In case anyone is interested, this month I wrote “How to tell if you’re allosexual, if you’re a journalist“, about low quality articles that seem intended to exploit SEO.

that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough | Pervert Justice – Gatekeeping trans women from sports ultimately results in gatekeeping cis women as well.  I think this pragmatic argument isn’t the most satisfying, because it doesn’t make a positive case for the inclusion of trans women–but it is, after all, still correct.

Fixing My Brain with Automated Therapy | Jacob Geller (video, 53 min) – Jacob tried five different therapy apps, and talks about the history of teletherapy.  Plenty of interesting discussion, for instance, about how teletherapy constrains the kind of therapy.  He echoes what I’ve said about Eliza–this technology will be cheap, but bad.  More people could have access to therapy this way, and that’s a good thing… but it’s not good therapy.

Is Salman Rushdie a Victim of “Cancel Culture”? | Skepchick (14 min video and transcript) – In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini essentially called for the assassination of Salman Rushdie for writing an allegedly blasphemous book–along with the assassination of anyone involved in its publication or translation into other languages.  Was Rushdie a victim of cancel culture?  Well, no, Rebecca argues that “cancel culture” consists of a bunch of distinct things that aren’t really comparable.

TikTok: Life on the Algorithm | Errant Signal (video, 52 min) – I appreciated this ethnography of TikTok.  It sounds awful.  Nothing but algorithmic recommendations?  The internet is so much better when you have control over what you subscribe to.