#household felony

[eelgraveyard]

hey guys sorry i died my wifi box exploded have petsclones content to make up for it

#leskowitz.rec #petscop #sheriff domestic #household felony #policecop #ai builds #petsclones

[liyazaki]

via the Arkansas Advocate

it’s official: in Arkansas, library staff may now be charged with a Class D felony for providing books to their communities that are deemed “obscene”.

in Florida, school librarians and teachers can be criminally charged for checking out books to kids that dare to touch on LGBTQ topics & gender identity, thanks to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

book censorship in the US is at such an all-time high, book sanctuaries are popping up all over the country.

library staff aren’t physically safe, either. just over the past couple months, threats against libraries and their staff resulted in the temporary closure of “five public library systems due to bomb and shooting threats," ALA. active shooter trainings have become the new norm for me.

the censorship myself and my colleagues have been watching unfold over the last several years has felt like watching a slow-motion car crash.

but this bill? this feels like a death knell for my profession.

via Teen Vogue

when I was a confused queer kid growing up in an ultra-religious household, the library was my refuge. when I asked hard questions, librarians listened and gave me the tools I needed to answer them. in many ways, libraries saved my life. it's why I became a librarian.

I can't believe I'm living in times where future generations of kids may not have access to the same refuge I did, but it's happening.

if you live in the US and you care about protecting open, equitable access to information, please check out the American Library Association for anti-censorship resources in your state, info on contacting your representatives, etc.

you can also report censorship you see in your community and ALA will investigate (1-800-545-2433, ext. 4266; [email protected]).

I know this isn't my usual content, but libraries are standing on the edge of a horrifying precipice- one we can't escape on our own.

libraries are free society's canary in the coal mine, and all the alarms are singing. when libraries fall, nations usually aren't far behind.

this matters- and we need help.

#censorship #book banning #libraries #banned books #arkansas #florida #public libraries #school libraries #librarians #american library association #american libraries #lgbtq+ #lgbtq+ history #us politics #homophobia #transphobia

[sexyheretic]

Mr. Lanez, 30, was convicted of three felony counts: assault with a semiautomatic handgun, carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. He faces more than 20 years in prison and could be deported.

The case, which played out as both a tawdry tabloid narrative and a weighty referendum on the treatment of Black women in hip-hop and beyond, was closely watched for both its famous characters and what it said about the recent adjudication of alleged abuse by notable men, such as Johnny Depp and Harvey Weinstein, in court and in public.

Mr. Lanez, though not a household name before the case, has seen his celebrity profile rise since the shooting, earning explicit and implied support from various corners of the hip-hop universe, including influential blogs, social media accounts and the rappers-turned-talking heads 50 Cent and Joe Budden.

#megan thee stallion

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the Red Team Blues audiobook, which Amazon won't sell (read by Wil Wheaton!)

Red Team Blues is my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller; it’s a major title for my publishers Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and it’s swept the trade press with starred reviews all ‘round. Despite all that, Audible will not sell the audiobook. In fact, Audible won’t sell any of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

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:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/anti-finance-finance-thriller/#marty-hench

Audible is Amazon’s monopoly audiobook platform. It has a death-grip on the audiobook market, commanding more than 90% of genre audiobook sales, and every single one of those audiobooks is sold with Amazon’s DRM on it. That means that you can’t break up with Amazon without throwing away those audiobooks. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I can’t give you a tool to convert my own copyrighted audiobooks to a non-Amazon format. Doing so is a felony carrying a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for an act that in no way infringes anyone’s copyright! Indeed, merely infringing copyright is much less illegal than removing Amazon’s mandatory DRM from my own books!

I’ve got amazing publishers who support my crusade against DRM, but they’re not charities. If they can’t sell my audiobooks on the platform that represents 90% of the market, they’re not going to make audio editions at all. Instead, I make my own audiobooks, using brilliant voice actors like Amber Benson and @neil-gaiman​, and I sell them everywhere except Audible.

Doing this isn’t cheap: I’m paying for an incredible studio (Skyboat Media), a world-class director (Gabrielle de Cuir), top-notch sound editing and mastering, and, of course, killer narrators. And while indie audiobook platforms like Libro.fm and downpour.com are amazing, the brutal fees extracted by Apple and Google on app sales means that users have to jump through a thousand hoops to shop with indie stores. Most audiobook listeners don’t even know that these stores exist: if a title isn’t available on Audible, they assume no audiobook exists.

That’s where Kickstarter comes in: twice now, I’ve crowdfunded presales of my audiobooks through KS, and these campaigns were astoundingly successful, smashing records and selling thousands of audiobooks. These campaigns didn’t just pay my bills (especially during lockdown, when our household income plunged), but they also showed other authors that it was possible to evade Amazon’s monopoly chokepoint and sell books that aren’t sticky-traps for Audible’s walled garden/prison:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/90282-we-wrote-a-book-about-why-audible-won-t-sell-our-book-and-snuck-it-onto-audible.html

And today, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Red Team Blues, and even by the standards of my previous efforts, I think this one’s gonna be incredible.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

For starters, there’s the narrator: @wilwheaton​, whose work on my previous books is outstanding, hands-down my favorite (don’t tell my other narrators! They’re great too!):

https://wilwheaton.net/

Beyond Wil’s narration, there’s the subject matter. The hero of Red Team Blues is a hard-charging forensic accountant who’s untangled every Silicon Valley finance scam since he fell in love with spreadsheets as as a MIT freshman, dropped out, got his CPA ticket, and moved west. Now, at the age of 67, Marty Hench is ready to retire, but a dear old friend — a legendary cryptographer — drags him back for one last job — locating the stolen keys to the backdoor he foolishly hid in a cryptocurrency that’s worth more than a billion dollars.

That’s the starting gun for a “grabby next-Tuesday thriller” that sees Marty in between three-letter agencies and international crime syndicates, all of whom view digital technology as a carrier medium for scams, violence and predation. Marty’s final adventure involves dodgy banks, crooked crypto, and complicit officials in a fallen paradise where computers’ libertory promise has been sucked dry by billionaire vampires.

It’s a pretty contemporary story, in other words.

I wrote this one before SVB, before Sam Bankman0Fried and FTX — just like I wrote Little Brother before Snowden’s revelations. It’s not that I’m prescient — fortune-telling is a fatalist’s delusion — it’s that these phenomena are just the most spectacular, most recent examples in a long string of ghastly and increasingly dire scandals.

Red Team Blues blasted out of my fingertips in six weeks flat, during lockdown, when technology was simultaneously a lifeline, connecting us to one another during our enforced isolation; and a tool of predatory control, as bossware turned our “work from home” into “live at work.”

The last time I wrote a book that quickly, it was Little Brother, and, as with Little Brother, Red Team Blues is a way of working out my own anxieties and hopes for technology on the page, in story.

These books tap into a nerve. I knew I had something special in my hands when, the night after I finished the first draft, I rolled over at 2AM to find my wife sitting up in bed, reading.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I had to find out how it ended,” she answered.

The next day, my editor sent me a four-line email:

That. Was. A! Fucking! Ride! Whoa!

Within a week, he’d bought Red Team Blues…and two sequels. I finished writing the second of these on Monday, and all three are coming out in the next 22 months. It’s gonna be a wild ride.

Kickstarter backers can get the usual goodies: DRM-free audiobooks and ebooks, hardcovers (including signed and personalized copies), and three very special, very limited-run goodies.

First, there’s naming rights for characters in the sequels — I’m selling three of these; they’re a form of cheap (or at least, reasonably priced) literary immortality for you or a loved one. The sequels are a lot of fun — they go in reverse chronology, and the next one is The Bezzle, out in Feb 2024, a book about prison-tech scams, crooked LA County Sheriff’s Deputy gangs, and real-estate scumbags turned techbros.

The third book is Picks and Shovels (Jan 2025), and it’s Marty’s first adventure after he comes west to San Francisco and ends up working for the bad guys, an affinity scam PC company called “Three Wise Men” that’s run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi who fleece their faithful with proprietary, underpowered computers and peripherals, and front for some very bad, very violent money-men.

Next, there’s three Marty Hench short story commissions: the Hench stories are machines for turning opaque finance scams into technothrillers. While finance bros use MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) as a weapon to bore their marks into submission, I use the same performative complexity as the engines of taut detective stories. Commissioning a Hench story lets you turn your favorite MEGO scam into a science fiction story, which I’ll then shop to fiction websites (every story I’ve written for the past 20 years has sold, though in the event that one of these doesn’t, I’ll put it up under a CC license).

Finally, there’s a super-ultra-limited deluxe hardcover edition — and I do mean limited, just four copies! These leather-bound editions have Will Staehle’s fantastic graphic motif embossed in their covers, and the type design legend John D Berry is laying out the pages so that there’s space for a hidden cavity. Nestled in that cavity is a hand-bound early draft edition of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues. The binding is being done by the fantastic book-artist John DeMerritt. Each copy’s endpapers will feature a custom cryptographic puzzle created especially for it by the cryptographer Bruce Schneier.

I often hear from readers who want to thank me for the work I do, from the free podcast I’ve put out since 2006 to the free, CC BY columns I’ve written for Pluralistic for the past three years. There is no better way to thank me than to back this Kickstarter and encourage your friends to do the same:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

Preselling a ton of audiobooks, ebooks, and print books is a huge boost to the book on its launch — incomparable, really. Invaluable.

What’s more, helping me find a viable way to produce popular, widely heard audiobooks without submitting to Amazon’s DRM lock-in sets an example for other creators and publishers: we have a hell of a collective action problem to solve, but if we could coordinate a response to Audible demanding the right to decide whether our work should have their DRM, it would force Audible to treat all of us — creators, publishers and listeners — more fairly.

I’ll be heading out on tour to the US, Canada, the UK and Germany once the book is out. I’m really looking forward to as many backers in person as I can! Thank you for your support over these many long years — and for your support on this Kickstarter.

Today (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.

[Image ID: A graphic showing a phone playing the Red Team Blues audiobok, along with a quote from Booklist, 'Jam-packed with cutting-edge ideas about cybersecurity and crypto. Another winner from an sf wizard.']

#pluralistic #wil wheaton #drm #chokepoint capitalism #Monopoly #audible #amazon #audiobooks #sf #science fiction #post cyberpunk #cyberpunk #technothrillers #thrillers #heists #cryptocurrency #red team blues #marty hench #kickstarter

[alwaysbewoke]

Racist print promoting anti-abolitionists' fears of multiracial personal relationships. Created by Edward Williams Clay in 1839. On December 13, 1893, Judge Householder of Knoxville, Tennessee, sent an entire family to jail on felony miscegenation charges. Setting bond at $500, he jailed a black man named Jim McFarland, and his mother, Ms. McFarland, a black woman, Henry Whitehead, a black man, Harriet Smith, who local authorities reported was a white woman, and her children from prior relationships with white men, Lydia Smith and John Smith. At the time of arrest, the multigenerational family lived in the same household. The court’s order left a young child at home without a caregiver. The family spent over a month in jail before facing trial in January. Newspapers noted that Smith had reported to them “with shameless candor,” that she was actually a black woman—while her mother was white, her father was a light-skinned black man—and that she had never pretended to be white. Local news speculated further that since Smith’s children had white fathers, those children living with black men and women might violate the miscegenation codes as written “even should the taint of negro blood be traced to the remote degree claimed.” Local media and the white Knoxville community praised Squire Householder’s actions, reporting that he “came to the rescue of the community” by “starting a war on the crime of miscegenation.” Ultimately, a month after her arrest, Smith was tried before a jury that determined she was “of colored stock,” and acquitted her and Henry Whitehead of miscegenation. However, the jury still convicted them both of lewdness for living together, and they were each sentenced to 11 months in the workhouse. The cases against her children were dropped by the prosecutor after this verdict.

x

[thisbelongsto-nohbodys]

[Eda is at the Lumity household and is holding Kid!Azura]

Luz: (whispering) Thanks for watching ‘Zura for a bit so Amity and I can have some time together alone.

Eda: No problem, I know how hard it is to be a parent. Me and this little one is going to have so much fun for a while.

Amity: So what do you have planned?

Eda: Eh, either get some ice scream or commit a felony, I’ll decide on the fly over. Okay Byyeeeeeee

Azura: Byyeeee

[Eda and Azura fly off on Owlbert]

Amity:…………

#the owl house #eda clawthorne #luz noceda #amity blight #Lumity #azura noceda #Azura Noceda blight #source: The Golden Girls #….kinda

[lem0nademouth]

i think the hardest pill for leftists/progressives/liberals/whatever you want to call yourself to swallow is that it’s not that simple. it’s not that easy.

i was the victim of a violent crime, and i personally do not want my perpetrator to go to prison. i do not think it will serve to protect anyone in the future or help me heal from what happened. but that’s my own feeling about my own experience. i do not get to dictate what other victims and their loved ones feel is justice for them. i support transformative and restorative justice as an option, but it can’t be the only one.

i work with young kids (2mo-7yrs) and try to keep up to date on discussions about child development to make sure i’m aware of what behavior is considered age appropriate. i ended up following a mom on tiktok who has been sharing her story about her son (who remains anonymous) and his progressive diagnoses of ODD, conduct disorder, and eventually antisocial personality disorder. he has threatened to kill his family, physically assaulted and severely harmed his family and neighbors, damaged private and public property, and has been arrested on several felony charges before his sixteenth birthday. this mom is distraught. he has no known history of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, was raised in a stable household where all his needs were met. he tried to kill one of the kids at the psychiatric hospital he was placed in, eventually leading to the state taking custody of him because it wasn’t safe for his family to be around him. not every person with his diagnoses is like him. but he is. and there needs to be a solution for him and his family.

my cousin was born to parents who were on a host of illicit drugs throughout the pregnancy and her early life, leading to her and her brother being placed in foster care. they were adopted by my aunt and it was revealed that my cousin has an intellectual disability called borderline intellectual functioning because her brain couldn’t develop properly in utero. fast forward to now, she’s in her early 20s and my aunt is raising the baby she had after being impregnated by her abusive boyfriend (we tried to get her to leave, called the police, my uncle nearly killed the guy) because she literally does not have the ability to raise a baby. she cannot process the complex thoughts you need to take care of a baby - her brain literally can’t do it. so now my aunt and uncle are raising their grandchild while caring for their daughter, who will never be able to live independently. was it ethical for that child to be born? i don’t know! i don’t even know if it was ethical for my cousins to be born! but i know it’s not as easy as “everyone should be able to have kids whenever they want and if you say otherwise its eugenics”.

people aren’t political issues. they’re people. and pretending like you have the answer to every problem doesn’t make you better or more in control; it makes you disillusioned. it’s not that easy. it never has been.

#long post #prison abolition #eugenics #psychiatry #politics #political theory #political philosophy #ethics #progressive ideology #leftist #liberalism #progressivism #leftism #its not that easy #restorative justice #transformative justice

[the-library-alcove]

I'm sorry, do Americans inmates NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO VOTE??

Nope.

Felons are legally disenfranchised in most of the US; compare that with how the US legal system disproportionately sends black men to jail and you have systemic disenfranchisement based on racism!

Bonus fact: While people in prisons do not have the right to vote, they do get counted in census numbers for determining districting. The "joke" is that the optimum voting district is one packed with prisons... and a single voting household.

There have been reform efforts, but they've been blocked by the people who benefit from the current status quo; a few years back in 2018, there was an attempt in Florida to pass an amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to felons who had served their sentences, which would have been about 1.5 million people--about 10% of the eligible voting population, the highest percentage in the nation.

The amendment passed... and eight months later, Republicans in Florida's state legislature enacted a bill that would require all felons to pay all "outstanding fees, fines, and restitutions" before they would be considered to have "finished their sentences" and be able to vote. (There was some more legal back and forth past that, but you get the gist).

And now that the GOP is trying to make it a felony to get an abortion--or even have a natural miscarriage--it's going to have the same effect for people who can get pregnant, which I imagine is a feature to the GOP, not a bug.

[hurtmionedanger]

Ok so i am just a person who is interested in law and Not an actual lawyer so take all of this with a grain of salt BUT

Ohio is a one party consent state meaning that in any recording where wiatt is an active participant in that conversation that is technically legal (though still morally questionable in most cases), and additionally its legal to record in public places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy

HOWEVER

in cases like in the Klein household where there absolutely is a reasonable expectation of privacy and wiatt was Not part of that conversation that is illegal as he did not have consent of at least one party to be filming that conversation and according to the Reporters committee for freedom of press(rcfp), illegally recording an in person or electronic conversation is a felony offense in the state of ohio (specifically a felony of the fourth degree according to the ohio laws website) and punishment for a fourth degree felony in ohio is a minimum of 6 months jail time, and a maximum of 18 months. Returning to the rcfp website it is an additional felony for the “use” or “attempted use” of illegally obtained recordings through disclosing them, and it could be argued wiatt is using the recordings by uploading them to youtube. (Though most likely not as use in this sense is most likely being defined as blackmail)

Finally as a civil suit anyone whos conversation has been recorded or disclosed in violation of the law (ie damien or oliver, or really a long list of characters in this show) can bring a civil suit to recover damages, 200 dollars for each day of the violation, or a fine of 10,000 dollars, in addition to paying punitive damages and attorneys fees.

So

Yeah

What wiatt did especially with recording olivers love confession and then uploading it was SUPER not legal, and it was at least one possibly more felony charges along with several thousand dollars in fines

Again im just a guy who likes law and enjoys doing research, i could be wrong and dont take any of this seriously, but theres my general conclusion!

#danger zone #i hyperfixate on law #dont ask me why #i dont know either

[organchordsandlightning]

Speckled Band Part 3

"Can I be of assistance?" "Your presence might be invaluable." "Then I shall certainly come." "It is very kind of you."

extremely soft over this dialogue. watson is his partner, and holmes is still like ‘look, you can wait in the hotel if you want’

"Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge. Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession.

as someone with a hobby knowledge of the history of toxicology, it really is fascinating to see this as written in 1892. at this point, we have an okay-ish knowledge of what household things are poisonous (at the very least, the UK at this time was much better about banning stuff like arsenic in candy than the US) but we’re still about ... like, thirty-forty years out from being able to reliably identify non-plant-based poisons (like arsenic, etc etc) in the human body after death. a lot of poisonings got away with it because, frankly, a lot of people were getting accidentally poisoned all the time anyway, and if you couldn’t identify arsenic or what-have-you in a corpse ... no case!

Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vise upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put his lips to my ear.

"It is a nice household," he murmured. "That is the baboon."

“It is a nice household” mixed with watson’s “MY GOD!? A CHILD!?” is so funny

I do love that Watson is writing these stories down for publication, but he’s freely admitting to burglary here

How long they seemed, those quarters! Twelve struck, and one and two and three, and still we sat waiting silently for whatever might befall.

god I’m remembering how well-done this scene is in Granada, and you can really feel the tension here

I could, however, see that his face was deadly pale and filled with horror and loathing.

oh holmes is SCARED scared “you won’t inject my body with an undetectable non-plant-based poison you son of a bitch”

"It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

such a good reveal

Some of the blows of my cane came home and roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience."

(a) snakish lmao (b) this brings up an interesting legal question of whether holmes is guilty of murder.  while I don’t think this falls under the legal definition of murder (no pre-intent) or manslaughter (frankly, it’s more self-defense than anything - you see a snake hissing at you, you gotta hit that bad boy with a cane, that it went back to its master and bit him is none of your business as far as you’re concerned) however, i did look up to see that the felony murder rule was still in place in the UK at that time (called constructive malice) -- essentially saying that the courts could attribute malice aforethought (’i’m gonna go kill that guy) to you if a death was caused during the commission of another felony (say .... burglary) EDITED WITH FURTHER LEGAL THOUGHTS -- HELEN INVITED THEM INSIDE THE HOUSE, I DON’T THINK IT COUNTS AS BURGLARY ANYMORE, SHERLOCK HOLMES IS MURDER-FREE

#letters from watson #god I'm digging up my forensics and criminology degrees today

[eelgraveyard]

yeah (characters under the cut

green is ed (sheriff domestic)

purple is weldon (policecop)

yellow is just paul (petscop)

light blue is oliver (demo disk)

blue is richard (household felony)

magenta is nicholas (ai builds)

red is mike (irregular authority)

grey is malcom (dark castle)

#leskowitz.rec #petscop #sheriff domestic #policecop #demo disk #household felony #ai builds #irregular authority #dark castle #petscop parodies #petsclones #yeah

[ninjaofthepurplethings]

There are now two teenagers in the Rampage-Morisson household. Good luck Felony and Summa 👍🏻

#TS3 #Sims 3 #Felony Rampage #Summa Morisson #Draxler Rampage #Jezzabella Morisson #Jon Lessen #Bronwen Llewellyn #Judy Bunch #Riverview

[sweettoothvn]

Merry Christmas!

So quick ask...

How would it be celebrating Christmas with the LI?

Andre is huge on family when it comes to Christmas, expect to be invited to their family dinner and falling into the best food coma of your life. So many people are there, loving, hugging, sharing, chatting, and having a great time. Andre shares a lot of stories about his family with you along with showing you off to everyone he knows.

Casey probably has a few traditions he does with his older brother- but this year his brother was out on the road. So instead he takes you around, sharing his own personal Christmas with you. You check out the decorations and lights in the rich neighborhoods of California that crank up the power bills to the max while eating some food his mom gave him for Christmas. Your... tongue is on fire.

Chrys is another person big on family- except she just celebrates with her household. She invites you over to watch some movies and drink hot cocoa, eating tons of food while also trying to avoid the dogs with their pleading, begging eyes. It's difficult to resist, but you must. Her brothers and her do a weird skit re-enactment of the Birth of Christ... you don't remember dinosaurs being involved but they're there alright.

David doesn't usually celebrate Christmas so he doesn't know what to do when you want to celebrate with him. The last Christmas he celebrated was when his brother was still alive, after that nothing was really special anymore. You guys settle on the couch with some hot cocoa or eggnog while watching Christmas movies. He hasn't seen most of them so he's cringing at all the cheesiness of it all. He seemed to enjoy 'Elf' at least.

Eddie invites you over to his dads' house... reluctantly. It's more so for your sake. He fears that you might get overwhelmed by his parents and siblings. And of course you do. After being bombarded with questions and chatter, he pulls you aside for some alone time. He would have preferred to have been back in the dorms cuddling with you while doing nothing but being lazy, but he couldn't just NOT go and see his family for Christmas. They're weird but he loves them

Kieran doesn't celebrate with his family anymore. He hasn't in years actually. So instead, he takes you to a bunch of parties to get wasted and potentially commit a few felonies along the way. It's Christmas! Who cares? He sure doesn't. When you're both back home, exhausted, barely sober, and maybe injured, he pulls together a quick yet delicious meal, and you pass out on the couch.

Noble hasn't really celebrated Christmas- more so just- watched it happen. He doesn't know what to do but he does notice a lot of people bake. He makes way too much food and it all tastes so good- but you're going to choke if you eat it all. Welp! That's what left-overs are for. You show him a couple of movies and he doesn't watch them- instead he watches you, loving the fact you wanted to show him what Christmas was like.

Zach hasn't celebrated Christmas for a while. He never really liked Christmas- in fact he actually dislikes the concept of Santa.... a man that breaks into your house at night and just... GIVES YOU THINGS? You tell him Santa isn't real. He doesn't believe you. There are now bear traps by the fire place.

#sweet tooth vn #asks #sweet tooth eddie #sweet tooth david #sweet tooth noble #sweet tooth kieran #sweet tooth zach #sweet tooth andre #sweet tooth casey #sweet tooth chrys

[lilflowerpot]

what would the fallout be from Lotor if someone decided to try and kill Keith, since the Emperor is so obviously besotted with him?

Given that you've provided the stipulations of (1.) Lotor having already ascended the throne, and (2.) being obviously besotted with Keith, whether or not Keith was formerly recognised as the imperial consort at this time actually wouldn't matter, because he'd still be recognised as a part of the imperial household for the fact that the Emperor keeps him close and values his council.

...and an explicit attempt on the life of any member of the imperial household would, as I'm sure you can imagine, classify quite cleanly as high treason.

High treason is the crime of disloyalty to the Crown. Offences constituting high treason include plotting the murder of the sovereign; committing adultery with the sovereign's consort, with the sovereign's eldest unmarried daughter, or with the wife of the heir to the throne; levying war against the sovereign and adhering to the sovereign's enemies, giving them aid or comfort; and attempting to undermine the lawfully established line of succession. [...] Considered to be the most serious of offences (more than murder or other felonies), high treason was often met with extraordinary punishment, because it threatened the safety of the state. Hanging, drawing and quartering was the usual punishment until the 19th century. - High Treason in the United Kingdom, Wikipedia

In terms of the galra Empire, the above offences when translated to imperial law can be taken as: plotting the assault/murder of the sovereign or any member of the imperial household; levying war against the sovereign and adhering to the sovereign's enemies, giving them aid or comfort; and attempting to undermine the lawfully won succession of the Kral Zera. To be found guilty of high treason as an imperial citizen is a death sentence, naturally. The perpetrator would first be legally and spiritually disowned by their family, thereby stripping away their right to claim any blood-name other than “Cuaaskhli”—which roughly translates to “cold-sand-blood” and not only brands them as a soulless disgrace and social pariah for the rest of time, but also condemns them in the afterlife too as to have no soul is to be unable to return to Sa—before being escorted to the arena to be made an example of, where they would suffer a long, painful, and very deliberate public execution.

#high treason is no joke kids //especially// given that the empire is so hardcore with regard to loyalty (particularly to the throne!!) #Ao3 Little Blade #sa screams back #galra history & culture #keith kogane #prince lotor #keitor

[mariana-oconnor]

The Beryl Coronet pt 2

We continue the tale of Mr Holder, who last time made an astonishingly bad sequence of decisions that ended in him accusing his son of theft and handing him over to the police.

And I definitely, in no way decided arbitrarily that other characters were guilty. There was evidence. I presented it.

Mary did fail the vibe check. Although I do sort of support her given that a) she was stealing from the state/the royal family, and it's not like they can't afford it b) apparently her uncle wants her to marry her cousin and c) I want her to break out of the conventional Victorian gentlewoman mould the narrative is painting her into.

Sure, if she's guilty, she's causing a national crisis, but really Bertie, Prince of Wales, did that already, she's just leading everyone else's dumb ideas to their inevitable conclusions. Can we really blame her for that?

Yes, we probably can. And it does seem likely that the (not at all an archfey) Sir George Burnwell may be manipulating her into it, which would detract from her agency in the matter.

I suppose it could still be Lucy the maid, but I still think it's more likely that Arthur is covering for Mary.

“She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She is four-and-twenty.”

She is a baby.

Also, she doesn't go out and Sir George Burnwell has been around 'several times lately'. Yep.

But yeah, this does twist it more towards a 'Georgie has been manipulating and grooming a young sheltered girl' and less 'Mary is breaking out of her societal prison with a jewel heist.' Pity.

“Terrible! She is even more affected than I.”

Yeah, he took the jewels and ran off and left her.

Well, let's all hope he dies in a shipwreck.

"If his purpose were innocent, why did he not say so?” “Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie?"

Guy's too damn honourable for his own good. Refuses to lie, refuses to condemn the woman he loves. It would be romantic if not for the whole... cousins sort of raised as siblings thing. She calls your father 'dad'... that's weird. Maybe not weird for the time. But it feels weird.

“What did the police think of the noise which awoke you from your sleep?” “They considered that it might be caused by Arthur's closing his bedroom door.” “A likely story! As if a man bent on felony would slam his door so as to wake a household."

I love how outraged Holmes is by this theory. The exclamation mark is perfect. Of course, the door might have been slammed by the wind, but then you wouldn't go and steal the gems immediately, you'd wait until you were sure people weren't getting up.

"Consider what is involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came down from his bed, went, at great risk, to your dressing-room, opened your bureau, took out your coronet, broke off by main force a small portion of it, went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?"

I confess that the guilt of the banker's son appeared to me to be as obvious as it did to his unhappy father, but still I had such faith in Holmes' judgment that I felt that there must be some grounds for hope as long as he was dissatisfied with the accepted explanation.

Once you have jumped to a conclusion, any evidence to the contrary, no matter how ridiculous it may make your theory look, must be completely dismissed.

I'm not being fair. Caught holding the remains of the coronet is not a good look. But if they can't find the missing beryls, then clearly someone else must be involved at least.

Disregarding my presence, she went straight to her uncle and passed her hand over his head with a sweet womanly caress.

The phrase 'sweet womanly caress' upsets me on a fundamental level. But also it makes me really want Mary to be the villain of the piece. Like, I'm 90% sure that Burnwell has done a runner, but I want Mary to have set some part of this in motion just so she can scream and go a little feral, y'know, as a treat.

I kind of want her to catch up with Burnwell, maybe make sure the police catch him with one of the gems, then take the other two and go off on her own.

“But I am so sure that he is innocent. You know what woman's instincts are. I know that he has done no harm and that you will be sorry for having acted so harshly.”

Woman's instincts or... knowing he's innocent because you're the one who is guilty?

“You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked to your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?” “Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawing-room, and who may have heard uncle's remarks about the coronet.” “I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her sweetheart, and that the two may have planned the robbery.”

But why would Arthur protect the maid? Also, I feel like Mary is a little too eager to push the possibility of Lucy's guilt here. She adds that bit about the drawing-room all by herself. Yes, she seems concerned about Arthur, but still... she's very much been leaving all the breadcrumbs about Lucy.

Lucy makes sense as a suspect apart from why Arthur would be covering for her. Unless offpage they are having a romance, despite him having canonically proposed to Mary multiple times, then I just don't see that happening. But then we have also been told that canonically Mary dislikes Burnwell. There is clearly a secret romantic relationship somewhere in this tale. I'm inclined to think Burnwell (who has been noted as a wrong'un) rather than Lucy.

“Which key was used to open it?” he asked. “That which my son himself indicated—that of the cupboard of the lumber-room.”

If Mary locks up at night, she also has access to all the keys. Just saying.

“Then I will.” Holmes suddenly bent his strength upon it, but without result. “I feel it give a little,” said he; “but, though I am exceptionally strong in the fingers, it would take me all my time to break it."

Even Holmes, who once bent an iron poker back to straight again, cannot break off a part of the coronet on his own. So... struggle.

"I understand that you give me carte blanche to act for you, provided only that I get back the gems, and that you place no limit on the sum I may draw.”

Considering the sums of money involved in this story, I fear that Mr Holder is going to be left bankrupt even if he does recover the jewels. Buying them back might be the only way to recover them. But maybe he won't have to actually buy them, just pretend to be willing to buy them in order to lure Burnwell in. (I'm pretty sure Francis Prosper, the one-legged greengrocer is not involved, but I hope he and Lucy are happy).

He hurried to his chamber and was down again in a few minutes dressed as a common loafer. With his collar turned up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and his worn boots, he was a perfect sample of the class.

And Holmes is in disguise again! Always fun to play dress up. I assume he is fact gathering in order to work out where Burnwell is and how to reach him to try to 'buy' the gems, but I have no idea why this particular disguise is the way to go.

I'm not sure how happily this can end, as the coronet itself has already been broken, so there is clear evidence of it having been tampered with. I fear that Bertie is going to have to have a little chat with his mother about this. Clearly it's going badly so far.

#Letters from Watson #Sherlock Holmes #The Beryl Coronet #long post

[missmcspooks]

TWISTED COUPLES: David and Catherine Birnie

David John Birnie, and Catherine Margaret Birnie were an Australian couple who lived in Perth, Western Australia. Together, they sexually assaulted and murdered four women, and attempted to murder a fifth. The media dubbed this case as the “Moorhouse Murders,” as their home resided on Moorhouse Street, in Willagee. I was inspired to write this article due to the movie based on this story, “Hounds of Love” (2016). 

WHO WERE DAVID AND CATHERINE BIRNIE?

David Birnie, born on February 16th, 1951, grew up in a dysfunctional household and was the oldest of 5 siblings. Some of the household troubles he and his siblings endured were allegedly alcoholism, promiscuity, and incest. The family never ate meals together, and the parents never cooked meals for their children. At the young age of 15, Birnie dropped out of school to become an apprentice jockey for Eric Parnham at the Ascot Racecourse. While he worked there, he had physically abused the horses and experimented with exhibition. During one evening, Birnie put a pair of stockings over his head and broke into an elderly woman’s home in an attempt to rape her. He had been in and out of prison for misdemeanors and felonies by the time he was an adolescent. When he was an adult he became a pornography and sex addict, and was also a paraphiliac (the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It had also been defined as sexual interest in anything other than a consenting human partner). In his early 20’s he married his first wife, Kerrie, in 1972, and divorced in 1982. Together they had a daughter named Tanya, who never married and never had children, as she didn’t want to “spawn another David Birnie.” She had also changed her surname after his conviction. 

Catherine Birnie, born on May 23rd, 1951, was only two years old when her mother died as she gave birth to her brother, who also died just two days later. Her father was unable to raise her alone, and sent her to live with her paternal grandparents. When she was 10, there was a custody battle, and her father regained full custody of her. She met David when they were only 12 years old, and began a relationship together two years later. However, her father didn’t like him and he begged her to stop seeing him, considering the fact that their involvement together caused her to get into trouble with the police. However, his disapproval of their relationship only ended up strengthening it. Her time in prison throughout her adolescent years offered Catherine a chance to break away from David. Encouraged by a parole officer, Catherine began working for the McLaughlin family as a housekeeper. She married Donald McLaughlin on her 21st birthday. The couple had seven children together, and her first born, who was a son, was killed by a car during infancy. In 1985, she left her husband and all six children to live with David, and even though they were never legally married, she changed her surname to his, Birnie. 

The abductions and murders happened nearly instantly after they moved in together. Within five weeks, they abducted five women, all aged between 15 and 31. All victims were sexually assaulted and murdered, with the exception of their last victim, who managed to escape the day after she was captured. Her escape ended their killing spree. 

THE VICTIMS

Mary Neilson (22): She was a psychology major at the University of Western Australia and worked part time at a deli. She met David when she went to the spare parts yard, where he worked, looking for tires for her car. He offered to sell her really cheap tires and gave her his phone number. When she arrived at his home on October 6th, 1986, she was gagged, chained to the bed, and sexually assaulted while Catherine watched. She was then taken to Gleneagle, in Bedfordale, where she was assaulted again, and then strangled to death with a nylon cord. He then proceeded to stab her thinking that it would speed up the decomposition process, as he “read that in a book somewhere.” He then buried her in a shallow grave. Mary would’ve received her degree in psychology one year after her murder. 

Susannah Candy (15): She was abducted two weeks after the murder of Mary, as she was hitchhiking along Stirling Highway in Claremont. She was a brilliant young girl who was doing an amazing job at school, and lived with her two loving parents and siblings. The couple was driving along for several hours looking for their next victim when they saw her looking for a ride. As soon as she entered the car, she was held there by knifepoint while they tied her hands behind her back. Once they got back to the house, just like Mary, she was gagged, chained to the bed, and sexually assaulted. They also had her write a letter to her family to assure them that she was safe, as her father was a well known surgeon, but they still feared for her life.

After David had finished assaulting Susannah, Catherine got into bed with them, as she knew this type of thing turned him on. Together, they assaulted her one last time, and David proceeded to try and strangle her with a nylon cord, but she became hysterical. They forced sleeping pills down her throat to calm her down, and once she was asleep, he put the cord around her neck and told Catherine to strangle her. He wanted her to prove her undying love for him by murdering her. Catherine went through with the demand and killed her while he watched. When Catherine was later asked why she did it, she told them:

“Because I wanted to see how strong I was within my inner self. I didn’t feel a thing. It was like I expected. I was prepared to follow him to the end of the earth and do anything to see that his desires were satisfied. She was a female. Females hurt and destroy males.” 

They buried her near the grave where Mary was, located in the State Forest.

Noelene Patterson (31): They spotted her standing by her car on the Canning Highway, as she had run out of gas. They offered to give her a ride, and once she was inside the car, she was held at knifepoint, tied up, and told not to move. When they returned to their home, just as the women before her, she was gagged, chained to the bed, and repeatedly assaulted. The original plan was to murder her that same night, but David decided to keep her inside as a prisoner for three days. Catherine began to feel jealous and threatened, as she noticed him showing signs of an emotional attachment to her. That’s when she decided to slam David with an ultimatum: She would have to kill Noelene, or she would kill herself, and went to grab a knife and put it to her throat to show him that she wasn’t kidding. David then forced sleeping pills down her throat and strangled her to death in her sleep. They buried her body in the same forest, but further away from the other victims. It was said that Catherine got a lot of pleasure from throwing sand on Noelene’s face. 

In the image above, Noelene is on the left, and Denise is on the right.

Denise Brown (21): They spotted her waiting for a bus on Stirling Highway, and offered her a ride, which she accepted. Again, she was held at knifepoint, tied up, and brought back to the house where she was gagged, chained to the bed, and assaulted repeatedly. The following day she was taken to the Wanneroo pine plantation. While they were hidden in the forest, David assaulted her again in the car as they waited for the night to come. Once darkness hit, he dragged her out of the car and assaulted her again, and then stabbed her in the neck. They thought that she was dead and began digging a shallow grave and tossed her body inside. However, she was surprisingly still alive and sat up, and David grabbed an ax and struck her with it twice in the head. 

Kate Moir (17) The Final Victim: She was abducted at knifepoint after accepting a ride from them. On the ride back to the home, she asked them if they had planned to rape or kill her. Catherine replied with, “we’ll only rape you if you’re good.” However, she was treated differently than the former victims. She wasn’t immediately gagged and chained to the bed, and Instead, they forced her to dance for them, and slept in the couples bed with them, while being handcuffed to David. After she was abducted, they forced her to call her mother and told her that she was okay, and just had too much to drink and was staying at her friend’s house. Kate was very smart and used her words wisely, as her mother knew that she was not much of a drinker. 

The next day, David went to work and Catherine went to the door to carry out a drug deal, and forgot to chain her up to the bed. Kate knew that it was probably her only chance she’d get to escape, and climbed through a closed window by breaking its lock, and hit her head on the concrete. She tried knocking on several neighbors' doors, but no one answered, so she decided to jump a gate and was attacked by David’s dog. She thankfully was able to escape the dog and ran into a nearby vacuum cleaner store. She told them that she had been abducted and raped and the police were called. For some strange reason, the police were skeptical to believe her story, besides one female officer who believed her due to the amount of detail and information she provided, including their phone number and address. She told the police that the Birnies had given themselves fake names, but she read David’s name on a medicine bottle. She also told them that they watched the movie “Rocky” on VHS, and described a drawing she had concealed in their house as proof that she had been there. They found her drawing, as well as the VHS tape in the VCR. 

David and Catherine were arrested and gave conflicting stories during their interviews. Catherine claimed that she had never seen Kate before, while David said that Kate had come over to their house on her own free will to engage in consensual sex with them. David eventually was convinced to confess and tell them who the other victims were, and where the bodies were located. 

There could be other possible victims that the Birnies were responsible for. Cheryl Renwick vanished in May 1986, and Barbara Western in June 1986.

TRIAL, SENTENCING, AND IMPRISONMENT

When the trial began, David Birnie pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and one count each of abduction and rape. When asked why he had pleaded guilty, he gestured toward the victims' families and said, "It's the least I could do." He was sentenced to four terms of life in prison. After being found sane enough to stand trial, Catherine Birnie was also sentenced to four terms of life in prison. Under law at the time, both were required to serve 20 years before being eligible for parole.

David Birnie was found dead in his cell on October 7th, 2005. He was 54 years old. An inquest found that he had hanged himself from an air vent using a length of cord. Various factors led to his suicide, those being a failure to provide him with his anti-depressants, his computer had been confiscated and he was suspected of sexually assaulting another prisoner. He was described by a former prison officer as a 'model prisoner' who looked after injured animals. Catherine was not allowed to be present at his funeral. 

Catherine Birnie is imprisoned in Bandyup Women’s Prison. Since being incarcerated she has worked as a prison librarian and appeared in a prison production called Nunsense. Her parole application was rejected in 2007, and it’s stated that she will most likely never be free again. In 2017, Catherine Birnie's youngest son, under the alias Peter, called for her execution. He has stated that his relation to Birnie has resulted in him being assaulted on multiple occasions.

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