Welcome to the weekly recap. In this post, I’ll be linking to my work from the week, sharing some stories from others I thought were interesting, and providing a few casual thoughts on [gestures at everything]. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “TPA Weekly Recap.” If you don’t want to receive the weekly recap, leave all boxes except “TPA Weekly Recap” checked.
From me this week: Twitter can’t bring itself to enforce its own rules, artificial intelligence-generated art is pretty amazing, and she who shall not be named.
On Monday, I wrote about Robert Foster, the former Mississippi legislator who called for trans people and those who support us to be executed… and about Twitter’s unwillingness to enforce its own policies. As I’ve said over and over, if Twitter (or YouTube or Facebook or any other social media site) wants to make its platform a free-for-all where you can say anything you want, they can absolutely do that. But if it’s going to continue to pretend like it enforces its rules against hateful conduct, it needs to actually do that.
And it now seems like Foster has deleted his Twitter account. Not sure why or when he did this, but the fact that it says “This account doesn’t exist” indicates that he did it on his own and it wasn’t the result of Twitter enforcing its rules.
And then on Tuesday, I wrote about a really cool new artificial intelligence-powered art tool called MidJourney. Words really don’t do it justice, so please click through to that story to see a bunch of examples of what it’s capable of doing.
And finally, yesterday, I wrote about trans rights and whether or not J.K. Rowling qualifies as “the new Anita Bryant.” The truth is that I don’t really know. There are a number of misperceptions about why trans people “canceled” her (I hate the term “cancel” when the actual action is more, “Oh dear god, why would I continue to give my money to someone who says these things about people like me/people I care about??”), and despite what Dave Chappelle said, it’s not just that she said “gender is fact” or “sex is fact".” Give it a read if you’re a subscriber.
Posts from others that I want to draw attention to:
Jessica Valenti has a great piece pushing back on conservatives’ latest attempt to smear LGBTQ people as “groomers.” Definitely worth checking out.
Over at Discourse Blog, Rafi Schwartz explains why Republicans got angry with Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) over his ridiculous claims about orgies and cocaine but not any of the other horrific stuff he’s said and done before and since joining Congress. Simply put: because this made fellow Republicans look bad.
This piece by Teddy Wilson at Radical Reports is a great summary of what he does best: offers streamlined, easy-to-understand information about the right. Definitely worth giving him a subscribe to stay in the loop on what’s happening in Trumpworld and elsewhere in the conservative cesspools.
And once again, Dan Pfeiffer has a must-read piece over at The Message Box about Clarence Thomas and accountability.
