In The News (24)

Death Came for the Dakotas In terms of the coronavirus, they’re a theater of American disgrace. ........ Deep into the coronavirus pandemic, when there was no doubt about the damage that Covid-19 could do, the Dakotas scaled their morbid heights, propelled by denial and defiance. .............. The Dakotas are a horror story that didn’t have to be, a theater of American disgrace. ............... many South Dakotans’ distrust of science and unshakable belief that the virus wouldn’t come for them. ............ Throughout the pandemic, he said, he was deluged with communications from constituents adamantly opposed to any mask-wearing requirement, which North Dakota didn’t even have. ............ One month later, Noem played cheerleader for a 10-day motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., that attracted some 460,000 people. .......... “a Woodstock of unmasked, uninhibited coronavirus defiance.” .......... Doering was reeling from tending to dying Covid-19 patients who continued to insist that the coronavirus was some kind of hoax. ..............  They “scream at you for a magic medicine” and warn that Joe Biden will ruin America even as they’re “gasping for breath,” she wrote. She added: “They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have Covid because it’s not real.” “They stop yelling at you when they get intubated,” she wrote. “It’s like a horror movie that never ends.” ........................  “To visit Iowa right now is to travel back in time to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in places such as New York City and Lombardy and Seattle, when the horror was fresh and the sirens never stopped,” Godfrey wrote. “The virus has been raging for eight months in this country; Iowa just hasn’t been acting like it.” ................... “North Dakotans will come to each other’s aids in a heartbeat, but when asked to give up personal freedom for an amorphous common good — that’s difficult” .................  “We maybe believed that our rural nature sheltered us from what cities like yours were experiencing,” Carson said. “Then we found out, very brutally, that was wrong.” 

The Children of Pornhub Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault? ............. That supposedly “wholesome Pornhub” attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. Pornhub rakes in money from almost three billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world. .............. Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are. ................  Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. .............. Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. ............... The issue is not pornography but rape. .........  I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive. ................ a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation. Google returns 920 million videos on a search for “young porn.” Top hits include a video of a naked “very young teen” engaging in sex acts on XVideo ................ Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. ...............  Twenty members of Canada’s Parliament have called on their government to crack down on Pornhub, which is effectively based in Montreal. ............. Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube .............. XHamster and XVideos ....... Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it. .............  Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. ............ Nominally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, Mindgeek is a private company run from Montreal. ........ its business model profits from sex videos starring young people. ....... 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub .......... a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable. ............ “It’s never going to end,” Nicole said. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma.” ................ I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa. ................. With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000.

The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense It’s not edible, but it can save lives. The virologist Ian Mackay explains how. ......... “One of the first principles of pandemic response is, or ought to be, clear and consistent messaging from trusted sources”