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Archive for May, 2024

Back Issue #131

Though the mob may cheer when some awful person’s sins are exposed, it will react with equal exuberance when the blood on the sand is yours.  –  “Blood on the Sand

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I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the violent execution of the last pathetic vestiges of my faith in any kind of government actor.
– “A Night to Forget

I’m often called a saint, but I can assure y’all that theurgy is not in my skill set.  –  “Teacher’s Pet

If you want to be cured, what you really need to do is stop believing the abusers who keep telling you that you’re sick.  –  “Incurable

Better to be thought a homewrecker than a vegetable.  –  “Whores and Wives (#841)

Nobody who does not claim to be acting for “the government” or “the people” is “accountable” to any politician; they’re just trying to confuse you about who owes what to whom.  –  “Accountability

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What is presented as an effort to stop…violence…ends up being the main source of violence.  –  Erika Lust

The Red Umbrella 

If he truly had trouble before, why did he call the same agency again?

Varinder Singh Deo…was celebrating with a friend…in Deo’s detached garage, drinking alcohol and consuming cocaine, while Deo’s wife and child slept…Deo arranged for a sex worker to come over…[but] didn’t think she looked like her online photograph. Deo [and]…the woman, referred to as B.K…argued over a cancellation fee…Deo [brandished]…a handgun…later [claiming to] police…he’d had a traumatic experience with the same escort service a few years earlier when he was supposed to meet up with a sex worker but was instead robbed by multiple men at knife point…B.K. and [her duo partner] M.C. started retreating back to their vehicle…[and] Deo fired two shots at them.  One…struck the back of M.C.’s left shoulder…[she] spent three days in hospital and suffered nerve damage…and…scarring…and…also had to pay a more than $7,000 bill for blood stain removal from the rental car…[the British Columbia judge] chose to sentence Deo to four years in prison…[and] ordered [him] to reimburse B.K. for the blood stain removal bill…

Link Rot

It’s good to see someone actually studying this problem:

A new Pew Research Center analysis shows just how fleeting online content actually is:  A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible…For older content, this trend is even starker.  Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023…23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites…54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists…Nearly one-in-five tweets are no longer publicly visible on the site just months after being posted…

The Course of a Disease (#1244)

The Spanish case of the Swedish rot has been especially virulent, so this is encouraging:

Spain’s Socialist Party…[has] suffered a sound defeat…in its attempt to recriminalize sex work…[after] the party’s ruling coalition allies…withdrew their backing from the widely reviled “Abolition of Prostitution” law…PSOE’s…Laura Berja, unequivocally stated last year, “We must abolish [women’s sexual freedom] because it is incompatible with human rights.”  El Mundo [said the]…defeat holds “symbolic weight” and sends the abolition law “right to the trash bin.”  It is the first time, the newspaper noted, that the PSOE has failed to rally its coalition allies in support of an important piece of legislation, which may indicate a “crack” in the coalition that could further endanger its chances to remain in power…

Thought Control (#1379)

The censors got what they wanted in this case:

A public library in Boise is transitioning to an “adult only” library.  The Donnelly Public Library s[tated]…that the change is due to the passage of HB710…that en[courages] anyone to sue the library if [they claim] children are exposed to…adult material…due to its small size and the…ambiguous…language of the bill, the change is the only way the…[library] can assure compliance with the law, which goes into effect on July 1…The bill…was signed into law by Governor Brad Little earlier this year, [despite his veto of an earlier version]…

Torture Chamber (#1415)

The inevitable result of locking mentally ill people in filthy cages and entrusting sociopathic thugs to mind them:

…in April 2021, Georgia Baldwin…was clearly in the throes of a severe mental health episode…[but] she was arrested…[on a trumped-up] felony charge [anyway] and sent to jail in Tarrant County, Texas.  Six weeks later, in June, a psychiatrist determined Baldwin was “incompetent and thus unable to stand trial”…[but instead of sending her to] a state hospital…”Tarrant County chose to [keep] Ms. Baldwin [locked] in a small cell, where she could not see through a window or view other human beings,” remaining there from July 27 until her death on September 14…from…”severe hypernatremia” —high levels of sodium in the blood typically resulting from dehydration… [two other prisoners] with severe mental illness [also died] of dehydration in Tarrant County’s c[ages] over a two-year period…Abdullahi Mohamed [was arrested] in June 2020 for…[a violent] manic…bipolar [episode]…Nine days later, jailers…found him unresponsive in his cell, and he died soon after.  And in December 2021, Edgar Villatoro Alvarez was [caged]…after having been hospitalized for a bipolar episode the previous month…he died [the following] February…

Dangerous Speech (#1435)

The government doesn’t care about all those charges, as long as Lacey dies in a filthy cage:

Government attorneys in the Backpage case…want…Lacey and two co-defendants to be sentenced on their respective guilty verdicts so the three men can appeal to the Ninth Circuit…[before] the government will decide if it will retry Lacey…Judge…Humetewa vacated Lacey’s previously scheduled Aug. 6 retrial date and set sentencing for July 9 for Lacey…Scott Spear and Jed Brunst…Humetewa [refused to consider]…the possibility that Lacey be allowed to remain out on bond pending the outcome of any appeal…The one thing the judge and the parties agreed on was that there are weighty matters to be decided by the Ninth, including [multiple kinds of] prosecutorial misconduct…It could take anywhere from eight months to two or three years before the Ninth issues a decision.  Which means there is no immediate end in sight for this vindictive prosecution, now in its seventh year…

The Cop Myth (#1438)

Why are people shocked when men paid and encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?

A [typical and representative Kentucky cop] has been found guilty of murder[ing the husband of his girlfriend, Lena North]…Jeremy Lewis…murder[ed]…Tyler North…[in 2018, but it took the Kounty Kops] two…year[s to find the remains]

 

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 #726

Longtime readers may remember that Memorial Day is generally bad for me emotionally due to some very bad memories associated with the day.  But since I moved to Sunset full-time, it hasn’t been nearly as sharp.  Part of it is probably just time working its magic; it’s been almost thirty years now, and though the feelings stayed intense until beyond the 20-year mark, the trauma seems to have receded far enough into the past now for the feelings associated with its anniversary to be more manageable.  Another part is that living here keeps me a lot busier than living in Seattle did, and having a more rigid schedule than was possible when I was still working full-time provides me with a sort of fence that helps to keep memory monsters out of the yard of my conscious attention.  And then there are aggravating factors; I think in the past, other stressors tended to hitch rides with the bad memories, creating one big bandwagon of unpleasantness every last weekend of May.  But in the past few years I’ve managed to cultivate a better emotional state in general, so those other bugaboos are neither as noisy nor as active as they once were.  I’m not going to tell you that this past weekend was perfectly peachy and funk-free, because it wasn’t (as evidenced by the fact that I thought about it enough to write this column); however, neither was it as bad as such weekends have mostly been in the past.  And that is definitely something to be thankful for.

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One of the main manifestations of my OCD is that I have a system for nearly everything I do.  My readers can see it in my blog: a new post every day, always at the same time, with certain kinds of columns appearing on certain days of the week and/or month in a strictly-managed format.  There’s even a lot of deep structure in the blog that few of y’all probably even notice, but which in my mind is an integral part of the blog’s structure.  And beneath that is another layer of organization completely invisible to y’all:  I write certain kinds of columns on certain days, and to a lesser extent certain times of day.  For example, I’m typing this on the evening of Tuesday, May 21st, because (unless life forces me to do it another time) I write Monday columns on the preceding Tuesday (after two of the news items for the next Saturday’s news column).  I pore over Twitter with my breakfast, collecting news items, commenting on what I find, and promoting things I’ve already written; I’m generally done about noonish and then move on to my morning ablutions, followed by my chores.  Afternoons vary by the day; I usually wash clothes on Monday and Friday, and also do my groceries on Monday.  Other days are for  appointments or weekly chores like vacuuming the floor or burning the garbage, and some days I actually manage to sneak in some other task I want to accomplish like baking cookies or tackling some kind of odious paperwork.  I cook dinner nearly every day, and there are patterns there too: red beans & rice on Mondays, soup & sandwich on Tuesdays, pasta on Thursdays, meatless Fridays, Tex-Mex Saturdays.  My cooking patterns aren’t merely daily and weekly, either; I usually make waffles on the first Friday of every month because we only eat a few, and the rest go into the fridge so Grace can rewarm them in the toaster oven for breakfast.  And similar patterns apply to other day/month combinations, which are of course subject to interruption by seasonal events; on top of that the times I cook, turn the lights on, feed the animals, and other such tasks follow a set schedule which varies by season.  Overwhelmed?  I’m not, because that’s how my brain works.  And directing my OCD toward scheduling chores and planning meals keeps me from obsessing too much about far more distracting minutiae, even though I also have the counting to 16 thing.

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I can’t breathe.  –  Anthony Johnson Jr.

I remember this song from The Doctor Demento Show in the late ’70s, and recently thought about it again; if it sticks in your brain for almost half a century as it did to me, my work here is done.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel, Jesse Walker, Scott Hechinger, Billy Binion, IncarcerNation, Walter Olson, and Brooke Magnanti, 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 new [Belgian] scheme seems…to grant government too much say in the employer-employee relationship.  –  Elizabeth N. Brown

Above the Law

Your “leaders” at work:

German…politician…Martin Neumaier…was [featured] in…several videos and photos…performing…fetishistic acts [which] began to circulate this week…the media was verified as authentic…[and Neumaier] said he had filmed them “voluntarily and with pleasure,” adding that all viewers…“had the right to…publish it wherever they see fit.”  In one of the videos, Neumaier could be seen naked while reciting the first verse of Nazi-era German national anthem and using an anal dildo…in another, Neumaier inserted a feces-covered dildo into his rectum before smearing it on a Quran.  In other videos, Neumaier was heard expressing his desire to “rape to death” one of the 12 wives of the Prophet Mohammed, smearing feces on his face and body, and licking public toilet seats…[now another] politician…[named Rene Dierkes claims] he ha[s] evidence [of] Neumaier…procuring young boys for sexual abuse…Neumaier [has in response] filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons alleging blackmail…

Business As Usual

As long as sex work is criminalized, rapist cops will target sex workers:

A [typical and representative Florida cop named]…Stephen Corbin [h]as…be[en]…arrested…[for attem]ting [to] sexual[ly] assault…at…[least two sex workers in Daytona Beach].  Sheriff Mike Chitwood [used the occasion to bloviate a lot of pompous nonsense one could barely believe was spewed by a grown adult]…Corbin…threaten[ed] the women [with arrest]…and [has apparently] picked…up [sex workers] in [the past] and [properly] paid for sex…

The Face of Trafficking 

Oh look, she managed to call for help without “hotlines” and magic bathroom stickers:

A 17-year-old girl was able to save herself from [an abductor] by texting 911…with “pleas for help” around 3 a.m. on May 9…[in] Ventura County [California.  She]…began texting landmarks and other “identifiable information” she was seeing, which helped the agency quickly dispatch deputies to the correct area…Investigators…believe…[she] was [brought] to Ventura County roughly two months ago from Mexico.  She has been placed with the county’s Children & Family Services until authorities can locate her family…[cops] arrested Gerardo Cruz…his bail is set at half a million dollars…

The story repeatedly uses the words “trafficking” and “trafficked”, but in the absence of information about the purpose and manner of the abduction, more neutral words are called for to avoid making the girl the unwilling subject of prohibitionist wanking fantasies.

Little Boxes (#837)

The shittiest-paying sex work ever:

…many of OnlyFans’ top earners…hire…a management agency to help keep up with…customers’ demands for personal attention…they…provide…a team of contractors whose sole job is to masquerade as the creator while swapping DMs with her subscribers…agencies tend to favor contractors who reside in lower-wage countries…like the Philippines and Venezuela…these workers are relatively well-educated, with university-level English and ace typing skills that some developed in high-pressure call centers…Even for positions with a starting hourly wage of just $2, agencies often demand…evidence that applicants ha[ve] not only chatted on OnlyFans before but had also cajoled subscribers into purchasing thousands of dollars’ worth of so-called exclusive content…

Welcome to the Future (#1052)

Cop excuses produced by human bootlickers are bad enough:

…giant [fascist corporation] Axon [has] announced Draft One, a new product that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo to automatically generate police reports from…bodycam audio.  The product promises to make police…reports…[more] helpful in…prosecution [rather than more factually accurate]…the user [has] to select what…[level of] severity [they want] the [report spin to justify], be that no charge, an infraction, a misdemeanor, or a felony…[cops are supposed] to proofread the draft, make any corrections, and sign off on its accuracy….Matthew Guariglia…at…the Electronic Frontier Foundation [said]…“Policing, with its legal power to kill, detain, or ultimately deny people’s freedom, is too powerful an institution to outsource its official narratives to technologies in a way that makes officers immune to critique, transparency, or accountability because they have…plausible deniability that they…were not aware of mistakes the [algorithm] made”…

The Cop Myth (#1432)

Cop violence is never limited to members of the public:

A Prince George’s County [cop] has been suspended and placed on house arrest fo[r attacking his wife on May 14th]…Robert Harvin III smash[ed] his wife’s iPhone and assault[ed] her after she…caught him on the phone with his mistress…Harvin…pushed her, dragged her to the floor and…choke[d her]…once she was able to break free, she grabbed Harvin’s…police radio and called for help.  Harvin [absurdly] claims the [violence] was “mutual, like Matrix”…[but his own] Google Nest kitchen camera revealed…Harvin’s wife “yelling and screaming for him to get away from her.”  Their doorbell camera footage also shows him “actively assaulting [his wife] by dragging and punching her”…

Nor is it limited to male cops:

Two [married] Detroit [cops have been] suspended [and] charged with child abuse….Jared…and Liana Shaw…are…[typical] and…representative…and…both…[aggressively choked] Liana’s two children…a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl….[because the] son…tried to intervene when the pair had been fighting…[the boy’s] grandmother…called the cops when she saw what was happening.  The two children are staying with her while this case works its way through the courts.  Three of Jared’s children have also been placed with relatives.  The Shaws…bond[ed out and are currently at large]…

Leaving the 20th Century (#1438)

Looks like I was wrong about Belgian decrim:

…Belgium…is trying to bring sex workers into “social protection” programs and employee benefits…The decriminalization law was a first step to making sex workers eligible for such things.  The second step was the law…that The Publica makes sound like a horrifying, dystopian mess…Under the decriminalized system, sex workers could be self-employed, and they could hire third parties to help them in various ways.  They could also be freelance workers in an establishment run by someone else.  But sex workers could not themselves be employees.  Under the new law, “sex workers will also be able to work under an employment contract, thus gaining access to social security: pension, unemployment, health insurance, family benefits, annual vacation, maternity leave,” according to UTSOPI…the law imposes obligations on both businesses that employ sex workers and on sex workers who work for those businesses…we’re not talking individual “pimps” (a one-person sex work business cannot legally hire employees) but registered businesses that have contracted as a sex work employer and taken on all the responsibilities that entails…

In my defense, I must point out that the scheme grants government so much say in business relationships I confused it for legalization until Liz Brown broke it down for me.

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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Sexual likes, dislikes, kinks and fetishes emerge by mysterious paths from the murky swamp we carry deep in our brains, and there’s no known way to reroute those pathways once they’re established.
–  “Out of the Dark

Westerners have some kind of sick religious attachment to the supposed magical health-giving properties of leaves and they take it as sacrilege when a heretic like me refuses to participate.  –  “Picky

While prohibitionists want you to believe that sex work is a symptom or product of mental illness, the actual truth is that it can in some cases be a tool for managing it.  –  “More Therapy Than Etiology

I tend to deal with obstacles in my path by figuring them out, charming them, intimidating them, or crying, and none of those work on a computer which is doing something I neither desire nor comprehend.  –  “Professor Syndrome

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Sex work…[is] a personal choice from which we don’t need to be rescued.  –  Natalia Lane

South of the Border (#992)

It’s barely even possible to talk about this under criminalization:

…on May 7, a group of sex workers [in Mexico City] launched ‘CLaP!’, a first-of-its-kind coalition that wants the decriminalization of sex work, its formal recognition as a job, and access to social security for those working online and in person…the group is appealing to potential members online and on the streets of the capital, aiming to create enough momentum for sex workers to win long-sought labor rights.  To date, about 42 workers have joined CLaP!…

Panopticon (#1316)

Privacy as we once knew it is a thing of the past:

American police are testing a new technology that can scan moving vehicles for anything that emits a signal, including phones, smartwatches, cat and dog tracking chips and even library books, according to its creator, Rome, Italy-based surveillance…company Leonardo…Elsag EOC Plus…is typically incorporated into one of Leonardo’s Elsag license plate readers…and is designed to help police [states] monitor [citizens by]…warrantlessly track[ing] people across large tranches of the country…by identifying their belongings without their knowledge…the tool can identify specific models of devices…[such as] pet chips, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, wearable tech like fitness trackers, in-car infotainment systems and tire pressure sensors, and…all that data can be linked to a car’s license plate number, becoming a unique “fingerprint.” As a person travels through other license plate scanners, their fingerprint can be followed around a given area, even when the driver or passenger switches vehicles…malls across the U.S. are already equipped…with…car surveillance technologies from Leonardo rival Flock Safety…[whose] cameras similarly create “fingerprints”…[by] look[ing] at identifying features on a car beyond the license plate number, such as color, make, model, bumper stickers or wheel rims…

If Men Were Angels (ROTW #6)

This will continue until fools stop teaching children unquestioning obedience to “authority”:

A [Spokane, Washington high] school paraeducator and…coach admitted to recording himself [molest]ing…underage boys and sending the videos to other [boys]…Dallas M. Shuler…told [cop]s he solicited explicit content from 25 [boys] in the last year because he is “sexually excited by” 11- to 15-year-olds…He al[so] admitted he kept a collection of explicit photos and videos of minors and “traded” them with [other minors]…

You Were Warned (#1428)

Politicians keep openly trying to destroy the internet:

…weakening Section 230 has become a weird political hobby horse for…politicians [because they] loathe communications…outside of their control.  Generally, such designs take the form of content-specific carve-outs…but a new proposal…would simply “sunset” Section 230 after next year…[politicians] Cathy McMorris Rodgers…and…Frank Pallone…”seem to fundamentally misunderstand how the law works and what the consequences of repealing it would be,” writes Mike Masnick at Techdirt, pointing to the pair’s [recent] Wall Street Journal op-ed…[which] manages to get just about everything about Section 230 wrong, including its origins.  Section 230 was part of a panicky “protect the children” law known as the Communications Decency Act, not a measure meant to “help people and businesses connect, innovate and share information,” as the pair so absurdly claims…”These days, one can ask, ‘How do you know when Section 230 is being misunderstood?’ and answer, ‘A politician is talking about it'”…lawyer Robert Corn-Revere aptly wrote in Reason last year…

I Can’t Breathe (#1434)

Articles about misconduct are more effective when journalists don’t make excuses for cops:

In hundreds of deaths where police used force meant to stop someone without killing them, [cops intentionally] violated well-known guidelines for safely restraining and subduing people — not simply once or twice, but multiple times.  Most violations involved [maliciously] pinning people facedown in ways that could restrict their breathing or [sadistically] stunning them repeatedly with Tasers…[some cops are very good at inventing excuses for] break[ing]…safety guidelines…[while] many other[s find it] harder to [make up bullshit.  Some cops plead incompetence, stupidity, or belligerence to] explain…a string of mistakes.  In other cases, they [moronically] kept applying force even after they had people handcuffed and controlled [as though they were rabid animals with no sense at all]…AP catalogued 1,036 [murders committed by cops]…not involving their guns.  In [only] about half, medical officials [admitt]ed that [cops] caused or contributed to the deaths…

The Vultures Descend (#1435)

Prohibition can never succeed, regardless of which substance is prohibited:

According to new research, about 8,000 women per month obtained abortion pills in late 2023, despite living in states that have bans or severe restrictions on telemedicine abortion or abortion access.  The survey also found that the abortion rate in 2023 was slightly higher than in 2022, despite total abortion bans in more than a dozen states…a…press release [says,] “This elevated volume of abortion may be due in part to the expansion of telehealth abortion care, which made up 19% of all abortion care nationwide by December 2023″…

You Were Warned (#1437)

The US government is almost completely out of Constitutional control:

…a bunch of members of Congress both signed an amicus brief in the Murthy case saying…governments should never, ever, interfere with speech and also voted to ban TikTok….th[e] same members of Congress who are so worried about “jawboning” by government officials…[are themselves using] the power of Congress to silence voices trying to defend TikTok…NetChoice has been the main trade group…defending against all the terrible laws being thrust upon the internet over the last few years…[it] has been structured to be independent of its members…which sometimes means their members dislike the causes and cases NetChoice takes on…members of Congress threatened to investigate NetChoice if it didn’t drop TikTok from its [membership] roster…PR agencies and lobbying organizations that work with TikTok…are [also] facing similar threats…

 

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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