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Archive for November, 2024

Back Issue #137

Just because a politician calls something the “Free Kitten Act” doesn’t mean it’s actually devoted to giving out free kittens; in fact, it may be the exact opposite.  –  “Gift Horse

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Every year on this day, the traditional beginning of the Yuletide season in the US, I remind my readers that the real spirit of the season involves giving to others rather than literally fighting to get more for yourself.  Children and whores are St. Nick’s two favorite groups of people; you can help the latter by donating to a sex worker charity such as SWOP Behind Bars, or you can help both by booking a session with a sex worker you know has kids.  And if you don’t know any, you can help by participating in my annual toy drive!  Regular readers know how it works: from today until Tuesday, December 17th, I’m collecting donations with which to buy toys, which I then donate to Toys for Tots.  Send your donation via PayPal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net, and please put “Toys for Tots” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not a regular blog donation; I can also accept donations via Zelle if you prefer not to use PayPal.  If you’re not hurting economically yourself, please consider donating (either to my drive or to one near you); rising inflation has taken a bite out of many people’s income, so there will be less money for more-expensive toys this year.  And while we adults can understand that, it can be heartbreaking for very young children to think Santa Claus has forgotten them or bypassed them because they were naughty.  Please help if you can!

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Thanksgiving 2024

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The unregulated data broker industry poses a clear threat to national security.  –  Ron Wyden

Elephant in the Parlor (#1139)

People keep pretending “politician hires whores” is something more than a yawn.  I can’t even bring myself to quote any of this pearl-clutching nonsense, which basically consists of restating “Matt Gaetz hired escorts” over and over and over again in hopes of eventually convincing the reader that this is not only bad, but somehow unusual.  That Gaetz’s downfall is due to honest and extremely mundane business transactions rather than the evil he openly espouses is a sign of just how sick American culture has become.  And any reporter who un-ironically uses the phrase “drug-fueled sex parties” can safely be dismissed as a pathetic, puritanical pearl-clutcher.

The Vultures Descend (#1324)

Another judge doing what judges should do more often: nullify tyrannical laws:

A state judge…struck down Wyoming’s overall ban on abortion and its first-in-the-nation explicit prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy in line with voters in yet more states voicing support for abortion rights…Judges [also] struck down bans in Georgia and North Dakota in September…In the Wyoming case, the women and nonprofits who challenged the laws argued that the bans…violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment saying competent Wyoming residents have a right to make their own health care decisions…

Whither Canada? (#1377)

Another attempt to overturn laws that were already known to be unconstitutional when enacted:

Kloubakov v. Canada…was brought by two men—Mikhail Kloubakov and Hicham Moustaine—who were employed as drivers for…sex [workers].  Both men were found guilty…[under] Canada[‘s version]…of…the Nordic Model…[which under] Bedford…is…unconstitutional….the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform (CASWLR)…sued to overturn the new laws…[but] the Ontario Superior Court tossed the…case [last year, and]…their appeal is still pending…Kloubakov only focuses on the two offenses that Kloubakov and Moustaine were charged with—benefiting materially from prostitution and procuring persons for sexual services—and not on the whole package of antiprostitution laws…”We hope that the Supreme Court will strike down these two provisions and that we will get the chance to argue before the Supreme Court that the other provisions are also unconstitutional,” said Jenn Clamen, of the CASWLR…The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is one of the groups that intervened on the side of the plaintiffs, meaning it, too, wants to see the regulations struck down…

Shame, Shame (#1398)

Well, that didn’t take long:

Instagram is flooded with hundreds of [computer]-generated influencers who are stealing videos from real models and adult content creators, giving them [computer]-generated faces, and monetizing their bodies with links to dating sites, Patreon, OnlyFans competitors, and various [sleazy] apps…Instagram is unable or unwilling to stop the flood of [computer]-generated content on its platform and protect the human creators…who…are now competing with [computers] in a way that is impacting their ability to make a living…“AI pimping”…is now trivially easy…using an assortment of off-the-shelf [software, much of it]…hosted on the Apple App and Google Play Stores…what was once a niche problem…has industrialized in scale, and shows [t]hat social media may [soon] become…a space where [computer]-generated content eclipses that of humans…

I Spy (#1420)

Could this evil industry be shut down in the name of “security”?

A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US companies legally collecting digital advertising data are also providing the world a cheap and reliable way to track the movements of American military and intelligence personnel overseas, from their homes and their children’s schools to hardened aircraft shelters within an airbase where US nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.  A collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily routines of US service members.  The findings also provide a vivid example of the significant risks the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas…

Torture Chamber (#1481)

“Officials” demonstrate what they think of the people they have power over:

Interviews with the families of people who die in federal prison show a remarkably consistent cruelty by BOP officials toward them during the worst moments of their lives.  Families describe delays in being notified that their incarcerated loved one had been hospitalized, or even died; having their phone calls ignored; not being allowed to see their loved one in their final moments; delays in being sent the body and death certificate; being given inaccurate or incomplete information about the manner of death; or waiting months and years for the Bureau to fulfill their public records requests for more information about how their loved one died…NPR reported in January that the BOP was misclassifying deaths as “natural,” which prevents further investigation and leaves families in the dark about what really happened…

I Spy (#1490)

Governments won’t stop until privacy of any kind is absolutely impossible:

…Graykey, a phone unlocking and forensics tool that is used by [cop shops and spook houses] around the world, is only able to retrieve partial data from…modern iPhones that run iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1…according to [leaked] documents…The leak is unprecedented for Grayshift, the highly secretive company which made the Graykey before being acquired by Magnet Forensics…Although one of its main competitors Cellebrite has faced similar leaks before, this is the first time that anyone has published which phones the Graykey is able, or unable, to access…[its] capabilities against Android devices are more mixed, likely due to the high level of variance between different Android devices which are made by a wide spread of companies.  With Google’s own Pixel range of phones, the Graykey is able to only extract partial data on the most recent…devices…when the phone is in an After First Unlock (AFU) state…

 

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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Making wildly exaggerated  Criswell-like predictions of the number of hookers who will descend upon a major sporting event has become a popular pastime of prohibitionists.  –
Hidden Hordes of Hookers

In a particularly absurd touch, the “free soap” is labeled with the phone number of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, undoubtedly so that motel guests can call from their waterproof cell phones if “human traffickers” pass through their bathrooms while they’re showering.  –  “It’s That Time Again

Government repeatedly grants to even its most minor actors immunity from the edicts by which it establishes universal criminality for the rest of us.  –  “Shame, Shame

Th[e] insane “progressive” social engineering scheme to “improve” the human race by giving governments control over everything individuals might choose to ingest…[was] from the beginning…deeply tied to eugenics and other racist pseudoscience.  –  “Winding Down

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Diary #752

The old cliche says, “When it rains, it pours”, and sometimes that’s literal.  Bad teeth are worsened by chemotherapy, with possible dangerous results, so they need to come out beforehand; Grace will get dentures afterward, but for now she has none at all, so I’m making only soups, mashed potatoes, small pasta, scrambled eggs, chili, and other things she can eat without chewing.  The last eight came out Tuesday, but about six that evening, in the middle of drying my clothes, we lost power due to something called a “bomb cyclone“; the generator kicked in, but it isn’t quite big enough to run the dryer in addition to everything else.  So that meant I couldn’t restart it until 3 AM, when the power was restored; I understand some parts of Seattle were out for much longer than that!  Anyhow, I just never caught up after that; I was a day behind on all my chores until Friday, when we again lost power just as we were about to head out for an appointment with Grace’s oncologist (fortunately it was restored that time before we got home).  We now have a tentative date for the start of her treatments: Monday December 9th.  Tomorrow she goes to Olympia for a CAT scan, which is used to make a mask to protect all the tissues of her head from radiation during the treatment; only intermittent rain and no “bomb cyclones” are predicted, so at least that’s something.  And Grace and I are very, very grateful for all the support and well-wishes after last week’s diary column; I’ll keep y’all posted on any important developments as they happen.  I just hope the weather mostly behaves itself during the period when we have to drive to town five days a week.   

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Are you happy now?  –  Reid Hawley

There was really only one choice for a sendoff for Lou Donaldson, so here it is.  The links above it were provided by Jesse Walker (x2), C.J. Ciaramella, The Onion, IncarcerNation, T. Greg Doucette, and Lenore Skenazy, 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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This is clearly a bill unburdened by thoughts of constitutionality.  –  Elizabeth N. Brown

I Saw My Brain (#1316)

Another reminder that Grady Judd is an utterly loathsome excuse for a human:

…between 2018 and 2022, Polk County’s [pogroms against sex workers which the psychopathic Grady Judd labels “]human trafficking stings[“] led to the arrest of 751 individuals.  Of these, 346 were clients, 23 were officially identified and “rescued” as trafficking victims, and the remaining 382 were adult consensual sex workers who ended up in jail…and [saddled with] criminal records…Grady Judd doesn’t abide any notions of adult consensual sex work in his mind numbingly foolish and uninformed public narratives but he is quick to be “The Decider” of who is – or is not – a victim of trafficking, with the very simplistic logic that “prostitution is Illegal” and therefore the harbinger to crime outbreaks…

Torture Chamber (Chamber of Horrors)

Your “leaders” want you to pay for more such hell-holes to torture even more people in:

Two years after a mentally ill man died malnourished and covered in insects in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, a Justice Department investigation has found that man’s death was only one of a string of fatalities due to pervasive unconstitutional conditions at the jail…which [is used to warehouse legally-innocent people cops decided to accuse of something]…investigators reported widespread infestations of mice, roaches, bedbugs, lice, and scabies…the jail’s [filthy] kitchen also fails to adequately feed [its legally-innocent victims]…90 percent of the…mental[ly ill people are held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and]…”significantly malnourished with obvious muscle wasting”…[deranged state-employed thugs] use Tasers and pepper spray against [the] mentally ill…and minors [because they think it’s fun, and they intentionally]…create [conditions leading to frequent]…rape…[of] minor[s]…

Censor Chic (#1438)

Unless people begin to have respect for free speech again, this will only get worse:

Jawboning…is when the government pressures a third party to…[censor] the speech of another…which is why there should be concern about Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and how it operates to force intermediaries to act against users and their speech, whether they would want to or not, and whether the targeted speech is wrongful or not.  Because when resisting a takedown notice can…potentially expose them to crippling liability, then the choice to acquiesce to the…demand is really no choice at all.  Instead it’s jawboning: using law to force the third party to act against speech in order to avoid the constitutional protections the speech should have enjoyed…

Dangerous Speech (#1467)

The first of a series of columns Michael Lacey will write from the cage where the government has thrown him for daring to publish speech it dislikes:

…My decades-long friend and business partner, Jim Larkin, the most upright of men, also guilty of naught, did not want to go in…He instead drove a chair to the botanical gardens created by a mining baron outside of Superior, Arizona…He removed the chair from his vehicle and sat himself. He was . . . resolved.  He took out his pistol. He pulled the trigger…He left six grown children and a spouse. God help all of them…A lesser man than Larkin, prosecutor Austin Berry, implored the judge: Please, your honor, sentence the remaining 3 defendants to prison, so there is no more “flight by suicide.”  Flight by suicide?  In my 40 years of covering courts, I have not heard a lower comment…

Paying the Bills

Eight weeks ago, I told y’all that I’m facing a projected $3000 shortfall for my annual operating budget, and asked for help making up that difference.  Well, several of my loyal readers have already stepped up, generously helping me to the tune of $2700.  So that now leaves only a $300 shortfall!  If you can spare some or all of that remainder right now, I’d really appreciate it; that would get this done in the next few days, so it doesn’t interfere with my annual toy drive!

The Vultures Descend (#1483)

This insanity will keep getting worse until these maniacs are forcibly stopped:

A bonkers new Texas bill would ban a bunch of activities related to abortion, including taking abortion pills in other states and facilitating or hosting online speech about procuring abortions.  It would also hold all abortion pill manufacturers liable for violations when a specific manufacturer could not be ascertained…the legislation…[bears the Orwellian moniker “]Women and Child Safety Act[” and]…create[s] new offenses of “paying for or reimbursing abortion costs” and “destroying evidence of an abortion,” both felonies…Other parts of the bill would be enforced by [encouraging and rewarding nuisance lawsuits]

That’s just a taste; this bill is such a giant clusterfuck of unconstitutional stupidity and over-the-top evil that I don’t have room here to list all its atrocities, so go read Liz Brown’s article for all of the details, in which she has to state not once but several times, “This is not how U.S. law works.”

The Cop Myth (#1489)

All promoters of state violence, from cops to judges to politicians, work together to ensure cops get away with their crimes:

…The Supreme Court [has] declined…to take up a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August by Desiree Martinez…[who] filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2015 against several [cop]s in Clovis, California, who [intentionally] ignor[ed] multiple attempts to report her abusive [cop]….boyfriend, Kyle Pennington…the 9th Circuit ruled that [since it is well-known that cops are moral imbeciles, they could not be expected to grasp that]…tipp[ing] off her boyfriend [so he would take revenge for her reporting him was wrong, and therefore they] are immune from Martinez’s lawsuit under qualified immunity…[after] Martinez…filed a…report against Pennington..[he] called [his crony]…Channon High…on speakerphone and…High [told him about the]…report…Pennington [then] hung up the phone and [beat and raped her, yet]…was [merely] convicted of violating a restraining order…

 

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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As I have repeatedly said and will continue to say, there is no such thing as “artificial intelligence”  regardless of what tech billionaires and their marketing departments tell you.  I’m neither splitting hairs nor being pedantic; the main reason so-called “AI” is becoming so problematic is that far too many ignorant people truly believe there is a kind of “intelligence”, even if it’s an artificial one, behind these electronic Mad Libs.  People who interact with these systems think they’re interacting with an ancestor of Commander Data or C3PO, when in actuality they’re merely accessing a program that’s roughly as aware of their existence as the software that runs modern slot machines is, often with similar psychological results.  The reason so-called “AI” spouts out such dangerous gibberish is that it is incapable of telling truth from falsehood, precisely because it is not “intelligent” in any way.  It does not understand the relationship between the words it is programmed to parse and the real world; in fact, it doesn’t even know that the real world existsThese programs are glorified sorting algorithms; they have much more in common with a Rolodex than with any kind of intelligence, even fish-level intelligence.  So the reason they “lie” and invent nonsense is that words are not representative of facts to them; they’re just collections of characters to be manipulated by algorithms.  But the most dangerous falsehoods are not those invented by these algorithms; it’s the one told by people who do have actual intelligence that the behavior of these programs constitutes anything which even remotely approaches that quality, which (at least for the present) is a function reserved only for living brains.

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Greed”…is what people call the desire to earn a decent income when the person with that drive is a woman; in a man, the same thing is called “ambition”.  –  “Train Wreck

My bullshit detector is pretty finely calibrated; I can usually sense it no matter how expertly it’s hidden, and I can often produce an analysis of the exact breed and variety of the bull and tell you what he was eating besides.
–  “Why I Wait

“Progressives” want sex workers to believe they’re on our side, but they go straight for the anti-whore slurs the second they think it will win them cheap points on the “other team”.  –  “Elephant in the Parlor (#1089)

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