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I have been experimenting with my writing lately. Around Feb 26, 2026, I stopped worrying about trivial embarassments. That was the date I found out from a cousin I trust that a sleazy local hospital is indeed as sleazy as I suspected. Good doctors, well run on the surface, totally creepy admins. It is owned by Blackstone now:
Warrantless disclosure of Motel 6 occupancies
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In separate cases in 2018 and 2019, the hotel chain Motel 6, owned by Blackstone, agreed to settle for $19.6 million for giving guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a warrant.[210][211]
Ancestry acquisition and data leaks
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In 2020, Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Ancestry.com, which controls access to millions of people's genetic data, heightening concern about Blackstone's data privacy practices.[212] This data was disclosed to Blackstone, and it has aggressively defended itself against class action litigation relating to misuse of the data of people who did not consent to genetic testing but were affected through direct biological relations or other means of identification.[213]
Illegal child labor
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An investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor showed that more than 100 American children had been working illegally for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a slaughterhouse cleaning firm owned by Blackstone. The investigation began after a Walnut Middle School teacher in Grand Island, Nebraska, reported a student with hydrochloric acid burns on his hands and knees to the Department of Labor.[214] Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor Department fined PSSI $15,138 for each minor who was employed in breach of the law, totaling $1.5 million in civil money penalties.[215][216]
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
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Blackstone has invested in companies with links to the commercialization and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.[217][218][219][220]
edit
In separate cases in 2018 and 2019, the hotel chain Motel 6, owned by Blackstone, agreed to settle for $19.6 million for giving guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a warrant.[210][211]
Ancestry acquisition and data leaks
edit
In 2020, Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Ancestry.com, which controls access to millions of people's genetic data, heightening concern about Blackstone's data privacy practices.[212] This data was disclosed to Blackstone, and it has aggressively defended itself against class action litigation relating to misuse of the data of people who did not consent to genetic testing but were affected through direct biological relations or other means of identification.[213]
Illegal child labor
edit
An investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor showed that more than 100 American children had been working illegally for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a slaughterhouse cleaning firm owned by Blackstone. The investigation began after a Walnut Middle School teacher in Grand Island, Nebraska, reported a student with hydrochloric acid burns on his hands and knees to the Department of Labor.[214] Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor Department fined PSSI $15,138 for each minor who was employed in breach of the law, totaling $1.5 million in civil money penalties.[215][216]
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
edit
Blackstone has invested in companies with links to the commercialization and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.[217][218][219][220]
These are the last people I would share medical or webuse etc data with.
Writing is one way to monitor influences on your thoughts. Nothing can really influence my spending or voting or other serious decisions, but it is the day to day war of economic attrition via attacks on one’s mood, temper, confidence etc which are the troublesome were it stuff below the threshold of active perception..Some of that is probably bullshit and the real roots as you mentioned being different. I thought the Facebook emotion contagion experiment was overhyped bs and the pearl clutching deflection from the real problem, which is an Idiocracy where Facebook, Kim Kardashian etc are taken seriously at all, just because they make money exploiting the lowest common denominator in human taste.
I always thought Facebook was garbage. I read trashy celebrity magazines as a teen but outgrew them by the time I was in my twenties and moved on to other slightly less trashy garbage online (I am a woman of taste and culture 🧐 )..actually not that trashy. Mostly personal blogs, which aren’t quite as bad. But still in no way part of any academic or activist portfolio. But I always found it grating how industry managed to label middlebrow trash from Oprah to Facebook somehow more refined if it is profitable enough. Give me Jerry Springer and something honestly without any redeeming value any day over this bs of claiming Facebook has a point followed by some kind of phony sense of betrayal.
Of course Zuckerberg will be sleazy if you let him..absent a lobotomy I would not trust any of those creeps. I trust EarlG and elad though.
But yeah it is hard to balance work, complaints and monitoring these things, but I must start.
I am sorry to hear about your wife Patrick? How is she? I remember your post in the thread about that old ad where the little girl is playing and it was about nuclear warfare?
Would you know which one I mean? This is one of the few places where I am one of the younger people
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