#pg 126

[hyeoni-comb]

"No hetero, but damn, Teo, your wings!" Niya circled Teo back on the boat. "Does this make me a furry?"

from The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

[mistbornbaby]

Breeze rolled his eyes. “We’re thieves, my dear man, not politicians. A nation is far too unwieldy a commodity to be worth our time. Once we have our atium, we’ll be happy.”

“Not to mention rich,” Ham added.

“The two words are synonyms, Hammond,” Breeze said.

If I have learned nothing else about Breeze, I have learned this: The man is a high roller of the peakest caliber. The Everest Expeditioner of high rollers.

[homoseggsuality]

“The U.S. TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act] has many good points but prosecutors must prove that ‘force, fraud or coercion’ was used in carrying out the trafficking. This requirement—a condition of criminalizing the trafficker—is very challenging to substantiate. Even when the traffickers have used force, fraud, or coercion, the burden of proof rests on the victim. Prosecutors depend on victim testimony, but victims may be reluctant to give evidence because their testimony can retraumatize them and endanger them or their families.

Dorchen Leidholdt, cofounding director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, in her testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives committee considering reauthorization of the TVPA in 2007, described the cases of two Korean trafficking victims assisted by her organization. ‘These traffickers preyed on their victims’ poverty and undocumented status, made them endure 14 to 16 hour days of sexual servitude, deprived them of sleep and food, and demanded that they endure sexual intercourse with as many as ten customers a shift.’ Although these victims were subjected to physical and psychological torture, their traffickers were not prosecuted under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act because the prosecutors could not meet the proof requirements of force, fraud, or coercion. Instead, the traffickers were prosecuted under another statute—the Mann Act—that metes out much less of a penalty.

...An amended version of the TVPA deleting the force requirement passed almost unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives but was stonewalled in the Senate by a coalition of groups, including the Justice Department, that convinced legislators it would divert the federal government ‘from its core anti-trafficking mission against crimes involving force, fraud or coercion and child victims.’

The Heritage Foundation, relying on the separation between trafficking and prostitution, argued the amended bill ‘trivialize[s] the seriousness of actual human trafficking by equating it with run-of-the-mill sex crimes—such as pimping, pandering and prostitution—that are neither international nor interstate in nature.’ A coalition between conservative and liberal groups—including members of the Freedom Network and certain governmental authorities, including then senator Joe Biden’s office—appeared not to believe that prostitution is a serious crime, nor pimps serious criminals, nor that most prostitution is in fact domestic trafficking. Unfortunately, Senators Joe Biden and Sam Brownback refused to support the amended anti-trafficking bill that had already passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 405 to 2.”

- Janice G. Raymond, Not a Choice, Not a Job

[mistbornbaby]

Kelsier studies the boy. “What’s your name, son?”

“Lestibournes.”

...Yeah, I see why you guys would choose to call him Spooky Boy instead of his name. I’m just excited for this kid’s ghost costume. That’s honestly all I see when I see “spooky boy”, just a lanky teenager in a bedsheet with eyeholes.

[wildride-comic]

126

[perkwunos]

A certain state of geometrical strain in the body, and a certain qualitative physiological excitement in the cells of the body, govern the whole process of presentational immediacy. In sense-perception the whole function of antecedent occurrences outside the body is merely to excite these strains and physiological excitements within the body. But any other means of production would do just as well, so long as the relevant states of the body are in fact produced. The perceptions are functions of the bodily states. The geometrical details of the projected sense-perception depend on the geometrical strains in the body, the qualitative sensa depend on the physiological excitements of the requisite cells in the body.

Alfred North Whitehead delivering some great prose, in Process and Reality

[stories-like-grapes-blog]

"The misery of other people is only an abstraction," Ray insisted, "something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the presence of their seemingly singular existence." "And mistreat each other, won't they?" Ray nodded. "Horrendously."

Man Walks Into A Room by Nicole Krauss

[falchionmalacandra]

At the pet store he picked out two painted turtle, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney-shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, so aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self esteem of the turtles: "You think we're slow? Look at that guy." To shore up the snail's morale in the same way, there was a rock. Everyone is happier if they have someone to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both. This is not only the Beta Male Strategy for survival, but the basis for capitalism, democracy, and most religions.

A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore, pg. 126