I use NordVPN and have for years. They are hyper secure, lots of sites worldwide, and they do not log or record user data. The VPN also has its own security built in for detecting and blocking Malware and other threats. It works. Plus it has the kill switch mentioned in the article. When I first got it VPNs were new and expensive. The price has dropped way down. I wouldn’t dream of going online with it. Hugs
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But will users of the surfing services face more exposure than they expect?Demand for virtual private network (VPN) services surged in Florida after Pornhub shut down access in the state. But cybersecurity experts say Floridians using VPNs may find more exposure than they desire.
A report by vpnMentor found the interest in VPNs skyrocketed as the internet’s leading pornography publisher publicly punished states over age verification policies. No state witnessed greater enlargement than Florida, where VPN interest jumped by 1,150% immediately after Pornhub started limiting access on Jan. 1.
“This surge in VPN usage suggests users are circumventing the IP-block and accessing Pornhub (and other restricted websites) through IPs where the block is not implemented,” a report reads.
Pornhub beginning Jan. 1 prohibited users in Florida from accessing pornographic content on the site. A video now greets Florida porn consumers trying to access the site and urges them to contact state lawmakers to object to age verification requirements. The state imposed a requirement for third-party age verification on publishers of content “harmful to minors,” with rules in effect as of the beginning of 2025.
But VPNs allow users to work around geo-blocking measures, including those used by Pornhub, to restrict traffic from certain states. Sports fans have for years used such services to evade regional broadcast rights restrictions.
The vpnMentor report also mentions other contributors to a surge in demand for restriction-dodging technologies. Use of VPNs soared nationwide when a U.S. TikTok ban briefly went into effect this month.
But the researchers found interest in the location-masking software went up disproportionately in 17 states where Pornhub now limits access. They based findings on state-by-state search volume, web traffic and clicks to downloads for VPN services.
Florida’s 11-fold spike led all other states. In South Carolina and Tennessee, where Pornhub limited access the same day as in the Sunshine State, VPN demand jumped 171% and 40%, respectively.
Other states with content throttled also saw mass interest in VPNs. In Oklahoma, where Pornhub announced a ban in October, demand spiked by 1,060%. In Utah, where Pornhub blocked access in mid-2023, VPN demand rose by 967%.
In Louisiana, where Pornhub allows access but other publishers restricted visits after age verification states went into effect in 2022, VPN demand leapt by 200%
Of note, Pornhub saw a significant decline in U.S. traffic last year regardless of VPN usage. Researchers found 15 million fewer visits to the website from U.S. users (or at least those with U.S. IP addresses). But that likely matters little to the publisher as traffic to the site exceeded 1.8 billion visits before the end of 2024. The website continues to have around 500 million more visitors than its closest competitor, XVideos.
While Florida users may turn to VPN services to bypass Pornhub’s gateway restrictions, that brings certain unsafe surfing risks.
Many VPN services lack the same security of major internet providers. In 2023, vpnMentor reported that a cybersecurity security researcher had found 360 million records leaked online after a breach of SuperVPN users’ data. The records included passwords, email addresses, personal financial information and personal content from individuals’ personal devices.
The report recommends users only employ VPNs with strong encryption services, an enforced policy not to log personal data from users, a “kill switch” feature that automatically disconnects users from the internet if a VPN connection drops, and a built-in DNS leak protection.
**** Trigger warning, talk of abuse with a few graphic details. ****
I had stopped going to the male survivor site as it was causing me to spiral badly into the bad places in my head, triggering my negative emotions, getting seriously depressed and spending hours stuck in my memories, crying, then having horrible nightmares as I tried to sleep.
Look even without going to the site I still scream out in my sleep. It is agonizing because in my dreams I am struggling to verbalize the words, get them out and it feels like my mouth is locked shut, sort of my like my lips are sewn together. In my nightmares I can speak and scream normally until it gets so intense it seems I struggle to get the sounds out and they become much more guttural. That seems to be when I am getting audible in the awake world. When it seems I am able to unlock my jaws or rip my lips open is when I am in reality shouting out in my sleep. Ron had to wake me just two days ago when I was shouting help help help. I spared him the description of the abuse even though he is always willing for me to tell him the memories or nightmares because he knows it is very helpful for me to talk about it or get it out. Especially when it has just happened.
Anyway back to this morning. So a new friend who is a survivor who has been on the Male Survivor site much more than I have been and posts there often about everything going on in his life, like I do here, this person has been saying to me that they wrote about their holidays so could I go to their posts to see what had been going on with them. I went to the MS site, I started reading new posts before I got to his posts. And I never made it to Steve’s posts.
The post was about being anally raped and the person leaving their cum inside you that you try to prevent leaking out. The post and the people replying / joining the conversation all also wrote about their underwear being stained with poop and cum or in some cases blood. The conversation was about trying to get rid of or wash the evidence out before it was discovered by a mother or other who cared for them and they did not want to find out they were being abused.
I did not have this problem. My abuse was much more open and known in the house so I did not have to hide it or wash my sheets after. I did get in trouble if I wore my white underwear after without cleaning myself up which would leave stains / marks in the white underwear. So those if I saw that I would wash them myself soon as I could like the people in the conversation said they did. When the wet underwear was discovered after a few times of me doing that, I was caught in the act cleaning them. I was yelled at for it, told I was so stupid then pulled to the kitchen in front of everyone while naked, while my adoptive mother “taught me how to wipe my bottom and clean myself” after being raped. I was told to rather than lay in the bed or put my underwear on, that as soon as the person was finished with me and they did not want to use me anymore I should go empty myself. Then wipe / wash my bottom. I then had to repeat and show I knew how to do this in front of the laughing hell spawn. All that taught me was to wash and dry them before I put them in the laundry basket.
So this brings me to what I can not get out of my head this morning. Before I got side tracked by my memories and started the downward spiral, I was busy reading news articles, adding to my posting of crazy stuff that the right was doing, and gathering memes of Sunday’s meme post. Then it all came to a halt and I started to crash. Writing this out is helping. So what about the above triggered me?
See I could hold it in, the fluids inside me normally while laying in the bed, or in the short timeframe from when it was over until I could get to the bathroom or if outside until I could dump / empty my bowels, but that left nothing to wipe with so I would have to carry my underwear until I could do so hoping not to soil my pants. But there was one place and time I couldn’t do any of that. It was when raped and abused at school.
Please stay with me and try to understand the feelings / thinking of a small kid as I try to describe this without being too graphic. It started at school when I was 7 and continued but tapered off as I became a teenager. So imagine being 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 and being taken to a supply closet, empty room, or after school hours to the principal’s office. Once there told to drop my pants. Being fondled and touched. Then ordered to my knees to give oral sex to a male. So far none of that deals with what I wrote about above, soiling myself. But that comes from when instead of being told to kneel, I was instead told to turn around and stand on something, or picked up and draped over something, (more than once being forced to lay over the copy machine as it dug into my chest / belly while my ass was used to make the male staff / teachers happy) when I was very small I would be made to take my pants off then placed on my back on a shelf with my legs pined up as my back was bent to position my butt hole correctly for their use.
Ok I tried to put if off as long as I could. This is the part I was trying to get to and that the conversation on the site was about. After being used, trusted into sometimes with lube and sometimes without, filled with those fluids and possible messiness, my bottom full of the ejaculate of the guy who just … fucked me, I would be told to get dressed and go back to class. Of course the person who used me wanted to make the time I was away from class as short as possible if I was taken from class for the abuse. So if I had been summoned or escorted from the classroom, I would be told to get dressed quickly and return to class. I knew better than to tell. If it had been painful and hurtful, I would be told to stop crying and wipe my face on my shirt.
So this gets back to the stained underwear. I would have to put my underwear on, no choice, and go back to class not knowing if I was messy or not. I would only know my butt hurt, maybe my belly, back, or legs would also hurt. I would have to enter the classroom trying to not show anything wrong, feeling like everyone in the room was looking at me knowing what had just happened, what I had just done. Again if it was oral all I struggled with was the taste in my mouth. But if it had been anal specially if it had been forceful, in a bad position for me, or if no lube had been used, then my butt / asshole would be very sore and full of fluids. I would be forced to try to sit still, and desperately pinch my butt cheeks together as painful as that was or let the liquids mixed with poop ooze out creating both smell and stains. Most teachers soon understood and did not scold me for not paying attention or being not being still in my seat. It was the same as when I had been given a belting, spanking, or bad paddling before school, they seem to understand the pain I was in that my clothing / pants covered.
As soon as I could or when the teacher would quietly whisper in my ear asking if I needed to use the bathroom, I would leave the classroom walk carefully to the bathroom where I would rush into a toilet stall. I would also check my underwear as best I could. I would do the same as I walked or rode my bike home. I lived about a mile and half from the school. It was so much better in the warm months trying to do it in when bundled up for the cold was horrible. Because in warm months I could run in to the woods or somewhere not able to be easily seen, strip off my lower clothing and then remove my underwear, and redress. Then I could take the underwear to a brook like the one we had behind our home, wash the underwear, hang it in the sun to dry off something where I should be able to retrieve it later. Stories of what happened the few times I was caught doing this another time.
Many abuse victims just threw their soiled clothing out. I couldn’t do that. Punishment for losing my clothing was as severe as for soiling them.
So that was what has destroyed my emotions and focus for the last 7 hours. Taking the time to write this has helped me calm down and recenter. But the remembered pain of being so small, the over whelming emotion of feeling that everyone knew when I entered the classroom, and the fear that it was leaking into my underwear knowing that I would be publicly punish and possibly also privately punish if they were stained. Maybe most parents finding semen, blood, or poop stains all over the back of their child’s underwear would cause them to question what happened or rush to defend / help their son. Not mine, if they felt anything at all maybe they were happy it was happening to me. Maybe it relieved their own guilt knowing others did the same to me. I don’t know.
Just more from my childhood I have to deal with. Anyway, no more meme hunting today, nor news about the stuff the right is doing. Today I am going to answer comments and concentrate on the love and out pouring of support I get from this community. Oh and tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment. Hugs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-legal-settlement-lgbtq-veterans/
When I was in the service in the 1980s it was illegal for gays to serve. But I was mostly openly gay. I had to be careful as did the many “straight” guys who from training on wanted to have sex with me, and worked / asked / begged for us to take an afternoon drive together somewhere remote on the base to those that begged me to take a four day pass with them to travel a little ways away and get a hotel somewhere. The reason if someone asked was we were seeing such … or visiting a theme park … what ever was plausible even though no questions were ever asked. I never thought about that then … no one ever questioned anything.
Not that you need to know this but I was having same sex relations with fellow service members several times a week and at least every month having a four day pass to have sex. Once it took me by surprise when on the way back to the base I got my first blowjob while driving. When I asked gratefully why, the guy told me he wanted me to remember him in case he asked to go on another pass. He did afterward … repeatedly.
Hey people we were all young really fit horny guys. Were they gay? Were they just straight who understood it would be a way to have enjoyable sex? The only thing I will say is that for every act I performed for them both passive and aggressive, they also performed eagerly for me. You make your own judgments.
Again this was the 1980s. I knew so many Marines who went into the Marines to have the gay worked out of them by becoming a real man. Others were like me, gay with nowhere to go, some were gay like my long term boyfriend who were gay so went where hunky young guys were. Remember what I have said about my time in. I was very skilled at my job as a technician. But as far as being in the Army … well not so much. But the day I was due to leave my warrant officer, my upper staff, two of who had walked in on me fucking my boyfriend on my bed with his legs up in the air and everything in view … left the room, made a big show of about to enter with lots of rattling keys to come in to our room for an unannounced room inspection finding us flushed with our pants hastily pulled on, look around and then the senior guy Sgt Emory winked as he told us … everything looks great guys … go back to what you were doing before we came in. My boyfriend about wilted and died, but I gave a hardy OK will do. And we did. I managed to get the satellite site back up online with modulation while in civilian clothing, which the others had been frantically trying to do before I jumped in. As I said, not to brag I had a talent for more than sex. They begged me to reenlist. I asked them if they could protect me from the new Company Commander who was from infantry and hard right wing who had told me if I did not leave when my contract was ended would see me court marshaled and given an unfit for service discharge. Like the people of this article. They admitted they couldn’t … so I left and became a civilian with the military losing my skills.
That is what tRump and the bigot LGBTQ+ haters want to return to. The military already is way behind on recruitment due to increasingly better economic times, so this will make recruitment worse. Making trans care for minor dependents unavailable and removing travel pay / time for abortion services will also cut down on retention. Removing the 15,000 to 20,000 trans people will also cut down on military people. Removing women from combat? What is the goal, to gut all the US military? To reinstate the draft? Anyway here is the article. Please feel free to ask me anything about this post / my time in the military you feel you need answers to. Hugs
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The Pentagon has reached a historic legal settlement with more than 35,000 gay and lesbian military veterans who were dismissed because of their sexual orientation, and in many cases denied an honorable discharge and the array of services they had earned, CBS News has learned.
Under the terms of the agreement, veterans whose discharge papers reference their sexual orientation as a reason for their separation from the military can now avoid a cumbersome legal process and be re-issued paperwork that eliminates any reference to their sexuality. If they were denied an honorable discharge, they will also be eligible for an immediate upgrade review, the agreement says.
“When I was discharged because of my sexual orientation, I felt that my country was telling me that my service was not valuable – that I was ‘less than’ because of who I loved,” said Sherrill Farrell, a U.S. Navy veteran who was a plaintiff in the case. “Today, I am once again proud to have served my country by standing up for veterans like myself, and ensuring our honor is recognized.”
The settlement, which still must receive approval from a federal judge, would resolve the claims from a group of LGBTQ+ veterans who were kicked out of the military years ago because of their sexual orientation. The veterans filed a federal civil rights suit in August 2023 over the Defense Department’s failure to grant them honorable discharges or remove biased language specifying their sexuality from their service records following the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 2011.
The class action lawsuit, which was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims the Pentagon’s failure to correct this “ongoing discrimination” represents a violation of constitutional rights.
It’s been more than a decade since the military lifted its longstanding ban on openly gay and lesbian troops. But thousands of those discharged under past discriminatory policies like “don’t ask, don’t tell” are still carrying less than honorable discharges today, depriving them of the full spectrum of benefits including VA loan programs, college tuition assistance, health care and some jobs.
A CBS News investigation has documented the Pentagon’s long-running failure to restore honor to the service records of thousands of veterans who were deprived of veterans benefits after their military careers were cut short. A series of reports documented the ways these veterans’ often traumatic separation from the military shaped the course of their lives.
The settlement would establish a streamlined process for LGBTQ+ veterans who were discharged honorably but whose dismissal was attributed to their sexual orientation — enabling them to be re-issued papers that make no reference to it. And for those who were denied an honorable discharge, the Pentagon would commit to a streamlined upgrade review process.
“This proposed settlement delivers long-overdue justice to LGBTQ+ veterans who served our country with honor but were stripped of the dignity and recognition they rightfully earned due to discriminatory discharge policies,” said Elizabeth Kristen, a senior staff attorney with Legal Aid at Work, a group that helped file the suit. “It marks a crucial step in addressing this deep-seated injustice and ensuring these veterans receive the acknowledgment and respect they have long been denied.”
The Pentagon has issued a series of pledges in the past year to right the wrongs inflicted on gay and lesbian service members in the past year. Both the Pentagon and the Department of Justice declined comment on the proposed settlement when reached Monday.
At the time the civil rights suit was filed, a Pentagon spokesman said the military had made attempts to streamline the upgrade process to a short, two-page application. The department said legal representation was no longer required to apply for a discharge review and that the discharge review boards “continue to strive to finalize 90% of all cases within 10 months as required by statute.”
But the lawsuit, prepared by the Impact Fund, Legal Aid at Work and the law firms King & Spalding LLP and Haynes & Boone LLP, called that a “constitutionally inadequate” response, saying it placed the burden on individual veterans to spend months or years obtaining old personnel records before they could file the applications. Those reviews would then take months or years to be processed, they alleged.
The lawsuit did not seek monetary damages, though the settlement allows the court to approve a $350,000 payment by the Pentagon to cover the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
“This case is not about damages,” Jocelyn Larkin, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said at the time it was filed. “This case is about simply changing that piece of paper because the effect of changing that piece of paper is so incredibly consequential for our clients.”
While the full scope of past discrimination against gay and lesbian service members remains unknown, Larkin believes the lawsuit could at least help some 35,000 veterans already identified by a Defense Department Freedom of Information Act request, first reported by CBS News in June 2023. The true figure could be significantly higher. According to the most recent data available from the Pentagon, just 1,375 veterans have been granted relief in the form of a discharge upgrade or correction to their record.
Hello everyone. This is a hard post but one I feel I must make for my own continued healing and to explain why this season hits me so hard. Before I get to the abuse let me tell everyone that yesterday taking things out of the car I was standing sideways with my knee pressed hard against the seat of the car as I reached across needing just an inch or two to grab the package … and as I strained to grab the parcel my knee snapped, I heard a grinding sound and fell to the ground. I fell to the ground seeing stars.
Ron rushed to me as soon as he saw me on the ground, we got me into my room and realized that my knee cap had been pushed into the cartilage beneath the cap. What ever happened to my knee caused me agony and lost me the ability to stand or use my leg. The pain made moving my leg in any way mind-blowing excoriating pain. Remember I take two kinds of morphine and other pain relievers. Ron got my walker from the bedroom but even using that was not able to help me move around. I went to bed. During the night I was OK if I did not move. The longer I stayed still the more the knee healed and the few times I had to get up to pee, well I had the walker and now understood how to hold my leg. The more it healed, the better it got. So this morning I was able to get up, and using the walker make my way to the kitchen and make my coffee. Then on to the Pink Palace to start my day.
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Now to the reason for my post. I seriously warn for abuse trigger warnings. Please. The reason for this post, I am going to post something I wrote to a fellow survivor about why I get so withdrawn during this time. I appreciate his care and concern, plus I want you to know that it was Randy my grand real brother who talked to me this morning and made it possible for me to deal with posting this time in my life. I won’t include what he replied when I showed him the stuff I wanted to post but I assure you he was a comfort unparalleled in giving me the strength to do this. When I look to the past, what happened in late 2013 and in 2014 forward I wonder if I would be here if not for the unflagging love and care of my grand brother Randy.
Below is what I wrote to a fellow survivor who was worried about me.
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Grand for me this year I got a true real Christmas gift. One with no costs of my body for exchange as in my childhood if I wanted something. When at my youngest even food came with me providing sexual favors.
Yes this year I got a Christmas gift with no strings attached. Yes Ron gives me those but this one was special. My brother Randy gave me money to spend on me, not on the house, not on others, but just on me. I have been working for years with a broken keyboard which the backlighting has given out, and my mouse now takes many clicks to make work. Even Ron was frustrated by it during the times we sat together paying bills and wanted me to replace them.
So remembering the spirit this gift was given, I used it to buy the following things. It will make my life so much better. I got them in white. Thank you my grand brother. Hugs
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-master-3s.910-006558.html
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/mx-keys-s.920-011559.html
This is a must watch video. It totally destroys the anti-vaccine groups and the Idea that vaccines cause autism. This is a medial Scientist researcher with the greatest knowledge in the field of study and he has an autistic daughter. He knocks down and shows proof of the lies of the anti-vaccine people. He explains how it all became a political issue and power, and how it is killing people. Hugs
Before I post the video, let me tell you all what is going on. My health first. I am very tired only wanting to lay in bed, sleeping or just laying there. At first I thought it was a depression thing, but when my blood work showed I was again anemic that may explain some. All I want to do when up is watch videos and I struggle to read news or do other tasks, feeling like every movement is too much and just wanting to sit here un moving. The second issue I have is I recently expanded the memory of my oldest computer, a built I like better because it is expandable. Pride go before the fall. I felt I understood the motherboard well enough and the system architecture to simple look for and buy the cheapest priced ram the system could handle.
I am humbled to admit I got my butt handed to me as after installing the cheapest four sticks equaling 64 GB of ram which is the max the system can handle I dumped and started the computer. Yes it seems all four sticks and ran at the higher speed. Grand. But then as I loaded Windows and other programs … problems happened. I got almost everything done and then had sudden BOD … the blue screen of death that I have not seen in my own systems ever. I diligently tracked every error, researched every error code and security event. What I got made me realize I had not done enough work understanding my system and the unbuffered ram.
I could make this a post on the system and what I learned. Going cheapest for me is going to cost me. I need to go back to a two stick mode with buffered memory. The reason is that the CPU can see the dual channel two stick configuration as one big stick. With four it has to run through the memory controller system to read each stick as a separate entity and compare try to manage the flow and errors of each. When the errors become too great or do an act that the system deems threatening, it shuts everything down. So I am going to spend more money on a new set of buffered 2 stick memory which should solve this issue and I can get back to being online with everyone and not spending weeks of every online time searching for and reading tech pages and specs reports. Now to the video. Love and hugs to all. Hugs
The list compiled by the American Accountability Foundation includes 20 general officers or senior admirals and a disproportionate number of female officers. Those on the list in many cases seem to be targeted for public comments they made either in interviews or at events on diversity, and in some cases for retweeting posts that promote diversity.
The above-named group is a dark money organization that does not reveal its donors. Their leader is a former staffer for nutbag Sen. Ron Johnson.
These people what a Russian style military of only white cis straight males which Ted Cruz gave such praise to over our US military. The thing is the Russian military was stopped and driven out of a country by the rag tag Ukrainian military with gifted supplies dripping in. A diverse military of the entire population is the strongest one, which has been demonstrated over and over again. Talk about a group wanting purity in a place, this is what these bigot racist haters want. Hugs
Among Hegseth’s alleged “mistakes” are sexual assault, countless incidents of adultery (including with a coworker), at last one bastard child, drunkenly attempting to climb onto a strip club stage, on the job drinking, being fall down drunk at corporate events, shouting “kill all Muslims,” having white supremacist tattoos, belonging to a far-right misogynist Christian nationalist church, and running two nonprofits for veterans into the ground with what former colleagues call questionable spending on partying and travel. It’s what Jesus would want.
So much for draining the swamp!
1. Bondi asked for a $25,000 campaign donation from Trump, and got it.
2. Then she dropped her state’s investigation into Trump University.
3. Now she’s Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.
Watch the clip and you’ll see an excited Lummis wave a copy of her bill, calling it a “present for President Trump.” Hayes calls the bill an “enormous heist” and an “explicit bailout” of bitcoin holders should the price plummet
Ten Bears has made me Jealous. I wish I had found this first. But to give credit I think he can do more with it. If you don’t know ask him his work out regiment. If anyone who claims to be male thinks their bigotry can out male his actual being … I hope they never tell that to him face to face. I was in the military and even in my best fitness I don’t think I could have kept up with his regimen. Hugs
The bible lessons were pushed by Jonathan Covey [photo], head of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Texas Values, which has appeared here multiple times in the past. In February 2015, on the tenth anniversary of the Texas state ban on same-sex marriage, Texas Values held a “banniversary” celebration complete with a cake-cutting ceremony. The actual tenth “banniversary” wasn’t until November 2015, but Texas Values held their little party months early because they rightly feared what the Supreme Court would ultimately rule in June of that year.
Three wives, adultery with an employee, and an alleged sexual assault is what Jesus would want.
Scottie's Playtime 