wishing for a better world

FLY is a story about a boy who gets a second chance. Help his story take flight June 9th 11am EST on Kickstarter. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings I hope this story lifts the world to a brighter place.

I've come across lots of radical feminists in my years of selling sex, starting when I was a homeless teenager. Other sex workers have often helped me, sending me money when I was desperate and offering me support to stop selling sex when I was traumatized. SWERFs have called me worse things than my clients have, all whilst arguing that I'm privileged because I argue for the decriminalization of prostitution which would make all sex workers safer, despite the fact I started selling sex underage and out of desperation because I had no other options.

Many radical feminists like to call sex worker activists the "pimp lobby" and imply they're encouraging sex work, but other sex worker activists have been the only people I've seen actually supporting people to stop selling sex.

The way decriminalization would've made me safer when I was underage was that I wouldn't have gotten into trouble myself for selling sex. With full decriminalization, I wouldn't have been at risk of losing my bank account or getting into legal trouble for helping other teen sex workers I knew. I wouldn't have risked having my earnings confiscated as proceeds of crime, which makes us have to sell more sex!

Indeed it is! The FCC controls how much of broadcasting has to cater to children and that includes how educational that programming has to be, and exactly how much and in what way you are allowed to advertise to kids. That's why for the entire 90s and up to the early 00s, kids shows had shorter commercial breaks, and ads that talked about a website had to say "ask your parents before going online", and those websites had to be non-commercial--i.e. they could not be shops, and could not have any way you could spend money or were encouraged to spend money. That's why Barbie.com was flash games, and O'Rielly LIFTING that ban is why Barbie.com now takes you directly to a storefront instead.

If you're mad about Saturday Morning Cartoons, dark patterns in ads targeted at children, online protections for kids, or wondering why educational children's shows aren't as much of a thing as they used to be, get mad at the FCC and the person in charge of it who is gutting the Children's Brodcasting Rules (sometimes called the Kid Vid Rules), because those rules control all of that!

While O'Rielly is responsible for gutting the rules in 2019, he was replaced in 2020 by Nathan Simington as head of the FCC, and Simington resigned in June of this year. The post remains vacant as of the time of this writing (August 31, 2025).

CBC has found that Loblaws and other major grocery stores have been overcharging customers for underweight meat. The report found overpriced fresh meat at seven Loblaw-owned or Sobeys-affiliated stores in the Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax areas. Last year, a similar investigation revealed that as many as 80 Loblaws stores in Western Canada — as well as Sobeys and Walmart locations in several provinces — had been weighing meat with packaging, increasing prices by 4% to 11%. Federal regulations state that posted net weights for packaged food, and subsequent pricing, can’t factor in the packaging.

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Ahmad Islaih, a 26 year old elementary school teacher, was accused of participating in a demonstration that briefly halted traffic on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway in November. The protest against Israel’s assault on Gaza had lasted for only five minutes. After waking up Ahmed, handcuffing him and charging him with “mischief,” eight police officers sat the family, still in their pajamas, at their dining room table. While they searched their home, the front door stayed open, despite freezing winter weather and the family’s pleas to police to close it. [...] After the police left with Ahmad’s computers, electronics, and clothes, the family discovered his room “turned upside down.” Drawers had been emptied on the floor, his mattress was thrown off the bed, a vase was broken, and several boxes had been rifled through. “It took us back to our life in the West Bank,” Suha said, “when Israeli soldiers raided our home.” 

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They want buckskin and face paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand recorded for them but with English subtitles, of course. They want educated, well spoken, but not too smart. Christian, well behaved, never question. They want to learn the history of the people, but not the ones that are here now, waving signs in their faces, asking them for clean drinking water, asking them why their women are going missing, asking them why their land is being ruined.

They want fantastical stories of Indians that used to roam this land. They want my culture behind glass in a museum.

Newfoundland and Labrador's provincial government is declaring gender-based violence an epidemic. Lela Evans, minister of women and gender equality, called it a "monumental" day. "Today is an emotional day for me," said Evans at a press conference Wednesday afternoon in front of MHAs, police and women’s groups from across the province.

Evans announced a 12-member task force to deal with the problem, made up of government members and community advocates. The task force will produce a report in the fall, she said, and government will begin work before the task force finishes its work.

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Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.

Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry."

The largest labour organization in Canada has committed to cutting ties with Israel’s trade federation, the Histadrut. A resolution passed at the constitutional convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in Winnipeg earlier this month also calls on the Canadian government to support a two-way arms embargo, suspend the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement and condemn Israeli settlement expansion. Kevin MacKay, who attended the convention as a delegate from the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), told PressProgress that, when it came time for the vote, “We had a lot of the biggest labour leaders in the hall lining up at the mic to either speak or show support for the resolution.”

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