The right to criticize the police without risk of arrest distinguishes a democracy from a police state. – Judge Brian Jackson
Regular readers know that I love unusual covers of songs; here’s one of the guitar solo from “Free Bird” played on a gayageum, proving once again that “cultural appropriation” is not only not bad, but actually awesome. The video was provided by Jesse Walker, and the links above it by Elizabeth N. Brown, Franklin Harris, Popehat, Ed Krayewski, Mark Draughn, Amy Alkon & Tim Cushing, in that order.
- As one does.
- R.I.P. Margot Kidder.
- The voice of Alexander Graham Bell.
- Cop pulls gun on man for buying Mentos.
- I don’t think I want to know who the father is.
- Cop arrests woman for driving while Canadian.
- Ever wonder how I learned to hate cops so early?
From the Archives
- Mike Crawford: one of the most eloquent male voices on sexworker rights.
- Massage parlors are popular pig targets because they’re low-hanging fruit.
- “I don’t want to see heroin-injection sites” is this whole thing in a nutshell.
- Politicians keep promising the impossible & the stupid keep believing ’em.
- Yes, “prostitution investigations” are part of a larger problem: prohibition.
- Women are passive dolls unable to make decisions without male coercion.
- Imposing order on the chaos which dominated my life for over two years.
- Despite political claims, regulations aren’t meant to protect sex workers.
- Delusional “trafficking” fetishist thinks the inflated numbers are too low.
- Anyone “shocked” by this should move to a remote farm without media.
- This man has repeatedly said Seattle is not interested in prosecuting us.
- KIRO has my number & should call it before printing ludicrous garbage.
- This needs to be repeatedly hammered into the faces of prohibitionists.
- In US media, “sex trafficking” is now just a dysphemism for “sex work”.
- Fashion shows promote “sex trafficking” hysteria to enrich sweatshops.
- I told y’all that this wasn’t gonna work, but of course y’all didn’t listen.
- Countering the Seattle Times‘ nauseating bootlicking & prohibitionism.
- This is what robo-fetishists want you to believe will take my job soon.
- A woman who fought New York’s agency-denying “trafficking courts”.
- The egregious lie that the “sex offender” registry isn’t a punishment.
- Canadian prohibitionists desperate to cash in before panic implodes.
- Why yes, I do get tired of saying “I told you so.” Thanks for asking!
- Cops, Kool-Aid, animals, MDMA, musical Tesla coils & much more.
- Reporters compete to write the most cop-fellatory article possible.
- Stenographer parrots clueless cop’s weird masturbatory fantasies.
- The Dutch seem determined to slowly throttle sex work to death.
- How persecuting ridesharing companies is like stripper licensing.
- Every outed sex worker or client should sue the party who did it.
- If you want a professional to entertain you, you need to pay her.
- Cops, bison, bureaucrats, a musical coming out and much more.
- Too bad they still criminalize having sex for the “wrong” reason.
- The poor widdle sheriff “had no alternative” because sex is bad.
- Why do people just accept these ridiculous made-up numbers?
- But it’s not a surveillance measure, because THE CHILDREN!
- An article on student sex workers with a “so what?” tone.
- Spokane cops are on a fanatical client-targeting crusade.
- Missouri wants to define escort ads as “sex trafficking”.
- Which is to say, the second country in the entire world.
- This is TOTALLY different from what American cops do.
- Is Iceland just going to recycle this story every spring?
- How do I return to sex work after a years-long hiatus?
- How to fail at writing a pro-decriminalization article.
- Not just a feminist, but an “anti-trafficking” activist.
- A glimpse at the return of the Sex Workers’ Opera.
- So many rapist cops they needed a whole column.
- Playboy needs to do a lot more articles like this.
- A tale of cookies, mud and chances not taken.
- The release of The Forms of Things Unknown.
- Why do so many women have rape fantasies?
- Rapist cops of the week, 2016 and 2017.
- Kaytlin Bailey on coming out to a lover.
- I’d love to be wrong once in a while.
- OMG an invasion of foreign whores!
- Another murdered transwoman.
- A week of good and bad.
- Is this dude gay?
Regarding The voice of Alexander Graham Bell above.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has not only reproduced Bell’s voice. The same team used similar methods to reproduce a voice recorded 25 years earlier, in 1860, by French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.
Scott de Martinville called his invention the Phonautograph. The Phonautograph made sound recordings on smoked glass or smoked paper, called Phonautograms. Scott de Martinville did not invent a means to reproduce sound from them. The Phoautograph’s purpose was to make sound waves visible for scientific investigation.
The sound the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recovered and reproduced was a fragment of the folk song Au clair de la lune (By the light of the moon), almost certainly sung by Scott de Martinville. They also recovered two 1860 Phonautograms of the song Vole, petite abeille (Fly little bee).
It’s only “cultural appropriation” when people like us do it.