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Lesbians in Thailand Bush Boundaries

Out Thai director Saratsawadee Wongsomphet (Yes or No)

 

CHIANGRAI TIMES – When she initially pitched the idea for Thailand’s first lesbian movie, it was quickly shot down. Producers called the premise distasteful and said movie viewers would find the story line disgusting.

After scrounging together funds for five years, director Saratsawadee Wongsomphet released “Yes or No” on an independent label to considerable acclaim.

The film’s recent success in outwardly tolerant but traditional-minded Thailand is part of a growing acceptance of lesbians under the influence of the Internet and fashion trends. These emboldened lesbians are not using Western-style activism. They are quietly pushing boundaries to find space for their lifestyle, harassing pop culture and introducing a Thai variation of Lesbian Chic.

“It would have been risky to make this movie five years ago,” Saratsawadee said about her directorial debut. “Now people are daring to express themselves.”

Women in this Southeast Asian country are expected to be gentle, polite, even demure, and gay women in Thailand traditionally have been more discreet than gay men, but that is visibly changing.

Yes or No tells the story of Pai, a college girl who holds a negative attitude about tomboys. Yet she finds out that her new room-mate, Kim, is a woman who dresses like a man and who likes women

Thai newsstands now carry “Tom Act,” the country’s first lesbian lifestyles magazine. A popular new clothing store in Bangkok touts itself as the first for “Tomboys,” the Thai term for the more conspicuous members of the lesbian community who act and dress like men.

Pop charts include hit singles from Thailand’s first openly gay female singer, a waifish, androgynously coifed 22-year-old known as Zee who is typically described as “handsome.”

Thailand’s freewheeling, anything-goes reputation has served its tourism industry well, but Thai society is far more conservative than its tourist sex shows and transgender beauty pageants suggest.

Movies are censored for morality, women are often too modest to wear bathing suits on the beach, abortion is illegal and the government regularly censors websites deemed immoral. When it comes to homosexuality, Thailand is ambivalent but tolerant: Bangkok is known as gay-friendly but politicians and high-profile public figures stick to an unstated “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of keeping their homosexuality hidden.

Concerns about offending Thai society prompted Saratsawadee to delicately depict the sole love scene between her leading ladies, a pair of college roommates, with a brief, fully clothed kiss.

“I was afraid nobody would want to see it,” said the 38-year-old, who is gay and has worked in the film industry for years, always wanting to do a film showing that lesbians are not “weirdoes” but regular people.

“I was afraid it would be censored, or would never be shown. I was afraid people would say it sends a bad message,” she said.

Saratsawadee never anticipated a nationwide release for her film, which hit screens in December to considerable media hype and modest but profitable box office returns. Then came the 40,000-member Facebook fan club, the viewers who thanked her for telling their life story. Last month, she was honored with a “Best Director” nomination at the Thai equivalent of the Oscars.

Thai newsstands now carry “Tom Act,” the country’s first lesbian lifestyles magazine

“The bubble is bursting,” says Anjana Suvarnananda, 53, who co-founded Thailand’s first and most outspoken lesbian activist group in the 1980s. “These young people are just doing their own thing and living their lives oblivious to discrimination — so that means they are not facing very much. It’s a very different picture from when I grew up.”

Another emblem of changing times is the glossy, 200-page Tom Act, a lesbian fashion and lifestyles magazine that creates “a space for us to express ourselves,” says editor-in-chief Khemanut Ronarut. She credits international fashion trends that make it cool to look androgynous with easing public acceptance of gay women in Thailand.

“Normally, we choose to be quiet. But by doing this magazine, I’m taking a risk,” she said. The first issue in December 2007 sold about 1,000 copies. It now prints 50,000 copies per issue. “What makes a difference is people like me, trying to open people’s minds. Acceptance will exist when people try to introduce new ideas.”

Petite, spiky-haired designer Supamas Sirimoungkalavanit got the idea of making man-tailored clothes for “Tomboys” after getting fed up with shopping in the men’s department.

She launched her Tom Chic brand online in 2008 and opened a Bangkok boutique in January. Her best-selling item is the breast-binding “Tom Tank,” designed to flatten female curves. She sells about 10,000 a month with the help of two dozen distributors nationwide.

“When we first opened, some men would walk past and make snide comments,” said Supamas, 30, who was featured recently on a popular TV talk show about successful small businesses. “Now there are copycat brands online.”

The Internet has nurtured virtual communities in online forums that build confidence and camaraderie and are now spilling over into the real world, said the activist Anjana, who co-founded the lesbian group Anjaree in 1986 with three other women who kept their identities hidden. She says her Western-style approach to activism ruffled Thai society, which values non-confrontational behavior, and never sparked a civil rights-like movement for gay rights.

“These young people are not making a political statement,” she said. “They are not rocking the boat, not directly challenging heterosexual norms, but they are making gentle changes that might one day lead to more.”

On a recent evening at Zeta, one of Bangkok’s few lesbian bars, a patron marveled at the surge of lesbian icons in mainstream pop culture.

“A decade ago, you would never have seen a movie about lesbians in Thailand. I would never have imagined a Tomboy singer,” said 24-year-old Sarunkorn Choksiripureenont, a drummer in an all-lesbian band. “It’s becoming fashionable now. You see lesbians everywhere.”

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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