The Damned Things Overlap

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump ruled late Friday night that Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (AEA), which would restrict drag performances in the state and threaten performers who violate the law with felony criminal penalties, is unconstitutional.

“The Tennessee General Assembly can certainly use its mandate to pass laws that their communities demand,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote. “But that mandate as to speech is limited by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which commands that laws infringing on the Freedom of Speech must be narrow and well-defined. The AEA is neither.”

Parker, appointed to the bench in 2017, found after a two-day trial that the law — criminalizing “adult cabaret entertainment” performances anywhere “where the adult cabaret entertainment could be viewed by a person who is not an adult” — is unconstitutional on several grounds.

Parker did not shy away from the underlying issues, either.

“The word ‘drag’ never appears in the text of the AEA,” Parker wrote. “But the Court cannot escape that ‘drag’ was the one common thread in all three specific examples of conduct that was considered ‘harmful to minors,’ in the legislative transcript.”

After detailing that legislative history, as shown in four transcripts reviewed by the court, Parker found that “the legislative transcript strongly suggests that the AEA was passed for an impermissible purpose.”

That “impermissible purpose,” Parker found, was “chilling constitutionally-protected speech.”

-via Law Dork, 6/3/23

i would kill for the confidence of novelists who write genius-poet characters and then actually write samples of the “genius” poetry in the book. if i were a novelist writing a genius-poet i’d just be like “trust me, the poetry’s real good.”

oh btw the lobster at the aquarium in the salt lake city area is literally just from a supermarket. like literally he was just a normie lobster (if very large) going to be sold to someone to get eaten and some aquarium staff member or executive was like We’ll Take Him!! and now he hangs out in his little cave in his tank next to a sign showing his biology facts. i think this is the crustacean equivalent to all those stories about models who got discovered shopping at some random suburban mall in the 80s. he is living the american dream

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

for context:

“Beep Beep Bitch, You’re Gay!”

Updated the lesbian flag and added nonbinary, pan, ace, and aro for all your tacky LBGTQ+ barcode needs.

Hope yall  like my abomination

That last one is fucking moving istg

at last. the gaydar

sometimes i get the impulse to abandon my entire life and devote the remainder of my time to the study of dead or endangered languages.

to be clear i am very bad at learning languages.

From the math Tumblr discord server:

blythe baird

a poem that reads: Half daughter,

half apology, all fire and the wrong kind of love.

This is a book that features a bunch of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people who grew up in different cultural contexts with different degrees of authoritarian intervention, and it functions as a case study on the ways in which rule-following and antisocial tendencies interact. As such we spend a significant amount of time this episode talking about our childhoods. This one is highly recommended but you may need to put it down occasionally if you've experienced traumatic mental health interventions (or graduate school.)

Using red dye to demonstrate that mercury can't be absorbed by a towel

Forbidden Beverage

Qin Shi Huang energy

fishing; the thinking man's gacha

hey chicken people are you okay

reduces but not eliminates

Round 3, poll 4

Battle of the Northeast Corridor

Meme news: The Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah came out as bisexual at the age of 76

That's her, btw

She's an icon and also very talented. We Stan.

now we know what she was trying to work out