#teche county

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Shrine to Longfellow's "Evangeline" in Acadia,” Brantford Expositor. March 28, 1930. Page 12. --- Memorial Chapel and Statue of Evangeline, at Grand Pre, the locale of Longfellow's well-known poem, "Evangeline." A pilgrimage to this spot, sacred to descendants of the Acadians, will be made this summer by 200 residents of the Teche country, South Louisiana, the district to which the greater number of the Acadians were taken when they were forced to leave their native land in 1775 -(S. N. S..)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

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

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

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

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

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

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

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[humanoidhistory]

Reels of data tape at Los Angeles County’s computer center in Downey, California, 1976. Photo by Cal Montney.

[mudwerks]

I don’t even trust my cell phone, and it’s a flip phone, and I don’t trust it. It doesn’t always give me results, it’s not always there for me. So, it’s a difficult thing...

After refusing to certify its election, Cochise County faces lawsuits to force it to do so

this is GOP county supervisor Peggy Judd - who said the voting machines weren’t certified, despite the certification and documentation of the voting machines by the state. She knows it’s a lie.

But the good news is - this is a heavily GOP county - Most GOP candidates WON the vote in Cochise County.

So if they don’t certify - their votes will be left out of the final AZ state tabulation. 

And some of the GOP representative electees will now lose and the seats will instead go to the democratic candidates - who now have more votes because the GOP in Cochise County are...not very smart.

disenfranchising your own voters is not a winning strategy

[broke-on-books]

Me months ago: omg easy science gened! I like maps I can def make maps this will be great

Me now: *trawling through a 2180 page pdf listing every mailbox in the UK* how the fuck do I turn this into a data layer

[bythorneparanormalsocietyint]

ALTERNATE SIGHTING REPORT FOR THE APPLICABLE COUNTY/IES : MANDELA

- Flawed Impersonator found roaming the back alleys of local tech store. Any further information on this alternate or related incidents would be appreciated. Approach at your own risk, and with EXTREME caution.

[bymcr]

.

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

jonah comes to gabriels place one day with alt cesar following him and we get the reunion of all reunions

johnny seeing cesar again

oh and seth seeing him too, i guess /lh

YEAH

Johnny being able to see Cesar again! Like rubbing against his arm or leg and he can feel him purring-

Oh yeah also the sad reunion with Seth too- /lh

[lies]

Duruflé's Requiem — Choir of Trinity College Cambridge

[capinejghafa]

So, this past weekend was fine. Lila and the cat fam are actually really calm... however, due to the "incident," Lila has to go back to the vet, and I'm like 😐 I also don't have a choice in the matter, so ya.

[innytoes]

20. Oversized sweaters with nothing but sexy panties underneath for Rulie (or Rukebox) because I have to ❤️

The text came right after she'd managed to wrestle herself into the very, very sexy dress Flynn had helped her pick out last month. The one she had been saving for a special occasion, and by that she meant 'a date night where she really wanted to blow Reggie's socks right off'. And also the rest of his clothes.

Except she'd managed to wriggle it on, when her phone chimed, and Reggie's name (surrounded by hearts) popped up on the screen.

💖Reggie💖: Sorry doll, emergency surgery and all the other vet techs have already left 💖Reggie💖: promise I'll make it up to you

She read the text, took a deep breath, and texted him back a quick 'good luck, hope the critter is okay, love you'. He didn't respond, didn't even read the messages, which meant it was probably a bad one. She hoped the animal was okay.

Then, she stared at herself in the mirror, taking a moment to appreciate how good she looked before starting on the process of wriggling herself out of the super sexy dress. At least she hadn't put make-up on yet. She threw her hair into a basic bun and padded back into the bedroom, hiding the dress back in the back of her closet and ditching the bra that admittedly made her boobs look great, but wasn't exactly the most comfortable.

Instead, she put on with her favourite oversized sweater, the fleecy one with the pastel galaxy print that came down over her hips. She ordered herself a pizza, as well as one for Reggie that he could reheat when he got home, and opened a bottle of wine. And then, she grabbed her laptop and selected a random episode of Gilmore Girls to mope to (just a little) and curled up under a blanket.

By the time Reggie came home, Lorelai and her mother had had three different fights and Julie had been texting Flynn a long, multi-text screed about how Reggie was the perfect mix of Luke, Dean, and Jess (as Flynn sent increasingly mocking texts back).

He opened the door with his key, before sticking his hand through and waving a white handkerchief. “I come in peace!” he called. “And I brought Cookie Dough ice cream! Don’t be mad!”

“I’m not mad, you goof,” she said, peering over the couch and smiling when he stuck his head through the door. Her smile dropped when she saw the amount of blood on his scrubs.

“Bad case?” she asked.

“Hit-and-run, no chip. The pup lost a leg, but we think she’ll make a full recovery.”

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, and he looked embarrassed and pleased at the same time. “Go take a shower, I’ll reheat your pizza in the oven.”

“You got me pizza after I bailed on our date?” Reggie asked, touched.

“You were saving a puppy, of course I did,” she said, getting up and taking the bag with the ice cream out of his hand and leaning to press a kiss to his cheek. She puttered around the kitchen while he cleaned up, reheating the pizza, stashing the ice cream for later, pouring Reggie a glass of wine as well. She was just rummaging around in the dishwasher for the pizza slicer when she heard Reggie return.

“Holy shit, Jules, are you trying to kill me?” he asked. She looked over her shoulder, confused (but victorious, pizza slicer in hand). Reggie moved into the kitchen, pulling her close and sliding his hand down her back, then up her thigh. “Those damn panties,” he growled, hand resting on her ass, fingers sliding over the dark purple lace.

She flushed, smiling her way into a kiss anyway. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her date night panties, that was true. “Pizza first. Then dessert. Then you can help me take these off.”

“Deal.”

[cecelovegood]

I’m literally living on a diet of lemon tea and cough drops right now

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fulton County’s jails are in real trouble: “[Inmates] are sleeping on the floor in plastic trays. Cell doors hang off hinges, footage from one local news report shows, and leaked water pools on the floor in some areas. Last September, one person was found dead and covered in bed bugs.” The funding to buy Talitrix tracking bracelets is part of an emergency cash infusion triggered by outrage (and litigation risk) over these inhumane conditions. But the hundreds of sensors being studded throughout the county’s jails and the expensive tracking cuffs are obviously solving the wrong problems, like “how do we stop prisoners living under these inhumane conditions from erupting in violence, or taking their own lives?” (For avoidance of doubt, the right question to answer is “How do we eliminate these inhumane conditions and focus on rehabilitation?”)

-The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve Has a Business Model

[babysgarage]

don't really have enough coherent thoughts to elaborate on this but this is what USA feels like to me re: ads

[iheartvmt]

Ugggghhhhh canine influenza outbreak in the state, so of course now all the brands of the vaccines are on backorder 🙄

[chonxevn]

Deck (New York)