Am I the only one concerned about the fact the opening credits for s4 of Black Butler includes very specific stuff that's not in the manga, like a giant fire person walking around? Who or what the heck is that?!? 🤔
Apr 13 - Yet More Scanning (of course). Just one album today, it was one of those fairly old ones fastened together with what was basically a shoelace and long interlocking grommets at one end, so I unfastened it to making scanning simpler, and then had to reassemble it afterwards. Nephew out again, I had a small pizza for supper.
Apr 14 - Another laced-up album to take apart and scan and reassemble. Then the loose photos from inside two albums that are both too large to fit in my scanner, so I'll need to photograph their pages another day. And then a small cardboard box of random photos, documents, negatives, and what turned out to be a small stack of handwritten recipes, probably from some time in the late 40s through early 60s as one of them was for a jellied salad. It was based on minced cooked beets, diced apple, celery, and green peas in lemon jello seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and vinegar, and with some of the water replaced with salad cream. *Shudders*
Nephew made a meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and steamed mixed veg for supper.
Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits
I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!
Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.
The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!
These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?
Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.
Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:
So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:
(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)
Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.
Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.
How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?
Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.
Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:
These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:
And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:
Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.
The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.
Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:
Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":
a million-armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.
But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:
The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
“The skirt I crocheted with leftover scrap yarns I had lying around, the scarf is custom-knit by my bestie @ivafs.art, the tights were a gift but I think they were from Amazon, the top is vintage Cynthia Steffe, the jacket is thrifted, nd the boots are from John Fluevog. I get inspiration from everything, but my main priorities (apart from the weather) are whether 13 year old me would like my fit, and whether it makes me happy in the moment.”
02 MAR '24: Rob and Steve are the first guests formally announced on the BHR website.
06 MAR '24: Alex McKenna is on board!
07 MAR '24: Benjamin is ready to party!
10 MAR '24: Red Harlow himself, actor Robert Bogue, will once again join the gang!
11 MAR '24: Peter and Mick are joining the fun once again!
12 MAR '24: Another big update! Jim Santangeli, and for the very first time, Howard Pinhasik will join the rest of the gang at Deadwood.
13 MAR '24: Ms Grimshaw and Ms. Jackson will be meeting up with the rest of the gang!
15 MAR '24: Arthur's favorite father figure and the Spaghetti villain have joined the fun.
16 MAR '24: THE BOAH is coming to Deadwood!
18 MAR '24: The final two camp ladies will be at Deadwood!
23 MAR '24: Everyone's favorite Bandito is coming to Deadwood!
25 MAR '24: For the first time. Ms Molly herself, Penny O'Brien will be at the 2nd annual RDR Event! Also, photos have been rearranged to place the newest announcements on top.
30 MAR '24: The talent behind Agent Milton will be joining the rest of the gang at Deadwood!
21 APR '24: Sophia Marzocchi, the og Abigail Marston, will maker her first appearance at the 2nd annual Red Dead event!
[★]; YOU FIND A PHONE NUMBER WRITTEN ON THE MIRROR OF THE SULIM LIBRARY'S SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM. It's scrawled messily across the glass in erasable expo marker, the handwriting underneath almost closer to hieroglyphics than lettering— and what you thought it read, was 'SEND DUCK PICS FOR A GOOD TIME.'
(You suppose, in hindsight, it was a good thing this person's penmanship was so shit— because if you knew what it really said, you might have never stumbled across the oddly intriguing inbox of one Huang Renjun.)
⤷ last updated apr. 13, 2024.
⤷ read the #about my work section here before proceeding.
⤷ minors and/or ageless blogs that interact w/nsfw content will be blocked.
places, places! ♡ ϟ gn!
1.3k words · idol!hyunjin x stylist!reader
⤷ you’re just trying to do your job; your client has other ideas.
fallen star ☁ ✧ gn!
2.5k words · ex-bf!hyunjin
⤷ an impromptu drive to the airport at five in the morning rekindles conversations and feelings alike.
crying lightning ☁ ϟ ✧
11.1k words · idol!hyunjin x stylist!reader
⤷ hyunjin finds you’re not half as impossible as everyone assumes you are.
ace ♡ ✧ gn!
15.2k words · volleyball player!hyunjin x tutor!reader
⤷ volleyball superstar and your personal hell proposes a trade-off you can't refuse: his matchmaking services for a passing anthropology grade.
𝐇𝐀𝐍 · 한지성
empty my mind ♡ ☁ ϟ
6.4k words · fwb!jisung
⤷ stars flare brightest in the absence of light, and you see his clearer than day.
𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐗 · 이용복
lifetimes ♡ ☁ gn!
1k words · established relationship, hurt/comfort
⤷ "if you smell the same as someone, you'll have some peace of mind."
subtext ♡ gn!
1.1k words · roommate!felix x streamer!reader
⤷ in which you forget that your hot housemate follows you on twitter.
resurface ♡ ☁ gn!
1.7k words · established relationship
⤷ felix misses you a little extra tonight; good thing you're way ahead of him.
everything has changed (besides myself) ♡ ☁ ✧ gn!
5.4k words · babysitter!felix, exes to lovers
⤷ the human heart is more stubborn than you know.
not mine ♡ ☁ ✧ gn!
7.7k words · idol!felix, best friends to lovers
⤷ five times you want to tell your best friend you love him and the time you finally do.
𝐀𝐋𝐋 · 스트레이 키즈
when they know they're in love ♡ ☁ gn!
1.4k words · headcanons
skz + the habits you share ♡ ✧ gn!
3.7k words · headcanons
winter falls · collaboration with @astraystayyh
⤷ eight winter-themed fics for each member of stray kids.
Birthday - EF - Prasha Ganesh
Sunday, 14 April .. wishes for this day from all the Ef family ..🚩❤️
🪔 ,
Ef Prasha Ganesh from Sri Lanka .. and Ef Urvashi Sharma .. 🙏🏻🚩
Mesadi / Vaisakhadi
Mesadi/Vaisakhadi festival celebrated by the people of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Celebrated on the 13th day of the bright half of the Hindu month of Vaishakha. An important festival for the farmers of Maharashtra and Karnataka as it marks the beginning of the sowing season.
VAISAKHI, VISHU, RONGALI BIHU, NABA BARSHA, VAISAKHADI AND PUTHANDU PIRAPPU
Sunday, 14 April
.. all the festive occasions .. all together .. one nation ..
greetings for peace calm and harmony among all .. 🚩🇮🇳
... for the joy and happiness in the celebration of good harvesting .. what be sown, be of value and immense .. the feed from the 'Annadata' .. अन्नदाता .. the deity who provides food ..
THE FARMER .. !!
... but the mind still lingers on the nuclear areas of discussion and many other books videos documentaries are researched .. and all come to just one conclusion ..
within seconds .. it can me Armageddon .. !!!
no further explanation or talk .. live in the present of celebration and gaiety , happiness and celebration .. for nothing be greater than that ..
Love to all 🌹❤️
Amitabh Bachchan
PS :
.. and you watch a game .. and truly without reason you side with one side and inwardly, even though there is no personal interest or following, you wish it to win .. and it reaches a hard fought end to a battle well fought .. and lose ..
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
My next novel is The Bezzle, a high-tech ice-cold revenge thriller starring Marty Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant, as he takes on the sleaziest scams of the first two decades of the 2000s, from hamburger-themed Ponzis to the unbelievably sleazy and evil prison-tech industry:
I'm taking Marty on the road! I'll be visiting eighteen cities between now and June, and I hope you'll come out and say hello, visit a beloved local bookseller, and maybe get a book (or two)!
21 Feb: Weller Bookworks, Salt Lake City, 1830h:
https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm
22 Feb: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 19h:
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow
24 Feb: Vroman's, Pasadena, 17h, with Adam Conover (!!)
https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle
26 Feb: Third Place Books, Seattle, 19h, with Neal Stephenson (!!!)
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow