Month: August 2026

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All The Usual Suspects

How each state is viewed on LGBTQ Issues (Currently as of 2026)

State by state classification of LGBTQ policy environments in the United States:

Pro LGBTQ: Strong legal protections, expansive anti discrimination laws, support for gender affirming care, generally supportive political climate.

Moderate: Mixed or evolving policies; protections may exist but with notable restrictions or political division.

Anti LGBTQ: Major restrictions on transgender rights and/or weak statewide protections, socially conservative political environment.

Pro LGBTQ States
These states generally have:
– Strong anti discrimination protections
– Broad LGBTQ healthcare protections
– Supportive state governments
– Strong protections for transgender rights

Moderate States
These states usually have:
– Some statewide protections
– Mixed court/political battles
– Urban rural divides on LGBTQ issues
– Competitive or divided electorates

Anti LGBTQ States
These states generally have:
– Restrictions on transgender healthcare or school policies
– Limited statewide anti discrimination protections
– Conservative legislatures/governors
– Strong religious conservative political influence

Hardest States to Classify
Utah: Conservative culturally, but has occasionally supported compromise LGBTQ protections.
Georgia: Atlanta drives a much more LGBTQ-friendly culture than rural Georgia.
Florida: Historically moderate/libertarian on gay rights, but recent state policy has shifted more conservative.
Iowa: Once a Midwestern leader on same-sex marriage, but recent politics moved rightward on transgender issues.
New Hampshire: Libertarian political culture creates unusual crosscurrents.
Michigan: Strong recent Democratic shifts on LGBTQ protections despite competitive statewide politics.

The West Coast and Northeast are overwhelmingly Pro LGBTQ.

The Deep South and much of the Great Plains are more Anti LGBTQ politically.

The Midwest and Sun Belt suburbs are the main battleground regions on LGBTQ issues.

Do y’all agree or disagree based on where you live?

[source]

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Do You Notice A Change In The Air?

A Texas constable has personally unplugged or covered every county-operated Flock camera, declaring that mass warrantless tracking has no place in a free society.

Hood County Constable John D. Shirley took physical action over the weekend by disabling and covering all three county-owned Flock Safety automated license plate readers. 

The defiant move followed a unanimous decision by the Hood County Commissioners Court to terminate its contract with the tech company amidst rising citizen pushback and contract performance issues. 

In a public statement on social media, Constable Shirley shared photos of the covered devices, telling the surveillance company to ‘come get your garbage out of my county’ and asserting that the protection of everyday privacy must come before indiscriminate data collection.

Flock Safety cameras, which automatically photograph vehicle license plates and build searchable records of where drivers travel, have become a polarizing issue nationwide. While law enforcement agencies advocate for the systems as indispensable tools for locating stolen vehicles, missing persons, and suspects, civil liberties advocates argue they facilitate continuous, warrantless government surveillance. As Hood County requests a $126,000 refund from the company, the local shutdown has reignited a fierce national debate over where to draw the line between public safety and personal liberty.

source: MyParisTexas. (2026). ‘Completely Unplugged’: Hood County shuts down Flock camera network.


I don’t think the oligarchs have yet realized they’ve awakened a sleeping giant, and that is the spirit of the United States that still lives in the hearts and minds of three-quarters of its citizens.

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Quote Of The Day

Lee Pace may have played one of Middle-earth’s most majestic and intimidating Elven kings, but his description of married life couldn’t be more down-to-earth.

The actor behind Thranduil has generally kept his life away from the cameras private. In 2022, however, Pace confirmed that he had married Matthew Foley after the two had been together for several years.

Their relationship began after Pace asked a mutual friend to introduce him to someone. That introduction eventually led to a relationship, and years later, marriage.

When Pace was asked what married life was actually like, he shared a description that quickly became one of his most endearing quotes:

“What I’ll say about being married, it was once described to me as an endless sleepover with your weirdest friend. In our experience, that is absolutely true.”

Then came the part that perhaps explains why the quote connected with so many people:

“If you’ve found one person you can be weird around, hold on tight.”

Away from premieres and enormous fantasy productions, Pace and Foley have built a relatively private life together, including spending time at their home in upstate New York.

It’s a surprisingly simple perspective from an actor whose career has taken him everywhere from the halls of the Elvenking to distant galaxies.

Find someone who lets you completely be yourself.

Then hold on tight.

I did not know Lee Pace was part of our tribe!

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An Apple AirTag just tracked a shipment of rare books to a secret Amazon AI facility in Las Vegas, where texts are cut apart, scanned, and destroyed to train AI models.

A groundbreaking investigation has exposed how tech giants are quietly acquiring physical books to train artificial intelligence models—by literally tearing them apart. 

Suspecting that bulk purchases of rare and obscure books were destined for AI training, journalists at 404 Media teamed up with an independent bookseller to plant an Apple AirTag inside a volume shipped as part of an anonymous 1,000-book order. The tracking device traveled across multiple states, eventually terminating at a high-security Amazon facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Inside this warehouse, a specialized unit code-named VGT3 systematically processes incoming books by slicing off their bindings, scanning the pages for digital intake, and destroying the physical originals.

This aggressive scanning pipeline highlights the extreme lengths to which tech companies will go to secure high-quality training datasets, particularly pre-2022 literature that is completely free of AI-generated content. While independent booksellers watch their inventories get shredded, legal and ethical questions are mounting over the practice of turning physical, copy-protected books into digital training data before disposing of the evidence. Amazon defended the operation in a brief statement, claiming it purchases books through commercial channels to improve its products and services, but the revelation has ignited intense debate over the systematic destruction of physical human knowledge to fuel artificial systems.

source: Maiberg, E. (2026). We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility. 404 Media.

We are long past the time to eat the rich. Just chuck ’em into their own shredders and be done with ’em.

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Oh Wow…

I’ve never dubbed this way before. Probably because I didn’t have the proper cable. Digitally dubbing via portables is easier than deck-to-deck. (That’s deck, you perverts!) Transfers track marks and everything.

I found a brand new, unopened original Sony OEM optical cable on eBay for less money than buying an Amazon Essentials.

And I’m loving my new desk mat.

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Could Probably Work As-Is, But I’d…

…add a guest bath easily accessible on the first floor. To do this I’d seal off the pantry (with a door to the kitchen, obviously) on the opposite side of the hallway, lose that hall closet between the pantry and the maid’s room and extend the bath and open it to the hallway. I’d also lose the wall between the dining room and that hallway. The maid’s room would make a great home office. This obviously hails from a simpler time when the garage was not the focus of the entire house.

The fact that the upstairs windows directly above the entrance are not centered on said entrance also annoys me…

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Morning Tunes/The More You Know

Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms (1985)

Playing on my period-specific Discman.

I learned that this particular CD was the very first that was digitally recorded from beginning to end, in other words a “DDD” recording (digital recording, digital mixing, digital mastering) and is considered one of the best-sounding CDs out there. I can’t attest to that personally because my copy is not from the original 1985 run, but a reissue and who knows what’s been done in the interim, but it does still sound good.

Sonic excellence aside, Brothers in Arms has always been a problematic album for me, mainly because of the “little faggot” lyrics in Money for Nothing, but like a lot of other artists with problematic catalogues I can force myself to turn a blind eye. Does this make me a bad person?

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