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!
Read Full Post »
Nowhere is the American ignorance of history more visible than in the pronouncements of people who really believe that nobody had to work to survive before the invention of capitalism. – “Yuletide Tweets”
