When the story of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleisss arrest broke in June 1993, it simply didnt compute for writer Molly Lambert, who was growing up in Los Angeles at the time. Why was this woman being hassled for selling something people wanted to buy?

Its a question that runs through Lamberts new podcast, Heidi World. The 10-episode series, the first episode of which is out today, traces Fleisss rise to infamy: growing up the daughter of a progressive pediatrician-to-the-stars in crunchy Los Feliz, making a name for herself on the party-girl circuit, and, finally, becoming a powerful madam with a stable of hundreds of high-class escorts and an A-list black book (reportedly actually a red Gucci planner) of Hollywoods rich and powerfulbefore it all came crashing down.

Lambert spoke with ELLE.com about casting the pod with dozens of L.A. personalities, actors, and collaborators to bring the story to life (with the captivating actress Annie Hamilton voicing Fleiss); what media narratives about sex work miss; and why America still cant get over our hang-ups.

LEE JAMESON

I am from Los Angeles and I was a kid when the Heidi Fleiss scandal broke. It was a huge story, especially here in L.A., and just completely fascinating to me. I think it was just the first time that I was like, Oh, well, why is it illegal to sell sex? Especially in Hollywood, where we all know that everybody uses sex to sell stuff.

I was just kind of surprised nobody had really done a really deep dive into yet. Then when I started getting into the research, I was like, This is everything I'm interested in. It's a story about hypocrisy and money and sex and everything interesting.

I really wanted to make a podcast talking about the story in a pro-sex work way. I also just realized when the story happened, the media was sort of incapable of saying, Well, what if this werent criminalized? Why is this criminalized? They could never make the turn into asking that question. Or, instead of saying, Why does this happen? or, How can we stop this? Say, well, What if we actually protected the people that are selling sex? What if we acknowledge that sex is a thing that people want to buy and sell, and it's a consensually sold thing? How could we actually protect sex workers and make it a safe thing for them to do? instead of this American thing where we pretend, That doesn't happen here. People dont have sex outside of marriage and they certainly dont pay for it. Whereas yeah, we all know that does happen.

We're in this moment where people have to sell themselves more than ever. Everybody has to have five jobs and be a brand.

I also think just the media in the 90s, even in this allegedly progressive moment when everything was, Were going to be less sexist! Were going to be less racist now! than the 80s, it was still just very puritanical in this way, punishing Heidi for selling sex, but not punishing any of the men who bought sex.

I think now were in this moment where people have to sell themselves more than ever. Everybody has to have five jobs and be a sort of brand in a way. It all just seemed like a really good time to revisit the Heidi story from that kind of angle.

Because I was just shocked at how little had changed since this moment when the Heidi Fleiss scandal really drew attention to the fact that sex work was criminalized. There were people at the time saying, Hey, why is it criminalized? Why is this person being punished? I think now were in this momentwere in essentially a recession. I think more people have stuff like OnlyFans, side hustles that involve monetizing skills or monetizing selling aspects of yourself. But it is also being criminalized more than ever. The way in which apps and platforms de-platform sex workers and shadow-ban people for posting, not even obscene, just lightly sexual content. But people like Kylie Jenner can post whatever they want. Theres this incredible double standard still of, yeah, hot women are used to sell everything, especially on social media. But if hot women say, Hey, Im using this to sell my pictures or my videos or anything like that, it becomes Thats not OK. They dont want women to make money off of their own sexuality. But if we keep sex work criminalized, that allows for people like Mark Zuckerberg to be in control of who gets to sell what.

I think its more that its not changed as much as you would expect. Especially because that felt like such an inflection point of people being like, Hey, what if we didnt criminalize this? Also, just because the way in which the cops expected that everybody would side with them against Heidi. It was a couple years after the L.A. uprisings; I think people in L.A. were able to see that this was just a big publicity stunt by the cops, that it didnt fix any of the real problemsthis wasnt even a problem that anybody wanted fixed. It wasnt a problem at all. It was a consensual exchange. It just feels like so little has changed, but also, more than ever, we live in that world.

What I loved about her was that shes not who you would necessarily expect to be this incredible madam. People think of a madam as being sort of an older woman who is experienced in this. She was this Gen X, young, cool madam who understood implicitly how to market sex to these super-rich guys in Hollywood who wanted to buy sex. How to brand her escorts as being higher-end, more exclusive, better than everybody else, and how that worked. Because these were super-rich guys in Hollywood who wanted to spend all this money on sex. So I just thought that was so brilliant of her to brand it that way.

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I think she just really understood how to sell stuff from a really young age. Shes this full hustler. I think all the great American stories are about hustlers and people who got one over on this system that's really rigid, one that says, you can climb as high as you want, advance as high as you want, but we all know that there are things in place to stop just anyone from doing that.

She was able just to make a name for herself just by talking her way into all of these situations, these guys in Hollywood completely vibed with her, because they were also all incredible hustlers, incredible talkers. I just found all of that interesting, and I guess as a podcaster, thats a little what Im doing too, being like, Hey, please listen to me.

Yeah, 100 percent, L.A. or Vegas. My dad says it should be the capital rather than D.C. And just looking at the way that the vice industries are so intertwined with the mainstream industries. Not just entertainment obviously, but everything has this kind of secret underground that we dont necessarily want to acknowledge, where any time it pops up and people have to be like, Oh, wait! Theres like this whole other world under the stuff we hear about.

Right, and Monica was the only one who really suffered any of the consequences of that scandal; she was slut-shamed by everybody. Bill Clinton got to come out looking like a cool guy, Hillary looked like a shrew. Its the misogyny that seeps into everything, and I think Heidi was aware of all of this. Again, I think it just backfired on the cops because they thought, Oh, were going to look like heroes for busting this person. Then, similarly to the OJ trial, it became a referendum on power and class and how things work in L.A. People sided against the cops, because nobody likes the LAPD, because theyre psychopaths.

I think Heidi became this folk hero for thumbing her nose at the LAPD, for refusing to play the game the way that it had been played. I think it just really speaks to our current moment in terms of where were at with fame and sex and social mediathis idea of, as long as youre watchable, thats all that matters.

They were saying Heidi was being exploited when she was doing sex work, even though she wasnt being exploited. She wasnt really exploiting her girls. That went against all these narratives of, Oh, well if someones doing sex work, they must have been coerced into it. Something bad must happen. It was like, No, its just a job and work is exploitative. Theres this patriarchal condescension of, Oh, well, they dont know any better. They dont know that its degrading for them to sell their bodies. Which again, the people who are saying that are the people who are buying.

I was just thinking about this yesterday, you used to have to pay money to see pictures of hot girls. Now you can just see it for free. Thats what Instagram is sellingpeople posting photos of themselves. Or selling take a look into my life, whether its sexual or not. But then being in this denial that they're selling anything.

Exactly! Thats the thing with social media and a lot of media: Sex workers are the first ones in, then the first ones to get punished when that thing becomes successful. Pornography is always the first thing to launch a new form of media.

What they tried to do with OnlyFans, where they were like, Oh, we're going to pivot away from sexualized adult content. I thought that was interesting, because people sided with the sex workers there. People sided with people who take nudes and lewds to pay their rent, because I think also more people than ever can imagine having to do something like that in order to make rent.

Just getting into the research, I realized there were so much quoting of people. People gave so many interviews. Heidi especially did a lot of profiles at the height of her notoriety, because I think she also was trying to control or take charge of her narrative once it started spinning out of her control. I thought it would be fun to cast a lot of people and see these characters. I was thinking of things like Inherent Vice, because its just also a story about these sort of unexpected ways in which all these powerful people know each other, kind of above the public line and below in this sort of underworld.

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I knew her through my friend, Naomi Fry. She posts these great Instagram Q&As, where she walks around New York and answers peoples questions. I just thought she had this great quality that Heidi has, of just, you cant look away. This person knows how to keep you interested and get you on the line with their charisma.

Its just so different. Its actually the woman who snitched on Heidi. One former Heidi Girl is now a right-wing political figure, who like a lot of right-wing political figures, is behind this movement to try to classify all sex work as trafficking. Right-wingers, but also liberals, lump everything in with trafficking. Trafficking is a crime. Trafficking is exploitative. Thats not what this was at all.

This was all women who wanted to do sex work. A lot of them were failed actresses who needed money. Or aspiring model actress types who... None of it was coerced. Nobody was getting forced to do anything. I think that idea is just still really hard for people to swallow, because theres this baked in idea that, if somebody does sex work, its because theyre down and out. I think if you talk to any sex workers, you see that that's not what it is.

I wrote a piece a long time ago about the porn awards, the AVN Awards, that was the first time I sort of saw the way sex workers were all in the gig economy, that nobody could just have one job, everybody has to have five jobs now and sell off whatever assets they have in order to make rent. I think its a time of extremes, and the mainstream media still portrays this narrative that sex work as this very degrading, exploitative thing, but somehow working at an Amazon warehouse where you have to piss in a jar is okay. Of course, there are exploitative forms of work, but sex work isnt automatically exploitative. Again, its just so nuanced, its hard for people to talk about, I think. Its so easy to railroad people.

I really think she foretold the social media world, where it doesnt matter what you do as long as people are looking at you. She didnt set out to become famous; her being famous ruined her life and her business. I also think theres this thing that happens in culture where, if a woman wants attention, people are like, Well, lets give her attention. Lets attention her to death. Which I also think is really what happened with Monica Lewinsky: Oh, you wanted people to look at you? Well, now were all looking at you and were never going to stop.

Heidi was just so smart that once she became famous, she found ways to monetize it, using her own notoriety to be like, Well, all these people in the media are making money off of me, how can I use it to make money off of this story? Now, for better and worse, thats the world we live in. As long as you can keep peoples attention, thats all that really matters.

New episodes of the podcast will be released all podcast platforms each Monday. Lambert also has a Patreon for the show, where backers will get access to bonus episodes, merchandise, and more.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Molly Lambert on 'Heidi World' and the Heidi Fleiss Scandal - ELLE

Warzone hack accusers everywhere are salivating as pro player MuTeX has been shadowbanned on the battle royale even though the streamer claims to have never broken any rules.

When it comes to Warzone, no one is ever safe from being called a cheater. As many hackers have infiltrated the game, it created a cheater until proven innocent atmosphere for many players.

While the RICOCHET anti-cheat has done its part in silencing hackers around the world, some people think it lacks in certain areas. This is why the game has shadow banning, which suspects players that may be cheating and makes it nearly impossible to find a game.

Now, streamer and pro MuTeX, who has been widely accused of cheating in the past, has been shadow banned on the game, despite proving to the community that he hasnt done anything wrong.

On April 10, MuTeX informed his fans that he has been shadow banned on Warzone even though he believes he didnt break any rules. He reached out to Raven Software and Activision saying please help me out as soon as possible. I stream your game every single day and dont want a set back for no reason.

MuTeX has done everything in his power to clear his name from hackusations in Warzone. Hes gone as far as 5-camera streams just to prove to everyone that hes just more talented than the average player.

However, it appears that Raven Software have flagged his account for suspicious activity. The pro has sent out numerous tweets asking for this to be resolved , but so far nothing has happened.

He even brings up that he streamed Warzone for a year straight without any issues just his love and passion for the game. He doesnt want this to hurt his career and unnecessarily set him back.

Accounts have been falsely flagged in the past as a player was wrongly shadow banned for abusing planes to drop an insane K/D ratio every game. While this could be the case for MuTeX, we will need to wait for an official statement from the devs to either confirm or correct this decision.

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Warzone pro MuTeX shadowbanned despite claiming to never break any rules - Dexerto

"They shouldn't down be here". John Dyer, our tour guide for the day and lifelong resident of Tregavethan, pulls over to the left-hand side of the road as several large vans attempt to drive through an extremely narrow lane framed by tall hedges and trees.

In the Tregavethan valley, this is a daily spectacle. Despite a "quiet lanes" scheme prohibiting motorised traffic, except for access, the area is almost only known as the rat run between Shortlanesend and the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

The valley has an impressive network of rural lanes. It is also dotted with tiny hamlets so, with John's help, we decided to discover this rather unknown part of Cornwall which is hiding in the shadow of Truro.

Read more: The village that refuses to shut down out of loyalty to locals

Tregavethan is part of the Kenwyn parish which, itself, only has a few thousand inhabitants. According to its residents, it is the best of both worlds. On the one hand you can enjoy nature, miles and miles of fields, its wooded areas and its fords, but on the other hand you are also within a couple of miles from the city, its hospital and its retail parks.

It is a world where driving is slow, where reversing skills have to be flawless and where a tarmacked road is considered a main road.

John, parish councillor for the area, has lived in the valley his whole life. He only moved three times and lived at Treworder, across the valley, and Threemilestone. The eldest of eight children, he has been dedicating most of his life to farming as well as parish and Cornwall Council duties.

"I'm supposed to be retired, but farmers don't retire, they merely go to heaven with their boots on," the 79-year-old said. "The hamlets have changed in my lifetime. They were named after farms in the area.

"What you name Tregavethan is something that was created in my lifetime after Tregavethan postal round. There are families that have been around for generations - since the 1700s.

"The valley is still lived in by the farming folk and the other houses are owned by people who like living in the countryside in the fringes of Truro. People here principally work in Truro, at the hospital or County Hall."

John remembers his grandfather, a dairy farmer who retired in the 1950s, doing his milk round in the valley, first with a small horse, then with a Vauxhall.

And, actually, although Truro is extremely popular and the area between the train station and Chiverton Cross keeps expanding, the valley, on the other side of the A390, has not changed much in the last few decades.

"It's because of the steepness of the valley," John explained. "It's not economic to build here. I remember when Threemilestone was a hamlet three miles out of town."

So we got into John's car and he drove us around the hamlets of Tregavethan. They are so close to Truro, and yet, we had never heard of most of them before. We saw Little Canaan, Boscolla - we counted ten houses there - and Newmill. Most properties around the area are either working farms or converted barns, farms and even chapels. Most have the most spectacular valley views.

John also took us to the site of Tregavethan Manor, which burnt down in the 1800s.

"The manor house burnt down and they took the remaining stones from the walls and with horses and carts they took them where Causilgey Manor now is," John explained.

During the World War 1, Causilgey Manor became one of the 247 Womens Land Army training centres set up around England and Wales. Called Tregavethan Farm at the time, it welcomed trainees who were willing to do land work while men were away. There, they learnt agriculture, timber cutting or forage.

The valley is full of history. Close to Treliske, we spotted Penventinnie Round, an Iron Age fort standing in the hillside.

Continuing our tour, John explained that, to live in the valley, you have got to have a bike or a car.

"There are no buses here," he said. "Cars must be robust with these lanes. It's only the likes of me who know the lanes, where they go and where they are.

"I think they should be tarmacked to make them more appropriate. You can't really have 'damn nice cars' here. I can't see that if you've got a nice Bentley, like the Queen has got, you would drive down these lanes."

The main issue in the valley is obviously traffic. The lanes are narrow and traffic is effectively not allowed for most people.

"The police don't come here very often. There is too much traffic, particularly at rush hour when drivers try to find a shortcut. What I call the rat runners charge through the lanes because it's a shortcut to Treliske, Truro College, etc. They take a chance."

The 'Quiet Lanes' scheme has been in place since September. Its aim is to make a 15km (just under ten-mile) network of roads safer for people wanting to walk and cycle in the area by banning through traffic. According to recent monitoring, around 200 vehicles use the lanes during peak hours.

Only residents and their visitors, as well as companies delivering to properties within the zone, are allowed to use the lanes during the six-month trial. You can read more about this here.

But, when traffic is quiet, one can only admire the beauty of the valley. It is, after all, truly the best of both worlds.

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The Cornwall hamlets hiding in the shadow of Truro - Cornwall Live

(AP) The nonprofit that distributed most of the $350 million in donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to election offices in 2020 said Monday that it wont disburse similar donations this year after backlash from conservatives suspicious that the contributions tilted the outcome of the presidential race toward Joe Biden.

Instead, the Center for Technology and Civic Life is launching a different program. Dubbed the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the $80-million, five-year effort is intended to create a network for the nations thousands of local election officials, who can apply for aid to improve their technology and processes.

Unfortunately, years of underinvestment means many local election departments often have limited capacity and training. The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is bringing together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer have to go it alone, said Tiana Epps-Johnson, CTCLs executive director, who announced the new program at the TED2022 conference.

The 2020 effort by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, amid the COVID-19 pandemic fueled conservative anger and distrust of the presidential election outcome. At least eight GOP-controlled states passed laws last year banning private donations to election offices in reaction to Zuckerbergs donations. Suspicion that the contributions routinely referred to as Zuckerbucks by conservatives helped Biden, a Democrat, has become a staple among those who believe in former President Donald Trumps election lies.

Several Republican election officials have said the program was vital and nonpartisan and dismissed criticism of it as conspiracy theories.

A spokesperson for Zuckerberg and Chan confirmed that the couple is not funding election offices this year.

As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis, Ben LaBolt said. They have no plans to repeat that donation.

Epps-Johnson said the group saw in 2020 just how woefully underfunded many local election offices are.

Elections in the U.S. are run at the local level, sometimes by a small staff of city or county workers and volunteers. One New England office, Epps-Johnson said, used its 2020 grant to replace century-old election tabulation equipment, and many struggled to maintain usable websites that could provide voters information on mobile devices.

The network will work with technology experts at Stanford University and elsewhere, Epps-Johnson said. Local election offices will be able to apply for assistance, but things will work differently than two years ago.

In 2020, election offices were scrambling to switch to mail voting as the pandemic made traditional polling places harder to maintain. Negotiations over additional money for election offices collapsed amid partisan acrimony in Washington. In late August of that year, Zuckerberg announced his donations, and CTCL swiftly distributed the funds to 2,500 election offices for a wide range of expenses, including new ballot counting equipment, pickup trucks to haul voting machines and public relations campaigns advertising new ways to cast ballots.

Conservatives were immediately skeptical. Many have long distrusted Zuckerberg, believing he uses his social media platform to help Democrats. CTCL is a nonpartisan group respected by election administrators of both parties, but its founders have roots in liberal politics. And although the grants went to conservative and liberal areas, Democratic-leaning counties received a disproportionate share of the money in battleground states like Florida and Pennsylvania.

CTCL has spent much of the time since the 2020 contests pushing for greater government funding of election offices, saying that would be better than another round of private donations. The nonprofit was encouraged by Bidens request for $10 billion in election funding in the federal budget he released last month.

Still, the movement fueled by Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud has latched onto the 2020 donations as one of its many grievances over how the election was conducted. For example, at Colorados GOP Assembly on Saturday, candidate after candidate referred to Zuckerberg and Zuckerbucks as they claimed the election was stolen from Republicans.

Mark Zuckerberg and his shadow forces should never be in charge of our elections, said Tina Peters, a county clerk under indictment for her role in the illegal download of voting software last year that was provided to Trump supporters. She made the comments to the crowd in Colorado Springs as she advanced to the partys primary ballot for the states top elections office, secretary of state.

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Zuckerberg money won't be in next round of aid for elections - The Business Journal

Republicans are plotting out their messaging strategy in case the Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision authorizing abortion rights.

The GOP strategy is to lead with science-based arguments and portray those in favor of abortion rights as extremists.

The Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, sent amessaging memolast week that advised members to communicate the message that the Left holds the extremist position on abortion.

Todays Left believes in a position even more extreme than Roe: taxpayer-funded abortion, on demand, until birth, said the memo, firstreportedby National Review.

The Left disregards the health and safety of women and makes false claims that the pro-life movement does nothing for mothers, it added, citing a rise in emergency room visits related to chemical abortion pills over the last few decades.

It also put a focus on advances in science and understanding of fetal viability since 1973.

Share what we know about the humanity of unborn babies. Roe was based on outdated science, the memo said.

The Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade when it considers the constitutionality of a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health.

It is doing so even though Supreme Court precedent prohibits states from banning abortions before viability, which is generally considered to be around 23 to 24 weeks into pregnancy

If the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion is overturned, much of the most consequential legislative and policy movement will happen in states with Republican control that will have new authority to restrict abortion procedures.

It also has the potential to shake up the midterm elections, when Republicans hope to win back majorities in the House and Senate.

Pro-abortion rights advocates warn that restricting access will disproportionally impact low-income women and put them at risk of seeking unsafe, unsanctioned abortions. A dozen states have trigger laws that would ban abortions if Roe is overturned,accordingto the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.

In many states, like Maryland, it will make no practical difference if Roe is overturned this June, since overturning Roe wont ban abortions it will just allow regulation at the state level, where it should be, said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), an anesthesiologist and a co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. In other states, where abortion will have some limits, you will see women finally having real choices, as pregnancy centers and other support services will grow to help women in crisis pregnancies choose life with the community help they need.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List,spoke to GOP House membersat a Republican Study Committee lunch last week about being prepared to lead on the issue, The Daily Wire reported. The press will turn to national Republicans to get their perspective if Roe is overturned, she said, and their constituents will also turn to them to get more information about abortion laws and alternate options in their states.

Members of the Susan B. Anthony Lists federal affairs team are also working directly with members of Congress to ensure maximum preparedness for a post-Roe environment.

Weve been engaged in a decades-long education battle to make Americans aware about this reality, because that doesnt jive with the majority of Americans, said Mallory Carroll, vice president of communications for the group.

Polls consistently find that Americans think the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade. A 2021 Galluppollfound that 58 percent of Americans said that the ruling should stay in place.

But Americans answers get more nuanced when they are asked about the specifics of when abortion should be allowed. A recent Wall Street Journalpollfound that 48 percent of voters supported restrictions on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with 43 percent opposed.

The action is going to be immediately focused in the states, but I think it would behoove federal lawmakers to have their own policy agenda in mind for what they plan to advocate for at the federal level, Carroll said.

Anti-abortion legislation is extremely unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled House and Senate this year, and President Biden would likely veto any anti-abortion bill that came to his desk. But Republicans have teed up a number of messaging bills an abortion that could come up if the GOP takes back the House in 2022. Such bills could set the stage for major changes if Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in a few years.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, that could open the door for Congress to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks.Another proposedbillwould require that a child who survives an attempted abortion receive the same standard of care as any other child.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), another co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, has a bill called the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would make permanent the restrictions on federal money funding abortions that are usually tacked on to annual appropriations bills each year with the Hyde amendment.

Republicans are keeping the focus on the issue in various ways.

Last week, dozens of House Republicanssigned a letterled by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, demanding that the House change its vendor for member-issued credit cards after Citigroup said it would pay travel costs for employees seeking abortions.

The Dobbs case presents the best opportunity in decades to finally correct the tragedy of Roe and return this fateful policy decision to the states where it always belonged, Johnson said in a statement. House Republicans will continue to fight for the sanctity of human life, defend the defenseless, and hold the Biden Administration accountable for any attempt to impede the policy decisions of pro-life states.

Republican women will likely be key to the partys messaging strategy if Roe is overturned. In a House hearing last year, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) shared a story about how she would not be here if her mother followed a doctors advice to have an abortion. She was the GOP answer to three Democratic women Reps. Cori Bush (Mo.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), and Barbara Lee (Calif.) sharing their own personal stories about getting abortions.

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GOP readies strategy in case Roe v. Wade is overturned - The Hill

This week read about a panel discussion covering LGBT issues in Namibia, and TikTok censoring LGBT terms in Germany.

LGBT Issues In Namibia Are Still Divisive

At a panel discussion, Charles Moore, the British high commissioner to Namibia, said LGBT issues are "deeply emotive, and often divisive, across the world.

The Diversity Alliance of Namibia hosted the panel discussion titled "Changing Hearts" in Windhoek.

When it comes to LGBT issues, Moore believes that strong religious, cultural, and communal convictions must be considered.

According to The Namibian, Moore stated that the United Kingdom and many other countries feel that basic equality for all human beings is worth fighting for, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

According to Moore, Namibia has an exceptional constitution that should be the envy of many African and international governments.

It's fine to not like, even to find it distasteful, if that's what you have been brought up to believe. But it's not fine to discriminate against those who do have a different sexual orientation or those who are disabled, just like it's wrong to discriminate against people of different tribal backgrounds, nationalities or color, Moore said.

TikTok Shadowbans LGBT Terms in Germany

Photo via Pixabay.

The popular social media app, TikTok, has been using a problematic word-filtering technique in Germany.

According to DW, the popular Chinese-owned social network has been censoring messages that contain German-language terminology pertaining to Nazis, LGBT culture, and tennis player Peng Shuai.

Words like "porn" and "sex" were censored, ostensibly to keep kids safe. However, words such as "gay," "queer," "LGBTQ" and "homosexual" were also blocked.

Users were able to submit the problematic terms, but they were hidden from others in a method known as shadowbanning.

Previous investigations have revealed that TikTok has banned phrases that are considered subversive or contentious in China, notably anything relating to Xinjiang province's ongoing human rights violations.

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From Equality Issues Still Divisive in Namibia to TikTok Shadowbanning LGBT Terms in Germany, This Week in Int'l LGBT News - SouthFloridaGayNews.com

The Government has backtracked on its long-promised policy to introduce a new law banning conversion therapy.

Boris Johnson and his predecessor Theresa May had long-promised to outlaw the practice and it has been one of the Governments flagship LGBT+ policies.

But Downing Street has now decided to explore non-legislative measures.

The decision led to accusations No 10 had let down those it promised to support and throws the upcoming LGBT conference, due to be held in the UK, into doubt.

i understands the Equalities Office was blindsided by the change in tact, which was revealed in a document leaked to ITV News.

Equalities Minister Mike Freer has repeatedly said the Government would bring forward the legislation telling MPs as recently as Wednesday that the Government was wholly committed to banning conversion therapy.

Just hours before the government confirmed the decision, Mr Freer had tweeted in support of banning the practice.

According to the document, Mr Johnson agreed with the plan not to introduce the legislation as promised.

A Government spokesperson said: Having explored this sensitive issue in great depth the government has decided to proceed by reviewing how existing law can be deployed more effectively to prevent this in the quickest way possible, and explore the use of other non-legislative measures.

Conversion therapy refers to any form of treatment that seeks to change someones sexuality or supress their gender identity.

Equalities Secretary Liz Truss said in written Government documents that she wanted to ban the coercive and abhorrent practice by introducing a new criminal offence and to ensure that conversion therapy is recognised appropriately when it is the motivation for an existing crime.

In the consultation on the issue, the Government wrote: Our intention is to bring forward a ban in the criminal law that is supported by additional civil interventions that will ensure these practices are ended. Our approach has been built on a detailed assessment of the existing legislative framework to identify gaps that currently allow conversion therapy to continue.

Liberal Democrat Equalities Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse MP said the u-turn was giving the green light to a form of torture in the UK adding: This is an utter betrayal of the LGBT+ community.

Conversion therapy should have been banned years ago, but the Conservatives are looking the other way on this abusive and dangerous practice, this is a complete injustice. The Government must ban it without dither or delay.

Labours shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: Conversion therapy is no such thing. It is harmful, psychological abuse and it should be banned. The Conservatives have once again broken their promises. Only Labour governments can be trusted to deliver on LGBT+ equality.

LGBT+ charity Stonewall said the news coming after years of delay was devastating.

Conversion practices cause extreme and often lifelong distress to LGBTQ+ people. Countries around the world are acting to ban this homophobic, biphobic and transphobic abuse, and it is shameful that the UK government is not amongst them, they said.

We call on the governments of Wales and Scotland to make good their promise to end conversion practices in their own jurisdictions. LGBTQ+ people in the UK deserve better than this.

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Conversion therapy ban ditched as government abandons long-promised plan - iNews

When Ryan Brady initiated a spring raptor count at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center while a student at Northland College in 1999, his ornithology professor, Dick Verch, had never documented a golden eagle near Ashland, Wisconsin.

The first bird Ryan spotted, on the very first day, showed the slightly V-shaped silhouette, small dark head, and dark tail of a migrating golden eagle. Both birders were thrilled.

In the second year of the project, Ryan counted almost 50 golden eagles during the spring migration season. In Duluth, the West Skyline Hawk Count spotted 41 GOEA in a single day on March 17.

Golden eagles are very similar in size to bald eagles, and can be confused with immature bald eagles who lack a white head and tail.

GOEA is the alpha code for golden eagles. Alpha codes are abbreviations of bird names that are employed by ornithologists as shorthand. These codes are established by The Institute for Bird Populations.

Now a conservation biologist in the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation, at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Ryan Brady is still counting and researching birds in northern Wisconsin. Ryan told me recently that part of the uptick in golden eagle sightings is due to an increasing population. Biologists arent completely sure whats behind the increase.

Golden eagles were not quite as impacted by DDT as other raptors, because they prey mostly on mid-sized mammals like rabbits and squirrels, which dont accumulate DDT to the same degree that insects, small birds and fish do. So the banning of DDT alone cant explain their comeback.

Maybe wildlife protection laws simply mean fewer of them are getting shot? Maybe they are adapting to wintering in our human-dominated landscapes by eating our abundance of turkeys and roadkill deer? Still, humans (collisions with cars and structures and ingesting lead shot) are their largest source of mortality.

A portion of the increase in sightings may just be a result of looking more. With the proliferation of raptor counts like the one Ryan started, as well as trail cameras capturing the eagles presence at gut piles, people noticed more golden eagles. They got excited, started looking more frequently, and now we see a lot more eagles.

Right now, during their spring migration from early March through the first week in May, is the best and really the only chance for folks in northwest Wisconsin to see these big birds near home.

In the winter, some golden eagles hang out in the goat prairies of the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin and northeast Iowa, where they prey on wild turkeys, medium-sized mammals and carrion. Others spend time in the uplands of the Mississippi River corridor, the Ozarks and even the Gulf states.

During the summer, golden eagles breed in the Black Hills and western United States, but the ones who migrate through Wisconsin are heading to the Canadian Arctic to build their nests. Golden eagles are also found throughout Europe and Asia on the tundra, in boreal forests and in mountains. But as confirmed by Wisconsins recent breeding bird atlas, no golden eagles nest in Wisconsin.

On fall migration, golden eagles hit the shore of Lake Superior and follow it around to the west. Counters at Hawk Ridge in Duluth spot dozens in October and November, but the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center is in Lake Superiors shadow.

Outside of this brief window of spring migration, golden eagles typically arent here.

So what about the dark eagles we see perched in white pines along our lakes and streams all summer long? Those are immature bald eagles who take four years to develop their white head and tail.

How can you tell what type of eagle youre seeing?

Season is your first criteria. Golden eagles arent here in the summer, while bald eagles of all ages are quite common. Habitat is another clue golden eagles hunt in the uplands and dont spend time around lakes and rivers like bald eagles do. Another place youll find bald and not golden eagles is eating roadkill along busy highways. Golden eagles do eat carrion, but they are more skittish and prefer to be on the backroads.

How about size?

Theres a popular myth that golden eagles are bigger than bald eagles. In fact, their weights and wingspans are similar, and both species exhibit sexual dimorphism in which females are larger than males. Golden eagles have smaller heads noticeable especially in flight.

There are variations in their feathers, too. Adult bald eagles have the classic white head and tail, of course. Immature bald eagles are mostly dark, with some white mottling.

If there is a big patch of white, it will be in their wing pits. In contrast, immature golden eagles have white patches on their wrists as you look up at them from below. While bald eagles hold their wings flat, golden eagles wings are angled up in a slight dihedral similar to a turkey vulture but without the vultures tipsy flight.

So when is the best time to see golden eagles in northwest Wisconsin?

Now! Just look up!

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'Tis the season to see golden eagles, population seems to be growing each year - Hudson Star Observer

For the Falkland islanders, the war in Ukraine brings back haunting memories of their own trauma four decades ago. Having themselves experienced a barbaric invasion by a big bully next door, they understand all too well what the people of Ukraine are going through.

I still feel that gun in my back, one islander told me recently, describing the day Argentine troops landed on Pebble Island and brutally rounded up the locals. Much has changed in the Falklands since 1982, nearly all of it for the better, yet the war remains seared in the memory.

This years 2 April is, therefore, hugely significant the 40th anniversary of the invasion. After two months of conflict and the loss of 907 lives, mostly Argentine, the Falklands were liberated and the aggressor sent packing. But while the anniversary is a chance to reflect, it will also be a day when islanders will shake their heads and sigh. Because the Argentine threat remains.

Landing at the islands Mount Pleasant complex today, its hard to imagine there used to be only the tiny Stanley airport. Before the war there were no roads to outlying communities. You rode on horseback, or drove across the hills, often getting bogged for hours or days. People rarely left and if they did, it was for good. The only industry of note was sheep farming, and that was a tough life. The population was shrinking.

Nobody wanted the war, but it changed everything. Afterwards, British money arrived. Roads were built. Stanley got a new hospital, school and the islands first swimming pool. Arrangements were made for children to study in the UK after the age of 16. A vehicle ferry linked East and West Falkland, and a modern telephone system was installed.

Crucially, Britain gave the islanders the rights to fish waters 150 miles offshore, something it had refused to do before for fear of upsetting Argentina. Fishing quickly became a huge source of income, and today is worth about 60 per cent of the economy. Tourism has boomed too, with cruise ships visiting Stanley. The islanders now have a European standard of living and more jobs than people to do them. The population has doubled, with newcomers from as far afield as the Philippines, Zimbabwe and New Zealand. A new port is being built, as well as a national sports facility. No wonder the mantra of the anniversary commemorations is Looking Forward at Forty.

But amidst it all is the giant, brooding presence of Argentina. Little did we imagine then that 40 years later tensions would still be simmering. We thought it was over that good had triumphed over evil.

If only. Argentina still feels the humiliation of defeat, covets the islands as much as ever and regards them as stolen, with a one-eyed version of history every bit as warped as Putins view of Ukraine. School maps propagate it and the slogan las Malvinas fueron, son y sern Argentinas (the Malvinas were, are and will be Argentine) is endlessly repeated. In Tierra del Fuego, the Malvinas crest is sewn into uniforms and sports kits.

Argentina knew it couldnt launch another invasion. The beefed-up British presence ruled that out. So it has pursued aggressive diplomacy instead. Just six years after the war, it persuaded the UN to request a negotiation. In 1994, it changed its constitution, incorporating the Falklands into one of its provinces; then Nstor Kirchner, elected president in 2003, declared sovereignty over the islands his top priority. When his wife, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, succeeded him, she pressured Gordon Brown, and tried to thrust a package marked UN Malvinas into David Camerons hands at the G20. To this day, and with no sense of irony, Argentinas leaders call Britain an aggressive actor.

Blatant though these tactics were, they were successful. Most of Latin America supports Argentinas claim. China and Russia do too, which tells its own story. Even within the EU, Argentina has advocates, not least Spain, which sees a chance to make trouble over Gibraltar.

But not content with this, Argentina has made every effort to bully the Falklands, something that Phyl Rendell, chair of the 40th Anniversary Committee, described to me as economic terrorism. Tactics have included banning flights from passing through Argentine airspace and pressuring the Mercosur bloc into closing ports to ships displaying the Falklands flag. Argentina has also banned energy companies active in the islands and threatened to arrest their executives, while targeting British natural resource companies with lawsuits. And it has lobbied loudly against Stanleys new port, declaring it a threat to its own port at Ushuaia.

While these tactics aim to hit the Falklands economically, Argentina has also stooped to a series of nasty pranks. Before the London Olympics, a film crew landed on the islands illegally to film an Argentine athlete training at clearly British landmarks, and in 2020 Argentina demanded a Falklands badminton team play as Islas Malvinas in an inter-national tournament. Some Argentine visitors wave their national flag around Stanley and write abusive comments in the church register.

Why all this absurd behaviour? The islanders say its envy that while the Falklands prosper, Argentina remains mired in economic turmoil. But thats a warning too. In 1982, a brutal administration tried to distract from economic problems by launching a war. For two months, until the moment of defeat, Argentines were fed stories of victory. Were winning! screeched the headlines, even as British forces surrounded Stanley. The junta soon fell after that, and Argentina became a democracy. But still problems mount, and still its government seeks to distract by keeping the issue of the Malvinas alive.

Understandably, then, the conflict casts a long shadow over the Falklands, and its people will be forever grateful to the British soldiers who liberated them. On my first work trip there, a decade ago, I went to places that had become familiar in 1982. I visited Goose Green, where Argentine soldiers shoved a hundred men, women and children into the tiny hall, incarcerating them in intolerable conditions for a whole month. I saw the spot where Colonel H. Jones fell. I visited the lonely war cemetery at San Carlos, before hiking across hills to see the wreckage of Argentine planes. I climbed Mount Tumbledown, from where British troops saw the white flag flying over Stanley.

But the other, peaceful, side to the Falklands always shines through: the wilderness and tranquillity. The islands are almost other--worldly. Theres hardly any crime, so people leave their houses and vehicles unlocked. The children roam safely. The air is clean. Theres no noise pollution. The scenery is spectacular, the wildlife incredible. On my last visit in January, a pair of huge turkey vultures swooped above Stanley, while sea lions snoozed on the quayside.

Yet this beauty is forced to sit alongside memories of conflict and subjugation. Perhaps thats as it should be. For so long as we refuse to forget, we remain determined to defend the rights of the islanders, and nations everywhere, to decide their own futures. Long may they be free to do so.

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40 years on, war still casts a shadow over the Falklands - The Spectator

THIS IS A BANNER YEAR for Shubigi Rao. Born in Mumbai but based in Singapore, the artist is representing her adopted country at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale and participating in the Asia Pacific Triennial. Rao is also the curator of the Fifth Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which will open in December after a delay of two years. Yet for someone wielding such clout, Rao has a prickly relationship with authority and the vectors of power and knowledge. She has rarely bowed to the pressures of the art market, bucking convention with back-to-back multiyear projects that defy the churn of the commercial gallery system.

The first of these endeavors was not intended to last as long as it did. Beginning in 2003, Rao assumed the fictive alter ego S. Raoul. (A devotee of Jorge Luis Borges, Rao is equally indebted to philosopher Hans Vaihingers idea of useful fictions.) The inventor, theorist, writer, iconoclast and eccentric polymath provided Rao with the ambiguously gendered cover to publish a series of pun-rich, intellectually indulgent hand-bound books with titles like Flotsam: An Elucidation of Jetsam (2005) and Bastardising Biography: An Extraordinary Initiative (2006), all bearing the same mischievous author photo showing the artist smirking in the half-hearted drag of a pencil mustache. Among Raouls crowning achievements was a trio of turgidly pedantic coffee-table books, published in 2006 and parodying the output of an overconfident armchair expert: Notions of Art: Thoughts from a Dot, a navel-gazing selection of essays and ruminations on creative production; Art of the Americas: Secrets Unearthed from Levels Seven to Two, whose back-cover blurb touts it as the musings of a caged, barely lit but well-ventilated mind; and Art of the United Kingdom: The Burden of British Art, which consists of an extensive list of all the objects of non-British origin in the holdings of the British Museum. Raoul later dabbled in neuroscience for The Tuning Fork of the Mind (2008), an elaborate (and entirely fabricated) study of the degenerative effects of viewing contemporary art on the human brain. The accompanying installationcomplete with a devious DIY brain-wave scanner straight out of Lost in Space, with zany blinking lights and a hidden disk drive playing a soundtrack of dogs barking and toilets flushingeventually made its way to the 2008 Singapore Biennale, where the security team of a former prime minister ripped out its wires on opening day to ensure there was no bomb. (Incidentally, Rao felt that this ludicrous gesture completed the piece.) In 2013, the artist memorialized Raouls life and works in The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul, by Shubigi Rao, an exhibition organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Its catalogue, Historys Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul, was a biography-cum-compendium lovingly rendered by Raouls ever-devoted protge, Rao.

The feeling was mutual. Raoul was purportedly a great admirer and collector of the artists work; in fact, as Rao pithily remarks, it was also what killed him. As the legend holds, Raoul died attempting to negotiate space in a cultural context; more specifically, he tripped over Raos River of Ink, 2008. The ambitious project saw Rao fill a hundred hand-bound books with a personal epistemology, compiling and categorizing all the knowledge she had gleaned from a life of reading. She then soaked these books in ink, saturating the pages beyond legibility. The work commemorated the razing of the House of Wisdom during the siege of Baghdad in 1258, when the rivers were said to have run black with ink, then red with blood. This act of unfathomable biblioclasm effectively decimated several centuries of thought, scholarship, and poetry; in doing so, it helped tip the scales, allowing other empires to eclipse the vast achievements of the Islamic Golden Age.

Intentionally or not, the work that killed poor S. Raoul would give rise to Raos next long-term endeavor, Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, 2014. As always, the artist chooses her words carefully. In keeping with the agentive potential she assigns books, Rao explicitly labels her work a biography, rather than a history. Moreover, at a time when book banning has once again reared its ugly head, Raos use of the term banished angles for something else; what she sets out to survey are not just victims of cultural warfare but banished books, those presumably sent packing from their respective Edens.

Pulp teems with a deep love of the printed page, while openly embracing the complicated edges of bibliophilia and the darker legacies of print. If our history is anything to go by, Rao writes, all books are predestined ashes. And yet preservation efforts can have unintended consequences. Like Nabokov and his butterflies, print has a nasty habit of fixing to the page ideas that should remain in motion. The irony of folk tales bound in a book, on a shelf in a library, is an obvious example of the cessation of the evolving, the silencing of the collective oral, Rao argues. She also points to the tyranny of the textbook, a means of entrenching narratives in the service of empire. To avoid reproducing such hegemonies, Rao has designed her project to have multiple flexible installments. Like her body of work devoted to S. Raoul, Pulp was intended to span ten years, with research beginning in 2014 and a total of five volumes issued at two-year intervals thereafter, but Covid-19 has disrupted this timeline. As of now, the series consists of two published books, with the third set to debut as part of the artists presentation at the Singapore pavilion in Venice. The first volume, released in 2016, introduces several of the key thinkers and case studies that frame Raos inquiry. Some speak to violence against books as an act of war (such as the 1992 destruction of the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo); others reveal perversity in the fetishism of the printed page (such as in Leuven, Belgium, where rare books recovered from the 1914 bombing of the library are kept under glass and would turn to dust if anyone ever tried to read them).

In the introduction to the first volume of Pulp, Rao writes of the act of destroying bookspulpingas a means of turning things into a sterile mush. The artist pulls off a similar mastication, condensing thousands of references and observations, but Raos text never feels sterile; if anything, theres an aura of active contamination, amplified by the red ink of notes originally handwritten in the margins. Raos a wily writer, and you get the sense that she likes to flirt with danger. Her sentences wink and smirk; her presence is constant, and unlike S. Raoul, she never loses herself in academic jargon. Its easy to take issue with the figure of the artist-researcher (the entire S. Raoul project did just that). The position affords one just enough gravitas to feel justified in holding forth on history, theory, or politics, and just enough levity to evade accountability. Rao owns these privileges and limitations. She styles herself as a flaneur in her own brain, sharing asides on coelacanths and the Koh-i-Noor diamond and pausing to admire the sunset in the bear diorama at the American Museum of Natural History. An omnivorous curiosity impels her Arcades-style stroll through the wonders of the library. Flipping pages, she writes,

While Pulp I bristles with a thorny wit and plenty of Borges references, Pulp II (2018) marks a dramatic tonal shift. During the research process leading up to Pulp II, the artist came to understand that the stories she was collecting were not her own. Framing the book as a Visual Bibliography, Rao steps back as the ever-present author, clearing space for the voices of her collaborators. Prior to this volume, Rao hadnt been terribly interested in truth; she had always gotten more leverage from fiction. Here, a series of vignettes acquaint us with all-too-real figures, ranging from the anonymous librarian who misclassifies a controversial paperback as rare so as to protect it from abuse, to the team behind Public Library, a digital shadow archive advocating for open access through mindful piracy, to firsthand accounts of the human chain that librarians and volunteers formed to rescue books from Sarajevos burning library, risking their own lives so that the cultures recorded on those pages might endure. If Pulp I had time for inside jokes, Pulp II seems staggered by the unexpected power of the narratives it contains, essentially reminding us that libricide matters only because we cling to books as a means of survival beyond the body.

The Biennale provides a fresh context and wider audience for Pulps pandemic-delayed third release, which seeks to reclaim agency for the printed word. With limited travel opportunities, Rao had to adjust her way of working; no longer the flaneur, following one avenue to another, she had to lay out a direct path in advance. Focusing on Singapore and Venice as historical publishing hubs, Rao takes up the case of two vanishing languages: Cimbrian, which traditionally flourished in the highlands just north of Venice, and Kristang, which today has fewer than a thousand speakers sprinkled through Malaysia and Singapore. Cimbrian may persist on the page, but it has slipped out of vernacular usage, whereas Kristang, the last of the Portuguese creole languages to survive in Southeast Asia, encapsulates the geopolitical tensions and asymmetries of its region. Exploring other power imbalances in print, the artist makes room for the stories of women who write about other women (her decision to do so now has particular resonance, as Rao and curator Ute Meta Bauer will make up the Singapore pavilions first female-led team). Above all, Pulp III (2022) offers its author a chance to digest the research of the past five years. If, as Rao has argued, one negative feature of print is that it endeavors to ossify the fluid processes of knowledge production, the artists multivolume format has allowed her the space to evolve alongside her research.

Kate Sutton is coeditor of international reviews for Artforum.

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Kate Sutton on Shubigi Rao and her work at the 59th Venice Biennale - Artforum