I’m not sure why Amazon decided people who send gifts from others’ wishlists don’t need to be thanked, but that’s exactly what it has done. It used to be possible to send a sender a “Thank You” email, which may be superfluous if the sender and recipient know each other in real life, but is very important to those of us who receive gifts from those who admire our work online. For several years now, though, I had noticed that though it was still possible to send such a message, the gift sender rarely received it. Then some months ago I realized it was no longer possible to even send one; when I got three anniversary gifts recently, I decided to dig through the “wishlist help” to see if they’d merely hidden the function in some submenu somewhere. But no; I soon found a clear statement that it was not possible to send it at all. So I really hope the readers who sent me a DVD of Sinners, a collection of four Kurt Vonnegut novels, and The Lensman Anthology, all see this and accept my thanks for your generosity; I never want anyone to think I take such gifts for granted, even if Amazon believes such respect for one’s audience is somehow outmoded.
Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
Diary #838
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged imaginative fiction, internet, Presents, psychology on July 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Diary #837
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on July 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I wanted to show y’all how big the turkey has grown; remember that when he arrived he wasn’t much bigger than the other chicks. That’s one of the other chickens who were still inside when he arrived in front of him in the video, so you can clearly see the difference. Of course as soon as I came outside with my phone he refused to either strut or vocalize, despite doing both regularly nearly every time I go into the coop; maybe I’ll get a video later so you can get the full effect. Just before I took this video I found the first pullet egg inside the henhouse, so all four of the new arrivals should be starting soon. I’ve already got lots of little green tomatoes, and it looks like my fruit trees and vines will be productive this year; given the forecast for the rest of this month, and the fact that we’ve only had a couple of days that could be called “hot” this year, it looks like it’s going to be a cool summer, more like the prevailing norms for the last few centuries. And I’m quite content with that; given the troubles of the world at large, it’s comforting for at least the natural conditions to be normal.
Links #836
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged acting, cops, disease, Mexico, Michigan, New Orleans, politicians, video, Washington DC on July 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »
She is not only vastly stupid, but also vastly lazy. – W.A. Mozart
There was no way I was going to feature anything by the Village People over one of my favorite songs (which I’ve somehow never featured), sung by Bonnie Tyler but written by the legendary Jim Steinman. The links above it were provided by T. Greg Doucette; Kevin Wilson; Mike Siegel; Jesse Walker; Dan Savage ; Radley Balko; and Mike Masnick, in that order.
- Metaphor alert.
- The new “Adolf”.
- Cops really hate being outdone.
- Seven lost Mozart compositions.
- R.I.P. Victor Willis and Bonnie Tyler.
- Cops are consistently a menace to society.
- There is still occasional good news, at least in STEM.
From the Archives
- There are a few judges willing to block “monkey see, monkey do” parades.
- Was this the person who sent me the proof of Ashley Madison’s con game?
- Crypto-moralists want people to fear even moderate alcohol consumption.
- I’m sure they helpfully yelled “Stop faking!” at him whenever he coughed.
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- Another of the people the government empowers to police your sexuality.
- While sex work is marginalized, sex workers will be targeted for violence.
- Politicians are avid devotees of cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
- If prohibitionists want to “rescue” whores, why shut us out of other jobs?
- It’s only been 4 years since the UK lost in court the last time it tried this.
- What so-called “AI” is actually best at is parting fools from their money.
- Mexican cops are more concerned about sex workers than US cops are.
- Erosion of civil liberties starts with “undesirables”; it never stops there.
- New tyrannies are often tested first on whores, but never stop with us.
- One of the people the government empowers to police your sexuality.
- What loser would pay to talk to computer programs posing as people?
- It’s not like 2011 is ancient history, or Florida far away from Georgia.
- Cops will continue to do this until there are criminal penalties for it.
- Politicians recognize bank blacklisting when it affects their cronies.
- Kansas courts aren’t allowing politicians to circumvent the voters.
- This surveillance is only “mandatory” for adults ignorant of VPNs.
- Cops, religion, Spencer Milligan, Shelley Duvall, and much more.
- An attempt to push back the swelling tide of adult infantilization.
- There is no part of this reeking pile of shit that fails to be stupid.
- Another attempt to use antique laws to ban abortion is foiled.
- My thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth anniversary columns.
- Naturally, because it’s cops’ job to cause harm, not reduce it.
- Cops, satire, Jim Shooter, Michael Madsen, and much more.
- There’s a reason I’ve repeatedly called this cult “dangerous”.
- Even the distancing “former” is the same as for rapist cops.
- Wave bye-bye to the last remaining shreds of your privacy.
- A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners.
- The first installment of my Throwback Thursday feature.
- Cops, crypto-moralism, Balkanization, and much more.
- Using crypto-moralism as an excuse to rob businesses.
- I was in this Hulu documentary about Ashley Madison.
- The only thing LLMs can actually process is language.
- Unfortunately, this is all we could expect right now.
- “YES, this really is a djinni who can grant wishes!”
- Another sign that the moral panic is largely over.
- Nosy authoritarians hoist with their own petard.
- There will never be another day like this again.
- Sleeping with cops isn’t safe for men, either.
- Words fail me in the face of such barbarity.
- When Jimmy Swaggart departed for Hell.
- A cop posing as a masseur is still a cop.
- How Cicero and Louie keep their cool.
- A shortcut to LLM-induced psychosis.
- This is a cop’s idea of “friendship”.
- Installing the atrium chimney.
- Throwback Thursday Girl.
- Far too little, far too late.
- The Curse of Fridaystein.
- My recipe for crumpets.
- Fascism in action.
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!
Sixteenth Anniversary
Posted in Biography, History, Philosophy, tagged artificial stupidity, blogging, internet, language, psychology, Walled Garden on July 10, 2026| 1 Comment »
I’ll keep going, just as I always do and always have done, until the day finally arrives when I no longer have to. – “Fifteenth Anniversary”
Sixteen years is a long time by internet reckoning; some of y’all reading this may not have yet learned to read when I started it in 2010, and even I barely remember some of the topics I covered in the first few years because they have since faded from the public consciousness. I daresay very few people were reading this blog on phones in 2010; now I suspect most read it that way. That is, most of those who still read it at all; before the enshittification of Google I averaged some 3000 visits per day, and now 500 is a good day. Of course, that’s not only due to Google; as I wrote three years ago, “the world and the culture have changed quite a bit since I started this project, and in a world of YouTube and TikTok, blogs are beginning to look as quaint as radio shows did in 1959.” But being considered “quaint” doesn’t actually bother me; after all, 25 years ago I was driving around in this car (though the dress and boots were already about ten years old then; if you’ve ever wondered how long I’ve been doing the snakeskin prints, now you know). This blog is on WordPress rather than Substack or whatever has replaced it in popularity, and my email address is on Earthlink. My books are still intended to be read on paper; the Kindle versions are an afterthought I only create to please those readers who prefer electronic texts. And in philistine circles, even writing essays oneself rather than attaching one’s name to something shat out by a computer program is considered hopelessly passé. You know what I think of all that? My 40-years-younger self would’ve rolled her eyes and dismissively said, “Whatever”. Because I plan to keep doing things the way I prefer doing them until I either croak or the increasing walled-gardening of the internet makes it impossible.
Diary #836
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, holidays, psychology, Sunset on July 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
My friend Sophie is very ill, so a little over a week ago she asked if I’d sit her dog Hallie. Though Hallie is a great big bitch and has a few odd personality quirks, she is a frequent visitor to Sunset and mostly knows how to behave herself out here. Also, Axel is her buddy and she generally follows his lead, so sometime after sunrise I let them out, then go back to bed and let them in again when I get up around 9. They’re both older dogs (Axel is 10 and Hallie 11 or 12), so about three hours of running around in the dewy, dewy grass is generally sufficient exercise, and they mostly just lounge and nap the rest of the day. Alas, it was different on the night of the 4th; though Trip prefers to spend 95% of his time outside, he is terribly afraid of fireworks, so as soon as they start he wants to be inside. But even inside, he gets spooked when the noise peaks, so on Saturday night the only way to keep him from running around, knocking breakables over, was to invite him onto the couch where I could pet him while assuring him that Danger Man would protect us from the scary noises (in all seriousness, I think the TV sound helped drown out the pops, cracks, and booms). Axel jumped up right beside him, which meant Hallie spent the next several hours in an elaborate dance: stand around looking forlorn until I tell her to lie down, then look at me as though she doesn’t understand until I point to the easy chair. Then get in the chair; lie contentedly for about 15 minutes; get up to wander around aimlessly until I tell her to lie down; lie on the floor for about 10 minutes; get up again and wander around aimlessly a bit more; then go back to looking forlorn and start the cycle again. Oh, well, it was only one night; the rest of the time, dogsitting is an easy way to help a friend, and barely even impacts my schedule.
Links #835
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged acting, Aphrodite, archeofeminism, artificial stupidity, cops, Florida, Mississippi, psychology, robots, Texas, video, Washington (state) on July 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »
You owe me lunch. – “Officer” Caleb Pomazon
Today’s video was called to my attention by Jessica Crabbit on Whores’ Day, but this is the first time I’ve had space for it. The links above it were provided by Dan Savage, The Onion, Jesse Walker, Kevin Wilson, Phoenix Calida, Nun Ya, and IncarcerNation, in that order.
- R.I.P. Ann Blyth and Penelope Keith.
- Sometimes The Onion isn’t really satire.
- Zappa had the courage of his convictions.
- Another great moment in artificial stupidity.
- Why is this reporter fixated on the smoking?
- Just another cop demonstrating exactly what he is.
- Crime: shoplifting diapers. Penalty: summary execution of baby.
From the Archives
- Pregnant women & new mothers are uniquely vulnerable to state coercion.
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- How long will Western society allow cops to terrorize traumatized women?
- “Claiming age verification preserves online anonymity doesn’t make it so“.
- SCOTUS isn’t quite ready to allow full-on government censorship just yet.
- I’m fine with this as long as it’s only tech companies harming each other.
- Cop violence is never limited to members of the public, nor to male cops.
- Maine defines women as moral imbeciles, and men as our moral betters.
- It’s too bad most authoritarian diktats don’t blow up in politicians’ faces.
- Cop deals with problems as he was trained to, and everyone is shocked.
- “Rescue” profiteers demand government conjure “victims” from thin air.
- SCOTUS rules that the First Amendment does not apply on the internet.
- Contradictory laws are an inevitable result of rampant authoritarianism.
- The first prosocial application of facial recognition technology I’ve seen.
- Pretexts for this would not remain limited to “child porn” & “terrorism”.
- Microsoft makes censorship easier, when it should be making it harder.
- This is what Pride should be: a gigantic “fuck you” to authoritarianism.
- Cops will ignore the Constitution until doing so is actually criminalized.
- Schools could best help the US by actually teaching basic math again.
- The New Orleans city council rewards the NOPD for criminal behavior.
- One of those fools who thinks anything involving gadgets is laudable.
- Cops, pizza, Julian Sands, Sue Johanson,Alan Arkin, and much more.
- shitty laws were used against an actual violent criminal for a change.
- Societies’ tendency to self-lobotomize will probably never be solved.
- “Search” is the most common government euphemism for “molest”.
- He wasn’t a “former” cop when he repeatedly raped a teenage girl.
- There is no “intelligence” in an automated high-resolution scanner.
- Note that cases of actual coercion don’t look much like the myths.
- A short EN Brown piece on the legacy of the Assange persecution.
- This will continue until the evil US immigration policy is reformed.
- Retrospectives of my blogging from June 2013, 2014, and 2015.
- Cops still use laws overturned in 2003 to harass gay men today.
- Unfortunately, a new Chromebook means more enshittification.
- One reason I added on to my house was to host guests at will.
- Your “leaders” work hard to ensure this happens more often.
- Cops, insects, Gailard Sartain, Bill Moyers, and much more.
- Your “leaders” call this “correction”, but you don’t have to.
- Crypto-moralists believe anything people enjoy is “unsafe”.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, Kinky Friedman, and much more.
- I’m happy to have been proven wrong about her chances.
- Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors.
- Cops are not known for intelligence and good judgment.
- In surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- Another of the many reasons not to play with chatbots.
- Good grief, don’t volunteer to be around them either.
- It’s rare that a rapist cop stops at only a few victims.
- The headline writer omitted the word “temporarily”.
- My three previous columns for Independence Day.
- Oh look, another “youth pastor”, what a surprise.
- Anyone “shocked” by this must live in a cave.
- Nearing the end of my annex project.
- The Wedding of Throwback Thursday.
- Good riddance to bad rubbish.
- Expanding my chicken yard.
- The Return of Fridaystein.
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!
The World of Throwback Thursday
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged activism, blogging, censorship, consensual crime, cops, fascism, games, holidays, law, lawheads, LGBT rights, politicians, psychology, universal criminality, weaponry on July 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I liked Pride so much better when it was one day celebrated by grass-roots organizations than a whole month ballyhooed by major corporations with rainbow-hued consumer goods, and with hypocritical expressions of solidarity from politicians and cops.
– “June is Tweeting Out All Over”
One…aspect of my neuroatypicality…[is] that…[I] spend [a lot of] time composing and performing a kind of music only I can hear.
– “The Music in the Numbers”
Unfortunately, societies’ tendency to self-lobotomize into stagnation and decay is something that will almost certainly never be solved.
– “The Eternal Frontier”
The only moral form of warfare is War of Assassins, in which the only combatants and the only legitimate targets are the rulers, their henchmen, and their agents. – “War of Assassins“
Diary #835
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, psychology, Sunset on June 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I’m pleased to report that Axel is completely off of the trazodone which the shelter had him on. When I first got him at the end of November, he was on 400mg/day, an immense dose for a 20kg animal. So I immediately started weaning him off, at first reducing the dose by 50mg/day every week, then once we were down to 100mg/day slowing the reduction to 25mg/day every few weeks. At the end of April he was down to 25mg/day, then for all of May 12.5mg/day, and then at the beginning of June I started skipping days between doses; since I saw no difference in his behavior between med days and no-med days, his last dose was a week ago, Monday the 22nd, and he’s just fine. He no longer chases the cats or snaps at strangers, and he isn’t nearly as high-strung as he was just a few months ago; about the only relics of his former problems are a tendency to eat cat shit (I know it isn’t an unusual dog behavior, but I’ve never owned a dog that did it before) and some separation anxiety. He no longer gets upset when he doesn’t see me, unless I go off in a car; when I get back, even if I’m only gone for a couple of hours, he cries and runs around when I return until I pet him and calm him down. Given that I was told his first owner died when he was seven, my guess is that the owner went off to the hospital in a car and never came back, so he is afraid when I leave in a car. But other than those comparatively minor issues, I’d say he has passed his good boy tests with flying colors, and demonstrated that he was exactly the right choice to bring into our Sunset family.
Links #834
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged acting, cops, disease, drugs, Georgia, lawyers, Michigan, Never Call the Cops, New York, prisons, The Punitive Mindset, video on June 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »
They were having a pancake and sushi luncheon.
I was not familiar with Ibrahim’s work, but I quite liked this piece Jesse Walker selected to accompany his obituary. The other links above the video were provided by IncarcerNation, Nun Ya, Mike Siegel, T. Greg Doucette, Radley Balko, Missy Mariposa, and IncarcerNation again, in that order.
- No, your reason is not an exception.
- Dr. Lilly never considered this possibility.
- R.I.P. Abdullah Ibrahim and Daveigh Chase.
- Cops are a menace to everyone in their vicinity.
- More cops demonstrating exactly what they are.
- Every once in a while, justice makes an appearance.
- Crime: suspected petty theft. Penalty: summary execution.
From the Archives
- Everyone who spread “sex trafficking” hysteria contributed to this tragedy.
- Vast sums of time, money & energy, flushed down the “culture war” toilet.
- Why do we need “permits” to exercise our speech rights in the first place?
- Both sides in the culture war have completely taken leave of their senses.
- Cops won’t drop this fantasy until “reporters” stop obediently parroting it.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, Donald Sutherland, Martin Mull, and much more.
- “Inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” = “molesting a 12 YO”.
- Australia expands Drug War, feigns surprise at predictable consequences.
- The government thinks you shouldn’t be allowed any privacy whatsoever.
- How much will the ER cost when someone punches you for filming them?
- Keep plunging that ice pick in; the bad thoughts will go away eventually.
- These algorithms make those who use them as stupid as the algorithms.
- Cops aren’t the only violent trade whose members feel sexually entitled.
- To “admit” something is to confess to something true, not to a delusion.
- I doubt this is the kind of lawsuit Louisiana politicians wanted to attract.
- Cops simply ignore putative cop-control laws without criminal penalties.
- Canadian politicians ignore events in other parts of the Commonwealth.
- France’s lust to spy on citizens and censor the internet hits an obstacle.
- One who ruins lives over arbitrary diktats trips up over a similar diktat.
- Cops, fantasies, Sheldon Harnick, John Goodenough, and much more.
- This silly tale is more pathetic now that the trope has largely died off.
- This barbarity began using the excuse of “fighting human trafficking”.
- Kool-Aid drinking politicians refuse to believe their own experiences.
- Are there actually naifs who believe speed traps are about “safety”?
- This is too useful a tool of state control for the rulers to give it up.
- One of the most flagrant abusers of this unconstitutional practice.
- Corporations have become the favored tool of censors worldwide.
- It’ll take a lot more such rulings before this political fad is buried.
- Reporter tries to bury the lede; headline writer won’t participate.
- Uber already encourages its drivers to spy on riders for the pigs.
- Seems like a significant fraction of child porn is spread by cops.
- The claims in these nuisance lawsuits are increasingly absurd.
- Assange was freed as soon as it became politically expedient.
- When a woman dies by hanging, it’s nearly always a murder.
- Even cops are starting to admit Shotspotter is a boondoggle.
- Chinese rename other people’s villages against their wishes.
- Composing and performing a kind of music only I can hear.
- Don’t think this will only be used to persecute the “other”.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, Dr. Demento, and much more.
- The dystopian future of Minority Report has arrived.
- The only moral form of warfare is War of Assassins.
- Just another kind of cop, with typical cop behavior.
- A curated selection of tweets from June 2024.
- Prohibitionism is a dangerous mental illness.
- Throwback Thursday’s Bloody Nightmare.
- The annex bathroom is almost finished.
- No shit. Sensible people did tell y’all.
- It wasn’t the best year for tomatoes.
- The tiniest pullet egg I’ve ever seen.
- Throwback Thursday’s Great Love.
- Working on Sunset’s outbuildings.
- Your “leaders” at work.
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!
The Vanishing Canals
Posted in Biography, History, tagged New Orleans, psychology, The Big Boom on June 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I’ve always loved maps, from old-time gas-station road maps to historical maps to maps of imaginary places. As a child, I delighted in preparing maps of places I’d dreamed up for make-believe play, and in my teens that turned into preparing maps for the world of my D&D campaign, ranging from dungeons my players would explore all the way up to the entire world they lived in. And though I rarely draw my own any more, I’m still always excited to find maps which show me something I didn’t know before, or at least didn’t know in sufficient detail. Case in point, the map at right, which some of y’all may recognize as depicting the western half of New Orleans; the part that was important to me is a small detail which those of y’all unfamiliar with New Orleans history may not recognize as interesting without explanation.
Last month I wrote about discovering a guide (including maps) to New Orleans’ extensive streetcar system of the early 20th century. But before the streetcars there were canals, leading from the then-much-smaller city through the swamps to the north, ending in Lake Pontchartrain (which connects to the Gulf of Mexico through a tidal channel named The Rigolets). I always knew about the New Basin Canal because it was not filled in until the 1940s, and in my youth I knew several older folks who remembered it. But in one of those strange oversights which often affect even people with relatively sharp minds, it had never occurred to me to ask where the Old Basin Canal had been! Furthermore, I never realized just how far the New Basin Canal came into the city until I found this map while researching for The Big Boom. If you zoom in you’ll see a straight channel running from the end of Bayou St. John (the wriggly thing just to the right of the map’s centerline), labeled “Carondelet Canal“. That’s what it was officially named from 1794 until the 1830s, when people started calling it the “Old Basin Canal” in contrast with the newly-completed New Basin Canal. If you look at a modern map of New Orleans, you can see a narrow strip of green running from Louis Armstrong Park to the end of the Bayou (very close to where I lived from 2004-2006, incidentally); that’s the former route of the canal, which was filled in by the city in the 1920s after the new Industrial Canal opened in 1923. The famous Basin Street of Storyville fame and jazz legend was named for the turning basin at the terminus, just north of the Vieux Carre.
That was exciting enough, but the part I got really jazzed about (ahem) was realizing that the New Basin Canal went so far into the city. If any of y’all have ever driven on West End Blvd in New Orleans, you’ve probably been impressed with its incredibly wide neutral ground (grassy median); the reason it’s that wide is it’s the filled-in route of the canal. But at the foot of that Boulevard, where it meets I-10 today, the canal once jogged over and continued almost to the river. After the canal was closed in the late 1940s, the Pontchartrain Expressway was built over the route in the 1950s; in the 1960s the expressway became part of I-10. The area of the filled-in turning basin was used by the city for storage until the late ’60s, when it was decided to build the Superdome there. So if you ever drive through New Orleans toward the Superdome on I-10 coming from the direction of the airport, you’re following a transportation corridor which has been there for just short of 200 years, only now on land rather than water.
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