"We just had some parents that were frustrated they could not control the entire universe of experiences their spawn might be exposed to for 25 years without actually having to seal them up in Skinner boxes." https://t.co/tLtQiv57o7
I was already an adult 40 years ago, and I can assure you nobody thought politicians were "smart" back then either. "Crafty" or "cunning" sometimes, but not actually *intelligent*. https://t.co/e5qjiBld0v
The time to question it was in the 1970s; it's *far* too late to close the barn door now. That horse has not only bolted, it already made it to the next state, died, and was devoured by vultures who have also long since died. https://t.co/gXS5pOSihN
If you live always putting "safety" above your principles, your life will be so meager that at the end you'll be begging and crying for just a few days more.
But if you live by putting principles above "safety", at the end you'll be able to say, "That was a good run."
Seriously, this woman's head is so far up the bottom end of her alimentary canal it's practically coming out of her own mouth again. She's like a human Klein bottle. https://t.co/If89NJNU9h
What is the point of ridiculous, constrained, hypotheticals like this? 1) Why does your gun have only 1 bullet? Were you in a shootout earlier? 2) A man and a bear standing together in the road? Are they from a circus? 3) Are all humans involved in this scenario mute? 4) AAA. https://t.co/urpXtmD2tA
I've never used "like" because it does nothing to boost the tweet I like. I've always retweeted when I thought something should be seen by more people; I suggest everyone else do that too, especially now that the only function of "likes" is to feed algorithms. pic.twitter.com/3DFSoDxTQD
I really wish people would stop buying the rather stupid lie that "liberal" and "progressive" are synonymous; they're closer to being opposites. Progressivism is authoritarian, while liberalism is not. But I guess that's too complex for people who believe left-right mythology.
The blatant absurdity of the claim that anyone "charged" armed cops with a knife is of no consequence when the intended audience has been conditioned to believe nonsense by a steady diet of TV copaganda.
Is there a a scriptural verse which basically expresses the idea, "Keep your damned paws off of me until I've had my breakfast and finished my morning ablutions"?
Every time I see somebody getting agitated online about some situation involving a number of people whose names I do not recognize AT ALL, I realize that all in all, I have lived my life correctly.
In other words, Adams' deranged "Cops über Alles" policies are not only harming NYC libraries NOW, they're going to result in big book-replacement bills for NYC libraries in the next decade.
A person is not more dangerous…based on the amount of bong water that person possesses. – Minnesota Supreme Court
This week’s video is only 44 seconds long, but as it’s one of my favorite moments from ’60s television, it was too good to pass up. The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Mike Siegel, Phoenix Calida, Nun Ya, IncarcerNation (x2), and Franklin Harris again, in that 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!
A man who murdered a woman and attempted to cover his tracks by burning her body has been jailed for at least 20 years. Robert Brown…killed [a sex worker named] Victoria Greenwood…[after luring her to] his flat in the early hours of Friday, 10 November [under pretense of hiring her for outcall]. CCTV footage showed her on the ground outside trying to escape, but being pulled back inside the property…A pathologist found that Ms Greenwood had suffered skull fractures suggesting she had been hit by a heavy, blunt object. There was no evidence she had inhaled fire fumes, which indicated she was dead at the time her body was set on fire…
In March, the Alaska Supreme Court held in State v. McKelvey that the Alaska Constitution required [cops] to obtain a warrant before photographing a private backyard from an aircraft…the government…[absurdly argued that] the surveillance [was OK because it was undetected]. In response…the Court observed that…“if the surveillance technique cannot be detected, then one can never fully protect against being surveilled”…the Court added pointedly, “the rise of drones has the potential to…[make such surveillance far more comm]on“…With this decision, Alaska joins California, Hawaii, and Vermont in finding that warrantless aerial surveillance violates the…constitutional prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure…
The Supreme Court…unanimously preserved access to [mifepristone because]…opponents lacked [standing] to sue over the…[FDA]’s approval of the medication…But the high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in…emergency cases [where] a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk…
Florida’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for transgender minors and restrictions for adults are both unconstitutional…U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle…sided with the plaintiffs in the class action…because [the law] solely targeted transgender people…[receiving] “medications routinely provided to others with the state’s full approval so long as the purpose is not to support the patient’s transgender identity”…
A…high school coach in Texas…told [cop]s that it’s “God’s divine plan” for him to continue [molesting] a 15-year-old student [he seduced]…Cole Underwood [was reported by the school]…superintendent…[after] surveillance video showed Underwood meeting the [girl] alone after hours despite being told not to be alone…with her[. She told cops he molested her] in his office more than 10 times between February and May…
John Ray, an attorney who represents the families of some of the Gilgo Beach murder victims, spoke to reporters on ‘evidence’ he says could implicate family members of Rex Heuermann including his 27-year-old daughter, Victoria. Ray accused the alleged serial killer’s daughter of posting disturbing images to social media. “This appears to be the remains of a human being that looks half-eaten,” Ray said, pointing to photographs…found on her Tumblr blog via a link from her LinkedIn page…it “appears that she [has] erased all of her [other] sites…We can infer from this…that this girl was made over the course of years, somehow, to become accustomed to liking what you see here”…
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!
“I’ve never done that before” is an argument for trying something rather than an argument against it. – “Green Eggs and Ham”
I’m not sure what’s stupider, the idea that there could ever be such a thing as a visible-tit emergency, or the one that a gland specifically activated during motherhood is somehow anti-family.
– “Little Boxes (#748)”
People who define sex work as the selling of a body, or who say sex isn’t work, are telling you a lot about their own sex lives. – “Starfish”
Please, keep telling me how society can’t survive without roving gangs of deranged thugs wandering around looking for excuses to summarily execute people who pose no danger to anyone. – “I Can’t Breathe”
The apparent path of the sun will reach its northernmost point at 20:50 UTC today, marking the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the shortest day of the year & first day of winter in the Southern. May all of your plans come to fruition in the fullness of time, and Blessed Be!
The family of a Texas man [murdered by] jailers…who…kne[lt on his]…back [while pepper-spraying him]…called for a federal investigation into the practices at the jail. Anthony Johnson Jr…a [retired] Marine…[was intentionally asphyxiated by the] jailers…[after they oinked the magic word “]contraband[” at him]. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner…ruled the death a homicide…[murder]er Rafael Moreno…kne[lt with all of his weight] on Johnson’s back…while he was handcuffed…[and another screw repeatedly] pepper-sprayed [him in the face]…
…Argentinian…prosecutors are trying the [Buenos Aires Yoga] School’s 85-year-old founder, Juan Percowicz, and a number of its members, alleging that the school was really a cult engaged in brainwashing and sex trafficking. Authorities raided the group’s headquarters and the houses of 50 members two summers ago, accusing the group of being a front for an international sex slavery ring. Seventeen people, including Percowicz, were arrested and jailed…It wasn’t the first time the Buenos Aires Yoga School faced criminal allegations; a similar case was brought in the 1990s. But after an intense investigation that involved [illegal] raids and wiretaps…that earlier case was closed with nary a conviction. And it’s looking like the newer case may face a similar fate…The government says at least seven women were forced into prostitution by BAYS…But the women in the case have denied ever having sex in exchange for money, or being victims of any crime…
[Authoritarian bureaucrats] in Florida have banned a book about book banning. The Indian River County School Board voted to remove Ban This Book by Alan Gratz from its shelves…overruling its own [hand-picked] book-review committee’s decision to keep it. The children’s novel follows a fictional fourth grader who creates a secret banned books locker library after her school board pulled a multitude of titles off the shelves…[censor]s…disliked how it referenced other [banned] books…and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school board authorit[arianism]”…The book…was [target]ed by Jennifer Pippin…the [chief censor] of the area’s local chapter of [pro-censorship cult] Moms for Liberty…
In 2019 and 2020, three Black men were accused of, and jailed for, crimes they didn’t commit after police used face recognition to falsely identify them. Their wrongful arrest lawsuits are still pending, but…all three…are speaking out against pending California legislation that would make it illegal for police to use face recognition technology as the sole reason for a search or arrest…[because due to a combination of confirmation bias and plain laziness, cops will merely] seek corroborating evidence [for the computer’s false identification instead of properly investigating the crime. One of the men is]…Robert Williams [of Detroit,] the first known instance of false arrest involving face recognition in the United States…the…[second is] Njeer Parks…[of] New Jersey and the…[third is] Michael Oliver…who was wrongly accused of assaulting a high school teacher in Detroit in 2020…
A lawsuit…aims to block a new Indiana [surveillance] law …[because it] violates [both] the Constitution and the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Fred Cate…[of] the Indiana University [Law] School…said…“The Supreme Court decided more than 25 years ago that you couldn’t require age verification online…because age verification is really hard to do online…How do you verify age for someone you can’t actually see? Usually, we do that by collecting a lot of information about them…the state law prohibits you from saving that information but, of course, you have to save it to prove that you did it”…
…In recent years, the Vallejo Police Department has made headlines for gang-like rituals glorifying [cops] who [successfully get away with murder]; the illegal destruction of evidence; and an inordinately high rate of police shootings, among other scandals. But the [murder of Darryl Dean] Mefferd [by Vallejo cop Jeremy] Callinan has remained covered up…[large]ly because the Solano County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office [obediently] ruled Mefferd’s death an accidental drug overdose…allow[ing] local officials to keep the killing secret for nearly a decade despite state transparency laws mandating the release of records about deaths and serious injuries caused by [cops]…His family wanted to sue the city, but several lawyers declined to take their case because official records labeled Mefferd’s death an accident…[and] the city [pretends] that…Mefferd[‘s]…death [by positional asphyxia was his own fault]…
…over the past two decades, hundreds of [cops] in the United States have sexually abused children while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have [covered up their crimes, refus]ed to…punish abusers and [facilitated] additional crimes…by botching background checks, ignoring red flags and [intentionally] mishandling investigations. [Rapist] cops have used their knowledge of the legal system to stall cases, get charges lowered or evade convictions. Prosecutors have given generous plea deals to [fellow pig]s who admitted to raping and groping minors. Judges have allowed many convicted [cops] to avoid prison time. All the while, children in every state and the District of Columbia have continued to be targeted, groomed and violated by officers [who have no legal duty] to keep them safe…at least 1,800 state and local [cops]…were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022…
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!
When an allergy shows up later in life, it’s usually something absent from the environment of one’s formative years. So when the severe allergic reaction I wrote about last week returned on Wednesday, virtually vanished while I was in town on Thursday, then got so bad Thursday night I got only barely-sufficient sleep, I asked myself what was present at Sunset but not in Aberdeen, and not in the New Orleans area or Oklahoma, and not even as abundantly at Sunset in previous years? And there was only one obvious answer: daisies. Oh, I’ve seen them here and there at Sunset in previous years, but this year there are so damned many it looks like I’m raising them as a cash crop. And the symptoms started ramping up just as they really started popping up like…well, like weeds. By Friday morning I just wanted to breathe through my nose again and get a decent night’s sleep, so I decided to try the suggestion a reader made in last Tuesday’s comments, and asked Chekhov to pick me up some before coming over for Grace’s birthday dinner. I’d tried nasal sprays before with little luck, but that was 40 years ago, so I figured maybe they’d improved. Well, the pharmacy Chekhov visited didn’t have the brand the reader suggested, so he got the stuff in the picture instead, figuring it was similar. And boy, did it work! Quite astonishingly well, in fact! About an hour after using it, I felt dramatically better; not totally well, mind you, but I could breathe properly and wasn’t blowing my nose every 15 minutes. And it did indeed last about 24 hours; I still woke up a lot, but a quick nose-blow and roll over, and I went right back to sleep. I assume the allergy will fade in a few weeks once the daisy mating season is done, but at least I won’t be miserable until then. And next year I’ll know what to do when the damned things pop up again.
First off, they aren’t actually zombies; as any student of folklore (or any D&D player, for that matter) could tell you, zombies are corpses animated by black magic and used as slaves. They’re neither fast nor clever, and most of the danger they present comes from the fact that since they’re already dead, they have to be completely hacked to pieces to stop them. They don’t eat people, and their condition isn’t contagious. So those aggressive dead people which became ubiquitous in fantasy fiction (written or acted) over the past few decades aren’t zombies, though everyone calls them that; actually, they’re a kind of “hungry dead”, more akin to ghouls (or even low-rent vampires) than the true zombies of folklore.
But why have they become so popular as a subject of horror and fantasy adventure, eclipsing ever other kind of undead and humanoid monster (with the possible exception of superhuman fantasy killers a la Jason Voorhees and evil ghosts a la Freddie Krueger)? The horror of true zombies derives from their origin in the folklore of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean: it’s the idea that a slave might not be able to find rest from oppression even in the grave, because their bodies might be dug up and forced to continue toiling even after death. But what is it about hungry-type “zombies” which makes them so fascinating to modern people? I think the key to understanding that is to recognize that while traditional zombies are objects of horror to be feared, modern “zombies” are objects of loathing, to be exterminated. Modern zombie shows are full of heavily-armed characters blowing out the brains of creatures who look like other human beings, often even former friends, family, and neighbors. They roam a lawless post-apocalyptic landscape where might makes right, and the only rules the zombie hunters need follow are practical survival rules of their own making. Sad to say, most humans want there to be some group of people they can imagine as subhuman, creatures whose rights and dignity need not be respected. They want that group (slaves, outcasts, infidels, “illegals”, homeless, “criminals”, whores, “sex offenders”, “colonizers”, “terrorists”, “wingers”, “groomers”, “sinners”, “traffickers”, those whose skin is a different color, those who speak a different language, “people who disagree with me”, etc, etc) to not be protected by any laws, and to be fair game for abuse so they can inflict upon those pariahs the petty frustrations they feel from being abused by their rulers and bosses (“shit rolls downhill”). Fictional zombies are people it’s OK to hate and even kill without having to worry about their rights, a fantasy outlet for violent impulses. Alas, far too many of our species don’t restrict that kind of behavior to make-believe, and are more than willing to gang up with others of their ilk to inflict whatever evil they think they can get away with upon their fellow humans without even waiting for them to die first.
He was in his bedroom asleep and you go in shooting. – Michael Monroe
A recent thread on BlueSky reminded me of this song, which I liked very much as a kid. Carl Douglas actually had a number of songs which described movies he had seen; another of them was “Witchfinder General”, which I shared back in January of ’17. The links above the video were provided by Mark Draughn, Scott Greenfield, Radley Balko, IncarcerNation (x2), and Billy Binion, in that 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!
The authorities in Vietnam have arrested one of the country’s most prominent journalists and accused him of “abusing democratic freedoms” by posting articles on Facebook that “infringed on the interests of the state”…Truong Huy San — known to many by his pen name, Huy Duc — was taken into custody last week…but there…were no details on the content of the posts…Journalists have long been a target for the country’s ruling Communist Party, which frequently crushes dissent. But Mr. San had for years managed to navigate the very small space for independent thought, often publishing articles that criticized the government. His connections with high-level officials were thought to have been a buffer — until now. Mr. San’s case is part of a sweeping repression of civil society that…has expanded in scale and scope in recent years. The law [used against him]…is an “overly broad” one that the authorities frequently use against critics of the government…After Mr. San…disappeared on June 1…Facebook [obediently deactivated his] account, w[hich had] more than 350,000 followers…
…Under questioning by a congressional subcommittee, top officials from the National Institutes of Health, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged that some key parts of the public health guidance their agencies promoted during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic were not backed up by solid science…[and] inconvenient information was…suppressed, denied or disparaged as crackpot nonsense…the rule that we should all stay at least six feet apart…“sort of just appeared,” Fauci said…As for the repeated assertion that Covid originated in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China, not in an infectious diseases laboratory there, N.I.H. officials were privately expressing alarm over that lab’s lax biosafety practices and risky research…Instead of circling the wagons, these officials should have been responsibly and transparently informing the public…Failure to acknowledge the basic facts of Covid transmission led the authorities to pointlessly close beaches and parks…delayed the opening of schools and caused untold millions of dollars to be wasted on plexiglass barriers (that likely made things worse) rather than effective air filters…the most severe ramifications of these failures may last for decades, because they gave people cause to doubt the word of scientific and public health authorities…
The Justice Department announced in 2022, amid several damning investigations into sexual assault by staff in federal prisons, that it was working to expand a program for early release to include women who’d been abused behind bars, but…federal prosecutors are now routinely fighting to disqualify [victim]s because of an unreasonably narrow definition…the…new policy passed in April 2023…included a major caveat that…a prisoner’s claim of sexual abuse “must be established by a conviction in a criminal case, a finding or admission of liability in a civil case, or a finding in an administrative proceeding”…but…victims of abuse have no say over when a case against their abuser will be brought, if it will be brought, and who will be [included] as the victims…And…from 2016 to 2018, perpetrators of staff sexual misconduct were only convicted, sentenced, fined, or pleaded guilty in 6 percent of substantiated incidents in federal and state prisons…
Schools and libraries in [Llano] Texas…can no longer ban books just because they’re about “butts and farts,” a court has ruled…[humorless politicians beshat themselves over public library] books…including I Broke My Butt! and Larry the Farting Leprechaun…then ordered them to be pulled from library shelves, along with others they labeled “pornographic filth,” including a memoir about a transgender teen and two books about the history of racism in the US. However, seven peeved patrons sued to reinstate the books…with a district court siding with them, ruling that books could not be banned or censored by government entities just because they did not like them…the [clueless] complainants appealed, [and] the Fifth Circuit…upheld an injunction that required the library to reinstate the removed titles within 24 hours…
…one of the few…things that make modern commercial flying tolerable is a strong onboard libation. For those lucky enough to travel internationally, the booze is sometimes even free. But…newly released [bogus] research argues that it should be…[banned because] in-flight alcohol can [supposedly] increase the risk of heart attack…”Even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases”…as students of the temperance movement know well, prohibitionary brush fires can start with the smallest of sparks. In fact, the in-flight booze ban movement has already begun to catch on in America…[using the excuse of] unruly and intoxicated…passengers [during the COVID panemic]…numerous federal [politicians have] inevitably joined the booze ban chorus…
Eight jailers at a…downtown Los Angeles jail were watching porn when they overlooked a noose hanging in the jail cell of a suicidal inmate…The jail…was extremely hot and humid with no natural light, had trash in the hallways and a whole host of other problems…[inspector Haley] Broder [said]…“There was just continuous neglect and bad conditions…we saw people with giant open wounds. The trash was just everywhere…it smells. There are fires. And…there is just a genuine lack of interest in changing that situation”…When the commissioners reported the noose to [screws] — eight of whom were sitting in an office watching a video on a large-screen TV — they said they’d check on the cell later and continued watching the video…The ACLU, which has served as a court-appointed monitor of LA County jails since 1985, called Men’s Central “a windowless dungeon” long plagued by “savage deputy on-inmate violence”…
…a [typical and representative Georgia cop named]…Michael Durieux…shot [a man named] Christian Chestnut several times [on June 7th because he discovered]…his [cop] wife [was having an affair with] Chestnut…Durieux [then fled the scene of the murder]…in his car and…crashed into multiple [innocent bystanders’] vehicles…When [his fellow cops caught up with him]…he…[shot himself as well]….
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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