By now, most of my readers have already heard that Backpage founder Michael Lacey, was found guilty of a single count of money laundering for a $16.5 million transfer to a bank in Hungary, which was supposedly done to conceal the illegal source of the money.That seems weird, since the jury did not find him guilty of any crime in which he supposedly earned that illegal money … [Read more...] about Backpage and The Iron Law of Prohibition
Sex Work
ChatGPT the Hobbyist?
I've been following sex workers on social media for many years((Strictly for purposes of libertarian activism, I assure you.)), and I've noticed a lot of escorts griping about strange first contacts from prospective clients.I wonder if Chat-GPT((Using the GPT-4 language model.)) can help?Write a first contact email to a young escort to set up a date. You can leave … [Read more...] about ChatGPT the Hobbyist?
No Ground Truth: Sex Trafficking and Machine Learning
A tweet last week by Carol Fenton led me to an article in the Vancouver Province by Nathan Griffiths which begins with a seemingly shocking statistic:Roughly 40 per cent of online ads offering escort and sex work services in B.C. included language indicating child sex trafficking, according to a new pre-print study from SFU.The article also includes this blurb from … [Read more...] about No Ground Truth: Sex Trafficking and Machine Learning
Prohibitionists’ Hollow Remembrance of Sex Workers
June 2nd was International Whores' Day (or International Sex Workers' Day, if you prefer) and Mistress Matisse was pissed:International Whores' Day commemorates the occupation of Église Saint-Nizier church in Lyon, France by a bunch of sex workers who were even more pissed off than Mistress Matisse. Forced to work in secrecy by the police, they were increasingly the … [Read more...] about Prohibitionists’ Hollow Remembrance of Sex Workers
#ThotAudit Is Really About Ethics in Tax Collection
Oh dear God. I saw a tweet from Mistress Matisse, wondered what the heck she was talking about, and made the mistake of clicking on the tag, and now I've discovered a whole new world of idiocy in something called #ThotAudit.First of all, I had to learn a new word: "thot." Apparently, it means something like "slut" or "whore," but it's a relatively new word that showed up … [Read more...] about #ThotAudit Is Really About Ethics in Tax Collection