You don’t see Superman holding Lex’s sister hostage in return for an orderly surrender. – Stephen Robinson
Dirty Whores
Whores understand the need for STI prevention; amateurs, not so much:
In 2002, a major report predicted an AIDS catastrophe in India. The country would have 20-25m…cases by 2010…But 2010 came and went…That victory – India’s biggest public health achievement – has remained uncelebrated…[because] the people…[who] were crucial in guiding India away from its seemingly inescapable destiny [were] the country’s sex workers…Ashok Alexander spent a decade at the helm of [Avahan,] the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s campaign against HIV. In his book, A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India’s Sex Workers, he says the miracle would never have happened without [them]…Avahan opened drop-in centres where…[sex workers] could unwind, have a hot shower and rest on a mattress on the floor. There was also the chance to be checked for sexually transmitted infection by a doctor without fear of being identified and stigmatised. For Avahan, the centres were a way of collecting the women in one place to be able to give them the information, support and condoms they needed…Avahan…had a presence in 550 towns in just two years; within three, it had become the world’s largest privately sponsored HIV prevention programme…The women knew what was best for them. All Alexander had to do, as he says, was tap into “the strength inherent in even the most marginalised of people if they are enabled to come together in a common cause”…
Surplus Women 
What does her income have to do with her murder?
A murdered escort known as a party girl by her “posh friends” told them she was an IT consultant to cover up her double life as a sex worker…Christina Abbotts…charged $2,500 [a night]…She was beaten around the head 13 times in a brutal attack and strangled, allegedly by a banker who was a regular customer…Zahid Naseem…is accused of the 29-year-old’s murder, at around midnight on her birthday…she…[used] the [stage name] Tilly Pexton…
$2500 for an overnight is a fairly typical rate for “high end” escorts; this detail is not noteworthy in any way. It’s only purpose is to appeal to prurience.
If Men Were Angels
Go on, keep raising your kids to respect authority:
A former high school athletic trainer in Montana accused of sexually assaulting up to 100 boys during a nearly 30-year span has been arrested on multiple counts of child pornography possession…James Eric Jensen…78…groomed and sexually assaulted up to 100 male students, prompting an admission of guilt…after at least 18 victims were identified…Jensen…promised to increase the physical prowess of the teen athletes as young as 14 with a training regimen that he dubbed “The Program” and included routine clinical exams that escalated to massages to oral sex and digital anal penetration…the…incidents…occurred outside the statute of limitations…[but] Jensen [also] had images of child pornography…[which] were discovered after a housekeeper at a retirement community…where Jensen lived told police she saw images of nude boys on his computer…
Pyrrhic Victory (#615)
All too often, evil arrives cloaked in the mantle of expediency:
…Hertz rental cars [has entered a]…partnership with Clear, the biometric face and fingerprint scanning company you’ve seen at airport security checkpoints…At the…Atlanta International Airport this month, you can check out and drive off in your rental car with just a scan of your face (or a fingerprint reading)…if you’re a Gold Plus Rewards program member who’s signed up for Clear…The Fast Lane service will expand to 40 other airport rental locations in the next six months…The rental car scans come less than a week after Microsoft president Brad Smith warned about the dangers of facial recognition tech…government misuse…stem[s] from this convenience. Granted, the Hertz use-case is fairly harmless. But that’s how it always starts…
The Pygmalion Fallacy (#684)
I think it’s kinda hilarious that these dumb sex doll conferences keep getting cancelled:
…the Fourth International Congress of Love and Sex With Robots had the rug pulled out from under it when co-conference Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology abruptly canceled its own event in what it [hilariously and self-importantly] called “a tragic moment in the history of human civilization”…Even before its demise, Love and Sex With Robots was shaping up to be something less than a remarkable affair. The conference appears to have been a nonstarter going back months. Springer Nature pulled the plug on the planned publication of the conference proceedings when it learned back in July that only about 10 papers had been submitted for the planned two-day conference…As of last week, only five academic papers appeared on the schedule, including one paper by Adrian David Cheok in which he apparently asked 15 people if they would like to have sex with a robot…
Pyrrhic Victory (#810)
When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:
…the Electronic Frontier Foundation…filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act…requests…[to investigate] Vigilant Solutions, the largest private company selling [Automated License Plate Reader] technology and data…173 entities (largely police departments and sheriff’s offices, but also some federal agencies) in 23 states scanned a total of 2.5 billion license plates in 2016 and 2017…99.5 percent of scans belonged to cars that weren’t associated with crimes…on average, each agency was directly sharing this information with 160 other jurisdictions at various levels of government…Vigilant…[also] sells access to this dataset to an undisclosed list of entities. What that means is even if your plates were shot in Georgia, your location data may be accessible to cops in say, Illinois. Or it may be bought by private companies or Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
Torture Chamber (#878)
Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together:
(ICE) announced…that federal authorities have arrested 170 immigrants who came forward to sponsor migrant children in government custody. This is the result of a new, fun rule the Department of Homeland Security put into effect…[which] allows immigration authorities to examine the criminal background and legal status of anyone who attempts to sponsor the unaccompanied minors — usually parents or close relatives already in the country. They can even check the papers of any other adults living in their home…It’s a masterclass in evil: Use defenseless children as bait to lure immigrants to the authorities…109 of the immigrants arrested had no criminal record. The remaining 61 had criminal records, but ICE wouldn’t specify [whether they were]…violent offenses…
The article is marred by the fact that author Stephen Robinson, who apparently opposes locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes, praises scumbag prohibitionist Kamala Harris…whose entire career is based on locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes and then using them for slave labor.
Pyrrhic Victory (#884) 
Though Amazon isn’t listening to shareholders, it seems Google is:
Google…made a pretty clear statement about how its facial recognition technology will and won’t be used for the time being…civil rights groups as well as its own investors and employees have urged [Amazon] to stop providing its facial recognition technology to police…
I think it unlikely Google has decided to stop being evil; it’s probably just too busy developing an internet censorship engine for the Chinese government.
Uncommon Sense (#892)
More on the Spanish sex worker union the government wants to suppress:
…APROSEX falls somewhere between a social network, support group, and day-care system. The women check in on one another to make sure they’ve reached and left their dates safely, take turns watching each other’s children during night shifts, and meet…to vent about work and clients. APROSEX counts about 150 members…Two years ago, the women of APROSEX decided it was time to unionize. Once they were a legal entity, they’d have a fighting chance to demand basic workers’ rights and challenge the criminal code. Under a 2015 public-safety law—colloquially known as the “gag law” and widely considered draconian—sex workers can be fined from €600 to €10,400 (roughly $680 to $11,800) for committing “obscene acts” or, more vaguely, for “disobeying authority” in public spaces close to places frequented by minors…Last year, law enforcement reported an average of 1.3 women per day for prostitution, 60 percent of whom were fined…
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