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Archive for December, 2020

Homemaking

Posted in Diary, tagged on December 11, 2020| 3 Comments »

It’s strange to think it has already been four years since I decided to move my primary residence to Washington.  In the first week of December, 2016, I called Grace and proposed the idea to her; even after I pointed out the difficulties of the idea, her response was simply “I want to be with you.”  Just a month later we had already walked in this house and decided to buy it; here’s a brief timeline of the various steps I’ve taken to make it a home:

2016

December

Get list of properties from realtor

2017

January

First visit to Sunset

May

Sell OK property, buy Sunset

June

Preparation for move

July

First load to Sunset

August

Second load to Sunset

September

Third load to Sunset

October

Complete move
Redo plumbing

November

Unpack boxes

2018

January-July

Clean up and repair

August

French drain system

September

Install gutters

October

Patch outbuilding rooves

November

Clear fenceline

2019

January-June

Minor improvements

July

Plan floor leveling

August-September

Redo plumbing

2020

January

First set of bookcases

March

Begin floor leveling
Bookcases

April

Finishing bookcases

May

Install Grace’s floor
Install living room floor
Hot tub delivered
Initial bathhouse layout

June

Posts phase 1
Foundation for cottage #1
Build cottage #1

July

Finish cottage #1
Bathroom deck area
Inside ramp
Move paddock gate
Posts phase 2

August

Main deck area
Posts phase 3
Foundation for cottage #2
Preliminary wiring
Build cottage #2

September

Skirt cottages
Roof cottage #2
Wire cottages
Upgrade power cable

October

Stain cottages
Buy steel

November

Paddock ramp
Insulation under cottages
Wifi extension

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The Home Stretch

Posted in Call types, Perception, tagged , , on December 10, 2020| 4 Comments »

Three weeks from today, I’ll be officially semi-retiring.  For those who somehow missed my previous announcements and reminders, what this means is that as of January 1st, I’m only going to see clients I’ve seen before.  I won’t be taking new ones unless they come recommended by people I know personally, and I won’t be doing any short-notice gigs unless everything is exactly right.  So for the most part I’ll only be seeing guys I’ve seen before, with enough notice to fit the dates into my existing schedule without having to turn handstands.  No more answering calls from unknown numbers, no more answering cold texts, no more screening, no more feeling annoyed because someone wants a same-day appointment and I feel I have to accept because I don’t want to turn away a blessing.  In other words, I’m eliminating all the parts of the job I dislike, the parts that stress me out and wear me down, and keeping all the stuff I like.  I’ve often said that one of the funniest of prohibitionist idiocies is the idea that the worst part of whoring is the sex; that’s the easy part!  The bad part is all the same crap one has to deal with in any other business, and I’ve never been especially good at business.  So I’m shedding as much of the unpleasant stuff as I can, and keeping as much of the pleasant stuff as I can manage, and with Aphrodite’s help, it will all work out for the best.

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In the News (#1095)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2020| 1 Comment »

[NOPD] argues the word “employ” means something else when it’s misleading the public.  –  Tim Cushing

The Puritan Recrudescence

No, Parler doesn’t have a “porn problem”; it has a spam problem:

Anyone following the #sexytrumpgirl hashtag on Parler…got an eyeful one recent Thursday evening as images of topless women and links to hardcore pornography websites appeared at a rapid-fire rate, often more than one per minute…The site’s lax moderation policies…have helped it become a magnet for pornographers, escort services and online sex merchants using hashtags…such as #keepamericasexy and #milfsfortrump2020.  The pornography…has the potential to complicate hopes the site may have to expand advertising…[because uptight] major companies typically avoid having their sales pitches appear alongside [sexu]al imagery…Parler once banned all pornography but in recent months revised its terms of service to permit essentially anything that’s legal, making its policy close to Twitter’s…[but] Twitter…has automated systems that prevent excessively rapid posting, as well as other spammy behavior…

I think most normal people would be just as annoyed by rapid-fire tweets hawking car warranties, miracle cures, get-rich-quick schemes, or political theater, but of course that wouldn’t be as lurid as focusing on porn.

Morality Lessons (#921)

Australian cops are envious of the FBI, and want permission to run their own kiddie porn sites:

[Australian pigs and spooks] will be [allowed] to take over the online accounts of [people they accuse of being]…paedophile[s], terrorists and drug-traffickers…under new laws to be introduced in Federal Parliament.  The [pigs and spooks] will also be a[llowed] to hack into people’s computer networks [to watch, steal and trade]…child [porn]…The new capabilities will give [pigs and spooks] unprecedented powers to [spy on people and justify it with all kinds of doubletalk about how “]criminals operating on the dark web…can more easily evade traditional law enforcement or investigation methods[“]…Under a new “account takeover power”, [pigs and spooks] will be able to take control of a person’s online account for the purposes of [creating false] evidence about criminal activity…

Pyrrhic Victory (#992) 

Why I keep telling you local laws banning facial recognition are feel-good bullshit:

…”The New Orleans Police Department has confirmed that it is utilizing facial recognition…despite years of assurances” t[o] the…contrary…this report by The Tenth Amendment Center makes the NOPD’s relationship with the tech more explicit…“the NOPD has…relied on technology operated by the Louisiana State Police…[via] the state fusion center”…the NOPD…”does not employ facial recognition software”…in the sense that the PD does not own the tech…It clearly does use it.  It just outsources that work to other agencies — including federal law enforcement — that do own the tech…The city is considering a facial recognition ban.  But this admission the PD outsources its facial recognition work means it won’t be enough to simply forbid the PD from buying and utilizing its own tech.  The proposal would need to be rewritten to prevent the PD from sending its photos to state or federal agencies for proxy searching.  The vote on the proposed ban has been delayed as city council members process the NOPD’s lies about its facial recognition use and decide what to do with this new information…now the city knows it can’t trust its own police department to be honest with it…

Take it from someone intimately acquainted with how things are done in New Orleans:  the city council already knew.  The vote has simply been delayed so they can think up good butt-covering lies.

A Moral Cancer (#1017) 

When government loses one excuse for violently intruding on private lives, it will invent another one:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has banned people from smoking in their own apartments…the board voted 10–1 in favor of a bill…to prohibit smoking tobacco inside private dwellings in buildings with three or more units.  Violators…could receive fines of up to $1,000…The…bill…at [first]…also applied to smoking legal cannabis…[but] an amendment…exempts marijuana…be[cause] cannabis [is politically correct but tobacco is not]…

A Broker in Pillage (#1062)

Burying government in lawsuits is the only way to slow its depredations:

Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow the government to s[teal] property…without ever charging the owner, are fundamentally rigged in favor of the [cop shops] that get a cut of the proceeds.  Even when an owner manages to challenge a forfeiture…he has the burden of proving his innocence, and the process often costs more than the property is worth.  Adding insult to injury, the government can drag out the process for so long that even innocent owners feel compelled to surrender.  The Institute for Justice (I.J.) challenges that aspect of civil forfeiture in an appeal it filed this week, asking the Supreme Court to rule that due process requires a prompt post-seizure hearing…The…case involves Gerardo Serrano, a U.S. citizen and Kentucky resident whose pickup truck was s[tolen] by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in September 2015, while he was on his way to visit relatives in Mexico.  The official, patently absurd justification: The truck was suspected of involvement in international arms smuggling, because Serrano had forgotten about a handgun magazine and five rounds he had left in the center console.  He waited two years without a hearing until CBP suddenly decided to return the truck in 2017, a month after I.J. filed a lawsuit on his behalf.  The circumstances…strongly suggest that Serrano was punished for asserting his constitutional rights…

You Were Warned (#1082)

Congress won’t stop until it controls the internet:

…Legislation to limit or abolish Section 230 has become popular in Congress…but with the exception of the 2018 sex-ad law FOSTA, most of these have gone nowhere.  Now, some [politicians] are taking a different tack.  Instead of pushing a standalone attack on Section 230, Sen. Roger Wicker…will allegedly introduce an anti-Section 230 bit into the latest defense spending bill…

And guess who’s actually behind it?

Donald Trump is threatening to veto a defense policy bill unless it [allows]…internet companies t[o be sued or prosecuted]…for material posted by their users…Trump has been waging war against social media companies for months, claiming they are biased against [him]…the…veto threat is another potential roadblock for the passage of the annual defense policy measure, which is already being held up in Congress by a spat over military bases named for Confederate officers…

Winding Down

A big step toward ending the disastrous War on Drugs:

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs…[has] accepted a World Health Organization…recommendation to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.  The historic vote in Vienna could have far-reaching implications for the global medical cannabis industry, ranging from regulatory oversight to scientific research into the plant and its use as a medicine…it could help boost medical cannabis legalization efforts around the globe now that the CND tacitly acknowledges the medical utility of the drug…

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Diary #545

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on December 8, 2020| 1 Comment »

I’m getting much better at scheduling my in-town appointments as closely together as possible so as to minimize the amount of time I spend in Seattle.  Last week, I drove in on Tuesday afternoon; did some shopping with a friend; had a hair appointment at 11:30 Wednesday morning; had my nails done at 2:00; saw one of my favorite gentlemen at 4:30; then drove back to Sunset early Thursday afternoon.  At first I thought I might have to extend my trip by a day to do toy shopping (I’ve already received $600 and several purchased toys from generous donors), but the day before I left I discovered that the Toys for Tots collection center in Olympia is on the west side of town, near many other places I know well (doctor’s office, Trader Joe’s, etc).  So that means I can take my time buying toys this week, and I can deliver them a week from today when I take Grace to a doctor’s appointment just a few blocks away from the collection center.  Look for my usual picture of the haul next week!  And the week after that, I’ll make one last run into Seattle just before Christmas.

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Links #544

Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »

She was yelling orders at the squirrels and telling them to attack me.  –  James Robinson

Through a series of connections too complicated to describe without an entire paragraph, I recently realized that I have never posted the video of Brak singing “I Love Beans”.  I am not sure how that happened, but it is past time to rectify the situation.  The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Walter Olson, Melanie Moore, I Am Curious Blue, Mike Siegel, and Jesse Walker, in that order.

From the Archives

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St. Nicholas Day 2020

Posted in Holidays, tagged on December 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »


If you’re a new reader and don’t understand why I specifically honor St. Nicholas on his day, I suggest you reread my 2014 column for this day, and don’t skip the links.  And if you wish to honor the jolly saint yourself, I suggest you reread my column from November 27th and proceed accordingly; I’ve provided ways you can help several of the saint’s favorites at the same time.  And if you already know what this is about, what are you waiting for?  I know you don’t want to end up on his naughty list.

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In the News (#1094)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2020| 1 Comment »

I make way more money per hour playing a professor in the dungeon than being one in real life.  –  Mistress Snow

Aggressive Ignorance

In Florida, you can now get a “certification” in racist, misogynistic propaganda:

Florida State University has launched a new certification in human trafficking prevention and intervention…to [indoctrin]ate [authoritarians in the approved]…human trafficking [propaganda]…the Tallahassee Police Department [recently] charged over 170 people [with various misdemeanors it pretended were linked together]…into a sex trafficking network…[authoritarians and profiteers] who seek to get the certification can use what they learn and apply it to…[profiting from the] crim[inalization of consensual acts and inventing propaganda]…just like [the cops did with] this one…

Buried Truth

I think we have enough evidence to start calling this “McNeill’s Law”:

An anti-LGBTQ+ Hungarian politician has resigned from the European Parliament after being caught in what’s being described as an orgy involving 25 men.  József Szájer, who has spoken proudly of writing a ban on same-sex marriage into Hungary’s constitution, acknowledged…that he had been at what he called a “house party”…in Brussels…[which was] raided [using the excuse of] violation of Belgium’s COVID-19 restrictions, banning gatherings of more than four people.  Szájer was caught “shimmying down a drainpipe” in an attempt to escape police…He had no identifying documents with him and had drugs in his backpack…[but] was released with a warning after [cops] escorted him home and he produced his diplomatic passport.  Police, however, “have opened a case against those present for violating lockdown rules, as well as against Szájer for possession of drugs”…

Shame, Shame

The state believes it’s OK for its operatives to dox you, but not vice-versa:

French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party agreed…to completely rewrite a draft plan that would have c[riminaliz]ed the…shar[ing of] images identifying [violent cops], after large protests over the weekend against police violence…More than 133,000 people, including 46,000 in Paris alone, demonstrated against the draft bill and in favour of free speech…The rallies followed the publication of video footage of a Black man being beaten up by three [cops] inside his own music studio…Macron…branded [the evidence] “shameful” for France [and therefore tried to prevent it happening not by controlling the pigs, but by criminalizing the act of revealing it]…Article 24…[would have] made it a crime – punishable by a year in prison and a 45,000 euro ($54,000) fine – to share [pictures of cops] with an “obvious intention to harm” [as determined by authoritarian bureaucrats]…

Imaginary Evils (#737)

Remember, huge police operations have never found more than a single-digit number of “sex trafficking” cases anywhere in the UK:

[Cops fantasize that] nearly 100…woman were [magically] trafficked into Scotland and forced into prostitution despite the ­lockdown restrictions…Fil Capaldi, head of Police Scotland’s National Human Trafficking Unit said: “[Pimps are magical ninjas who can walk through walls and pull screaming children through computer monitors, so naturally they have no trouble with travel restrictions]…Slavery is not a thing of the past, it’s happening in every local authority throughout ­Scotland…When ­international borders open up again, we will see a spike in trafficking”…he said Covid rules may have helped the traffickers keep their vile trade hidden…

So “sex trafficking” increases under restrictions, and it also increases when there are no restrictions.  It’s easy to make contradictory statements when nobody expects you to provide even the most rudimentary evidence of anything you say.

Feminine Pragmatism (#970) 

It’s good to see that the media are beginning to grasp this:

More than half of all college professors are now “adjuncts”: part-time freelance instructors who…have the same PhDs as their tenured and full-time colleagues, but who get paid low amounts on a per-course basis, with few or no benefits and little job security.  Typically, adjuncts (also known as “contingent faculty”) string together gigs at multiple colleges, which pay an average of $3,984 per course…So, many adjunct professors now find themselves needing to find significant side-work to stay afloat…Last December, Mistress Snow…wrote a personal essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled “I Told My Mentor I Was a Dominatrix: She Rescinded Her Letter of Recommendation.”  The summer before the article came out, she found herself without a teaching gig—which is common for adjuncts…[so] she w[ent]…back [to] the sex trade…

Social Distancing (#1055)

So many “enlightened” countries still believe that disease is caused by “sin”:

On September 26, 2020 the Government of Ontario closed down strip clubs without warning or consulting strippers.  At the same time, other similar businesses such as bars continued to be allowed to operate.  Strippers are not demanding we be given exceptional treatment…we only want to be treated fairly.  This means being consulted about the implementation of prevention and other occupational health and safety measures at our workplaces, rather than government officials assuming we are vectors of disease that pose particular risk to public health…

Social Distancing (#1082)

Another example of how “lockdowns” cause far more harm than good:

…In sub-Saharan Africa, 16 countries have an HIV prevalence rate greater than 37 per cent among sex workers.  “To ignore HIV prevention and sex workers during an emergency is self-defeating,” said Innocent Modisaotsile…[of] the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.  “New infections and demands for ARV treatment will burden the health system.”  COVID-19 has brought hardships to sex workers in Africa…in terms of loss of income, police crackdowns, exclusion from social protection schemes, and increased violence…in the past two decades Kenya’s robust HIV prevention and care programme has reduced HIV prevalence among sex workers significantly…[via] drop-in centres (DICs) that provide safe spaces, healthcare and peer support…[but] under the lockdown [police roadblock are preventing sex workers from accessing the centres]…

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Annex 25

Posted in Diary, tagged , on December 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Last weekend, we made another “invisible” improvement.  As I’ve explained, this is a fairly old house by Washington standards (built in 1927), and it appears to have been entirely built by the owners at every stage of construction (including, obviously, the currently-ongoing project).  So we’ve often been confronted by head-scratching features (“Why the hell did they do that?”) that need to be fixed or worked around.  It is, however, quite solid; they definitely didn’t scrimp on the wood.  So when DSL was added by the previous owners, they brought the cable through the wall very near the breaker box, which is to say as far from the guest cottages as it’s possible to be while still inside the house.  So there was no way the wi-fi could reach all the way to the cottages, and even the repeater we bought just couldn’t get a good signal through all that distance and thick, solid walls; we could get a connection, but it was weak and balky.  So we decided to buy a 100′ outdoor ethernet cable to hard-wire the repeater; it arrived Saturday morning and we wasted no time.  We moved the router to the top of the bookshelf and drilled a hole in the ceiling to run the cable into the attic, discovering in the process that the cavity between living room ceiling and attic floor is much wider than expected; it took our longest drill extension to bridge the gap.  But bridge it we did, and I pulled the cable into the attic and ran it down the length of the house…only to find that there was a wall about a meter short of where Chekhov had drilled up into the laundry room ceiling.  Perplexed, I crossed the area in the picture (you can see the ethernet cable to the right of the picture) and pressed down on that fluffy insulation, revealing a rough opening barely large enough for my petite frame, and beyond it a crawlspace whose floor now featured a freshly-drilled hole.  After that, the rest was easy; the cable went down into the laundry room, down behind the dryer, out through a new hole to the exterior, under the deck behind the hot tub, and then over to the well room (where the repeater is plugged in).  It took a bit of doing to force the stupid thing to “see” the cable instead of trying to pull the signal from the air, but we finally got it to catch, and we now appear to have decent wi-fi in the cottages.  So that means there’s now water, electricity and data to the annex; unless they invent another vital utility, I think we’re done in that department for now.

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Out of Touch

Posted in Biography, Philosophy, tagged , , on December 3, 2020| 4 Comments »

Most people who know me, friend and foe alike, are impressed or even intimidated by my encyclopedic memory.  And though I do indeed seem to have more memory space and better recall than most, I honestly think the apparent effect is boosted by my not devoting much memory space to popular ephemera.  No, that’s not strong enough; it’s more truthful to say that I’m astonishingly ignorant of popular culture, at least of the past four decades.   As I’ve often said, I stopped watching network television in 1980, and truth be told I was losing interest in it for several years before that, so I never watched a lot of the ’70s fluff such as The Love Boat that my younger siblings enjoyed.  For the next two decades I watched PBS and a few cable or independent stations, and by the turn of the century I had mostly stopped watching that, too.  Furthermore, I disliked TV news from time I was old enough to form an opinion about it (11 or 12 maybe?) and have only ever got my news from text sources.  Once I started being able to afford my own entertainment equipment in the mid-’80s, it was rare that I just turned on media (for “background noise”) that I wasn’t actively consuming; that’s probably largely due to my ADD, which makes it difficult to impossible to concentrate on reading or writing unless the room is fairly quiet.

The result of all this is, a lot of names and terms and phrases, etc, which most people would recognize might as well be drawn from medieval Chinese textbooks as far as I’m concerned.  Earlier this year I made a series of self-deprecating jokes on Twitter about my inability to recognize the various names associated with the various Trump administration scandals: “Lindsey Graham…wasn’t he in an ’80s sitcom?” or “Why are people complaining about Stephen Miller?  His music isn’t that bad.”  “Ooh, I know Mnuchin; that’s one of the little people in The Wizard of Oz!” and so on.  Last week, one of my gents texted me with something about bubbles and surges which I figured probably had more to do with COVID than with soup-making, but I wasn’t totally sure.  And in response to my query, an online friend said I was probably better off not knowing why Trumpaloons were making what appeared to be references to Ray Harryhausen’s last movie.  I suspect it does give me a bit of an “absent-minded professor” vibe, but c’est la vie; judging by the distress a lot of the stuff I don’t know seems to cause people, I think I’m better off keeping my head filled with facts, names, and even trivia that are important to me rather than letting all and sundry strew whatever rubbish they have on hand all over my mental front yard.

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In the News (#1093)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2020| 1 Comment »

ICE has no reservations about covering its tracks to avoid accountability for its…human rights abuses.

Banishment (#435)

Habeas corpus? New York don’t understand that fancy Latin jazz:

New York’s top court upheld a law…that allows the state to keep [people tarred with the label “]sex offender[” indefinitely locked in filthy cages long]…after they have completed their sentences…the state Court of Appeals [pretended] the law didn’t violate due process guarantees, and did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment…In a 5-2 decision, Judge Eugene Fahey wrote for the majority: “We [pretend] that there was no constitutional violation”…

The Course of a Disease (#925)

The Spanish case of the Swedish rot is especially virulent:

…[Busybodie]s in one of Madrid’s eastern districts, Ciudad Lineal, have decided to…campaign for the removal of small flyers and brochures advertising [sex workers’ services]…in the first four hours of the activity some 1238 advertising materials were removed from the streets and vehicles.  [Puritans claimed that interfering with poor women’s ability to pay bills and feed their children during a pandemic is] good news…and [babbled a lot of tinned]…non[sense]…about treatment of women…[and “]the children[!”]…

For an added touch of irony, a notice at the end of this ugly propaganda claims that “TheMayor.EU stands against fake news and disinformation.”

Torture Chamber (#1022)

The government needs to be buried in lawsuits before this will stop:

Newly released federal data show a direct link between widespread sexual abuse in youth [prisons] and unprofessional behavior by staff…Just Detention International…says the findings detail how staff  “routinely crossed boundaries with [young people] prior to abusing them, in ways that should have been obvious to fellow staff and higher ups, including showing kids preferential treatment, sharing intimate details with them about their lives, and providing them forbidden items like alcohol and other drugs.”  Perpetrators most often targeted [youth] who identify as LGBT…[or] have disabilities…youth who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual were about twice as likely as their straight peers to be abused…nearly one in five [trans youth are]…sexually abused…[and more than one in five] who have a disability or mental illness…

Torture Chamber (#1025)

“Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, so I can torture and deport them”:

…Cameroonian and Congolese immigrants [were] subjected to physical…and [mental torture]…while [imprisoned] at Adams County Correctional Center (ACCC) in Mississippi.  The[y]…were coerced and tortured into complying with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [thugs] to fingerprint documents approving their own deportation.  These fingerprints, used in place of signatures, indicated the immigrants’ [supposed] consent to initiate deportation proceedings and waive their rights to further immigration hearings.  Three people provided firsthand accounts of the violent tactics ICE…used to obtain their prints, including pepper-spraying [them] almost to the point of suffocation, breaking their fingers, and subjecting them to further [violence]…in unmonitored rooms.  A joint complaint filed by FFI and the Southern Poverty Law Center cites eight cases of forced signatures or fingerprints on stipulated orders of removal, as well as several instances of violence…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1076) 

LAPD “bans” technology it’s already illegal to use in California:

The Los Angeles police department…has banned…facial recognition software and launched a review after 25 [cops] were accused of using it [illeg]ally to try to identify people…deputy chief John McMahon…noted that p[igs] were only allowed to [root in] the official LAPD ID system…and [that California banned any use] by [cops several months ago]…LAPD…used…Clearview AI…nearly 475 times…over a three-month period beginning at the end of 2019…an LAPD spokesman said [that even though cops ignored previous bans because they carry no criminal penalties, this time will be different even though the new ban is only a policy rather than a law and carries no criminal penalties either]…

Sheep and Goats

But don’t worry; this isn’t important because it’s just “white women getting a manicure”:

On most days, Juyoung Lee is the only person inside Beverly Nail Studio, the salon that she owns in Flushing, Queens…Like nail salons across New York City, her business [was forced by politicians] to close when the pandemic hit in March.  There was a brief surge in demand after the lockdown was lifted in July, but then appointments started dwindling.  Often, customers requested cheaper services.  Now, they hardly come at all.  The beauty industry in the city seemed well positioned to bounce back after restrictions ended.  After all, many customers had spent months without professional grooming.  But now, many of these businesses are on the verge of collapse — a drastic hit for an industry that is an economic engine for immigrant women…The New York Nail Salon Workers Association…said…“The work force is primarily immigrant workers living paycheck to paycheck, supporting children and in many cases sick and aging family members in their own countries”…

Welcome to the Future (#1092)

“Predictive policing” scams don’t spare minors:

Victorian police [are using] a secretive data tool that tracked youths and [pretends to be able to] predict…the risk they w[ill] commit crime…Between 2016 and 2018, police [stigmat]ised young people as “youth network offenders” or “core youth network offenders”…Once a young person was classified, police [harass them, accusing]…them…[of] crimes…and [then claiming their self-fulfilling prophecy]…is…95% accurate…

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