#the forensic record society

[hypothermiatapes]

Yesterday I answered an ask about the Hogwarts school system and if it might have been different in Tom’s time than it was in Harry’s time (you can find it here). I’ve been thinking about it for a day now and would like to add onto it.

I believe the Hogwarts education is catered to the purebloods to widen the gap between them and muggleborns. I say this because the school system is actually very poorly set up for people that didn’t grow up in the magical world.

The lovely anon had mentioned how ancient languages aren’t taught, which are important because many ancient texts would most likely be written in them (not to mention most spells are in Latin). This really caught my attention because throughout history people have used reading and writing to widen the gap between social classes. This was especially prevalent during Shakespeares time when those in poverty wouldn’t be taught and thus couldn’t rise in society because they didn’t have the skill.

It can be assumed that this could also be the case at Hogwarts. Purebloods would have grown up in the magical world while practically swimming in gold for most of them. This means purebloods would likely grow up being taught these languages and reading ancient texts considering their families most likely knew these languages and had the money to hire tutors and buy books.

This opens their field to the pure and unaltered history and records of the very world they live in while also knowing their worlds traditions through first hand accounts. Muggleborns and a lot of halfbloods won’t have this privilege, and if the ability to read these languages is common among purebloods (the people in charge of the government) then people who can’t will be considered unqualified. This also means most texts won’t be translated because why would they translate it if the important people already can read them?

There’s also only eight classes a student can take during Harry’s time (this doesn’t include flying in first year), and while there might have been more in the past we’re going to ignore it. These are far too few classes to properly educate people newly entering your world. There are no classes to introduce muggleborns to the magical world, not a word about how much their money is worth, holidays, just culture in general.

The classes also lack variety and specialization for certain subjects. In high school I had the opportunity to take very niche classes in science and social studies to deepen my understanding of the subjects while also exploring career options. We had classes like Cold War, Native American history, mythology, forensics, conceptual physical science, to name a few.

Hogwarts lacks these things, you only have one path you can take not to mention how when you pick an elective you must stick to it. This is a horrible strategy since they only start discussing career choices in fifth year and by that time you can’t change what you’re taking. Electives should also be more niche and odd to introduce students to new careers and opportunities. Hogwarts lacks this.

However, purebloods grow up in the magical world, so they have the knowledge of what paths can be taken and how to achieve them. They have the money for private tutors if they wish to have a deep dive into a certain subject.

The core classes are very straightforward too and don’t involve philosophical discussions or debates. This may seem small to you, but these things are essential to the development of a person. Don’t get me wrong, the facts are important, we must know them, but what about the grey area? This approach doesn’t teach kids to think for themselves, only to follow what they’re told.

My social studies and literature teachers always brought up several sides, often had us debate and also made us make educated guesses with limited information. My father had a sci fi fiction class and his teacher after a book and during would force them to try and understand how things like those dystopian futures had happened. This approach makes children learn to recognize patterns, make connections and also think for themselves.

When people can’t think for themselves and just follow what they’re blindly told it makes them easy to control. The government is controlled by the corrupt, money constantly going into the purebloods pockets not to mention they’re part of the Wizgomant is ran by purebloods and this is the high court. Nobody challenges them because they were never taught to look deeper, they only see the facts and whether these facts are real or not is irrelevant. This means the purebloods continue to enter high positions while muggleborns and many halfbloods are unable to.

I also want to mention how the history of magic class is ran by a ghost that can’t teach. They could’ve replaced him at any time, but they chose to keep him which means there’s a reason. I’m assuming firstly that enough students pass to say it’s not a teacher issue, and who are those students? The purebloods, people who grew up hearing about this history, have the resources. It’s also strategic to keep him because he keeps the “lesser” uneducated, and if someone doesn’t know history they’re doomed to repeat it/turn a blind eye as it’s repeated.

Finally, anon had mentioned how Hogwarts doesn’t teach subjects like math, science, geography, etc, and I also have a theory for this. While it may seem to put everyone in the magical world at a disadvantage it actually puts muggleborns into a horrible position.

The purebloods have the money and connections to do whatever they please and have a good life in the magical world, but the muggleborns don’t know how their own world works and it’s been rigged so that they will have a significantly hard time getting anywhere. The logical conclusion would be to leave the magical world but they can’t because nobody in the muggle world will hire someone who doesn’t know math, science and things like that. This means no matter what they do most are doomed to live in poverty and be exploited.

This is all theory, but I’ve been thinking about this for a whole day now and needed to write it down.

[ckret2]

I'm staring at the newest chapter in horror but also, there are SO many witnesses and there will probably be a ton of documentation about the second dimensional incident, which makes it that much more baffling Bill got an insanity plea. I know it's for Story Reasons and I probably shouldn't think about it too hard but goddamn.

They legitimately looked at all of this and said "yeah no he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, Theraprism NOW." (I thought at first it was "guilty but insane," however we get no indication that he's going to be sent to a normal multiversal prison after he completes his karmic rehabilitation. They all but say that reincarnation is the goal after this is over, which seems to be equivalent to release and reintegration into society.)

That being said it could simply be that interdimensional court has different requirements to be declared insane enough not to get permadeath. Or I'm misremembering how the Theraprism works...It's a forensic hospital, right? Not prison. He's being treated not punished.(Kinda debatable. That place sucks.)

The Axolotl gotta be the single best lawyer of the entire multiverse how the hell did they pull this off. I would love to just be in the court when this went down actually I can already feel how absolutely insane it was. No way either side didn't fight tooth and nail.

the fact that Bill is willing to look every single person he meets dead in the eye and say "no my dimension wasn't destroyed, it's fine, all my people are alive and they love me" is ngl gonna be a big part of the ax's defense strategy.

They have a lot of documentation of what Bill's like after the massacre—but there's absolutely no record, anywhere, of what happened during the massacre. You know what they do have documentation of though? Bill insisting that he dumped Euclydia into Dimension Zero so that he could do renovations and that he's built a paradise universe in its place when all he's built is a void with a few strobe lights. Bill claiming that all these people he kidnapped himself are actually from his dimension. Bill pulling off "rescues" with seemingly no self-awareness that he slaughtered more than he saved. Bill being told MULTIPLE TIMES "if you keep trying to fix Dimension Zero then the multiverse will collapse" and Bill going "okay. i hear you. So how about i fix Dimension Zero, and then, everything is fine."

What do you do if you get Bill into a courtroom and ask him "do you plea guilty to the massacre of Euclydia?" and he goes "I don't know what you're talking about. There was no massacre. I liberated everyone, they're fine. They're literally still alive today. Nobody died." Like. You're trying to decide his culpability in a crime he doesn't acknowledge happened.

You've gotta ask 2 questions: does Bill literally not know what happened to his dimension—even if the knowledge comes and goes, is it still sometimes genuinely missing—or is this just an act to try to wiggle out of trouble? And, if he does literally not know what happened to it, is that a trauma reaction to the massacre, or did he commit the crime not comprehending what the result would be?

Bill's a known liar, this could all be an act. But, like, god, wow, it's a really, really good act.

The Ax can argue that Bill literally doesn't grasp the difference between right and wrong. He can tell them that Bill is completely unable to differentiate fact and fiction. He can tell them that Bill has delusions that he didn't destroy Euclydia, that the neighboring dimensions are Euclydia, that all his people are alive and healthy, and argue that he probably had delusions that whatever he did to his dimension wouldn't destroy it in the first place. He can argue a whole lot of things about Bill.

Are any of these things true about Bill? Debatable. Probably not. Somewhere between 30%-60% true. Could the Ax convince a court that they're true? Probably. Everyone already agrees Bill's insane. The only question is if he was the right kind of insane at the right time.

[argumate]

A growing trove of evidence detailing the final moments of the first responders has blown apart the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) initial narrative of what unfolded that day, in which it claimed without offering evidence that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without headlights or flashing lights toward the Israeli troops and that members of the emergency teams were militants.

A CNN review of video capturing the gunfire, photos and satellite imagery of the site, along with interviews with forensic experts and family members provides a detailed account of the Israeli military’s targeting and burial of clearly marked rescue crews from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Civil Defense, and the United Nations. A CNN interview with a survivor of the attack and exclusive audio from a medical worker recorded in his final moments also contradict Israel’s account.

The IDF said it had begun re-investigating the incident after footage emerged Friday showing ambulances and a fire truck traveling with their emergency signal lights on. After being briefed on the preliminary inquiry, the IDF Chief of Staff on Monday ordered the initial inquiry be “pursued in greater depth” through an “investigation mechanism” and completed within days. The video, first published by The New York Times, was obtained by CNN from the PRCS.

“All the claims raised regarding the incident will be examined through the mechanism and presented in a detailed and thorough manner for a decision on how to handle the event,” the IDF said in a statement Monday.

According to an Israeli military official, troops from a brigade that had set up an ambush opened fire on the emergency crews that morning, after intelligence had deemed their movements “suspicious,” and believed they had successfully carried out an attack on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.

...

An Israeli military official said the troops shot at a vehicle at 4 a.m., killing two individuals and detaining another, all of whom the IDF claimed without providing evidence were Hamas security officials. The official also denied that the vehicle was an ambulance or that the individuals were uniformed paramedics. Abed, who said he was released later that day from Israeli custody after the military checked his records, rejects those claims.

Once communication with Abed’s crew was lost, PRCS dispatched additional ambulances alongside Civil Defense vehicles to check on the missing team.

However, the support crews would meet the same, grim fate. A newly released video discovered on the phone of one of the 15 deceased ambulance and relief team members captured their final moments before being killed by the Israeli military.

The video is filmed from the front of a vehicle and shows a convoy of clearly marked ambulances moving along a road at dawn, with headlights and flashing emergency lights on.

The video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle that had seemingly crashed into a power pole on the side of the road. Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the PRCS, confirmed in a press briefing on Monday that the vehicle seen in the footage was one of the agency’s ambulances.

Two of the rescuers seen in the footage getting out of the vehicles are wearing reflective, PRCS emergency responder uniforms. A fire truck and an ambulance at the scene are marked with the PRCS insignia.

Almost immediately there is intense gunfire, which can be heard hitting the convoy. The video ends, but the audio continues for five minutes.

bloody hell, at this point sending an ambulance out in Gaza to get blown to pieces by the IDF is like the guy who was essentially feeding pet cats to coyotes, at some point you have to consider every death in Gaza to be the deliberate murder of civilians.

(CNN)

[mariacallous]

In the winter of 2021, “Saturday Night Live” spoofed the true-crime industrial complex with a musical number called “Murder Show.” The sketch sends up the consumption of spectacular depravity as an idle form of female self-care: “A bodybuilder chopped up an old lady / I watch it while I text my sister about her baby / Murder show, murder show / Every type of murder show / Late-night true crime / This is my relaxing time.” These binges aren’t altogether passive—the cast member Ego Nwodim sings that she’s “fully down the rabbit hole” as she stands in front of her own labyrinthine wall of clues and concordances.

The writer Caroline Fraser, who won a 2018 Pulitzer for the biography “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder,” addressed the routine derision of the genre a few months later, in an essay for The New York Review of Books. “A guilty pleasure—that’s what true crime is said to be, by everyone from avid fans to literary scholars,” she writes. Critics had long disdained the appetite for sanguinary entertainment as a symptom of decadence. Fraser cites the 1827 satirical essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” by Thomas De Quincey, which “mockingly elevates the genre, positing the existence of a gentleman’s club, the ‘Society of Connoisseurs in Murder,’ whose members were aesthetes, ‘Murder-Fanciers,’ who ‘amidst some carnal considerations of tea and toast’ relished ‘masterpieces’ of the art.”

This assessment, Fraser allows, was historically warranted. Salacious treatments of rape and homicide often specialized “in the debasement of female sex objects: temptresses, sex kittens, jail bait, and lost women.” The twentieth century saw a flourishing trade in pulpy detective magazines, with lurid covers “reflecting a noir underworld in which women are whores and villains, wielding guns and knives, or hapless victims of their own lust, barely clad, menaced by men in the frame or just outside it: eyes wide, bosoms heaving, arms (or legs or necks) tied, red lips open, mouths screaming.” The unsubtle indication was that these women probably got what they deserved. Even the more exalted contributions to the canon—“In Cold Blood,” with its fictive embroideries—did the genre no favors. At stake was more than just representation. Fraser describes a perverse feedback loop between true crime and degeneracy in the real world; grisly depictions of evil acts were received as both prurient diversion and helpful instructions for homicidal aspirants.

Since then, Fraser argues, we have seen a revisionist turn in the murder-show business, one that merits a more sophisticated and generous appraisal. She writes, “In true crime’s latest iteration, writers, reporters, bloggers, documentary filmmakers, and podcast hosts—many of them women (alongside empathetic men), many of them energized by the Me Too movement—have taken a soiled brand and turned it into a collective exercise in retributive justice, recording and correcting the history of sexual violence.” She isn’t referring to the streamers’ pabulum but to such books as Ann Rule’s “The Stranger Beside Me,” about Rule’s friendship with Ted Bundy; the late true-crime writer Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” following her search for the Golden State Killer; and Jessica McDiarmid’s “Highway of Tears,” about Indigenous women and girls who have been abducted on Highway 16, in Canada. These are neither tawdry nor sheepish; they reclaim crime, especially against women, as “worthy of rigorous, accurate, and analytical attention.”

Fraser’s essay might be read as a preface to her new book, “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers,” an extraordinarily well-written and genre-defying blend of memoir, social and environmental history, and forensic inquest. The book opens with a typically dry observation: “The Pacific Northwest is known for five things: lumber, aircraft, tech, coffee, and crime. Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, Starbucks, and serial killers.” What follows is a granular, if poetic, attempt to solve two related mysteries: What might account for the abrupt rise and equally abrupt fall, between the nineteen-sixties and the turn of the century, of the “golden age” of serial killing? And why were so many of these brutes—almost all of them men—cradled in a crescent of psychopathy around Seattle’s Puget Sound?

Fraser admits that she, too, is a practitioner of what she calls the “crazy wall”: “Amateur cartographer, I draw lines, making maps tied to timelines, maps of rural roads and kill sites and body dumps.” She continues, “In a chaotic world, maps make sense. There are people who have gurus or crystals or graven images. I have maps. They tell a story. They make connections.” She locates herself on the first and most puzzling of these maps: “It’s August of 1961. I’m seven months old. There are three males who live in what you might call the neighborhood, within a circle whose center is Tacoma. Their names are Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Gary Ridgway. What are the odds?”

A crazy wall can function as an actual tool. A good detective assumes, as a heuristic, that there are no coincidences. She uses pushpins and red yarn to reveal hidden patterns, and these patterns ensnare the perpetrator. A crazy wall is just as likely to function as a metaphor. A bad detective also assumes there are no coincidences, not as a heuristic but as a matter of conspiratorial or aesthetic principle. She uses pushpins and red yarn to create hidden patterns, and these patterns ensnare her.

Fraser’s quarry is not an individual perpetrator, and her book is not a whodunnit, at least not in the traditional sense. The stories she recounts have been settled. Ted Bundy, the principal vector of Fraser’s narrative, was a sadist who spent the nineteen-seventies raping and killing dozens of women—first in Washington State, then in the intermountain West, and finally in Florida—before he was executed, by electrocution, in 1989. He generally approached his targets posing as an injured man in need of some sort of aid; once in or near his car, he bludgeoned them as a prelude to rape, murder, and extended necrophilia. He squirrelled away the remains of his victims on remote logging roads or mountain passes, revisiting the sites until decomposition or wild animals rendered further abuse unfeasible. Fraser details these atrocities with clinical precision. She declines to indulge the allure of Bundy’s Lecter-like cunning, emphasizing instead the innocent lives he cut short—and the raft of mistakes made by law-enforcement officers in their ham-handed pursuit.

Fraser wastes little time trying to figure out what went wrong for Bundy on the level of moral psychology. She is more interested in what went wrong in general: “There are 55 serial killers in 1940, 72 in 1950, 217 in 1960. By 1970 there are 605. By 1980, 768.” Her childhood was colored by a sense of accelerating disorder. In 1975, in the middle of Bundy’s spree, violent crime increased by fourteen per cent in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. Tacoma measured a sixty-two per cent rise in murder and a twenty-eight per cent rise in rape. There were those who didn’t seem to think that any special paranoia was called for.“When it comes to serial killers, 1984 is shaping up to be what one scholar will later call ‘a moral panic,’ ” she writes. “In the Pacific Northwest, however, it’s difficult to tell what distinguishes a moral panic from a real one.”

Among the observers who purported to take this savage crime wave seriously, there were plenty of theories to go around. One syndicated columnist from the New York Times, Fraser writes, “muses on ‘mindless violence,’ ” blandly conjuring such bugbears as “political turmoil and the dissolution of the family and the pernicious influence of television.” The killers themselves occasionally betrayed greater insight. In 1978, Dennis Rader, who was known in Wichita as the B.T.K. Killer, for “bind, torture, kill,” wrote a letter to the local newspaper in which he claimed to be under the influence of something he called “factor X,” which he described as “the same thing that made Son of Sam, Jack the Ripper, Havery Glatman [sic], Boston Strangler, Dr. H. H. Holmes Panty Hose Strangler of Florida, Hillside Strangler,” and, last but not least, “Ted of the West Coast” Bundy, who had recently been added to the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list. Fraser appears to think that Rader was on to something: he “is aware that there’s a pattern to his own behavior but senses a larger pattern as well, one involving multiple serial rapists and killers operating all over the country, displaying versions of his pathology and variations of factor X.”

Fraser thinks the master key is to be found in the fact that these serial killers disproportionately originated in the counties and milieu of her childhood. The area south and southwest of Seattle was home to massive ore-processing facilities, and she, her classmates, and her subjects were reared in their murky, particulate shadows. “Spare some string for the smelters and smoke plumes,” she writes of her crazy wall, “those insidious killers, shades of Hades.” The smelters caused a profusion of heavy metals in the region’s air and water, and toxins such as lead and arsenic were found in staggering concentrations in the blood of Tacoma’s postwar children. Some were merely dulled, or delinquent; a few became tabloid monsters. Bundy was the most famous figure in “a long line of outlandishly wanton necrophiliac killers who’ve lived, at one time or another, within the Tacoma smelter plume.” Fraser waxes in a self-consciously Lynchian register, with stygian and hallucinatory descriptions of the Pacific Northwest. In Tacoma, she writes, it was “as if someone had scratched through to the underworld and released a savage wave of sulfur.”

The perpetrators of these environmental crimes have been hiding in plain sight for generations: “It takes two great American family fortunes to build a city of serial killers: the Rockefellers and the Guggenheims.” The Rockefellers built the American Smelting and Refining Company, and in 1901 the Guggenheims assumed its ownership. ASARCO ultimately controlled virtually all of American lead production—much of it at the company’s sprawling Tacoma plant. Fraser’s portrayal of the family is akin to my colleague (and friend) Patrick Radden Keefe’s genealogy of the Sacklers, in his book “Empire of Pain,” as the malevolent force behind the opioid epidemic. Both dynasties knew what they were doing while they were doing it, and both went on to whitewash their exorbitant sins with exorbitant largesse. Meyer Guggenheim’s money, she writes, “keeps throwing off culture the way clay flies off a potter’s wheel, obliterating any association with slag and smoke.”

In the course of the twentieth century, America’s manic industrialization became a kind of industrialized mania. Nature was incrementally plated in concrete and metal infrastructure, which Fraser frames as an epidemic of heedlessness and hubris. The smelter plumes may have done the most concentrated damage to young brains locally, but leaded gasoline democratized American access to diffuse toxicity, especially in poorer communities that lived along busy roads. Proliferating metals were treated as blameless economic inputs that fuelled the “frothy postwar fizz of euphoria, when people are eager to swallow the cost of progress.”

Sometimes this cost took the form of a direct trade-off: mass mobility and mass convenience simply required a little tolerance for some minor mass death. Fraser’s recurring example of this is a poorly designed floating bridge that connected her childhood home, on Mercer Island, to Seattle. “Every great psychopath wants a floating bridge,” she writes, and this one in particular was built (and subsequently dismantled) with utter disregard for the volatility of the local environment. Fatal incidents became a fact of life on the island: “Floating femme fatale, she presides over mayhem as if she were born for it, designed for it, engineered for it. In 1961, the bridge kills more people than Ted Bundy.”

Unlike the bridge fatalities, Bundy’s lurid crimes naturally attracted mass attention. On the afternoon before Bundy was executed, in 1989, he gave an interview to the evangelical broadcaster James Dobson. Bundy performed the role required of Dobson’s moral diagnosis, blaming his psychopathy on the proliferation of pornography. The morbid spectacle of an interview, which aired shortly after Bundy’s death, was consumed with fascination by an audience eager for potted analyses of cultural derangement. In the wake of the interview, Fraser adds, this magazine published a Comment by the late writer Roger Angell, who rebuked both Dobson and a “complicit” viewership. “I don’t believe that Ted Bundy or anyone else understood what made him commit and repeat the crimes he confessed to,” Angell writes, “which were rape-murders of an unimaginable violence and cruelty.”

As Fraser puts it, “We pay attention to the wrong things. We make a mystery of Jack the Ripper. It’s not a mystery. It’s history.” Americans had fallen for metaphysical or cultural interpretations of an effect that was, in her view, mechanistic. Bundy’s victims were the collateral damage of prosperity—not a direct trade-off, as the bridge fatalities were, but an indirect consequence of our country’s insatiable appetite for growth. Greedy people despoiled our habitat, which despoiled Bundy and his dark fraternity, who despoiled young women. The overbuilt environment and serial killers were two sides of the same coin. The true-crime industrial complex comes full circle to represent the entirety of the industrial complex itself: “The true crime,” Fraser writes, “lies in what we’ve done with the place.”

But then we managed to undo it. By 1990, the year after Bundy’s execution, lead had been almost entirely phased out of gasoline. The country simultaneously began to phase itself out of serial killing, which followed lead exposure on a twenty-year time lag: “Throughout the 1990s, nationwide there are 669 serial killers. In the 2000s: 371. From 2010 to 2020: 117.”

“Murderland” is exhaustive—four hundred dense, conscientious pages, with an even denser and more conscientious fifty pages of endnotes. (As Janet Malcolm once noted, “books of this genre published in America today apparently need to fulfill only one requirement—that they be interminably long.”) But Fraser’s argumentative style is one of association, a vast crazy wall studded with murders and smelters and industrialists, yoked into patterns with skeins of gripping red yarn. It’s never quite clear whether she thinks she’s really caught the bad guy or created an impressionistic tableau of America’s helter-skelter years. She has, after all, warned the reader up front that maps are to her what gurus and crystals are to other seers.

Taken in this latter, atmospheric mode, “Murderland” is something of a moody masterpiece. Fraser is an outstanding social, cultural, and environmental historian, and she has an effortless way of turning pontoon bridges into villains. As a persuasive work of criminology, however, her book leaves something to be desired. In her final chapter, Fraser refers to the work of the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who published an influential article, in 2007, linking lead exposure to violent crime. This suspicion had been around since the nineteen-nineties, but Reyes gave a definitive sheen to what has come to be known as the “lead-crime hypothesis.” Reyes’s study is invoked as a kind of capstone, an empirical piece of scholarship to crown Fraser’s more ethereal conjecture.

Yet for all Fraser’s research, and her commitment to the “rigorous, accurate, and analytical attention” to true crime she praises in her New York Review of Books essay, she neglects to devote any rigorous or analytic attention to the two decades of debate that Reyes’s work inspired. There is absolutely no question, on a micro level, that lead exposure increases rates of delinquency and aggression. In 2019, the economists Anna Aizer and Janet Currie found that, among boys, a “1 unit increase in lead increased the probability of suspension from school by 6% and detention by 57%.” In 2020, three Swedish researchers exploited a natural experiment—the differential phaseout of leaded gasoline in Sweden—to conclude that “even a low exposure affects long-run outcomes, that boys are more affected, and that changes in noncognitive skills explain a sizable share of the impact on crime and human capital.” Another report found that homicide rates were as much as twice as high in cities with significant lead exposure than in cities without.

A 2022 meta-analysis of twenty-four studies of the relationship between lead and crime, however, found strong evidence of a publication bias in the literature—that is, studies that showed a strong correlation were published, and studies that showed a weaker or nonexistent one were shelved as inconclusive. In the United States, the authors of the meta-analysis found, the abatement of lead explained at most a twenty-eight-per-cent decline in homicide rates. This upper-bound estimate is certainly substantial, but it suggests that a variety of other factors played equally significant roles. There are moments in the book where Fraser pauses to hedge her bets. “Recipes for making a serial killer may vary, including such ingredients as poverty, crude forceps delivery, poor diet, physical and sexual abuse, brain damage, and neglect,” she writes at one point, backing off slightly from her central thesis. “Many horrors play a role in warping these tortured souls, but what happens if we add a light dusting from the periodic table on top of all that trauma? How about a little lead in your tea?”

Despite these caveats, Fraser writes with great confidence. She has lucked out insofar as the lead-crime hypothesis is politically and morally convenient. She never brings herself to acknowledge that her account happens to flatter liberal preconceptions, and she only really gestures to politics in passing, when she disparages an alternative view that is popular among conservatives: that the rapid decline in the homicide rate since the nineteen-nineties ought to be attributed to President Clinton’s notorious 1994 crime bill and a subsequent investment in more aggressive policing. It’s much more ideologically agreeable for liberals to argue for less lead than it is to argue for more police. It’s also a little quixotic. With a few notable exceptions—including the crisis in Flint, Michigan, a few years ago—lead abatement has already been widespread, and even proponents of the lead-crime hypothesis concede that further remediation is unlikely to have an appreciable effect on crime.

There is a third possible explanation for the serial-killer epidemic, and although Fraser doesn’t mention it, it happens to be the prevailing inclination among contemporary criminologists. “Routine-activity theory,” which was first elaborated by sociologists in the late nineteen-seventies, treats crime as a matter of ecology. The “golden era” of serial killers was made possible by the contingent rise of some technologies and practices—the automobile, the interstate highway system, the prevalence of hitchhiking—that happened to facilitate crimes of opportunity. In the last quarter century, the development of other technologies and practices—surveillance cameras, phone tracking, interjurisdictional coöperation, and DNA evidence, along with a much greater degree of interpersonal paranoia—have drastically limited those opportunities. Ted Bundy might have been profoundly lead-poisoned, but he also lived in a time and a place where it wasn’t hard to kill with impunity.

What’s ultimately bizarre about Fraser’s omission is that “Murderland” presents just as much evidence in favor of routine-activity theory as it marshals in support of the lead-crime hypothesis: Ted Bundy is constantly filling his 1968 VW with gas, prowling dark, unsupervised parking lots in pursuit of innocently unparanoid victims, leaving their corpses in remote ravines, and driving on to some other jurisdiction. Doors are frequently unlocked, parents aren’t home, and windows are easily pried open. Bundy was caught, but many cold cases, like that of the Golden State Killer, went unsolved until DNA evidence became tractable. This additional story is perfectly compatible with Fraser’s prosecution of lead—and with her overarching point that there is no mystery to be solved, only history to be laid bare. It doesn’t excuse the Guggenheims or the Rockefellers. But it does make it a little harder to accept the witchy incantation with which she concludes the book: “Hand the engineers their heads; hang them from lampposts on a floating bridge.” The implication is that we were better off in some prelapsarian era, though the points Fraser has assembled are equally legible as a tale of progress. This, too, is history. 

[forensicfield]

Forensic Linguistics

Here is a glossary of key terms related to Forensic Linguistics:

1. Forensic Linguistics: The application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and techniques to legal and criminal investigations, including the analysis of spoken and written language for legal evidence.

2. Linguistic Analysis: The systematic examination and interpretation of language, including its structure, usage, and meaning, to uncover insights and evidence in legal contexts.

3. Authorship Attribution: The process of determining the author or origin of a written text by analyzing linguistic features, such as writing style, vocabulary, and grammar.

4. Linguistic Profiling: The analysis of language to create a profile of an individual, including their demographic information, cultural background, and psychological characteristics.

5. Discourse Analysis: The study of language in use, focusing on how language is structured and used in different contexts, such as conversations, interviews, and legal proceedings.

6. Stylistic Analysis: The examination of linguistic features, such as word choice, sentence structure, and tone, to identify patterns and characteristics that can help identify the author or origin of a text.

7. Phonetics: The study of the physical aspects of speech sounds, including how they are produced, transmitted, and perceived.

8. Phonology: The study of the organization and patterns of sounds in languages, including the rules and structures that govern their use.

9. Morphology: The study of the structure and form of words, including how words are constructed from smaller meaningful units called morphemes.

10. Syntax: The study of the structure and arrangement of words to form grammatically correct sentences and phrases.

11. Semantics: The study of meaning in language, including how words and sentences convey ideas and information.

12. Pragmatics: The study of how language is used in real-world contexts, including the role of context, social factors, and implied meanings in communication.

13. Linguistic Variation: The study of how language varies across different speakers, dialects, regions, and social groups.

14. Sociolinguistics: The study of how language and society interact, including the social and cultural factors that influence language use and variation.

15. Language Documentation: The process of recording and preserving endangered languages, including their grammar, vocabulary, and cultural context.

16. Expert Witness: A professional who provides specialized knowledge and expertise in a particular field, such as forensic linguistics, to assist in legal proceedings and provide expert testimony.

17. Legal Discourse: The language and communication used in legal contexts, including legal documents, court proceedings, and legal arguments.

18. Miranda Rights: The rights of individuals in the United States, as established by the Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which include the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present during police interrogations.

19. Linguistic Evidence: Language-based evidence, such as written documents, recorded conversations, or linguistic analysis, that is used to support or refute claims in legal proceedings.

20. Linguistic Proficiency: The level of skill and competence in a particular language, including the ability to understand, speak, read, and write in that language.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV)

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

This week marks the publication of my latest novel, The Bezzle, and to celebrate, I'm serializing an excerpt from Chapter 14 in six parts:

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

The Bezzle is a revenge story, a crime novel, and a technothriller. It stars Martin Hench, a hard-fighting forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding high-tech scams. Hench made his debt in last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!); The Bezzle is a standalone followup:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The serial tells the tale of Stefon Magner, AKA Steve Soul, a once-famous R&B frontman whose disintegrating career turned to tragedy when his crooked manager forged his signature on a rights assignment contract that let him steal all of Stefon's royalties, which ballooned after modern hiphop artists discovered his grooves and started buying licenses to sample them. The first three installments related the sad circumstances of Stefon's life, and the real-world analogues (like Leonard Cohen and George Clinton, both of whom were pauperized by sticky-fingered managers) as well as one real-world countermeasure, copyright termination, a thing that more artists should know about and use:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Today's installment weaves in a major subplot for the first time in the serial: Los Angeles's notorious, murderous Sheriff's Deputy gangs. These are another unbelievable true tale: for decades, the LASD's deputies have formed themselves into criminal gangs, some of which require that initiates murder someone to be inducted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

They sport gang tattoos, have secret signs, and run vast criminal enterprises. This has been the subject of numerous investigative press reports, and one extensive official report that called the gangs "a cancer":

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-scathing-re-rcna73367

The sordid tales of the LASD gangs beggar belief. For example, deputies in charge of LA County jails forced inmates to pit-fight and took bets on the outcomes:

https://www.aclu.org/publications/report-cruel-and-usual-punishment-how-savage-gang-deputies-controls-la-county-jails

The taxpayers of LA have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to settle claims against LA's criminals with badges:

https://news.yahoo.com/deputies-accused-being-secret-societies-230851807.html

Periodically, LA judges and officials will insist that they are tackling the problem:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-17/dozens-of-lasd-deputies-ordered-to-show-suspected-gang-tattoos-reveal-others-who-have-them

But at every turn, the LA police "unions" manage to crush these investigations:

https://abc7.com/los-angeles-county-lasd-deputy-gangs-cliques/13492081/

And top cops are right there with them, insisting that these aren't "gangs" – they're just "subgroups":

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/01/former-la-sheriff-villanueva-sheriffs-gangs-are-just-subgroups/

It's very weird being an Angeleno and knowing that one of the largest, most militarized, best funded police departments in the world has been openly captured by a hyperviolent crime syndicate. When I was in the Skyboat Media studios last December with Wil Wheaton recording the audiobook for The Bezzle, Wil broke off from reading to say, "You know, someone's going to read this and google it and have their mind blown when they discover that it's real":

https://sowl.co/8nyGh

That's one of my favorite ways to turn literature into something more than entertainment. It's why I filled the Little Brother books with real-world surveillance, cryptography and security tech, giving enough detail to advance the plot and give readers an idea of what search terms would let them understand and use the concepts in the novel. That's something I'm happy to keep up with the Hench novels, unpicking the inner workings of scams and corruption. The more of us who are wise to this, the sooner we'll be able to get rid of it.

Here's part one of the serial:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#lawyer-up

And now, onto part four!

The last of the boxes had been shelved.

Benedetto rose from his chair. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the movers, and dug a roll of twenties out of his pocket and handed each of them two of their own. He turned to me as they filed out. “You wanna get sushi? The place next door is great.”

The empty storefront was in a down-­at-­heels strip mall in Eagle Rock. On one side, there was a Brazilian jujitsu studio that never seemed to have any students training in it. On the other side was Sushi Jiro, name on a faded sign with half its lightbulbs gone. Beyond that was a vaping store.

“The place next door is good?”

He laughed. “You San Francisco motherfuckers got terrible LA restaurant radar. Put Sushi Jiro in the Mission and it’d have a Michelin star and a six-­month waiting list. Here it’s in a strip mall and only the locals know how good it is. Bet you never had a decent meal in this town, am I right?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said, “but I admit my track record isn’t great.”

“Let’s improve it.”

The sushi was amazing.

#

Inglewood Jams had the kind of books that were performatively bad, designed to foil any attempt at human comprehension.

But whoever cooked them was an amateur, someone who mistook complexity for obfuscation. Like cross-­referencing was a species of transcendentally esoteric sorcery. I don’t mind cross-referencing. It’s meditative, like playing solitaire. I had Bene­detto send over some colored post-­it tabs and a big photocopier with an automatic feeder and I started making piles.

One night, I worked later than I planned. Sushi Jiro was becoming a serious hazard to my waistline and my sleep-­debt, because when your dinner break is ten yards and two doors away from your desk, it’s just too damned easy to get back to work after dinner.

That night, I’d fallen into a cross-­referencing reverie, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m., my lower back was groaning, and my eyes were stinging.

I straightened, groaned, and slid my laptop into my bag. I found my keys and unlocked the door. The storefront was covered with brown butcher’s paper, but it didn’t go all the way to the edge. I had just a moment to sleepily note that there was some movement visible through the crack in the paper over the glass door when it came flying back toward me, bouncing off my toe, mostly, and my nose, a little. I put my one hand to my face as I instinctively threw myself into the door to close it again.

I was too late and too tired. A strong shoulder on the other side of the doorframe pushed it open and I stumbled back, and then the guy was on me, the door sighing shut behind him on its gas lift as he bore me to the ground and straddled my chest, a move he undertook with the ease of much practice. He pinned my arms under his knees and then gave me a couple of hard hits, one to the jaw, one to the nose.

My lip and nose were bleeding freely and my head was ringing from the hits and from getting smacked into the carpet tiles over concrete when I went down backward. I struggled—­to free my arms, to buck off my attacker, to focus on him.

He was a beefy white guy in his late fifties, with watery dark eyes and a patchy shave that showed gray mixed in with his dark stubble. As he raised his fist for another blow, I saw that he was wearing a big class ring. A minute later, that ring opened my cheek, just under the orbit of my eye.

Apart from some involuntary animal grunts, I hadn’t made a sound. Now I did. “Ow!” I shouted. “Shit!” I shouted. “Stop!” I shouted.

He split my lip again. I bucked hard but I couldn’t budge him. He had a double chin, a gut, and he was strong, and used that bulk to back up his strength. It was like trying to free myself from under a boulder. That kept punching me in the face.

The strip mall would be deserted. Everything was closed, even the vaping store.

Shouting wouldn’t help. I did it anyway. He shut my mouth for me with a left. I gagged on blood.

He took a break from punching me in the face, then. I think he was tired. His chest heaved, and he wiped sweat off his lip with the back of his hand, leaving behind a streaky mustache of my blood.

He contemplated me, weighing me up. I thought maybe he was trying to decide if I had any fight left in me, or perhaps whether I had any valuables he could help himself to.

He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Goddammit, I messed your face up so bad I can’t tell for sure. I hope to fuck that you’re Martin Hench, though.”

Even with my addled wits, this was an important piece of intelligence: he came here for me. This wasn’t a random act of senseless Los Angeles street violence. This was aimed at me.

I was briefly angry at Benedetto for not warning me that Chuy Flores was such a tough son of a bitch. Then I had the presence of mind to lie.

“I don’t know who the fuck this Mark Hendricks is.” My voice was thick with gargled blood, but I was proud of Mark Hendricks. Pretty fast thinking for a guy with a probable concussion. The guy slapped me open-­handed across the face, and as I lay dazed for a moment, he shifted, reached into my back pocket for my wallet, and yanked it—­and the seat of my pants—­free. Before I could react, his knees were back on my biceps, pinning my arms and shoulders. It was a very neat move, and fast for an old guy like him.

He flipped my wallet open and squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, then smiled broadly. He had bleach-­white teeth, a row of perfectly uniform caps. Los fucking Angeles, where even the thugs have a million-­dollar smile.

“Shoulda sprung for botox,” I slurred.

His grin got wider. “Maybe someday I will. Got these in trade from a cosmetic dentist I did some work for.” He dropped my wallet. “Listen, Martin Hench, you stay the fuck away from Thames Estuary and Lawrence Coleman.”

“It’s Lionel Coleman,” I said.

“What the fuck ever,” he said. He labored to his feet. I stayed still. He looked at me from a great height, and I stared up his nostrils. Without warning, he kicked my ribs hard enough that I heard one of them crack.

“You’ve been told,” he said to my writhing body, and let himself out.

ETA: Here's part five!

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/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#poacher-turned-keeper

[welcome-to-green-hills]

What’s the difference between an anthropologist and an archaeologist? 😃 And what do archaeologists do when they’re not digging at excavation sites?

Oooh! Okay!❤️🤩❤️

An anthropologist is a scientist who studies human beings. The ask questions like, “what makes us human?” And “How can we define ourselves as human?”

We ask these questions through four (or five if you want to get technical) categories:

Linguistics

Cultural and Social Development

Biology

Archaeology (ME!)

and Applied Anthropology

Linguistics pretty much answers how languages not only changed through time, but how they’ve influenced culture and changes in society. It’s pretty common to have Linguistic Anthropologists work in a language lab where they play with words all day. They also make it a point to connect language with reading. If you ever talk to a linguistic anthropologist, ask them about cranial cap ripples.

Biological anthropologists help with the biological and organic portion of humans and nonhumans. You get primatologists (primates), forensic experts, retired doctors, paleontologists (human evolution), molecular scientists, and those that practice alternative methods of medicine. If you ever meet a biological anthropologist, as them how many ways to Sunday you can study teeth.

Cultural Anthropologists is very open in interpretation. I say that because it’s always advancing in its field with new discoveries every day. Cultural anthropologists study social groups. They immerse themselves in artwork, written/spoken literature, music, humanities, material goods, women’s rights, gender and sexuality. and social engagement. Kinda like how it’s a Tumblr norm to say, “I like your shoelaces. Thanks, I got them from the president.” They learn behaviors and manners, physical and non-physical telling of what makes that society function. If you ever meet a cultural anthropologist, ask them what their favorite cultural greeting.

Archaeology is a field in anthropology that’s commonly classified as a “historical science.” We use the scientific method to answer questions about the past and continuously ask “why?” We’re not Indiana Jones, many of us frown upon the comparison. We’re environmentally conscious of what we do when looking through historical records and digging at different sites. You need an understanding of history, linguistics, biology, and cultural practices for what site you work at. When archaeologists aren’t digging, they’re considered “shovel bums.” They travel around from one agency to the next (if they’re freelance) and dig year-round. We practically live out of a suitcase. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m not a shovel bum. I’ve made my archaeological work through museums and conservation labs.

Applied Anthropology is a newer branch in anthropology. They ask the question, “now what!?” They look for practical solutions. They question a bit more and ask, “now what do we do? How can we make this more efficient for humans?” If you ever meet someone in this field, ask them their stance on Cyber-Anthropology (I.E., video games, AI, robots). You’ll get a mixed bag, but you might come out wiser.

SAPIENS.ORG is an anthropological magazine that’s designed for anthropologists, as well as those who are learning/interested in the field. Free subscription. Scope them out if you’re interested! And know that I’m always up for chatting about it here. I know that I’ve gotten some DMs from y’all wanting to know more about it. Know that my inbox is open.

[paramoira]

@myersbprd

variables.

her parents and uncle kadir had always taught her to look at context clues to unravel the truth of the past, the truth of a people, the truth of society (at least when her parents had been around). one couldn’t ascertain what had befallen a lost city in the jungle from a single piece of broken pottery or bone or understand the social dynamics that resulted in finding two distinctly different artifacts from two warring tribes within the same ruined household buried under a mountain of dirt. you had to investigate, you had to look at the ruins as a whole, the uncovered weaponry, the uncovered art, and chemical residue from the clay pots unearthed that held traces of foods from the other side of the country (even if it hadn’t been that country at all back then). you had to look into what’d happened on that side of the land too, consult geologists that helped support, through their own independent research, the theory that a geologic event caused an ancient migration that forced two societies to merge into one.

it was much the same thing investigating how the dead became that way. one in her field didn’t just look at the body, though the primary and secondary causes of death were always important in the work of a forensic pathologist. but one had to examine a victim’s life, their medical records, speak to family at times. one had to understand how this person met their fate and what factors predisposed them to such. one sometimes had to understand the suspects too, the fact one favored one arm over the other and how that matched with the angle of a wound. it aided the investigation of detectives as they went about their side of the grind. though, dr. kalkan could readily admit her role these days has been drastically blurred. she’d seen things and learned since that fateful day with her mother that she'd have been hard pressed to understand prior-- even if she held a propensity as a child to come up with fantastic stories-- yet now, after having begun to aid the bprd from time to time she’d seen more than she ever had those few times she'd encountered her godfather's 'friends'. ariadne had ended up in the field too, something she’d never quite been officially trained for but when the body was going to dissolve into a pile of goop in an hour or the deceased in question had gotten up and moved to another location, you learned quickly to go with it.

given how nomadic her life had been at times, adaptability was certainly something she was used to.

so it’s variables which she takes into consideration as she works at the post mortem in the smaller theater of the medical examiners office in new jersey, leaving the larger one to her collages who weren’t privy to the work she did for the "fbi" . the local news had been discussing crude grave robberies for the past three weeks which rivaled what one would hear centuries before when medical students paid for cadavers in secret - no questions asked. (how many of those had been undead? she wonders morbidly.) there’d also been a rash of murders the press had dubbed with a sanguine moniker due to the lack of blood and viciousness of the attacks. most of them had come through this office, some had found themselves a jurisdiction over, and a few even crossing state lines into new york.

she imagines that’s what’d alerted the bprd once it flagged the fbi.

of course the bprd would get involved from there. once the independent pieces had started to come together and the last body she’d examined had decided to get up and grab her. john and a team had… dealt with it. that’d been yesterday, another body already fresh on her table– an escalation. the issue had become the fact that the actual or the normal part of the fbi had become involved in the case too and some kind of jurisdictional confusion had transpired despite the bprd's fbi cover until director manning had become involved. why she’d even been present when manning was having it out on the phone she wasn’t sure, it wasn't as if he really spoke to her anyway.

her mind drifts for a moment when she glances at the clock, wondering what devin might be thinking somewhere else in the building. so much was influx on that front even if the larger truths seemed to be aired out now (there had only been so much a person could take at once and ariadne figured throwing the supernatural into the mix of the whys of him leaving and her having her own ties to criminal figures wasn't the best idea in one night) and yet, here there were more secrets being thrown into the waters they were attempting to navigate because part of the office had been taken over by agents in suits blocking employees from the exam theater she'd been lead into with no explanation other than dr. kalkan was conducting classified work for them. not all agents had myers natural ability with people and words either.

regardless, dr. kalkan continues noting her findings to the blinking light of a camera feed, stating how the marks and her findings were consistent with the other bodies that had been found drained or nearly drained with blood. she queries aloud (the speaker in the gallery actively on) that if a strigoi (also known as a vampire) like the press was stirring the pot with allusions to had been responsible it seemed strange for any victims to still have blood if the goal had been to kill for sustenance. perhaps such a wild theory is just her unserious commentary given the newspaper reports, though it’s said with a seriousness. it wasn’t as if her co-workers would see this video.

only the bprd would.

she goes on to state that such findings were also consistent with the few bodies that had been stolen from the graveyard that pre-dated the more recent bodies. the ones that all evidence indicated, as she states, the same killer had caused those deaths and it had failed to be realized until their bodies had been reexamined. further, the brutality of the crimes appeared to be getting more extreme and frenzied.

“you can come down here now, agent myers. i’m about to put him on ice.” perhaps agent myers had some thoughts on what the true culprit was after listening to her findings. she was intelligent and knew a fair amount of about the paranormal, but she was still learning.

[angelofsmalldeath-codeine]

Hear me out… But please, please, please let’s use our text comprehension and critical thinking skills before dog piling on me. Thanking yous.

Note: this is NOT a pearl clutching post.

Rant below the cut.

TW: kink; kink in public; consent

We don’t kink shame in dis haus. The lawd knows we enjoy kinky stuff.

However, I gotta say that kink requires consent from everyone participating in it, either actively or as a voyeur. There are hard limits to be negotiated, boundaries to be respected, agreed safety systems for when things become uncomfortable/unsafe.

Hence kinky activities taking place in dedicated spaces (their home, pride, clubs, dungeons, whatever is your flavour) and with consenting adults. Now, when you take your kink into the public space, you are forcing everyone around you to take part in it. And children exist in the public space regardless of many people wanting them to never leave the house until they are 18 or something. Children cannot consent to be part of someone else’s kink scene. And no, this is not a “But think of the children” stances that fundamental evangelicals use to tear apart people’s rights.

The demonisation of sexuality and sex declined over time although it still bores influence on society’s thinking on what is ‘the norm’ and ‘acceptable sexual expressions’. This often led to criminalisation of sexuality and sexual practices which deviated from the established norm (heterosexual PIV for procreation purposes). Sodomy or masturbation were labelled sinful, which required an exorcism or other religious interventions (Tosh, 2014; 2017). Heterosexual sodomy was a crime in the UK until 1994 when the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act decriminalised it for adults. Check Buggery Act 1533 and the famous trials it’s brought us if you are curious. The Mental Health Act in the UK uses the same language to describe sadists in a consensual community and in the forensic setting of convicted serial killers. Thus, making it possible that a diagnosis of sexual deviance can be used to commit a person to a mental institution (Tosh, 2017). The DSM-5 conflates both and casts the assumption that everyone with a sadist or sexual deviant label is dangerous or a risk to commit extreme violence.

We cannot get on a high horse and scream that we are heavy on consent and respect when we take our kink to a fucking Ikea! Has anyone in that store consented to watch their Pup Play? Were there children around? My guess would be yes because it was a Saturday and they were in the restaurant. Children cannot consent to sexual activities. Even if it’s “just” light Pup Play with no sexual acts (I’m referring to touching, penetration, and such, don’t get smart on me now) happening in front of them.

We can be our own worst enemies. We cannot advocate to not being stigmatised, prejudiced against, judged for our preferences, yell from the mountain tops that we do consent better and turn around and force everyone around us to take part in our scenes. We can still be imprisoned and have our lives destroyed because of our preferences.

————————————-

I know the Daily Record is a steaming pile of shite of a newspaper. Don’t come for me on that one but this is where the footage came from.

Source:

Another example

[darksorcerer]

15, 19, 21 for sloane please!

starting to realize i love this question meme because for this character all the answers are going to read like, wildly unhinged

15. what mundane human job would they have in modern society to pay the bills and do they like it

she's a medical examiner. she went to med school and she has a medical degree, works in forensics.

but also in the background she'd own a weird hole in the wall shop where she sells both crystals and strange taxidermy and other weird curiosities that caters to like four regular clients. this is what her doctor money pays for. she has an etsy shop

19. their top 3 songs on repeat

she doesn't really listen to music except in rare cases and never on repeat. when she wants to put on noise to work to she opens up youtube on her phone browser (not the app) and puts on youtube playlists of like, whale sounds or the nasa recordings of planets in space. this is also what she puts on if you give her the aux cord.

21. do they use duolingo and what's their longest streak

she took languages in school for fun so she's very multilingual (primarily english and french but also a few others) but not because of an app. her phone has no apps on it it's the default background with the default homepage and and you open up her camera roll and it's all photos of roadkill and human bones

[houseoftooth]

Interesting Facts About Teeth You Didn’t Know

Teeth care tips

Teeth are interesting components of the human body, essential for chewing, helping in speech, and their invaluable contribution to human smiles. Most of us take our teeth for granted, unaware there’s much more to them than what simply meets the eye. Their special properties, as well as surprising historical facts concerning them, have kept many secrets within which could find you amazed. Here are some interesting lesser GT facts about teeth: they will make you further appreciate these pearly whites. Teeth care tips

1. Your Teeth Are as Distinct as Your Fingerprints

Like fingerprints, each individual’s set of teeth is unique; they vary in shape, size, and alignment. Hence your dental structure becomes unique. Therefore, forensic authorities often use dental records to identify an individual. Even identical twins have distinct dental patterns! Teeth care tips

2. Tooth Enamel is the Toughest Material in the Human Body

The outermost layer of your teeth, called enamel, is more durable and flexible than your bone.And that makessense because it is made of mostly calcium and phosphate minerals—the two ingredients to make a strong protective cover for the teeth to sustain daily wear and tear. But it is not indestructible. In fact, with acids from food and drinks, and poor oral hygiene, it erodes with time and leads to cavities.

3. You’re Born With 52 Teeth

Although babies are born without teeth, they hide 20 teeth under their gums: the primary (baby) teeth waiting for the right moment to erupt. Underneath those baby teeth lie the buds for 32 permanent ones, which will replace the baby teeth as they get loose and fall out. So you’re practically born with 52 teeth!

4. Your Teeth Can’t Heal Themselves

The difference between bone and tooth is that bone can repair and regenerate itself while teeth cannot heal themselves. When enamel gets damaged or cavities form, they cannot be healed. Therefore, preventive measures are necessary: brushing, flossing, and regularly visiting the dentist are all essential for keeping healthy teeth. Teeth care tips

5. Teeth Start Forming Before You’re Born

Your teeth started developing while still in the womb. They start developing from the sixth week of pregnancy, and by the end of the third or fourth month, the hard tissues of teeth begin to form. However, baby teeth usually do not erupt until a baby is about six months of age. Teeth care tips

6. You Will Invest Approximately 38 Days Brushing Your Teeth Over a Lifetime

So, on average, if you brush for two minutes twice a day, you will spend around 38 days of your life brushing your teeth! A lot, but not costlier than maintaining a healthy smile. Teeth care tips

7. The Ancient Toothbrush Dates Back Thousands of Years

Before the invention of contemporary toothbrushes, ancient societies utilized chewing sticks or twigs as their dental cleaning tools. The bristles of these sticks were frayed at one end, which helped remove debris from the teeth. The first bristle toothbrush, similar to what we use today, was invented in China during the Tang Dynasty (619–907 AD) and was made with boar hair. Teeth care tips

8. Your Teeth Reveal Your Age and Diet

The teeth contain valuable details for determining a person’s age, diet, and way of living. To understand the ancient diet, find out the deficiency of nutrition, and estimate age from skeletal remains, authors like forensic scientists and anthropologists study teeth. Teeth care tips

9. Teeth Are the Only Part of Your Body That Can’t Repair Themselves

Your teeth are unique in that they are the only body part that cannot regenerate once it has been damaged. Skin, bones, and other tissues of your body can repair themselves, except teeth, since they are made of enamel and lack any living cells. Restorative dental procedures like fillings, crowns, and implants often become necessary for damaged teeth. Teeth care tips

10. Not All Animals Have Teeth Like Humans

Some animals possess multiple sets of teeth, while humans only have two, namely baby teeth that eventually fall out to allow permanent teeth to grow. Sharks, for instance, lose and foster teeth ceaselessly during their lifetimes. Fascinatingly, certain sharks can develop as many as 50,000 teeth throughout their life! Teeth care tips

11. The First Toothpaste Was Invented Over 5,000 Years Ago

Around 3000 BC, ancient Egyptians had invented toothpaste. It was made utilizing ground rock salt, mint, dried iris blooms, and pepper. While this sounds very rough, it probably worked remarkably well to clean teeth. Modern toothpaste is miles ahead of what it had, with fluoride and all sorts of other ingredients that tend to strengthen the enamel and fight cavities.

12. The Tooth Fairy’s Origin

The Tooth Fairy, the beloved myth of childhood, originally came from Europe and changed over time. In medieval Europe, parents removed their children’s missing teeth to ward off evil spirits. In time, this evolved into the modern figure of the Tooth Fairy who frittered away coins or gifts for the tooth. Teeth care tips

13. Teeth Are Stronger Than Steel

Believe it or not, the enamel on your teeth is dented pound for pound than steel. It can withstand a lot in terms of pressure when chewing. However, unlike steel, enamel can chip or crack when it comes into contact with hard or sharp objects; hence the need to avoid habits such as chewing on ice or opening packages with your teeth. Teeth care tips

14. Saliva Plays a Vital Role in Oral Wellness

At first, you might think of saliva as a mere moisturizer-presented mouth, but it is essential to oral health: this amazing fluid allows you to flush away food particles, neutralize the acids, and remineralize the primary phases of the harm caused to the lacquer. Average lifetime production by the body of saliva amounts to about 25,000 quarts: for two swimming pools!

15. The Most Expensive Tooth Ever Sold

The most valuable teeth in the world belonged to Sir Isaac Newton. One of the notable pricy artifacts sold at auction in 1816 included one of his teeth that fetched a price of 730 pounds equivalent to about $35,000 today. It was reportedly set up in a ring and would be worn as a keepsake. Teeth care tips

Conclusion

The teeth, besides serving as an aid in eating, reveal part of your history, health, and identity. If you know and appreciate the exceptional features of your teeth, you can therefore take better care of them and thereby enjoy a healthier smile longer into the future. So always remember to brush, floss, and visit that dentist regularly to make your pearly whites healthy and strong. Should you have concerns regarding your oral health, visit a dentist today because your pearly whites deserve the highest care possible!

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[youthcareerinstitute]

Choosing Your Academic Path: A Guide to Streams, Subjects, and Their Career Links

Choosing Your Academic Path: A Guide to Streams, Subjects, and Their Career Links (Focusing on the Indian Education System)

Choosing what subjects to study after your 10th standard (or equivalent) in India is a major decision. It can feel like you're standing at a crossroads, with different paths stretching out before you. Your choices here will significantly influence the career options available to you later.

At Youth Career Institute, we understand the importance of making an informed decision. This guide will walk you through the main academic streams in the Indian education system (primarily CBSE and State Boards), the key subjects within them, and the potential career links they offer. Let's navigate these paths together!

Understanding the Main Academic Streams

After completing your 10th standard, you'll generally need to choose one of the following streams for your 11th and 12th grades:

Science Stream: Often perceived as the gateway to technical and medical professions, the Science stream typically includes subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology (or Biotechnology), and Mathematics. You'll also usually have the option of an elective subject like Computer Science, Economics, or English.

Commerce Stream: This stream focuses on business, finance, and economics. Core subjects usually include Accountancy, Business Studies, Economics, and Mathematics (or an alternative like Informatics Practices). Elective options might include subjects like English, Legal Studies, or Entrepreneurship.

Arts (or Humanities) Stream: This stream encompasses a wide range of subjects related to social sciences, humanities, and languages. Common subjects include History, Political Science, Geography, Economics, English (or other languages), Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, and more. The specific combinations can vary widely between boards and schools.

Exploring Key Subjects and Their Career Connections

Let's delve deeper into the core subjects within each stream and the types of careers they can lead to:

Science Stream

Physics: The study of matter, energy, and their interactions.

Career Links: Engineering (various branches like Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Aerospace), Physics Research, Astronomy, Meteorology, Geophysics, Data Science, Software Development.

Chemistry: The study of the composition, properties, and reactions of matter.

Career Links: Chemical Engineering, Pharmacy, Medicine (through NEET), Biochemistry, Materials Science, Forensic Science, Environmental Science, Research and Development.

Biology (or Biotechnology): The study of living organisms and their processes. Biotechnology applies biological principles to create products and technologies.

Career Links: Medicine (through NEET), Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Genetic Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Agricultural Science, Environmental Science, Research.

Mathematics: The study of numbers, patterns, structures, and change.

Career Links: Engineering (all branches), Computer Science, Data Science, Actuarial Science, Finance, Economics, Statistics, Research, Teaching.

Computer Science/Informatics Practices: Focuses on the principles and application of computer systems and software.

Career Links: Software Development, Web Development, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, Game Development, IT Management.

Commerce Stream

Accountancy: The practice of recording, classifying, and summarizing financial transactions.

Career Links: Chartered Accountancy (CA), Company Secretary (CS), Cost and Management Accountancy (CMA), Accountant, Auditor, Finance Manager, Investment Banking.

Business Studies: An introduction to the principles of business organization, management, and operations.

Career Links: Business Management, Marketing, Human Resources, Sales, Entrepreneurship, Retail Management, Operations Management.

Economics: The study of how societies allocate scarce resources.

Career Links: Economist, Financial Analyst, Banking, Insurance, Public Policy, Market Research, Civil Services, Teaching.

Mathematics/Informatics Practices: (As described in the Science stream, these subjects offer analytical and technical skills valuable in commerce-related fields).

Career Links (in Commerce): Finance, Data Analysis, Actuarial Science, Business Analytics.

Arts (or Humanities) Stream

History: The study of past events and their significance.

Career Links: Historian, Archaeologist, Museum Curator, Archivist, Journalist, Civil Services, Teaching, Heritage Management.

Political Science: The study of political systems, theories, and behavior.

Career Links: Civil Services, Journalism, Law, Political Analyst, International Relations, Public Policy, Teaching.

Geography: The study of the Earth's physical features, human populations, and their interactions.

Career Links: Urban Planning, Environmental Management, Cartography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Tourism, Disaster Management, Civil Services, Teaching.

Economics: (As described in the Commerce stream, Economics is also a popular and valuable subject in Arts).

Career Links: Economist, Civil Services, Journalism, Research, Public Policy.

English/Other Languages: The study of literature, grammar, and communication skills.

Career Links: Journalism, Content Writing, Translation, Interpretation, Teaching, Public Relations, Advertising, Literature, Linguistics.

Sociology: The study of society, social interaction, and social institutions.

Career Links: Social Worker, Counselor, Human Resources, Market Research, Civil Services, Teaching.

Psychology: The study of the human mind and behavior.

Career Links: Psychologist, Counselor, Therapist, Human Resources, Research, Marketing.

Philosophy: The study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.

Career Links: Law, Journalism, Civil Services, Research, Teaching, Ethics Consulting.

Making the Right Choice for You

Choosing your academic path is a personal journey. Consider the following factors:

Your Interests: What subjects do you genuinely enjoy learning? You're more likely to succeed and stay motivated in areas that interest you.

Your Aptitude: What are you naturally good at? Consider your strengths in subjects like math, science, language, or analytical thinking.

Your Career Aspirations (Even if Tentative): While your first choice isn't set in stone, having some career ideas in mind can help you select a relevant stream. Research different careers and the educational qualifications they typically require.

Guidance from Teachers and Counselors: Talk to your teachers, school counselors, and career advisors at institutes like Youth Career Institute. They can provide valuable insights and help you understand the implications of your choices.

Don't Just Follow the Crowd: Choose a stream based on your own interests and abilities, not just because your friends are doing it or because of perceived social status.

Navigating these choices can feel overwhelming, but you don't have to do it alone.

At Youth Career Institute, we offer personalized career counseling to help students like you understand your strengths, explore different career options, and make informed decisions about your academic path.

Reach out to us today for guidance on choosing the right stream and subjects for a bright future!

[mariacallous]

There are more than 114,000 missing persons in Mexico, and that number is continuing to rise. Criminal violence in the country is at a record level, largely driven by gangs and drug cartels. Many of those missing are buried in clandestine graves all across the country.

To contribute to the solution of this complex problem, a group of scientists from the Center for Research in Geospatial Information Sciences (CentroGeo) put technology and data analysis at the service of the searches.

"I never thought I would have to work on this, but if this knowledge is of any use, now is the time to show it," says José Luis Silván, a geographer at CentroGeo. Years ago, as part of his doctoral work, he specialized in measuring forest biomass and human populations through satellite information. At that time, he was far from imagining the scientific work he is doing today: investigating the potential of drones, hyperspectral images, and protocols to detect clandestine graves.

In a recent article published in the International Journal of Forensic Research and Criminology, Jorge Silván and researcher Ana Alegre insist that studying the geographical environment is very important to understand in depth a crime such as disappearance. Thus, “due to its context and diversity of climates, the case of Mexico may represent an opportunity for the development of investigations.”

Finding burials requires hard work. All available information and resources must be optimized. Therefore, scientists have evaluated the use of remote sensing tools and have systematized information from previous findings. They seek to discover patterns in the behavior of the perpetrators and, with this, to find burials.

According to Red Lupa, 88% of the 114,000 cases of disappearances in Mexico occurred between 2000 and May 2024. 10,315 were registered in 2023, the most on record. This represents an average of 29 people per day. Jalisco, Tamaulipas, State of Mexico, Veracruz and Nuevo Leon are the entities with the highest incidences.

Justice is almost non-existent, with 99% impunity for this crime. For this reason, since 2007 alone, civil society has formed more than 300 search groups, mostly made up of family members who scour the land guided by witness statements or organized in general brigades. These groups have detected most of the 5,696 clandestine graves reported on Mexican soil.

The association United for Our Disappeared searches in the north of the country, in Baja California. One of its members, who preferred to remain anonymous, has been searching for his son for 18 years. He says they have been using pointed rods to detect graves for more than 10 years. This is one of the most widely used tools in Mexico for this purpose. "We fit the rod in where we suspect the earth was removed, insert it, pull it out and smell it. If there are bone remains or tissue, you can tell by the smell. It is a strong odor, easy to detect. It smells like organic matter in the process of decomposition."

Before, he says, they used a georadar—a device similar to a pruning shear that detects inconsistencies in the ground—but they abandoned this practice because it was not very useful. The radar responds to almost any kind of object, from chips to boats. The last time they used it, it returned 40 suspicious spots, but none were positive. In Mexicali, another group uses a drone to fly over areas and detect changes in the terrain. Others have used machines to dig holes instead of shovels. Some innovations are abandoned over time, but the use of rods remains.

In 2014, after the disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa normalistas in Mexico, Silván and other CentroGeo professionals joined the scientific advisory board on the case. During the search for the students, different civilian groups and government brigades detected dozens of illegal graves. In less than 10 months, the Mexican Attorney General's Office counted 60 sites and 129 bodies in the state of Guerrero. As a result of the raids, 300 illegal graves were revealed. Since then, the number of clandestine graves has only grown.

No one anticipated the size of this horror. The report "Searching between pain and hope: Findings of clandestine graves in Mexico 2020 - 2022", exposes with hemerographic data that in those two years, 1,134 clandestine graves were registered, with 2,314 bodies and 2,242 remains. In proportional terms, Colima reported the highest rate of illegal graves, with 10 per 100,000 inhabitants. It was followed by Sonora, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Zacatecas.

By number of cases, Guanajuato, Sonora and Guerrero stand out. These three entities account for 42% of the records. By April 2023, a journalistic investigation by Quinto Elemento Lab reported that the number of illegal burials reached 5,696 clandestine graves, and that more than half of them were detected during the current federal administration.

Employing his field of study, remote sensing, José Luis Silván uses images captured with satellites, drones or airplanes, from which he extracts geospatial information using knowledge of the physics of light, mathematics and programming. Multispectral and hyperspectral images capture subsurface information using sensors that record wavelengths of light imperceptible to the human eye, making them useful for searching.

In 2016, during a first study by CentroGeo researchers, they simulated burials with pig carcasses to evaluate the potential of using hyperspectral cameras in searches and learn what information from the sensors was useful to them. The Mexican researchers knew from research in other countries that successful detection with these techniques depends, in part, on being able to recognize how carcasses (and their spectral images) change in different soils and climates.

The experiment was carried out on rented land in the state of Morelos. There they buried seven animals and evaluated the light reflected by the soil at different wavelengths for six months. They concluded that a hyperspectral camera, which provides more than a hundred layers of data, has the potential to detect clandestine burials, although the technique is only effective three months after burial. They tried to arrange for the acquisition of a camera and drone (valued at 5 million pesos) through the National Search Commission, but were unsuccessful.

Faced with this, they began to evaluate more affordable alternatives, such as multispectral devices. Today, despite the fact that spaces such as the Commission for the Search for Disappeared Persons of the State of Jalisco (COBUPEJ—-with which they have a partnership—has acquired this equipment, no national strategy exists to deploy these technologies systematically.

Some time later, the scientists took on a bigger challenge. When they briefed the National Search Commission on the usefulness of remote sensing for locating burials, officials told them that in some regions of the Northwest, the greatest need was to locate substances used to conceal crimes. "They dispose of them in caustic soda or with chemicals, char them and incinerate them in the open air or in crematoria; they throw the remains away or bury them," the researcher says.

So, in 2021, Silván's group did another experiment, this time in Hidalgo and with a spectroradiometer, which measures how different substances reflect light. For that study, they tested the trace of substances used in crimes. They found that diesel, muriatic acid and blood treated with anticoagulants require more precise imaging to be located, but that most substances, such as caustic soda, lime, blood and those resulting from open burning could be detected with multispectral sensors, which are less expensive.

CentroGeo has also participated in the development of complementary strategies to identify areas with a high probability of harboring clandestine graves. One example is the training of mathematical models with the coordinates of previous findings and the characteristics of the sites preferred by criminals, which they call clandestine spaces and which define as those which are easy to access for perpetrators and of low visibility to the population.

In addition, they have been using the signs that decomposing bodies leave on the vegetation for years. As a corpse decomposes, it releases nutrients into the soil, in particular increasing the concentration of nitrogen. In plants, this element is linked to chlorophyll, which gives them their greenness. In experiments with buried pigs, they have observed that a chlorophyll indicator can be quantified through satellite images. They measure how fast this index grows to detect sites with anomalies. This tool is available on the "Clandestine Space" platform.

Silván says that to interpret the nitrogen signal, they must consider that the gas signal can also vary due to the use of fertilizers or rains that carry nutrients. The presence of nitrogen, then, is not definitive proof of the existence of trenches, but it provides indications that justify paying attention in certain regions. The National Search Commission has been trained to use this indicator.

In Baja California, a northern state with 17,306 missing persons cases, these strategies have already been used. They first analyzed 52 locations of known graves and deduced that, because of the way they were distributed, there was a high probability of finding more graves at a distance of between 18 and 28 kilometers from those already known. They also looked for possible "clandestine spaces" and identified that 32% of the territory of Baja California had the potential to be used for that purpose. Finally, they reviewed the concentration of chlorophyll in satellite images. The result was a useful accompaniment for some family brigades.

Recently, Ana Alegre and José Silván analyzed geospatial models that could explain the distribution of graves in 10 states. They found that the travel time it would take an offender to get from urban streets to the grave is the factor that most influences the location of graves. "The secrecy sought by perpetrators seemed less important than reducing the effort they invest in creating the grave," their article says.

In addition to collaborating with the government, CentroGeo researchers work with civil associations such as Regresando a casa Morelos and Fuerzas unidas por nuestros desaparecidos en Nuevo León (FUNDENL). Some time ago, the former asked them to survey a site. "We collected thermal images and three-dimensional models to provide information," says Silván. In addition, they gave a workshop for visual interpretation. Silván describes the members of "Returning Home Morelos" as dedicated people. "They want to find their loved ones, they are willing to learn anything, to analyze an image or fly a drone. To everything."

With information from the FUNDENL collective and support from the American Jewish World Service, CentroGeo created "Huellas de vida", a platform that crosses the information of unfound persons and unidentified bodies with data from objects found in clandestine burial sites in Nuevo León. The intention is to detect coincidences that will help solve cases.

The geographer points out that the investigation is advancing, while the forms and numbers of disappearances are multiplying. Other countries, he says, are installing ground penetration radars on drones, or are planning to use electronic noses as indicators of methane, an element that corpses release at a certain stage of decomposition. To search for missing persons from the Spanish Civil War, for example, patterns in geographic data were tracked to narrow down search sites.

The big pending issue is to evaluate the real contribution that geographic information has had in uncovering crime scenes. "It is complicated to have feedback, even with the National Commission, because they are not obliged to tell us where they have findings." It will be until they have the new reports when they will be able to collate the results and measure the impact of their contributions. For now, "it is complicated to attribute the findings to our tools and information".

For his part, the member of United for our Disappeared assures that the search groups are the ones who have found most of the clandestine graves currently located. The usual thing, he says, is that the governments do not have departments for this work and only search when they have declarations that oblige them to do so. With the collectives it is different, because "we receive anonymous information, and even if we have no information, we still schedule searches and go out".

Finding graves is the beginning of another loss. When they have reason to excavate, they use picks and shovels and, if they find human remains, the authorities (who usually accompany them) cordon off the area and proceed with their work. If they are not present, they call them. "From there, many times we don't know what's going on, we don't get feedback from the authorities. We say that the person we found is lost again." The problem is general, "the collectives complain that people get lost in the bureaucratic process". In few cases, they say, the Prosecutor's Office restores the identity of the disappeared.

While technology is integrated into the systematic searches, collectives such as United for our Disappeared ask society to share the information they have on missing persons. "We only want to find them, all the information that reaches the collectives is anonymous," says the interviewee whose identity we reserve. The authorities have accepted this, he assures.

For his part, José Silván comments that, as a result of the collaboration with COBUPEJ and other institutions, they are about to publish a book to disseminate techniques for the detection of graves that they tested during their work.n de fosas que probaron durante un año en dos sitios de inhumación controlados en Jalisco, así como otras experiencias recogidas a nivel nacional a través de la ciencia ciudadana que hacen las madres buscadoras. The book is entitled Interpreting Nature to Find Them and is coordinated by Tunuari Chavez, head of the COBUPEJ context unit, and Jose Silvan under the direction of commissioner Victor Avila.

[venusaditya]

Lost Someone? Don't Despair! How a Private Missing Person Investigator in India Can Bring Them Home

The unexpected loss of a loved one can cause families severe emotional turmoil, sometimes plunging them into depths of despair which they would never have expected. When it comes to finding someone in India, the possibilities are vast like the land itself and society is a complex structure making it really hard to conduct an official search, so hiring a private missing person investigator in India often becomes a shining light. Private investigators provide unique services, applying their skills, use their resources and connections, and collaborative abilities to help locate an individual when traditional methods have stopped working.

The Invisible War: Why Use a Private Investigator?

Although the police in India work hard to resolve missing persons cases, their ability to do so depends on the resources they have, and their engagement with the available resources could also be limited. This is where a missing person private investigator in India comes in to help locate the individual. Missing persons private investigators are able to work with more focus, sometimes faster, and offer a discretion level that is rarely found in a public agency. Private Investigators have the ability to put a lot of time and resources toward one project, while at the same time follow unexplored options to gain information that may help them locate the missing person.

Understanding the Mystery: What Private Investigators Do

A legitimate missing person investigation agency will take a methodical and thorough approach. Their process generally looks like:  

1. Initial Consultation and Information Gathering: This initial phase is key for investigators to gather every possible detail on the missing person: their habits, relationships, last known locations, online footprints, financial information, possible reasons for the disappearance, etc. This is the bedrock of the investigation.  

2. Search Database & Records: Investigators utilize databases in the public and private realm to search public records, social media pages, and other traces of the missing person. If available, financial transaction records are an excellent lead.  

3. Surveillance and Field Investigations: This may involve covert physical and electronic surveillance of subjects or locations, tracking movements, and collecting vital intelligence. This can be critical in cases of voluntary disappearance and when foul play is suspected.

4. Interviews & Interrogation: Experienced investigators will carry out sensitive interviews with family members, friends, associates, and any witnesses, sorting through talk and interrogating information to uncover the inconsistencies or facts that may be hiding in plain sight.

5. Digital Forensics: We live in a digital world, where evidence can be found in phone records, emails, social media activity, and other digital footprints. Discovering vital information regarding the missing person's recent interactions and whereabouts may be found when digital forensics is done properly and legally.

6. Networking with Law Enforcement and other Professionals: Although a private investigator operates in an independent capacity, many private investigators have a working relationship with law enforcement officials, which allows for the potential of sharing information and working collectively when necessary and if legal obligations arise.

7. Undercover Work: In some cases of relatively high complexity, private investigators will go undercover in order to extract information from the environment, or contact an individual in an established environment.

8. Providing Evidence and Reports: Reporting findings, evidence, such as photographs, videos and witness statements, and anything else supporting their observations are important documents, playing a crucial role for clients and perhaps in future legal cases.

Spotting Agent across India's subcontinent

The reality of needing a missing person investigator in India is location agnostic. Be it a missing person in Delhi, a runaway in tech city Bangalore, or a family member in years in the financial capital Mumbai, there are specialized agencies that will help you.

Finding Your Way: Missing Person Investigation in Delhi

Delhi's large population coupled with its transient demographics creates unique challenges for missing person investigation. Missing person investigators in Delhi need to understand the breadth of the city, and be aware of the rural-urban divide along with the social aspects of the city's many areas and their informal networks.

A missing person detective agency in Delhi will have a legitimate local presence and a strong reputation as one of the best missing person detective agencies in Delhi. Likewise, for those living in the NCR, both a missing person investigation detective agency in Noida and a missing person detective agency in Gurgaon are another great option for you offering localized knowledge.

Across the Country: Pan-India Coverage 

Top agencies for missing person investigator in India services frequently transcend state/provincial restraints and service pan-India, with associates/partners in large cities, such as:

Missing Person Detective Agency in Mumbai: India's largest city, with its substantial population of diverse cultural background, can be overwhelming. Even a skilled investigator must use proficiency to tap into that geography. 

Missing Person Private Detective Agency Navi Mumbai: Operating in the greater metropolitan Mumbai area, there is additional assurance support from local agency/trained investigators.

Missing Person Detective Agency in Hyderabad: There are certainly missing person cases that come from lack of resources or effort to connect the dots to an investigative approach in a growing city resources and effort are necessary.

Missing Person Detective Agency in Bangalore:  Known as the Silicon Valley of India, the cases documented can often go beyond simply missing persons in regards to professional transfers/moving or sometimes just digital disappearance.

The Importance of Female Detectives in Missing Person Investigations 

The involvement of female detectives in many cases, particularly missing women or children, can be vital. The ability to quickly build rapport, trust, and conduct sensitive interviews with female witnesses or family members, can prove invaluable. Many premier organizations such as the Armed Forces of India, and many others have vetted experienced female investigators on their teams.

Private Missing Person Investigator Costs

The private missing person investigator costs in India can range from several thousands to over (R)1 lack depending on several factors as outlined below: 

Nature of Investigation – A runaway case may cost less than a long-term missing person case that is deeply embedded and thought to involve foul play.  

Geography – The cost of the investigation will also depend on the area in which the investigation is to take place. If there is an investigation with multi-city factors involved, or if there are international factor inquiries or the need to liaise with international authorities, the costs will be considerably higher than an investigation with a limited geographic scope.  

Length of Investigation – How long the investigator is required to undertake the investigation. If an investigation is expedited, and resolved within a few hours, the costs will be much lower than a missing person inquiry that spans weeks or months of sustained investigation.  

Resources – The amount of personal resources deployed to resolve the investigation. If the investigation is assigned to multiple personal investigators or an analyst with specialization in forensic analysis, costs will be significantly higher than that of a personal investigator undertaking the investigation alone with limited resources.  

Agency Credibility and Success Rate – A credible agency with a significantly successful investigation rate will charge higher attributed to their exposure to the profession.  

It is recommended prior to soliciting an agency to provide personal investigation services, that agencies be upfront about their pricing structure including their potential hidden costs and any nefarious practices associated with the pricing structure. Most agencies will offer introductory consultation options to hear the case to ascertain any associated fee to produce a fee estimate.

Selecting the Right Investigative Firm

If you are looking for a missing person investigator agency or a private missing person investigator in Noida (or anywhere else) consider the following:

Experience: Search for agencies that have a demonstrable record of success in working specifically in missing person cases.

Licensing: verify that the agency is legally permitted to operate in their jurisdiction and they follow an ethical code of conduct.

Communication: Select an agency that provides verbal and written communication within a reasonable time and offers regular updates to keep everyone on track.

Previous clientele references: Every agency should have previous clientele or case reviews or other evidence in relation to reliability, professionalism and effectiveness.

Initial consultations: A good agency should offer an adequate initial consultation to adequately examine your needs and their methodology.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: How long does it typically take for a private missing person investigator to find someone?

A1: The timeframe varies greatly depending on the complexity of the case, the amount of information available, and the circumstances surrounding the disappearance. Some cases resolve in days, while others can take months.

Q2: Can a private investigator help if the police are already involved?

A2: Yes, absolutely. Private investigators can complement police efforts by dedicating more focused resources and pursuing leads that the police, due to their broad mandate, might not prioritize immediately. They can also share any discovered evidence with law enforcement.

Q3: Are private missing person investigators in India legally allowed to conduct surveillance?

A3: Yes, within legal boundaries. Private investigators operate under specific laws and ethical guidelines. They cannot violate privacy laws or engage in illegal activities like trespassing or illegal wiretapping.

Q4: What information should I provide to a private missing person investigator?

A4: Provide as much detailed information as possible: full name, date of birth, last known address, physical description, recent photos, known habits, friends, family, employment details, financial information, digital footprint, and any unusual behavior or events leading up to the disappearance.

Q5: Is hiring a private investigator worth the cost?

A5: For many families facing the agony of a missing loved one, the peace of mind and potential for resolution offered by a dedicated private investigator can be invaluable, often making the investment worthwhile.

Don't Lose Hope

The search for a missing loved one is an arduous journey, but you don't have to walk it alone. A skilled private missing person investigator in India offers a professional, discreet, and dedicated path to finding answers and, hopefully, bringing your loved one back home. From the bustling streets of Delhi to the serene landscapes of other Indian cities, expert help is available to guide you through this challenging time.

[thamilan24x7]

Pollachi Sex Assault Case: Life Sentence for 9 Convicts Marks a Long-Awaited Milestone in Justice

In a landmark judgment that has brought closure to a case that shocked the nation, a Tamil Nadu court has sentenced nine men to life imprisonment for their roles in the Pollachi sexual assault and blackmail case. The case, which came to light in 2019, exposed a disturbing pattern of systemic exploitation and abuse of women—most notably, a college student—between 2016 and 2018.

The Verdict: Justice After Six Long Years

On Tuesday, Sessions Court Judge R Nandhini Devi in Coimbatore delivered the long-awaited verdict, finding the accused guilty of gangrape, repeated rape, and criminal conspiracy. The court handed down life sentences to the following convicts:

Sabarirajan alias Rishwanth (32)

Thirunavukarasu (34)

T Vasantha Kumar (30)

M Sathish (33)

R Mani alias Manivannan

P Babu (33)

Haron Paul (32)

Arulanantham (39)

Arun Kumar (33)

The convicts have been lodged in Salem Central Prison since their arrests in 2019. They were brought to court under tight security amid heightened vigilance in Coimbatore.

Evidence and Testimonies: A Case Built on Courage

The prosecution presented a formidable array of over 200 documents and 400 pieces of electronic evidence, including forensically verified videos of the assaults. These digital records, combined with the resolute testimonies of the survivors, were central to securing the convictions.

"No witness turned hostile," said the public prosecutor, highlighting the significance of the Witness Protection Act, which safeguarded the identities and lives of the victims. However, only eight survivors came forward to officially file complaints, reflecting the ongoing social stigma surrounding sexual violence.

A Chilling Pattern of Predation

The Pollachi case, which first surfaced in 2019, revealed a horrifying modus operandi. The accused targeted women—mostly young students—whom they sexually assaulted, filmed, and then blackmailed for sexual favours and money.

Between 2016 and 2018, the perpetrators operated with disturbing coordination, manipulating victims with threats of leaking explicit videos to their families and communities. Charges under the Indian Penal Code included:

Rape and gangrape

Repeated rape of the same survivor

Criminal conspiracy

Sexual harassment

Blackmail

The Tamil Nadu CB-CID initially took over the investigation from local police, but amid rising public outrage and political controversy, the case was later handed to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to ensure impartiality.

A Litmus Test for India’s Justice System

This trial became a symbolic benchmark for how India deals with gender-based violence. Legal experts and women’s rights groups monitored the proceedings closely, urging the judiciary to uphold the rights of survivors in the face of institutional delays, political interference, and societal bias.

“The verdict is welcome, but it's only the beginning,” said a spokesperson from the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective. “Survivors need more than a judgment—they need financial compensation, psychological support, and secure government jobs to rebuild their lives.”

Political Fallout and Public Backlash

The case also had political ramifications, with the then AIADMK-led state government facing criticism for allegedly trying to suppress the case. Delays in filing the FIR and questions over political connections of the accused only intensified public anger.

While AIADMK denied the allegations, it did expel one of the accused from the party after public pressure mounted. The controversy underlined the dangers of political influence in sensitive criminal cases and sparked calls for more transparent governance.

Conclusion: A Step Forward, But More Work Remains

The Pollachi case verdict is a significant milestone in India’s fight against sexual violence and gender-based exploitation. But even as justice is served in the courtroom, society must reflect on the larger issues of victim-blaming, stigma, and institutional failure.

Accountability must extend beyond the courtroom—to communities, to educational institutions, and to political systems that too often look the other way.