2024 Minnesota Statutes 609.27 COERCION.
https://law.justia.com/codes/minnesota/chapters-609-624/chapter-609/section-609-27/
Retired FBI agent Frank Figliuzzi made his oppinion public that it applies to AG Bondi here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPeeCYq_a48
Felony Murder Territory!
#Law #ICE #AGBondi #Extortion #Minnesota #VoterRoll #Resistance
They should investigate and charge accordingly.
Surrey council wants feds to issue state of emergency due to extortion violence
Mayor Brenda Locke is also requesting Ottawa declare a federal state of emergency and reiterated the need for a national extortion commissioner to oversee a co-ordinated response.
#violence #extortion #emergency #Surrey #Politics #SurreyExtortion
https://globalnews.ca/news/11639875/surrey-council-government-issue-state-of-emergency-extortion-violence/
5 arrested, 2 sought in extortion and arson attacks on Winnipeg businesses
Winnipeg police say they have made several arrests related to a series of extortion and arson attacks on Winnipeg businesses last year.
#crime #police #business #Winnipeg #Arson #Extortion
https://globalnews.ca/news/11639772/winnipeg-extortion-arson-attacks-businesses-arrests/
Surrey council wants feds to issue state of emergency due to extortion violence
Mayor Brenda Locke is also requesting Ottawa declare a federal state of emergency and reiterated the need for a national extortion commissioner to oversee a co-ordinated response.
#violence #extortion #emergency #Surrey #Politics #SurreyExtortion
https://globalnews.ca/news/11639875/surrey-council-government-issue-state-of-emergency-extortion-violence/
5 arrested, 2 sought in extortion and arson attacks on Winnipeg businesses
Winnipeg police say they have made several arrests related to a series of extortion and arson attacks on Winnipeg businesses last year.
#crime #police #business #Winnipeg #Arson #Extortion
https://globalnews.ca/news/11639772/winnipeg-extortion-arson-attacks-businesses-arrests/
5 charged in arson, extortion offences targeting Winnipeg convenience store owners, police say
Five people have been charged and two others are wanted by police in connection with extortion-related offences at Winnipeg convenience stores, police say.
#crime #police #extortion #Winnipeg
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-arson-extortion-charges-9.7063108?cmp=rss
5 charged in arson, extortion offences targeting Winnipeg convenience store owners, police say
Five people have been charged and two others are wanted by police in connection with extortion-related offences at Winnipeg convenience stores, police say.
#crime #police #extortion #Winnipeg
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-arson-extortion-charges-9.7063108?cmp=rss
Tues. Jan. 27, 2026: The Wrong Kind of Grind
image courtesy of Albrecht Fietz from PixabayTuesday, January 27, 2026
Waxing Moon
Uranus and Jupiter Retrograde
Snowy and cold
Welcome to another week!
The Community Tarot Reading for the Week is up here. It’s our last week with the Ask the Witch deck. Next week, we switch decks.
By the time I posted Friday’s blog (before 9 AM), clouds obscured the sun and it already smelled like snow.
Of course, on Friday, I got the notice that my print proof copy was ready for THE VICIOUS CRITIC. I did not respond until Monday, when I ordered it. I’m hoping the print version will be ready soon after the digital version releases on Feb. 10.
I spent part of the morning doing relevant work offline, and then adapted one of my seminar handbooks into a Topic Workbook, which is always more nuts-and-bolts work than I expect. The slide out shelf of my desk fell off, so I have to find the right size screws and tools to fix that. I suspect it wasn’t put together correctly after the move, and it’s been hanging on as long as possible.
I combined ingredients I liked from the chicken peanut butter soup recipe with ingredients I liked from the Moosewood sesame noodles recipe, and came up with a good lunch and respectable leftovers. So good I had three helpings! Plus plenty of leftovers for lunches into this week.
In the afternoon, I read and I shared materials about the general strike in MN. Played with some ideas for short stories.
I received a very thoughtful email from my House Rep about concerns I’ve been raising with him. While I appreciate that he votes to stop the madness, I believe he should also be co-sponsoring some of this legislation, so that will be part of our next interacting. I am also very worried about my extended family in the area around Portland, ME, with the escalating raids.
Cooked dinner in the evening and read some more, while prepping the house for the brutal cold as best I could.
It was nice to snuggle down in the fleece sheets and piles of blankets, and I had a decent night’s sleep, although I woke up a couple of times. Charlotte stayed curled up next to me, rather than being at the bottom of the bed, where she usually spends most of the night after our initial 20 minutes or so of negotiations at bedtime. When I rolled over, she hopped over me and curled up on the other side.
I stayed in bed until almost 7 on Saturday morning. It was so comfortable. But Tessa was hungry, and when Tessa wants something, she does not stop until she gets it. So I got up, fed them, did the morning routine through the free write. Paused to make scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon, shredded cheese, onion, sage, and a dash of Tabasco, which was really good.
I did the art journaling, and then the usual Saturday morning chores. The art journaling is geared more toward therapy than creative expansion in my opinion, so it’s not what I hoped, but I’m continuing on, at least for now.
My web host informed me that they are going to pull the next year’s fee early, and I replied that no, they are not. That is not our agreement. Telling me if I don’t let them take money early, they will interrupt my service is extortion, and the AG’s office will have something to say about it. I guess this year, I have to go on the hunt for a new web host, which is a shame, because they meet my needs so well on so many fronts. But ever since they “rebranded” themselves last year, I have been less than thrilled. Plus, the annual rate increases that they tell me less than two weeks before renewal annoy me. But I need to run multiple sites, and they are the only host I’ve found so far that allows me to do that within my budget.
I will just have to look harder. If I can find one who meets my needs, I will see if I can get a multi-year discount so I don’t have to worry about it for 2 or 3 years, and then slowly move everything over the spring and summer. The big things I need from my webhost is WordPress compatibility, unlimited domains/subdomains, and within my budget.
I started looking, but I honestly do not have the bandwidth to move all my sites to a new host this week.
I finally managed to delete my TikTok account. I hadn’t used it since the chaos around TikTok early last year, but it wouldn’t let me delete. I sure as heck wasn’t going to agree to geolocating and the other crap the new rightwing owners are adding. It took nearly an hour to delete, because I had to enter a code they claimed they sent but did not, so I had to keep asking to re-send until I got something I could use and then just delete everything. It was useful for the serials to a point, but honestly, my book sales are stronger without TikTok or Facebook. I’d like to dump Facebook, but that’s how the City does most of its communications.
I also turned off the “smart” features in my Gmail, because I don’t want them reading my emails and giving out information. Of course, that means they are no longer sorted into categories, and everything is dumped in the inbox and/or spam, but that might work better in the long run. It also makes searching for an email or a contact more difficult. I’ll take the trade-off.
I did the updated video for the Nina Bell Mysteries, and the individual video for THE VICIOUS CRITIC. They are on the media page of the Nina Bell website. I also updated the VICIOUS CRITIC page with the buy links I have so far. There were some glitches. I miss the iMovie software that Apple discontinued. I loved working with that. OpenShot looks like it’s pretty good. I mean, my degree is in film and video production, for crying out loud. Even though I was the era where you had to splice film together with tape and then clean out the sprocket holes. And Canva doesn’t really do what I want it to do.
Somewhere in this spring, I need to build in time for OfficeLibre and then try OpenShot.
Housework, because there’s always housework. It never ends. And some other work that needed to be done offline and not discussed publicly.
When I returned, I heard about the murder of Alex Pretti by government-sanctioned cosplaying goons. Another murder. This is firmly on the shoulders of the 7 Vichy House Dems who voted to fund this domestic terrorism just a few days ago as much as on the individuals who committed the murder and the administration who sanctions it. Absolutely unacceptable. And Jeffries and Schumer continue to do nothing but bleat on social media. It is literally their JOB to stop this. These fake Dems need to step aside.
Needless to say, I didn’t get anything else except storm prep done on Saturday, because this murder is so upsetting.
Tessa was quiet on Sunday morning, and I was worried about her, but she was waiting for me when I got up, and we did our usual routine.
The snow predictions went up to 30 inches. It started two hours later than expected (9 AM instead of 7 AM), but was ferocious from the beginning. Most places either closed ahead of the storm or decided to close early, thank goodness. People shouldn’t be out in this.
I went out on the back balcony to re-secure the tarp and my neighbor nearly locked me out there. His dog was barking, and he saw the door on the latch and went to shut it, but I caught him before I was stuck out there. He apologized profusely, and we’re all good.
Sunday was a snow day. I did my usual routine. I prepped the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. It is not a gentle reading, and demands we decide where we stand.
I read THE QUEEN WHO FLEW: A Fairy Tale by Ford Maddox Ford. I’d never read it before, and a friend sent it to me. It’s really delightful, with relevant subtext. It’s been years since I read anything by that author, probably college or a little after.
Read another book in a long series I’ve been working my way through, and it was a decent read.
Shoveled mid-afternoon, after the plow cleared what it could in the lot, so I wouldn’t have a snowdrift behind my car. Checked in with some friends, to make sure everyone was okay during the storm.
I did the art journaling exercise a little later in the day than usual. I drafted a short poem and did a sketch I actually liked.
I worked on some legislative language to send my elected officials.
Did not sleep particularly well. Up around 6:30, morning routine. About a foot of snow fell overnight, which meant more shoveling, although I waited until afternoon to do it.
Morning was for admin, dealing with over 500 emails. I got the feedback from the scriptwriting class I taught last March. The students really liked it, and the only “do this differently” was that they’d like it to be a day-long or weekend-long with meal breaks, rather than two hours/week over a month. Useful feedback.
I did the cover reveal for VICIOUS CRITIC and did the marketing rounds. I created the content calendar for this week and all of February (Friday, maybe?) and got back on the stick with that.
I had another pointed exchange with the webhost, and I have no doubt I will have to file a complaint with the AG’s office. The correct response to my concerns would be, “We understand your concerns, and we have noted that the contract renewal date is the day on which we will pull the money.” Instead, they doubled down on extortion. “Pay us early or else.”
I may have to pay them this week, but I will file a complaint as I look for a new webhost. I’ve started. A friend suggested SiteGround (which looks to be out of my budget, but a host I’ve wanted to join for years). DreamHost looks like it might work, and another friend recommended them, but I need to ask them some questions first. It would have to wait until spring, when I can actually move the sites one at a time, if the new host doesn’t move them for me.(It looks like DreamHost charges $99 a move unless I’m on a plan beyond my budget, and that kind of a move is beyond my budget, so I’d have to do it myself). I have to move the domain site first, wait until it’s live, then move each subdomain as quickly as possible so the downtime is limited. And only move one domain at a time, so the downtimes are rolling. The whole process would take at least a month, even working every day on it, because there would have to be rebuilding and tweaking of sites.
I had to move each site myself when I moved from 1&1 to A2 Hosting (now Hosting.com), and it was not fun, but I learned a lot. And now I have even more sites. At least I now keep my site registrations separate from my hosting platform, so I don’t get into the situation I had when I left 1&1, where they wouldn’t allow me to point the domains I owned to a new host, because they held the registrations as well as the hosting platform. I learned from that mistake, and keep my registrations with NameSilo.
If I go with DreamHost, it looks like I can use MigrateGuru to help me move my sites.
My mobile phone is also giving me trouble, and I’d like to dump my carrier, so I’m looking at other carriers, such as BOOST mobile. It means buying a new phone, but maybe I can keep my number. Or maybe I should change that, too. But the amount of things I’d have to update if I change my phone number makes me roll my eyes. I actually sort of like my mobile phone (at least more than I liked my previous ones), but I’ve had it for going on 5 years now, so of course the manufacturer is going to try to force me to buy a new one.
None of this can happen until I know if the car passes inspection this week/if there are major repairs/until I buy new tires. But at least I can research and put together dossiers of information, so when I can make each of these moves, I’m ready.
Mid-afternoon, I shoveled another 15 inches out from behind my car. And then the plow came, an hour late, and pushed more snow back against the car. Plus, it was still snowing all day, so I’ll be out there again today.
I was not very productive all day. I didn’t get most of what I hoped to get done, done. How can I concentrate when things are in such a mess? And I feel like all I got done was little, piddly work, but I hope it will save me some time in the future.
I started reading the next book for review, and I did some proofing on the next Topic Workbook, but that was about it, other than riding my elected officials. I dumped a lot of accounts on social media who hold the “I’m not political” position. They’ve let us know they condone what’s happening, and are not accounts with whom I want to interact. Some of them belong to people with whom I’ve interacted with for years, but we are at a point where we all need to stand for something, and know where each other stands.
Schumer does his useless posturing that he will actually take a stand on something, but he’ll fold like a cheap plastic chair, the way he always does. No one believes him. He’s a laughingstock.
Nazi Napolean in his long coat has been “moved” out of Minnesota – so he can terrorize some other city? He needs to be arrested.
This morning was another email from the webhost, how maybe they’ll do me a favor to pull the money on the contracted date. I told them to do that.
Even if they keep their word (which I doubt), I am looking for a new host. I’ll renew, look around, find what works best, and make my move in the coming months. I’ll also ask around our local artist/small business group and see how much an IT person would charge to move the sites, or charge to teach me how to do it. I’d rather the latter, frankly. It’s a skill I should learn.
On today’s agenda: digging out the car again, writing, ghostwriting, continuing to read the book for review, maybe some proofreading. I have another crockpot dish to try, so that will go in after breakfast.
It’s all very disheartening, but the garbage still needs to be taken out, the car needs to be dug out, a living needs to be earned. However, I can choose where to put whatever doesn’t go to bills, and it won’t be to anyone supporting this regime. On top of that, the regional chamber, with whom I’ve great experiences, is now advocating FOR the use of AI in marketing. So I’m ending my relationship with them, and I will not support any business, especially any small business, that uses AI in their marketing.
Damn WordPress is still defaulting to small font and I have to manually change it. So sick of “upgrades” that are actually downgrades.
Onward.
#Democrats #disillusionment #extortion #freelance #frustration #murder #slimyTech #snow #writing
I’ve called my #senators to let them know I totally support them refusing to approve the budget for #dhs , regardless of what comes next. #NM is blue, but really only #MelanieStansbury has any spine, so I encourage you to do the same. If #pambondi telling Governor #walz that #ice will stop shaking them down if they hand over #voterrolls isn’t staggeringly clear evidence of #extortion I have literally no idea of what that word means. #uspol #standwithminnesota #iceout
Now we find out that the state terrorism in Minneapolis was a pretext for obtaining voter rolls in Minnesota?
So terrorizing and killing people under the pretense of "immigration enforcement" is justified because the President and his minions want information about a state's voters, NOT because of so-called illegal immigration?
That's extortion.
-> Remember: Extortion was the crime Trump was impeached for during his first term.
Just got these messages from @seengoals@mastodon.social, one of the members of Gaza Verified, basically accusing me of running a fundraiser for Gaza and keeping the proceeds (I have no fundraiser on any fundraising site anywhere) and extorting me to share his fundraiser or he’ll apparently go public with it.
So here’s what’s going to happening instead: Nabil has been removed Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org/warning/@seengoals@mastodon.social/) and I would urge caution in your dealings with him and that account in the future.
@staff, I would like to ask, when you have time, if you could please update his profile so the verified badge no longer appears as the verified status doesn’t automatically update once added.
For the rest of our Gaza Verified family, I am sorry for this unpleasantness but we will not entertain threats or extortion towards any of our volunteers.
EL PAÍS: This is how extortion campaigns target small businesses on Google Maps: ‘They can ruin you’. “After receiving inquiries from EL PAÍS, Google replied that its systems detect and remove the vast majority of fraudulent content. The company cites staggering figures: since 2024, they have blocked or removed more than 240 million reviews and 70 million edits to Maps locations that […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/25/this-is-how-extortion-campaigns-target-small-businesses-on-google-maps-they-can-ruin-you-el-pais/This letter of “AG” Pam Bondi to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is basically extortion requiring the governor to rescind laws in jurisdictions where he has no authority, and proffer state documents which contain personal information subject to privacy regulations. Its tone is inane, threatening and insistent on arbitrary justifications.
#ICEorelse #extortion #PamBondiFail #ImpeachNoem #FireTrump
Bondi Demand Letter to Walz Extorts MN for Voter Roll Access to Halt Violence
"...Third, allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960."
Letter in Fox Link Below
🇨🇦 Surrey's chief of 👮 police thinks the crime wave is escalating. #canada #police #vancouver #city #extortion #crisis #threats [ https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/this-is-definitely-a-crisis-surrey-police-chief-speaks-out-as-city-faces-growing-extortion-threats/ ]
It's all about🚨branding, grifting, & pleasing #Putin:
#Greenland🚨becomes Trumpland, &🚨his buddies/donors also become rich: Horn, a snr aide to Pence & CEO of GreenMet: the co that’s offering strategic support to the project.
Sorial *an exec VP.., at the Trump Org until 2019, & Schiller *longtime bodyguard & dir of Oval Office ops during Trump's 1st T, helped set up the co in 2021 *remain shs.
#Bribery #Extortion #Corruption #Minerals #Plunder #Recession #Protest #USPol
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/23/greenland-data-center-trump-greenmet.html
The #RepublicanBrand
Chock-o-block full of #ignorance, #sexism #murder, #terrorism, #fraud, #rape, #extortion, #racism and #extremism. Many are outright #liars #traitors and #delusional #crackpots.
It's really been this way for generations, it's just getting worse as the years go on.
#trump is really the perfect leader for today's so-called #conservatives
RCMP head of B.C. Extortion Task Force sorry for challenging term ‘crisis’
Despite dozens of new extortion threats and eight extortion-related shootings this year, the B.C. RCMP says progress is…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #CA #Canada #Crime #extortion #SurreyExtortion
https://www.newsbeep.com/368220/
Eby says head of extortion task force needs to demonstrate urgency or step aside
David Eby says the head of a police anti-extortion task force needs to step aside if he cannot demonstrate a sense of urgency in the fight.
#police #extortion #urgency #Crime #Politics #DavidEby
https://globalnews.ca/news/11623354/bc-premier-david-eby-extortion-task-force-urgency/
