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Archive for August, 2022

In the News (#1267)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The more eggs you have in one basket, the more likely the basket is to break.  –  “Mark”

If Men Were Angels 

Oh look, it’s another “youth pastor”:

A [Pennsylvania]…youth pastor has been indicted…[for] sexually exploit[ing] underage boys…Sean Higgins…has been in custody since he was arrested in October 2020.  He is accused of victimizing 13 boys ages 12 to 17…in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Tennessee…[by] pretend[ing] to be a teenage girl on Instagram and Snapchat and deceiv[ing] boys into trading images with him.  Higgins…would then…blackmail the victim to [masturbate] while he watched and recorded remotely.  The investigation began when [some of the victims]…reported [him]…to Snapchat…

To Molest and Rape

Yet another cop specifically targeting a vulnerable woman:

[A typical and representative] Ottawa [cop] who r[aped]…a [drunk, mentally ill] 19-year-old…plea…[bargained] to breach of trust…[to escape] sexual assault [charges]…He also tendered his resignation from the Ottawa Police Service…[Sundeep] Singh was one of four [cops] dispatched…after [the victim] left a party intoxicated and walked home in early February 2021, not suitably dressed for the cold weather…The[y]…took her to…Hospital…but [after treatment she was behaving irrationally and]…left…[the] hospital [on foot again]…Singh [pursued]…her home, [then took advantage of her intoxication and confused mental state to force himself on her]…

I Spy (#1184)

Your “leaders” want this to happen much more often:

Mark noticed…his toddler…son’s penis looked swollen and was hurting him…in February 2021.  His wife called an advice nurse at their health care provider to schedule an emergency consultation…by video because…pandemic…the nurse [foolishly] said to send photos so the doctor could review them in advance.  Mark’s wife [foolishly] grabbed her husband’s phone and [foolishly] texted a few high-quality close-ups of their son’s groin area to her iPhone so she could upload them to the health care provider’s messaging system…the doctor diagnosed the issue and prescribed antibiotics, which quickly cleared it up.  But the episode left Mark with a…target [painted on his face.  Our fascist system]…pressure[s corporations to do what governments are Constitutionally prohibited from doing, namely rooting through people’s private property without warrant]…Two days after taking the photos of his son, Mark’s…[Google] account [was]…disabled because of “harmful content”…Not only did he lose emails, contact information for friends and former colleagues, and documentation of his son’s first years of life, his Google Fi account shut down, meaning he had to get a new phone number with another carrier.  Without access to his old phone number and email address, he couldn’t get the security codes he needed to sign in to other internet accounts, locking him out of much of his digital life…Mark filed [an] appeal, [but because these corporations allow mindless algorithms control over human beings] Google…would not reinstate the account…[instead it snitched on him to] the San Francisco Police Department…Google [claims] the company scans only when an “affirmative action” is taken by a user…[but doesn’t bother to tell users] that includes when the user’s phone backs up photos to the company’s cloud…

Yet people often ask why I refuse to copy my data to the so-called “cloud”.

Torture Chamber (#1259)

I guarantee you that the number is a lot higher than 70, probably by at least one order of magnitude:

At least 70 girls [concent]rated in Los Angeles County…camps and [cage stacks] were sexually assaulted by [screws over]…more than three decades…a similar lawsuit [was] filed in March [by] 20 women [who]…were sexually assaulted over the course of a dozen years at Camp Joseph Scott, Los Angeles County’s all-girls juvenile detention facility.  Two new lawsuits…replace that case and expand on its accusations.  The [serial] abuse occurred from 1985 to 2019 a[s]…the same [screws assaulted]…different girls [condemned to] the facilities over the years…

The Crumbling Dam (#1262)

The feds don’t need to stop harm reduction programs when an ambitious politician will do it for them:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill legalizing “safe consumption sites” in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland…Where safe consumption sites are legal, they have proved tremendously effective…However, Newsom seems [afraid] that safe consumption sites will help the state’s drug users [at political cost to him personally]…Newsom’s veto of the bill has little to do with the efficacy of safe injection sites and instead is the result of his preparation for a possible presidential run in 2024…Newsom could be eager to present a more anti-drug, even “tough on crime” image…

To Molest and Rape (#1264)

Most rapist cops have multiple underage victims:

A “[typical and representative]” [London cop] has been jailed for 24 years after being found guilty of 13 counts of rape and sexual assault…against three girls between 1993 and 1997…[Anthony] Smith…[was sacked] in 2004 after he was convicted of gross indecency with a child in an unrelated case.  His abuse of the girls [in the current case] emerged in 2020 when one of his victims came forward, [followed by the]…other two…

Thought Control (#1265)

Texas just won’t stop plunging that ice pick into its frontal lobes:

A [cop paid to harass and spy on students in] Katy [Texas censored]…a book [in] a high school library last month…after a woman filed a criminal complaint alleging the district was providing “harmful” material to minors.  The book, Flamer, by Mike Curato, had been formally reviewed by a committee and deemed appropriate for high school students…in March…the woman…was not satisfied with th[at and so took it upon herself to censor it and enlisted the help]…of the [power-drunk cop]…

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Diary #635

Posted in Diary, tagged , on August 30, 2022| 1 Comment »

Last Tuesday morning I went down to the kitchen to pour myself another cup of tea, and when I looked out the kitchen window, this was what I saw.  I ran back upstairs, grabbed my phone, then took this through the sliding glass door in my living room; I didn’t dare open the door because it could’ve frightened them.  They grazed for about ten minutes or so, then decided to head out my front gate and down the lane.  Being close to nature is one of the things I like best about living in the country; there’s something beautiful and wholesome about wild animals of all kinds coming up near the house like this, and I always give them space to do whatever it was they came to do.  A few years ago we even had a mama bear and her two cubs come onto the north lawn in search of fallen apples; Grace called he dog in to keep him from enraging mama by barking at her cubs, and after they ate what they wanted they left as peaceably as they had come.  Lots of people like to flap their gums about living in harmony with Nature, but I feel very blessed to have found the opportunity to actually do it.

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Back Issue #110

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged on August 29, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The mythology of every moral panic always gets more extreme toward the end, for reasons which should be obvious.  –  “Soap Opera”

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Links #634

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on August 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

It was you!?  –  Jason Leonor

I can’t and don’t do a tribute to every musician who dies, but I try to do as many as possible, and my mother used to sing this song quite often when I was small.  The links above the video were provided by Dan Savage, Lucy Steigerwald, Radley Balko, Cop Crisis, Mike Siegel, Popehat, and Cop Crisis again, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#1266)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 27, 2022| 1 Comment »

Sex workers are collateral damage in th[e “progressive”] quest to build the perfect internet.  –  Evan Greer

The Missing Word (#570)

Notice what nobody calls this?

For almost seven years, two Pennsylvania judges sent hundreds of [teens and] children—some of them as young as 8 years old—to privately run juvenile detention centers in exchange for financial kickbacks…[now] former Judges Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan [have been ordered] to pay over $200 million in compensatory and punitive damages to their victims.  Starting in 2000, the pair sent children into juvenile detention for offenses as innocuous as jaywalking, petty theft, or truancy.  In what became known as the “kids for cash” scandal, the [victims] were sent to two privately run detention centers whose builder and co-owner paid the men $2.8 million…over the course of the scheme…following the plot’s discovery, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court…thr[ew] out 4,000 juvenile convictions…[but] many of the plaintiffs still suffer from mental health problems.  Several…died by suicide or drug overdose in the years after their detention…Unfortunately, it is unlikely that any of the plaintiffs will [actually] receive [any] financial compensation…[because] Ciavarella and Conahan are now serving lengthy prison sentences.  Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years…and Conahan…17…though he was released to home confinement in 2020…[due to] COVID-19…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#1009)

Another baby step toward recognizing sex work as work:

…a group of former Star Garden [exotic] dancers…filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, through the established actors union Actors’ Equity Assn…If the[y]…succeed, it would be the first time the century-old union that represents actors and stage managers on Broadway and venues such as the Hollywood Pantages Theatre would include strippers in its ranks.  Star Garden would become the first unionized strip club in the U.S. since…the Lusty Lady…closed in 2013…But…most of the strippers seeking representation said they have not worked at Star Garden since mid-March, when they raised safety concerns and were subsequently [fired]…Union lawyers will need to convince the National Labor Relations Board the strippers are Star Garden employees who were unduly terminated in order to be eligible to participate in a union vote and secure a shot at winning…

The Widening Gyre (#1116)

The latest iteration of “sex traffickers are EVERYWHERE!!!” has it all: the roses from the item linked in the subtitle, themselves only one example of the “valuable bait” trope, are loaded with the magic instant-overdose fentanyl of cop fantasies instead of the unidentified magic contact poison of earlier iterations of this myth.  Given that cops have recently started claiming that the magic fentanyl is being intentionally sprinkled onto $1 bills, the convergence is pretty clear; presumably the fentanyl-using “traffickers”, no doubt driving around in white vans, are also dropping the bait bills where cops can find them so as to stop their heroic anti-trafficking pogroms, or something.

A Broker in Pillage (#1147)

Absolutely nothing is “safe” if government actors know where it is:

The FBI [lied] to…a federal magistrate judge…[claiming] that it intended to open hundreds of safe deposit boxes s[tolen] during a March 2021 raid in order to inventory the items inside—but new evidence shows that federal agents were plotting all along to use the operation as an opportunity to [steal] cash and other valuables…the FBI also seems to have ignored limitations imposed by the warrant, including an explicit prohibition against using the…boxes as the basis for further criminal investigations…agents…were instructed to be on the lookout for cash…and to note…anything which [might give the government a pretext to steal it]…Agents [even] arranged to have drug-sniffing dogs present…which doesn’t do anything to help inventory items, of course, but makes more sense if the actual goal is to initiate forfeiture proceedings…

You Were Warned (#1218)

Looks like Reddit is covering its butt as a hedge against more FOSTA-enabled predatory lawsuits:

…adult content creator[s have]…recently found themselves abruptly removed or had their Reddit account limited without warning.  Sex workers have long been subject to deplatforming on most social media platforms…yet even though Reddit has a reputation for being relatively sex-positive compared to other Big Tech sites, sex workers are increasingly finding themselves restricted or even outright permanently banned on the platform, often without notice or…explanation…“The fact that sex workers are reporting an uptick on Reddit is particularly concerning because it has been one of the last places where this type of content is allowed,” says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future, citing Twitter as the only other example of a platform that still continues to allow NSFW content…

The Vultures Descend

You can always count on my native state to out-Herod Herod:

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry…successfully urged the Louisiana Bond Commission…to delay a $39 million future line of credit for the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board–which the city needs for [a dedicated power station for] its flood response–until city officials agree to enforce the state’s abortion ban.  The move comes right at the start of hurricane season, on the same day New Orleans…issued a flood advisory…Even Republican state senator Bret Allain warned that because the sewerage and water board is a state-created agency, he finds it “problematic” to target New Orleans over their abortion stance…

The Last Shall Be First (#1244)

If you didn’t see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention:

After one competitor “outclassed” the rest of the field in a girls’ state-level competition last year, the parents of the competitors who placed second and third lodged a complaint with the Utah High School Activities Association calling into question the winner’s gender.  David Spatafore, the UHSAA’s legislative representative…said the association…asked the student’s school to…examine…the students’ enrollment records [going]…“back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female”…Spatafore said the association has received other complaints, some that said “that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough”…

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Bathhouse 79

Posted in Diary, tagged on August 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »

What was once the wellhouse has now become the utility room.  If you look at the older pictures of this project, you can see it sitting there like the little outbuilding it once was, in the midst of the posts; then in later pictures it looks like a miniature companion to the guest cottages.  But once the atrium roof was in place I could remove the shabby, deteriorating roof of the structure, and with the addition of these wooden steps and cupboard-style doors it has become a utility room rather than a wellhouse.  I say “utility room” because it doesn’t just house the well and its tank, filters, etc; the breaker boxes for the cottages and hot tub are also in there, as is the wifi repeater, and it provides a convenient storage spot for things like the cat litter cleaning screen and the pump used to empty the hot tub.  Furthermore, it’ll soon be the only easy way into the basement under the deck (where the water, power, and internet cables all run); I designed the steps so that the two bottom ones form a single assembly that can be pulled out so I can crawl under.  Later, the top of this utility room will be a bar, neatly hiding the purely-functional space beneath.  And best of all, unless it gets much colder than we’ve ever seen here before, we shouldn’t need that heater to protect the pipes any more; everything is contained within the house, so the only pipe that could freeze is the hydrant coming up from the ground in front of the chicken coop, and we can just let that one trickle when necessary.

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Dog Day Tweets

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 25, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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In the News (#1265)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2022| 4 Comments »

If there’s one thing law enforcement agents are not, it’s modest.  –  Elizabeth N. Brown

To Molest and Rape

Cops covered up these crimes for six years:

A [typical and representative] Hutchinson [Kansas cop] was arrested…[for] more than a dozen sexual assault cases…between 2012 to 2018…Todd Allen…was arrested…on…multiple charges including rape, kidnapping, aggravated sexual battery and…child…[molestation.  When current police chief Jeff] Hooper…took over the…department in 2018…[he discovered that there had been] a series of sexual assaults that had not been reported to the public…After…he [held a] press conference [on the subject]…the sexual assaults stopped happening…[and] Allen resigned from the department shortly after[ward.  Then]…in 2022, the…department…received multiple “prowler” and “peeping tom” calls…and [arrested Allen while answering one of them]…Allen’s arrest closed 17 active sexual assault cases, including 12 cases between 2012 and 2018 and five since…

Between the Lines (#964)

Liz Brown tries to assess the damage from this year’s “Operation Cross Country” pogroms:

Operation Cross Country, the FBI’s annual vice squad bonanza disguised as a human-trafficking rescue mission, is back.  This year’s operation…involv[ed] more than 200 [cop shops and spook houses and claims to have]…located 37 missing minors, identified “more than 200 victims,” and led to the “identification or arrest” of 85 suspects.  But it gives us little information beyond these broad statistics…the FBI press release mentions only three federal cases, none involving sex trafficking…

The Implosion Begins

The hysteria is imploding so hard, it’s falling all the way back to its roots:

Accusations involving ritual sex abuse and the sexualization of children have surged into the mainstream of American politics over the past year…We ran a nationwide poll in cooperation with Qualtrics from May 26 to June 30 to gauge Americans’ views toward these topics…Twenty-six percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Democrats strongly agreed or agreed that Satanic ritual sex abuse is widespread; 36 percent of Republicans and 34 percent of Democrats strongly agreed or agreed that members of Satanic cults are secretly abusing thousands of children, and 32 percent of both Republicans and Democrats strongly agreed or agreed that government and Hollywood elites are running a massive child sex trafficking scheme.  Sixty-three percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats believed the debunked claim that 300,000 or more children are currently victims of sex trafficking in the US.  These numbers suggest that these types of beliefs transcend typical partisan divisions…

Remember this when the New York Times or another media outlet who profited from this panic for two decades tells you it’s a “far-right conspiracy theory”.

Welcome to the Future (#1125)

Everything I read about modern corporate work makes me happier I became a whore:

In lower-paying jobs, the monitoring is already ubiquitous: not just at Amazon…but also for Kroger cashiers, UPS drivers and millions of others…Now [so-called] productivity monitoring is also spreading among white-collar [and professional] jobs…Many employees, whether working remotely or in person, are subject to trackers, scores, “idle” buttons, or just quiet, constantly accumulating records.  Pauses can lead to penalties, from lost pay to lost jobs…Architects, academic administrators, doctors, nursing home workers and lawyers described growing electronic surveillance over every minute of their workday.  They echoed complaints that employees in many lower-paid positions have voiced for years: that their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control…[or] even…enough time to use the bathroom…[they] describe…being tracked as “demoralizing,” “humiliating” and “toxic”…But the most urgent complaint, spanning industries and incomes, is that the [surveillance systems]…are…inept at capturing offline activity, unreliable at assessing hard-to-quantify tasks and prone to undermining the work itself…

The Last Shall Be First (#1132) 

What kind of mind thinks it’s OK to protest by threatening health care providers?

Boston Children’s Hospital has warned employees about mounting threats…after [anti-trans] activists on social media began targeting the hospital with false claims about its treatment of young transgender people…One allegation said that the hospital offered gender-affirming hysterectomies to [legal minors]…fact-checking organizations debunked the claims…but many of the same accounts continued to spread the false allegations…and…also targeted…individual doctors…leaving vulgar and harassing comments on their social media accounts and flooding their online pages with negative reviews.  Some hospital staff have since made their social media profiles private…

Thought Control (#1224)

Texas just won’t stop plunging that ice pick into its frontal lobes:

A day before kids return to class, Keller [Texas bureaucrats ordered] school [librarians to remove]…any book that was challenged last year from library shelves…among the titles…[are] Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Anne Frank’s Diary (The Graphic Adaptation) and The Bible…Keller [politicians]…kept its book c[ensorship] committee deliberations secret in part because of fear of retribution from Gov. Greg Abbott…Also this week, [politician] Jared Patterson…[of] Frisco…[demanded censorship of] nearly two dozen books…and…[complained that] Frisco…[politicians are]…not banning as many books as other local districts…

Winding Down (#1241)

Over half of Americans now live in states with legal cannabis:

Voters in at least five states will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana this fall, and a similar measure may yet qualify for the ballot in one more state.  If all six initiatives are successful, recreational use will be legal in half of the states, underlining the untenability of continuing federal prohibition.  In Arkansas, where medical use was legalized in 2016, voters will consider a ballot initiative that would allow…recreational use [despite strong opposition from politicians]…In Maryland, where legislators authorized medical use in 2013, voters will consider a [similar] ballot initiative…In Missouri, where voters approved medical marijuana in 2018, this year’s ballot initiative would amend the state constitution to…remove state prohibition…North Dakota [is trying to legalize recreational use for the second time after a loss in 2018]…and…South Dakota…[is trying to circumvent] Gov. Kristi Noem[‘s]…overturn [of the will of the people using a legal technicality]…In Oklahoma, where voters approved medical marijuana…in 2018, they could have a chance to…legalize recreational use…Oklahoma has become an improbable model for marijuana reformers troubled by the problems that states like California have encountered in trying to displace the black market.  Medical marijuana in Oklahoma is strikingly cheap and accessible, thanks largely to fast application approvals, light regulation, and modest taxes…

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Diary #634

Posted in Diary, tagged , on August 23, 2022| 5 Comments »

We had a guest at Sunset last week, a friend from Australia.  And when he asked me what he could bring, I half-jokingly suggested a large jar of Vegemite (since we can only get small jars here in the States).  I say “half-jokingly” because, though I certainly would like a larger jar than usual, I wasn’t really expecting him to actually do it.  But he did, all right, and in fact trumped my joke by bringing me this (as he called it) “meme-sized” container; I left the butter dish in the picture to give y’all a sense of scale, since I doubt many people outside of Australia have ever seen one this large.  Honestly, I doubt many people inside of Australia have seen one this large; it seems unlikely most families can go through almost a kilogram of Vegemite in an amount of time that would make an institutional-size container worthwhile.  I’m certainly going to try, though, because I love the stuff.  A lot of people think I’m a picky eater because I despise green, leafy vegetables, but outside of those I actually have a pretty broad palate and will try just about anything at least once (unless its smell stops me).  And a few things I’ve tried on my travels have become favorites, among them Vegemite, Stornoway black pudding and St. Louis gooey butter cake (which I am realizing I could probably make at home).  It’s true that I was a picky eater as a child, but that was mostly because so many things made me sick I preferred to err on the side of caution.  Then as I got older I resolved to keep trying things so as to broaden my tastes, and didn’t stop with what most Americans consider palatable.  But despite enjoying lots of things a lot of Americans won’t even try (such as haggis), I still can’t get near any of the brassicas without feeling nauseous.

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Off Duty

Posted in Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , on August 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

If cops only had cop powers and privileges when wearing their magical clown costumes and/or carrying their magic tin talismans while in disguise to deceive people, whether they were “on duty” or not would be important.  But that’s not the case, so it isn’t.  And yet in story after story, both spokespigs and journo-parrots obsess about whether or not a cop was “on duty” when he murdered someone, or “in uniform” when he raped someone, as though this somehow made the crimes better or worse.  But a corpse is no less dead if the hail of bullets in his back were fired “on duty”, and a woman or child no less traumatized if told that their rape was actually a “search” or “investigation”.  If the State wants people to care about this, it needs to severely punish cops who act like cops when “off duty”; require cops to wear proper uniforms when “on duty”; eliminate the poisonous doctrine of “qualified immunity”; and dramatically increase the penalties for those using their badges and titles as an excuse to commit crimes.  Because as it stands right now, “cop” isn’t a job, but rather a privileged ruling caste who are virtually immune to the laws they enforce on everyone else, whether they’re actually on the clock or not.

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