Can porn survive Project 2025?
Plus: Silicon Valley’s death cult, double-daddy rodents, and reverse engineering evolution
Last week, Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers introduced a bill “aimed at restoring moral sanity.” The proposed measures would abolish abortion, outlaw drag story hours, make divorce more difficult, and put an outright ban on pornography.
“Sadly, the left’s century-long assault on morality and decency has been so successful that some have come to accept as normal a society that is drowning in hardcore pornography, prenatal homicide, and sexual performances for children,” Deevers, who just so happens to be two letters away from the perfect drag name, declared in a press release.
If the bill passes into law, anyone caught producing, selling, or simply possessing prohibited material could face between 10 and 50 years in prison.
This isn’t the first time the senator has made headlines for his extreme stance on personal freedoms. He previously proposed legislation that would have the state treat abortion like murder. But this specific set of bills, presented at this particular moment in time, hits differently. For two weeks, Trump has been on a tear. Despite his denials on the campaign trail, he embraced the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, laying the foundation for the roll back of hard-won civil rights.
This playbook, also known as “The Conservative Promise,” names the “toxic normalization” of pornography, drag queens, and “transgenderism” among the greatest threats to American society. Also on that list: communism, inflation, abortion, immigration, drug addiction, and “The Great Awokening.”
Despite their apparently outsized influence, trans people make up a very small fraction of the US population, as do undocumented immigrants; people who watch porn, on the other hand, are everywhere. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Sex Research, porn is bigger than TikTok, ChatGPT, Netflix, and, even, Amazon. How those numbers break down across the political spectrum is unclear, but I’d be willing to bet that a bunch of pud pounders were responsible for the bro-nomenon that swept the 2024 election.
Two days before Trump’s inauguration, I was chatting with my friend and porn mentor, Dian Hanson, about the potential of a TikTok ban and the as-of-yet-unseen horrors of the incoming administration. Dian made her name as the EiC of men’s magazines like Juggs, Leg Show, and Oui; now she’s the sexy book editor at Taschen where she produces coffee table gold. She’s seen the full arc of the porn industry; from the Hollywood-style studio system of the late 20th century to the disruption of social sites like OnlyFans. She’s witnessed attacks on free speech from all sides.
As anyone should be, Dian is pessimistic about a second Trump presidency, but she’s pretty sure porn isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. When I asked her what she thought about the conservative push for hardcore prohibition, she cited statistics that show 97% of men consume NSFW content at some point in their lives.
“That is an issue that would crush a government on the heels of a TikTok ban,” she wrote.
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Sex, singularity, and the new Manson family
Vegan militarism, godlike AI, and a cross-country murder spree; Silicon Valley’s newest “death cult” has it all. Earlier this month, police implicated a crew of bloodthirsty computer programmers, known as Zizians, in the slaying of an 83-year-old Vallejo, California man, and, three days later, the shooting of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont. Under the leadership of an enigmatic engineer going by the name Ziz, the radical rationalist sect that some are calling a cult has been connected to at least one other double homicide and multiple suicides. As of this writing, Ziz is still at large.
Rationalists, like transhumanists, see the singularity as the ultimate evolution of humanity, which raises the question: Did they do it all in the name of AI?
The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults – Read Max
Maps and timeline clarify confusing ‘Ziz’ case linked to deaths of Bay Area landlord, five others – SF Chronicle
Party like it’s 1981? Queer erasure sweeps the CDC
As one of his first acts in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling protections for LGBTQ+ citizens. Now we’re seeing his brand of federally funded bigotry in action. Last Friday, the CDC removed sites and studies pertaining to HIV prevention, trans youth, and mPox vaccines. If this all feels familiar, it should. The echoes of Reagan-era AIDS denial are deafening.
CDC removes gender, equity references in public health material – Washington Post
A group of scientists in Beijing has employed advanced gene-editing techniques to reproduce mice with two dads. The achievement is a big step forward for “bi-parenting,” or same-sex reproduction, but a proper Gayby Boom is likely still a long way off. As it stands, the technique is far too dangerous for human trials. Of the 164 gene-edited embryos produced, only seven pups made it, and those who survived were reportedly infertile, larger than average, and lived shorter lives.
Mice with two dads have been created using CRISPR – MIT Technology Review
In case you need another reason to be sus on the future, might I introduce you to the “lower literacy-higher receptivity” link. Or, what I like to call the AI-enthusiasm gap. According to research published in the Journal of Marketing, the people most enthusiastic about embracing artificial intelligence are the ones who know the least about it. Hell, even the experts building this stuff think it could destroy humanity. But anyway, onward and upward, I guess?
Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – The Conversation
Trending! CNN-branded deepfake sextortion schemes
According to Wired, the Yahoo Boys, a loose group of online scammers and sextortionists based in West Africa, have a clever new trick up their sleeves: deepfake news reports. The con artists apparently build a rapport with their victims before asking them to send nudes. Once the goods arrive, they flip the script and start sending AI-generated deepfake broadcasts, complete with major network branding and automated anchors, accusing their victims of wrongdoing.
Researchers in Switzerland have recreated the process that sparked complex life on Earth. Endosymbiosis, in which one single-cell organism takes up residence inside another, is a fundamental part of many biological functions, but up until now, scientists were in the dark about how the couplings occur.
Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life – Quanta Magazine
Hey Google: Stop fucking up my search results
Are you tired of Google’s AI overview muddying your search results with hallucinations and inaccuracies? Try telling it to fucking stop! Apparently cursing in your search query breaks the bot’s little baby brain and eliminates AI-generated results.
“Just give me the f***ing links!”—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews – ArsTechnica