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Life with a Fast Brain

September 3, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

I’ve written before about the dark side of characteristics usually viewed as positive, pointing out that every deviation from balance has a cost.  The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as quickly; of course that means it lasts half as long, but it also means that other candles burn at half speed relative to it.  My thoughts race constantly; I’m usually well ahead of everyone else in figuring things out, and my reflexes are abnormally fast.  But have you ever considered what the world looks like when viewed from within such a nervous system?  Take traffic, for example; many people say I drive too fast, but from my vantage point most other people are driving much too slowly.  Anything slower than freeway speeds seems like crawling to me, and being trapped in a clump of people going below the speed limit makes me feel like I’m having one of those nightmares where you are moving in slow motion, and I get so nervous I can’t endure it for long without trying to find some way out of it.  When I’m doing physical work with other people, they often seem to me to be taking much too long, and with far too many breaks in which they sit still in a way I can’t manage without being sedated.  And then there are automated telephone systems, which to me seem something like this:

Thank.  You.  For.  Calling.  The.  Blank.  Ety.  Blank.  Office.  Lo.  Cated.  At.  The.  Inter.  Section.  Of.  Main.  Street.  And.  First.  Ave.  Nue.  In.  Snail.  Ville.  Wa.  Shing.  Ton.”

{long pause}

If.  This.  Is.  An.  E.  Mer.  Gen.  Cy.  Please.  Hang.  Up.  And.  Call.  Nine.  One.  One.

This.  Line.  Does.  Not.  Handle.  E.  Mer.  Gen.  Cies.

{very long pause}

If.  This.  Is.  Some.  Other.  Thing.  Please.  Call.  Our.  Other.  Line.  At.  Eight.  Zero.  Zero.  Five.  Five.  Five.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.   Exten.  Sion.  Six.  Seven.  Nine.

{pause so long I start saying “Hello?  Hello?”}

For.  The.  Least.  Con.  Ceive.  Ab.  Ly.  Use.  Ful.  Sel.  Ec.  Tion.  Press.  One.

For.  The.  Least.  Con.  Ceive.  Ab.  Ly.  Use.  Ful.  Sel.  Ec.  Tion.  Save.  The.  Pre. Cee.  Ding.  Press.  Two.

For.  Some.  Depart.  Ment.  You.  Never.  Heard.  Of.  Press.  Three.

As you might expect, by this part I’m about to scream and/or jump out of my skin, and I start repeatedly pressing zero, hoping it isn’t one of those systems where the operator is actually reached by pressing five or eight or whatever.  If I know or suspect it’s a voice-actuated system instead, I’m liable to start repeating “Agent. Agent. Agent. Agent.” every time the system starts to say anything, in hopes of getting to talk to someone before my phone runs out of power or I die of boredom, starvation, or old age, whichever comes first.

Anyhow, I think you probably get the picture.  And it may help you to comprehend why navigating bureaucratic systems is like some kind of exotic torture for me, and why it’s best for all involved if I work for myself.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

In the News (#1069)

September 2, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

America’s founding generation…knew their fair share of unwelcome constables.  –  Judge Justin Walker

Elephant in the Parlor (#832)

Remember this scandal?

A California Superior Court judge has ordered President Donald Trump to pay $44,100 to…Stormy Daniels, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement…[the suit ended when] Trump and his legal team agreed outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA.  The…claim…[was] ruled moot, as the NDA had been rendered unenforceable…Judge Robert Broadbelt III ruled that [Daniels] was entitled to legal fees, finding her the “prevailing party” under California law…

License to Rape (#940)

Let’s hope this means it’s going to get harder for cops to molest kids under the pretext of a “search”:

Holly Curry sued [a] cop and [a busybody bureaucrat who threatened their way into her home without a warrant and molested her children under the pretext of] investigat[ing her] for child abuse…[she argued] their behavior was so egregious, they had to take responsibility for it.  The judge agreed…and…[denied] them…[qualified] immunity.[because]… it was clear the government used an improper threat to enter the home, lacked any evidence that might have justified a strip search, and violated the children’s rights to bodily integrity…The investigator in the case testified that they “automatically strip search every child when they go into a home”…

I Spy (#966)

Any internet-connected device can be used to spy on you:

Amazon…received more than 3,000 requests for smart speaker user data from police…this year…[and] complied with…more than 2,000 occasions, forking over recordings and data that [let pigs eavesdrop on private conversations]…This number marks a 72% increase in these types of requests from the same period in 2016…Google’s Nest unit has also seen a similar spike in police demands for data from its [microphones]…Voice clips are…only the beginning…Police can also [ob]tain time-stamped logs of user activity…

Torture Chamber (#987)

This isn’t nearly enough, unless it’s drawn from the screws’ pension fund:

The [citizens] of Florida will [be forced by the state to] pay…$4.65 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by Cheryl Weimar, a…prison[er] who was paralyzed from the neck down after a brutal beating by [screws] last September…the payout…[is slightly] large[r]…[than] the…$4.5 million [given] to the family of Darren Rainey…who[m sadistic screws intentionally and maliciously] boiled to death in a rigged shower [in 2012]…Keith Turner, one of the [screws who maimed her]…was later arrested [for] molesting two minors and fired from the FDOC…[his accomplice Ryan Dionne was arrested in 2013 for domestic battery, yet] remains employed at the department…

All-Purpose Excuse (#1063)

Trumpists and anti-Trumpists continue to fight for control of the “sex trafficking” narrative:

A new report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offers a damning portrait of the people Donald Trump chose as his partners for potential projects in Russia.  They include…Tevfik Arif…[whom] the…committee…accus[ed of being…“involved in Russian…human trafficking…[because] he…brought ‘thousands’ of women into the United States, primarily from Ukraine”…and…Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov and his pop-singer son, Emin…who…“have been closely affiliated with individuals involved in…prostitution…and other significant criminal enterprises”…

The Implosion Begins

This is getting sweeter by the day:

Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory…marched in downtown Miami on [August 22nd] as part of a series of rallies stretching across Florida…some demonstrators held vague signs asking to “save our children,” [and] others hinted [th]at…the…underground human trafficking ring [of the myths so beloved by yellow journalists and anti-sex profiteers is actually] run by the country’s elite class…

The Implosion Begins (#1067)

Moral panics never end until they start harming those who weren’t their intended targets:

A Waco, Texas, woman [named Cecilia Fulbright]…motivated by the QAnon [branch of the popular “sex trafficking” delusion]…got behind the wheel of her car just after 9 a.m.​ [on August 19th] with the intent to “[save] a child” from “pedophiles”.  Fulbright…chased two strangers’ vehicles in an apparent attempt to ​hit them…the first vehicle was a catering truck driven by a woman with her ​minor daughter in the passenger’s seat.  They successfully evaded Fulbright…[who] then ​targeted a second unrelated ​vehicle, a Dodge Caravan ​driven by a 19-year-old college student​.  Fulbright chased ​the student into a parking lot​ where she cornered​ and repeatedly rammed ​the..van​…[cops] found Fulbright “crying hysterically” and yelling that the driver of the vehicle she attacked “was a pedophile and had kidnapped a girl for human trafficking”…her blood alcohol content was recorded as 0.21​ percent…

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Diary #531

September 1, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

I spent the better part of my Saturday and Sunday under Chekhov’s cottage, connecting the cables that will supply electricity to the outlets.   As you can see, it’s still pretty tight down there, but at least I can sit up without hitting my head very often; a few weeks ago someone asked why the deck was so high off the ground, and one of the reasons I gave him was, “I’ve never been in a crawlspace and said, ‘There’s too much room in here’.”  So, voila.  When I took this picture, I was in the middle of chasing down a short; it turned out that while cutting the conduit, I managed to cut into the insulation of one of the three cables in three separate places (I’m competent to do basic wiring, but at first I wasn’t really using the best tool for that particular job).  But eventually I got it all fixed, and now that I’ve done all the crawling around below the floor, Grace can wire the outlets themselves.  I’m in Seattle today, but I’ll be back at Sunset tomorrow, and in the next few days I’ll do the same for the second cottage.  And you can bet I’m going to be much more careful with sharp objects this time.

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Back Issue #86

August 31, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

Until…women present a unified front against collective ownership of our bodies, progress will be slow at best.  –  “What a Week!”

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Links #530

August 30, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

You have two things against you — you’re black and I have a badge.  –  Donald Kincaid

Vincent Price was never too proud or snobbish to appear in just about anything, including a plethora of TV commercials from the ’70s and ’80s; this one was from one of the first credit cards to offer reward points.  The links above the video were provided by Scott Greenfield, Rick Horowitz, Tim Cushing, Radley Balko, Mike Siegel, and Thaddeus Russell, in that order.

From the Archives

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In the News (#1068)

August 29, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

Traffickers aren’t sneaking into your home in the night and stealing your teen daughter from her bed.  –  Kip Hollenbeck

Finding What Isn’t There

Are some cops starting to abandon the “sex trafficking” myth?

[While “rescue” profiteers in] Spokane [keep spouting fantasies about hundreds of teenage “sex slaves” controlled by “pimps”]…Kip Hollenbeck, who heads up Spokane Police Department’s sex trafficking unit…estimates the average age of a prostitute in Spokane at about 30.  He said some three out of four people selling sex in Spokane are independent, meaning they keep their own money and don’t work through a pimp…they choose sex work when they find they can make significantly more money than working for minimum wage…FBI agents, who work with SPD, sees similar trends.  “We’re not seeing hundreds of juveniles being trafficked in our city, and we’ve got people whose full-time job is to look for that,” said [spook] Christian Parker…profit[eer]s’ [fantasies] that the vast majority of people [selling] sex are basically enslaved are “nothing like what we’re seeing”…Dramatic claims of women or girls kidnapped and chained up in basements are also false…

To Molest and Rape

Another rapist protecting and serving:

Desmond Ladon Logan, the [typical and representative] Chattanooga [cop] who admitted to raping three women [he had abducted] and [tortur]ing a…fourth [with a taser]…has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison…Logan stood before U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier and [claimed he]…”never hurt anyone [because obviously his victims wanted it]”…

A Broker in Pillage (#1012)

Nobody will be safe until this odious, contemptible practice is recognized as unconstitutional:

Tucson handyman Kevin McBride was hard at work one Friday last May when his girlfriend offered to get him a cold drink from a convenience store.  She took his Jeep, his sole means of transportation and the basis of his livelihood.  Then the cops [stole it]…and local prosecutors are…demanding a $1,900 ransom before he can get it back.  This sort of shakedown…is legal under Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture law [because] the cops [claim] McBride’s girlfriend…used his Jeep to sell a small amount of marijuana to a…[disguised, lying pig] for $25.  Although the charges against her were dropped, the Jeep is still being held…the Goldwater Institute is representing McBride pro bono, arguing that Arizona’s system of legalized theft violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process and the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines…

Rotting Fruit (#1015)

In which the old-fashioned act of paying for a son to lose his virginity to a sex worker is described as “sex trafficking”:

Peter Nygard, the 79-year-old Finnish-Canadian fashion designer, [h]as [been] sued…by two of his sons, who accused their father of sex trafficking, and claimed that he arranged for them both to be raped when they were underage.  The suit…comes just months after ten women and girls filed a sexual assault and trafficking lawsuit against Nygard…[his] sons…say that their father [hired]…a “known sex worker”…to…statutorily rape them when they were 14 and 15, respectively…

Losing Their Shit

Some states are doubling down on the dying myth:

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a new unit that will focus solely on [persecuting sex workers]…the new…Human Exploitation and Trafficking (HEAT) Unit….will focus on [hunting] commercial sex [workers] and…[locking up consenting] adult[s]…

Loose Cannons (#1054)

Court declares that illegal surveillance is illegal:

A Florida appeals court ruled…that police violated the rights of…Robert Kraft and others when they secretly video recorded them paying for massage parlor sex acts, barring the tapes’ use at trial and dealing a potentially deadly blow to their prosecution…Prosecutors will likely appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court…and…State deputy solicitor general Jeffrey DeSousa argued that police and prosecutors [shoul]d [be allowed to do whatever they like, no matter how illegal] to convict [massage parlor] owners of felonies…because…sex…

Social Distancing (#1054)

“Equality minister” is European Prohibitionese for “chief anti-sex bureaucrat”:

Spain’s Equality Minister Irene Montero…called on the country’s regional governments to order the closure of all brothels [under the guise of] avoid[ing] coronavirus infections…Montero made her request via a letter sent to the regions’ equality chiefs [rather than public health officials], and called on them to take specific measures for the sex trade…[which she referred to as] “sexual exploitation”…

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Annex 14

August 28, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

Heavy rain last Thursday and Friday slowed us down, but we were still able to get the foundation for the cottage finished by dinnertime Saturday, at which point I took this picture.  We had already done all of the joists on Thursday before the rain started in earnest, then on Saturday I got all the green foundation boards in place.  It was mostly a one-person job, so while I worked Chekhov started staging all the parts for the second cottage nearby (just out of the frame to the left).  Meanwhile, Grace was taking measurements and making calculations for the roof, which we plan to start in the next couple of weeks.  On Sunday we got started on the lower part of the cottage walls, and this time I decided to do the porch as part of the first day of work so we’d have a place to stand instead of having to put down boards and plywood to stand upon.  Then all this week we worked on the cottage with the help of my usual hired man and a friend of his; the wages for the second helper were provided by a generous donation from one of my gentlemen.  I really want to get the roof in place before the rainy season really gets going in the autumn, so the gift of funds for the second helper were very much appreciated; next week you’ll see the results!

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(State) Violence Against Women

August 27, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

Every so often a story comes along that demands too long a quote, and covers too many categories, to fit neatly into a news column.  The always-awesome Elizabeth Nolan Brown recently published such an article; though at first glance it belongs in “Top Cop“, it also covers a great deal of material I’d file under “Greeks Bearing Gifts” and “Counterfeit Comfort“, and…oh, to Hell with the introduction; here’s a generous taste:

…Kamala Harris…is currently painting herself as a criminal justice reformer.  Last night, a voiceover introducing Harris even described her as having fought “to end mass incarceration.”  That would be news to the countless Californians she fought to lock up or keep locked up…Harris’s record as a “progressive prosecutor” is one of continually cracking down harder on “quality of life crimes” like drug use, prostitution, and truancy.  Overall, Democrats seem confused about which way they want to go on law and order issues.  The 2020 convention has seen some nods to “racial justice,” policing…and Black Lives Matter, but…even as Democrats make nods to change, Harris, Biden, and other prominent party members speak of new arrest and incarceration regimes they want to put in place—for guns, for speech, for sex, and more.  Out of one side of their mouths, they talk of ending racist and discriminatory policing and our over-reliance on jails and prisons…but out of the other side of their mouths, they push policies that would lead to more surveillance…more ways to extract fines from people and cage them, more reason for contact between law enforcement and those they’re policing, and more opportunities for violence, abuse, and targeted harassment of ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual minorities…

…various voiceovers and speakers mentioned Joe Biden’s role in the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act—widely considered one of the biggest policy disasters in modern U.S. history and a huge driver of our country’s mass incarceration problem.  Of course, they didn’t mention the crime bill by name, just one specific part of it:  The Violence Against Women Act…several aspects of [which] were just as problematic as the rest of the cursed legislation.  Along with the Jacob Wetterling Act, a component of the ’94 crime bill that required the creation of sex offender registries, the VAWA “laid the foundation of the current, overwhelmingly carceral—and increasingly overwrought—response to sexual violence,” write Judith Levine and Erica Meiners in their new book, The Feminist and the Sex Offender…Among VAWA’s “chief provisions were mandatory arrest in domestic violence situations…and ‘no drop’ prosecution, which prohibited the alleged victim from retracting charges…some [prosecutors]…began to subpoena women to testify against their partners or jails them until they comply…child protective services sometimes charge mothers with neglect or ‘failure to supervise’ for allowing the children to witness their mother’s abuse“…(Aya Gruber’s new book, The Feminist War on Crime, is a great place to read more about all this…

Americans’ addiction to Manichean thinking, one-size-fits-all pseudo-egalitarianism, and worship of authority figures has created this mess, and no politician has the ability to end it…especially because they’re highly motivated to continue it so as to increase their own wealth, power, and social capital.

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In the News (#1067)

August 26, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

Prohibitions don’t eliminate things. They drive them underground.  –  Jeffrey Miron

Welcome To Our World

You mean laws can’t stop consensual business transactions? Who would have thought?

…underground gyms appear to be popping up everywhere, from LA to New Jersey…Governments can legislate all they want, but prohibiting stuff with eager buyers and sellers is super hard…and…When markets get pushed underground, quality control tends to go down. In the case of drugs, this means potentially finding rat poison in your weed.  When it comes to gyms in the COVID-19 era, it means potentially creating fitness environments that are even more likely to spread the virus than if they were legal and regulated…

Give Them an Inch…

European anti-migration policies grow steadily more horrible:

At least 1,072 migrants were sailed to the edge of Greece’s water territory on inflatable life rafts and abandoned by Greek authorities…[one of the victims reported] that on July 26, she and 22 others including babies were taken by masked Greek officials from a detention centre on…Rhodes while it was dark outside….they were left on a “rudderless, motorless life raft” and were later rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard…abandon[ing] migrants at sea is illegal under international law…François Crépeau, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants [called the act]…”a human rights and humanitarian disaster”…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#933)

I love it when they feed on their own:

…[Florida cop] Stephen Utter…was arrested this month for trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex…Utter was made immediately aware of the [fictional] girl’s age before he began to sexually groom…a cop [fantasy roleplaying] an actual child…Utter sent explicit messages detailing the sexual acts he wished to perform…Once he’d incriminated himself enough, police moved in to arrest him…

Saving Them From Themselves (#987)

Georgia pigs are especially enthusiastic about destroying young people’s lives for the terrible “crime” of looking at pictures:

On the second day of virtual classes for Henry County schools, the county’s police department [issued a threat to] students…“If you stream pornography in an online class…the…Sheriff’s Office will find you and charge you with life-[destroying] charges…[including] child pornography [and] child molestation [?]…and [you will be condemned] to [the]…sex offender [registry]”…

I Spy (#1014)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

A newly released document shows the U.S. Secret Service went through a…social media surveillance company to purchase the location information on American’s movements, no warrant necessary.  Babel Street is a shadowy organization that offers a product called Locate X that…gather[s supposedly] anonymized location data from a host of popular apps that users have unwittingly installed on their phones…U.S. Customs and Border Protection ha[s] a contract to use Locate X and…the Secret Service ha[s] used…it…[since at least] September 28, 2017…

Guinea Pigs (#1018) 

Courtesy of Tryst, here’s Maya Morena on the gang of malignant sociopaths called Deliverfund:

DeliverFund is a…private intelligence agency that provides data to [cops]…they combine counterterrorism (War on Terror), anti-drug, anti-immigrant, and anti-poverty tactics to target the sex industry…[and] track sex workers online…[one of their collaborators is] ShadowDragon, which…[scrapes] escort sites [to] collect data [from] sex worker’s advertisements to [give it to cops, usin the excuse that]…”they’re all secretly controlled by traffickers”…To them we aren’t really people who need to work, to pay bills and live, we are examples of human trafficking…

The Implosion Begins

The Democrats won’t admit that they are just as responsible for this as the GOP:

QAnon [follower] Alpalus Slyman pushed his Honda Odyssey past 110 mph while his five children screamed in the back…and [cops]…pursued him…[he prayed to] Donald Trump…on a livestream [and shouted]… “QAnon, help me!”…Slyman appears to have been convinced …that the police were coming to abduct [his children]…after he accused [one daughter] and his wife…of being agents of the [“sex trafficking”] cabal that QAnon believers say controls the world…he…told his children, who ranged from 8 months to 13 years old…that a video of Hillary Clinton and aide Huma Abedin eating childrens’ brains was discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop…the chase only ended when Slyman crashed into a [copmobile]…then drove his minivan into a tree…His five children were unharmed…a group of QAnon believers are now actively encouraging parents estranged from their children to steal those children back from child protective services…

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Diary #530

August 25, 2020 by Maggie McNeill

On Thursday morning I woke up at Sunset, came downstairs, looked out the back door and immediately turned on my phone to catch this picture.  Orville used to pass directly through this area on his way to look for green apples falling from the tree, but he quickly discovered that he didn’t especially like what we’ve put in his way.  He hasn’t tried it again since; I don’t think he liked coming down the ramp.  And once the roof and walls are in place, he won’t be able to get in anyway.  Besides, not many apples fall directly onto the deck (though I had an Isaac Newton experience on Sunday).  But while the apples aren’t yet ripe, the plums definitely are; I made a cobbler Sunday evening, and I think I’m going to make jam this coming weekend.  It looks as though we’ll be finished most of the second cottage by Friday, and I don’t need to return to Seattle until Monday, and we aren’t yet ready to start on the roof just yet.  And it’ll be nice to have homemade jam again for the first time since I left Oklahoma.

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