yeet it out

Headline: The Painful Truth of Exactly How ICE’s New Shock Gloves Work

Publisher: Wired

Archive link: https://archive.ph/O7TKI

Date published: 13 August 2026

Selected text from article:

With the revelation that ICE will spend up to $20 million by March on gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to subdue an individual, according to a notice published earlier this week by the Department of Homeland Security, it's worth looking at how this apparel, designated as a nonlethal tool for law enforcement, actually works.

When activated via a one-second press on a wrist switch, conductive pads embedded on the palm and undersides of the fingers of the gloves can transmit high-frequency electrical pulses directly to the wearer’s point of contact on a subject. A rechargeable battery and microprocessor module tucked inside a zippered pouch on the cuff powers the entire system.

The electrical pulse overstimulates nerve endings in the subject's peripheral nervous system, resulting in pain that inhibits coordinated muscle movement, but without causing systemic muscle lockup. The pain induced is localized to just the area touched by the glove's conductive pads. The manufacturer claims the gloves result in a subject's compliance in less than three seconds and leave no burns, marks, or scars.

[...]

Crucially, the GLOVE has limitations, chief among them that for the device to work effectively and deliver its restraining pain shock, it must come into contact with the subject's bare skin. According to Compliant Technologies, the gloves won't work through dry clothing or thick hair. The gloves will work, however, if the subject is wearing thin, wet clothing, such as soaked T-shirts or blouses. The GLOVE also does not like being dunked in water and will likely be rendered inoperable if this happens.

Michael Crowley, a senior researcher at Omega Research Foundation—an organization that tracks human rights abuses committed across the world by people using police, security, and military equipment—is concerned that the GLOVE is seemingly designed not to restrain or incapacitate, but to hurt.

when i asked whether their autistic classmate's meltdown was dangerous or merely uncomfortable, they said, "i felt like i was in danger!"

yes you should, actually. that's life. upsetting things happen. no one should have to experience any discomfort. but we do. we get stung by bees and sunburns and headaches. we live in bodies in the world.

autistic people are human beings who have the right to exist in society, including during meltdowns. having one class of your entire semester interrupted by a singular meltdown is not anymore of an infringement upon your entitlement to education than having your class interrupted by a fire alarm or cancelled for a snow storm.

one of my peers once experienced a cardiac event 10 minutes into class. it was terrifying. it was desperately upsetting. i was contacted by the school and offered counseling afterward because i happened to be the one who managed the situation until paramedics arrived. no one should have to experience their classmate being hauled off in an ambulance, but it happens. everyone was worried about my classmate first and foremost, and then about me. no one blamed anyone, and certainly when my classmate happily recovered and returned to school, no one thought they should be removed from the program.

especially for the comfort of "well behaved" ID/DD people

the time when i was young and a girl came up to me and started playing with my hair so i started crying and all the abled adults went quiet and started acting like she was a bomb they had to defuse and eventually literally swept her up like she was a load of laundry and carried her out

i've seen 2 disabled people manhandled out of a room for "misbehaving", and been the one manhandled out myself too

there's a part in the ugly laws: disability in public by susan schweik about seizures which makes a point i want to add onto:

"consider this account, written by charles henderson in 1906, of what happens if a member of the public sees an epileptic seizure:

(quote:) in sociable intercourse the epileptic is an object of dread, and no one who has witnessed the person in a convulsion can quite escape from the haunting memory of the spectacle and entirely free his mind from terror or disgust. hence there cannot be that free, unconstrained, and natural converse which gives pleasure to society. (end quote)

[...]

this kind of thinking, to which the ugly laws have obvious links, often goes along with a certain kind of understanding of the public sphere. public space, in this model, is pedagogic space; what you allow in public is what children learn is allowed in public. if you allow unsightliness a foothold, the next generation will be even uglier. to display something publicly is to spread it."

Okay, I want to address the several comments that expressed concern about Lois and want people to treat her with more compassion, because these additional details are funny and also to comfort you that others also are concerned about Lois. One of the neighbors who talked about this on the town Facebook page and who had said they’d called the cops gave basically this caveat: “please don’t tell us to make friends and try to give her attention in a healthier way. We have done this. She doesn’t want healthier attention. She wants to fake injuries to passing motorists.”