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Archive for October, 2022

Halloween 2022


Happy Halloween, dear readers, and Blessed Be!

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I’m going to blow your fucking brains out.  –  “Deputy” Rodriguez

It’s been a few years since YouTube showed me an interesting Halloween video, so I was quite pleased to be offered this one last week!  The links above it were provided by C.J. Ciaramella, Cop Crisis (x3), Missy Mariposa, and Walter Olson, in that order.

From the Archives

 

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

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One obvious hole in the…[“drug treat” legend] is that drugs tend to cost more than candy.  –  Joel Best

King of the Hill

The first “King of the Hill” claim I’ve seen in almost three years:

 [A rescue industry group called] Reflection Ministries hosted [a propaganda session it labeled a “]human trafficking summit[“, in which professional “]survivors[” claimed] the Permian Basin is in the top five areas for most trafficked individuals throughout the United States…

The Permian Basin is a largely-rural area of West Texas; its only sizeable population cluster is the Midland-Odessa SMSE, with a total population of 320,513 over an area of 2,720 sq mi (118/sq mi, approximately the state average for Texas).  Click on the link for other cities & states claiming to be in the “top five”.

Buried Truth

Not a specific McNeill’s Law case, but adjacent:

A GOP candidate running for an Arizona college district’s governing board was arrested on a charge of public sexual indecency after a…[fellow cop] caught him masturbating in his truck near a preschool. Randy Kaufman was…[a screw] for 27 years…[and claimed] he didn’t know there was a preschool just feet away…In a Facebook post from May, Kaufman said he wanted “our children protected [from] the progressive left”…

Prudesville (#1012) 

Not an especially satisfactory resolution:

…Everett, Washington…passed a law prohibiting quick service food and drink peddlers from showing off certain body parts…The city didn’t even pretend to tie the law to food safety, instead c[laiming that “women who dress like sluts cause rape”]…A group of bikini baristas working suedcalling it a matter of women’s rights…the law…[also invent]ed a new crime of facilitating lewd conduct, to target the owners of bikini barista establishments…Now, a judge has finally ruled…that Everett’s dress code is unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.  [Judge Ricardo] Martinez rejected the baristas’ argument that the dress code violated their right to free expression.  And he let stand the city’s expanded definition of lewd conduct and criminalization [thereof, claiming]…that [stopping women from making money in ways politicians dislike]…is…an important government interest…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1248) 

Frogs, meet scorpion:

A China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens…The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees.  But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company…it is unclear from the [leaked] materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data…in…[order] to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any…other purpose…

To Molest and Rape (Rapist Roundup)

“Police explorer” programs are nothing but grooming schemes for predatory cops:

A 17-year-old in Florida was part of a [grooming] program for [predatory cops, yet somehow everyone was shocked when]…a [cop] sexually abused [her]…Matthew Allen Anderson…is charged with sexual battery…

To Molest and Rape (#1278)

I’m sure if they really “investigate”, they’ll find multiple underage victims:

An investigation is underway [because a typical and representative Houston cop]…sexually assault[ed] a child…Paul Fernandez has not been charged but was terminated from his role…supervising Internal Affairs investigations…

Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1282)

The stupider the belief, the harder it is to debunk:

…TSA agents [recently] discovered around 12,000 fentanyl pills in a passenger’s carry-on bag…smuggled in boxes and packaging of well-known candy brands, like Whoppers, Skittles, and SweeTarts.  [Cops and bureaucrats] quickly seized this detail as a reason to warn parents to be on the lookout for fentanyl pills in their children’s Halloween candy…Even though the pills seized during this week’s drug bust at the L.A. airport were all light blue, the fact that they were smuggled in candy boxes has allowed government officials and the media to piggyback on recent “rainbow fentanyl” fearmongering… “Stories about contaminated treats are best understood as contemporary legends,” writes Joel Best, a prominent researcher of “Halloween sadism…My data goes back to 1958, and…I can’t find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating”…

 

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

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Annex 87

Gas-powered tankless heaters need to be vented outside the house, so we bought a model which could be entirely installed outside.  And the best place to install it was on the north porch, where it can be outside and yet protected from the elements.  You may notice the gas line hasn’t yet been hooked up; unless something goes wrong, the propane service guy is supposed to be here to hook it up today.  And once everything has been pressure-tested and proven sound, we’re going to wrap the pipes (these are the same lines visible in last week’s photo of the plumbing in the basement); I hope to also get skirting in place along the basement’s northern exposure, because even though it rarely gets cold enough here to actually endanger the pipes, it would be rather stupid to let the water in the pipes lose heat on its way to the shower (or the heater, for that matter).  In the past week we’ve also hooked up the plumbing in the shower, and we’re getting ready to lay the mortar bed pretty soon; I probably bought more bags than I need, but there was nothing on the bags about how much volume of finished mortar each bag yields, so I’d rather have to return some than run out in the middle of the project.

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Back Issue #112

No normal person wants to control what other people think, and no sane person could believe that he can control what anyone else thinks.  –  “Thought Control

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

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Conflating…sex work with sex trafficking is not only obtuse, but has deeply harmful consequences.  –  Savannah Sly and Diane Goldstein

Change a Few Words

Savannah Sly and Diane Goldstein of LEAP question why sex work is still persecuted while drug restrictions are being loosened:

On October 8, President Biden pardoned thousands of people convicted of simple marijuana possession.  In doing so, he took a step toward undoing the harms of…a notorious era of mass criminalization that has caused untold damage to our communities.  This historic, if limited, moment is worthy of celebration.  But it throws into sharp relief how the tools of criminalized prohibition continue to wreak havoc on marginalized communities, particularly in the realm of sex work…Harmful morality policing punishes drug use and poverty, fosters corruption and promotes the investigation of other victimless “crimes” like sex work, as both of our organizations, New Moon Fund and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, have recognized…

Monsters

This is some seriously warped behavior:

…Buti Sashi…was armed with a large knife when he went to the homes of [transgender] sex workers…[he had] arranged to meet…at [Dublin] apartments.  In the first attack on the night of May 26, 2017, Sashi began hitting the victim on the face and body before cutting her with the knife.  He demanded sex and [rap]ed her before stealing her mobile phone and laptop…[and leaving her with] a fracture to her left jaw and to an eye socket bone…a month later, on June 28, Sashi and another man forced their way into the flat of another transgender sex worker.  Sashi was again carrying a large knife and both men began beating the victim and [stole] two mobile phones from her.  When a housemate tried to help [her]…the men attacked him, breaking his jaw and cutting him twice with the knife.  They [then robbed him of]…his phone, laptop and €300 in cash…Sashi…has…previous convictions…for…the violent robbery of a taxi driver in August 2014…[and] for assault of a sex worker and theft from sex workers [in 2017]…

Business As Usual

If only there were a concise term for “forced into sex”:

A [typical and representative] Hernando County [Florida cop]…forced a person [to submit to rape] by threatening to arrest them if they refused…Zachary Carter [committed the crime at least twice]…The news release…does not specify a gender of the person Carter [raped]…

Given that this is Florida, my guess is that the reason the cops are playing coy about gender is that the victim was a trans woman.  And given the circumstances, and that he was able to find her twice, she is probably a sex worker (which is why I chose this heading).

To Molest and Rape (#920)

When this monster was first arrested, he was reported to be merely a serial stalker:

A Perth jury that asked for urgent counselling because of the “sickening and confronting” material they were having to view has convicted a [typical and representative West Australian cop]…of drugging, [rap]ing and indecently recording 13 women…Adrian Trevor Moore…was once [convic]ted…of 87 offences…committed over a 12-year period…He met most of the women through online dating sites such as Tinder and RSVP, and he used the police computer system to [pry into their private business]…Moore readily admitted being interested in BDSM and “dominant/submissive” role-playing, and [claim]ed that [the bitches were all lying and they wanted it anyway]…

Surplus Women (#1153)

Cops can’t be bothered to investigate the disappearance of sex workers, especially black sex workers:

…a 22-year old Black woman escaped…after being kidnapped, [rap]ed, and held captive in [a] basement…[i]n Excelsior Springs, Missouri…[by a] man [named] Timothy Haslett Jr…She…[was] kept…in a small room in the basement that [Haslett] had built…restrained in handcuffs on her wrists and ankles…she was able to get free when he left to take his child to school…[but still] had a metal collar around her neck with a padlock, and duct tape around her neck…[she had been held captive since] the beginning of September…Bishop Tony Caldwell [and others]…made reports of numerous murdered and missing Black women…who were missing were being taken from an area on Prospect Avenue in Kansas City…[but] the Kansas City Police Department…called the…[reports] “completely unfounded rumors,” dismissing the concerns.  Local news outlets [obediently] followed suit, [as usual.  The woman who escaped]…said her friends “did not make it out” and were killed by…Haslett…

Micromanagement (#1260)

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

Texas public school systems are set to distribute DNA and fingerprint identification kits for K-8 students to parents [foolish and frightened enough] to participate…The cards are intended to be kept by guardians [and can be subpoenaed by]…law enforcement in order to potentially [connect relatives to crimes, but they’re being sold to the gullible as being used to] help find missing or trafficked children…

Torture Chamber (Rapist Roundup)

The State refuses to call this what it is:

A jury has convicted a [typical and representative Rhode Island screw of two rapes]…Collins Umoh…was found guilty of [a lesser] count…[invented especially for cops, so]…he…face[s a mere]…five years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000 [for multiple rapes]…

 

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

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Diary #643

One of the things I like about living on the Olympic peninsula is that the seasons are generally well-behaved and arrive and depart on schedule.  But this year has been an exception; last winter arrived a month early and overstayed its welcome by a month, and now summer has finally departed after hanging around for a month longer than it was supposed to.  On Friday we finally got some proper autumn weather, then on Saturday it turned decidedly cold so I decided it was time to put up the shutters.  Unfortunately, Jae has been recovering from foot surgery and thus has fallen behind on her contributions, one of them being painting the aforementioned shutters.  But she did one side on Sunday and the other yesterday, and I’m going to get them up this week as soon as I have help (it’s a two-person job); that’ll keep the winter winds out until we take them down again in early spring.  The atrium will still be distinctly chilly until we get the wood-burning stove in, but even before then it’ll be a lot better than the ice hazard it turned into last winter.

 

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

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I’ve always been dedicated to the idea of this as the time of year for spooky fun.  So every year I collect all the spooky, creepy or scary content from the previous year into one place just before Halloween.  If you’ve come to my blog in the past year, or don’t remember previous editions, they are “Trick or Treat”, “More Trick or Treat“, “Tricks and Treats“, “This Trick’s a Treat”, “Tricky Treats“, “A Trickle of Treats”, “Tricking and Treating“, and “Tricks for the Treat“.  Oddly, though there were enough spooky or Halloweeny links to justify collecting them, the only horror, death or Halloween-themed column of the past year was “Books of the Dead“, and the only creepy or spooky-fun video appeared in Links #591.  Here’s hoping for a better collection next year!

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

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Why?  –  Erik Cantu

I’ve always been fond of this song, and given that the story it references was originally a werewolf tale, it seems seasonally appropriate.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel, Cop Crisis, Scott Greenfield, Mike Siegel again, Cop Crisis again, Thaddeus Russell, and Elizabeth N. Brown, in that order.

From the Archives

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

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The scale of this is beyond what anyone imagines.  –  Anna Arons

Without Let or Hindrance

Some people still believe these sociopaths are motivated by a desire to “protect children”:

Across the nation, child protective services agencies [violate] the home lives of roughly 3.5 million children [and teenagers] every year…only about 5% of them are ultimately [declared] to have been physically or sexually abused.  With rare exceptions, all of these investigations include at least one [raid], and often multiple…Yet in a ProPublica and NBC News survey that drew detailed responses from 40 state child welfare agencies, all said they would only obtain a warrant or court order to search a home — or call the police for [backup] — in rare cases when they are denied entry…It’s a staggering reality — likely millions of warrantless searches a year — and one that has not been reported [adequately] before…

To Molest and Rape

Typical and representative, by their own admission:

Kansas’ 2021 Officer of the Year has been indicted on charges of rape and aggravated sexual battery…Guillermo Gutierrez…[committed the crime] on May 19, 2022, in Dodge City…

Comfort Zone (#873)

The UK finally admits the “human trafficking” narrative is about migration control:

The Home Office has taken the modern slavery brief away from the minister responsible for safeguarding and classed it as an “illegal immigration and asylum” issue…The move is seen as a clear sign that the department is doubling down on Suella Braverman’s suggestion that people are “gaming” the modern slavery system and…“derailing the UK’s policy on illegal migration”…

The Last Shall Be First (#1265) 

Moral imbeciles are almost completely out of control:

A bill introduced in the Michigan Legislature…could mean life in prison for any parent or doctor who “consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child”…[where “child” is used to mean “legal minor”]…Gender transition procedures are defined to include not just surgical interventions but also the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones…under the proposed change, prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to a teenager would be equivalent to severely beating a child.  And it would be defined as a more severe form of abuse than starving or abandoning a kid…

Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1279)

The stupider the belief, the harder it is to debunk:

Florida’s [Propagandist] General continues to…[drum up hysteria about migration, claim]ing that its effects are spilling over into all aspects of life…Ashley Moody [went on] Fox & Friends [to spread tall tales] about how transnational drug gangs are bringing in lethal narcotic cocktails, [imagin]ing that some of these concoctions may take the form of popular candies.  “We’re seeing them put it in candy packaging, like Nerds packaging. And Halloween’s coming up and those of us with young children have to…start learning about the fentanyl crisis and warning our children”…Host Ainsley Earhardt [confused] the topic…[by say]ing…“so many people are sending their children off to college right now. It’s fall…and we worry that they’re going to take one little pill just because it looks like candy”…

Yes, these people are actually conflating young men and women of university age with children so young they’ll put anything that looks like candy in their mouths.  I couldn’t have invented anything so imbecilic, infantilizing, and disconnected from reality even if I had money riding on it.

Choke Point (#1280)

PayPal is becoming a major threat to civil liberties:

PayPay HK has halted services for the League of Social Democrats (LSD) – one of the remaining active pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong – due to unspecified “excessive risks”…[without] explain[ing] what the “excessive risks” are…Chow Ka-fat…of the LSD [sai]d…the group had not been able to accept any new donations via its PayPal account since the day it received the email, but they can still withdraw money from it…

Stalkers in Blue (#1281)

No, this is a different Louisville cop stealing women’s nude pictures:

A [typical and representative] Louisville [cop]…used [cop surveillance] technology as part of a scheme that involved hacking the Snapchat accounts of young women and using sexually explicit photos and videos they had taken to extort them…Bryan Wilson used his…access to Accurint, a powerful data-combing software used by police departments to [snoop in people’s private business without a warrant]…to obtain information about potential victims.  He would then share that information with a hacker, who would hack into private Snapchat accounts to obtain sexually explicit photos and videos….Wilson would then contact the women, threatening to post the photos and videos online and share them with their friends, family, employer and co-workers unless more sexually explicit material was provided to him…Wilson…[has already] pleaded guilty to a cyberstalking charge as well as to a charge related to…[a scheme] in which Wilson and other [pigs] assaulted pedestrians by throwing beverages out of unmarked p[igmobile]s, sometimes filming their exploits…

 

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

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