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In the News (#1502)

January 8, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

This…law…put website operators at risk of criminal prosecution for something as trivial as a mention of the human nipple.  –  Alison Boden

Unchristian Nation

Government thugs continue their crusade against Christian charity:

Annunciation House [is] a nonprofit that shelters and aids migrants…. in…El Paso…Its mission is “to provide hospitality and accompaniment for the poor in migration”…and…it has helped “hundreds of thousands of refugees” since its founding…[but psychopathic] Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton…launched a…[harassment campaign against] Annunciation House…and demanded the nonprofit turn over huge amounts of documentation about its immigrant clients…then…sought an injunction to stop what it [claims is]…”systemic criminal conduct”…[by] “a criminal enterprise”…In July, a state district court judge strongly rebuked that argument, calling Paxton’s actions “outrageous and intolerable”…But that hasn’t stopped Paxton, who hasn’t just continued his pursuit of Annunciation House but is targeting other nonprofits that assist immigrants…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1424)

Politicians no longer care if their laws are unconstitutional:

A Tennessee District court…blocked the state’s age-verification law…from going into effect on January 1, following a motion…by Free Speech Coalition…[which] is [also] challenging similar laws in Louisiana, Texas, Utah, Indiana, Montana, and Florida.  The Texas case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, will be heard by the United States Supreme Court on January 15…

Shifting the Blame (#1448)

It looks like this monster may turn out to be the best witness against himself:

Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is being charged with a seventh murder: the November 2000 death of Valerie Mack…a…New Jersey…sex work[er]….based on evidence…found on an electronic device seized from Heuermann’s home…Heuermann kept detailed notes about serial killings, body disposal and torture pornography…

I Spy (#1478)

If “official” busybodies can spy on you via your car, so can unofficial ones:

For months, the location information of around 800,000 electric Volkswagen vehicles was available online due to…the software running inside Volkswagen vehicles [which] could’ve allowed a bad actor [such as cops or spooks] to trace a driver’s exact movements…the vulnerability…also affects EVs from Volkswagen-owned car brands…including Audi, Seat, and Skoda…Cariad, the Volkswagen subsidiary behind the automaker’s software, made it possible for an[y busybody] to find and access driver data housed in Amazon’s cloud storage service…includ[ing] details about when [vehicles] were switched on and off, along with the emails, phone numbers, and addresses of drivers in some cases.  It included the “precise” locations of about 460,000 vehicles…“accurate to within ten centimeters” for Volkswagen and Seats vehicles, and within 10km…for Audi and Skoda models…

Vulture Watching (#1485)

Oh look, the totally-predictable results of bad laws are happening just as sane people said they would:

A quarter century ago, prompted by a spate of abandoned babies in Houston, [Texas] became the first [state] in the [US] to pass a safe haven law allowing parents to relinquish newborns at designated places — [supposedly] without questions or risk of prosecution.  Yet [such] surrenders remain rare [because Texas’ psychopathic politicians regularly demonstrate that they cannot be trusted in any matter involving pregnancy]…Statewide…at least 18 babies have been abandoned this year…A decade ago, the number was seven…

Shame, Shame (#1494)

Zuckerberg is out of his mind:

[Facebook has deluded itself into believ]ing that characters generated by [computers] will fill its social media platforms in the next few years]…“in the same way that accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, [Computer Cartoon Czar] at [Facebook].  “They’ll have [invented] bios and [fake] profile pictures and be able to [make up the same kind of bizarre nonsense we’ve come to expect from ML systems]…that’s where we see all of this going”…He said hundreds of thousands of [such] characters have already been created…but most users have kept them private so far…social media companies have been racing to [cram] the latest generative [algorithms] into products as a way of [enabling the wealthy to access creativity while denying to the actually creative the means to access wealth]…Snapchat rolled out…[computer cartoon] characters…[and] TikTok is piloting a suite of products called Symphony, which enables brands and creators to use [computer-generated] advertising [schlock]…

Thought Control (#1500)

In other words, the text of this law can be summarized as “Free speech for me, but not for thee”:

The Canyon Independent School District in Texas…pulled the Bible from school library shelves [last] month…[because] House Bill 900…”prohibits books that have one instance of sexual content”…[but politician] Jared Patterson…who sponsored the bill…[says vulgar sex scenes are OK if they’re in] the Bible, and…cited a [contradictory] part of the Texas education code that requires schools to carry “religious literature”…Of course, that [does not actually] preclude…the Bible from meeting Texas standards for “sexually explicit” material.  It just means that Texas authorities make exceptions for certain texts…[and] illustrates further how involved the state government is in micromanaging exactly what can and can’t be available in schools…And it’s kind of funny how the only “religious literature” explicitly named in the code is the Christian Bible…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Diary #758

January 7, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

A couple of years ago, our TV set developed a sort of shadow on the right side of the screen; the picture in that area seemed a bit darker than on the left.  At first it wasn’t really striking, but over time it slowly got more noticeable, especially to visitors (because Grace and I got used to it).  Then last summer, Chekhov bought a new set for Yellowbird’s house which immediately developed some kind of screen problem; since it was under warranty the company sent out a technician to fix it.  But after he was done, the technician felt the problem wasn’t fully solved, so he had the company send them a new TV and Chekhov gave us the repaired one.  Ever cautious when it comes to such things, I put our old one in the hall because I was pretty sure the technician knew whereof he spoke.  He and I were right; the new TV displayed a series of transitory glitches all summer and autumn, none of them all that annoying or persistent.  Finally, in late November, it suddenly went black and we knew it was well and truly dead.

So I put the shadowy one back into service, and used an Amazon gift card from one of my gentlemen to halve the cost of a new one.  The website said it would arrive the first week of February, and that suited us fine; the old one was (and is) still serviceable, so I was in no rush.  But it arrived early, on Christmas Eve, and sat in the living room until Chekhov and I had free time to install it (getting them on & off the wall mount is a two-person job) on New Year’s Day.  We installed it and tested it and everything looked good, so I turned it off for a couple of hours until Grace and I were ready for our shows.  Lo and behold, it now absolutely refused to respond to the DVD player remote, despite functioning perfectly only two hours before.  I tried all the usual tricks (turning everything off, unplugging and replugging, etc), but nothing availed; it was pretty clear to me that while the screen was off, the machine had been busy installing dozens of “updates” (I had already seen it doing so while we were setting up the system).  So I set the old TV up on some chairs and switched the cables to watch our shows, and the next day spent over an hour on the phone with customer service before they finally admitted what I had already surmised: one of the “updates” had downgraded the system so it was no longer compatible with “old” (2018) DVD players, and there was no way to revert the system to un-downgrade it.  The technician of course tried to talk me into “streaming hundreds of new shows” instead of watching what I actually wanted to watch; I’m sure you can guess how that went.  So the defective unit is now on its way back to Amazon, and once the credit is applied to my account I’ll be buying a refurbished Samsung TV that their customer service assures me will work with my all-region Samsung DVD player.  We’ll see; in the meantime our old reliable is back in place, shadow and all.  And worse come to worst, I’m sure I can buy a used set that is compatible from some pawnshop.

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Little Christmas 2025

January 6, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

If you don’t understand why this witch is carrying a sackful of toys, 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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Links #757

January 5, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

I don’t for a second believe that this woman is going into labor.
–  Caleb Stewart

The movie Amadeus continues to inspire modern musicians, as demonstrated by this takeoff on “Gangnam Style” called to my attention by Mike Siegel.  The links above it were provided by IncarcerNation, Tracy Quan, T. Greg Doucette, Tim Cushing, Ryan Marino, Stephen Lemons, and C.J. Ciaramella, 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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In the News (#1501)

January 4, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

You don’t [leave] any human being on earth…lying on a cement floor in their own shit.  –  Mrs. White

Torture Chamber

The government calls this “correction”; for journalists to parrot that ugly euphemism is a choice:

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has ordered that 13 [screws] and a…nurse [collaborator] be fired after the [brutal murder] of a…[human being locked] in [one of the state’s filthy cages by] a…[gang] attack that [even] their [own] union called “incomprehensible”…[The murder of] Robert L. Brooks…[was] at least partly captured on video.  [Prison bureaucrats at first tried to downplay the savage, animalistic beating by calling it]…a “use of force” [and talking about the crime the victim had been convicted of]…The[y also first rewarded the thugs with paid vacations]…Hochul [made the logically-absurd claim that]…“The vast majority of [screws] do extraordinary work“[, in apparent ignorance of the meaning of the word “extraordinary”]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#995)

Judges have ruled that if cops forcibly hold your head to unlock your phone, it counts as “consent” to root through your property:

Apple is working on a new s[stupid] doorbell camera that uses Face ID to unlock your door…The camera could be released by the end of 2025 “at the soonest”…The lock would work just like your iPhone, automatically unlocking your door when you or another resident looks at it…this device will “likely” work with existing third-party HomeKit s[stupid] locks and that the company may also partner with a s[tupid] lock company “to offer a complete system on day one”…

Torture Chamber (#1110)

Just in case you thought screws restricted their petty sadism to the prisoners:

For people entering prisons, jails, or courts, consent is coerced at every visit.  Throughout the time that I traveled to these institutions, I felt caught in an inescapable loop, always forced to let someone [grope] my [breasts] under the guise of “security”.  After spending time and money traveling to [prisons]…far from urban centers, visitors are not likely to challenge demeaning [molestation disguised as a “]search[“]…The fear of canceled visits, retaliation against imprisoned loved ones, or being late to court appearances makes people comply…Questioning the search process can end the visit…Carceral institutions are sites where sexual violence is routine and protected by law…In 2019, New York settled a class action lawsuit for conducting unlawful, invasive [sexual assault]s on jail visitors.  This year, California paid a $5 million settlement to Christina Cardenas, a woman [who was groped by screws] before a doctor sexually violated her…[after belching out the magic rights-negating word “]contraband[“]…But these settlements are the exception, not the rule…

Thought Control (#1362)

Laws criminalizing women for pragmatic thoughts are equally unconstitutional, but don’t expect any judge to recognize that anytime soon:

A federal judge…struck down key parts of an Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers [if a wannabe censor pointed at any book in their collection and belched out the word] “harmful”…Judge Timothy Brooks [wrote]…“The law deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest”…

Don’t Call It Trafficking (#1411)

It’s never called “trafficking” when the government and crony corporations do it:

No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners [as slave labor] to private companies than Alabama.  With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.  Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease [slave]s from one of the most violent, overcrowded…prison systems in the U.S. in the past five years alone…The cheap, reliable labor force has generated more than $250 million for the state since 2000…Most jobs are inside [prisons]…but more than 10,000 [enslaved prisoners] have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart…

Eavesdropping (#1482)

If a system lets “authorized” busybodies spy on you, “unauthorized” ones can do the same:

…the Salt Typhoon…hackers [have still not been expelled] from most of the compromised systems and [officials] were unable to give a timeline for when that would be achieved…the effects of the hack threaten to be…widespread, with CISA and its counterpart agencies in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada warning this month that Salt Typhoon’s campaign extends beyond just U.S. networks…[and] NBC News report[ed] that the hackers also accessed…metadata…of more than a million Americans…[cybersecurity expert] Tom Kellermann [said]…“This is something we’re going to be dealing with for years, to identify all the back doors that [copsucking politicians forced companies to install] in the systems”…

Torture Chamber (#1493)

Be fair; how much medical skill does it take to repeatedly yell “Stop faking!” at people?

One doctor accidentally chopped off part of a newborn’s…finger…[and cho]ked two nurses…in a rage.  Another…drained the wrong side of a patient’s chest…and altered a medical record to [cover]…the [mistake]…A third…botch[ed] 10 surgeries in four years…and [subjected victims to] extensive, medically inappropriate procedures.  Common to all…is…their most recent place…of employment: the New York state prison system.  They are among [the incompetent] physicians…who…ma[ke] up [more than 10%] of the system’s full-time core of doctors, despite being sanctioned for horrific mistakes and other professional abuses…Some were hired…after serving lengthy probationary sentences meted out by the state’s Board for Professional Medical Conduct…

 

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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Son of Fridaystein

January 3, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

The unnamed multitudes for whom “research” is anathema and “critical thinking” might as well be some obscure principle of Hindu metaphysics, are the greatest enemies of truth and reason in the world today.
–  “Gullible’s Travels”

Christmas comes only once a year, and in my opinion it seems a bit rude to rush a guest out practically as soon as he arrives.
–  “The Feast of Stephen”

Unless the burgeoning power of police to victimize peaceful people is radically amputated, it must eventually result in catastrophic consequences for any society so afflicted.
–  “Catastrophic Consequences”

Tyrants never fight harder than when they know they’re losing.
–  “New Year’s Eve 2020”

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Forty Years

January 2, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

Forty years ago this month, I accepted money for sex for the first time.  It was Friday of the first full week of January; according to a perpetual calendar that would’ve been January 11th, 1985.  When my blog was only a few weeks old, I shared the story in these words:

An engineer who was a friend of one of my professors had to go out of town on business; his wife, also an engineer, was away as well, but they had been waiting for some time for a contractor to do some work on their house and he had offered to squeeze them in between two long jobs.  The gentleman was willing to trust the contractor in his house but not with his keys, but I came highly recommended so I was offered a house-sitting gig.  All I had to do was open the house at 8 AM, supervise the contractors until they left and close up by 6 PM.  For this I was to be paid $5/hour, 10 hours a day for seven days, or $350 total; not bad for a broke coed in those days.  The contractors got done ahead of schedule, by Friday morning, and the engineer also came home early and arrived about 4 that afternoon.  While I was showing him a few things the contractor had asked me to point out, he kept finding excuses to rub up against me and eventually came right out and propositioned me.

I honestly don’t know what got into me, because without hesitation I said, “Can I stay on the clock?”  He raised an eyebrow and I elaborated, “I was counting on being paid through the weekend.”

“OK, if that’s what you want,” he said, and he was as good as his word.  It took less than an hour, and when he forked over the whole $350 I felt rather proud of myself.

For the next couple of years, I expected guys who wanted to date me to provide a monetary gift in addition to the cost of dinner or whatever; though I was never very specific about amounts, they learned fast that cheapskates would not long remain in my good graces.  As one might expect, that meant most of my gentlemen were at least a decade older than I was, but that never bothered me; undergrad boys were generally far too immature to hold my interest.  I never advertised or otherwise put myself out in public; my business was all word of mouth.  But unlike many of today’s sugar babies, I had no illusions about what I was doing and what prudes (or cops) would call it.  Alas, I was too young to recognize that no one man I was likely to attract would give me as good a deal as I could give myself, and so it was that (almost) exactly ten years later my poor decisions blew up in my face, and I returned to making my way in the world by the same means I had first learned barely two months after turning 18.  The rest, as the saying goes, is history.  But I can’t help wondering how the course of my life might’ve been different (and almost certainly worse) had I not been offered that house-sitting gig four decades ago.

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New Year’s Day 2025

January 1, 2025 by Maggie McNeill

Happy New Year, dear readers!

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New Year’s Eve 2024

December 31, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

However destructive a wildfire may be, it’s at least possible to fight it when there aren’t hordes of fools running around throwing lit matches everywhere they go.  – “New Year’s Eve 2023“

Though “sex trafficking” hysteria has imploded, that does not mean we will soon enter a new golden age of sex workers rights; as I wrote two years ago today,

When the last iteration of “sex trafficking” hysteria died in the 1920s, the laws it spawned remained and are still being used to persecute people for thoughtcrime to this very day; the laws passed over the past 20 years will likewise long outlive the moral panic which spawned them.

Furthermore, no massive structure built over 15 years disappears without leaving debris.  Trumpists are still vomiting out “sex trafficking” myths in support of their anti-migrant, anti-LGBT, anti-porn, and anti-brown people agendas; cops still use the propaganda to justify raping Asian sex workers; gullible stenographers who dare to call themselves “journalists” still uncritically repeat copaganda; and even those who have finally admitted that the “trafficking” mythology is a load of dingo’s kidneys now label it a “right-wing conspiracy theory” and refuse to admit their own culpability for the society-wide toxic effects of the racist, misogynistic wanking fantasy they helped spread for so long.  The ascendance of Trumpism and the re-criminalization of abortion across much of the US are the direct results of that ugly narrative, and both book-burning crusades and the widespread demonization of anything to do with LGBT people are other offshoots of the same noxious root system which, had it been dug out and burned in the Oughts, would have been neither robust enough nor extensive enough to engender such toxic growths.  The moral panic is over, but its rotten fruit have burst, spewing xenophobic, anti-sex, authoritarian poison all over American society.  It’s going to take many years of arduous, unremitting effort to clean it up, and that’s assuming there are more willing to do so than are actively engaged in making it worse.

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Diary #757

December 30, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

We intentionally did a little “smaller” Christmas celebration this year, because I knew Grace might not have the energy for a lot of noise and bustle.  On top of that, the radiation is taking its toll on her throat, which often hurts her too much to swallow; her oncologist prescribed a viscous solution of lidocaine that she can swallow a few minutes before eating to make swallowing anything rougher than liquid bearable.  But she did just fine; after she had a little breakfast we gathered beside the tree and fire and exchanged presents with the friends who usually gather with us on holidays.  My friend Sophie helped out quite a bit, bringing a couple of dishes and helping me with logistics just in case I needed to attend to Grace, and though I had to puree her turkey and gravy she was able to eat, and she didn’t even get too tired to socialize.  Everyone seemed to like their presents, and in addition to the nice ones Grace got a very important one: Sophie took up a collection from her usual donors and presented me with $1000 toward her dentures, which means we now have enough!  As soon as her doctors declare her in remission, we’ll get the impressions taken and her dentures ordered, and by the time they arrive she should be getting over the throat pain; that’s a good thing, because although she loves soup I’m sure she’ll be ready for something more substantial by then!

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