employees preferred to be melodramatic instead of simply looking at the documents on the damned plane]…after about 40 minutes, during which the flight was delayed at the gate, she was let back on…
…the Netherlands[‘ biased and punitive] lockdown measures…[plunged] legal…sex workers…into deep financial trouble and…emboldened [NIMBY]…residents…to [demand]…the [government throttle]…the…tourism [on which the inner city economy depends]…Sex workers [point out that, as is typical in places steeped in puritanism,] their industry has been unfairly singled out as the root of the problem…Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema [is using]…the pandemic [to push her scheme to confine]…sex workers…[in] a “prostitution hotel”…outside the [direct sight of busybodies]…
The Spiral of Absurdity (#1056)
Thousands of Nigerian women forced into prostitution were left to starve by sex traffickers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy…[racist Europeans fantasize that] more than 80% of the tens of thousands of Nigerian women who arrived in Italy from Libya in recent years were victims of highly organised sex trafficking gangs. The [fetishists claim that] women are forced into prostitution to pay off debts of up to €40,000 (£36,000) and controlled through violence and fear of ”juju” black magic rituals they are made to undergo before their journey to Europe…during the prolonged and strict three-month Covid-19 lockdown introduced by the Italian government, trafficking gangs abandoned women and their children, who were unable to leave their homes or work and were left without food or money to pay the rent. Given the illegal status of their jobs, they had no recourse to financial assistance or unemployment benefits…
Anyone with at least one foot in reality could comprehend that sex workers are in financial trouble for the same reason as many other people, but that would require admitting that sex work is work.
Diary #526
Posted in Diary, tagged Presents, psychology, Sunset, Washington (state) on July 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
I’m starting to run back and forth to Seattle more often again. Back in April and May I spent most of my time at Sunset, and I still do; however, instead of staying there for weeks on end, I’m usually returning to Seattle after about 4 to 10 days, accomplishing whatever it was I needed to do (clients, beauty appointments, etc), and then heading back to Sunset after perhaps three days in town. When I returned to my apartment a week ago today, my blue girl surprised me by having burst into flower during the week I was gone; I also found a DVD waiting for me, sent by a kind reader for my blog anniversary. That’s how I plan to keep things for a while; since there’s not much reason to be in Seattle most of the time, I’d rather be working on my house than fighting traffic and enduring half a dozen sirens a day. And because I’m not in Seattle as often, it’s a pleasant little change of pace when I visit.
Five Months Left
Posted in Call types, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged advertising, escort review sites, internet, sex work is work on July 27, 2020| 3 Comments »
It’s now been a year since I largely abandoned traditional escort advertising sites such as Eros; I still have a few free ads (such as on Tryst), but as I explained in “In the Club“, most of my new clients over the past two years have come from “people who approach me via my blog, Twitter, other writing, my public speaking, TV interviews, etc.” That column also explained that by the end of this year, I plan to semi-retire, seeing only people I’ve already seen before (and the occasional new client who comes directly recommended by a sex worker I know personally). By the beginning of this year I’d seen very little change in my income despite five months without regular ads, and though like most sex workers I’ve been hit pretty hard in the bank account by the events of this year, that has only demonstrated to me more clearly that I can survive without a constant flow of new clients. So I think it’s time to remind y’all that as of January 1st, it’s going to get harder to see me if you haven’t seen me before; I even plan to remove my business phone number from ads. Regulars won’t see any difference, nor will anyone who has seen me professionally at least once by the end of this year, so if you’re not yet in that exclusive club, but would like to be, you should contact me pretty soon to get screened and arrange a visit. I understand that some of you may be interested, but aren’t traveling or seeing anyone right now; that’s perfectly fine as long as you’re screened and paid by New Year’s Eve, even if we have to delay our actual meeting (and I do phone call as well, if that helps). It’s likely I’ll do one more reminder around the beginning of December, but don’t wait until then; even one session now will protect your ability to book an appointment with me until I finally put away my lingerie for good at some point down the road.
Links #525
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged Arizona, cops, Maryland, Michigan, Oklahoma, prisons, teachers, video on July 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Problem would be if I take you in the woods. – “Officer” James Lloyd
Here’s another of those unusual song covers I like so much. The links above it were provided by Furrygirl, Cop Crisis, Mistress Matisse, Tim Cushing, Marc Randazza, and Amy Alkon, in that order.
- But tell us how you really feel.
- Don’t have any dealings with cops at all.
- Cop brutalizes woman for getting takeout.
- Crime: yelling. Penalty: death by electrocution.
- The school-to-prison pipeline is rarely so direct.
- So it’s not OK to use wood for paper, but it is OK to eat it?
From the Archives
- Even a horrifying case like this doesn’t look like the “sex trafficking” myth.
- Disclaimers won’t stop charlatans from pretending this is “sex addiction”.
- “Trafficking is EVERYWHERE!” articles sound so tired & perfunctory now.
- “Education” here means confinement in the notorious Prey Speu prison.
- Another case of state using sex work as “evidence” of mental disability.
- Think I’m wrong about sex worker rights having passed the watershed?
- I’ve never seen anything raise support for sex workers like FOSTA has.
- Witchcraft charges were once a popular way to persecute sex workers.
- “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.“
- The few articles about “Straight Pride” events we do see are hilarious.
- The worst crime I’ve ever seen “sex addiction” used as a defense for.
- Pederast politicians are nearly as common as those who hire women.
- So much for any hope this myth would be dead by the next election.
- Rape is legal as long as other wannabe rapists are allowed to watch.
- Yellow journalists keep parroting long-debunked wanking fantasies.
- Just in case you forgot about the other sex workers Trump paid off.
- Even the request for screening info acts as a form of pre-screening.
- It’s good to see the fascist establishment hoist with its own petard.
- “Walk Free” got tired of its old wanking fantasy, so they inflated it.
- What kind of “rescuers” lock the “victims” they “rescue” in a cage?
- This actually recognizes criminalization as a major cause of stress.
- Sex workers are fighting India’s terrible new “anti-trafficking” bill.
- Australian prohibitionists are just as vile as those in the US & UK.
- Get your kids into the facial recognition database before puberty!
- More insulting, patronizing, COAST-type “sex trafficking” bullshit.
- We certainly can’t have those dirty pedos not molesting children.
- Another good example of why “legalized” sex work is a bad idea.
- Yellow journalists assist cops to protect and serve crime victims.
- Columbus, Ohio wants to give every pig the opportunity to rape.
- I hope this finger-pointing keeps up until the hysteria implodes.
- The quaint non-“law enforcement” term for this is “blackmail”.
- “Repatriation” is the fashionable euphemism for “deportation”.
- Guys, sex workers are both safer and cheaper in the long run.
- Even by prohibitionist standards, this is hilariously hysterical.
- Judge rejects FOSTA challenge for bogus, cowardly reasons.
- Another of those cases whose reported details don’t add up.
- Sex workers all over the world are demanding their rights.
- Any internet-connected device can be used to spy on you.
- Agricultural workers are routinely harassed & even raped.
- A retrospective of my columns from July 2015 and 2016.
- How did you deal with anal rape without serious trauma?
- Congress made a bizarre pro-FOSTA propaganda video.
- Not an attempt to control women’s bodies, no sirree.
- Another step toward the end of privacy, everywhere.
- Another effect of France’s jihad against sex workers.
- More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever.
- Cops, Florida, hot dogs, Art Neville and much more.
- Where does the phrase “turning tricks” come from?
- Cops, feminism, yoga, Jim Croce and much more.
- Your government refers to this as “correction”.
- A quiet week, a new phone and a blue rose.
- More from Liz Brown on the Epstein case.
- To St. Mary Magdalene on her feast day.
- A “life hack” for a surfeit of daylight.
- “Youth pastors” are as bad as cops.
- In other news, bear shits in woods.
- A lot of editing was needed here.
- A wound that never will heal.
- Rapist cop of the week.
In the News (#1058)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged California, Censor Chic, censorship, China, cops, Disqualified, domestic violence, drugs, fantasy, Forward and Backward, Islam, Lying Down With Dogs, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pathologization, pathologization of males, politicians, prisons, propaganda, psychology, Quiet Genocide, racism, red-light districts, Safe Position, streetwalkers, Swedish model, The Cop Myth, The Mote and the Beam, tits, Tunisia, Twitter, United Kingdom on July 25, 2020| 1 Comment »
It’s disheartening to see Twitter side with the police against researchers, journalists, and the public. – Emma Best
The abuses committed by the “therapeutic state” are rarely so blatant:
A 16-year-old boy [locked in] a Los Angeles County [cage stack] developed enlarged breasts after he was [forced to take] estrogen [against his will to make him docile]…a move that baffled doctors who said the [so-called] treatment defied medical logic…The teen…was [claimed to have “]oppositional defiant disorder[“, a label invented to medicalize teens’ natural resentment of being treated like children]…Medical records…show that the teen’s testosterone levels were “slightly high” when the doctor [assigned to control] him prescribed daily doses of estrogen…After taking approximately 13 daily doses of the hormone, the teen was diagnosed with gynecomastia…James McGough, a professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA…[said]“You won’t find a reference anywhere that supports the use of estrogen for ODD”…The doctor who prescribed the estrogen, Danny Wang, [is being sued along with the county by the young man, who]…will require surgery to treat the [malformity]…Wang prescribed a daily regimen of 2 milligrams of estrogen…without the parents’ consent…
2 mg of estrogen is roughly 4x the typical amount taken for hormone replacement by post-menopausal women.
What other country does this sound like?
In mid-June, Tunisian Islamic political party El-Karama launched an initiative to ban all forms of sex work in the country and penalise sex workers…[using the moronic excuse of] “the dignity of…woman”… “Political parties [used to] shun sex work issues. It’s a taboo subject,” says Souhaila Bensaid, founder of the Tunisian Association for Positive Prevention (ATP+) for sexual and reproductive health. But increased animosity against sex workers over the past decade has turned into “a moralistic crusade,” according to Bensaid, leaving women in increasingly precarious situations with little to no protection…
Corporations are becoming the favored tool of censors around the world:
Twitter has banned the account of the collective that published almost 270 gigabytes of leaked documents from police departments all over the country…Emma Best, the founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets…said that Twitter had taken down the official account of the DDoSecrets collective, which is made of activists, journalists, and technologists…when a Twitter user now clicks on a link that leads to the DDoSecrets’ site, it’s redirected to a warning that labels it as “unsafe”…“it’s disheartening to see Twitter side with the police against researchers, journalists, and the public”…[said] Best…
A prohibitionist attempt to destroy the Leeds red light district has been defeated:
The University of Huddersfield…[was] tasked…with investigating how effective the [Leeds] Managed Approach (MA) was, amid [attempts by] some [politicians to]…abandon…[it] altogether…the review concluded: “The MA was found to be more effective at reducing the impact of problems associated with on-street sex working than any other approach or model. There are currently no alternative models or approaches that promise to be more effective and which fit within existing UK law on sex working”…[unfortunately NIMBY] residents [have] stag[ed] regular protests…[using the usual hackneyed claims of] littering and soliciting creeping into residential areas…
41% of cops admit to beating their wives. Some don’t stop with beating:
[A] Dover [New Hampshire cop named Ronald Letendre beat his wife] Sarah [so severely he broke four of her ribs, then had her arrested] and charged her with domestic violence [on him]…the…husband…is a[lso]…a…former MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter…[since] the incident…The…police are…con[tinuing to harass]…Sarah…stopp[ing] her vehicle [and trying to brutalize and re-arrest her on bullshit charges]…Fortunately [s]he…was [able to escape] and…ha[s] not yet [been tracked down by]…police…
Hawley has a long history of spouting self-aggrandizing lies about sex workers:
When Missouri police raided several Springfield massage parlors in 2017, as…Josh Hawley…tells it, it was a righteous rescue mission led by a promising young attorney general who would later go on to become a rising Republican star in the U.S. Senate…While this tale nicely reinforces Hawley’s long-standing preoccupations with public morality and Chinese hegemony, the evidence doesn’t back up his version of events. The real story is one about police and prosecutor overreach at the expense of potentially vulnerable immigrants, followed by grandstanding and falsehoods from a senator intent on rewriting his own history. Three years after the initial raids, Missouri has [only] managed to elicit six guilty pleas to misdemeanor offenses against the state’s massage licensing law…Hawley’s…raids…[were] largely based on…the fact that they all advertised on the now-seized classified ad site Backpage…
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz [lied during] her campaign [by] promis[ing] to end the criminalization of sex work…[in reality she is pursuing a Swedish criminalization strategy]…Amnesty International found in a study published in 2016, that [this] Model violate[s] the rights of sex workers by creating an atmosphere of fear built upon surveillance, evictions, and deportations…
Are Western media finally going to stop tiptoeing around calling this what it is?
Two recent disturbing events may finally awaken the world to the scale and horror of the atrocities being committed against the Uighurs…One is an authoritative report documenting the systematic sterilization of Uighur women. The other was the seizure by U.S. Customs…of 13 tons of products made from human hair…forcibly removed from Uighurs imprisoned in concentration camps. Both…evoke chilling parallels to past atrocities elsewhere, forced sterilization of minorities, disabled, and Indigenous people, and the image of the glass display of mountains of hair preserved at Auschwitz. The Genocide Convention, to which China is a signatory, defines genocide as specific acts against members of a group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. These acts include (a) killing; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Any one of these…constitutes genocide. The overwhelming evidence [is that] Chin[a’s]…campaign [against]…the Uighur people…meets [all] of the[m]…Over a million…Uighurs are…subjected to electrocution, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, and injections of unknown substances…The repeated government orders to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins”…demonstrate a clear intent to eradicate the Uighur people as a whole…
Twitter accidentally admitted what everyone already knew:
[Last week]s hack of a large number of prominent Twitter accounts — which led to the company’s disabling of…verified…accounts for part of the day — also resulted in the unexpected confirmation of the practice known by users as “shadowbanning,” and by Twitter as “blacklisting”…the secret re-categorization of certain Twitter accounts, without the knowledge of the affected user or their followers, so that they do not show up in searches, predictive auto-complete fields or trending topics. Even though…companies like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have in the past denied knowing what “shadowbanning” meant, large numbers of sex workers…are verifiably victims of this…practice…a…Motherboard article…[showed] a screencapture from Twitter’s back-end reveal[ing] some accounts labeled under “Trends Blacklist” and “Search Blacklist”…[reporter Samantha] Cole explained…“A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard on the phone that these blacklists are the same ones it explained in 2018 (though it didn’t use the term ‘blacklist’ at the time and has not used that word publicly)”…
Bathhouse 9
Posted in Diary, tagged Sunset on July 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Between last week and the week before, we set all the posts for the second phase of the bathhouse project; we also set new posts so we can move the paddock gate, which you can see in this picture, farther away from the house (because the extension will block the current gate location). Everything else we’ve done in the past couple of weeks wouldn’t really show up in pictures; that list includes leveling the hot tub, building a lower ramp from house level down to ground level in front of the shop building, taking down Jae’s yurt in preparation for moving it to the other side of the bathhouse complex, running the basic wiring in the first cottage, and taking inventory of the second cottage kit. I’d really like to continue installing more deck next, but unfortunately that’s going to have to wait until the concrete around the posts cures more thoroughly so we can remove the temporary braces, cut the posts all to the same height, and put in the joists; we also need to dig a new French drain, put down plastic and gravel in the area you see here, and run the main power cable to the new breaker box (the cable actually arrived Wednesday). But after all that, there’s going to be deck on top of everything you see here; it’ll be nice to be able to walk across the area without maneuvering around construction and having to worry about falling into holes or tripping over the water line!
One Neck
Posted in Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged propaganda, psychology, racism, Twitter on July 23, 2020| 3 Comments »
Would that the Roman people had but one neck! – Gaius Caligula
I’m not going to analyze this propaganda too deeply, parse out which of the statements make sense and which don’t, or discuss the long and tortured history of the construct of “whiteness” and how it has changed over the past 400 years. I’m not even going to comment (beyond this sentence) on the fact that this was lifted from a 30-year-old book by a white woman. All I’m going to do is remind you that the National Museum of African American History & Culture is part of the Smithsonian; it is owned and run by the US government, and therefore heavily invested in promoting that government’s interests (because he who pays the piper calls the tune). And then I’m going to ask you why a government might want the most oppressed minority under its rule to associate individualism, independence, autonomy, and rational thought with their oppressors.
Magdalene’s Day 2020
Posted in Holidays, tagged Catholicism, holidays on July 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Every year on her feast day, I honor St. Mary Magdalene; even though the Church does not officially recognize her as the patron of whores, she certainly is in the public imagination. And if beliefs have power, that recognition of sacred whoredom in the minds of millions has far more metaphysical and philosophical weight than any official Church designation.
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