Dinking around in the St. Clair v. xAI docket, I found that xAI is indeed raising Section 230 as a defense to liability for Grok's bikini pics, as previewed in its opposition to a PI. ("Does 230 apply to gen AI outputs?" is a Q courts haven't answered yet.) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

My goal for the week is to work the phrase "dancing by default" into a sentence, or better yet an invitation.

Look, I abhor ICE as much as the next sane person, but this isn’t at all what happened reason.com/2026/02/11/a...

This passed out of another committee (House Rules) in a 5-2 vote this week apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/B...

Having muscled age-verification through last session, AZ Republicans are pushing forward even greater restrictions on sex, including banning porn entirely (HB 2900), threatening adult producers with warrantless AG inspections (HB 2133) and HB 2720, which would make purchasing sex a felony.

so wait you're telling me a moral panic around the internet is not based on any actual scientific data but just cynical governments looking to control access to speech

I hate hate hate so much that the world has shrunk so much for kids since I was a kid. We took outside away from them and now we're taking inside too. Exploring and curiosity in different spaces is so important to learning about yourself, and we're shutting them off to every opportunity.

We often think about censorship in terms of Orwellian censorship -- the government telling us explicitly what we can and cannot say or read. But throughout history, Orwellian censorship is rare because it's impractical for the government. Self-censorship has always been the preferred method.

If we zoom out from Discord, what we are seeing are companies and regimes coalescing around an inevitable solution that simply bans kids from the Internet. Australia is already piloting this. South Africa is considering it. Europe and the U.S. are flirting with it.

The Discord age verification discourse focuses on adults losing access to communities they have a right to access. That's important. I'm also worried, though, about the kids. They seem to be an afterthought in these conversations. They have much to lose too. 🧵 www.theverge.com/tech/875309/...

A line from Kant that’s been ricocheting around my head a lot for the past year: “Whoever wills the end wills also the necessary means.” We’re going to get a lot of doe-eyed protestations from folks who “just wanted immigration laws enforced” & couldn’t be bothered to contempate what that entailed.

When a sitting representative refers to the Super Bowl halftime show as “pornography,” people should use that to reflect on how they and other representatives are simultaneously working to ban, censor, and restrict “pornography” and what that actually means

It might be tempting to sneer at this, “oh we need science to say moderation is good” but it’s actually an important response to the unhinged alarmism pushed by public “intellectuals” like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, where they misrepresent and over-extrapolate studies for their patrons.

A huge Australian study of tweens and teens finds best mental health among moderate social media users — not total abstainers reason.com/2026/02/09/a...

TN is considering a new bill that allows parents to sue large platforms that allow "material harmful to minors"— including sculpture, drawings, photos, music or video games— that describe or depict nudity, sex or "excessive violence" The censorship that started with "porn" is coming for everything.

For the most part, these laws don't exist to actually prosecute. They exist to threaten, to scare people, to encourage self-censorship. They exist to frighten people and venues from working with drag performers, or LGBTQ+ orgs, or political protests that might be profane or controversial.

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

OMG. How have I missed this all this time?

Love the community note that got added on to the Democrats' tweet about their deranged and harmful efforts to dismantle Section 230.

He wrote FUCK ICE with his own urine.

Good morning Bluesky

In more civilized times and places than 2020s Arizona, midnight performances of Rocky Horror have been a standing institution for the goth-but-not-old-enough-to-drink set

The AZ "unlawful exposure to drag" bill cleared its first hurdle. Judiciary committee votes 6-3 to pass. The bill would criminalize parents bring kids to any show where drag is an element or even bringing them in a building where such a performance takes place reason.com/2026/02/04/a...

I hate being told what I can or can't do. If I still had young kids & lived in Ariozna, I'd take them to a drag show just out of spite. New from @enbrown.bsky.social 'Bringing your kid to a drag show could become a felony crime in Arizona.' reason.com/2026/02/04/a... ➕ banning VPNs & other bullshit.

Should letting your child enter a building where drag performers exist be a felony crime, on par with burglary and assault? At least one Arizona lawmaker thinks so! We'll find out later today if any of his colleagues agree.. reason.com/2026/02/04/a...

Seems real bad that the end point of ~25 years of War on Terror architecture is an agency of thin-skinned goons who will send armed men to your house if you email the government asking for compassion on behalf of someone else. newrepublic.com/post/206088/...

The key phrase to remember "harmful to minors." It's been used to push for greater internet restrictions (age-verification, KOSA), VPN bans, book bans, attacks on librarians, healthcare defunding and, most recently, the push to repeal marriage equality.

Talked to @taylorlorenz.bsky.social about social media "addiction" and how it became a legal weapon youtu.be/vXnsbiPXOB4 Taylor has been doing amazing work lately on how social media regulations and lawsuits are often driven by a desire for censorship and control

New @enbrown.bsky.social 'Sex & Tech' on Moltbook & tHe DeAth of HuMaNiTy‼️➕ KOSA, cannabis & (never-ending) sex panic 😱. Unsurprisingly, a new Oregon proposal shows politicians still can't decide when we become adults (but are still fine sending 18 year olds to war...🖕🏼) reason.com/2026/02/02/n...

Even if you don't have time to read all 83 pages of Judge Reyes's opinion barring the Trump administration from rescinding Temporary Protected Status for 350,000+ Haitians, please at least check out the four-page introduction. It's a tour de force: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

twitter must be dead dead cause someone posted a rat coin purse that would have 2019 twitter losing its collective mind and most of the top comments are bots saying random words or people not nearly amped enough about the rat coin purse

Humans pretending to be AI is my new favorite plot twist.

"For the Governor of California to jump from 'some rando users reported upload problems during a technical outage' to 'we must investigate whether this violates California law' is… not how any of this should work." www.techdirt.com/2026/02/02/h...

Breaking: Large Language Models trained heavily on Reddit are good at impersonating Reddit.

Moltbook is essentially Reddit for Robots — and they're using it to plot our demise! ... Or, wait, maybe not? reason.com/2026/02/02/n...

🤔

I’m _not_ telling you not to enjoy your LSD, I’m just sharing. New in @wired.com: 'a medium-strength cup of coffee may prove more beneficial in treating major depressive disorder than a tiny dose of acid.' www.wired.com/story/microd... cc @enbrown.bsky.social @nickgillespie.bsky.social #coffee

“The two-party system that pretends to work for us is ridiculous," said David Gedert, aka Sugar Vermonte. "We have to stop pretending that it's working. We all recognize that it's broken in one way or another, but someone has to stand up." www.cincinnati.com/story/news/p...

"The fact that Patel is openly talking about this investigation (while bungling information about its legal basis) indicates that this is more about striking fear and chilling legal speech."

Signal group chats about ICE whereabouts are protected speech. The FBI is investigating anyway... reason.com/2026/01/29/g...

Biden officials even helped draft the law and whipped up congressional support for it. And that was after they ignored every meaningful reform offer TikTok proposed over many years. There's zero chance this would've happened without Democrat support www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

I think TikTok is telling the truth about the content "censorship" creators saw this week reason.com/2026/01/28/t...

Minnesota National Guard members have arrived at a federal building and were directed to distribute donuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to anti-ICE protesters. Guard members were issued reflective vests so they would not be mistaken for federal agents.

One problem with advocating for censoring unwanted political content on TikTok is that you might get your way

They know their defenses are lies and that everyone knows they’re lying, so they have to push the negative polarization button in the hopes that their supporters rationalize the indefensible. It’s worked so far bsky.app/profile/jwmu...

Not the key part of this story, obviously... but they *sold* his phone? WTF?

New @enbrown.bsky.social is rich on content, from the wars on choice (abortion, sex, always something) to "Saving America by Saving the Family" to maybe the coolest news in the closing line. Always informative. & h/t @mikestabile.bsky.social (💙 that Liz uses a 🦋 image) reason.com/2026/01/12/p...

When women do it, it’s smugness. If it had been a dude in survivalist cosplay toting an AR-15 it’d be manly patriotism.

Having Grok issue an “apology” is not just insulting and stupid (obviously Grok cannot actually “regret” anything, deeply or otherwise) but cowardly: It asks us to assign responsibility to an unconscious piece of software rather than the humans and institutions who should actually be blamed.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s latest is an anti-tech omnibus, combining years' worth of dangerous policy ideas into one big, bad bill.