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Is Cryptocurrency dead in 2023?
Unveiling the Future of Cryptocurrency: A Paradigm Shift in 2023
LEARN WHAT IS CRYPTO MININING
Introduction: Embracing the Rise of Crypto
In an ever-evolving digital landscape, the world of cryptocurrency has emerged as a transformative force. With its decentralized nature and potential for financial independence, crypto has gained significant attention from individuals, investors, and businesses alike. As we dive into the future of cryptocurrency in 2023, we explore the dynamic changes and groundbreaking developments that have reshaped the industry, debunking any notions of its demise.
The Crypto Revolution: Unveiling the Truth
The Resilience of Crypto in the Face of Adversity
Contrary to sensationalist claims, the death of cryptocurrency is far from reality. In fact, the resilience and adaptability of crypto have become more evident than ever before. The industry has weathered various storms, including regulatory challenges and market fluctuations. This resilience is rooted in the underlying technology of blockchain, which has proven its robustness and ability to withstand adversities.
read complete articles click to READ
KNOW MORE The World’s Top-Earning Models: Defying Limits of Success
Kendall Jenner, a name synonymous with grace and style, has rapidly ascended the ranks of the modeling world. Born into the iconic Kardashian-Jenner clan, Kendall ventured into the industry with a determination to carve her own path. Her natural poise and striking features captivated audiences worldwide, leading to an influx of lucrative opportunities.
HER PANTHOUSE CLICK
#defying limits#evan carmichael top 10 rules for success#success coaching#cultivating success#jeff bezos top 10 rules for success#age defying#the limits npr#business success#the pursuit of happiness#success#stratospheric success#the limits jay williams#the theory of everything#the pursuit of happyness#economic models#success motivation#ring of honor#harvard study of adult development#function of holes in airplane windows#humans of maine#cryptocurrency#cryptocurrency news#raoul pal cryptocurrency#cryptocurrency mining#cryptocurrency new#cryptocurrency live#why is cryptocurrency down#cryptocurrency market#cbdc vs cryptocurrency#cryptocurrency prices
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Just thinking about like. How biden has done shit like make pharmaceutical companies have to negotiate prices with insurance and has made it possible to get non-hearing aid hearing aids, and gotten infrastructure money to areas that haven't had shit in decades, and like yeah OBVIOUSLY he's not fucking perfect but trump is the reason we have at least 3 simultaneous listeria outbreaks because he fucking slashed regulations.
Like. Biden (& Harris) are out here doing shit that is quietly improving people's lives and its getting ignored because they aren't undoing decades of policy on Israel (and YES its fucking horrifying but I PROMISE you trump would be worse) and Trump is, in addition to all the blatantly horrifying things that Project 2025 intends (disenfranchising huge swaths of already marginalized communities, ravaging freedom of the press, criminalizing queerness, etc and so on) just cheerfully responsible for fucking over decades of work done to protect environmental, individual, and public health.
#I half-jokingly told my roommate like 10 days ago 'I bet trump cut some regulation and that's why there's all this listeria'#SWEAR TO GOD 3 days later NPR has an article on exactly what regulations trump cut that allowed less strict sanitation for meat processing#That DIRECTLY lead to at least one of the current outbreaks (probably 2- the boarshead & the chicken + beef)#And im sure also impacted the other one#And like! Another trump presidency would probably include slashes to public health budgets#Limiting the ability to track confirm and pinpoint outbreaks!#Im not even slightly kidding when I say that another trump presidency will kill people#It will kill a fuck ton of people and you know who's first. It won't be the rich.
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Mannie Fresh talks Lil Wayne being overlooked for Super Bowl and Hot Boyz reunion [VIDEO]
Mannie Fresh Discusses Lil Wayne’s Exclusion from Super Bowl, Hot Boyz Reunion, and Touring with Juvenile Continue reading Mannie Fresh talks Lil Wayne being overlooked for Super Bowl and Hot Boyz reunion [VIDEO]
#400 degreez#b.g.#back that azz up#birdman#cash money records#hot boyz#jay-z#juvenile#lil wayne#mannie fresh#master p#new orleans#no limit records#npr#roc nation#super bowl 2025#tiny desk concert#turk
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I am not excited about Harris as a candidate, but I will be voting for her in this upcoming election. This is why→
(full transcript under the cut)
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
“Transgender ideology” to be classified as pornography & excluded from First Amendment protection. Authors who produce & distribute it threatened with prison. Educators & public librarians who share it classed as registered sex offenders. communications & technology firms that facilitate its spread shuttered. -Project 2025, page 5
Delete the terms sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, & inclusion, gender equality, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, out of every federal rule, contract, grant, regulation, & piece of legislation that exist. -Project 2025 page 5
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit. -Project 2025, page 141
Increase all fees for asylum applications, limit the availability of fee waivers. -Project 2025, page 146
Mandatory appropriation for border wall system infrastructure. -Project 2025, page 147
Deny loan access to those who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents & deny loan access to students at schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens. -Project 2025, page 167
Ensure that only U.S. citizens & lawful permanent residents utilize or occupy federally subsidized housing. -Project 2025, page 167
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Encourage intelligence agencies not to waste effort collecting surveillance data when they can buy it from private sector facial recognition companies. -Project 2025, page 206
Defund the Corporation for Public Broadcast, specifically NPR & PBS educational programs like Sesame Street. -Project 2025, pages 246-247
The USDA will not be able to place environmental issues ahead of agricultural production. Reconsider the Food Stamps program. -Project 2025, page 290
Labeling regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture & sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated. -Project 2025, page 302
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Eliminate the Community Eligibility Program which allows school districts with high rates of poverty to offer meals to all students without having to qualify each student individually. No longer provide meals to students during the summer unless students are taking summer-school classes. -Project 2025, page 303
No public education employee shall use a pronoun in addressing a student that is different from that student’s biological sex without written permission of the parents or guardians. -Project 2025 page 346
Delete reporting on which educational institutions claim religious exemption from Title IX. -Project 2025 page 357
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Gut the Office for Civil Rights’ power to prosecute any kind of discrimination in public schools. -Project 2025, page 357
Eliminate the Office of Fossil Energy & Carbon Management -Project 2025 page 377
Eliminate the stand-alone Office of Environmental Justice & External Civil Rights -Project 2025, page 421
Restructure the Office of International & Tribal Affairs into the American Indian Environmental Office -Project 2025, page 421
Eliminate the Office of Public Engagement & Environmental Education -Project 2025, page 421
Pause all action of the Environmental Protection Agency for review. -Project 2025, page 422
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Center for Disease Control stripped of the ability to suggest that schools embrace masking or vaccination strategies. -Project 2025, page 454
All states will be required to submit detailed information about pregnancies, abortions & miscarriages to a federal database. -Project 2025, page 455
The medication Mifepristone, a life-saving drug used to stop deadly postpartum hemorrhages that’s also used in chemical abortions, will be banned. -Project 2025, pages 458-459
Artificial intelligence should be used to determine what is suitable treatment for those currently covered by Medicare. -Project 2025, page 463
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which implements government price controls for prescription drugs. -Project 2025, page 465
Funding for abortion travel prohibited under the Hyde Amendment. -Project 2025, page 471
End taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. -Project 2025, page 471
Withdraw Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance. -Project 2025, page 472
Hospitals will no longer be willing to perform emergency abortions, even to save the life of the mother. -Project 2025, page 473
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Rescind the Department of Health & Human Services' ability to impose a moratorium on rental evictions during COVID. -Project 2025, page 492
Rescind large portions of The Endangered Species Act & The Migratory Bird Treaty Act, reinstate Trump’s plan for opening the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska to leasing and development. -Project 2025, page 524
Review & downsize national monuments. -Project 2025, page 532
End the Endangered Species Act’s ability to prevent economic development & de-list many currently endangered species. -Project 2025, pages 533-534
I AM VOTING AGAINST THIS
Make it harder for workers to unionize & easier for employers to retaliate against whistleblowers & organizers. -Project 2025, pages 601-602
TikTok classified as a national security concern & made non-operational. -Project 2025, page 674
Break up National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, including National Weather Service & National Marine Fisheries Service. -Project 2025, page 674
Downsize the Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research; disband its climate-change research work. -Project 2025 page 676
AND SO MUCH MORE.
The full text of Project 2025 is available at static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf I am very grateful to stopproject2025comic.org which produced a series of very readable comics to help explain many sections of Project 2025. Some of the language in this post is taken directly from their transcripts. (You can read many of their comics here on tumblr @stopproject2025comic) Please vote against Project 2025. Our tattered democracy, healthcare, clean air & water, workers rights, reproductive rights, civil rights, intellectual freedom and more are at stake.
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↷ ⋯ ♡ᵎ I FOUND MY BEST FRIEND LITTLE SISTER FINISHING IN HIS BATHROOM WHILE MOANING MY NAME. So... I fucked her.
tags: smut, unprotected sex, dumbification, breeding, overstimulation, a lot of cum, age-gap, gojo is SO obsessed with you, tummy bulge, sadism, breeding, dacryphilia, cunnilingus, reader gets caught masturbating, objectification if you squint, possesive gojo...
A/N: wasn't my last writing of the year lol, wrote this while watching sinjin drowing so npr, happy holidays!!
You’ve known Gojo Satoru almost for your entire life. It was one day your brother Suguru introduced the both of you just so he could enter the house and have dinner to continue playing with Satoru.
Ever since Gojo has been a daily presence in your house. He was known as “Y/N’s big brother hot best friend” well, mostly to the ones who liked Gojo, because that didn’t stop the other girls from crushing into your brother.
You told your friends you didn’t like Gojo in that way, since he was off limits for you- Not only because he was your brother's best friend but because it also ruined your hopes thanks to the age difference you had between.
Being a freshman in college wasn’t easy. Not only you had the weird seniors going for the new girls, but being known as the Geto’s Suguru’s hot little sister didn’t feel like a compliment either. At least Gojo treated you as your own person, not like Geto’s other friends.
Geto invited you over at his dorm, having some of his close friends present, which included Gojo. It turned into an usual occurrence ever since you entered college, your brother making it easier for you to adapt into this new environment.
All of you decided to take it easy tonight and just watch a movie. Nothing wrong with it, right? Well, there's nothing wrong. While watching, Gojo would try to make small talk with you, most likely because he’s just clingy and Geto is hanging with his girlfriend on the other sofa. Nothing wrong with what’s happening. During scary moments he would lean and hug you. Keeping his right hand on your left thigh, playing with the strings of your tiny small pajama shorts.
That comment is his, obviously. Keeping the blanket covering both of your bodies and his totally not wrong act. And you’re pretty sure if he just moved his hand a little higher he would feel your wetness coating your shorts.
Gojo was trying to gain your attention. It’s pretty obvious he’s been crushing you for years now, and he’s pretty sure Suguru has commented about it. Taking it as a go to continue flirting with you and adorning your pretty face with reddish colors.
But ever since he entered college, he kinda forgot about his crush and got his head (and dick) into other girls. The first time he saw you again, he couldn’t believe it. You looked so beautiful and.. different in a good way. It’s like his caged feelings escaped and flew all across the room.
And he’s sure that happened to you too, because your pretty face didn’t hide those loving reddish colors he adored.
Coming back to the present, it was kinda weird everytime he hugged you or leaned into you. You seemed uncomfortable… Your thighs caging his hand, making his blood run straight into his cock. But he didn’t think anything about it, and assumed it was normal.
While he was leaning into you, it became difficult and you decided to go to the bathroom to at least fix the problem going on between your legs and left. After a while, Gojo noticed that you were taking a long time, and he really needed to use the bathroom too to also fix his problem between his legs. He got up, commenting about going to the bathroom too. His friends clearly are not caring about it– too busy in their make out session.
He got out and decided to wait for you to get out of the bathroom. He stood in front of the bathroom door for a while until he realized the door was unlocked so he assumed that you already finished and just went somewhere else.
He opened the door and then, he saw you.
Never in his entire life did he expect to see such a pretty sight. Your pretty fucking face could make him cum alone. Your mouth making an ‘o’ form with your eyebrows scrunched up, just whimpering his name. Legs opened up trying to find balance sitting down in the toilet.
And you might have an exhibitionism kink or maybe you were just at your limit. Because once you realized Gojo was standing there watching you, it brought you to climax. Taking you an embarrassing amount of time to recover from it.
He couldn’t believe his eyes and shut the door in front of you face and went back to the living room with a raging erection, and never mentioned the incident with you from the remaining time.
As soon as he left, you went up running towards him, begging to not tell anyone about it. And Gojo Satoru, being the asshole he is, saw this as an opportunity.
“Okay.”
“Okay?! Oh my god Gojo, thank you so much- I swear I can explain it was-”
“But,”
Fuck. There has to be a ‘but’
“You have to go out with me and do it on my face.”
Silence…
“I- I’ve never done it before…”
Oh fuck. You’re going to be the cause of the death of Gojo Satoru.
He wasted no time taking you to his dorm, stealing small pecks from you which helped you with the anxiety in your tummy turn into desire for him. Feeling confident enough, once the both of you entered his dorm he closed the door and you attacked his lips with no warning. Earning a groan from him, your hole clenching at the feeling of his clear erection making its presence between the both of you.
He picked you up, a moan leaving his lips once he realized the big difference of size between your bodies, thinking how you would be capable of taking his cock. He had to prepare you enough to fit him.
Your back arched from the bed as Satoru's tongue laps up the slick of your soaking hole, his lips around your clit, sucking like his life depended on it. It's been so long since he felt like this for somebody, the feeling that he just wants to bend you over anything and just... shove his cock in your tight little pussy.
It's like, you're created for the sole purpose of pleasuring him. You just have to be, that's what he thinks as he plays with your body. Fat tears fall out of your pretty doe eyes, your hands finding their way onto his scalp and tugging at his hair.
Why can't you just take it? Look at you now, whimpering and crying, but on the inside you know you love it, being a little whore for your brother’s best friend– you sob as he continues his assault on your poor pussy.
Why do you keep screaming at him to stop? You were just screaming his name some hours again. Is it the overstimulation? But you weren’t prepared enough for his cock!
Gojo knows you better than anyone, he knows you even better than your older brother. Why do you think he’s the one taking care of you this whole time in college? Who do you think has been scaring off the guys waiting in line to have a taste of this pussy? It’s so weird you don’t know about it because everyone thinks you’re off limits right now. Is it because you’re really that naive? Maybe he loved that of you, how you’re so clueless of how crazy you make him. Being known as “Gojo’s Satoru’s hot next and official last real girl” instead of “Geto’s hot little sister”
Like- That’s why he's giving your sweet little cunt a lot of attention right now.
“Ssatoru! Please, stop! baby… ‘s too much..” All your whines fall into deaf ears as he continues without a care. Your pussy felt so stimulated as he sucked on your hole, his tongue licking and his throat groaning at the mere taste of your slick.You can barely lift your hands in exhaustion.
For hours, he didn't stop, continuously dragging orgasms out of you without fail.
“Aww, are you tired? But I finally have the girl of my dreams" You nodded, your tummy full of butterflies, making a mental note to talk about your feelings with Satoru tomorrow- your eyes droopy from all the cumming you've been doing for the past hours.
"But, princess, I'm not done yet~ I have to show you how much I desired you this whole time, how much I have waited for you to finally give and and realize." Gojo purred as unclasped the button of his pants, taking off his own clothing. “ But I guess you were just so dumb to get it all those years ago, at least you kept this cute cunt for me. We still have much time left. Fill you up and break you apart baby” You were faced by his raging cock, hard and full- he sits back down between your legs, lifting them up to his shoulders again, he then rests his hand against your clit. And after that, he slapped your pussy so hard that it made you jump and cry of his name. Never in your life did you expect your dream to become true and have your first time with him. Nor Gojo being a sadist and a have an obsession with your pretty little cunt compared to him
"I'm gonna pump your pussy with all the cum I have, girlie. You made a promise after all."
It's like Gojo doesn’t have a stamina limit in his body- able to go round after round in position after position - but at this point it’s been god knows how many times. He’s addicted to the way you feel around him, the sounds you make when he fucks into you a certain way, or just the look of your fucked-out, dazed face that has him needing more of you.
“hah- made a big mess down there, huh?” Gojo sneers brashly, heavy hips rocking into you faster at just the lewd sight of his cum from previous rounds smothering your skin. the aching twitch in his cock won’t fade, pleasure burgeoning with every press of his cock into the hilt of your pussy. “I think there’s room for some more, yeah? just one more…”
Your little play doll for him to change, shape, and form. A clear bump showing and leaving your tummy, making Gojo’s eyes go crazier and more full of desire than before. He programs you to do things he wants, and you just nod your head at his words though you don't understand them, just giving him a smile on your lips- your delicate fingers already spreading your pussylips for him, ready to take his cock inside of you. Biting your lip, rolling your eyes as he plunges into you.
You couldn’t count how many times Gojo’s said ‘just one more round’, but from the fatigue glimmering in his eyes and the raggedness lacing his breath - you can tell this is the last one. So naturally, he’ll make sure it’s the best one of the night.
“g’na fill you up like you deserve, yeah? lemme fuck this pussy full,” Gojo grunts pantingly between a grin, fingers digging into your waist taut as the heavy smacks of his hips against yours get sloppy and quick. it’s with rasped groans and his hips fully bottomed out that he finally cums for the last time, ropes of white seeping out around his shaft and spilling onto the sheets. he can’t help but bargain and promise to clean the bed if you let him do it all over again tomorrow.
#romy's writings#gojo satoru smut#jjk smut#gojo satoru#jujutsu kaisen smut#jujutsu kaisen#jjk x you#jjk x reader#gojo satoru x reader#gojo smut#gojo x reader#jujutsu kaisen x you#jujutsu kaisen x y/n#jjk drabbles#gojo drabbles#jjk fic#jujutsu kaisen x reader smut#satoru gojo x reader smut#satoru gojo smut#gojo fluff#jjk x reader smut#jjk x y/n#gojo x reader fluff#gojo x reader smut#gojo satoru x reader smut#gojo satoru x y/n#gojo x y/n#gojo jujutsu kaisen#jjk
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#Buy Linux vps hosting in Nepal at just NPR.1999/month AGM WEB HOSTING#https://nepal.agmwebhosting.com/linux-vps-hosting.php...#Linux VPS Hosting price is NPR NPR.1999 per month and then 35% additional discount for a limited period. AGM Web Hosting Linux VPS hosting#Come to visit our website… See more
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From NPR this morning:
President Biden called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices yesterday. The White House said that the proposal would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service to the Supreme Court. He also called on Congress to pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require high court justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and remove themselves from cases if they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. The president also called for a constitutional amendment that would limit the broad immunity presidents now enjoy due to a recent Supreme Court decision.
...Yes please.
Le source: Up First briefing: Trump shooter update; Crypto and the 2024 election
#Remember to vote Americans#There are very Meaningful Differences in the party policies being displayed#Get an absentee ballot if you don't like the lines and your state allows them#Vote EXTRA HARD if your state doesn't#Because boy are they doing that on purpose#If voting didn't work they wouldn't work so hard to discourage you from doing it#You can vote yourself into a dictatorship (or abstain your way in) but you can't vote yourself back out#2024 elections#2024 presidential election#election 2024#presidential election#american politics
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"I am now the sole provider for my family, and we have not received any humanitarian aid since the war began," Tafesh says. Her oldest son, Yousef Tafesh, 14, helps by searching for wood to make a fire, since Israel has cut off fuel and electricity." First there was flour, until it ran out. Then we could get wheat, and that ran out. Then corn kernels. Then we tried animal feed. Now my mom makes us a pudding with water and starch and we eat that," he says. The hunger is all consuming. The lack of safety limits the family's ability to search for the rare aid convoys that come or the airdropped packages. "There's no milk, no protein, no bread, no clean water, no fruits or vegetables," Tafesh says. Her kids constantly cry from hunger, begging for bread. She sees them wasting away, bones protruding, and feels helpless. Her youngest boy is 4 ��� before the war, he was active and playful. Now he spends most of the day sleeping. "Every night I go to sleep in fear of waking up to find one of my children dead," says Tafesh. According to UNICEF, acute malnutrition has doubled among children under age 2 in the last month. At least 23 children have starved to death, according to Gaza's health authorities. Most people in the north don't have access to hospitals, and experts fear the actual numbers of malnutrition are much higher.
#yemen#jerusalem#tel aviv#current events#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#news on gaza#palestine news#news update#war news#war on gaza#famine#northern gaza#genocide#gaza genocide
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sometimes i remember that The Locked Tomb is not, actually, very niche -> it was the #1 book series on Tumblr this year, has been nominated for a Hugo & Nebula, NYT bestseller, recomended by mainstream publications like NPR and Wired, limited edition sets sell out within minutes, my friend's 70 year old mom has read Gideon the Ninth in her book club....... it's so weird to consider because the fandom community, while definitely growing, still feels pretty small and relatively cozy. idk! big fandom numbers with small fandom feel ♥️
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"The New York City Council voted to ban most uses of solitary confinement in city jails Wednesday [December 20, 2023], passing the measure with enough votes to override a veto from Mayor Eric Adams.
The measure would ban the use of solitary confinement beyond four hours and during certain emergencies. That four hour period would be for "de-escalation" in situations where a detainee has caused someone else physical harm or risks doing so. The resolution would also require the city's jails to allow every person detained to spend at least 14 hours outside of their cells each day.
The bill, which had 38 co-sponsors, was passed 39 to 7. It will now go to the mayor, who can sign the bill or veto it within 30 days. If Mayor Adams vetoes the bill, it will get sent back to the council, which can override the veto with a vote from two-thirds of the members. The 39 votes for the bill today make up 76% of the 51-member council. At a press conference ahead of the vote today [December 20, 2023], Council speaker Adrienne Adams indicated the council would seek [a veto] override if necessary.
For his part, Mayor Adams has signaled he is indeed considering vetoing the bill...
The United Nations has said solitary confinement can amount to torture, and multiple studies suggest its use can have serious consequences on a person's physical and mental health, including an increased risk of PTSD, dying by suicide, and having high blood pressure.
One 2019 study found people who had spent time in solitary confinement in prison were more likely to die in the first year after their release than people who had not spent time in solitary confinement. They were especially likely to die from suicide, homicide and opioid overdose.
Black and Hispanic men have been found to be overrepresented among those placed in solitary confinement – as have gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
The resolution in New York comes amid scrutiny over deaths in the jail complex on Rikers Island. Last month, the federal government joined efforts to wrest control of the facility from the mayor, and give it to an outside authority.
In August 2021, 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez died while in solitary confinement at Rikers. He had been in pre-trial detention at the jail for less than a week. His mother, Tamara Carter, says his death was ruled a suicide and that he was in a mental health crisis at the time of his confinement.
"I know for Brandon, he should have been put in the infirmary. He should have been seeing a psychiatrist. He should have been being watched," she said.
She says the passage of the bill feels like a form of justice for her.
"Brandon wasn't nothing. He was my son. He was an uncle. A brother. A grandson. And he's very, very missed," she told NPR. "I couldn't save my son. But if I joined this fight, maybe I could save somebody else's son." ...
New York City is not the first U.S. city to limit the use of solitary confinement in its jails, though it is the largest. In 2021, voters in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, passed a measure to restrict solitary confinement except in cases of lockdowns and emergencies. The sheriff in Illinois' Cook County, which includes Chicago, has said the Cook County jail – one of the country's largest – has also stopped using solitary confinement...
Naila Awan, the interim co-director of policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union, says that New York making this change could have larger influence across the country.
"As folks look at what New York has done, other larger jails that are not quite the size of Rikers will be able to say, 'If New York City is able to do this, then we too can implement similar programs here, that it's within our capacity and capabilities," Awan says. "And to the extent that we are able to get this implemented and folks see the success, I think we could see a real shift in the way that individuals are treated behind bars.""
-via NPR, December 20, 2023
#prison system#prison#jail#criminal justice system#criminal justice reform#prison industrial complex#us news#united states#new york#nyc#new york city#rikers island#eric adams#solitary confinement#us politics#police brutality#cw police brutality#cw death#cw suicide#prison reform#carceral state#good news#hope
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Is it wrong I kinda want to keep building this wholesome Salem and Jaune story? We didn't get to see Team Jnpr or Team Rwby's reactions. So can we see those?
I wonder? More cracked insanity everyone? Hmmmm?
/==/
Pyrrha stood with her back pressed against the wall next to the open window of NPR's dorm. A raven sized Nevermore sitting on the sill looking out at the armed assembly of her friends. She was biting her lip, while holding an open parchment letter to her chest.
Ren: Pyrrha... care to... explain?
Pyrrha: It's... it's not what... it looks like?
Yang: Really? Cause it looks like you're ready a letter... that was delivered by a nevermore? Or am I seeing things?
Nora: Nope. That's what it looks like.
Weiss: How could you BETRAY BEACON like this! Cavorting with the enemy... with... with the GRIMM!
Blake: I'm confused... like seriously... this makes no sense. I mean seriously? Grimm delivering letters?
Ruby: Pyrrha I know Jaune vanished, but that doesn't mean you should throw everything away and join the dark side!
Pyrrha: I'm not joining anyone! This is a misunderstanding! I swear!
Ren: How is it a... misunderstanding? There's a letter in your hand, and a grimm sitting besides you.
Ruby: YOINK!
Pyrrha: HEY!! THAT'S PRIVATE!!!
Pyrrha wanted to rush Ruby as she handed the stollen letter to Wiess, but she was hesitant to do anything that her friends would consider hostile...
Weiss: WHAT THE FUCK!!!
THUD
Blake: So that happened.
Yang: What the hell? Give me that!
Yang yanks the letter from currently fainted Weiss' hand, and opens it before her eyes.
Yang: WHAT THE FUCK!!!
THUD
Blake: Huh. That's two.
Ruby: Weiss! Yang! Stay with me! Don't go into the light!
Nora hesitantly reaches out and picks the letter from Yang's grip. As Ruby sits between the fainted forms of her sister and partner, a look of total bewilderment on her face.
Pyrrha: Please... just...
Nora looks at everyone before she as well reads the contents of then letter...
Nora: NO WAY! NOT POSSIBLE! SERIOUSLY?
Ruby/ Blake / Ren / Pyrrha: ...
Nora: I'M AN AUNTIE!!!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!
Ren / Blake / Ruby: Excuse me?
Nora: So...
Nora points at Pyrrha with the letter.
Pyrrha: So?
Nora: How long have you... known where Fearless Leader was?
Pyrrha: A while...
Nora: Why... didn't... you... tell... us?
Pyrrha: I was asked by Jaune not to, until after the babies were born.
Ren / Blake / Ruby: Babies?
Nora: Likely story.
Pyrrha: It's true?
Nora: What else have been hiding from us... Pyrrha... IF that is even your real name!
Pyrrha: Yes it is my name!
Nora: Confess!!! Confess everything!!!
Pyrrha: But I...
Nora: CONFESS!!!
Pyrrha: I knew since about a month after Jaune vanished. I was approached by a woman named Cinder Fall while in Vale at a photo-op...
Nora: Anything... else?
Pyrrha: That trip to Argus four months ago?
Ren / Blake / Ruby: Babies?
Nora: Go on.
Pyrrha: I was actually at Jaune's wedding.... I was his best man, er woman...
Nora: And pray tell why did you not tell us... Jaune-Jaune's team... or more importantly...
Pyrrha: Importantly?
Nora: WHY WASN'T I INVITED!!!
Pyrrha: It was a small service with limited seating, and Jaune's family took up most of his side, he only had room to invite one more...
Nora: Okay. I accept that. It's reasonable.
Ren / Blake / Ruby: Babies?
Nora: So why didn't you tell me and Rennie? I thought we were friends?
Pyrrha: I'm sorry. Jaune asked me to keep things quiet until after the babies were born. They were worried... and... I'm sorry?
Nora: Apology Accepted. So.
Pyrrha: So?
Nora: When does Auntie Nora get to see her nieces? Oh! Oh! Oh!! Do you have pictures? Please say you have pictures!
Pyrrha: Not yet... but soon?
Pyrrha cast a glance at the nevermore and it just tilted it'd head.
Pyrrha: Maybe?
Nevermore: SQUAWK!!
Nora lashed out and grabbed the nevermore faster than anyone could have guessed she could move. In fact her motions rivaled Ruby's Semblance. She pulled the grimm avian towards her face, a maniacal gleam in her eyes.
Nora: Go... bring... pictures... understand?
Nevermore: SQUAWK!!!
Nora released the grimm and it bolted out the window and vanished into the air. Dropping the letter to the floor, Nora stepped over and past everyone, hooking her arm through Pyrrha's and leading the stunned champion out of the dorm.
Pyrrha: Nora?
Nora: I want all the details! Leave nothing out!
Ren / Blake / Ruby: Babies?
/==/
Utter & Complete Insanity Story Collection
/==/
#reader ask#response to reader ask#my answer#rwby#grimm knight#pyrrha nikos#ruby rose#weiss schnee#nora valkyrie#lie ren#yang xiao long#blake belladonna
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Working Masterpost of Charities for Genocide & Humanitarian Crises
Want to help Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, East Turkestan, Armenia or other places facing genocide but don't know where to donate? Have limited funds and want to make sure your money helps as many people as possible? I've compiled some resources to help you get started.
Note that this is a working masterpost, meaning that I'll update it as I find more resources. This is also an inherently non-conclusive list, in significant part because I'm just one person. I urge you to do further research of your own
TIPS FOR DONATING
Charity Navigator and Charity Watch are useful sites to vet charity organizations
If you're employed, check out Charity Navigator's guide to employer donation matches.
GENERAL
Resources here are not specific to any one region in crisis, but you may be able to specify where you want your donation to be used
Doctors Without Borders/Medicins sans Frontieres (98% charity rating)
OxFam (98% charity rating)
UNICEF (94% charity rating)
World Central Kitchen (100% charity rating!)
MAUSA - Muslim Aid USA (98% charity rating)
CARE (97% charity rating)
International Committee of the Red Cross (85% charity rating)
UNHCR - UN Refugee Agency (the US branch has an 84% charity rating)
International Rescue Committee (96% charity rating)
HAIS (100% charity rating!)
Region Specific Charities Under the Cut!
PALESTINE
Palestine Children's Relief Fund (97% charity rating)
ANERA (91% charity rating)
Palestine Red Crescent Society (no specific rating, but part of a movement with the Red Cross, which - as mentioned above - has an 85% charity rating)
ALLMEP (85% charity rating)
Middle East Children's Alliance (100% charity rating!)
UNRWA (the US branch has an 89% charity rating)
eSIMs for Gaza (not currently rated, but you can read about the importance here on NBC)
Women Wage Peace (not currently rated, but you can read about their efforts on their website and via Time Magazine)
SUDAN
Sudanese Red Crescent Society (no specific rating, but part of a movement with the Red Cross, which - as mentioned above - has an 85% charity rating)
Sadagaat Charity Organization (the US branch has an 80% charity rating)
Sudanese-American Physicians Association (97% charity rating)
Khartoum Aid Kitchen (no charity rating, but you can read the effort here on NPR)
Darfur Women Action Group (not currently rated; page may be updated)
Water for South Sudan (97% charity rating)
Sudan Relief Fund (96% charity rating)
CONGO
Friends of the Congo (81% charity rating)
Panzi Foundation (91% charity rating)
UKRAINE
Ukraine Humanitarian Fund (recommended by here by Charity Watch)
Catholic Relief Services (not currently rated; read about their efforts here on Charity Watch)
ACT Alliance (recommended by here by Charity Watch)
Project HOPE (93% charity rating)
EAST TURKESTAN
East Turkestan, also called Uyghurstan, is the indigenous name for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. If you're unfamiliar with the Uyghur genocide, you can read some intro information here on BBC
Uyghur Human Rights Project (84% charity rating)
Save Uyghur - Justice for All (94% charity rating)
ARMENIA
If you're unfamiliar with the current Armenian genocide by Azerbaijan, you can read some intro information here on CNN
CARITAS Armenia (no specific rating, but part of CARITAS, which as a 98% charity rating)
Armenia Fund (not currently rated)
Armenian National Committee of America (not currently rated)
LEBANON
ANERA - Lebanon (91% charity rating)
Oxfam - Lebanon (98% charity rating)
ICRC - Lebanon (85% charity rating)
UNICEF - Lebanon (94% charity rating)
UNHCR - Lebanon (the US branch has an 84% charity rating)
UN Lebanon Humanitarian Fund (Currently unrated, as far as I can tell)
#free palestine#keep eyes on sudan#congo#stand with ukraine#uyghur genocide#armenian genocide#genocide#gazagenocide#racism#islamophobia#donations#help someone out#alex tir talks
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BY: GILEAD INI
Before looking at specific examples of disinformation by the “critics,” as the Times and NPR calls them, we should address a few broader points.
Despite evidence of rape, those defending Hamas from charges of sexual violence point to a lack of forensic evidence — the kind that might be revealed at the denouement of a television crime show. Indeed, Israel’s frontier with Gaza on and after Oct 7 was less untouched crime scene and more battlefield and disaster zone.
But this is neither exonerating nor unusual. “There is very much what’s known as the CSI effect, where there is a perception that without forensic evidence or DNA, then you don’t have a case,” an expert on sexual violence in conflict zones told NPR. “And that’s just patently not true.”
In this case, the full CSI treatment was impracticable. “As is common in war, collection of physical evidence was hindered by ongoing combat and a large, chaotic crime scene,” NPR reported.
With limited resources and such a large-scale attack, compromises were necessary, journalist Carrie Keller-Lynn explained. “Instead of going through CSI, which would make it possible to produce evidence of crimes, the bodies are being processed through the disaster victim identification (DVI) track, as is common for mass casualty events,” she reported. Or as the UN mission put it, there was a “prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification, and burial of the deceased in accordance with religious practices, over the collection of forensic evidence.” (The mission noted additional factors, too, that hindered the collection of forensic examination. See paragraph 46 of its report.)
The deniers had also pointed to lack of testimony by victims — a puzzling defense in the context of this story, where survivors describe women raped then murdered; where recovery workers noted naked and bound corpses; and where released hostages say those still in captivity had said they were sexually assaulted. Which category of those victims, exactly, would the deniers expect to have heard from? (When a hostage did eventually speak out about being sexually assaulted, the self-appointed investigators were not particularly interested, or worse, dismissed her account.)
None of this means every testimony is beyond reproach. Just as the record of 9/11 was contaminated by multiple false accounts and fake survivors, likewise after 10/7 false accounts were reported by pretenders, and some unfounded atrocity charges were shared, believed, and repeated. The “critics” did not miss the opportunity to capitalize on these inaccurate accounts in order to push the idea, through innuendo or explicit denial, that every witness of rape and every first responder account of sexually abused bodies are fake.
The Critics
NPR’s story about “critics” of a New York Times piece on sexual violence repeatedly cites The Intercept.
Once of many acknowledgements by The Intercept that its claims come from the further fringes.
And across The Intercept’s incessant efforts to discredit those shining a light on Palestinian sexual violence, its reporters cite Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, and Max Blumenthal of Grayzone.
It is an echo chamber of Hamas apologia — invariably, one story links to identical accusations by the others, which link back to similar pieces by the rest. The common theme, other then denial, is the extremism of its participants.
Consider, most relevantly, their response to the Oct 7 massacre:
A writer for the Intercept, at least, grants that the attack was “horrifying” — though this was in a post whose argument was that we shouldn’t view it as horrifying.
Others are less subtle. Denier Ali Abunimah, for example, was self-evidently delighted by the slaughter of civilians in Israel. He not only defended the attack, calling it “just”; not only insisted we shouldn’t feel bad about it (this just minutes after he posted video of elderly female hostage paraded and taunted on video); but also viciously attacked those — including critics of Israel — who would dare share any sympathy for the victims of the mass slaughter of Jews.
Mondoweiss summarized the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust with an announcement that “Gazans have broken out of their open air prison imposed by Israel and launched an elaborate surprise attack on their occupier,” while pooh-poohing the idea that Hamas had started a war. As the extent of the atrocities became apparent, Mondoweiss’s defenses of the assault grew more emphatic. On Oct. 8, its culture editor Muhammed El-Kurd insisted the attack was a cause for “celebration.” On Oct. 9, it published a piece insisting we “must shout our support for the resistance from our rooftops.”
Max Blumenthal minimized Hamas’s slaughter as ”guerrilla bands bursting out of a besieged ghetto with homemade weapons.” In response to a Twitter post noting that at its attack on a music festival Hamas “began shooting those in attendance,” Blumenthal mocked the victims and justified their slaughter.
The motivation for their leap to action at the first accusation of rape, then, is as simple as it seems: It is born of sympathy for Hamas.
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For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns.
The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks.
In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted — blacked-out from public view — since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok.
But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret.
After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general’s office “to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated,” according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials.
NPR reviewed all the portions of the suit that were redacted, which highlight TikTok executives speaking candidly about a host of dangers for children on the wildly popular video app. The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures — like time-management tools — would have a negligible reduction in screen time. The company went ahead and decided to release and tout the features.
Separately, under a new law, TikTok has until January to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. TikTok is fighting the looming crackdown. Meanwhile, the new lawsuits from state authorities have cast scrutiny on the app and its ability to counter content that harms minors.
In a statement, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek defended the company’s child safety record and condemned the disclosure of once-public material that has now been sealed.
"It is highly irresponsible of NPR to publish information that is under a court seal,” Haurek said. “Unfortunately, this complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”
He continued: “We have robust safeguards, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16.”
Kentucky AG: TikTok users can become ‘addicted’ in 35 minutes
As TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users can attest, the platform’s hyper-personalized algorithm can be so engaging it becomes difficult to close the app. TikTok determined the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. After that, according to state investigators, a user “is likely to become addicted to the platform.”
In the previously redacted portion of the suit, Kentucky authorities say: “While this may seem substantial, TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and are played for viewers in rapid-fire succession, automatically,” the investigators wrote. “Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform.”
Another internal document found that the company was aware its many features designed to keep young people on the app led to a constant and irresistible urge to keep opening the app.
TikTok’s own research states that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” according to the suit.
In addition, the documents show that TikTok was aware that “compulsive usage also interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.”
TikTok: Time-limit tool aimed at ‘improving public trust,’ not limiting app use
The unredacted documents show that TikTok employees were aware that too much time spent by teens on social media can be harmful to their mental health. The consensus among academics is that they recommend one hour or less of social media usage per day.
The app lets parents place time limits on their kids’ usage that range from 40 minutes to two hours per day. TikTok created a tool that set the default time prompt at 60 minutes per day.
Internal documents show that TikTok measured the success of this tool by how it was “improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage,” rather than how it reduced the time teens spent on the app.
After tests, TikTok found the tool had little impact – accounting for about a 1.5-minute drop in usage, with teens spending around 108.5 minutes per day beforehand to roughly 107 minutes with the tool. According to the attorney general’s complaint, TikTok did not revisit this issue.
One document shows one TikTok project manager saying, “Our goal is not to reduce the time spent.” In a chat message echoing that sentiment, another employee said the goal is to “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.
TikTok has publicized its “break” videos, which are prompts to get users to stop endlessly scrolling and take a break. Internally, however, it appears the company didn’t think the videos amounted to much. One executive said that they are “useful in a good talking point” with policymakers, but “they’re not altogether effective.”
Document: TikTok demoted people it deemed unattractive on its feed
The multi-state litigation against TikTok highlighted the company’s beauty filters, which users can overlay on videos to make themselves look thinner and younger or to have fuller lips and bigger eyes.
One popular feature, known as the Bold Glamour filter, uses artificial intelligence to rework people’s faces to resemble models with high cheekbones and strong jawlines.
TikTok is aware of the harm these beauty filters can cause young users, the documents show.
Employees suggested internally the company “provide users with educational resources about image disorders” and create a campaign “to raise awareness on issues with low self esteem (caused by the excessive filter use and other issues).”
They also suggested adding a banner or video to the filters that included “an awareness statement about filters and the importance of positive body image/mental health.”
This comes as the documents showcase another hidden facet of TikTok’s algorithm: the app prioritizes beautiful people.
One internal report that analyzed TikTok’s main video feed saw “a high volume of … not attractive subjects” were filling everyone’s app. In response, Kentucky investigators found that TikTok retooled its algorithm to amplify users the company viewed as beautiful.
“By changing the TikTok algorithm to show fewer ‘not attractive subjects’ in the For You feed, [TikTok] took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm even though it could negatively impact their Young Users,” the Kentucky authorities wrote.
TikTok exec: algorithm could deprive kids of opportunities like ‘looking at someone in the eyes’
Publicly, TikTok has stated that one of its “most important commitments is supporting the safety and well-being of teens.”
Yet internal documents paint a very different picture, citing statements from top company executives who appear well-aware of the harmful effects of the app without taking significant steps to address it.
One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying the reason kids watch TikTok is because of the power of the app’s algorithm, “but I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities,” said the company executive. “And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at someone in the eyes.”
TikTok’s internal estimate: 95% of smartphone users under 17 use TikTok
TikTok views itself as being in an “arms race for attention,” according to a 2021 internal presentation.
And teenagers have been key to the app’s early growth in the U.S., but another presentation shown to top company officials revealed that an estimated 95% of smartphone users under 17 use TikTok at least once a month. This lead a company staffer to state that it had “hit a ceiling among young users.”
TikTok’s own research concluded that kids were the most susceptible to being sucked into the app’s infinitely flowing feed of videos. “As expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance,” according to a 2019 TikTok document.
In response to growing national concern that excessive social media use can increase the risk of depression, anxiety and body-image issues among kids, TikTok has introduced time-management tools. These include notifications informing teens about how long they are spending on the app, parental oversight features and the ability to make the app inaccessible for some down time.
At the same time, however, TikTok knew how unlikely it was these tools would be effective, according to materials obtained by Kentucky investigators.
“Minors do not have executive function to control their screen time, while young adults do,” read a TikTok internal document.
TikTok pushes users into filter bubbles like ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’
TikTok is well aware of “filter bubbles.” Internal documents show the company has defined them as when a user “encounters only information and opinions that conform to and reinforce their own beliefs, caused by algorithms that personalize an individual’s online experience.”
The company knows the dangers of filter bubbles. During one internal safety presentation in 2020, employees warned the app “can serve potentially harmful content expeditiously.” TikTok conducted internal experiments with test accounts to see how quickly they descend into negative filter bubbles.
“After following several ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’ accounts, it took me 20 mins to drop into ‘negative’ filter bubble,” one employee wrote. “The intensive density of negative content makes me lower down mood and increase my sadness feelings though I am in a high spirit in my recent life.”
Another employee said, “there are a lot of videos mentioning suicide,” including one asking, “If you could kill yourself without hurting anybody would you?”
In another document, TikTok’s research found that content promoting eating disorders, often called “thinspiration,” is associated with issues such as body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, low self-esteem and depression
Despite these heedings, TikTok’s algorithm still puts users into filter bubbles. One internal document states that users are “placed into ‘filter bubbles’ after 30 minutes of use in one sitting.” The company wrote that having more human moderators to label content is possible, but “requires large human efforts.”
TikTok’s content moderation missing self-harm, eating disorder content
TikTok has several layers of content moderation to weed out videos that violate its Community Guidelines. Internal documents show that the first set of eyes aren’t always a person from the company’s Trust and Safety Team.
The first round typically uses artificial intelligence to flag pornographic, violent or political content. The following rounds use human moderators, but only if the video has a certain amount of views, according to the documents. These additional rounds often fail to take into account certain types of content or age specific rules.
According to TikTok’s own studies, the unredacted filing shows that some suicide and self-harm content escaped those first rounds of human moderation. The study points to self-harm videos that had more than 75,000 views before TikTok identified and removed them.
TikTok also has scattershot policies on content that includes disordered eating, drug use, dangerous driving, gore and violence. While TikTok’s Community Guidelines prohibit much of this content, internal policy documents say the company “allows” the content. Often, the content is findable on TikTok and just not “recommended,” meaning it doesn’t show up in users’ For You feeds or took a lower priority in the algorithm.
The company has talking points around its content moderation work. One example highlighted in the documents details a child sent to the emergency room after attempting a dangerous TikTok challenge. When dealing with the negative fallout from the press, TikTok told employees to use an internal list of talking points that said, “In line with our Community Guidelines, we do not allow content that depicts, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies [dangerous] behavior, including dangerous challenges.”
TikTok acknowledges internally that it has substantial “leakage” rates of violating content that’s not removed. Those leakage rates include: 35.71% of “Normalization of Pedophilia;” 33.33% of “Minor Sexual Solicitation;” 39.13% of “Minor Physical Abuse;” 30.36% of “leading minors off platform;” 50% of “Glorification of Minor Sexual Assault;” and “100% of “Fetishizing Minors.”
TikTok slow to remove users under 13, despite company policy
Kids under 13 cannot open a standard TikTok account, but there is a “TikTok for Younger Users” service that the company says includes strict content guardrails.
It is a vulnerable group of users, since federal law dictates that social media sites like TikTok cannot collect data on children under 13 unless parents are notified about the personal information collected. And even then, social media apps must first obtain verifiable consent from a parent.
In August, the Department of Justice sued TikTok for violating the federal law protecting the data of kids under 13, alleging that the app “knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy.”
In the internal documents, however, company officials instructed TikTok moderators to use caution before removing accounts of users suspected to be under 13.
An internal document about “younger users/U13” says TikTok instructs its moderators to not take action on reports of underage users unless their account identifies them as under 13.
The previously-redacted portions of the suit suggest the company is aware these young users have accounts – through complaints from parents and teachers — but does little to remove them.
TikTok in crisis mode after report on TikTok Live being ‘strip club filled with 15-year-olds’
After a 2022 report on Forbes about underage kids stripping on TikTok’s live feature, the company launched its own investigation.
That’s when TikTok officials realized there was “a high” number of underage streamers receiving digital currency on the app in the form of a “gift” or “coin” in exchange for stripping — real money converted into a digital currency often in the form of a plush toy or a flower.
TikTok discovered “a significant” number of adults direct messaging underage TikTokkers about stripping live on the platform.
As part of this internal probe, TikTok officials found that in just one month, 1 million “gifts” were sent to kids engaged in “transactional” behavior.
In an understated assessment, one TikTok official concluded: “[O]ne of our key discoveries during this project that has turned into a major challenge with Live business is that the content that gets the highest engagement may not be the content we want on our platform.”
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In a brazen attack that caught Russia off-guard, Ukraine’s military has sent a large ground force across its border and into western Russia. The Ukrainian soldiers crossed the country's northeastern border Tuesday and now appear to be several miles inside Russia’s Kursk region, where they are operating in several villages. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia's general staff, said in a Kremlin briefing Wednesday that some 1,000 Ukrainian troops were taking part, backed by dozens of armored vehicles. Russia has sent reinforcements in an attempt to drive the Ukrainians back across the border. Russian leader Vladimir Putin listened to the assessment with a look that appeared to be a mixture of impatience and disgust. He called the Ukrainian incursion a "large-scale provocation." Ukraine has previously backed Russian exiles who carried out limited cross-border raids, but has never conducted its own operation on such a scale. Ukraine is not commenting on the current developments, and many details remain sketchy. In an interview with NPR, Mykhailo Podolak, one of the top advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, declined to provide any specifics.
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““Dorothy reminds me in so many ways of Toni Morrison,” West said. “You know Toni Morrison is Catholic. Many people do not realize that she is one of the great Catholic writers. Like Flannery O’Connor, she has an incarnational conception of human existence. We Protestants are too individualistic. I think we need to learn from Catholics who are always centered on community.”
(…)
She viewed belief in God as “an intellectual experience that intensifies our perceptions and distances us from an egocentric and predatory life, from ignorance and from the limits of personal satisfactions”—and affirmed her Catholic identity. “I had a moment of crisis on the occasion of Vatican II,” she said. “At the time I had the impression that it was a superficial change, and I suffered greatly from the abolition of Latin, which I saw as the unifying and universal language of the Church.”
Morrison saw a problematic absence of authentic religion in modern art: “It’s not serious—it’s supermarket religion, a spiritual Disneyland of false fear and pleasure.” She lamented that religion is often parodied or simplified, as in “those pretentious bad films in which angels appear as dei ex machina, or of figurative artists who use religious iconography with the sole purpose of creating a scandal.” She admired the work of James Joyce, especially his earlier works, and had a particular affinity for Flannery O’Connor, “a great artist who hasn’t received the attention she deserves.”
What emerges from Morrison’s public discussions of faith is paradoxical Catholicism. Her conception of God is malleable, progressive, and esoteric. She retained a distinct nostalgia for Catholic ritual, and feels the “greatest respect” for those who practice the faith, even if she herself wavered. In a 2015 interview with NPR, Morrison said there was not a “structured” sense of religion in her life at the moment, but “I might be easily seduced to go back to church because I like the controversy as well as the beauty of this particular Pope Francis. He’s very interesting to me.”
Morrison’s Catholic faith—individual and communal, traditional and idiosyncratic—offers a theological structure for her worldview. Her Catholicism illuminates her fiction; in particular, her views of bodies, and the narrative power of stories. An artist, Morrison affirmed, “bears witness.” Her father’s ghost stories, her mother’s spiritual musicality, and her own youthful sense of attraction to Christianity’s “scriptures and its vagueness” led her to conclude it is “a theatrical religion. It says something particularly interesting to black people, and I think it’s part of why they were so available to it. It was the love things that were psychically very important. Nobody could have endured that life in constant rage.” Morrison said it is a sense of “transcending love” that makes “the New Testament . . . so pertinent to black literature—the lamb, the victim, the vulnerable one who does die but nevertheless lives.”
(…)
Morrison is describing a Catholic style of storytelling here, reflected in the various emotional notes of Mass. The religion calls for extremes: solemnity, joy, silence, and exhortation. Such a literary approach is audacious, confident, and necessary, considering Morrison’s broader goals. She rejected the term experimental, clarifying “I am simply trying to recreate something out of an old art form in my books—the something that defines what makes a book ‘black.’”
(…)
Morrison was both storyteller and archivist. Her commitment to history and tradition itself feels Catholic in orientation. She sought to “merge vernacular with the lyric, with the standard, and with the biblical, because it was part of the linguistic heritage of my family, moving up and down the scale, across it, in between it.” When a serious subject came up in family conversation, “it was highly sermonic, highly formalized, biblical in a sense, and easily so. They could move easily into the language of the King James Bible and then back to standard English, and then segue into language that we would call street.”
Language was play and performance; the pivots and turns were “an enhancement for me, not a restriction,” and showed her that “there was an enormous power” in such shifts. Morrison’s attention toward language is inherently religious; by talking about the change from Latin to English Mass as a regrettable shift, she invokes the sense that faith is both content and language; both story and medium.
From her first novel on forward, Morrison appeared intent on forcing us to look at embodied black pain with the full power of language. As a Catholic writer, she wanted us to see the body on the cross; to see its blood, its cuts, its sweat. That corporal sense defines her novel Beloved (1988), perhaps Morrison’s most ambitious, stirring work. “Black people never annihilate evil,” Morrison has said. “They don’t run it out of their neighborhoods, chop it up, or burn it up. They don’t have witch hangings. They accept it. It’s almost like a fourth dimension in their lives.”
(…)
Morrison has said that all of her writing is “about love or its absence.” There must always be one or the other—her characters do not live without ebullience or suffering. “Black women,” Morrison explained, “have held, have been given, you know, the cross. They don’t walk near it. They’re often on it. And they’ve borne that, I think, extremely well.” No character in Morrison’s canon lives the cross as much as Sethe, who even “got a tree on my back” from whipping. Scarred inside and out, she is the living embodiment of bearing witness.
(…)
Morrison’s Catholicism was one of the Passion: of scarred bodies, public execution, and private penance. When Morrison thought of “the infiniteness of time, I get lost in a mixture of dismay and excitement. I sense the order and harmony that suggest an intelligence, and I discover, with a slight shiver, that my own language becomes evangelical.” The more Morrison contemplates the grandness and complexity of life, the more her writing reverts to the Catholic storytelling methods that enthralled her as a child and cultivated her faith. This creates a powerful juxtaposition: a skilled novelist compelled to both abstraction and physicality in her stories. Catholicism, for Morrison, offers a language to connect these differences.
For Morrison, the traits of black language include the “rhythm of a familiar, hand-me-down dignity [that] is pulled along by an accretion of detail displayed in a meandering unremarkableness.” Syntax that is “highly aural” and “parabolic.” The language of Latin Mass—its grandeur, silences, communal participation, coupled with the congregation’s performative resurrection of an ancient tongue—offers a foundation for Morrison’s meticulous appreciation of language.
Her representations of faith—believers, doubters, preachers, heretics, and miracles—are powerful because of her evocative language, and also because she presents them without irony. She took religion seriously. She tended to be self-effacing when describing her own belief, and it feels like an action of humility. In a 2014 interview, she affirmed “I am a Catholic” while explaining her willingness to write with a certain, frank moral clarity in her fiction. Morrison was not being contradictory; she was speaking with nuance. She might have been lapsed in practice, but she was culturally—and therefore socially, morally—Catholic.
The same aesthetics that originally attracted Morrison to Catholicism are revealed in her fiction, despite her wavering of institutional adherence. Her radical approach to the body also makes her the greatest American Catholic writer about race. That one of the finest, most heralded American writers is Catholic—and yet not spoken about as such—demonstrates why the status of lapsed Catholic writers is so essential to understanding American fiction.
A faith charged with sensory detail, performance, and story, Catholicism seeps into these writers’ lives—making it impossible to gauge their moral senses without appreciating how they refract their Catholic pasts. The fiction of lapsed Catholic writers suggests a longing for spiritual meaning and a continued fascination with the language and feeling of faith, absent God or not: a profound struggle that illuminates their stories, and that speaks to their readers.”
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