Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Throwback Tuesday

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

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

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

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

Diary #752

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

Links #751

Are you happy now?  –  Reid Hawley

There was really only one choice for a sendoff for Lou Donaldson, so here it is.  The links above it were provided by Jesse Walker (x2), C.J. Ciaramella, The Onion, IncarcerNation, T. Greg Doucette, and Lenore Skenazy, in that order.

From the Archives

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

In the News (#1492)

This is clearly a bill unburdened by thoughts of constitutionality.  –  Elizabeth N. Brown

I Saw My Brain (#1316)

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

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

Torture Chamber (Chamber of Horrors)

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

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

Censor Chic (#1438)

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

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

Dangerous Speech (#1467)

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

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

Paying the Bills

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

The Vultures Descend (#1483)

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

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

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

The Cop Myth (#1489)

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

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

 

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

Mad Libs

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

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

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

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

In the News (#1491)

Making the police the central focus of delivering sex work policy is utterly pointless and doomed to fail.  –  Raven Bowen

I Spy (#826)

Toward the end of privacy, everywhere:

The United States will support the United Nations cybercrime convention…follow[ing] months of internal deliberations at the White House and other agencies…[due to] serious concerns over…its potential misuse by countries like Russia and China…The decision is likely to face pushback from human rights groups…be[cause it could be] used…to justify surveillance…and infring[e] on digital rights…One key concern…[i]s a clause that would allow [signatory] nations…to request data on [anything they choose to label a “]serious crime[” regardless of the act’s legal statu]s in other nations…

I Spy (#1067)

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

Officials inside the Secret Service [actually claimed]…they [didn’t] need…a warrant to use location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on smartphones…[because] citizens have agreed to be tracked…by accepting app terms of service, despite those apps…not saying their data may end up with [cops, spooks, and other violent authoritarians who might wish them harm]…hundreds of pages of internal Secret Service emails obtained by 404 Media…provide deeper insight into the agency’s use of Locate X, a powerful surveillance capability that allows [pigs and spooks] to follow a phone, and person’s, precise movements over time at the click of a mouse.  In 2023, a government oversight body found that the Secret Service, [CBP], and [ICE] all used their access to such location data illegally.  The Secret Service [now claims] it is no longer using the tool…

The Mob Rules (#1351)

Ambulance-chasers can’t wait to capitalize on mob rule laws:

A [gang of shysters] is actively courting potential plaintiffs in Kansas, using the state’s age-verification law to dangle the prospect of large financial judgments from adult companies…[in front of the moral imbeciles who infest evangelical] church networks…In Kansas, simple access of an adult website by a minor may be enough to bring a civil case with statutory damages — no proof of actual harm is required…[and] statutory damages begin at $50,000.  The state’s attorney general is separately empowered to bring [nuisance] litigation

Censorship Ascendant (#1427)

Cops are now being dispatched to intimidate people for “bad” thoughts:

[On] Remembrance Sunday…two [cops turned up at my door]…to inform me that I had been accused of a non-crime hate incident (NCHI)…[due] to…something I had posted on…Twitter…a year ago…The co[p claimed]…he wasn’t allowed to tell me [what I had supposedly said or]…who…my accuser…was…[I was] shocked…[and] astonished…to have [cops invade my privacy] on the saddest, most solemn date in the calendar with this kind of malevolent nonsense…

Torture Chamber (#1446)

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

For years, San Francisco’s public defenders and prisoners have filed formal complaints about the city’s lengthy pretrial detention and jail conditions.  Late last year, a federal judge ruled that San Francisco was “recklessly indifferent” in denying prisoners sunlight…the average [detention period i]s 324 days…[so] many people spend months or even years without time outside…at least four [legally innocent] people [have been] held…for nine years or longer…hundreds of [the city’s victims are accused of] non-violent property crimes…[and] lock[ed] up…without sunlight, exercise, adequate healthcare, hygiene, or drinkable water…[and with] frequent use of [solitary confinement]…retaliation [by screws, and]…sexual…assault…

Thought Control (#1462)

Just keep plunging that ice pick in; the bad thoughts will go away eventually:

Since February, the Rutherford County [Tennessee] Board of Education has banned 35 books, including well-known young adult novels such as Wicked, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Beloved…The…bans were initiated by board member Caleb Tidwell, who [pointed at] the titles a[nd belched “]sexually explicit[“]…and… “pornographic material”…Butch Vaughn, a retired principal was just recently elected to the board…call[ed the censorship]…“political grandstanding”…Stan Vaught, another new board member…[said] “It…reminds me of 1930s Germany”…Ken Paulson, Director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University…said…“the [notion that the] books…are somehow written to capture the same audience as…Hustler magazine is nonsense.”  Both Vaughn and Vaught worry that the district is headed down the road to a federal lawsuit which could cost the school district hundreds of thousands of dollars…[and] the…ACLU…is [already] considering legal action…But instead of waiting for [legal] guidance, Tidwell…[ran out and belched “pornographic” at] ten additional titles, and…[his collaborator] Frances Rosales [vomited “obscenity” all over] another 150 titles…including…Catch-22 and A Clockwork Orange

But no other state’s self-lobotomization can hope to keep up with Florida’s:

Florida school districts…axed about 700 additional books from school libraries…in the 2023-2024 school year.  PEN America…estimates that 4,561 books [in all] have been removed from Florida school libraries since July 2021…[including] works of classic literature…[such as] A Clockwork OrangeSlaughterhouse-Five…and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings…The [mass censorship was enabled by] a law that allows [any Froot Loop] to [demand] removal of any book [by pointing at it and belching the words]…“sexual content” or…“pornographic”…

Mumbo Jumbo (#1487) 

When the “sex trafficking” hysteria was at its height, this wouldn’t have been considered a problem:

The Scottish government’s strategy to [impose the Swedish model on]…sex [workers] has been cast into disarray after it was forced to ditch a proposed partnership with [“rescue” profiteers] whose founder…[wrote] a handbook for “Christians involved in outreach to prostitutes”…[which] says: “Most prostitutes have had some exposure to the occult in childhood…others may have learnt about tarot cards and Ouija boards in prison,” and…offers a checklist of…“occult activity” that includes yoga and playing Dungeons & Dragons…Groups who [actually] support sex workers…have serious concerns about the government’s shift in focus back to policing, less than nine months after the conviction of Iain Packer…exposed chronic police failings [to do anything about] the horrific levels of violence still faced by women selling sex[, especially at the hands of the police themselves]…

 

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!

Diary #751

As I’ve often mentioned, my best friend Grace is not aging well.  Beside inheriting a tendency toward health problems, she spent most of her life in the industrial trades and also did a bit of wild living; as a result she has a number of different illnesses and conditions including thyroid failure, diabetes, arthritis, glaucoma, mild COPD, and bad teeth.  We assumed the latter were to blame when she developed a lymph node infection in her throat, but a biopsy revealed that it was caused by HPV-related throat cancer.  Fortunately, it was caught fairly early and the mass is compact; the doctors tell her the prognosis for radiation treatment is very good, so for the past month we’ve been running around taking care of all the preliminary steps for the treatment, which looks like it will actually start the Monday after Thanksgiving.  That means taking her to town for treatment five days a week for seven weeks, and more intense caretaker duty than I’ve become used to over the past five years.  She has a very positive outlook and the doctors are optimistic, but all the same it’s going to be very hard on her, and therefore very hard on me.  It probably won’t be as difficult as caring for Jae in 2015-16 was, but I’m almost a decade older than I was then; I’m going to try my damnedest not to fall behind in my writing and maintaining this blog, but obviously Grace’s needs must come first.  So please bear with me, and gods willing things should be mostly back to normal by the end of January.

If Men Were Angels

You’d think “youth pastor” would be a big red flag by now:

A [South Carolina] youth pastor [named]…Andrew Payne was arrested and charged with [molesting]…a minor in the [congregation]…he…was [report]ed on January 14 [but the cops only got around to arresting him in October]…

But go on, keep teaching kids to respect these “authorities”:

A MAGA youth pastor favored by…Jerry Falwell Jr has been charged with coercing minors to [submit to rape] and send him pornographic images.  Zachary Radcliff…of…Michigan [has been molesting teens since at least]…2011…

Droit du Seigneur (#1174)

This is a long, detailed look at what happens when an entitled rapist cop is caught: a horrifying ordeal for the victim, and nearly every part of the criminal court system bending over backward to accommodate, make excuses for, and coddle the rapist, even after conviction; in this case, rapist boss hog Larry Clay has used various excuses to have his sentencing delayed 12 times since his conviction in April of ’23, so as to delay his transfer from a small-town jail where he’s relatively well-treated “to a federal prison as a former police chief and convicted child sex offender”.

Business As Usual (#1254)

These rapists only faced consequences because a prosecutor was squicked out by their behavior:

Lewisville [Texas boss hog] Brook Rollins [was] publicly [forced to slap the wrists of 13 rapist cops, but still made excuses for their crimes]…he was [put into the position]…when the district attorney refused to prosecute 28 [victims of]…the [rapists]…with the…prostitut[ion charges the rapists tried to saddle them with.  Three were fired]…one…was demoted.  [The rest got little more than reprimands, but none were charged with sexual assault or rape]…

Above the Law (#1469)

It’s unusual that they didn’t make this sound like the rapist was doing his victims a favor:

The owner of a bail bonds company [in] Central Florida has been arrested on charges of human trafficking and racketeering…Russell “Bruce” Moncrief of Moncrief Bail Bonds…[forced women] to [submit to rape]…in exchange for being bonded out of jail…If a [woman] refused to [submit], she would not be bonded out or her bond was revoked…Moncrief [has apparently] been engaging in these practices for over a decade…

To Molest and Rape (ROTW #14) 

When will the mainstream media admit that pigs in schools are a menace?

[A Utah cop paid to lurk in schools in order to spy on, harass, and intimidate students] has been arrested for [molesting]…a minor.  Colton Johansen was a[lso charged with] tampering with evidence [but actually gave himself away somehow.  The cops want you to]…believe…the [student he molested was at a different]…school [from the one they are responsible for giving him access to]…

 

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!

Links #750

Phenylephrine…is not effective as a nasal decongestant.  –  FDA

I noticed this little video just before Halloween, but this was the first time I had room for it.  The links above it were provided by Eric Sprankle, Mark Bennett, IncarcerNation (x4), 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!