Phaedrus

What we really, really need right now is a vaccine against conspiracy theories.

And the usual suspects are complaining about it... https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/conservatives-call-for-appeal-of-ontario-court-decision-that-found-federal-prostitution-law-unconstitutional/

Thanks for the insights, @Everleigh May! I'm just wondering... what name did you go by back in the CERB days?

Great interview, @Kilt Boy! It was really interesting to find out more about you.

This is interesting https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56737828

And the war on porn continues: Mastercard is *really* cracking down. That means Visa probably won't be far behind. Of course, this won't just affect the likes of Pornhub; it'll be a real problem for any site that sells adult content, including the sites and services that providers have been using to get through the pandemic.

Oh, gawd... where to start? Double-dipping? Yes, they do it in porn and it's probably safe enough... but you don't get the see the hours of decidedly unsexy cleaning that goes into making sure you can do that without getting infections all over the place. Choking? From what I've read, this is becoming a huge problem. There's an entire generation of men that have grown up believing that grabbing someone's throat while you fuck her is an entirely normal thing to do. Fingering? If you go at someone's ladybits the way they normally do in porn, you're going to hurt her. This is why an increasing number of providers just don't allow it at all. Spit? If the number of "spit is not lube" posts I see on Twitter is anything to go by, this is another big one. And honestly, all the rough sex you see in porn. Hopefully that was all negotiated beforehand, but we keep reading horror stories about people who go beyond what was agreed on shoots. And even when that doesn't happen, it doesn't help with the people who get the idea that you can just start the slapping/jackhammering/whatever else without talking about it first. And on a less serious note: a lot of the positions in porn look really uncomfortable to me. But I guess they're driven by the need to let a camera in to see what's going on, which isn't a concern for most of us.

I get the feeling that these people have been on (or seen what happens on) boards, and just decided they don't want any part of that scene. Which is a shame. Thanks! Actually, for me this is probably the thing I like most about boards: we can have this sort of conversation. The main alternative for communication these days seems to be Twitter, and you just don't get it there. There's a lot of stuff which is too complex or nuanced to go into a tweet. And the other problem with Twitter is that anything you say kinda disappears into the void very quickly; it flies though people's timelines and then... nobody will ever see it, unless they make a point of going to your profile to see what you've been saying. But here, I can respond to a post from five days ago as easily as one from five minutes ago, and I don't miss stuff that happened when I wasn't online.

@Kitten Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you shouldn't post links - more access to information is always good!

I don't think this is new, particularly. You get this sort of thing with any online community (or real life one, for that matter); some people take the time to read/listen and get a feel for what the community is like before they engage, and some people just make assumptions and jump right in, and some just don't even realize this sort of thing is an issue. The latter types are the ones that there's issues with - either they think they can get away with the same shit they pull elsewhere, or they just don't have a clue what's OK and what isn't - but they generally either get straightened out reasonably quickly, or figure out they're in the wrong place and leave... or leave with a bit of assistance :)

Thanks, @Ava Maria Love - it's great to get a provider's perspective on this stuff, especially given how unpopular boards seem to be in general. Whenever I see boards mentioned there does seem to be a general approach from providers that "all boards are toxic". I can see why people would say that, but it's good to know that not everyone believes it. Boards can choose to be as toxic (or not) as they like, depending on what the people running them choose to allow. This is very good news; if we have more SPs coming for this, maybe a few of them will feel inclined to post in the main board while they're here...

To some extent, that just reflects the normal progress of any new disease. To start with we know nothing about it, and we gradually learn how it's spread, and what the risks are, and how to treat it.... but in the meantime, yes, you get a lot of stuff that's just wrong, and this is how you get the "you can catch AIDS from toilet seats" stuff. This is also inevitable, because the way science works is by creating a theory about how things happen and then attempting to disprove it - but most people simply don't understand that, and when they see this normal process of scientists being wrong sometimes and correcting themselves as they find out more, they interpret it as inconsistency, or scientists being clueless, or 'all the experts are wrong so why bother with them'. We've seen this process at warp speed over the last year. Remember last spring? Everyone was obsessively washing their purchases because we thought that Covid might be transferred via surfaces; it can be, but we now know that's very rare. We were told not to wear masks by some folks; the theory there was that the home-made cloth masks everyone had back then weren't virus-proof, and so it's better to get people to stay home rather than give them a false sense of security). Again, we now know better, but those early instructions still generate a whole lot of bad-faith attacks from people who are just trying to discredit political opponents by any means necessary. Of course, as you note, the situation with HIV was far worse because the people who really got hit hard by it were folks who were abhorred by more self-righteous segments of society, and so there was this horrible attitude of "if you get HIV you probably deserved it for your immoral lifestyle". And, of course, the same people who believe that are deliberately playing up the myths about how you catch it, because they want to scare their own communities out of that same immoral lifestyle. Covid, at least, doesn't have that - although the disinformation machine is far more effective these days, and even wearing a mask is political in some places now.

One of the issues here is that I think most people know as much about this as they want to. The information is there, but if people wish to put their heads in the sand it will never do them any good.

I think the most common misconceptions are "I'll be fine!" and its close relative "It hasn't happened to me yet, so it never will". And also that certain things are completely safe. It's not possible to remain completely safe without being completely celibate. It's all about reducing the risk to acceptable levels.

Well, here's one excuse you can't use any more https://www.theonion.com/trojan-introduces-new-anti-anxiety-weighted-condoms-1842619828

Absolutely. I think the Bedford case took five or six years from start to finish. This one would probably be similar if we didn't have a pandemic slowing everything down. But we've taken the first step, and that's a big deal.

I'm pretty sure we did :)

Hopefully, this will lead to the removal of C36/PCEPA (the current Canadian law around sex work). https://sexworklawreform.com/sex-worker-human-rights-groups-launch-constitutional-challenge/

TBH I think the anonymity is the thing they really hate. Governments will flood us with FUD about criminals using it, and I suspect there's a large part of the corporate world that hates it too. How can they sell more things to you if they don't know what you're spending your money on now?

Great interview, @500 Pound Gorilla! Thanks for doing it! I remember reading the recommendations a couple of folks wrote for you...

This. There are sooo many people who don't understand this... Thanks for the insignts, @Andee

Well, yes. That's what I thought. I'd love to believe it will get there, but I'm afraid I don't have your faith that it will. I might be completely wrong here, but my understanding is that the fundamental issue here is the computing power required to keep the blockchain sane, the cost of adding a new transaction to it, and the fact that this continually gets worse as the blockchain grows with every transaction. You can already find a whole bunch of hand-wringing articles about how much power that consumes and how bad for the environment it is. But if bitcoin becomes widely used, there will be several orders of magnitude more transactions. I don't see how it remains sustainable at that point. Who's going to want to put all that computing horsepower at bitcoin's service once mining is no longer a thing? The end of mining won't necessarily make it stable; if people continue to speculate, then it'll continue to be volatile. We can get massive swings in the value of things that have absolutely nothing to do with their inherent worth (hi, Gamestop!). The other issue here is that bitcoin, like any currency, only has value because we collectively agree that it has value. Traditional currencies are backed by central banks and by governments that attempt to keep them stable, and usually - but not always - succeed. Who does that for bitcoin? A run on a cryptocurrency could well end up looking like a bank run on steroids. I hope you're right, because I fundamentally love the idea of a currency that's easy to use and divorced from government control. Perhaps. But a lot depends on what people do with it... and now that NFTs are news I'm doing a *lot* of eye-rolling. There is no technology so pure that we can't use it to do something stupid, alas.

Thanks for this, @conquistador! I have to say, this is something I know very little about - it's always great to find out more.

Well, that's great if you view Bitcoin as a chance to make a quick profit (and if you don't gamble more than you can afford to lose). But it's disastrous for something that aspires to be a useful currency. I guess the real question here is, "So what is Bitcoin for?"

Yep. This. Thanks for all the work you do to keep things interesting here, Lydia - it's much appreciated!