I would rather be dead than ever go back. – victim of ALA
Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#1136) 
Laws are for the peasantry, not the rulers:
A [typical and representative] North Dakota [politician] who was one of the most powerful members of the Legislature [will] plead guilty…in federal court to traveling to Europe with the intent to pay for sex with a minor. Ray Holmberg…was indicted in October 2023…and…will…have to register as a sex offender…
A Broker in Pillage (#1276)
South Carolina is one of the most flagrant abusers of this unconstitutional practice:
In Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on Interstate 85, [cop]s stop vehicles for…any infraction, no matter how minor…lead[ing] to a roadside interrogation and warrantless search…the [sophomorically-entitled “Operation Rolling Thunder” has been committed] every year since 2006, yet no one has ever done a systematic audit…It took a lawsuit to finally pry the records loose…Over 72 percent of vehicle searches during [the scheme] in 2022 produced nothing illegal. Officers routinely treated innocent drivers like criminals…[and] currency as contraband. The records describe no single case in which officers found a large amount of cash and did not seize it…[they] pressured property owners to sign roadside abandonment forms, giving up claims to their cash on the spot…Officers focused on vehicles with out-of-state plates, rental cars, and commercial buses. Over 83 percent of the [victims]…lived out of state…and 75 percent…were black…[the armed-robber cops] do not create incident reports for every search. They only document their “wins”…[so there are] no records for 102 of the 144 searches that occurred during [the scheme] in 2022…This leaves government watchdogs in the dark—by design. They cannot inspect public records that do not exist. Victims cannot cite them in litigation…
Don’t Call It Trafficking (#1387)
The entire “troubled teen” industry needs to be sued out of existence:
There is a highly lucrative, multibillion-dollar market of residential “behaviour modification programmes”…in the US, where an estimated 50,000 children [and teenagers] are [sent] by their parents…against their will every year. All operate in closely guarded secrecy. There are more than a hundred in Utah alone, but some are based offshore in remote, low-regulation, low-cost foreign locations such as Samoa, Costa Rica, Mexico and Caribbean islands…[they are condemned to these camps] for bunking off school, wearing inappropriate clothes, swearing, [or using] cigarettes or alcohol…a sizeable number [are]…adopted by parents who had then changed their minds…many [we]re had been diagnosed [by quacks] with oppositional defiant disorder, whose symptoms…[are] indistinguishable from typical adolescent behaviour…boys aged 14-18 confined in [Atlantis Leadership Academy, or ALA, raided by Jamaican officials in February]…had been starved, waterboarded and brutally beaten with broom handles, rakes, belts and metal water bottles…sleep-deprived and relentlessly insulted…bleach and salt [were] rubbed in their wounds; others…were [brutally assaulted,] threatened with knives and kept in solitary confinement for months on end…
Panopticon (#1429)
“Prostitution” is such a handy excuse for surveillance:
Moral panic about sex work leads to law enforcement practices that reach far beyond anyone engaged in or with erotic labor. The latest example comes from San Diego…where cops are putting up a creepy surveillance tower under the auspice of stopping…prostitution…[by] record[ing] video of anyone who happens to be in the area…even if you think that punishing prostitution customers (or sex workers themselves) is a swell idea, it’s hard to see how the surveillance tower makes any sense…the tower is very visible and local media have been publicizing it. Smart sex workers and their customers will simply move to another, less visible area…It seems clear that th[is]…is…just a way for authorities to look like they’re doing something about sex trafficking while further normalizing the idea of conducting broad, warrantless surveillance of everyone…
Pyrrhic Victory (#1432)
Phrenology for tech worshipers:
Michal Kosinski…has made…plausible[-sounding] claims that machine-learning algorithms…can discern deeply private things about us — our intelligence, our sexual preferences, our political beliefs — using little more than…photographs of our faces…Science has been trying to divine truths about personality and behavior from various tests and images for centuries…Phrenologists used calipers to measure bumps on people’s heads, hoping to diagnose mental incapacities or moral deficiencies…none of these “sciences” worked…[and] every time someone claimed they’d found a way to measure people’s inner traits based on their exterior features, it quickly turned into a tool to discriminate…Yet today…facial recognition continue[s] to be…abused…in everything from marketing and job hiring to college admissions and law enforcement…
Opting Out (#1438)
Politicians refuse to recognize that prohibition of speech, ie censorship, is as doomed to failure as other kinds of prohibition:
As riots rock…Britain, some [politicians] are trying to blame social media…[rather than the] government policy…[causing] the country’s civil unrest…they…want social media companies to ban [any] user accounts [politicians point at, calling this indirect censorship]…”their responsibilities”…Ofcom, the British…[censorship bureau], has already [harass]ed social media companies…about online speech, in…the name of “safety”…Making businesses liable for speech that is not their own is fraught with [wholly]…intended consequences…[by] strongly incentiviz[ing] those businesses to remove any content that could invite legal scrutiny…allowing [government] control over online discourse without the messy optics of jailing citizens for wrongthink…
The Cop Myth (#1446) 
Why are people shocked when men paid and encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?
An…Atlanta [cop was]…arrested [for murdering] a man…outside of a…bar during a birthday party…Melvin Potter…[shot] Devon Anderson…to [death after he] tried to de-escalate [an] argument…[between the drunk] Potter…[and another partygoer. Potter]…was [previously] arrested on DUI charges in 2021…but [as is typical for drunk-driving cops escaped without consequences]…
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!
Read Full Post »
It never ceases to amaze me that, after a century and a half of pseudoscience, self-contradiction, crypto-moralism, scams and outright lies, most people STILL believe nutritionism is a real science rather than something akin to astrology, phrenology, or bite mark analysis. – “Autumn Tweets”
