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In the News (#1401)

January 4, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

They don’t want incarcerated journalists. It doesn’t serve the interest of [the prison bureaucracy or] predatory companies like Securus.  –  Christopher Blackwell

Surplus Women

Why doesn’t the headline read “Brutal murder linked to basketball”?

Marayna Rodgers…left Washington State on December 1 to work as a prostitute in Las Vegas…But on December 6…[an NBA basketball player named] Chance Comanche…and [his ex-girlfriend, a thief and sometimes-whore named] Sakari Harnden…kidnapped and [murdered her after]…Comanche posed as a [client]…the…[two both] strangled…her…and [dumped]…her [body in a ditch]…in Henderson…Nevada…Harnden [supposedly] wanted revenge…[on] Rodgers [because she] had told others that Harnden’s boyfriend, Iosua Sataua…was…arrested for a double murder in Stockton, Calif…

The story is so badly written, it’s hard to be sure of what it means, but I think this is probably close.

The Widening Gyre (#1257)

Technically, several decades is indeed “over a year”:

Police are issuing a warning to…be wary of…social media [tales], after a story…raised alarm but turned out not to be true.  You may have seen the post making the rounds on Instagram and Facebook, telling people of how a young girl went into a bathroom at [a shopping] mall, and when her mom went in to find her, she discovered the child in a stall unconscious, with her head shaved, dressed like a boy…[supposedly] in the process of being abducted for human trafficking…The Alberta RCMP…[says] this particular hoax has been circulating for over a year and is “entirely false”…

I first read this one in one of Jan Brunvand‘s urban legend collections when I was a librarian, but its roots go back centuries; it’s a descendant of “gypsy child abduction” stories or even tales about changelings.

The Last Shall Be First (#1299) 

Texas seems completely uninterested in controlling its psychopathic politicians:

…Seattle Children’s Hospital [has] filed a lawsuit…against the Texas…Attorney General…after [it demanded private medical information of any]…gender transition [care]…provided to [legal minors from] Texas…the hospital…[noted that the Texas attorney general has no jurisdiction over it], and that Washington’s “Shield Law” protects it from [legal demands, warrants, court orders, etc] made by states that “restrict or criminalize reproductive and gender-affirming care”…the OAG[‘s]…demands…[accused] the hospital [of]…“misrepresentation[“] …and [included a demand]…that…the hospital [provide Texas instructions on how to forcibly “detransition” people against their will]…The…demands [includes threats of]…fine[s] and jail confinement of [hospital personnel who do not live in Texas]…

The Punitive Mindset (#1326) 

This fascist evil needs to be eradicated, root and branch:

Securus, a [fascist] company that [profits from people in] prison…persists in struggling with [substandard] tech…greatly affecting incarcerated writers…The company…generat[es huge] profits rooted in hidden charges, kickbacks, and fees imposed upon family members to talk to their loved ones…In Washington, incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell and his peers recently faced a data erasure for the third time this year, causing devastating losses for many writers on the inside who depend on devices to save the progress of their work…“I probably lost 150 hours of content, and I have to go back and recreate that,” said Blackwell. “It’s not only exhausting, but it really pushes you to not want to continue to write.”  Derek Trumbo, an incarcerated writer in Kentucky, lost more than a year of writing in a single [forced] system update on his tablet…

The Cop Myth (#1368)

Why are people shocked when men paid and encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?  This story is, unsurprisingly, almost entirely void of details; it takes 175 words to say, “A Mississippi screw argued with another screw and shot him dead in the prison parking lot.”  The rest is puffery and trivia, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the swineherds’ desire to absolve cops of blame for murder trumps their desire to get revenge for a dead cop.

Thought Control (#1379)

Cops will keep taking more and more power as long as people allow them to:

[A Massachusetts cop named Joseph O’Brien who barged into]…an eighth grade classroom [in an attempt to steal] a book wore a body camera and recorded the incident…The American Civil Liberties Union…say[s] they cannot recall [the last] instance…of police going to a school [in an attempt to steal] a book [because late September is too long ago]…Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts…[said] “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”…school [officials] apologized for [kowtowing to the cops’ illegal demands without even requiring a warrant, bloviating a lot of excuses and buzzwords]…an anonymous complaint [was the pretext cops used]…to [justify the attempted theft]…of the book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, [belching out the words “]obscene material or pornographic[“]…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#1393) 

Perhaps we’re nearing the end of this nasty, twisted saga:

The company that owns and operates adult entertainment websites including Pornhub…will pay [a] $1.8 million [bribe] to the U.S. government to resolve [extortion demands deriving from] its ties to…GirlsDoPorn.com…and GirlsDoToys.com…whose creators and operators were charged in California in 2019 with deceiving and coercing young women to appear in sex videos…In addition to the $1.8 million pay[off], Aylo will pay victims whose images were posted on its platform and have not already been compensated…

 

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 #705

January 3, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

Since a number of readers have asked me how Louie is doing, I figured a picture is worth a thousand words.  As you can see, he’s largely adjusted to life at Sunset; he knows where and when I put food out, comes when I call, and is less shy of the other animals than he was at first.  Since he’s gelded and was at first a stranger in a strange land, the other animals push him around a bit, but except for Shiloh trying to steal his dinner that has mostly eased off.  In order to stop that, I need to feed all the big animals at once in different places; Cicero gets his dinner near the stock tank, Louie gets his in the barn, and Shiloh and Jonathan get theirs in the stable.  So by the time any of them finishes, the others are also done and there’s nothing left to steal.  Incidentally, Louie is even more vocal than Cicero, perhaps because he lived alone for so long; every time he sees me he starts oinking, grunting, and squealing enough to constitute an entire conversation.  But his little tail starts wagging when he’s fed or petted, so I think he’s happy here already and is only getting happier.  Oh, one more thing: I chose this picture from a series I took just before Christmas because there are so many animals in the frame at once; how many can you spot?

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The Big Picture

January 2, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

As I wrote last year on this date, “January second has always been an important day in my life; over the years, a number of life-changing events have happened on the date or very soon thereafter.  So over the last decade, it has gradually developed into a day when I think about the Big Picture.”  And this time around, what I’ve been thinking about is that oft-elusive condition called “happiness”; over the past four years, I’ve gradually come to the realization that I’m happier now than I’ve ever been for any extended period in my entire life.  That isn’t to say I’m in a continual state of bliss; I’ve only experienced that once in my life, for a few minutes, and psychedelic drugs were involved.  But even in that extended moment I realized, “This is what people mean by ‘bliss’!” and what I’m experiencing now is nothing like it.  It also doesn’t mean my life is trouble-free; it’s rare that I get through a day without some kind of hassle or irritation, generally involving A) bureaucracy; B) money; or C) people doing dumb or careless shit that causes me to have to go out of my way to put whatever-it-is back the way it’s supposed to be.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve succeeded in building an ivory tower to shut out the evil of the world; working on this blog is a daily labor, and if anything I’m more cynical now than I have ever been (and twice as cantankerous).

But having a realistic view of the world requires accepting that it and everything it contains is impermanent, and that even those rare individuals who make lasting contributions were usually enabled to do so by circumstances of place, time, and condition; furthermore, even their names and works are as impermanent as those of Ozymandias, and will be no more remembered in future eons than the kings of any pre-literate realm are remembered today, however important they believed themselves to be in their own times.  In the big picture, any order we manage to impose on the universe is as ephemeral as a sand castle, and will soon be obliterated by time and tide.  But, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Angel observed, “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”  Or, if you prefer Scripture to popular entertainment, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”  In “Its Own Reward” I wrote, “I don’t do what I do for recognition or reward or even the belief that I can make the world a better place; I do it simply because it is right.”  And as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that doing what’s right is not only enough, it’s the best any of us can reasonably hope for.  Power, wealth, and fame are ultimately ephemeral, and on his deathbed what the self-made king Charles Foster Kane most longed for was simple personal happiness.  Could I have been wealthier, more famous, and more influential had I worked harder and/or made different decisions?  Probably, but it would’ve required compromising my principles, and when all was said and done I couldn’t do that.  I have my own scriptural “vine and fig tree”, and the knowledge that I’ve lived my life by what I know to be right, and I am content and at peace.  And if that isn’t happiness, I’m not sure what would be.   

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New Year’s Day 2024

January 1, 2024 by Maggie McNeill

Happy New Year, dear readers!

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New Year’s Eve 2023

December 31, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

Fascists, prohibitionists, and other violent busybodies…can always be counted on to use every power at their disposal to inflict as much suffering as possible on those weaker than they are.  –  “NYE 2022“

As I first predicted over a decade ago, “sex trafficking” hysteria did not end quietly, but instead violently imploded.  In “The Widening Gyre” I referred to the moral panic as “an increasingly-erratic cultural meme spinning wildly out of control, whose far-flung debris is going to cause a lot more damage before it finally disintegrates”, and boy was I right; though we no longer have to endure endless parades of lackwits with tape over their mouths, and cops’ public masturbation to the “gypsy whores” myth in Super Bowl host cities is more likely to evoke mockery than parroting these days, the toxic fallout of the collapse is everywhere, and will likely poison the social ecosystem for many years to come.  Of course all the terrible laws the hysteria spawned will stay on the books, just as the terrible laws spawned by its previous incarnation a century go (such as 1910’s Mann Act) are still around for the government to oppress people with.  And though the surviving QAnon offshoot of the panic is largely the realm of Trumpists, it’s far too late for belated debunking by prohibitionist media such as The New York Times (which eagerly promoted “sex trafficking” hysteria when it served their authoritarian goals and funneled money into its coffers via clickbait) to have any real curative effect on the paranoid poison which has permeated every part of Western society and may yet engender still-worse laws.  But in the long run, the most dangerous effect of “sex trafficking” hysteria may result from its shifting of the Overton window.  The “white slavery” hysteria of the previous century shifted the public perception of sex work from something which, while distasteful to many, was recognized as normal and even necessary, to a “social evil” which could be eradicated by state violence; similarly, “sex trafficking” rhetoric, by casting women as permanent children wholly unable to view sex pragmatically or even plan travel or place ads without male assistance, paved the way for the ongoing erosion of many of women’s hard-won rights which has already resulted in the widespread recriminalization of abortion across much of the US, the sexual infantilization of women in Canada and much of Europe, and a worldwide war on porn which has made ambitious censorship and surveillance schemes acceptable to useful idiots worldwide.  Where this will end, it’s impossible to say, but one thing is sure:  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.

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Links #704

December 30, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

Shut the fuck up before I shoot you.  –  David Delgado

When I used to watch a lot of public TV in the late ’70s and early ’80s, our local PBS station played a lot of shorts between shows, many from the National Film Board of Canada; this one was played so often I got rather tired of it, but it’s been over 40 years since I’ve seen it and it’s certainly seasonal, so voilà.  The links above it were provided by Mike Masnick; Popehat; Dan Savage and Marc Randazza; Lucy Steigerwald; and IncarcerNation (x3), 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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Back Issue #126

December 29, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

Many of the persistent myths about sex work are exactly the opposite of the truth.   –  “Catastrophic Consequences”

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In the News (#1400)

December 28, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

These warrants…turn innocent people into suspects.  –  Jennifer Lynch

If Men Were Angels

This will continue until fools stop teaching children unquestioning obedience to “authority”:

An Independence [Missouri] pastor…[named] Virgil L. Marsh [has confessed to repeatedly] …molest…ing two girls under the age of 14 who attended his church between 2011 and 2018…Virgil [burbled to] police [about]…“forgiveness from God”…the second…victim…[was only] eight and nine years old…[when] Marsh [was molesting her]…

Creepy Coppers

This is the kind of garbage the state pays to spy on and harass your kids:

A [typical and representative Missouri cop named Darrin Skinner] who [was paid to surveil, intimidate, and harass high] school [students has been] charged with 14 felony counts [for collecting and sharing] child [porn on a social media network called]…MeWe…

I Spy (#1220)

If more companies did this, the fascist surveillance state would be severely hobbled:

Google [has] announced it would soon change the way it would store and access users’ opt-in “Location History” in Google Maps, making the data retention period shorter, and making it impossible for the company to access it.  That means it will no longer respond to “geofence warrants,” a [civil-right violating] co[p]…tool used…to force Google to hand over information about all users within a given location during a specific timeframe…Google’s decision…is a major win for privacy advocates and criminal defense attorneys who have long decried these [unconstitutional] warrants…

A Broker in Pillage (#1250)

There are many ways for governments to steal things that don’t belong to them:

In June of 2022, [cops]…threw dozens of tear gas grenades into [a woman’s South Bend, Indiana] house…smashed windows, destroyed the security cameras, punched holes in the walls, ripped a panel and fan from the bathroom wall and ceiling, ransacked and tossed furniture, snatched curtains down, and broke a mirror and various storage containers…a litany of personal belongings…were ruined.  [Cops were after] a man named John Parnell Thomas…who…did not own the home, did not have any relationship with its owners, and had never been there.  The actual owner, Amy Hadley…told [cops] that Thomas was not inside and that her security cameras…would have alerted her if a stranger had forced his way in [but of course they didn’t care and proceeded to destroy her house like a mob of deranged hooligans, and have refused to pay for the damages]…Her home insurance helped her in part but declined to pay the full amount, which totaled at least $16,000…

Civil rights advocates often joke that the Third Amendment is the only one that hasn’t been undermined, but I fail to see any important difference between the government forcibly taking people’s homes to quarter troops and forcibly taking them to serve as props for cops and robbers games.

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1391)

The currently-fashionable “monkey see, monkey do” parade has escaped the US:

The [authoritarian] government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez intends to implement age verification to access adult content on the internet…Spain’s data regulator Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) is developing a process to require web users to utilize a digital ID…[similar to the one in Louisiana that suffered] a data breach [months after the state started the “age verification” parade]…

The Cop Myth (#1397)

This one really was an ex-cop, but still just as dangerous:

A former…Tennessee [cop named]…Lawrence Goodine…[has been] charged with murder, kidnapping and tampering with evidence…[after murdering his girlfriend] Kara Akins…[by] strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head…Goodine [absurdly claimed] he had woken up at 3 a.m. and found the victim dead…[of an] overdose…Goodine…was fired [from the pig herd] in 2007…

To Molest and Rape (#1399)

Sometimes molester cops helpfully provide photographic evidence of their crimes:

Hidden cameras captured hundreds of hours of…footage inside a bathroom and bedroom at the home of a [typical and representative] California [cop who]…sexually abus[ed] an underage boy…One camera [was] placed in a light fixture above a toilet…another [was] concealed in a bedroom smoke detector…The [typical and representative cop], James Plas Grider, is seen in one video masturbating while wearing his [magical clown costume]…

Other cops’ fixation on the magical clown costumes of rapist cops is a common element of these stories:

New Mexico State Police arrested Joe Lucero Gonzales last month…for sending nude photos to four teen…[girl]s through social media and [raping] one of them in his [pigmobile] while [wearing his magical clown costume]…The teens range in age from 15 to 17…

 

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!

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Diary #704

December 27, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

What a wonderful Christmas we had at Sunset!  Christmas of ’21 was the best I could remember until that time, but this one surpassed it in almost every way.  Though we didn’t have a white Christmas (it rained all day), we were snug and comfortable in the atrium, the first time we’ve used it for a family gathering like that; I woke up about an hour early (not unusual for me when I know there’s a busy day ahead) and started a fire so the area near the tree would be warm by late morning.  Everyone liked their presents, and though I had to go back to the kitchen a little after noon to get dinner started, most of my guests sat around the atrium stove, talking, listening to Christmas music, stoking the fire and basically making merry.  Even the dinner prepration went so smoothly that everything was ready right on time, and judging by the relative paucity of leftovers everyone really enjoyed the food!  Chekhov said it was the best Christmas he’d had in over a decade, and everyone else expressed similar sentiments; I was especially happy that my vision for the annex has come true, and I hope and pray to see many more good times there.

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Boxing Day 2023

December 26, 2023 by Maggie McNeill

Just a reminder of what this day is for: relaxing and sharing with the less fortunate. And they needn’t be strangers. Happy Holidays, and Blessed Be.

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