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.
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From me this week:
On Monday, I published a story about what would happen if the Supreme Court were to overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized marriage equality. Turns out that a lot of states still have laws on the books banning same-sex marriage…
And then on Tuesday, I wrote about why I made 1,000 images of SpongeBob SquarePants using AI (and talked a bit about mental health).
Stuff from others elsewhere I’d like to highlight:
Over at his Law Dork newsletter, Chris Geidner has a story about the legal case against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Adam Johnson has a post at The Column about the way the press prioritizes things like “cancel culture” stories over actual news like the heating crisis in US prisons, many of which become unbearably hot during the summer.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat has a piece pushing back on arguments that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted (even if he committed crimes). As she writes, “‘Getting away with it’ has been the bedrock of authoritarianism,” and “prosecuting bad actors, no matter who they are, is essential to safeguarding our democracy now and in the future.” I agree.
Popular Information’s Judd Legum has a piece (which certainly ties into the 3 stories from Ben-Ghiat, Johnson, and Geidner) about how Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is attacking actual free speech. Unfortunately for those of us who actually support free speech, the mainstream media is making clear that it desperately wants DeSantis to be president, so we’re bound to hear 100x more about “cancel culture” than about a tyrant in Florida using the power of the state to silence his critics and make certain subjects off-limits.
That’s it for this week. As always, thank you for reading, for subscribing, and for supporting my work. Things remain financially rocky over here in the operation of The Present Age, but it’s thanks to those of you who subscribe that I’m able to do this. Thank you so much.
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