In the news (#1470) | The honest courtesan

These extraordinary restrictions… serve no purpose other than to harm transgender people in Florida.

The face of human trafficking

Please note that cases of actual coercion do not look much like the myths:

An Oregon man was arrested (and charged) with human trafficking (for) the exploitation of a man with an intellectual disability… Jack Hauser (was) supposed to be a caregiver for the 26-year-old man after the victim’s mother died… (but) for at least two years… Hauser forced the man to sell drinks and snacks at the exit of a Hillsboro shopping mall, where he was often forced to stay for days and nights without shelter or proper clothing… he was allowed… to sleep only in a car or in a gazebo… Hauser also limited his contact with other people, as well as his access to money and health care…

Disaster (#978)

Seattle is known for cloaking its police state in false “liberal” talk:

(Seattle) City Attorney Ann Davison and… City Councilwoman Cathy Moore (have) proposed (nonsensically labeled) SODA and SOAP zones… that would, among other things, ban sex workers from a designated area on Aurora Avenue North, a major corridor of Seattle’s survival sex trade. In a bizarre moment during her presentation, Moore showed video of sex workers engaged in what she described as “commercial sexual exploitation”… (but in reality) just (surveillance video of) sex workers walking around an Aurora street corner… taping sex workers for public screening in a recorded meeting that was also posted online – without anyone in that video getting a voice – is an odd way to try to prove how opposed to exploitation you are. It’s an exploitative act in itself, and a reminder of how out of touch the City Council is…

The Public Eye (#1385)

This childish puritanism is so tiresome:

(MAGA)ists in Indiana are campaigning to unseat an elected official after a blog exposed her as an OnlyFans model and published multiple screenshots of her member account. The moralistic witch hunt against Etna Troy Township Trustee Elaine Western originated at Real News Michiana, which first exposed her as a sex worker in April and is now ad(vertising) a “petition to have her post censored, investigated and removed”…In April, Western told the site, “I didn’t try to keep it a secret. I’m not doing anything illegal”…(and her) attorney warned the a(gitators) that their attempts to intimidate Ms. Western into resigning to avoid a public media circus…could constitute a criminal offense of harassment”…

Panopticon (#1413)

Another “security system” that isn’t:

…the Oakland Police Department…and (other police agencies)…are increasingly on the lookout for…Teslas parked near…(“crime scenes”), hoping their unique outward-facing cameras have captured key evidence. And…they’re even grabbing…(stealing) cars to make sure they don’t lose the video…While few cars have camera systems comparable to Teslas, that could soon change, especially as the (“monkey see, monkey do” habits of marketers) continue…In at least three cases in July and August, Oakland police attempted to (steal) a Tesla…to…obtain the stored video…There’s no guarantee that a Tesla will capture a crime happening nearby…But the police who see Teslas as rolling surveillance cameras (don’t) (give) a damn…Similar problems have arisen with self-driving cars (and delivery robots)…in San Francisco and other cities, which are also equipped with advanced video capabilities…But in those cases, the police are subpoenaing the tech company…because it owns the cars and the data. Tesla drivers, on the other hand, are being (violated) individually because they have control over their own camera feeds…

Social Autoimmune Disorder (#1416)

Politicians continue to try to portray old civil rights violations as new “solutions” to problems of their own making:

San Francisco (politicians spewed out the idiotic phrase “)illegal prostitution(” to justify a series of civil rights violations), including sending “Dear John” letters to the owners of vehicles (that happened to be driving through) the neighborhood. Mayor London Breed also spewed out the magic word that justified rights violations) “safer”…to…encourage useful idiots to report each other to the pigs, and) the city plans to install (magical bills) barriers along Shotwell Street…(along with more) license plate recognition (and facial recognition) cameras…to (monitor) individuals (long after sane sex workers have simply moved to a new street)…

You have been warned (#1438)

Governments are becoming increasingly brazen in their internet censorship:

In the… standoff between Elon Musk and Brazil… neither side is coming out of it well… Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes (is) (1) freezing Starlink assets and (2) threatening to…ban Twitter from the country entirely…Brazil has done this in the past with WhatsApp and Telegram. The freezing of Starlink’s assets…suggests how far Moraes would go…in this war of attitudes. He was apparently prepared to go even further, to the point of potentially blocking VPNs entirely…ISPs and app stores have been ordered to…block the (Twitter) app within five days…Moraes appears to be reversing that part of the ruling (blocking VPNs), though perhaps only temporarily…after Moraes hears from “the parties to the proceedings,” the VPN ban could come back…the…order…also threatens to fine anyone who manages to circumvent the block up to nearly $9,000 per day…

The last shall be first (#1448)

The time, money and energy our society flushes down the toilet of the ‘culture war’ is incalculable:

Several transgender youth and adults are being told their care will be terminated after a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals… allowed a 2023 law… to go back into effect after it was blocked in June… The ruling… said transgender people… do not receive the same level of… protection under the Constitution as other categories such as race, ethnicity, religion or gender. This…implies that laws that discriminate against transgender people would likely be considered…constitutional by the 11th Circuit…SB254…banned gender-affirming care for…youth…(and) also limited care for…adults…(by) requiring that such care…only be provided by physicians…the majority of (current) care is provided by nurses…because the number of transgender adults far exceeds the capacity of physicians (in the field)…If the Supreme Court were to rule (in an ongoing case arising from Tennessee’s ban on transgender care) that transgender people are not entitled to equal protection under the law, many forms of discrimination…could be considered perfectly legal…many (in Florida) cannot afford to wait for such a decision, and…have already fled the state…

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