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Archive for February, 2022

Diary #609

The predicted cold front I mentioned last week turned out to be less severe than predicted, and completely dry. So though we had to take extra precautions (putting the pony’s coat on, plugging in an extra heat lamp for the chickens, etc), we were actually able to get much more work done than I’d anticipated.  That was working with wood, of course; it was much too cold to weld, and even too cold to do concrete until Friday.  You’ll see what I was up to with the wood a week from Friday (I couldn’t fit a bathhouse column in this week), but in the meantime you can see what our animals like to do when it’s cold but quite sunny.  Cicero has a heat lamp at night, but in the daytime he prefers the real McCoy.

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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.  –  P.J. O’Rourke

I’ve heard these impressions before, but they’re really quite remarkable; Bowie was a man of any talents!  This video was provided by Franklin Harris, and the links above it by Cop Crisis, Walter Olson, Dave Krueger, Emma Evans, Cop Crisis again and Dave Krueger again, in that order.

From the Archives

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Is there anything they wouldn’t sell this mass surveillance for?
–  Jack Poulson

A Broker in Pillage

Nobody will be safe until this odious, contemptible practice is recognized as unconstitutional:

Carl Nelson and Amy Sterner Nelson…[w]ere…[forced to sell] their house and their car, liquidate…their retirement funds, and move…their family of six from a comfortable West Seattle home to Amy’s sister’s basement after the FBI s[tole] almost $1 million from them in May 2020…The[y looted]…nearly every corner of the Nelsons’ world, including…the savings Amy racked up from her decade as a practicing attorney…[even though] the[y]…never even suspected Amy of committing any crime.  It was…Carl—a former real estate transaction manager for Amazon—w[hom]…they accused…of showing favor to certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks…the…years-long investigation into Carl’s alleged fraud has not yielded an indictment.  Yet no such thing was necessary for the federal government to wreck the Nelsons’ lives…Last week, the government agreed to a settlement:  Of the original approximately $892,000 it seized, it will return $525,000…and…[keep] about $109,000. (The remaining sum has been depleted by court fees)…Carl is still a defendant in a massive federal lawsuit against Amazon, and they accepted the deal so that they’d have money for attorneys’ fees…

To Molest and Rape (#989)

I won’t be surprised if his sentence is shorter than this:

Cynthia Perkins…faces 41 years in prison after taking a plea deal…in exchange for testifying against her [child rapist cop] ex-husband, Dennis…[who] manipulated…her…[in]to commit[ing]…horr[ible] crimes [ranging from rape to child porn to mixing his semen into cupcakes which she fed to her students]…Cynthia…could have faced 72 years in prison.  However, 68 of the remaining charges against her were dropped…she has no possibility of parole…and…waived any right to appeal…

What was the advantage to her in agreeing to what amounts to a life sentence without parole?  Does she honestly think she’ll have any kind of life after getting out of prison at 77, assuming she lives that long once the other prisoners figure out who she is and what she did?

Something Rotten in Sweden (#1112)

California’s annual anti-whore pogrom did a lot more damage this year, thanks to federal collaboration:

More than 200 sex workers were arrested as part of an [annual pogrom] that police [sell to the ignorant] as an attempt to save people from human trafficking.  The arrests—part of a Super Bowl-adjacent collaboration between Los Angeles law enforcement and the feds—represent an all too common theme in U.S. law enforcement, where people claim to be helping sex workers while actually subjecting them to harm.  The…[pogrom is] christened with the creepy name “Operation Reclaim and Rebuild”…now in its seventh year…[Pigs merrily oinking about all the lives they ruined were] joined by representatives of…Morality in Media…214 people were arrested for allegedly selling sex and 201 people were arrested for allegedly trying to pay for sex…only 53 people were arrested for pimping, pandering, or supervising prostitution. And it’s unclear if any of these individuals were engaged in anything that we might think of as abusive or non-consensual behavior…most of the arrests—445—were for misdemeanors…

To Molest and Rape (#1142)

Imagine how many others like this are still out there, raping and murdering:

The suspect in a 1983 cold case murder is…a [cop] who worked in several counties…in Central Florida.  St. Lucie County…cold case squad found evidence that [dead] deputy James Harrison raped and murdered an 11-year-old girl…[and] could be responsible for more unsolved cases.  He died of cancer in 2008…11-year-old Lora Ann Huizar disappeared while walking home from a gas station.  She was found in a nearby drainage ditch.  Detectives… believe [Harrison] kidnapped, raped and killed her…witness[es] report[ed that]…Harrison [was] watching the girl…[Sheriff Ken] Mascara…[claims] he was concerned at the time that Harrison showed a pattern of inappropriate behavior with young girls…his complaint w[as dismissed by a]…supervisor [who opined] that, since Harrison was also a preacher, he was “spiritually mentoring children at risk”…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1182)

Still think this djinni can be crammed back into its bottle?

The facial recognition company Clearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable”…Those images — equivalent to 14 photos for each of the 7 billion people on Earth — would help power a surveillance system that has been used [to abduct] and [terrorize many] thousands of [people by cops, spooks,] and [other] government [operatives] around the world.  And the company wants to expand beyond…[fascist operations to purely corporate ones], saying in the presentation that it could monitor “gig economy” workers and is researching a number of new technologies that could identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from a photo or scan their fingerprints from afar…With $50 million from investors, the company said, it could bulk up its data collection powers to 100 billion photos, build new products, expand its international sales team and pay more toward [buy]ing…poli[ticians so as] to “develop favorable regulation”…

Creepy Coppers

The only thing cops seem to love as much as raping kids is collecting kiddie porn:

In less than two weeks, two Sioux Falls [South Dakota cops]…have been arrested for child pornography…On Wednesday, February 16, Matthew Alan Jock was…charged with five counts…and…on February 8…Luke Schauer, a[nother typical and representative cop], was…[charged with] “attempted production”…[spokespigs fell all over themselves to distance themselves from the pair and oink about “bad apples”]…

Meanwhile, a few states to the southeast:

Ohio…[cop] Kevin A. Kovacs…pleaded guilty…to transporting and possessing child pornography…between April 2015 and July 2017, Kovacs uploaded more than 300 images and 2,200 videos depicting child pornography to his Dropbox account.  Videos featured the sexual abuse of children as young as toddler aged.  One video depicted a toddler…whose arms and legs were bound by black tape…In total…Kovacs possessed more than 780 images and 5,100 videos of child pornography…[his] plea…includes an agreed upon sentencing range of 60 to 240 months in prison…

The Mob Rules (#1209)

Until SCOTUS acts, this will only get worse:

A Texas-style abortion law is advancing in Idaho…SB 1309…would authorize the father, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or sibling of a fetus aborted after [fetal cardiac activity can be detected] to file a civil lawsuit against the doctor at any time up to four years after the abortion, and get $20,000 minimum damages plus attorney fees…”It’s unconstitutional on its face,” state Sen. Grant Burgoyne…said. “I think that the state of Idaho is in for another rough ride on…abortion litigation, and an expensive ride, and an unconstitutional ride”…

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Back Issue #104

The 21st century American view of sex is warped beyond that of any other historical culture.  –  “Scorched Earth

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The online safety bill presents a clear attempt to age-gate the internet.  –  Mark Johnson

To Molest and Rape

It’s pretty rare for reporters to actually use the word “rape” when the rapist is a cop:

Atlanta [cop]…Lionel Joseph Dely…rap[ed] a woman in her…apartment…Jan. 31 shortly after…Dely…[tricked her into admitting him by belching out the magic word “]investigation[“.  A spokespig oinked that]…Dely [didn’t have]…official [permission]…to [commit rape]…

Safe Position

Prior to 2018, it wasn’t even safe for a politician to support human rights for sex workers, much less admit to being one:

As I prepared to enter the political world as a candidate, I made promises that I would not leave anyone behind and that I would be honest about my experiences, including my time working as a stripper during college…I was afraid if I told anyone I would be stigmatized.  I feared getting kicked out of school, losing my friendships, and being denied a future in the career I was working toward…After coming forward in the campaign, the soccer club I worked for through this pandemic confronted me about sex work on my campaign’s social media platform.  They asked me to remove my statements while…removing me from both the teams I coached…My story is not unique.  So many examples exist that highlight the stigma and job loss that impact individuals, especially women when their past or current involvement in sex work is revealed

HIV Cure (#920)

Previous cures were accomplished by bone marrow transplant:

A woman in the New York City area appears to have been cured of…HIV…[she] has shown no detectable signs of the…virus in extensive testing since she stopped antiretroviral treatment in October 2020 following a transplant of stem cells with a rare genetic mutation that blocks HIV invasion…The woman, who had a form of leukemia, received a transplant of stem cells from an adult relative and umbilical-cord blood from a newborn to whom she wasn’t related.  The treatment is likely to be suitable for a broader range of people than are the transplants that beat HIV back in three other patients, because cord blood doesn’t have to be a precise genetic match to a recipient patient…

Welcome to the Future (#944)

Conditioning kids to accept constant, intrusive surveillance:

…GoGuardian…[is] a s[urveillance]…tool for monitoring what students do during Zoom classes…it…[euphemizes the atmosphere of distrust this creates] as [a]…”digital learning environment…where every student can thrive”…Defenders of [such] programs [barf up the usual platitudes about “safety”]…but…[the] tools also collect data related to non-life-threatening behavior…most kids probably don’t want school administrators reading their journals…and…if students feel they are being watched, they may be less likely to explore less “acceptable” ideas or to search the internet with questions they are embarrassed to ask in class…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1120)

Even if Clearview itself is brought down, the djinni is already out of the bottle:

Face surveillance is a growing menace…and…one of the worst offenders is Clearview AI, which extracts faceprints from billions of people without their consent and uses these faceprints to help police identify [people they wish to target for]…violence.  Clearview’s faceprinting violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act…which requires opt-in consent…Clearview now faces many consolidated BIPA lawsuits in federal court.  It also faces another suit, brought by the ACLU…in state court…the judge in the federal cases rejected Clearview’s First Amendment defense, denied the company’s motion to dismiss, and allowed the lawsuits to move forward.  This is an important victory for our privacy over Clearview’s profits…

Rotting Fruit (#1187)

Oh, oh, my goodness me, who could ever have predicted this outcome?

Prince Andrew and his accuser Virginia Giuffre have settled out of court in the civil sex assault claim filed in the US…the…lawyer[s]…wrote jointly…to say that the parties had “reached a settlement in principle”.  Court documents show the duke will make a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”…

Opting Out (#1194) 

“At least one person noted that the UK was at risk of looking like idiots”:

U.K. government officials confirmed…that social media sites “hosting large amounts of pornographic material, such as Twitter and Reddit” would have to “introduce systems to remove adult material in the U.K., or introduce age checks to determine whether users are over 18″…This is one of the first official confirmations that the measure has as eventual targets not only “pornographic websites”…but also any website that tolerates sexually explicit content.  Eradicating adult content from open platforms has been one of the core objectives of the leading religiously inspired, U.S.-based groups that are at the forefront of the War on Porn, including [Morality in Media] and Exodus Cry and their mouthpieces…

The tagline above was drawn from this article, demonstrating just how much more acceptable censorship has become to the hoi-polloi in only 4 years.

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Diary #608

On the day this posts, we’re supposed to get a cold front through, possibly accompanied by some snow. But for a week or so, we had some almost-springish weather, and the animals were all grazing for the new shoots. Shiloh has figured out some new way to escape the paddock, but she knows it’s her home and she doesn’t like to be far from Jonathan, so I’m not terribly concerned when she gets out (especially since she can sometimes figure out how to get back in when she’s ready). It’s long past time to expand the fence anyhow, so I’ll make time to do that the next time I have both dry weather and a helper. In the meantime, I’ve been taking advantage of the clement conditions to forge ahead on the bathhouse project; as I explained Friday, we want the north ramp under the roof, so it had to be built before I could set up the posts which will support the steel header.  But that part is now done (you’ll see pictures in my next Bathhouse column) and the weather has turned cold and rainy again, so it’ll probably be next week before we can start on the next leaf of the roof; in the meantime I’m using the energy to clear up some of the mess which got displaced into my bedroom when we started working on my office.  With any luck, I’ll be finished all of the major projects by the holidays, so perhaps next year I’ll be able to find the time to indulge myself in some quaint pastimes like reading for pleasure.

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Some of you have trouble understanding this, so I’m going to spell it out: you are not stupid.  You have a brain, and it allows you to weigh data and make judgments for yourself.  You don’t have to do it alone; you can consult the opinions of people you trust, people who know more about a given topic than you do and, as far as you know, have never lied to you.  But to do that, information must flow freely; beware of those who say, “I have all the information you need, and those who express different opinions from me should be silenced.”  And most of all, beware those who rely on your unquestioning acceptance of their claims to increase their own power; they are not your friends.  Accept no source as an absolute authority, especially when they demand you should.  No church, no government, no prophet or politician.  Thoughts and ideas in themselves are never your enemy, even if they are silly, stupid, misinformed, or dead wrong.  Those who want to stop you from hearing, thinking about, and weighing those thoughts and ideas for yourself are your enemies, especially if they claim to know best for you.  And no, the ideas you personally dislike are not an exception.  Neither are your favored “authorities”.  Not the Pope.  Not your “leaders”.  Not Marx.  Not any Prophet.  Not me.  Not the entertainers you like.  Not journalists.  Not podcasters or bloggers.  There are no absolute truths.  And lest you be inclined to be a smartass: yes, that includes everything in this thread.  Accept it or reject it for yourself as you please.  But you have no right to impose your preferences and beliefs about this subject, or any other, on anyone else.

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Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.  –  Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) in Ghostbusters

In recognition of the passing of hard funk pioneer Betty Davis, here’s her “They Say I’m Different”, from the 1974 album of the same name.  The links above the video were provided by Cop Crisis (“serving”, “leaning”, and “demonstrating”); Cathy Reisenwitz (“exception”); Gustavo Turner (“Davis”); Franklin Harris (“Reitman”); and Jesse Walker (“shark”).

From the Archives

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By and large, the [state’s] reaction is, “Who cares? A child is dead. Let’s put her in prison for the rest of her life.”  –  Karla Fischer

Bad Girls

I don’t usually think ages are an important detail, but this is an exception:

…two Thai sex workers…Nualpan Coxon, 67, and Pornthip Phonkoed, 63, both of Auckland, have been on trial…[for defrauding] and…blackmail[ing three elderly men]…between August 2015 and February 2018…prosecutor Rebecca Mann…described the pair’s behaviour as “psychological coercion”…but…defence counsel Russell Boot told the jury…”They were not deceived in any way…It wasn’t until their wives and daughters found out … that it became an issue”…

Micromanagement

Any information you give to cops can and will be used against you:

The San Francisco police crime lab has been entering sexual assault victims’ DNA profiles in[to] a database used to identify suspects in crimes…District Attorney Chesa Boudin…said his office was made aware of the practice last week, after a woman’s DNA collected years ago as part of a rape exam was used to link her to a recent property crime.  If DNA from a rape kit was used without consent for purposes other than investigating the underlying rape case, it may be a violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as well as California’s Victims’ Bill of Rights, Boudin said.  Such a practice could also create another deterrent to sexual assault victims coming forward…Boudin said his office was investigating the scope of the practice…the database potentially includes thousands of victims’ DNA profiles, with entries over “many, many years”…

For comparison: roughly 60% of prostitution charges in the US result from the charged sex worker becoming the victim of some crime.

Property of the State

The state wants vengeance for the loss of future tax revenue:

[On] New Year’s Eve…2019, Rebecca Hogue, then a 28-year-old cocktail waitress, arrived home in Norman, Oklahoma, around 4 a.m. and went to check on her 2-year-old son…Ryder…her boyfriend, Christopher Trent…had put him…in his crib, where he appeared to be sleeping…when she woke up again a few hours later, Trent was gone.  And her toddler, still in the crib, was…dead…Days later, [police] found [Trent] hanging from a tree in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, where he’d killed himself…he’d [apparently] beaten the boy while Hogue was away at work…[because] they found the words “Rebecca is Innocent” carved into a tree…But in the ultimate act of victim-blaming against a grieving mother, the state of Oklahoma…convicted [her] of first-degree murder, even though she never laid a hand on the boy…Hogue was convicted under Oklahoma’s “failure to protect” law, which requires parents to [magically] shield their kid from physical harm if [a jury decides] they…[“]should[“] have been [clairvoyantly] aware…that another adult [wa]s abusing the child…

Broken Record (#747) 

There’s something especially pathetic about a politician who fails to realize a prohibitionist trope is long past its sell-by date:

…In a city council video that reads like sketch comedy…[Hudson, Ohio] mayor [Craig Shubert]] warns that if you open up the lake to ice fishing, ice shantytowns will follow, and the​​n commercial sex…”If you open this up to ice fishing, while on the surface it sounds good, then what happens next year—does someone come back and say I want an ice shanty?…And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem: prostitution.  Just data points to consider,” he added. (Apparently, Shubert doesn’t understand what “data points” means)…

At least Shubert had the sense to realize he had become a laughingstock, and resigned the following week.

I Spy (#1154) 

The government thinks you shouldn’t be allowed any privacy whatsoever:

…the U.S. Postal Service…is violating the privacy and civil liberties of the American people by using sophisticated tools to break into hundreds of citizens’ cellphones and collect their social media posts…the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) admitted in its 2020 annual report that it not only employed top-of-the-line technology hundreds of times to hack into mobile phones but also planned to expand its use of…Cellebrite…and GrayKey…to break into phones, unscramble otherwise unreadable encrypted data, and copy it for [pigs] to [root] through.  This technology is dangerous and prone to abuse…

The Implosion Begins (#1189)

Everyone who spread “sex trafficking” hysteria contributed to this atrocity:

…Troy Burke…admitted to killing his wife, Jessica…by shooting her three times in the head in their [Michigan] home…a judge allowed Burke to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, after psychiatric evaluations by both the state and independent experts concluded that he was not fit to stand trial…Burke believed his tablet device was sending him signals from QAnon members who told him that his wife was working for the CIA…the messages directed him to kill his wife to save the world from child sex trafficking…it’s unclear if the messages Burke was speaking about were real or imaginary, but…QAnon…was built on…false claim[s about]…child sex-trafficking [spread for the past two decades by politicians, cops, the news media (including Vice), sex work prohibitionists, and amoral profiteers]…

Permanent Record (#1200)

Coverage of these incidents is growing more sympathetic:

Cami Strella…tried to tune out distress about being outed until a classmate who discovered her online identity broached a conversation about sex and Strella’s online content.  That encounter signified to Strella that her time as a student in occupational therapy with a neurological rehabilitation track was nearing a close…she…sought the advice of a trusted academic adviser who told her it would be best if she left the program…[so] she followed that advice and submitted her intent to unenroll from the only graduate program to which she had been accepted…Lutheran-affiliated Lenoir-Rhyne University has no policy against digital sex work, [and] a university spokesperson…said the school encourages Strella to communicate her concerns to university leadership…

“Communicate her concerns”?  What sanctimonious bullshit.  Note also that despite the generally-sympathetic tone, writer Lateshia Beachum still felt compelled to include dysphemisms such as “earning a living in society’s underbelly” and sophomoric tee-hee attempts at wit such as “pull themselves up by their garter belts to attain financial stability”.

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