Shit. While I was watching a 1993 film about a guy who became obsessed with his colleague Laura Black and shot up the California computer firm where they both worked, apparently leading to the first stalking legislation in the US, someone in Tennessee shot up a primary school. The 129th mass shooting in the US this year and March isn’t even over.
Houston, we have a problem. And it needs fixing. Urgently.
This just popped up in my YouTube stream and I subscribed (unsubbed shortly after, lol). This former CIA dude, or “CI-officer” like he says it, has a tip that can get you out of a lot of trouble should you ever get robbed or held up.
Carry a dummy wallet, with a few bucks, a bunch of expired bank cards (or rather the cardboard credit cards that these companies send you when they want you to apply) and so on. You can literally toss it at the person if you ever encounter someone who demands your money. Great idea! Can buy you enough time to get away safely before they realize that the wallet you threw at them is a decoy.
Does not work in all situations. I was robbed in Florida once where someone took off with my handbag with passport, driving license, bank cards and the lot, so it won’t work for that.
(That said, I instinctively instantly started negotiating and I got all my stuff back minus the 5 dollars or so that I had still left in my wallet. Because I had just shopped at my local Winn-Dixie and was walking home with two grocery bags which made me an easy target.)
This too portrays what is behind many cases of men stalking women.
It’s got nothing to do with passion, terrorizing someone.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/hate-crime-victimhelp-move-me-to-a-safe-place
She is in America, in a sundown town, but her experiences were highlighted by The Guardian a few days ago. I am so fucking angry for her.
She is still relatively young, thankfully.
Me, I have set up similar crowdfunding campaigns for myself a few times, but I never got beyond £350, which was not enough to enable me to leave and the worst of the nightmare started happening after 2013 when I briefly had the funds that would have enabled me to escape. But no animals had been attacked yet and I didn’t know yet that my locks were already getting picked for years. I’ve tried four times since in spite of that.
I actually more or less started wrapping up my life a while ago and started making (small) donations all over the place because if my life was over anyway, if I couldn’t get away anyway, then I would do whatever the hell I still could to help others or just generally help make the world a slightly better place. My health has declined horribly after I moved to Portsmouth; things are only getting worse (and I have no access to medical care).
Below is what I would like to say to Angel Pittman.
Angel, I am so fucking angry for you. Below I explain why.
I am pleased to see that you’ve already surpassed your goal. That gives me hope, too. It shows that there are plenty of good people.
Here in the UK, there is a lot of this too. A family in Bristol, with their own hostel, suffered a double arson attack, for example. Racism. They are of Asian heritage.
I’m from the Netherlands. I’ve lived in the States (Florida) and am now in England. My dad was his own boss, my sisters are their own bosses and I have been my own boss for a long time, but my life turned into a nightmare when I relocated within England. The hate for me was not racist as I am white, but rather misogynistic, instead, it seems. Slogan on wall, bucket of liquid emptied over me, locks picked, at two addresses, vandalism in my apartment, animal cruelty, lots of hacking etc etc. I don’t want to bore you with more of my story because it is bizarrely similar to yours and you know what that is like. You don’t need me to tell you that. In the previous town here in England, I had actually been attacked, physically. The police here don’t care either, just like in Rowan County. I’ve tried to escape four times already and one day I will succeed.
Stay strong. Keep fighting. Don’t give up. I found your story just now. Me, this morning, I sent a plea for help to various relatively powerful people around the world, folks who know me, because due to England’s bizarre archaic class system, I have zero power here. I’m a migrant, I’m a female, I am not married, am a feminist, am over 45 (in my 60s now) and have been stuck in poverty for so long. That’s SIX reasons for anonymous folks to hate me.
The fear is the hardest to deal with, isn’t it? The fear and the erosion of trust in people. Just like you, I never expected anything like this. I didn’t know how to explain it to folks in my home country either. It was too fucking bizarre for words.
You did something right. You will succeed. I can tell. You have something that I seem to lack or maybe it’s also because I am simply in the wrong country.
You will succeed, I am telling you.
Best,
Angelina
PS For anyone who does not understand where the fear comes from… this level of hate, and to be personally targeted by it, is really scary. Certainly if it’s persistent. It hollows you out, eats away at you, corrodes you inside because you’re surrounded by it all the time. There is almost no getting away from it.
Me, I found a local Starbucks last year to which I secretly escaped from time to time. A little oasis. Then one day, a blond young woman, who I had not met before, greeted me from behind the counter with sheer hate, the Pompey flavor hate, and that place then soon turned into hell too. I often genuinely feel that Portsmouth does not deserve to exist and should be bombed off the map; it is that evil. It’s really scary, the level and extent of the local hate. It’s really really really scary, the Pompey-flavor hate. It makes you wish you were dead because there is no getting away from it and it’s so ut-ter-ly vile.
Simple. Offer them a better alternative next to a railway embankment, one that they find much more attractive for building a sett in.
Use the intelligence of animals. Rely on it to find ways to coexist peacefully with them in the habitats that we share with them.
Because we must learn how to do that.
I’ve only seen a badger ONCE in my life, on a Sunday morning near Loftahammar in Sweden, in 1989, more or less at the center of the image below, near the water.
16:26: I just found that all text had disappeared here!
I originally posted this at 13:33.
I had written that it’s been in the news in the UK before, and that I included the info in one of my stalking-related booklets, namely the one about how to protect yourself against stranger-stalking. Toronto Police Service 22 Division had already addressed Apple Air Tags before:
Or is the UK government admitting that life is much easier abroad than in the UK?
Sign, please. Thank you. https://chng.it/v7TpcQhKDZ
People like Anne are British citizens who should simply receive the pensions that they’d built up in the UK, like any other British citizen, without any deductions and with the corrections for inflation etc.
Extradited from the US forty years later, for a case to do with a pub brawl, for a crime for which he was acquitted and of which the judge said “that he did not know why the case had been brought after so many years”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64678781
(But “there is no racism in England” either…)
(Source: Article in Dutch, in Dutch “Financial Times”, and you’ll need to be registered for a free or paid account to access it.)
It works both ways, though, and, of course, with a bias. You’re more likely to be a high earner when your parents were high earners and you’re more likely to be earning little when your parents’ income was low.
9.4% who had parents in the highest income group (20%) are poor 25 years later, while 38.5% of them are in the 20% with the highest incomes. 21% of those whose parents had the lowest incomes (20%) are poor 25 years later while under 15% are among the highest-earning 20% then.
Visually, it looks as follows (red = parents with lowest incomes, blue = parents with highest incomes).
07 APR 2022
TOPIC: Europe
The article below is from the Goldman Sachs BRIEFINGS newsletter of 07 April 2022.
Compared with other countries, the most disadvantaged in the U.K. are less likely to climb the income ladder and the economically advantaged tend to stay at the top. Covid-19 has increased inequality further, and recent rises in inflation, especially energy costs, are intensifying the problem. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs Research has taken a closer look at the issue, investigating what needs to be done to improve mobility and opportunity for people in the U.K. We sat down with authors of the research, Goldman Sachs’ European Strategist Sharon Bell and Chief U.K. Economist Steffan Ball, to discover more.
Read the remainder of the article – with definitions – on the Goldman Sachs website: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/from-briefings-07-april-2022.html
Continue readingThe Welsh first minister has spoken of his emotion at the “contemporary resonances” he perceived in a letter written by a 15th-century Prince of Wales envisioning a country free from the rule of the “barbarous” English.
During a visit to France, Mark Drakeford said he was moved by the Pennal letter sent by Owain Glyndŵr to the king of France, Charles VI, in 1406 asking for help in his fight against English rule.
Drakeford was shown the original of the letter at the French national archive in Paris during a trip aimed at strengthening political, business, cultural and sporting links between Wales and France.
The UK has been downgraded in an annual global index of civic freedoms as a result of the government’s “increasingly authoritarian” drive to impose restrictive and punitive laws on public protests.
This obviously erodes the UK government’s credibility when it speaks out against similar ongoings in countries like Hungary and South Africa or even, for example, China.
Report issued yesterday: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26902/using-population-descriptors-in-genetics-and-genomics-research-a-new
Download free PDF or read the report online.
Why have I off and on had so much trouble WALKING since I moved into this flat? Why did this get so horribly dramatic before the end of last year? And why am I once again suddenly very unwell and can I barely walk? I’ve often blamed it on my gallbladder or on hay fever, but that no longer adds up.
Why did someone once let me know that I had “kidney disease that wasn’t manifesting yet“?
I thought the person was angry about – or making fun rather of – the fact that my GP having left a box (for kidney function which can also an indication of the functioning of other organs such as the heart) ticked in the form when he ordered a blood analysis for me back in 2016 or 2017. But was that really the case?
In fact, I had no idea what it was about until that same woman at my GP practice – you know, that one – made a pretty big fuss about it when I collected the results. (A year later, I discovered that she was part of the gang here in town that had and has been making my life a living hell for so long.)
And why did – with no connection to the above – two people e-mail me to tell me that I needed Mg for my muscles???
In a town in which people literally have tried to get me to commit suicide, I have to ask such questions.
I just discovered that someone today quietly climbed up the stairs to my flat, and slightly pulled out a box on top of my Christmas tree so that I would notice – because of the light above it – that this card below had been left underneath it, folded.
(hacker(s) at it as I am typing this; that is, seem(s) to have reprogrammed an arrow key on my keyboard, which he toggles, ha ha ha. It’s been acting up throughout the day and the fan did its stupid deliberate gearing up – wind – too a few times)
This used to be at my door upstairs. I had stuck it on the wall next to the front door as well but it got removed instantly and very deliberately stepped on. I had found these cards at the local CAB where I got… wait for it… never mind.
When I moved to Portsmouth in 2009, my today and tomorrow went up in smoke. Only yesterday was left from that point onward.
This masterful film was about another war and about what people do to each other in wars, featuring David Bowie, oh, and a few other Brits.
Why are sexist influencers appealing to our boys?
Online discussion (webinar):
I’ve been detecting that exact same tone too for some years.
The UK is not a place in which foreigners can feel perfectly safe.
Personally, I was met with xenophobic hostility from the beginning, in 2004. I didn’t recognize it for what it was at first. I thought that people were just disorganized (unprofessional) or just plain weird. Thankfully, not everyone was hostile, but by contrast, my experiences in the US were very different. The times were different too, sure, and Donald Trump has not helped and I’ve seen changes in people I used to know in the US too, I’ve seen two of them become more xenophobic, but I doubt that the US is as hostile as the UK these days.
Four houses in Rotterdam are in danger of collapsing and have been evacuated; the facades somehow became separated. Traffic needs to take a detour to avoid causing vibrations.
Thankfully, the danger was discovered in time. There were one or two loud bangs, and smoke, the latter likely having been dust. There are no cracks in the walls, so the facades “simply” need to be re-anchored asap. The cause of their detachment is not clear yet.
A funny coincidence is that just a few streets from me, a house did collapse in December and the house next-door collapsed partially. Two people were taken to hospital. Cause? The mains cause was likely low-quality bricks, said Portsmouth City Council.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-64254661
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-64172151
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-63889834
These homes are not in the Copnor area, as the third article says, but in the Kingston/Buckland area (and in the electoral area called Fratton ward).
In May 2021, something similar happened concerning a much younger (2013) house in Christchurch (with video):
Just listening to this initially made me very nervous (because I too want my life back, though my story is very different).
I am so pleased that her friends and family were there for her when she got out of the relationship.
There is so so much that I recognize, the not knowing what to do, the contradictions in one’s own behavior and attitude, and particularly also the identity crisis, because your entire life has basically revolved around this for sooooo long and you no longer know what it is like to be able to live without constantly having to brace yourself… You need to go through a healing process and that can only begin after the stalking stops. After a rape, the healing process can begin immediately. Not with stalking. Unless the person dies, indeed, you never know when it’s really over.
Most police officers have NO IDEA what being stalked does to a person. No fucking idea.
You will have to watch this on YouTube. The two creators of this podcast (which has a video version on YouTube) are very strict about a lot of stuff. I am sure that’s because they learned a lot of things the hard way.
Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson. This worm should shut up and crawl back into the woodwork. I have had more than enough of his vile hate-mongering, too. Isn’t even capable of tying his shoes, for crying out loud. Too fucking complicated for him.
All he does is sow hate and division.
CNN’s recently written about how the country is still reeling from the results of his disasters and there he is, popping up again with his stupid inane bullshit. Enough!
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/25/uk/boris-johnson-british-politics-intl-cmd/index.html
That guy too, now that’s what I call fucking demented.
I have no more patience for bullshit. None.
As a result of Johnson’s demented bullshit, Britain is falling behind further and further and further. Poland and Slovenia are overtaking it.
Yep, dude, that IS called “taking back control” and revealing the bullshit and chaos and incompetence for all the world to see. That is exactly what it is. Turning the country into a sinkhole. The sinkhole has control of itself. Sure.
Everyone else avoids it.
(That’s what I call deluded and deranged, Mr Johnson. Or just plain greedy, if you look at it on a much smaller scale.)
The bigger picture is that the more we abuse and otherwise mess with other species and their habitats, the more it comes back to bite us humans.
That the US needs to find out whether China is into some secret biological warfare stuff, that I get, though.
(Why the US? It is the only other super power – Russia is mostly a big pain in the behind, not quite a superpower, albeit a worrisome pain in the behind – and it has a pretty big presence in that part of the world, as we saw on CNN the other day, when CNN crew was on board of that American plane that got intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet over the Taiwan Strait. The pilots said that they get this stuff all the time, that it was just another day at the office for them. That the US does that, has a presence there is to help protect Taiwan, but also the Philippines and other countries, as China tries to claim territories as well as waters that aren’t China’s, kinda like Russia is trying to claim Ukraine.)
Why? Because if they catch fire or explode, the resulting fire can develop so quickly that you may not have time to get out of the house.
If you charge it while you’re away and it blows up or catches fire, and you’re in a freestanding home, at least only the home would be damaged.
A plane that had just taken off from San Diego, for Newark, had to return a few weeks ago when a battery pack or a battery in a laptop caught fire. Four cabin crew were taken to the hospital as a precaution.
They had manage to stop the fire by putting the object into a thermal containment bag, but I could imagine that that sounds much easier than it is in reality.
Watching this video made me realize that it’s far worse than I thought. Hmm.
Leave the books unchanged. They represent the era in which he wrote the books and as such will show readers that times have changed.
Editing his works is an insult to the creativity of the author and in spirit almost, albeit not quite, akin to removing references to the Holocaust from books.
It’s not as if he wrote in incomprehensible medieval English after all.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his works but I can imagine that editing them may also take part of their charm away.
I believe that the publisher has now decided to publish both the original and the edited versions. That’s a good compromise, as long as their covers make very clear that the latter books have been edited.
This was also in the news in the Netherlands, along with the bit below, which I’ve seen mentioned on the CNN site as well.
This one in the video immediately below was based in Canada. Was working as an IT guy at Canada’s National Research Council (!) when he was already shipping and selling huge amounts of drugs. Got arrested, went to prison, then got himself a job as an IT guy at Public Services and Procurement Canada (!).
He targeted hospitals, medical research institutes and other organizations during the pandemic, at a point when a lot of people were tired and anxious.
Yes, it’s true that the NHS still had a lot of Windows XP computers at the time and that that was why it was so vulnerable.
I’ve read that more recently, it still had a considerable number of computers and laptops relying on Windows XP. (See for example this article in Computer Weekly, 2019.) So did the UK’s court system. So did police forces. (See for example this article, 2019.)
Back in 2020, many ATM machines still did too: https://www.techradar.com/news/atm-security-still-running-windows-xp
Did you know that the checkouts at the Asda in Portsmouth used to run on Windows XP too, until they did that big makeover a few years ago? (Yes, I’ve seen it, and should have taken a photo, but didn’t.) I wonder how many supermarket checkouts currently still rely on Windows XP.
Tesco did too. See below.
While I was looking on the web to see how many store self-checkouts still use Windows XP, this popped up for those who need an explanation of what for example Windows XP is: https://www.porthosp.nhs.uk/departments/it-training/jargon-buster_2.htm
The problem is not so much that they’re running XP. The problem is when those systems no longer receive updates. Microsoft used to have special maintenance contracts for organizations that continued to run XP after its “expiry date”, such as the British and Dutch government, but I doubt that it still does that.
Now, to end with, here is a ransomware story that will make you smile:
This attack used EternalBlue.
PS
Want more? Then watch this. About an attack of a very different nature.
24 February 2023: Ouch. Big Dutch data theft involved someone who people did not see this coming from… He worked at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, but he didn’t abuse data there as far as people are able to tell at this point. (It’s not that easy to get access to data there other than when you’re really working closely with specific data.) His access was blocked as soon as folks found out. He was seen as a pleasant colleague who gave off no signs whatsoever that he might be doing things that he shouldn’t be doing.
Do you know who alerted us to the problems with these forever chemicals? The people who were living near the plants where they are manufactured and… pet bird owners. It was not instantly clear what caused it, but pet birds started dying horrible deaths because their owners used non-stick cookware. These pet birds served as the canaries in this coalmine. Eventually, avian vets and pet bird owners put two and two together.
That might explain a few things…
When you get older, you feel much less able to defend yourself against physical attacks or simply run away as fast as you can.
The fawning trauma response, which is often described as motivated by a “need to avoid conflict”, can have a lot to do with that. It’s what you do when you can’t fight or flee and when freezing is not part of your mental make-up.
The fawning response serves to keep you physically unharmed, helps you avoid physical trauma.
This is the phenomenon that I have noticed in older women here in the UK who live on their own. I didn’t know that there was a name for it. As soon as you turn 45, you’d better make sure that you have a black belt in judo that you keep up or quietly fade into the background and smile a lot, right?
Wrong. But this is what we are taught.
The way to overcome this fawning response is to very deliberately risk physical harm in conflict situations. What do I mean by that?
If you stand up for yourself in conflict situations that are often the result of older adults being widely ridiculed and demonized in the UK and you very deliberately risk getting injured, knowing very well that there won’t be a thing that you can do against it anyway, you radiate strength.
You radiate “I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, I’m gonna say what I want, I’m gonna say how I feel about how you are behaving and if I end up on a hospital ward with a broken arm, a concussion and a black eye as a result of that, so be it.”
You likely feel that you don’t want to spend even a second of your time on the abusive fools that you encounter and prefer to ignore them and contentedly live your life.
But until you do spend those few seconds on them and let them know what’s what, they may well continue to force you to see them if these are people who you encounter on a regular basis. Because people who are abusive desperately want to be seen and heard. They want a sense of power and if you ignore these people, you motivate them to keep bugging you.
The fawning response, on the other hand, may feed their addiction to a certain feeling. That too can keep them coming back for more.
Also, get as fit as you can. Do what you can to stay fit. Even if it’s just a daily Tai Chi session that someone teaches on Vimeo or YouTube. You’ll feel so much better. It’s not true that old age comes with muscle weakness and illnesses by definition. You do have to work harder at staying fit, or so we think, but the reality is that we simply were much more active when we were younger and may have gotten lazy.
I don’t think that older adults should need to get nose and eyebrow piercings or start wearing chainmail and biker jackets just to discourage aggression and feel safer.
