#how to manage expenses in usa

[sandramili143]

part time high selary job

registration now

[nikovraskol]

Okay, seeing the one where we have to get permission to have a job is kinda funny. Especially since in the state I live, at 16 or older you're able to get a job without a parents permission. If it doesn't require extreme labor, NDA's, or requires being 21 and allowed near drugs or naughties.

So, what job was Reader going for? Secretary work? Lol, if we just decided to work at a cafe or something, we wouldn't have to worry about a permission slip.

Which leaves me to wonder, if Alfred set Bruce on Reader, but Reader said nothing and got a job? Bruce finding out Reader has a job, instead of just asking for money?

Especially if Tim recognizes Reader after getting a drink? But he's questioning why we're working there. He chooses to sit back and observe. Only to watch as an absolute Karen yells at Reader and dumps hot coffee on them.

oopsy poopsy i am NAWT familiar the usa child labour laws, but honestly imagined mc as just snatching the first job she sees, like yk when u apply for a bunch of jobs only for like the worst one to call you back?

like u apply for 30 jobs, each of them being like a barista or a cashier or something normal but the only one to reach back to u is a taxidermy LMAO (true story)

masterlist

honestly, you getting some minimum wage job as a barista -- working in some relatively nice area of gotham then one day you just see tim.

just sat there, some over-expensive drink in his hand as he stares at you in confusion? why is his sibling working at a coffee shop? bitch, your dad is bruce wayne WHY are you working a minimum wage job?? if you wanted a job so bad, you should've applied for wayne enterprises or something!

he tries to talk to you only for you to ignore him, acting like you don't know him, it stings. you were preening for his affection a month ago, how could you casually just ignore him?!

whatever plans he had, cancelled, he spends the day sat in a booth, watching your every move. anytime one of your co-workers come up to him and ask him to leave he just tips them like $100 to shut them up.

then, he sees you handling yourself and sighs, maybe you're okay at this, it's good for you, as helpless as you are, to get some experience.

until a nasty customer comes in, shouting at you and berating you, all you can do is lower your head and apologise -- because it's a customer! you can't fight back because if you get fired you'll have to go job hunting again, you'd rather get beat up by damian.

but the sight of you, your head lowered and a frown on your face. well, tim just can't have you working in such environments, he'll just let bruce know.

you pull up home, you're tired from working a 9-5, you smell like caffiene and your social battery is in DEBT only for your father to put his hand on your shoulder and sigh,

"quit your job." he says softly, as if he's doing you a damn favour. when you obviously refuse, he says nothing, just sighs.

and then you pull up to work the next day and your manager tells you you've been promoted and will now work at wayne enterprises ?!

bruce bought the coffee shop just to have you work with him! isn't that great? he can keep an eye on you AND you can spend time with your family!! don't worry, he won't let you do any hard work, in fact, the only thing you're tasked with is spending time with your family !!

just remember to thank tim, he got you a better job AND he gave you oppurtunities to spend time with them, that's all you've ever wanted, right?

if yall sent in a request i PROMISEE i will get back.. i'm just switching between writing the next chapter and giggling at all the nice things yall r saying >3>

[aces-and-angels]

IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM SHAHED:

Note : this post is a repost of @appsa update on Shahed's campaign with updated infos on the current amount of raised funds.

I am so grateful to everyone who shared and donated, i really do count it as a miracle that we were able to reach the goal at all, never mind that it happened within the deadline we set. Your support has felt like a blessing in a truly wretched time, especially after all those baseless accusations were made.

Unfortunately, as is the norm with these fundraisers, it seems that shahed has run into some problems with the bank while withdrawing the funds she raised from this campaign. Apart from the unexpected $3.5k cut gfm took from the total amount, it seems the american bank her campaign manager using to send the money will also take a tax of $2k.

This has left her short of $5,500 from getting the full amount she needs to evacuate her whole family.

And it seems because the amount the campaign initially raised is so large, the campaign manager cannot afford to officially increase the target on the gofundme campaign page itself without putting himself at risk of having his bank account and its funds frozen.

As you may know already, there are lots of roadblocks when it comes to transferring funds from western countries to countries of the global south but especially gaza right now. People having their accounts frozen for sending money to gaza and having to go through legal hassles for it is not anything new.

Shahed doesn't want to put the campaign manager, who is their family friend, at risk of legal troubles like that, especially given the hostile political climate towards palestinians in the USA right now.

So i want to make this clear:

Shahed is currently unable to increase the target on the fundraiser on the gofundme itself, but she still needs to raise another 5.5k to cover the tax cuts taken by both gfm and the banks.

The goal on the fundraiser may say $80,000 is the target but the new one we have to aim for is actually $85,500 now

She is currently at $81,525 / $85,500

Believe me when i say that no one is more disheartened by this development than shahed herself. The morning we had reached the goal of $80,000 she told me that she felt she was the happiest girl in the world, and had bought and distributed sweets to the kids at the camp she was at to celebrate despite how expensive it is in Gaza right now.

She had also begun plans to help boost other fundraisers of palestinians, so that no one would have to feel the hopelessness she felt during those months where her fundraiser had been stagnant and had already gotten started on that barely a day or two after she'd completed her campaign.

Shahed was very nervous to tell me about this, especially after this whole racist hate campaign that was led against her so recently. She does not want her and her family to be accused of lying about their torment a second time. Especially when the violence has begun to ramp up once again even after her recent displacement, she can't bear it. Frankly neither can i.

Please know that she would not increase amount again unless times were desperate.

Please do NOT punish her during this difficult time by ignoring this. We have seen time and time again how gfms from gazans have to increase their goals even after they have been reached because of various issues, so this is not unprecedented. I've said it before- the goalposts will always be changing because they are going through a genocide.

So i urge you to please be kind and show her your solidarity and urgency once again, because the deadline is still the same. The raffle still hasnt ended so please check out the link above, and partcipate.

PLEASE HELP HER REACH $85.5K WITHIN THIS WEEK. THIS CAN'T WAIT.

current total: $81,530 USD

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kinkslump Linkdump

This is my dozenth linkdump! The world comes at you fast, and even though I'm writing 4-5 essays a week for this newsletter, many's the week that ends with more stray links than will fit in that format. Here's the previous ones:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I managed to turn out five posts last week, despite being on tour with my latest novel, The Lost Cause, a hopeful solarpunk novel endorsed by Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. The tour went great – the book's now a national bestseller on the USA Today list! Here's an essay I wrote explaining the structure of the feeling that the book is meant to convey:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/14/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

This is a climate emergency novel full of rising seas, terrible storms, wildfires and zoonotic plagues, and yet – it is a hopeful novel. What makes it hopeful? It depicts a future in which we are treating these phenomena with the gravitas and urgency they warrant, with our whole society's focus shifting to moving coastal cities inland, weatherizing and solarizing our housing, and creating permanent housing for internal refugees.

While it would be infinitely preferable to live in a world where none of that is necessary, that's not the world we have. This is an sf novel, not a fantasy novel, so all the climate harms we've locked in through decades of expensively procured inaction are present. But the difference between disaster and catastrophe is how and whether we address those harms. Sure, this is a world where superstorms wipe away whole cities and Miami is a drowned mangrove swamp, but it's also a world in which oil executives do not chair UN climate summits or complain that oil companies are being "unjustly vilified":

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

I write a lot, and it's not just this newsletter. Writing transports me from my anxieties and aches. That's how I came to write nine books during lockdown ("when life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla"). Lost Cause was one of three books I published in 2023.

I'm going to greet 2024 with another novel, The Bezzle, a sequel to 2023's Red Team Blues, about the hard-charging, high-tech forensic accountant Marty Hench:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a story about the shitty technology adoption curve – the way that the worst technologies we have are first rolled out on the people least able to complain about them. After these bad technologies have their sharp edges sanded down on the bodies of prisoners, refugees and kids, they move up to blue collar workers and discount store shoppers, and so on, until we're all living under their thumb.

In The Bezzle, a dear friend of Marty finds himself serving a long sentence in a privatized California prison that flips from one private equity fund to the next, each with even worse, more extractive ways to use technology to bleed prisoners and their families dry. You can read the opening scenes in a just-published excerpt on Tor Books's site:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

The period immediately before a book's publication is always a tense one, as the first reviews trickle in. Library Journal's Marlene Harris is the first out of the gate, with a spectacular review:

https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-bezzle-1802415

Marty’s reminiscences range from obscure financial machinations to heaping helpings of social commentary but always move the underlying thriller story forward in a backwards heist tale that delivers a righteously satisfying ending to the surprise of both the reader and the villain. This novel, like his previous outing, rides on Marty’s voice. He has a jaundiced view of everything, but he tells it with such style and verve that readers are caught up and ride along on the surface until the shark beneath the water jumps out and bites the villain where it hurts.

I'm headed into Skyboat Media's studios on Monday with @wilwheaton to record the audiobook for this one, directed as ever by the amazing Gabrielle de Cuir. Keep your eyes peeled for a presale crowdfunder in January!

I am often asked how I decide when to present an idea through fiction and when to do so with nonfiction. The answer is a complicated one, and I got into it in some detail on Nature's Working Scientist podcast, in discussion with Paul Shrivastava:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03394-8

When it comes to politics, fiction and nonfiction are intensely complementary. Nonfiction can convey the data about a social phenomenon, but fiction can convey the meaning of the data. It's one thing to see a chart about inequality, and another to inhabit it through fiction. Marty Hench's narrative adventures are a way into the feeling of living in a corrupt oligarchy.

There are other ways into that feeling, of course. Take Barry Bowen's "Lifestyles of the Blessed & Famous: Preacher Homes Sold in 2023" for The Roys Report:

https://julieroys.com/lifestyles-blessed-famous-preacher-homes-sold-2023/?mc_cid=9678383b64

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then carefully staged realtor drone shots ganked from the Redfin listing for a "pastor"'s $3.5m mansion in Newport Beach is a full-on sermon about the corruption of the Hillsong megachurch:

https://www.redfin.com/CA/Newport-Beach/503-30th-St-92663/home/12363926

Narratives and photos are all well and good, but there's always room for some data. The USA's weird breed of federalism and devolved power makes for some very interesting data. Writing for The American Prospect, Paul Starr rounds up several studies evaluating the "natural experiments" created by enacting very different policies in otherwise similar states:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-12-08-life-death-cost-conservative-power/

The data is in: conservativism kills. Living in a red state shortens your life expectancy. The redder the state, the worse it is. The bluer the state, the longer you're likely to live:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12469

The exemplars here are Connecticut and Oklahoma, whose life expectancies were at par until they began to diverge in policies. Oklahoma got more conservative, Connecticut got more liberal. Today, the average Oklahoman will pop their clogs at 75.8, while a Connecticutensian can expect 80.7 years.

Different scholars have parsed out different policy outcomes. Giving Medicaid to children, for example, shows benefits for the next 50 years:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20171671

The big one, of course, is gun control. Here's the topline: "restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths." Water also wet:

https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2023/11000/the_era_of_progress_on_gun_mortality__state_gun.3.aspx

Fact-free spiritual beliefs like "an armed society is a polite society" are key to conservative policymaking. Pesky progressives who confuse the issue with relevant facts are playing dirty, pointing out reality's unfair leftist bias.

But after 40 years of neoliberal deference to corporate power, the worm is turning. Somehow, a world on fire, filled with megapastors in megamansions who brief for lethal policies, has finally inspired a global vibe-shift (and not a moment too soon!). One of the most tangible expressions of that shift is the revival of antitrust, which has been in a coma since the Reagan administration.

All over the world – the EU, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA – there are new competition enforcers challenging corporate power in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. If I'd written an enforcer like FTC chair Lina Khan in 2010, critics would have slammed me for wish-fulfillment too unrealistic for science fiction.

But today, Khan is taking big swings at corporate power, fighting against a calcified edifice of decades of bad, pro-monopoly precedent. The pro-monopoly press hate her, which is why the WSJ keeps publishing sweaty op-eds insisting that she is wasting her time and that monopolies are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

But she is still out there, fighting for all of us. After a pro-monopoly judge stymied the FTC's bid to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger, Khan re-filed, appealing the decision:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/us-ftc-tries-again-stop-microsofts-already-closed-deal-activision-2023-12-06/

Critics insist that she's on a foolish errand, but Khan is tackling the most promising face of a sheer cliff, and the plainly anticompetitive merger between one of the world's largest console makers (a convicted monopolist!) with one of the world's largest games publishers is the right place to start. If she can get her piton into one of the hairline cracks in that face, her arduous climb gains a solid anchor for the next stage of her assent.

Of course, Khan's highest-profile action is her case against Amazon, the omnipresent, dystopian poster-child for enshittification, a platform we can't avoid, but which is so haphazardly policed that the bestselling bitter lemon energy drink you order might be bottled piss harvested from its immiserated drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

In a world of murderous, community-destroying monopolies, Amazon stands out for the sheer number of ways it makes the world worse. Amazon maims its warehouse workers and kills its drivers with impossible quotas. It poisons Black and brown neighborhoods with truck exhaust from its giant depots. It destroys small businesses that sell on its platform. It was part of the studio cabal scheming to destroy actors and writers' livelihoods with unfair contracts and AI. Its audiobook monopoly stole at least $100m from independent authors. It makes goods and services more expensive at every retailer (not just Amazon), and price-gouges on its own storefront:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Keeping that scam going requires a lot of skullduggery. A new set of leaked internal Amazon documents shed some light on how that inedible sausage gets made:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjbm9/amazon-brags-it-cultivated-california-mayor-with-donations-in-leaked-policy-document

Amazon's "Community Engagement Plan 2024" brags about buying off small-town mayors and astroturf groups in its bid to resist regulations that would limit warehouse delivery van emissions in communities of color (Amazon calls this "philanthropic work"). Coincidentally, that "philanthropy" targeted Perris, a town where residents voted for a warehouse tax to repair the roads that had been trashed by fleets of Amazon vans.

But the real focus of Amazon's "Community Engagement" is California's AB1000, a bill that will limit the construction of supersized, 100k+ sqft warehouses near daycare centers, schools or rec centers. Secondarily, Amazon is hoping to get California to make it easier to advertise alcohol around kids, to "unlock" California's liquor market.

This kind of shameless, mustache-twirling villainry can only go on so long before it meets resistance. One of the longest-running, hardest fought struggles against corporate malfeasance is the farmers' right ro repair fight against John Deere. Deere boobytraps its tractors so that after a farmer repairs a Deere tractor, they have to wait for days, and pay hundreds of dollars, for a Deere technician to come out to the farm and type an unlock code into the tractor's console:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Despite multiple state right-to-repair initiatives and a pending rulemaking from the FTC, Deere is still fucking around. Now, they've found out. US District Court Judge Iain Johnson just handed Deere a scathing, 89-page memo rejecting the company's bid to kill a class action suit brought by its customers:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/deere-must-face-us-farmers-right-to-repair-lawsuits-judge-rules-2023-11-27/?ref=404media.co

The memo hearkens back to company founder John Deere, "an innovative farmer and blacksmith who—with his own hands—fundamentally changed the agricultural industry":

https://www.404media.co/a-massive-repair-lawsuit-against-john-deere-clears-a-major-hurdle/

Judge Johnson tells Deere's lawyers that the real John Deere "would be deeply disappointed in his namesake corporation," and calls out their lying. You love to see it.

This kind of thing is happening all over the world as policymakers, regulators and lawmakers take aim at corporate power. The Australian government just announced that it would force Apple to open up iOS to alternative browser engines:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/new-digital-competition-laws-for-australia/

This is obscure and technical, but that's why it's so exciting: rather than mumbling broad platitudes about competition and user choice, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's regulation targets a critical leverage point where a small change will deliver huge benefits:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/consumers-and-small-businesses-to-benefit-from-proposed-new-regulation-of-digital-platforms

While there are many browsers in Apple's App Store, they're all just reskinned versions of Safari, all running on the same core engine, Webkit. Webkit is ancient, undermaintained and feature-poor. Crucially, Webkit does not implement the parts of the HTML5 standard needed for WebApps, which would allow app developers a safe channel to offer apps that don't go through Apple's App Store monopoly chokepoint:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Now, there's a big jump between announcing this kind of regulation and enacting it. As Mark Nottingham points out, Australia's had an "in principle" commitment to enact a privacy regulation for two successive governments, with no actual regulation in sight:

https://techpolicy.social/@mnot/111546662237364754

So we can't take these announcements as a sign to declare victory and stand down. The policymakers who announce these proposals deserve our accolades for the announcement and they require our constant vigilance until they make good on their promises.

That's the case in Ireland, where the Coimisiún na Meán has just published a fantastic regulatory proposal for recommendation systems, requiring recommenders to be turned off by default and that recommendations based on "political views, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or health" have to be switched off by default:

https://www.cnam.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Draft_Online_Safety_Code_Consultation_Document_Final.pdf

It's especially significant that this is coming out of Ireland, a corporate crime haven that has successfully lured the world's tech giants into flying its flag of convenience, with the guarantee of tax evasion and lax regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

This rule won't enforce itself. It'll require constant vigilance and pressure. There's plenty of ways to do that on a part-time, voluntary basis, but if this kind of thing enflames you enough to make a career out of it, here's a tenure-track job for an infosec professor at Citizen Lab, fearless slayers of high-tech corporate ogres:

https://jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-Assistant-Professor-Information-Security-ON/576463017/

That's all for this week's linkdump. It's time for me to go hole up in my office and wrap presents. When I do, I'll be tuning into the latest Merry Mixmas MP3 of Christmas mashups from DJ Riko:

http://www.djriko.com/dls/DJ%20Riko%20-%20Merry%20Mixmas%202023.mp3

Riko's Christmas mashups have been part of my holidays for more than two decades now. He's been making them for 22 years! That's a lot of great holiday mashups:

https://www.djriko.com/mixmases.htm

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/2023/12/09/gallimaufry/#marty-hench-rides-again

[euniexenoblade]

any advice on how to access hrt? it's too expensive to get rn but i have no idea where to even begin, especially being in a rural area

I mean, it does sorta depend where you are and what type of hrt you need tbh but a generalized run down is:

diy: you get it sent to you and manage it yourself. I did this way back in the day so I wont claim my specific knowledge of it is 100% but there's subreddits and entire communities that will help you.

informed consent: if you live in an area with planned parenthoods you should give the closest one a call and see if they handle informed consent hrt, if they do it's as easy as showing up to an appointment. If they don't, they can likely point you to one or even possibly a trans friendly therapist/doctor for the next rundown if necessary.

the shittacular way (usa edition): the typical way a lot of people did this before informed consent or diy was wide spread (and probably still the most common thing tbh) is see therapist -> therapist writes you a letter -> take letter to doctor -> (OPTIONAL) doctor sends you to a specialist. this can be a bit of a drag cuz therapists typically want more than one session with you for a letter, general practitioner doctors are scared of hormones despite being easy, and specialists almost always want your letter too so they can judge if you're a worthy tranny. you can always just show up to your normal doctor and be like "hey i'm trans and wanna start hrt" there's always a possibility they'll be like "hell yeah here you go," but it's more likely they'll send you to a specialist. and if you're in a rural area, I would guess a specialist will want a therapist letter. google your city with keywords like "transgender hrt" or "transgender friendly therapist" and see what comes up. It may be beneficial to drive up into the closest city, cuz most have lgbt organizations and generally they can help you locate a trans friendly therapist. but, maybe just bring it up with your doctor at you're next general checkup, that way you're not just showing up just for that. ideally this should be about three months (or less).

the shittacular way (uk edition): gender clinics. they'll put you on a wait list that's too fucking long, and when they see you they're gonna wanna hear and see you be as societal binary gender roley gender as possible. this path is generally really long but its the "official" way and I have heard of people getting through faster than other stories.

i dont know about most other countries as well, so if you need something more specific to another country, just ask and I can see what I can scrounge up.

[karlmarxmaybe]

All power to the soviets! Ok, now that the liberals have ran away: I am interested in how marxist-leninist theory can be applied in the critique of the internet, and what ideas have been brought up by communists on what a collectivized web could be like. We all know the privatized, globalized internet is a tool of capital, social media working as a content factory in which workers work for free and generate advertisement revenue for the enterprises like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the like. Now, it is also evident that web connection is a useful tool for communicating information, managing economical transaction and sharing knowledge. But under capitalism, any potential communal good that could come from the web is hampered by design; access to the internet is expensive and thus only easy for those that benefit from the spoils of imperialism (living in the imperial core); web hosting is privatized, social media is built as a factory of self-propaganda, the internet works esentially as a highway for globalized commerce and bourgeois exploitation in digital format. This is why I wonder how this could be dismantled in a communist regime (obviously it must start with state control and popular ownership of the physical means of digital production, but beyond that) and what shape a communist web would take, or if such a thing is possible at all. So if anyone knows any essays or books on the subject, please let me know, and thank you for your time.

@death-to-usa @bogleech @brendanicus @komsomolka @elbiotipo @hurricanewindattack @txttletale @papasmoke @transingthebourgeoisie @trans-girl-nausicaa @genderyomi @nyancrimew @communist-ojou-sama @communistkenobi @marxism-transgenderism @chrisdornerfanclub @commiemania @transmutationisms @gaylenin @lambdadelta-communism @autolenaphilia @little-bolshevik @apas-95 @kira-serialfaggot @thottacelli @zvaigzdelasas @daughter-of-sapph0 @decolonize-the-left @strawberry-crocodile @estrogenesis-evangelion

(communists of the entire website, unite!)

[crippl-hacker]

Can we talk about how expensive it is in the USA to be a complicated patient? I have 11 specialists I need to see - and a $40 copay for each appointment. Just seeing all of them *once* puts me out $440.

Adding up all my appointments for the year (167) puts me at $6680 and that’s not even taking into account how much my insurance costs and the premiums.

I’m on my mom’s healthcare - it costs $1500 a month and has a deductible of $13,000. For non-USA citizens that’s how much you have to pay out of pocket before insurance starts paying for things.

It doesn’t even include dental or vision! Those are separate! It also doesn’t include total coverage for medicine, mobility aids, hearing aids, or any of the other things that I need to manage my disability in my daily life.

At this point in my life I have racked up over $1.5million in medical bills. I am only 23.

We are paying more money for worse healthcare and it’s absolutely bullshit.

Feel free to chime in with your own experience.

[tomurderornottomurder]

i don't want to talk; saul goodman

pair. saul goodman x gn!reader

summ. you and your boss are kidnapped cartel style and have a somewhat quiet moment after

gen. angst, hurt minimal comfort

wc. 1.8k+

tw. breaking bad related themes, kidnapping, guns, blood, descriptions of injuries, focus on mouth injuries, death mentions,

note. i still need to finish better call saul. old draft but i really like it.

Your wrists are freshly raw from the rope they had been bound with. You rub at them with your fingers as you twist them around, trying to massage the marks away. You sit in the arid desert on the dry, sandy ground. Your expensive, secondhand suit will suffer from the harsh minerals rubbing against the fine material. Your cheeks should be stained with tears yet none had come even face to barrel with a gun larger than the hand holding it. You were resilient in the moment, strong and silent, something you hadn't been able to be before, yet while facing death, you could finally be. Your disposition was for nothing though as you had made it out alive and yes, you were grateful but what's amazing about standing your ground and living?

The red marks on your wrists remain despite all the effort and you can only manage to sigh in disappointment. Footsteps sound behind you and you have to fight back the violent urge to turn and see who's coming. If it's your captors, goodbye; if it's your boss, well, who knows? Some would argue that it was his fault you were here but you know better, you always have. You didn't blame him and he shouldn't blame himself either, you doubt he would admit such a thing out loud anyway. You were kidnapped together, bound behind the back, bags over your heads; the whole shebang. Even behind you two, a grave dug just big enough to fit your rotting corpses but shallow so as to not show respect. What was respectable about either of you? There was nothing. There was nothing.

The footfalls stop just beside you and in a quick second, you hear the familiar groans of the older man. Saul Goodman, your boss, and he was sitting with his legs crossed like a kindergartener. You almost couldn't believe it but then again, Saul has done more unimaginable things. You look over at him, careful to not look anywhere near his face. You see his legs all crossed and his socks that peak out, you could laugh at them if you hadn't just been threatened with a barrel pressed against the roof of your mouth. You notice how high his pants come up as he sits like that, how his belt looks -too smooth to be real leather and too tacky of metal to be anything valuable. You notice the small scuff marks on his shoes that could only be from today and you wonder why his shoes are so nice and expensive but his belt isn't. You don't say anything though. (Why would you?) 

"Hey-" Saul tries to speak, genuinely too, you can tell.

You snap, "I don't want-" You lose your fire immediately, you can't even finish the damn sentence; he knows what you mean anyway. There's something in your heart that can't be mean to him. Not even now. Not after feeling the cool metal of your kidnapper's gun against your tongue and tasting your blood after your captor hit you with it. Not after sitting in the blaring heat of the sun in the middle of the desert in nowheresville USA with your arms bound behind your back and the heat weaving through your skin, waiting to coil up and take your life like the very snakes that called this place home. Not after all of that can you manage to be mean. 

You don't wonder if Saul feels bad. He does. Of course. He scoots closer, his arm touching yours. He doesn't want to freak you out. He doesn't care that much about you. You're his employee, not much more. But a shiny, purple bruise has a glare that some people -people like him- can't ignore. Right there on the left side of your face, surrounding your eye is the deepest purple Saul has ever laid his eyes on. Marks litter the bridge of your nose and it's starting to swell. Your mouth is worst of all. Blood will not stop rushing past your lips, there are cuts all over inside, a tooth was knocked out in the chaos, your tongue was cut (even just the littlest thing makes it bleed so much), and your lips are raw and scratched. It looks like someone let an animal loose inside your mouth. It's horrible. 

Saul watched it happen. Them, the people who kidnapped you both, shove a gun into your mouth like it belonged there. Twist it around and threaten you as Saul pleaded with them doing what he always does and striking a deal, persuading the audience, getting them on his side, trying to save someone; someone who he had gotten into this mess, someone he cared about -even the littlest bit. You got hit repeatedly, swung at with the gun or knuckles, a mix of the two, or a kick to the ribs. You didn't let out anything. Not a single word. You let Saul do the talking. You took the punches. That was your job in this little operation. Maybe that was always what was supposed to happen. 

You can't shake the metal that had been in your mouth. You can't shake closing your eyes and making peace and just being quiet and waiting. You don't even know what you were waiting for. Death or release or life after all of this? Freedom or pity or indentured servitude? Sweet peace or life-long guilt? It wasn't fathomable. It wouldn't be for years. 

You almost jump at the touch. Saul's finger graces your bruise. You hold back a hiss and you wonder what he's doing. There are things you know and there are things you wonder about. Saul's touch not feeling like fire against your skin is something you can only wonder about, you will never understand that -for lack of a better term- relief. You sit silently with your legs bent in front of you and your back straight waiting. For death, release, or sweet, sweet peace. You can't choose in this one. Freely, your fate is decided by one Saul Goodman. You trust him enough for that yet you wouldn't trust him with your car keys. 

You don't want to look at his face, especially not his eyes. You know what happens if you do. You can't deal with that right now. He makes that mission difficult. He takes his fingers off your bruise and places his thumb at your nose. In a strange way, it was like a medical examination or at least with the precision of one. Like he was assessing you for damage. Maybe not so medical-like after all. You wouldn't expect less from him. It almost makes you smile. He was tallying up his losses. Smart move, you think. 

He reassigns his thumb to swiping blood from your chin even as it still dribbles out. Your poor mouth; all beat up for the senselessness of it. He wants to examine your mouth, maybe see what exactly is going on in there but he finds himself at a loss (funnily enough). He can't see this looking very good. He can't imagine how you'd interpret it and he's at a crossroads. Maybe he should talk to you? But that directly disobeys your earlier word. But he's the boss? Who tells him what to do? You, you, of course. 

He's yet to see your tears from this. A normal person would be concerned. A normal person is no Saul Goodman. 

The blood seems to stop at least flowing out of your mouth but inside is a whole other story. He wipes his your-blood-stained thumb against his already bloodied shirt. His head turns as the wheels of your captors' vehicle squeak and kick up dirt creating clouds of shit he'd rather not inhale and neither would you. He flips open his phone, one bar, good enough. He flips the phone closed. He's not so scared anymore.

What you'll think of him he cannot say nor can he decide and maybe that's good. You should have your own feelings about him, he couldn't stand it if they weren't yours. Maybe he could for a while but that's not forever, it's temporary and fake; stale like potato chips that have sat in your kitchen for months now with the bag open and you mean to throw them out, you really do, but you never quite get around to it and they are always, always just left there in the end. Your feelings for him couldn't be stale potato chips. 

Maybe he should have thought it through better but those clouds of dust must have gotten to him because he presses his thumb against your bottom lip and he doesn't say anything or give you any sort of look, you just open your mouth. It's like an active warzone inside. There's blood here and a cut there, some deep indent northbound, and an empty space where a tooth should be. Your raw lip does not feel good against his thumb. He hates it actually but it stays there for a good long moment as he totals the loss of your mouth. It was like a bomb exploded and he was picking up the missing limbs. His mind entertains the idea of what you'd look like with a gold tooth, he doesn't like it. 

He lets his thumb off your lip like letting a foot off the gas and then there's eye contact. Yours meet his, his meet yours. You look empty. You look like you're about to cry. He couldn't blame you. He was probably going to go home and cry about all of this later. 

He pulls all of his limbs away from you and against himself as he sits at your side. He doesn't look at you or turn his head. He feels your head rest against his shoulder and it's like he's allowed to breathe. He lets out a deep sigh like he's been absolved of all sins. He's quiet. He hears your sobs. They are deep and powerful sobs that he can tell you need to let out. He wraps his arm around your back, maybe even holding you a little closer. 

The sun's harsh glare washes over you both. The air is dry and humid and the horizon is baking. It's like you're in an oven. You've been kidnapped and shrunk and placed in an oven with your boss because life is cruel and why shouldn't you be trapped in an oven? But you're not. Kuby is on his way to pick you both up and you're never going to speak about it again. Saul will not mention the gun in your mouth or the crying. You will not speak thanks to said gun in the mouth and you won't care to regale anyone on how you were kidnapped and beaten up and left to cry on your boss' shoulder because why would you? 

[ms-m-astrologer]

Ms M blows off steam

(And the annual plea for help)

Why, in the 21st Century, do people insist on cultural appropriation? And eco-unfriendly activities?

I have been reading a series of books (each written by a different author) about pagan-based spirituality, aimed at a Western audience (European, USA, Canadian, Australian), and just finished one which recommended working with various non-European deities. People seem to think, “Wow, what a cool practice - I want to do that, too.”

Speaking for just myself: this here 73% German-derived woman, living in the US of A, has no fucking business “borrowing” from other cultures’ pantheons. And if it isn’t your roots, then neither do you.

(I’ve done enough ancestry research to know I’m mostly from southern Germany - around the Black Forest - so when I find deities from that area, that’s where I direct myself. When there’s no equivalent, I use the rest of my Scots-Irish heritage.)

Another recommended the use of glitter for anything/everything - regular glitter qualifies as a microplastic and helps poison Mother Gaia further. No nature-based practitioner should condone such a thing.

(There are eco-friendly brands of glitter, but the author didn’t specifically refer to them - they’re too expensive for yours truly, but if that’s what floats your boat and you can afford it, go for those brands.)

In many pagan-specific books and articles, the astrology is (way) off, but that’s so prevalent I just blip over those parts.

(Example: the “zenith” is when the Sun is directly overhead - “high noon” - every single day, not just on this or that Sabbat.)

It really brings home to me how much our own experiences and our locale have to do with our practice.

+++ === *+=+* === +++

My “day job” is being a paraeducator in the public schools. It’s an hourly, not a salaried, position - which means when I’m not working (like now, in the summer), I don’t get paid. Sometimes I manage to save enough money, over the course of the academic year, to get me through the summer. Other times, I’m not so successful - inflation making food more expensive, unexpected medical bills, etc.

This summer is one of those “other times” - I could use some financial help, please! All this blog’s content is provided free of charge, because I know what it’s like to be unable to afford anything beyond basic survival (and to have to struggle just for that much), and I want to reach as many willing people as possible.

(Yes, I have adult children who could help out, and they’re both traveling pretty extensively/expensively in August - one to Amsterdam, the other to California. Plans are finalized and they’re fiscally unavailable to me in August.)

Two ways to send help:

Venmo @Mary_Brack

Paypal @MaryVBrack

I am really grateful for all of your support and encouragement! If you’re broke, too, don’t worry - just send me good thoughts. “Ms M has more money than she knows what to do with” has a nice vibe to it….

[thedreadvampy]

do not Chappell Roan me on this one I, like her, am not equivocating between fascism and centre-right but like

see a lot of folks from outside the USA talking about how scared we are of Trump's impact on the rest of the world and while yes, having a US president who's definitely worse on climate (which is a Pretty Pressing Issue) is going to fuck the world up. on a bombing, foreign relations and world economics level, there has literally just not been that much between Trump and Biden. Or Obama and Trump.

whoever's president of the US they are going to bomb the Middle East, prevent Israel facing consequences, impose dire disincentives to trade which doesn't profit them at the expense of the world, veto climate legislation, and start shit with Russia, China and Iran. they will continue to work to prevent positive political change in the global south and to maintain the international power of corporations.

again. this is not to say there's no difference. but it is mostly domestic. and that's fine, whatever. but also it's not because the US president doesn't have near-total massive global power to shape international legislation and trade, it's uhhhh because the US being a force for evil in the world is the nature of the goddamn beast and for the most part Trump doesn't NEED to be shittier on foreign policy because US policy is already fully set up to subsume the rest of the world to America's interests and to specifically target Muslims, the Global South, and any hegemonic power large enough to potentially compete with the US.

so no Kamala isn't just going to be shit on Israel, she will be shit on Iran, on Saudi, on China, on Russia, on Mexico, on Cuba, on Congo - but in all fairness so is anyone you have the chance to vote for as president, and if they weren't, and were somehow allowed to get as far as the White Horse, I can't imagine they'd actually manage to beat back the entire machinery of the American empire in one term.

(they could have stopped arming Israel, though, but why the fuck would they when you're all screaming NOOOOO YOU CAN'T DEMAND POLITICIANS DO THINGS OR YOU'RE BASICALLY LETTING IN DOUBLE HITLER 😱)

like vote for Harris. or vote third party. whatever. but like it's ok to acknowledge that you're not doing it for the world, you're doing it for your own country. and that's fine! an election is for the person who leads your country and if they're both gonna be shite on foreign policy, which they are, then domestic policy is going to be the only possible decider. but no we're not all waiting on tenterhooks outside the USA to see if you fuck this up.

don't vote for the fascist but do recognise that whoever you vote for, you're voting for the head of a massive empire which will impose its interests by force, and they're going to act like it internationally. whoever you vote for in this election, they're going to be pretty much the same amount of shit for the rest of the world. so you know. at this stage vote for Less Shit, 100% the right thing to do to vote for someone who's not actively going to attack marginalised people within the US as much.

maybe next time consider not IMMEDIATELY SAYING 'nothing you do could make me rescind my vote so don't worry about accountability m'lud 👅🥾' before the campaign even starts BUT at this point what are you gonna do? Vote if you can stomach it.

but FFS no we're not all clutching our breasts in fear of what a Trump-led US will do, because lest we forget we saw that 4 years ago and it looked, with the exception of the Muslim ban and some real climate bullshit, p much identical to what Biden did after him, or Obama before.

if you start shit with me on this I absolutely will block you btw. simply move on I am so so so bored of this eternal pearl clutching election.

[noirhistories]

Welcome to Antioch, CALLUM ‘CAL’ MAJENTY! Local sources report that you’ve been in town for FIVE YEARS and are known to be AFFECTIONATE yet TEMPERAMENTAL. Others have dredged up rumors that you’re involved in SATANIC PANIC as BASS, but most know you for your work as an ASSISTANT MANAGER at ZIPPO’S ARCADE. We’ll see you around town soon!

BASICS

Character Name: Callum Wesley Magenty Nickname (s): Cal, which is how he introduces himself. Face Claim: Kiowa Gordon Birthday: February 13th Place of birth: Peach Springs, Arizona, USA Zodiac: Aquarius MBTI: ENFP Moral Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Sexuality: Bisexual Occupation: Assistant Manager Place of work: Zippo's Arcade Subplot affiliation: Satanic Panic 3 positive traits: Caring, adventurous, loyal 3 negative traits: Stubborn, argumentative, destructive Languages: English Love language: Quality time

TRIVIA

Rolls his own cigarettes just like he remembers his dad doing.

Bites his nails and rips his cuticles even though he says he doesn't.

Likes to draw and used to dream about having his work in an art gallery.

Biography

Barely old enough to hold onto memories of his father when the man went out to 'buy some cigarettes' late one night, Callum grew up with just his mother looking out for him for most of his life, a woman that sometimes had to work two jobs to pay the bills and who always did her best even if it meant Cal was left on his own a lot growing up. Daycare was expensive and his aunt had her own job to do, not capable of dropping everything to pick up her nephew so he wasn't home alone. He knew the rules. Keep hold of your house key. Let yourself in, check all the doors and windows. Hide somewhere and do your homework. Keep a knife with you.

He knew the rules, but didn't often follow them. Instead of homework, he'd sometimes do odd jobs for the neighbors and try to make extra money so his mom didn't need to work so hard. Then he got older and he got braver, more rebellious. Old enough that people didn't question what he was doing on the bus alone and once he was away from the neighborhood of people that knew him, Cal started taking more risks to make money, and sometimes those risks ended up with the cops called.

His mama tried her best, Cal would never tell anyone otherwise, and Cal did his best as well and would spit on anyone that didn't understand that.

It all crashed when she died not long after he turned twenty, and to no one's surprise, the funeral ate up their savings until their was nothing left. Her loss opened up a gaping hole inside Cal and sucked inside of it their entire lives together. The modest little house he grew up in was sold, and Cal ditched his roommates in order to take off on his motorcycle, leaving home behind without any inclination of just where he would go next. He did that for years, traveling around from state to state, trying to start over and always falling back into trouble, trying to find a sense of peace only to feel an itch under his skin.

He showed up in Antioch eventually because it had a reputation worse than him, it seemed like a town made up of bad luck and ill fortune and finally he slotted in there, a place where misdeeds were the norm. He fit in, found a job, and then found the band. It wasn't the life his mom would have wanted for him, but it was a life outside of a prison cell, so Callum thought he was doing pretty good and didn't see the point in asking for more.

Because that's all life had turned into for him. Surviving. No real goals, no real aspirations, just a handful of dreams covered in dirt that he didn't believe in anymore, and emotion without a targeted direction.

CONNECTIONS

Wanted Connection #1: Past hook ups because the guy is probably a slut.

Wanted Connection #2: People Judging:tm: him because of the previous point (could also judge him because of Callista)

Wanted Connection #3: Either someone to antagonize him because they don't believe he's better than that, or someone to mentor him because they DO believe he's better than that. (I'll be real. I know damn well what will happen if he meets Gim.)

[vague-humanoid]

Hannah doesn’t have to call herself a tradwife because she already is one. As such, Ballerina Farm has become the lodestar for those still aspiring to establish an aesthetically pleasing—and, ideally, monetized—pastoral existence. Most of her acolytes are less subtle about their politics, which they assume Hannah shares. In 2021, Morgan Zegers, the founder of the Turning Point USA-affiliated group Young Americans Against Socialism, said that Ballerina Farm gives her “DAILY inspiration on how to live out my values as a Conservative.” On her podcast, Zegers, who recently got engaged and does not have any children, gives “young unmarried women who dream of becoming a traditional wife and stay-at-home mom one day” advice on how to “become an asset for your future family.”

She is far from the only tradwife-in-training who has been inspired by Ballerina Farm. Take Gwen the Milkmaid, a Canadian “ASMRtist” and wellness-influencer-turned-tradposter. “Pov: you used to be a pro-abortion, anti-marriage, lesbian ‘feminist,’” reads the caption on a TikTok post of her rehydrating sourdough starter, “but now you’re getting married to your fav man on earth, love serving him, and can’t wait to make babies.” Like Hannah, Gwen is blonde, posts videos of herself cooking and frolicking in prairie dresses, and emphasizes the difference between her old life and the new one she has built for herself—or, rather, the life she hopes to have built, someday. In one video, Gwen asks God “why I don’t have a fifty-acre farm, seven children, forty chickens and five jersey cows yet.” Lacking a multimillionaire father-in-law, or a dairy cow of her own, she’s forced to churn store-bought cream into homemade butter. Gwen’s videos turn the subtext of Ballerina Farm’s videos into text, as if to compensate for the ranch she lacks: Gwen is proudly antigovernment, antivaccine, and anti-birth control.

Ballerina Farm has also been frequently boosted by Evie Magazine. Billing itself as the conservative answer to Cosmo, Evie publishes articles on everything from “How to Wear Shorts Like a French Girl” to the supposedly rampant child sex trafficking to which the Biden administration has turned a blind eye. In February, they responded to a minor scandal that broke out when details about the Neelemans’ family wealth began circulating on TikTok. The article ends with a full-throated defense of Ballerina Farm. “Our culture has become far too comfortable with criticizing people for being rich,” it reads. “There’s nothing wrong with having money or coming from money. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with using that money to create a beautiful homesteading life that creates useful food, products, and content for people all across the country.” For Evie, the Neelemans’ secret wealth isn’t proof that living off the land is largely inaccessible to the masses but a symbol of the virtuousness of Ballerina Farm’s mission. They have enough money to live glamorously; instead, they choose to live a simple life. That this simple life might be an expensive illusion is never considered.

A month later, the magazine published a treatise on tradwives by Gina Florio, a personal trainer who moonlights as manager to Candace Owens, a conservative commentator whose BLEXIT foundation urged Black people to abandon the Democratic Party. (Owens has also promoted Ballerina Farm on Instagram. Hannah, for her part, reposted the endorsement and later deleted it.) Like Gwen the Milkmaid, Florio is a reformed liberal who wrote for Teen Vogue and PopSugar before she “left the left.” Tradwives, she argues, are superior to “the shrieking, blue-haired protester who wants on-demand abortion and supports the ‘free the nipple’ movement.” She describes Ballerina Farm as the example on which conservative women should model their lives: “The children are blonde and seemingly well-mannered. The father herds cattle in a cowboy hat. And the mother is impossibly beautiful as she milks cows in her overalls, loose braids, and zero makeup.” This is all in contrast to “the average twenty-five-year-old woman” who “lacks basic domestic skills, serially dates multiple men, and loudly opposes manners and decorum.”

To her credit, Florio acknowledges that it’s functionally impossible for most women—even those who want nothing more than to dedicate their entire lives to caring for a husband and children—to fulfill the tradwife ideal. She points out that real wages have stagnated since the 1970s, making it impossible to raise a family on a single income. “We have to really ask ourselves if we want to truly return to tradition,” Florio writes, “or if we want to just fantasize about the perfect trad wife who is both gorgeous and domestic.”

[ao3gobi17]

The surname Socorro has its roots in Spanish or Portuguese. I wonder if Paz, instead of being Mexican, was from Spain/Portugal and had some extended family there who still lived there and took Spider in after her death, would the authorities have still brought him to the USA specifically so he could get information from Quaritch or would they suggest an alternative? If they could convince him, they could at least cover his travel expenses hah. And if Spider managed to leave America before Quaritch escaped, how would Quaritch get to him? He wouldn't have Leo to exchange hostages and quite a long distance to travel. And would he have realized after their encounter that Spider now lives on another continent?

In that case, I assume Delgado and company would have to contact the authorities in Spain/Portugal first and seek permission to request Spider's visit. Given it was to prevent a possible terror attack (or similar) it may be that the Spanish/Portuguese authorities would be willing to help or do a lil intelligence deal. Spider would still have to be willing to go and his family would have to let him. I'm sure Delgado would try to talk Quaritch into a zoom visit but Quaritch would hold firm on 'in person'. I'd imagine Spider's accent would be a huge giveaway again, and maybe even how he dresses might hint that he's living abroad. Quaritch would of course know about this extended family of Paz, so he'd likely be able to guess if Spider was in Spain or Portugal and he could certainly mention the country in his convo with Spider.

I think with all of this in mind, Q might tell Wainfleet to leave him in prison and focus on tracking Spider back to wherever he lives. Or, again, depending on what Spider had for social media (if it used his real name etc) then they might be able to locate him that way. Or since Q has the family member names, maybe they can easily be located.

Once they knew where Spider was, they probably would try to bring more people on board to facilitate trying to grab Spider in Spain/Portugal and do the breakout same time. It would be a big logistical operation, lots more complications, and Q might have to stay in prison longer till they were all set up. I think if Wainfleet (on Q's behalf) might hire someone in Spain/Portugal to grab Spider and possibly smuggle him into another country then they'd try to get Q out to that same country. Wouldn't be easy! And it would be important to Q that the kidnapper in Spain/Portugal was very much 'vetted' and that Spider's safety was prioritised, which is a lot harder for Wainfleet to confirm since it's not his home team he put together (several of which personally knew or knew of Q already). The other possibility is Wainfleet would go after Spider himself in Europe, try to bring another American in for the jailbreak team and let Zdinarsk or one of the others lead the jailbreak.

Either way, lots more cogs in the machine to work round! <3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[masllp]

Streamline Your Business with Outsource bookkeeping services in USA by MAS LLP

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[wanderinglcst]

(Jonathan Bailey) [the eccentric]. Please welcome [Daniel 'Danny' Anderson (He/they)] to Huntsville, WV. They are an [36]-year-old [VISITOR] who lives in [THE COMMUNE]. You may see them around working as a [MANAGER AT THE GRAPE ESCAPE]. Poor unfortunate soul. We’ll see if they survive.

Basics

Name: Daniel Anderson

Nicknames: Dan, Danny

Age: 36 (25th April)

Sexual orientation: Gay (sorry not sorry)

Originally from: London, England

Huntsville residence: the Commune

Hunter/gather: neither yet

Job: Manager at the Grape Escape

triggers: mental health mention

So, how does one end up in a place like Huntsville? Danny had a high powered job back home in London, he lived for that hustle and bustle, having worked his way up since leaving school at sixteen, there was nothing better than feeling accomplished, life was going grandly and according to plan. He had an expensive flat to pay for and an even more expensive lifestyle that went with it. Then it got too much and a mental breakdown followed.

That resulted in him being sacked from his job, losing his flat and having to move back in with his parents over at Tower Hamlets (he's a proper Londoner) for a little while but none of that helped, living there made him feel like he was fifteen again and hating life so he started to go out all hours of the day, drinking, partying, sleeping with the random men he'd meet at the night clubs, anything to try and feel normal again, like himself. He nearly stepped off a platform in the underground one day, that's when he decided that he really needed to do something.

Danny went to see a doctor who diagnosed him with ADHD and depression, which he controls with medication now (for as long as he has it). Deciding that staying in London wasn't worth it any more, he took his savings and bought a plane ticket to the first place he pointed to on a map, the USA. He was in the middle of a road trip when he got caught in a bit of a landslide, took a sharp turn and drove for safety into Huntsville... yesterday.

Possible connections:

A friend in need is a friend indeed: Someone who will befriend Danny and let him rely on them as he navigates his new normal.

TBA