- A Kiev-based agency has developed iron weights shaped like breasts. It’s a real product.
Breast Weights: A Bro-tastic New Standard In Agency IP (Fastco Create)
- Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare has blocked Looo.ch and added it into the Registry of Forbidden Sites. The site recently published two ebooks responding to Russia’s new “anti-gay propaganda” laws. Looo.ch takes 26,439 sites with it that are also now banned in Russia — everyone using the Squarespace platform, which powers Looo.ch. Uh-oh.
Did Russia Just Censor All 26,439 Squarespace Sites Over a Satirical Gay Art PDF File? (AnimalL NY)
- The study, The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Productivity, found that Australians lead the way in their relationship with wearable technology, with one in five even claiming that it actually makes them better lovers.
Australians Say Wearable Tech Boosts Their Sex Lives (XBIZ)
- The Arabic term (jihad al-nikah) describes a phenomenon, evident in other Arab countries as well, of women traveling to the battlefield to provide comfort – and sexual favors – for the rebel fighters (and are coming home pregnant). Some hardline jihadists consider the practice a legitimate complement to Holy War.
Tunisian Women Go on ‘Sex Jihad’ to Syria, Minister Says (TIME)
- Even with three recent cases of HIV among performers many porn producers and performers are still fighting against mandatory condom use. Friend and colleague Tristan Taormino is not one of them. This week she told CNN she’ll require condoms from now on even if she loses some viewers – but she’s not so sure she will. And she’s getting flack from the mainstream porn industry for taking a stand. She elaborated on her own blog saying: “Plenty of people say that no one wants to see condoms in porn. That no one cares about the safety of the people who make the images they masturbate to. I hope to prove them wrong, and I hope you, my audience, will help me do it.”
Porn producer vows to mandate condoms after HIV scare (CNN)
Porn, Feminist Labor Practices, and The Condom Debate (puckerup.com)
- Three porn performers who recently learned they were HIV-positive are asking the industry to require condoms. Cameron Bay, Rod Daily and an unidentified third performer held a press conference with CBS in Los Angeles on Thursday to discuss their cases.
HIV-positive porn actors call for condoms on sets (CBS)
- If you’re a woman looking to learn more about a labiaplasty – an invasive, potentially nerve damaging surgery – your first step is probably to just plug the term into Google. That will, almost inevitably, bring you to the Wikipedia article about the procedure. Turns out plastic surgeons who perform the procedure have been editing Wikipedia to their benefit for years.
Are plastic surgeons nip/tucking ads into high-profile Wikipedia articles? (DailyDot)
- A softcore porn actress is suing Daily Mail’s parent company Associated Newspapers Ltd. for $3 million, accusing one of the most-read news sites in the world of putting her photo on an article about an HIV positive adult actress without her permission. Danni Ashe sued the British paper last week. An Aug. 22 article about a porn actress who had tested positive for HIV used a photo of Ashe for illustrative purposes.
Daily Mail Slapped With $3 Million Libel Lawsuit by Porn Actress (TheWrap)
- Sexual trauma and assault warning. Conservative group Generation Opportunity (part of the billionaire Koch brothers-funded empire) have produced two anti-Obamacare ads that essentially depict patient rape in a medical setting. In “The Glove” a man is to be a digital penetration victim by a horrifying latex-gloved Uncle Sam suited character; in “The Exam” it is a female victim who will receive the character’s speculum. The ads will be part of a six-figure fall campaign at 20 college campuses to discourage healthy young people from signing up for healthcare.
Creepy Anti-Obamacare Ads Suggest Where Uncle Sam Wants to Stick It (The Atlantic)
- A Moscow strip club has released an anti-war themed calendar addressing Barack Obama and praising Vladimir Putin for his efforts to stop U.S. strikes on Syria. The quotes accompanying the women’s photos are bizarre and worth clicking through to read.
Strippers Celebrate Vladimir Putin’s Syrian Diplomacy Because Russia (Buzzfeed)
- In support of the government’s planned default Internet porn filter, UK regulators will ask banks and creditors to cut off business with legal, foreign adult websites for not having “adequate” age checks.
Banks to block foreign websites in UK anti-porn Internet crusade (Pulp Tech, ZDNet)
- Past the veneer of primary colors, inside the walls of Google’s Mountain View campus, Google is a hotbed of sex and political infighting.
Sex and Politics at Google: It’s A Game Of Thrones In Mountain View (Business Insider)
- The Turkish government blocked Grindr last week. Now the app is fighting back with help from All Out and the Turkish LGBT rights group KAOS GL.
Grindr Fights Back After Turkish Ban (Buzzfeed)
- On June 6, a 65-year-old man took off his shorts at a beach near Stockholm and began masturbating into the ocean. The man was charged with sexual assault, but was acquitted last week after a judge ruled he was not targeting a specific person.
Public Masturbation Declared Legal in Sweden After Landmark Trial (Gawker)
- There are some companies out there trying to innovate and think critically about a product’s UI. One such company is the Sweden-based LELO, which not only has a reputation for high-quality products. LELO takes into account a number of factors when designing the UI/UX of a new sex toy, like the seemingly obvious step of making sure the control interfaces are easy to press and responsive…
The Shape of Sex Toys to Come (VICE: Motherboard)
- “The job was to watch porn. The office was a Bay Area dotcom, circa 2008. My assignment was to tag each actor in these videos by attributes (hair color, breast size) and tag each sex act. That way, a subscriber could easily search our database and filter out everything but, say, group sex featuring brunettes.”
What I Learned as a Porn Tagger (TIME)
- Penthouse magazine publisher [Adult] FriendFinder Networks Inc. (Alt.com) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under a deal that would see it return to the hands of its founders, who sold their collection of adult social-networking websites to the company nearly six years ago.
Penthouse publisher FriendFinder files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (Wall Street Journal)
- “I’m a formerly lesbian, currently queer cis-gender woman. For the last six months, I’ve been dating a wonderful trans guy. What’s not wonderful is the unexpected shit I’m getting from my community about dating a he.”
My Trans Boyfriend, My Transphobic Friends, and Me (sexuality.about, Cory Silverberg)
- The bodyguard to the stars who was killed by cops in Florida during an alleged break-in got fired from his job protecting Jay Z and Beyoncé due to his sexual activities. The duo also allegedly discovered photographic and video evidence showing Oosterbroek using the family’s passports in a lewd act.
Jay Z and Beyoncé fired bodyguard Norman Oosterbroek, after freaky incidents, before he died during break-in (NY Daily News, via Eve Batey’s Twitter)
I think one reason viewers don’t like condoms is the range of common colours sucks, they stand out too much. The regular white/cream ones are fine for those of us without a custom camera/light rig in the bedroom, but when you’re lighting up a room so you can see everything on camera, you can see Everything. I think pink condoms usually look invisible on most skin tones, although I wonder if men with darker skin would actually want black ones, to enhance their skin tone?