#prison security

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"HOOK TO SCALE WALL FOUND IN STATE PRISON," Chicago Tribune. November 22, 1942. Page 1. ---- A new escape plot was discovered and frustrated yesterday at the Stateville penitentiary near Joliet when a hook, 30 feet long and designed to scale the prison walls, was found buried under a coal pile. Warden Joseph E. Ragen, who made public the find, said that the hook consisted of three metal pipes, each 10 feet long. Each pipe end was threaded so that the pipes could be connected into one length. The end of the top length was fitted with a large, steel hook, which had been welded on. The prison wall is 32 feet high so that the pipe hook, in the hands of one or more convicts. could easily have reached the top of the wall. Ragen said he doubted the pipe was made in preparation for the escape Oct. 9 of Roger Touhy and six other desperadoes, who are still at large. They used guns. On Nov. 9 Warden Ragen foiled another escape plot when he discovered that three convicts had sawed away the bars of their cell and replaced them with wood.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money���is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

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

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

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/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

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

[biboomerangboi]

The thing about Zukka is that one of them is always going to be doing the most insane bat shit thing in the world while the other is just there to pass them the tools of destruction and go that’s nice honey.

[andloveisenough]

saying 'fuck' in f1? believe it or not, right to jail

[ltorekdraws]

BRO PLEASE DRAW MORE MANFRED AND TRUCY STUFF

I never thought I'd wanna see that old man being happy

Their dynamic is silly and whimsy I love it 😔❤️

oh sure i'm so into it SO there is another granddad manfred thing AND there is will be more

phoenix has NO IDEA how to handle him but he can't leave an old man sleeping in chair

[boothefanficeater]

thiz meme but w these little critters (i love them with all my heart already, if u cant tell)

Edit: their tag is now houselock :3

[the-golden-kingdom]

Day seven of drawing the citizens of the golden kingdom until their anime debut happens : A field of thistles

[inmate62763]

[mynxk]

Wylan: I have seen a lot of murders in my time, and all six of them were today

[ailithnight]

*Whoops. Forgot to title and link previous chapters. Fight me, I just woke up.

A King in Arkham

Chapter 3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

"Tim. Tim you have to get me copies of this footage." Tim is not surprised by the request. In fact, the 'Sure' is already on his tongue when he pauses, a thought creeping into his head, seeded by the notification Tim really hopes Jason isn't paying attention to in the bottom corner of the computer.

"One condition."

"Fuck you, I knew you'd want something. What? You want my cookies? Coffee? For Red Hood to go on camera singing praises for Red Robin? I'll fuckin do it. Just send me the god damn clips."

"Nope, nope, and tempting, but no."

"Name your price, Replacement. I'll pay it."

"Swear you aren't going to go rush in and extract the kid until we're done investigating him."

"What!? Fuck that! I told you was pulling him out next chance I get!" Tim lets himself groan in annoyance.

"Look, anyone that could do that-" Tim gestures to the part of the screen where they'd pulled up The Joker's medical reports following the incidents, showing pictures and descriptions of just how thoroughly Daniel had beat his ass 3 weeks in a row, "without getting so much as a scratch or fucking bruise in return, has got something going on. There may well be a reason they sent him to Arkham!"

Jason's eyes narrow at Tim as he all but growls, "No reason is good enough to put-"

"A fifteen year old in Arkham. I fucking know that, Hood. But we still need to know exactly who we're dealing with when we get him out. What his deal is. If his dangerous. What the hell was so wrong with him that someone thought it was a good idea to stick him in there to begin with."

"He could get hurt while we're sitting on our asses trying to satisfy fuckin Bat paranoia!"

"He took down the Joker! Clearly he can take care of himself."

"Then who has been hurting him!?"

"Maybe him fucking self!" Tim knew he was pushing it. The green growing stronger in Jason's eyes was proof. But he needed to buy them some time before Jason made thing exponentially harder by storming the castle. Still, now he needed to calm Jason down before he went into a full rage. So Tim held up his hands placatingly.

"A few days, Jay. Just give us a few more days. I'm already almost through the Arkham reports, and there are only a handful from Chicago and Oracle is probably going to announce any minute now that she got through the communications blackout around his home town. We just need a bit more time to sort out intel so that we actually know how to help him once we get him out."

Finally, after a tense 34 seconds, green fades back into blue and Jason let's out a heavy sigh.

"Fine. But I get to tell the Bat about Daniel's discipline slips. Wanna see his fuckin face when I do."

"Deal." Tim hurriedly puts a comm in as Jason watches with narrowed eyes.

Batman.

Red Robin. Ready to fill me in?

Not yet, you're about to be busy. I isolated a pattern earlier. Exactly 15 minutes before the locks malfunction, there's been a strange power surge. Always written off. But the surge doesn't seem to be coming from the grid. And like I said, exactly 15 minutes later is when the locks malfunction.

Jason huffs as he catches on. Apparently he hadn't thought to question why Tim was so desperate to buy time before.

Robin responds, since he's on stakeout with Bruce. Mostly because Bruce won't let him watch the asylum alone. Much as the kid hates it, the rest of the family agrees. It's only a matter of time before someone in max security manages to take advantage of theses malfunctions. So far Croc is the only one who had, though thankfully he's not one to start shit on his own. But with Joker, Scarecrow, and TwoFace all inside; any one of them, or god forbid all three, could make for a real bad situation.

Tt. So you can tell before a malfunction happens.

Think so. Last power surge was 8 minutes ago.

And you are only telling us now, why Drake?

Codenames.

Cause he spent those 8 convincing me not to go get our kid out yet.

6 minutes. See if you can stop things before they start.

I'm not far out. Want me to join you?

Tt. I doubt we'll need your assistance, Signal. We shall be done before you get here.

No wait. Signal, head in. See if you can get a read on 26B.

You think he might be meta?

Hood?

Jason glares at Tim betrayed.

"I wanted to see his fuckin face."

Tim just waves him off.

"They need to know. You tell them or I do."

Boys

Jason scowls, but relents.

He put the Joker in the infirmary on his 1st, 7th, and 15th days there. All 3 times took no damage himself. Feral child had to be pulled off and still didn't stop struggling till the clown was out of sight.

All 3 assaults followed by panic attacks, though whether about the Joker himself or what Daniel had done to him, we don't know yet.

The comms were silent for a moment.

A 15 year old...

Did what you've never had the balls to old man.

...I've fought the Joker.

Daniel hits first.

Hnn

I will admit, it is impressive that he can take the Joker down alone. Perhaps he will make for a worthy brother after all.

4 minutes.

We're moving in. Thank you Red Robin, Hood.

The fuck are you thanking me for?

For helping. And giving us time to work this out.

ETA 7 minutes out. Be with you shortly.

.

The advanced warning proved invaluable for Batman and Robin. After alerting the chief of security of their supposed pattern, he had guards already in motion when the doors swung open. Batman took a perch to watch for max security escapees while Robin assisted the guards in keeping inmates corralled. Many didn't even bother to leave their designated areas, having already seen the Bats in the building.

No sign of any max security inmates. Normally, Batman would find this concerning. And while he did file it away to ponder later why no one from max security ever seemed to make it out of that wing, for today he counted the blessing that he would not have to try to keep Robin safe while dealing with someone like the Joker.

Batman tracked motion through the crowds, watching as a black mop of hair moved, seemingly otherwise unnoticed, through the sea of people. He thought to move in to direct the person back towards where people were being herded to, but the small figure merely walked towards the B wing and entered one of the far cells. That gave Bruce a sneaking suspicion of which patient that was. He moved to get a closer look as Signal swooped in.

"Where is he?"

"I believe he just went into his cell. This way." Batman led Signal to the cell he'd seen that tiny person enter. It was indeed 26B and there was indeed a small, too small, frail looking boy lying on the bed there. A red blotch had appeared under his left eye even though Bruce was certain there had been no injury there as the boy had crossed the hall.

Signal froze beside him, breath stuttering. The boy briefly glanced at them through the corner of his eye, mouth twitching into a brief frown. Then his eyes turned back to the ceiling and his face smoothed out. Bruce couldn't help but reach out.

"Hello." The boy said nothing. Signal opened and closed his mouth, seeming to try to say something, but unable to get words out. Batman wondered what he must be seeing. "You seem hurt. Do you need help?" Eyes flickered back to him and away just as quickly.

"Nothing you can help with Mr. Batman." And oh, how Bruce hated the kid's voice. So quiet and so so hollow. Bruce's mind flashed to his children, imagining any them speaking with such emptiness. His heart clenched, wondering what could have happened to this boy to have snuffed the life out of him so young.

Duke found his voice again, just as the doors buzzed and swung shut again.

"What are you?" Bruce frowned, looking at his latest. Who was looking, as Bruce tracked his gaze, not at Daniel but at the space just above him. Daniel himself seemed to take interest all of a sudden, breaking away his upward gaze to roll his head and look at them. Confusion plain on his face, the first hint of life shining dimly in his eyes.

"Signal? Signal, what do you see?" Batman asked. Robin materialized beside them. The daytime hero stepped forward, then back, light sparking and fizzling around his fingertips.

"There's something in there with him."

Daniel looked back up, where Signal still had his gazed trained on something Batman couldn't see. Even Robin seemed confused, though he no doubt trusted Signal's meta sight.

"Don't worry," Daniel murmured, "S'just a ghost. She can't hurt you."

This 'ghost' seemed unhappy either with the teen's words or this turn of events. Daniel's head snapped back to the side again, causing Batman and Signal to wince while Robin watched stoically. 4 red scratches appeared on Daniel's right cheek, as though he had been backhanded by someone with clawlike nails. A light chill brushed through him and Signal tensed, then relaxed, his gaze finally turning from the emptiness above Daniel to the boy himself. Batman took that as a sign that the... entity, was gone.

Daniel did not react to the obvious abuse from an invisible assailant. He mechanically turned his head back, once more dead and glazed eyes returning to the cracks in the ceiling of his cell. "You should go now. The guards will come around soon to make sure I'm still here."

Bruce wanted so badly to say 'Don't worry, we'll get you out of here.' But Batman was more restrained than that. He would get the child out. But he would have a plan first. For now, Bruce placed a hand each on the shoulders of Duke and Damien, guiding them away. Only when they were back outside did Bruce let them go. Only when they were perched on a rooftop half a block away did Batman pause.

"Robin, report."

"No escaped inmates and no sign of any from maximum security."

"Good. Signal, any information on what you saw in there." Duke rubbed at his eyes.

"A ghost, I guess? I don't know. It was weird. She didn't really have an aura. It was more like, an absence of aura. Like she was a black hole, drawing all the light in."

Even behind the domino, Bruce could tell Damien rolled his eyes.

"And what of the patient, Thomas? Was he not the one you were sent to look at?" Batman bit back the reprimand for codenames, more interested in Signal's response. Signal seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head.

"He definitely had a pretty distinct aura. It... felt powerful. But it looked weak. Dim. When the ghost... struck him, it flared up a bit, but died back down almost instantly. I... I get the feeling he was holding it back. Almost like he was afraid of it. Of himself."

"Hnn. Good job Signal. Robin. You two are welcome to head back to the cave. I'll take the rest of this Arkham shift."

At that moment, the comms crackled to life.

Actually B, you may want to come in, also. Arkham should be fine. And I found why they sent the kid there.

[cartsandhorses]

this is a very bad idea

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Used at St. Vincent-de-Paul: Metal scanners for airlines?" Montreal Star. September 11, 1970. Page 27. ---- By DUNCAN HAIMERL ---- Airlines, faced with considering more stringent security checks, could adopt prison-type metal detectors to check for weapons on passengers.

But some of the devices, while ideally suited for prison conditions, may mean extra difficulties for airline staffs.

The common one used in prisons is a personnel scanner which an inmate walks through. Any metal on his person is indicated by a bell and a more thorough search is carried out to find the object.

Any metal unfortunately means just that, and the metal can include a zip per, a ring, a watch or a pen as well as a knife or similar weapon.

However, a trained person might be able to tell just how much metal is there and a high meter reading and steadily-ringing bell could mean a gun.

Jean Page, director of the Special Correctional Unit at St.-Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary his Rens Personnel Scanner, an eight-foot high walkthrough machine does the prison job with ease.

"But we know what the inmate is wearing," he said. "What will they do on the airlines? Ask all the passengers to wear coveralls with nylon zippers? I don't think it's what they want."

A smaller hand-held metal detector may be the answer, he said, because it's held against the person's clothing and indicates where exactly the metal is and roughly how much there is.

Sensitive enough to detect a dime in a person's hand or pocket, the Transfrisker emits a varying tone de pending on the size of the metal object and could check luggage for large metal objects.

Some airlines already use a type of metal detector for passengers and lug- gage but officials were hesitant to point out what type they used.

Suggestions were made that fluoroscope or x-ray machines could be used. However, this could mean passengers would be given above-normal exposure to the machines, with uncertain health effects.

Two Canadian suppliers of the metal detection units said they have not been contacted by airlines since the recent rash of hijackings prompted tighter security measures.

But they added they would be ready to co-operate with the airlines' requests. Some checks may be made with airlines already using the devices to determine their suitability and also see whether design changes must be made.

NEW USE FOR METAL DETECTORS? How prison-type metal detectors could be used for checking for guns on plane passengers is demonstrated by Edgar Robitaille, assistant security chief of the Special Correctional Unit at St. Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary, and reporter Duncan Haimerl. In background is an eight-foot high walkthrough detector called a Rens Personnel Scanner.

Staff Photo by Gerry Davidson

[gleamer]

just pretty & deranged

[feroluce]

Randomly consumed today by the thought of henghill cuddles, but like from a specific point in their relationship, like after they've only recently started laying in the same bed together.

It's something that takes them a long time to work up to; they both have nightmares, and yeah, Dan Heng is a Vidyadhara and he can heal himself beyond anything Boothill could accidentally do to him, but still. Boothill is made of metal now. He's heavy. It wouldn't take much, just a single flailing limb to cause some damage. He still gets up after Dan Heng falls asleep, and sneaks down into the guest cabin in one of the other cars.

But he'll lay in bed with Dan Heng until then. At first Boothill would always try to situate a blanket between them, because well. Metal isn't exactly pleasant to cuddle. But more and more lately, he's noticed Dan Heng keeps worming his way around their soft barrier and just kind of...rubbing his hand along him? Open palm up the curve of his side, across the planes of his chest, into the star-shape at his solar plexus, down the plates of his abdomen, back to his side again. Fingertips tap soundlessly against metal, or press into dents and divots, or smooth over old scars in the steel.

"Ya don't hav'ta do that, ya know."

"Does it bother you?"

Dan Heng's hand has already stopped, settling somewhere on the futon, neutral ground. Boothill clarifies that no, it doesn't bother him. But he can't feel any of it. He only knows he's doing it because he can see the motion out of the corner of his eye. Dan Heng doesn't need to go through the extra effort to do things for him like he would someone with a normal human body.

And Dan Heng goes quiet, just long enough that Boothill gets curious and turns to look at him over his shoulder. He has the cute little furrow between his brows, like when he's thinking.

And then he opens that pretty mouth of his and says, "That's alright, I think I'm doing it for myself, anyway" and Boothill nearly wheezes because wow, Dan Heng is almost never quite that honest when it comes to himself fdklsajlkd

Boothill cackles in surprise and asks point blank what he means, because what could he be getting out of that? Given the implied permission, Dan Heng's hand starts it's usual route again. Side, chest, solar plexus, abdomen, side. Boothill can practically hear him chewing on his words.

"I like that you're warm," is what he finally says, and Boothill suddenly feels like a bullet has just grazed something vital. "All the processes you run increase your temperature," Dan Heng's hand fans out across a span of steel and he holds it there, like he's soaking up the heat. "And your metal is smooth, it feels pleasant to touch," his fingertips move in circles, slip into a divot perfectly sized, rub back and forth. Boothill silently wills one of his cooling fans threatening to open up to stay closed.

"I like how you feel under my hands. That's all." Headshot! No recovery possible.

"...Suit yerself, then," and Boothill quickly turns back over before Dan Heng can see it in his face, how close he just hit to his heart.

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne arriving at a performance of the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in Rio de Janeiro on 24 March 1986 🩰

[unsettling-type-of-vibe]

Shadowhunters are fr obsessed with putting children in maximum security prisons for having abusive parents