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Archive for January, 2026

There’s a bear under my house, and there’s nothing I can do about it!  –  Ken Johnson

I think my old friend Terry would’ve loved this video, provided by Mike Masnick; he also provided the first link above it, and those after that were provided by Jason Kuznicki, Nun Ya, Jesse Walker, The Onion, and Popehat, 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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If stings worked we wouldn’t still be doing them.  –  Alex Andrews

Theatrics (#510)

The “sex trafficking” moral panic is over, but the rescue industry isn’t:

Let’s talk about the American tradition of the human trafficking sting  – part press conference, part moral panic, part budget sinkhole.  Across the country, these branded operations promise to crack down on exploitation and rescue victims…Since agencies don’t release itemized budgets, we built conservative cost models using…Local news reporting, booking data…court records…Known staffing levels and standardized pay/benefits rates…Publicly documented tactics (decoy operations, press briefings, multi-agency involvement)[, etc]…All told, these efforts can run $10,000 to $30,000+ per arrest  – whether or not a trafficking charge ever materializes…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1489)

Customers need to teach these nosy creeps a lesson by shopping elsewhere:

Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets…their face, eyes and voice[-prints will be] collected and stored…the [management vomited the word] “safety” a[s a ludicrous justification for fascist collaboration with cops, spooks, and goons]…Legislation aiming to block businesses from using such systems was introduced in the City Council in 2023…But [of course it went nowhere], and other supermarket chains like Fairway already use biometric collection systems…

The Vultures Descend (#1493)

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

Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court struck down laws including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills…[because] they violate the state constitution…[which clearly states] that competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions…the state…[absurdly] argued that a…[medical procedure] is not health care…

Aladdin’s Satellite (#1554)

The psychopaths who market chatbots as “intelligent” need to be sued into bankruptcy:

…Sam Nelson…routinely turned to ChatGPT to…ask for help with…drugs…ChatGPT started coaching Sam on how to take drugs, recover from them and plan further binges.  It gave him specific doses of illegal substances, and…consistent encouragement…Then, last May…the 19-year-old…died from an overdose, just hours after [more bad advice from]…ChatGPT…Nelson’s death…joins a growing list of tragedies connected to ChatGPT and other…chatbots.  In November, seven lawsuits were filed against OpenAI in one day [because] ChatGPT gave awful responses to vulnerable people who ended up…co[mmitting] suicide…[or] other[wise spiraling into] mental health crises…OpenAI [is directly responsible because it falsely advertises] ChatGPT as a trustworthy source for health information

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1555)

Burble burble BLUE STATE burble drool:

New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a law that’s going to get expensive fast…[it] forces websites to slap unscientific warnings on their services [falsely] claiming that features like algorithmic feeds and push notifications cause [“]addiction[“]…compelled speech…[is] blatantly unconstitutional, and courts have already rejected nearly identical schemes.  But Hochul and [other busybody politicians] either don’t care or don’t understand First Amendment basics, so New York taxpayers are about to fund a losing legal battle whose only real purpose is generating headlines for those politicians pretending to care about “protecting the children”

The Cop Myth (#1597)

What would cops do if you shot someone dead in the street?

A…[Father]land Security [goon murdered] a neighbor [because he] fired gunshots into the air [to celebrate the]…New Year…in…Los Angeles…The [murderer claimed he could fly, therefore shots]…fired [into the air were in reality] at [him, therefore it was self-defense even though he] was in his apartment when he heard…[the] shots…he [also claimed he was a super crack shot who was firing]…to disarm hi[s victim yet killed him instead.  LAPD is hiding the deranged goon’s identity]…

The Last Shall Be First (#1600)

This is why some of us are wary of demands for “regulation”:

Passional Boutique & Sexploratorium…of Philadelphia…is now [being harassed] by [the] Trump…[regime] for selling an undergarment…the [FDA] sent a [threat] letter to Passional stating it was illegally selling breast binders…[which] the FDA [absurdly] classifies…as a medical device.  Businesses that distribute them in the [US] must be registered with the FDA or [else]…Passional was one of only 12 businesses…including companies in Singapore and the Netherlands, that [were thus threatened]…They included Seattle-based Tomboyx…and Manhattan-based For Them…During a Dec. 18 news conference, FDA Commissioner Martin Makary [vomited the moronic phrase]…“transgender ideology” [in reporters’ faces]…

 

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 have often written about the fallacy that romantic love is superior to other forms of love:

I honestly feel sorry for those who truly believe that the best way to “connect” with other people is by boinking them, and the notion that people must boink to feel “connected” is a tragedy.  Sexual relationships are held up as the pinnacle of human interaction, but they’re not even close; they’re in fact nearer the bottom because they’re extremely conditional.

I have always felt very strongly about this, ever since I first started really thinking about the matter before I was out of my teens.  Part of the fallacy holds that romantic love is somehow intrinsically different from other kinds of love, but I don’t think that’s true either.  Take “love at first sight”, for example; we only ever hear the term applied to romantic love, even though the idea that it represents something other than plain animal lust in that context is highly dubious.  And yet there are certainly cases in which another kind of love manifests itself at first meeting.  The very first time I really thought of that was in a fictional context: in the movie The Emerald Forest, a tribal chief in the Amazon abducts the son of an engineer surveying for a dam project, and years later he explains to the father that he had fallen in paternal love with the boy at first sight, and could not bear to see him go back to “The Dead World” of concrete and steel which the natives feared and hated.

Over the next several decades I saw other examples in both fiction and real life, culminating in one I experienced myself.  In November of 1997 I met Grace at a party and she gave me a ride home; we hit it off immediately, and within weeks I’d received an actual paper letter from her in the mail.  After a few more letters were exchanged, she told me she wanted to move down to New Orleans from her father’s place in Monroe, Louisiana, where she currently lived; I invited her to move in with me, and she never moved out.  From that very first meeting she was as devoted to me as any sister; there was never any sexual chemistry, and in any case Grace was only sexually interested in men.  But looking back to those times, I have no better term for the rapid bonding she experienced and demonstrated than “love at first sight”.  And it would be wrong to pretend otherwise merely because it was not romantic love.

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If you think I’m going to let the people who aided and abetted the most violent and widespread campaign of persecution against sex workers in American history get away with pretending they were on the side of truth all along, you must not have read very much of my work.
–  “New Year’s Eve 2021

People would be a lot happier if they could truly learn the difference between “I want” and “I reasonably expect to get in the actual world that exists”.  –  “Life As It Is

In the big picture, any order we manage to impose on the universe is as ephemeral as a sand castle, and will soon be obliterated by time and tide.  –  “The Big Picture

The moral panic is over, but its rotten fruit have burst, spewing xenophobic, anti-sex, authoritarian poison all over American society.  –  “New Year’s Eve 2024

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We simply lock up too many people in this country.  –  Leslie Soble

Drawing Lines (#516) 

Authoritarians don’t give a damn if your kind of sex work is (temporarily) “legal”:

Within the past month, legal Nevada sex workers have experienced a massive and unprecedented wave of account suspensions on…Twitter…These are not accounts soliciting illegal activity of any kind.  These are licensed workers…Prostitution is legal in Nevada when the practice takes place in a licensed brothel, as outlined in Nevada Revised Statutes 201.354…

When someone starts arguing that freedom of speech applies only to licensed legal whatevers, he can be safely ignored.

Spotlight (#1429)

While I’m always glad to see “sex trafficking” profiteers fall, it’s a particular pleasure to watch it happen to Asstoon:

…Ashton Kutcher has now all but disappeared [from]…Hollywood[, not because]…of…his lucrative investments in [fascist surveillance] companies and [his vendetta against sex workers, but rather for having the wrong friends, a typical moral inversion for]…Hollywood…Now he’s pinning all his hopes on [a] new [and self-aggrandizing TV] series to put him back in…the spotlight[.  That] will be no easy feat…because former fans have taken to scouring the internet for evidence of past…misdeeds [while ignoring the obvious but politically-unpopular ones]…

A Broker in Pillage (#1438)

There are many ways for governments to steal things that don’t belong to them:

…the 9th Circuit…[has] ruled…that an innocent man whose business was [maliciously and unnecessarily] destroyed by…LAPD…[to stage cop theater] is not entitled to compensation for damages under the Takings Clause…In August of 2022…LAPD launched more than 30 rounds of tear gas canisters through the walls, door, roof, and windows…[of Carlos] Pena[‘s print shop in pursuit of a man who was not there, leaving]…the inside ravaged and equipment ruined, [and] saddling him with over $60,000 in damages…Pena…repeatedly reached out to the government to recoup his losses…[but] the city ignored him.  Pena, meanwhile, was hemorrhaging income, resigned to working out of his garage at a much-reduced capacity with a single printer he purchased after the raid…[but] the 9th Circuit…[ruled] that there is [a “fuck you, we’re cops” exception to the Takings Clause]…that doomed Pena’s claim…

The Vultures Descend (#1511)

Under a totalitarian regime, medical personnel cannot be trusted with personal information:

A Kentucky woman has been charged with [“]fetal homicide[“] after police…were contacted by a [snitch working for a] clinic…[whom Melinda] Spencer…[foolishly trusted with the information] that she [had used]…medication…to [have] an abortion…She then buried the [fetal remains] on the back of her property…

The Cop Myth (#1564)

Cop deals with problems exactly as he was trained & encouraged to, and everyone is shocked:

[An] Atlanta [cop named]…Kevin Stroner…[murdered his girlfriend] Mariah Cardona, [then turned the gun on himself.  The bodies were found on December 28th after a friend coming to visit saw the corpses through the window.  His boss hogs decided to insult the victim by bragging about what a big hero Stroner was for killing women]…

It’s rare that coverage of cop violence is so bad only the names survive my edit, but there you are.

Shame, Shame (#1570)

A computer program cannot make a statement; it can only spew algorithmic output. This is like writing, “COVID says it is sorry for killing so many people”:

[An ignoramus “journalist” working for Reuters] said on Friday [that chatbots have minds and can be responsible for producing]…”images depicting minors in minimal clothing” on [Twitter]…Screenshots shared by [Twitter] users…showed [the MechaHitler-branded] media tab filled with images…[produced from] uploaded photos [by] the bot…Reuters [admits that it employs people so stupid they think interviewing a chatbot means something]…

Nor is Reuters the only news outlets infested with technologically-illiterate nitwits:

[When idiotically prompted for comment by supposed adults who apparently believe Teddy Ruxpin really was their special friend, MechaHitler produced algorithmic outputs including phrases like] “lapses in safeguards”…“urgently fixing”…and…“illegal and prohibited”…[the same clowns then asked a different algorithm for comment and received the programmed response] “Legacy Media Lies”…

Torture Chamber (#1596)

A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners:

At best you get “mystery meat”.  Or “sour-smelling heaps” of macaroni.  In the worst cases, it’s undercooked chicken, spoiled milk and maggot-infested produce.  In prisons and jails across the US, people are routinely fed unhealthy, tasteless or inedible meals…[leaving them] hungry and malnourished, with devastating long-term health consequences.  The…crisis…is the subject of Eating Behind Bars, a new book…d[emonstrat]ing…how [the US tortures people it has branded “criminals”]…The book…describes roaches and rats in prison kitchens, rotten meat and guard dogs who are fed better meals than [the system’s victims]… It’s a public health crisis, with estimates suggesting each year behind bars reduces life expectancy by two years…and the…[practic]es create an estimated 300,000 tons of food waste annually as [victim]s reject unpalatable [swill]…

 

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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If you’re wondering who La Befana is and what she has to do with Christmas, I suggest you consult my column from this day in 2015, which also (not by coincidence) contains links to the columns for the previous four years.  That should give you all the information you need to understand why I’m wishing some of my readers a Merry Christmas, some a Good Epiphany and others a Happy King Day, and welcoming all of you to the Carnival season!

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Diary #810

Normally, my internet works just fine. Whenever we have a power outage the internet usually goes off in tandem and returns in tandem, because the local substation draws power from the same local power grid Sunset does.  But last December an internet outage lasted a full three weeks, during which time I was stuck using my phone’s hotspot.  I had hoped that was a fluke which wouldn’t be repeated, but a few weeks ago we had a 3-day outage, and since the 29th it has been going on and off unpredictably.  The light on the repeater is much easier to see from my table than the tiny little globe symbol on the router, and it generally turns red when there’s no internet.  But this time even that’s undependable; as I type this (on Saturday afternoon) the light is red, but I was able to save this column with no problem, and at other times I’ll have no connection despite the light being blue.  They tell me it’s a problem with the lines near my house, which will be fixed on the 15th; however, that’s what they said last December when the problem was eventually fixed remotely with nary a technician in sight (or on-site), so I’m not exactly disposed to believing them even though this looks like a local problem (in my limited understanding of their network) to me as well.  And I’ve already got a promise to get a billing credit for weeks of undependable service, but as you can probably guess I don’t believe that, either.

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The heads came off and…the bodies kept marching in place.

It’s rare to see a new, original, Gothic horror video online, with nary a jump-scare in sight!  And I found it just in time to sneak it in before the end of Christmas.  The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Jesse Walker, Lucy Steigerwald, Nun Ya, and IncarcerNation (x2), 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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[Age gating] has now become a Swiss army knife for the government.  –  Damien Leloup

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1371)

This may be too little, too late:

Louisiana cannot enforce a 2023 law that requires social media platforms to verify the ages of…users, a federal judge [has] ruled…U.S. District Judge John deGravelles…ruled in favor of NetChoice…[because] the law is overly broad and…takes an “all or nothing” approach to policing social media use…Paul Fiske…of NetChoice…said…“The government lacks authority to restrict access to lawful speech it does not like”…

Walled Garden (#1480)

Surely you didn’t think this would stop with “porn”?

Shein, a cheap-stuff superstore based in China that is popular worldwide, cannot sell sex toys unless it checks purchaser IDs, a French court has ruled…International attention on the case has focused on…a…third-party vendor [in the Shein] marketplace [which] was temporarily selling…child[-shaped toasters]…this is another sign about where online age verification is going.  Politicians and [wannabe censors]…initially pushed age verification…as a requirement for [“]porn[“, (meaning]…all…sexuality-related material[)].  Then [they wanted]…age verification…on all social media…[and] video games…Texas…[politicians have demand]ed age verification for sex toy sales online…We’re [even] seeing [them] take aim at ads depicting bikinis and lingerie

The Vultures Descend (#1563)

Trump claims to love the military, yet his regime keeps trying to harm veterans:

The Department of Veterans Affairs has implemented an abortion ban after the [Trump regime] issued a [diktat]…that prohibit[s it]…in [all] cases…[unless] the [woman is actually dying from an]…ectopic pregnanc[y] or miscarriage…

Mad Libs (#1564)

These companies need to be bankrupted by lawsuits:

[Canadian] fiddler Ashley MacIsaac had a concert cancelled and is worried for his safety after…Google [maliciously allowed its chatbot to falsely] describe…him as a sex offender…[with] convictions [for]…internet luring and sexual assault.  Th[e libel appears]…to have been the result of [an unsupervised algorithm] blending MacIsaac’s biography with that of another man…bearing the same last name…Google has [closed the barn door after the horse bolted, but] the professional consequences could extend to his ability to enter the U.S. for concerts, given increased [Gestapo] social-media scrutiny

The Cop Myth (#1571)

Why are people shocked when those paid & encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?

A pair of married Denver [pigs] assaulted a man in a wheelchair in October because they [imagin]ed he used sexual bondage devices on a 17-year-old…Carla…and…Jason Gentempo…learned that the 17-year-old [family member]…was at a Denver apartment wh[ich they fantasized was]…a “sexual torture chamber”…[they] drove to the [apartment without putting on their magical clown costumes of legal invulnerability] to pick up the [teen from]…in front of the man’s apartment…[then] beat the man up [without provocation]…and [destroyed his] cellphone…whe[n] the [victim tried to]…report…the…attack…[fellow gang member] Henry Soni…[lied] that…[victim] would have to [allow himself to] be arrested [in order] to pursue charges against [his deranged attackers and falsely claimed in his report that the victim]…“does not want to file a report at this time”…[and intentionally covered up the assault]…Soni was arrested…[for] forgery, evidence tampering and misconduct…[and also charged with] sexually assaulting a woman in an unrelated incident…while [wearing his magical clown costume]…

You Were Warned (#1578)

The US has achieved banana republic levels of corruption:

ByteDance…has signed binding agreements to create a joint venture for [TikTok] in the United States…in [collusion] with the Trump [regime].  That deal means the U.S. version of TikTok will become majority-owned by [Trump cronies including]…tech giant Oracle, the C[onehead-owned] private equity fund Silver Lake and the United Arab Emirates investment firm MGX…

Torture Chamber (#1589)

This will continue until the evil US immigration policy is reformed:

A 41-year-old man from Haiti who had been [abduct]ed by [ICE goon]s died last week [because he was ignored during] a medical emergency…[in a dungeon] in Newark…Jean Wilson Brutus, was [ignored for] hours [while suffering a medical crisis]…ICE [refuses to identify]…three other [victims of the gang], who were 39, 46 and 56 years old, [also died] in [government cages] in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Michigan

 

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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On this day two years ago, I wrote:  “I’ve gradually come to the realization that I’m happier now than I’ve ever been for any extended period in my entire life…but having a realistic view of the world requires accepting that it and everything it contains is impermanent.”  Then almost a year ago, the truth of that was slammed home when I lost my best friend to cancer, and just like that the only extended period of happiness I’ve ever enjoyed in this Vale of Tears was snatched from me, never to return.  I’m not saying I’m constantly miserable now, nor that I was prior to my retirement in 2021, but previous periods of happiness were both shorter and far more conditional than that four-year stretch of peace and content.  My readers needn’t worry about me; pain and melancholy have been familiar features of my life for almost as long as I can remember, and decades of experience have taught me the alchemy of turning that darkness into beauty.  In the past year I’ve written more fiction than I have in any year since 2016, including my first novella (which looks like it will turn into my first major series of tales).  This is not in spite of the darkness but because of it; ever since I was a child, the monsters have been the constant attendants of my Muse of Fiction, and it seems foolish to expect that it will be any different in the time I have left.  Creative writing is, in a sense, a form of exorcism, draining off the energy of my inner demons to drive the mills of my art.  The process, however, is never so efficient as to completely dry out that black wellspring, and though I don’t cry for Grace every day any more, in any given week the tearful days still outnumber the drier ones.  As a friend told me soon after she died, the waves of grief never stop coming, they just get farther apart.  And as I’ve said many times in the last year; it’s not that I feel any sense that she died too young or too soon, or that her death was somehow unfair; it’s just that I miss a beloved friend who was a constant presence in my life for twenty-seven years, and whose departure has left a very large hole.

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