The Honest Courtesan

The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal.  –  Ron Wyden

A Broker in Pillage

There are many ways for governments to steal things that don’t belong to them:

Louisiana…judges, like most in the country, issue fines and fees.  In other states, the resulting revenue is allocated in ways that prevent judges from personally benefiting from the money they extract.  But…thanks to a court-funding system with its roots in…Jim Crow…a portion of the fines and fees issued by Louisiana judges go into a fund that the judges themselves control…in recent years judges…have used these…funds…to pay for expenses ranging from the staff salaries and law library subscriptions to luxury cars and rooms at the Ritz Carlton.  In 2019, a federal court ruled that [such] use…created a conflict of interest…[but] the two rulings…applied to…New Orleans…the unconstitutional practice…persists in nearly every other district court in the state.  The Louisiana Legislature knows it is unconstitutional…The judiciary knows it is unconstitutional, too…And yet years later, state law remains unchanged…

Dirty Amateurs (#980) 

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

The number of syphilis cases in the U.S…increased by nearly 80% to more than 207,000 between 2018 and 2022.  Rates increased among all age groups, including newborns, and in all regions of the country.  In 2022, 3,755 cases of babies born with syphilis in the U.S. were  reported, which reflects an alarming 937% increase in the past decade…reasons for the increase…includ[e “abstinence only” sex education,] increases in…risky sexual behavior, decrease in condom use, ongoing social and economic conditions and reduction in…STI…services at the state and local level…

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#1186)

“Porn addiction” is still being used as an excuse for violent crimes:

A…man [in Solapur, India murder]ed his [14-year-old] son by forcing him to consume cold drinks laced with sodium nitrate…on January 13…Vijay Battu…was angry as his son was…poor at studies [and Battu blamed this on an imaginary “porn addiction”.  He confessed to poisoning him and dumping his body]…on the roadside…

The Last Shall Be First (#1350) 

The time, money, and energy our society is flushing down the “culture war” toilet is incalculable:

Transgender people in Florida could have their driver’s licenses revoked or face prosecution if they try to change their gender markers…Robert Kynoch, the [head DMV bureaucrat], issued a memo dated January 26 that said…”misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud…and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties”…Kynoch [burbled at length about his beliefs regarding]…”innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics”…and…”frustrat[ing] the state’s ability to enforce its laws”…Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney…who shared the memo on [Twitter], wrote…”if the language used in this directive is taken at face value, any trans person driving with a changed gender marker on their drivers license could be criminally charged with fraud…including tourists…This is a ‘show me your papers’ policy for trans people in the state of Florida”…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1355)

There’s a reason I’ve repeatedly called this cult “dangerous”:

…many researchers and sex therapists worry that [anti-porn] online communities…often endorse inaccurate medical information, exacerbate mental health problems and, in some cases, overlap with extremist and hate groups…One of the central concepts in these communities is known as “nofap,” a…term [which] has come to encompass a set of unproven claims that not masturbating confers social and health benefits…While some figures in this space are [openly] religious, most frame their advice as science-based forms of self-improvement or as a cure for [the nonscientific concept of] pornography addiction…For those who believe [in it], the official NoFap LLC website suggests no masturbation for 90 days, during which the brain supposedly reboots like a computer.  Other claimed benefits of avoiding masturbation may include “superpowers”…

I Spy (#1381)

This has been going on for years, but the Times waited until they admitted it to say something:

The National Security Agency buys [“various types” of information about] Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to a…letter [issued] by the agency [under pressure from Senator Ron Wyden]…the revelation is the latest disclosure to bring to the fore [cop shops’ and spook houses’ abuse of a] legal [loophole by wholesale, warrantless]…purchase [of American citizens’]…data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly.  It comes as the Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on companies that trade in personal location data…gathered from smartphone apps and sold without people’s knowledge and consent…

Stupor Bowl (#1392)

This type of article on the “super bowl sex trafficking” myth is no longer unusual:

This year’s Super Bowl takes place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas…Nevada sex workers and their allies will be gathering at the stadium to protest Super Bowl sex stings and the myths that encourage them…This “Stop the Raids” coalition also held two days of workshops and community-building activities for sex workers over the past weekend…A decade ago, almost all reporting on “Super Bowl sex trafficking” seemed to be wholly credulous of law enforcement’s narrative.  From 2010 to 2016, 76 percent of U.S. print media stories on the subject “propagated the ‘Super Bowl sex trafficking’ narrative,” according to a 2019 paper published in the Anti-Trafficking Review.  Back in 2014—when Maggie McNeill challenged this narrative in Reason—questioning it was a pretty lonely perch.  In recent years, more outlets have been willing to push back against the official narrative, and pieces challenging it have appeared in such publications as Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Slate, Vice, and The Atlantic…

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