This is Massive Attack's response to what happened in Singapore, posted on their Instagram page. Good on them.

Kirsten Han 韩俐颖@kirstenhan.com · 5d ago

Massive Attack has been banned from Singapore after they held up a Palestinian flag during their concert here last week. www.bbc.com/news/article...

What's more nefarious than age-verification? The chilling effect on platforms. The threat of prosecution is likely enough to get a lot of retailers to end sales of politically "harmful" categories entirely. No more fantasy, no more sex education, no more LGBTQ+ resources. That's the real goal.

And for the really bad news? They've put a target on VPNs. Sites are required to identify (and age-verify) any US citizen, regardless of whether they're using a VPN. In fact, the default is to get the ID and biometrics of EVERYONE unless you can somehow prove their not a US citizen.

Mike Stabile@mikestabile.bsky.social · 2d ago

"VPNs are a privacy and security tool used by millions of internet users every day, and their use should not be treated as suspect. It is particularly galling that the SCREEN Act forces users who intentionally take steps to protect their privacy to identify themselves."

The SCREEN Act is not just another age-verification bill — it goes much further than anything passed at the state-level or in other countries. 1. The bill doesn't just target porn sites. It goes after *any* site that allows material "harmful" to minors. You'd have to scan your face to use Google.

The laws have effectively pushed hundreds of millions of people away from regulated sites where sex workers can actually earn money to pirate sites and sites with illegal, unmoderated content. They're doing to porn what they did with abortion.

I mean not to sound like a broken record but it's almost as if this wasn't about protecting children as much as punishing the sex industry.

I should be clear that the architecture of Bluesky makes it the social media place I most like to be. I'm not on social media to be an influencer or instigator; I want to hang out with folks and have an enjoyable time. This place delivers on that. I hope it continues to do so for a long time.

This case is a terrifying reminder of the fact that being charged with a crime upends your life. Maria Rojas has had her midwifery license suspended, and the conditions of her bond prohibit her from working in healthcare in any capacity. Texas didn't just arrest her, they took away her livelihood.

Autonomy News@autonomynews.co · 2d ago

“The problem is that there's a human being on the other end of whatever political point it is they're trying to make," said an attorney for Maria Rojas, the Texas midwife who is the first person to be prosecuted under the state's criminal abortion ban.

it's actually sad as hell to use AI for research when research is the fun part. you can just email people and call them on the phone and ask them questions about the thing that they have expertise in. you can read documents & learn cool shit. ok now i'm just talking about how being a reporter is fun

A new study out of Canada looked at four youth gender clinics. Out of 445 patients only four who started gender affirming hormone therapy ceased taking it, and only one did so due to a re-identification with their birth sex. assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

A New Study from Canada Again Finds Less Than 1 Percent of Trans Youth Detransition - Assigned Media

Out of 445 patients across four gender clinics only one who started hormone therapy stopped due to a change in gender identity.

assignedmedia.org

Don't forget to read and vote for the Ignyte Awards! The deadline is August 16th, and "Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity" is nominated alongside so many excellent books and stories.

The Ignyte Awards@theignyteawards.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Congratulations finalists! Public voting is now open thru August 16: ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/vote/ We encourage you to read or otherwise engage with the nominated works/folks between now and then. Thanks for tuning in!

god just sort of zoning out and making 20,000 different kinds of ants

I get that most ppl won't know this, but this website is a News Corp site and this journalist in particular is a really really nasty piece of work. Please share the original @404media.co that NC is copying for clicks www.404media.co/ai-companies...

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

404media.co

Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele@drdragases.bsky.social · last wk.

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

The NYC Gay Men's Chorus in 1993. The men in white were the only original chorus members to make it out of the AIDS crisis. We lost SO many young people.

ɪᴍᴍᴀɴᴜᴇʟ ᴋᴜɴᴛ@soberthots.blacksky.app · 4d ago

Hearing Jennifer Lewis talk about the losses she experienced during the AIDS crisis really contextualizes how bad it was. She said that every day she would get a phone call saying at least 3-5 people passed away, and this is just within her immediate circle - think about it nationally.

The diarrhea lettuce company, Taylor Farms, uses slave labor contracted from the Arizona Dept. of Corrections. The backbreaking labor is often performed by imprisoned Mexican nationals who would be otherwise ineligble to work in the US. They are paid $1.50 an hour.

The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor

The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.

futurism.com

and for the weekend crowd..

intelligentwat 🇹🇹 BRING BACK ŁINK@zinrock.bsky.social · last wk.

WE FOUND AN APARTMENT WE CAN AFFORD!! we still have to be approved but we tour next Tuesday, the 4th. we just need a smidgen more to ensure we have the deposit and first month. we are also creating a 'zon wishlist for the kids. gofund.me/63506f95e

The TOS being so strict that they control you offsite is the problem; sites like Patreon and Kofi have offsite clauses too. The social criminalization of the suggestion that somewhere you might be doing nsfw is a problem. It's branding a person as obscene and we need consumers to stand up for us

Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 5d ago

a bunch of popular ASMR artists lost their channels forever this week, after YouTube cited them for violating terms against "sexually gratifying" content: www.404media.co/youtube-asmr...

simply love a sentence that improves exponentially word by word

matt demon@ayshaufarah.bsky.social · 4d ago

We were in the sex panel and there was a tornado so we had to move across the hall to the improv panel.

This was: my panel,

matt demon@ayshaufarah.bsky.social · 4d ago

We were in the sex panel and there was a tornado so we had to move across the hall to the improv panel.

I don’t really want to get into this with people who feel this way, but i don’t think this is a good thing! We don’t need to behave this way! It’s not healthy to approach academic discourse as an exercise in harshness!

it all just sort of makes sense, now, huh. all this shit was just generated by AI and he believed it all enough to parrot it on his podcast, and his fact checking team had to clean up after him this is a really massive blow to popular science. Everything is in question now. does he realize this?

Kotaku@kotaku.com · 5d ago

YouTuber Hank Green Admits He Has Unhealthy Relationship With AI After Facing Backlash Over Recent Video 'The level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs is not healthy for me,' said Green

My publisher was in this building for many years and while it was absolutely an impractical building, I loved visiting and am sad that now the only people who will get to see the view from it are a bunch of rich folks www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

New York City’s Flatiron building enters new era with $58.5m apartments

Manhattan’s triangular building will open this fall to wealthy residents, with 36 apartments exposing Flatiron’s ‘steel skeleton’

theguardian.com

People potentially subject to the nyc pied-à-terre tax are being treated with 1% of the administrative hostility of SNAP and Medicaid applicants, and they’re throwing 100x the fit

If you didn't get to see #Shine when it aired, it's now on Netflix, so hopefully it'll reach a wider audience. It's beautiful and heartbreaking, but also has a lot of hope and love. Some scenes that are hard to watch and one in particular that wrecked me. www.netflix.com/us/title/829...

Watch Shine | Netflix

In 1969 Bangkok, idealistic economist Trin meets carefree musician Tanwa amid political unrest, sparking a forbidden romance that tests their beliefs.

netflix.com

A billion dollars is the socio-economic equivalent of a loose nuke, and we should work with the same urgency and ruthlessness to prevent the acquisition of the former as we do the latter.

Robert Reich@rbreich.bsky.social · 5d ago

Elon Musk is planning to spend at least $100 million to help Republicans in this year’s midterms. That’s just 0.014 percent of his current $702 billion net worth. Oligarchs can rig the system at the expense of everyone else, and only spend pennies doing so. We must get Big Money out of politics.

and it's just really striking to me that amnesty can't capitulate here and have any value as a human rights org, but also that transphobes and the right wing are hoping for that. they want trans rights to be the wedge issue which errode liberties generally

I was just thinking about how "you need to become an influencer to sell books" is ruining everything

Delilah S. Dawson@delilahsdawson.bsky.social · 5d ago

I hate how what I need to do is write books, and yet I keep thinking, "Maybe if I wore increasingly weird glasses and sat in front of my taxidermy with a bubble pipe and did unhinged houseplant reviews I could go viral and sell some books." Doing the work doesn't feel like enough, some days.

Connor in Toronto a couple days ago! via engclau on Instagram

it’s depressing how many dems turn to gutter racism when their backs are against the wall

@thejrocktv.bsky.social · 6d ago

She knows she’s losing so she said let’s just go mask off.

For the record, this Emily Wilson Odyssey review furor is ridiculous, and largely fueled by algorithms designed to work us up over practically nothing. She wrote a very interesting review from her perspective and I personally enjoyed it. Now, it feels like people want her arrested for a crime.