Last week the company said it would ban porn, starting Oct. 1, citing pressure from banks and payment companies. They just reversed that.

They apparently decided, “Fuck those guys if they don’t want our business. The money from porn is so sweet that we can BE a payment company, if necessary.” It seems that their bankers and billers backed off, presumably not wanting to eschew their share of those sweet, sweet porn bucks.

As I see it, OnlyFans facilitates willing exchanges between buyers and sellers, and everyone wins. The women who provide the content are prospering, the clients are satisfied, OnlyFans gets a nice cut, the payment companies and bankers make money and the government gets tax revenue. The services are provided virtually, so they create no public health challenges, preventing society’s high sheriffs from applying the logic they often apply to sexually-oriented transactions in the flesh-and-blood world. There may even be a health benefit from keeping the clients in the virtual world and off the streets, thus avoiding physical contact with strangers during a pandemic. Moreover, the transactions are not publicly accessible, so there is no chance that children or the general public will accidentally stumble upon XXX material. The explicit material on OnlyFans doesn’t seem to be harming anyone. I say let ’em do their thing.

“More and more Mississippians are using a horse de-wormer medication as an at-home treatment for COVID-19, and it’s causing a spike in calls to poison control.”

Mind you, this poisoning is sending more people toward the hospitals that are already at capacity in that state!

Yeah, they’re afraid of the vaccine, but they’re totally OK with filling their bodies with horse de-wormer, so they just pop down to the feed store and pick some up. Talk about thinning the herd!

I also read somewhere that Trump is now saying he was right about hydroxychloroquine, even though there are now controlled clinical trials showing that the drug not only failed to improve patient care, but actually made matters slightly worse! (One cannot fairly say that it hurt because the slightly worse rates of death, intubation and hospitalization were not statistically significant. A fair conclusion is that it did not help.)

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Notes:

1. This horse dewormer business started before the vaccines were available. See this report from Nevada. “Feed stores are having trouble keeping the medication in stock.”

2. There is some vague logic to the use of this dewormer (ivermectin). Ivermectin has been tested to inhibit the spread of the virus in vitro, but at a dosage many times that prescribed for humans for parasitic infections. Some studies show that ivermectin may also be effective in vivo, and there is a chance that it may someday be approved for treating viral diseases, although the evidence is still insufficient. Researchers have predicted a low likelihood of success against COVID at the current prescribed level for humans, but some evidence at least suggests that higher doses might have some value. But the effective dose may be so large that it might produce dangerous side effects.

The NIH says:

“Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans”

Trials are still needed to test both the safety and efficacy of various doses. It should go without saying that you should not be stocking up on it from your feed store and taking a horse-strength dosage on your own authority.

Pollution is leading to higher rates of erectile dysfunction, fertility decline, and growing numbers of babies born with small penises. Though the headline fact about shrinkage may sound like a laughing matter, the research paints a bleak portrait of humanity’s longevity and ability to survive.”

“President Joe Biden called on Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign Tuesday, following a report that said Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women.”

On the national scene, Biden was joined by Pelosi, the Democratic governors of four northeastern states, and several Democratic congresspeople from New York.

If for no other reason, Cuomo might consider leaving before the humiliation of being removed. The NY State Assembly is now considering articles of impeachment, and that seems to have bi-partisan support.

Do you remember Dan Ackroyd pitching the Bass-o-Matic? He was sending up Ron Popeil, inventor, pitchman and founder of Ronco. Popeil’s brain children included the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone, the Veg-a-Matic and many other familiar “as seen on TV” products. Through his pioneering use of 30-minute infomercials, Popeil blazed the trail that eventually led to Mike the Sweater Guy.

He gave us so much.

… which could be:

A new horror film

A new rock band

A real thing in Big Bend National Park

It’s not as bad as it sounds. (I just love sensationalized headlines.) The acid they squirt is basically common vinegar, harmless to humans, so they sort of make their own hot and sour lobster soup. They are not lobsters, of course. “The whip scorpion, more commonly called a vinegaroon in Texas, is a member of the arachnid family but poses little danger to humans, unlike its cousins, the scorpion and the spider.”

In French

Here’s how Google Translate renders it (probably awkwardly). I can’t help. I don’t know enough French.

Summer of famine

Titane: a rare experience. Lengthy and frequent nudity from Agathe Rousselle, the breasts of Garance Marillier (see a little more) and Anaïs Fabre.

Annette: beautiful but boring. The breasts of Marion Cotillard.

Upcoming films:

Tralala: the Larrieu brothers tick off a new cinematographic genre with a light and pleasant film. Very sensual nude scene by Mélanie Thierry, who mainly offers us her ass, to see a little more.

Eiffel: classic biopic. Emma Mackey’s breasts in a sex scene.

I comete: naturalistic Corsica.

Nos frères ennemis: another oriented re-reading of the events in Algeria. The Luxembourgish breasts of Vicky Krieps.

Amants: we knew Nicole Garcia more inspired. Stacy Martin at “oilp.” (??)

Si demain: Fabienne Godet continues her quest for meaning.

La troisième guerre: the hard work of a soldier ensuring “vigipirate” (Google obviously encountered some problems translating this one)

Rouge: man pollutes to live!

Tout nous sourit: small vaudeville

Vagabondes: street school, where we keep our clothes.

Hunted: Lucie Debay gets hunted but does not suffer the extreme outrages.

L’origine du Monde: Parisianiste (I had never noticed that Vincent Macaigne was the double of François Hollande). Karin Viard still and always very naked (it will still be necessary to ensure that there has not been recourse to digital special effects because Karin appears particularly sharp and the 2 actors exhibit the cocks of porn actors).

Ni Dieux, Ni Maitres: from the right of cuissage to the Middle Ages. Flore Grimaud’s heavy chest.

Isn’t this a song?

No, not that gay anthem by Paul Shaffer.

This one:

They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And it’s raining cocaine

Twelve million dollars worth of cocaine lands on somebody’s roof in Sardinia

It did break a solar panel when it landed, but the homeowners could easily have paid for that if they hadn’t informed the police. Do you think Farmers will cover it? They’ve seen a thing or two.

The combined effects of rising sea levels and nodal cycle modulations of tidal amplitude lead to acute inflections in projections of future high tide flooding”

In human language, that means the moon is heading into a recurring cycle that makes high tides higher and low tides lower, while rising sea levels make those high tides very, very high.

In actionable terms, this is a good time to unload your oceanfront property, and move away from low-lying coastal areas. It may be cold in Minnesota, but you shouldn’t plan a retirement move to the Outer Banks, Charleston, Savannah or Miami.

NASA explains: “The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam.”

This indictment is much narrower than you might think, and the charges against the corporation are probably less significant than you might assume.

First of all, a good chunk of this consists of actions taken by Allen Weisselberg to benefit Allen Weisselberg and his family. He was using the Trump Organization to pay for things like his vacation homes and private schools for his grandchildren, and was not accounting for those as income. Based on what we know now, there is no reason to believe that Trump himself approved these shenanigans, and Trump may even be shocked to have found out about it now (as far as we know – but the point is that we don’t know). I’m not sure how the incorporation defines the ownership of Trump’s company, so I don’t know exactly how the company’s profits pass through to Trump himself, but it is possible that Weisselberg was paying for those things out of Trump’s personal pocket, which means he may have been cheating his boss as well as the tax man. Anyway, the most serious accusation against Weisselberg is that he cheated his way out of nearly a million dollars in taxes. He pleaded not guilty, but it’s difficult to imagine what defense he might present. The whole thing seems cut-and-dried.

(The indictment mentions that the scheme also benefited other company executives besides Weisselberg. Nobody is letting on who they are or what legal liability they may have, if any.)

As for the charges against the Trump Organization, well, they are trifling in the grand scheme of things. Since the executive perks should be defined as income, the Trump Organization should have been paying payroll taxes on those amounts. How big a deal is that? I quote the Post: “If Trump’s companies were convicted, they could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.” Hundreds of thousands? Really? Big fuckin’ deal. They can probably pay that out of petty cash. They probably have that much hidden in the floorboards for emergency bail money.

There may be some more significant charges to appear subsequently, but so far, it’s a tale of one embezzler. People like Rachel Maddow may try to persuade you otherwise, but up to this point Godfather Trump remains Teflon Don – nothing we have seen so far sticks to him.