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Porn Star Nabs a Big Win Against Meta
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: CBS News
Top Columbian court says Instagram ban was unlawful, orders policy changes. A top Colombian court has ordered Meta to overhaul its privacy policies after ruling the company unlawfully silenced a prominent adult film actor by shutting down her Instagram account. Esperanza Gomez, who'd amassed over 5 million followers, claimed her account was shut down without explanation after she posted photos of herself in her underwear, which she said was part of her profession, significantly impacting her ability to earn a living. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, contended that Gomez had breached its nudity guidelines. However, the court concluded that Meta's actions were "arbitrary" and that the company infringed on Gomez's freedom of expression, per CBS News.

U.S. Officials to Link 25 Child Deaths to COVID Shots, Report Says
Topic: Children and Family
Source: MedPage Today
Claim said to be reviewed next week by Kennedy's newly installed vaccine panel. Federal health officials are expected to claim a link between COVID-19 vaccines and roughly two dozen deaths in children, according to multiple news outlets. A report outlining a claim of 25 deaths linked to the vaccines is expected to be reviewed by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) during its meeting next week, according to the Washington Postopens in a new tab or window, including at least one linked to myocarditis, the New York Timesopens in a new tab or window detailed.

The Earliest Known Appearance of the F‑Word
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Open Culture
Embrace it. Insert well-placed profanities into your communiqués. Indulge in bawdiness and ribaldry. You may notice that you are doing no more than writers have done for centuries, from Rabelais to Shakespeare to Voltaire. Profanity has evolved right alongside, not apart from, literary history. T.S. Eliot, for example, knew how to go lowbrow with the best of them, and gets credit for the first recorded use of the word “bullshit.” As for another, even more frequently used epithet in 24-hour online commentary?—well, the word “F*ck” has a far longer history.

64% Of Robberies, Physical Attacks, & Sexual Assaults On Parisian Public Transport
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Remix News
Are Committed By Foreigners. There has been an 86% increase in sexual offenses on French public transport, according to the National Observatory on Violence against Women. The data, from the French agency INSEE, as reported by Fdesouche, also shows that in 2024, overall in France, foreigners committed 41 percent of violent robberies, physical and sexual violence on public transport. Nineteen percent of these crimes were committed by North Africans.

California age verification bill backed by Google, Meta, OpenAI
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Politico
...heads to Newsom. The bill could force Gov. Gavin Newsom to choose between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with powerful groups taking different sides. A California bill to check kids’ ages online is heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, after it secured rare support from major tech giants, including Google, Meta and Snap. The proposal, which would require device makers and app stores to verify user ages, cleared the state Assembly 58-0 in the early hours of Saturday with backing from Republicans and Democrats.

SCOTUS Halts SC Ban on Trans Student's Restroom Use
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: CBS News
9th-grader can use boys restroom while legal fight plays out. The Supreme Court has allowed a transgender ninth-grader in South Carolina, known as "John Doe" in court documents, to keep using the boys restroom at school while a legal fight over the state's bathroom ban continues. This interim decision comes as Doe challenges a state rule that bars transgender students from using facilities matching their gender identity, a policy tied to school funding and renewed by South Carolina lawmakers for the new fiscal year, per CBS News.

Historically Black Colleges Cancel Classes
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Associated Press
After Threats FBI says threats don't seem to be credible. A series of reported threats toward historically Black colleges and universities across the US on Thursday led to lockdown orders, canceled classes, and heightened security. Authorities did not elaborate on the type of threats that were made, and no injuries have been reported. The FBI told the AP that it is taking the "hoax threat calls" seriously and that there is "no information to indicate a credible threat." Although the lockdowns have been lifted, some universities opted to call off classes for the rest of the week and send students home.

Aussie Students Spend The Most Time In School, Polish Kids The Least
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Zero Hedge
Students in OECD countries and economies receive an average of 7,604 hours of compulsory instruction during their primary and lower secondary education. However, as Statista's Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, a wide gap exists between countries, with students in Poland receiving an average of just 5,304 hours, compared to Australia where children must attend nearly double that at 11,000 hours.

Appeals panel allows Trump admin to strip Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood
Topic: Abortion
Source: The Hill
A federal appeals court Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to enforce a provision of the new tax cut and spending law that will cut off Medicaid funding from some Planned Parenthood clinics. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold a preliminary nationwide injunction issued in July by a lower-court judge that blocked the Trump administration from cutting funding to all Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Texas A&M FIRES prof
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Post Millennial
...caught kicking student out of classroom for objecting to trans ideology in kids books. Video taken by the student showed her interrupting a lecture by Professor Melissa McCoul, with the student voicing concerns that what was being taught in the class went against executive orders from President Donald Trump, as well as her religious beliefs. "This also goes against, not only myself, but a lot of people’s religious beliefs," "And so I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal," the student said. McCoul told the student, "I do have the legal and ethical authority [and] professional expertise in this classroom," adding, "It’s time for you to leave."

Alberta gov promises to fight for school pronoun law amid legal challenge
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: CBC
Students under 16 must now have parental consent to change their names or pronouns. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative government says it will fight to defend a court challenge to its school pronoun law. "Alberta's government will vigorously defend our position in court," Heather Jenkins, press secretary to Justice Minister Mickey Amery, said in a statement after two 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy groups officially filed a court challenge last week. Jenkins stressed the legislation was introduced to strengthen ties between parents and their child's education.

High school seniors' reading plummets to lowest level since 1992: NAEP
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Post Millennial
The data comes from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Reading skills of high school seniors have hit the lowest point they have been at in three decades, according to new testing data that has been released. In math, the scores also came in at a low point, with scores coming in the worst place they have been since 2005. The data comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, which has been the gold standard of testing for decades for the skills of high school students. Now with the advancements of AI, those with lower reading skills may be at an even greater disadvantage in the workplace. The test determined that only 35 percent of high school seniors were performing at or above reading level for their grade.

Why we must not censor the ghouls celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: Spiked Online
Kirk believed deeply in free speech. Launching a crackdown in his name would be perverse. While normal people thought that the death of another human being was a tragedy, parts of the left, across the West, found cause to celebrate. One video going around social media depicts a young man addressing a small crowd, rousing them with a chant of ‘We got Charlie in the neck’. TikTok was rife with scenes of youthful leftists expressing pure glee at the violent death of a father of two small children. More even-minded individuals on the left took to humming and hawing about the assassination, taking a line that roughly goes, ‘Yes, murder is bad, but hey, Charlie Kirk was asking for it a bit because of some of those things he said’. This is sometimes expressed as, ‘Well, maybe he should have kept his mouth shut’ – something that comes across as much more sinister than I believe is intended.

The murder of Charlie Kirk: cancel culture turns lethal
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
The shooting of the conservative firebrand is the grim capstone to a decade of campus intolerance. Minds have turned to the rising temperature in America. To the bleak rise in political violence. To the bullet that ripped through Donald Trump’s ear last year. To Luigi Mangione shooting Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, in the back with a 3D-printed pistol. I dare say the college campus is where this rot took hold. When Kirk was coming to prominence, students were rioting at Berkeley because Milo Yiannopoulos had dared to show up, or were manhandling academics at Middlebury for interviewing Charles Murray. Now, campus cancel culture has turned deadly.

Has murder become the new porn?
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
The harrowing last moments of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska have been turned into online spectacles. The CCTV footage of Zarutska’s murder was the first to go viral. Watching her final moments left me in a state of shock. My instant reaction was that this was a video that I did not need to see. Unfortunately, thousands of people on social media disagreed. They assumed it was their public duty to share the graphic details of Zarutska’s murder with as many others as possible. It’s been just as deflating to see their hypocritical tone in doing so. Warning of ‘graphic footage’ in the straplines, these posters nonetheless felt compelled to share said footage with the world.

Pirate Porn Study Finds No Difference in Sexual Attitudes After Seeing X-Rated Video
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Reason
The study—titled "Shiver Me Timbers! Effects of Pornography Viewing on Partner, Relationship, and Sexuality Outcomes"—was published in the journal Sexuality and Culture in July. Lead study author Alicia McLean, of the University of Central Oklahoma, recruited 144 participants online and randomly assigned them to watch either 30 minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 30 minutes of the animated pirate film The Pirates! Band of Misfits, or 30 minutes of an X-rated 2005 film called simply Pirates. Afterward, they were given a lengthy and detailed survey about their sexual needs, values, orientation, drive, and fantasies, what factors make for "great sex," and how they feel about their current romantic partner and relationship.

How We Criminalized Childhood
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Reason
Journalist and activist Lenore Skenazy explains how fear and over-parenting left kids more anxious and less independent, and and how a movement to restore that independence is gaining ground. The Reason Interview goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and visionaries who are making the 21st century more libertarian—or at least more interesting—by challenging old, worn-out ideas and orthodoxies. Today's guest is Lenore Skenazy, a journalist and activist dubbed "the world's worst mom" for letting her nine-year-old son ride the New York subway alone back in 2008

The mutiny of Middle England’s mums
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: Unherd
Contra received opinion on the internet Right, Reform has understood one of Britain’s deep truths: the ladies of this land are not, in fact, “naturally” Left-wing. Stats nerds may point to women’s overall 2024 electoral preference for Left-wing parties, and to the increasingly gendered political polarisation of the young, in which young women veer Left while their male peers sidle Right. But more women than men voted Tory in 2024, and the British daily newspaper with the largest female audience has long been the Mail. Ordinary British women, especially mothers, are not precisely conservative, if by this you mean abstract stuff about markets or Edmund Burke. But they are fiercely so, if by this you mean animated by a desire to protect their own. The confusion arises because if you view politics from this angle, it’s less about ideology than embracing whichever political offer seems best calibrated to help you do so.

Defying Cultural Assault, Men More Likely Than Women to Embrace Family Values
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: SAVE
In the 1960s, feminist Kate Millett convened consciousness-raising sessions for liberal women. The back-and-forth recitations went like this:
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” Millett asked the group.
“By destroying the American family!” the women answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” Millett came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” Millett replied.
“By taking away his power!”