Protesters vandalise a retail store during a demonstration near Place de la République, as the the Gilets Jaunes join students for a weekend of action on October 17, 2026 in Paris, Franc
Carl Court/Getty Images
Screenshots of Vinted listings circulating on social media show products being offered for a fraction of their retail prices.
The suspected stolen merchandise was listed after looting in France.
Vinted told The Telegraph it had taken immediate action to identify and remove listings connected to the violence.
Resale websites including Vinted have removed suspicious listings after they were flooded with apparently stolen goods in the wake of riots that swept across France.
Perfumes, designer handbags, cosmetics and even Pokémon cards have appeared on second-hand marketplaces following a weekend of violence that saw shops ransacked, The Telegraph — which, like Business Insider, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — reported.
Screenshots circulating on social media show products being offered for a fraction of their retail prices, including bags overflowing with Sephora cosmetics advertised for as little as €10 (£8.40).
The listings have triggered suspicions that looters are trying to sell stolen goods online. eBay and Vinted have removed some items and stepped up their monitoring of suspicious activity.
One advert on Vinted showed six Sephora lip glosses being sold for €15, while another offered six tubes of cleansing cream for just €12.
Sephora France sells comparable own-brand lip glosses for around €13 each, meaning six would ordinarily cost around €78.
A screenshot of a Vinted listing showing suspected stolen Sephora beauty products
Screenshot
Other listings included Christian Dior perfumes advertised for €250 and large quantities of make-up still in their original packaging.
In one case, Pokémon trading cards allegedly stolen from a shop in Lille were advertised on Vinted, with some still bearing their original price stickers.
Hundreds of cards were reportedly found scattered across streets in the northern French city after a fire at Le Coin des Barons, a shop specialising in collectable cards.
A trophy said to have been stolen from French e-sport club Team Vitality was advertised on eBay for €1,250.
The silver StarLadder Counter-Strike trophy was photographed against a graffiti-covered wall and listed under the title: "STOLEN RARE VITALITY CS2 TROPHÉE."
Team Vitality confirmed that its Paris premises had been looted during Saturday's unrest, with trophies and computer equipment stolen and display windows smashed.
The listings emerged as France struggled to contain some of its worst civil unrest in years, caused by anger over the cost of living and deteriorating public services.
More than half a million people joined demonstrations on Saturday, with violent clashes breaking out in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities.
French authorities said more than 2,400 people had been arrested by Sunday, while nearly 1,000 police officers were injured.
The unrest has spread beyond France, with demonstrations about living costs and public spending also taking place in Belgium, Portugal and Italy.
French retailers have been left counting the cost, with supermarket giant Carrefour reporting damage to 50 stores, including 20 that were looted.
'We have zero tolerance for it'
Sephora closed its French stores on Saturday evening and kept them shut on Sunday after several branches were ransacked.
Vinted said it had taken immediate action to identify and remove listings connected to the violence.
A spokesman said: "The sale of stolen goods, or soliciting them, is strictly prohibited on Vinted, and we have zero tolerance for it."
The company said it had stepped up monitoring and would take action against offenders, including permanently banning accounts. It added that it was working with law enforcement and French authorities to identify suspicious sellers.
An eBay spokesman said: "The sale of stolen property is strictly prohibited on eBay."
The company said it used technology to identify suspicious activity and worked closely with police to investigate criminal behaviour.
The spokesman added: "If we receive confirmation from law enforcement that an item has been stolen, we remove it immediately and take action against the seller."
This story originally appeared on The Telegraph and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from Business Insider, POLITICO, The Telegraph, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.
Matt Gaetz resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2024, shortly before the House Ethics Committee released a report accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017, when he was 35, and "regularly pa[ying] women for engaging in sexual activity with him." The probe was widely discussed as a sex trafficking probe, but the ethics committee "did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute," per its report.
Now two women have filed a civil lawsuit accusing Gaetz of sex trafficking.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, says that Gaetz and two other men (Joel Micah Greenberg and Christopher Dorworth) broke federal anti-trafficking laws by using "their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability" of Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2.
Gaetz, who now hosts The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network, said many of the suit's allegations against him are false. "The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn't allow me to confront my accusers," he said. "Now I will finally have that chance."
On X, Gaetz posted an image of three women in bikinis seated next to bottles of beer and looking at the ocean and wrote "Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram."
Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram. https://t.co/HPvX2xypzs
This does not seem like especially helpful behavior from a public relations perspective, to say nothing of whether it's legally wise to for Gaetz to be posting to social media about the suit against him.
But Gaetz's point isn't entirely off base. The actions described in the suit against him are hardly what most people would consider sex trafficking.
Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 were adult women willingly advertising on Seeking Arrangement, a site aimed at connecting young women with rich men for mutually beneficial relationships. And by their own account, that is what went down. They were taken on trips and paid thousands of dollars while hanging out, partying, and having sex with Gaetz and his friends.
Needless to say, advertising on a sugar baby website does not make you fair game for forced prostitution or sexual assault. But nowhere in the lawsuit are forced prostitution or sexual assault alleged.
Instead, we get sentences like this: Gaetz and the other defendents "led [Jane Doe 1] to believe they could solve her financial problems as long as she kept performing sexual acts for them and their associates," states the suit. But "the money never came as a single payment that would have solved Jane Doe 1's financial issues."
So…it's sex trafficking because he didn't pay her enough at one time? I don't think that's how the law works.
Overall, it's a stretch to say that Gaetz's actions as described in this suit fall under the scope of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Under federal law, sex trafficking must involve an element of force, fraud, or coercion, and/or must involve commercial sex involving someone who is under age 18.
In this case, both alleged victims were in their 20s at the time of the alleged trafficking. No element of force or fraud is claimed. And the type of "coercion" alleged seems more appropriate for a college debate than a courtroom.
There was no suggestion that harm would come to the women or their families, that a job or housing would be lost, or that failure to engage in sexual activity with Gaetz and his friends would result in some sort of other (physical, reputational, legal, etc.) harm befalling them. There was nothing on Gaetz's end that would seem to arise to "coercion" under federal trafficking statute, which defines it as involving "threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person," a scheme to make someone believe that serious harm will befall them if they don't comply, or abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
The suit contains a lot about Greenberg—a former tax collector who is in prison after pleading guilty to charges that include sex trafficking—and comparatively little about Gaetz. It seemingly attempts to make up for the lack of direct allegations against him by noting findings from the Ethics Committee, even though that committee specifically said it could not find evidence of sex trafficking.
Gaetz is accused of having sex with Jane Doe 1 at a party while Jane Done 1 was on MDMA. But the suit does not accuse Gaetz of foisting drugs on her, simply saying "controlled substances circulated at the party, and Jane Doe 1 took MDMA during the evening." Nor does it say that anyone forced Jane Doe 1 to be at the party or to have sex with Gaetz.
Gaetz is also accused of paying Jane Doe thousands of dollars—never directly after sex or as a direct quid pro quo, but during the same time period during which he was having sex with her. The payments were labeled things like "Being my friend," "Being awesome," "Here," and "Just because," the suit says.
And Gaetz is accused, along with the other defendants, of paying to fly Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2—whom Greenberg met through the sugar baby website and introduced to Gaetz—"to Venice Beach, Miami, Las Vegas, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and New York City" and paying for their hotel rooms. The suit does not say that they were forced or coerced on these trips, merely that the trips exposed them to "men they would never otherwise have met, and every part of that access, from the flights to the hotel rooms, was paid for by men, including the Defendants, who expected sex in return."
The women's lawyer told the Associated Press that there was "an exploitative power imbalance," because on one side you had a congressman and some other powerful men and on the other "young financially vulnerable women in their early twenties."
Morally speaking, that might be relevant. And for a congressman, it may have been grounds for sanction. But the fact that these women were younger and less financially successful does not make a relationship between them and Gaetz de facto "coercive" or illegal.
Age gaps in relationships—even substantial ones—are not outlawed. And relationships in which an older man is attractive precisely because he has more money and power than the younger female involved, and offers to spend it lavishly, are not uncommon. The idea that this violates federal criminal law simply showcases how distorted our ideas of sex trafficking have become.
In the News
Children have a fundamental right to access the internet, says India's Supreme Court. The Free PressJournalreports:
"The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both," the court observed.
The bench explicitly recognised the right to access and use the internet as a fundamental right under Article 21, which protects life and personal liberty, read with Article 19(1)(a), which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.
Meanwhile, in the U.S.: "A federal appeals court panel has ruled that Florida's 2024 law restricting access to social media for teens is likely constitutional and can continued to be enforced while the legal challenge continues," notes the Florida Phoenix.
We were promised REPEATEDLY that age-verification law was narrow, and would ONLY apply to porn. But— as we warned —it was always a ruse.Since conservatives got their ruling in FSC v Paxton, they've pushed to age-gate anything and everything. It's not going to stop with social media or chatbots.
'Appropriate safeguards.' A small change in the language of the Apple App Store's app review guidelines could portend big changes. Via9to5Mac:
Under Section 1.2, which covers user-generated content, the guidelines now read (changes in bold):
Apps that enable users to create, generate, upload, share, or otherwise contribute content present particular challenges, including intellectual property infringement, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and anonymous bullying.
Apple's new terms add that "Developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards or fail to remediate identified violations after notice may be considered in violation of the Developer Code of Conduct."
The change is being reported as a crackdown on "nudification" apps, and that certainly seems to be part of it. But the language about going after "developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards"—combined with the broad warning about user-generated content—could signal a broader intent to crack down on social media platforms and other types of apps that don't implement ID verification or engage in more intense content moderation.
On Substack
Don't sacrifice due process to outrage. We can't let anger over allegations of gang rape at Cornell convince us to re-implement old Title IV policies that disregard due process, writes Robert Shipley of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:
There's a groundswell of demand to "do something" in the wake of the sexual assault claims at Cornell. But amid the outrage and concern over the incident, it's critical to remember that one attempted remedy we actually know will not work is to return to a campus justice system in which the burden of proof is on the accused and basic civil liberties are cast aside. That social experiment has already been run. It failed.
Title IX, the law against sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, was passed in 1972. Debates at the time focused on how it would affect single-sex colleges and college athletics. Explicitly aimed at sex discrimination, the text of the law itself mentions neither sexual assault nor sexual harassment. Those became matters for Title IX gradually over the next couple of decades, as courts determined that sexual assault and sexual harassment were both forms of sex discrimination, and therefore covered under Title IX.
The Jane Doe lawsuit against Cornell and the accused students (as well as a fraternity, a sorority, and a local bar) hit national news at nearly the same time that the Trump administration officially removed the Biden-era regulations from the Federal Register. While almost certainly not related, some have connected the two, citing the Cornell incident to argue that regulations surrounding Title IX need to be changed again to reduce due process protections for the accused.
Not to pick on Sam here, but this is a useful point to highlight some of the impossibility of trust & safety work. Meta actually used to have a program *exactly* like this, BUT it became a central feature of Frances Haugen's Facebook Files as an example of Meta being evil.I'll explain…
• A new pair of high-tech sunglasses from Meta "can read your mail, describe the person in front of you, tell you what is on a restaurant menu, and help you find your way home," writesReason's Reem Ibrahim. "For the approximately 700,000 Americans who are blind, it is potentially life-changing."
• "The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a decision ordering new trials for two people facing human trafficking and sexual services offences, after concluding they should have been able to cross-examine a complainant about the commercial aspect of her prior sex work," reportsThe Canadian Press. "The case looked at the application of section 276 of the Criminal Code, known as the rape shield law, which limits use of evidence about a complainant's sexual history in court proceedings."
• Markets in everything:
This website lets you attend the wedding of complete strangers
Couples list their weddings and users can buy a ticket to attend https://t.co/8b7EawyFod
• The People First Transportation Alliance has been campaigning against robot taxis in D.C. "But just who is behind the group remains unclear, even as it has sought to sway the outcome of a contentious issue with vast sums of money and thousands of jobs at stake across the country," reportsThe Washington Post.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei during a September visit to Washington, DC.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Anthropic is looking to shape AI regulation by pitching an AI safety bill of its own.
POLITICO obtained a confidential draft of the proposed legislation.
The bill would let the government block an AI model only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.
Representatives for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers on a draft bill to regulate frontier AI safety and security, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The confidential draft, obtained by POLITICO and not previously reported, marks a notable effort by the frontier AI lab to shape the rules governing its own technology as Congress weighs how to respond to the fast-moving industry.
"This bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic's Advanced AI Framework, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June," an Anthropic spokesperson said. "These are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on."
The bill would let the government block a model's release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. The risk must stem from the creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer's controls or a cyberattack. The language mirrors that found in California's AI laws including SB 53, which was signed into law last year.
Leading AI labs disclosed a series of incidents this summer, in which AI agents hacked or probed websites and platforms. None reported so far appear to have caused widespread deaths or over $1 billion in damages.
Anthropic has yet to publicly back particular legislative efforts in Congress, but they have backed some state AI safety laws, including two in California. Their head of U.S. state and local government relations previously told POLITICO that they hope states will continue to pass ever-stronger AI safety laws that raise the standard nationwide.
Under the bill, independent evaluators, which would register with the Commerce Department, would be tasked with periodically evaluating the lab and its frontier models. The evaluators may be paid for their work by the lab itself so long as the payment is not contingent on the evaluations' results.
If the evaluators determine there is "imminent enumerated risk" for a company's frontier models, they must report it to Commerce within 72 hours of completing their assessment.
While the Commerce Department could bring a request to the judge to halt the release of a model after determining that it poses a risk, the language explicitly prohibits any other U.S. "department, agency, or officer" from suspending the model's development, deployment or internal use. A federal judge for the District Court for the District of Columbia could order the suspension of a model.
Over the summer, Anthropic was subject to sweeping export controls that shut down two of its most advanced models. The decision was made in a whirlwind series of phone calls between administration officials and the company's executives, worrying some in the tech industry that access to their technology may be restricted on the whims of government officials.
Anthropic's bill would also preempt some state AI laws related to public disclosure of risk, third-party evaluation and reporting of critical incidents. Preemption has been a political flashpoint on Capitol Hill, with Democrats rejecting some proposals they feared would neuter regulations passed by the likes of California, Illinois and New York.
Many tech industry groups have argued that a state-by-state patchwork of laws is difficult to comply with compared to a unified national standard.
The legislation would also require frontier labs to create safety frameworks, publish transparency reports for new frontier models, implement protections for whistleblowers and report critical safety incidents to Commerce.
Capitol Hill has seen a flurry of activity on AI safety legislation this summer. In the House, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) spearheaded the FRONTIER Act, which would give the government the ability to stop the deployment of risky models and preempt some state AI laws.
In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have been negotiating an AI safety bill intended to mitigate catastrophic risks. But it has faced headwinds from some safety-minded groups and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on Cruz's Commerce Committee, who want the government to have a larger role in reviewing AI models.
Other progressives, including Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have gone well beyond their colleagues in calling for a pause in advanced AI development and a ban on superintelligence, a type of theoretical AI that far surpasses humans' cognitive capabilities.
This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.
I video di Giorgina Siviero sono ormai un format riconoscibile: chi li segue cerca sì consigli di stile, ma anche la brillantezza e l’eloquio della protagonista. Dietro un successo social da 40 milioni di visualizzazioni a settimana c’è però anche sua figlia, Elena Cecchi, 57 anni, architetta e fotografa. È lei ad aver inventato il meccanismo della domanda improvvisa che, a un certo punto del video, offre a Siviero lo spunto per parlare di moda, gusto e vita quotidiana.
L’idea, racconta al Corriere della Sera, è nata quasi per caso: “Un giorno mia madre stava parlando con una cliente (della sua storica boutique San Carlo a Torino, ndr) e ho filmato la scena così com’era. Spiegava le regole della valigia perfetta: pochi capi essenziali per stare via qualche giorno. La mattina dopo mi sono svegliata con mille follower in più”. Cecchi vuole però restare “invisibile”, perché “la protagonista è la mamma”. E svela anche uno dei segreti del format: Giorgina non sa mai in anticipo quale domanda le verrà fatta. “A volte protesta, è insofferente: ‘Potevi anticiparmi qualche domanda, magari mi preparavo sull’argomento!’. Le rispondo che mi basta il suo pensiero, così come le viene. Oggi abbiamo bisogno di cose vere, anche imperfette, ma autentiche”.
The meal kit delivery service denies the allegations, saying it found claims to be ‘entirely without merit’
Workers at a HelloFresh facility in Newark, New Jersey have claimed in court documents that they were verbally and physically abused and denied regular bathroom breaks, with one former worker telling the Guardian he experienced incontinence issues as a result.
The newly proposed amended complaint comes in a class action lawsuit first filed in August 2024 against the food prep service giant and staffing agencies. A New Jersey state court judge is expected to review the amended complaint in a hearing scheduled for 23 October.
When embraced and used carefully, AI tools can help gain perspective and boost productivity at work.
Alex Cristi /Getty Images | Chris Williams
Chris Williams was the VP of HR at Microsoft and is now an advisor and consultant.
Williams uses a broad range of AI tools and encourages his clients to do the same.
"Perhaps you'll find, as I did: AI can be better at deletion than creation," he says.
Practically every company is making AI tools available to their employees. As the former VP of HR at Microsoft and a leadership advisor with over 50 years of business experience, I'm amazed at how quickly this rollout has progressed.
Some people are all in, using the tools for nearly everything they do. Others have barely stuck their toes in the AI waters. I've been using a broad range of AI tools and encourage my clients to do the same.
AI isn't without controversy, and if someone is strongly against using it — for whatever reason — I'm not going to convince them otherwise.
But if you're wondering how and why you should use these tools, I'm here for you. Let's talk about three ways I advise all my executive clients to use AI effectively in the workplace.
1. Use AI as a second opinion
Use AI as a way to see things you might not have seen. Ask it, "What am I missing?"
I agree with many that AI is lousy at most creative efforts. Whether written or visual, AI results can be generic, mediocre, and often embarrassing. The output usually deserves the "AI Slop" label it gets. But to dismiss it entirely misses a core value.
AI is useful with, perhaps even because of, that generic, often obvious other perspective.
It can be amazingly helpful to simply ask: what am I missing? Since AI has a tendency to agree with me, I explicitly ask for pushback: "review this and tell me what I'm missing, tell me where I'm wrong." The fact that AI is so obvious, so average, is actually a core value here. I'm often surprised at the points I missed and the viewpoints I overlooked.
Even if AI doesn't find things you missed, a contrarian angle can be very helpful to shore up your own case. You'll be able to say, "Yes, I considered those things, and here's why my take on this issue is better."
In that way, AI can also help you prepare for your discussions with colleagues. With so many letting AI draft their arguments, it's very valuable to see their perspective in advance.
So no, I don't let AI make my case, but I always look for another perspective in what I do — wherever it comes from. Having a tool that can give me that on a moment's notice is incredibly useful.
2. Ask AI to summarize dense information
Long before AI, we all had that colleague who always told you far more than you needed to know. With some now using AI heavily, it can frankly be overwhelming.
You ask a simple question and get a blizzard of AI-generated noise in response. AI can be the worst over-explainer when simply left to run. You see the results in a seven-page response.
When I'm faced with one of these walls of text, I've learned there are really only two ways to respond. I can, and often do, ask the person to try again. What does this all really mean? Can you summarize your point in a couple of sentences? I occasionally get snarky and ask for the "non-AI slop" version.
Another way to deal with this is to ask AI to summarize it, whether AI tools or a wordy colleague wrote it. Importantly, I don't trust the AI summary to be the full explanation, but it helps me understand the key points. Which I then work to find in the original blizzard response.
Yes, this is a little circular. After all, why not just have the two AI systems have the discussion? Leave me out of it. But in a world where it seems everyone has a hard time getting to the point, any tool to cut through the noise is welcome. And AI is very good at that.
3. Let AI help you with tasks
In a similar vein, one thing AI does incredibly well is organize. This kind of rote task of sorting, filtering, and filing is right in the sweet spot for most AI systems.
I'm wary of letting AI systems automate tasks like filtering or filing things without my supervision. I'd never let an AI system automatically send emails, texts, or documents without my careful review. But I often have AI systems help me sort through mountains of accumulated debris.
I recently moved to a new computer system and had AI review what I was planning to move over. I discovered decades of accumulated cruft. Simply from a comprehensive list, I found gigabytes of programs, files, and settings, 90% of which I just left behind.
So if you have 8,000 emails in your inbox, or a documents folder that has grown a second life, let an AI system take a look for you. Don't just tell it to "deal with it." Your judgment is needed.
Rather, have it give you a review of it and another perspective. And once you've reviewed it, perhaps you'll find, as I did: AI can be better at deletion than creation.
So when your company rolls out the next new AI, use those tools to your advantage. AI can help you see another perspective, find the important points in the blizzard, and cut through the mess. I've embraced AI, use it with great care, and encourage everyone to do the same.
Seven Tory MPs who skipped a vote on leaving the ECHR also belong to the pro-Net Zero 'Conservative Environment Network'. Coincidence? Paul Homewood thinks not and reckons Kemi Badenoch has a serious problem on her hands.
When the author's dad died, she reevaluated her approach to work.
Courtesy of Tayla Blaire
I used to push myself at work, outearning myself year after year.
When my dad died, and I heard how people talked about him, I reevaluated my approach.
Now, I still make enough to cover what I need, but I'm living a fuller life.
I'm a reformed workaholic. I'd love to say I slowly came to realize that my value isn't monetary or based on how high I can climb a ladder, but that epiphany wasn't achieved in a growth-centric way. Instead, it was a surprising side effect of losing my dad suddenly in September 2024. He was there, and just like that, he was gone. And my willingness to burn myself out died that day, too.
In the flurry of administrative chaos and world-wrecking grief that follows sudden death, it took a while for me to notice the change. It was normal to work less while grieving. Except it's now almost two years later — and yes, I'm still very much grieving — but I am back in the flow of working. And it looks completely different.
I had been working hard for years
When I was balancing full-time teaching with a writing side hustle, I regularly pulled ridiculous hours, working from 7 am until late at night. Not only that, but I was also frequently working both weekend days and throughout school vacation. I even had an accident in May 2024 that put me out of work while my arm was in a sling to help the broken bones heal, but once I was back, I hit my highest earning month of all time. But then my dad died, and I just don't care the way I used to.
There wasn't an inheritance that suddenly made working optional. And it's not all-consuming depression either — the months that followed were immensely dark, but I'm doing really well from a mental health perspective now. Instead, there's been a reshuffling of priorities. My identity fundamentally shifted in 2024. I came entirely too close to dying in an accident while riding horses, where doctors couldn't fathom how I survived without paraplegia, and then, mere months later, my dad had a heart attack at 65.
The way people spoke about my dad made me want to live a fuller life
The eulogies poured in for my dad, who was a beloved doctor. Hundreds of people messaged us, telling stories of my dad's generosity, his kindness, adventurous spirit, talent, sense of humor, and utter chaos.
The sheer number of anecdotes was almost mythical, as it seemed impossible that someone could do so much with their time. My dad even started kitesurfing in his 50s because he thought it would be cool, and regularly drove hours out of town to reach the nearest dam to do it. His last kiting session was the week before he died. He was an astronomer, a chess player, an artist, a rugby fanatic, a dear friend, a dedicated husband, and the best dad anyone could wish for.
It made me look at my own life. I was out-earning myself, year after year. But I lived in a city that gave me little joy, and my hobbies were…well, just reading. And often, I was only reading self-help books to help me earn more or be more productive.
It's not that I took a step back from work. I just didn't step forward again. I have ongoing luxury travel copywriting clients. I still do a fair bit of journalism and a little bit of coaching essay writers. I ensure I earn enough to make ends meet — pay my mortgage, set aside money for my retirement, health insurance, and so on, but that's it. Once that goal is met each month, my foot comes off the accelerator, and I focus on life instead.
I moved to the coast and qualified as an advanced open water scuba diver. I knock off early on Fridays to hit the beach if it's a nice day, and I'm dabbling in surfing. I've started lifting weights. I have more friends than I've ever had before. I've started painting, and my guitar has been dusted off and tuned again.
I don't have it all worked out. I'm still trying to figure out what life without my dad can possibly look like. I just know how much life he crammed into the years he had, and the best way I can honor him is to try to do the same.
AlgarExperience renova a certificação Great Place To Work e reforça o compromisso com o bem-estar das suas pessoas. A AlgarExperience voltou a ser distinguida com a certificação Great Place To Work®, renovando este reconhecimento pelo segundo ano consecutivo e reforçando o seu compromisso com a construção de um ambiente de trabalho positivo, assente na confiança, […]
Ask a chatbot why something happened in the war, and the answer may be written by Russia. Russia is poisoning AI chatbots with millions of fake articles so they repeat Kremlin narratives as fact, a cognitive weapon with strategic impact, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert “Madiar” Brovdi warns on Telegram.
Russia has waged a cognitive war against Ukraine for years, and it intensified sharply with the full-scale invasion. This war goes beyond fake news and disinformation: it aims to shape the deeply ingrained beliefs that drive people’s attitudes, decisions and behavior, and its newest weapon is artificial intelligence.
Brovdi calls it a cognitive operation with strategic impact, one his forces studied among the technological risks of 2027. People increasingly ask a chatbot “why did X happen?” and take the instant answer, he explains, without asking where it comes from.
“Artificial intelligence does not know the truth. It retells the internet, literally,” Brovdi claims.
How the strategy works, step by step
Brovdi lays out a chain that turns a single lie into something a machine will repeat as fact:
The enemy invents a lie. For example, that Ukrainian soldiers did something terrible, when nothing of the sort happened.
It is copied across thousands of sites. The same fabrication is published again and again, in many languages, until it looks like everyone is reporting it.
It fakes a crowd of independent sources. The sites cross-link to one another, but ten sites copying one lie are not ten independent confirmations.
A person asks the AI. They type “why did Ukrainian soldiers do X?”, though X may never have happened, so the lie is already smuggled into the question as fact.
The AI may repeat the lie. If the system ingests unreliable material and checks facts poorly, it echoes the fabrication in a calm, confident tone.
The person trusts it. “The AI said so,” they think, so the answer feels objective, and they believe it, retell it, or share it online.
The lie shapes decisions and trust. People start to distrust the army, the state, or one another, and even an unproven fabrication has already changed how they feel.
The machines already repeat the lie
The attack runs on volume. Russia floods the web through the “Pravda” network, close to 200 sites in dozens of languages posting 4 to 6 million near-identical articles a year, Brovdi claims, written for machines, not people.
It works, by his account. Of the ten most popular chatbots studied, about a third of the time they reproduce Russian fakes, he noted, and four of ten in a 2024 test affirmed that Azov fighters had burned an effigy of Trump, a fabrication, and cited sources for it.
A war Ukraine admits it is losing
Brovdi is blunt about the balance. Ukraine is losing this fight to Russia’s troll farms, he concedes, even as a layer of homegrown trolls has sprung up too.
His closing advice was aimed at readers.
“Critical thinking should not be delegated. Not even to the smartest machine. Switch on your own judgment and always check the source and the information,” Brovdi states.
Il Livorno aveva mantenuto la privacy parlando di semplice “interventoprogrammato“. Ma il proliferare di commenti sui social hanno spinto all’operazione verità, d’accordo con il diretto interessato: il percorso medico che deve affrontare Samuele Regazzetti, difensore della squadra amaranto (Serie C, girone B) è dovuto a un tumore ai testicoli, per il quale appunto è stato operato, con successo. Il difensore ha continuato a giocare anche dopo aver ricevuto la diagnosi e la società amaranto ha provato a tutelare la privacy del proprio tesserato, ma ieri, in una conferenza stampa, ha dovuto prendere posizione. Non è mancata la rabbia dei fratelli Lucarelli (Alessandro è direttore sportivo e il fratello Cristiano è allenatore) per le spiacevoli illazioni sui social nel giorni scorsi, quando il Livorno aveva annunciato un’operazione “programmata da tempo” per il giocatore. Durante la conferenza stampa hanno raccontato anche delle lacrime per il giocatore per qualche commento sui social, in cui si insinuava che avevano comprato un giocatore nonostante fossero consapevoli della malattia (“Un bidone” ha scritto qualcuno dei più poveri di spirito). “Leggendo quei commenti è la prima volta nella mia vita che mi sono vergognato di essere livornese”, ha detto Cristiano Lucarelli. L’operazione è stata eseguita lunedì dal primario di Livorno Maurizio De Maria e i tempi di recupero sono ancora da stabilire. “Ciò che conta è che il problema sia stato risolto: quando Samuele sarà pronto noi saremo qui ad aspettarlo”, ha affermato il direttore sportivo.
Regazzetti, classe 2004, è cresciuto nel Bresciano tra Lumezzane e Ospitaletto dopo le giovanili alla Cremonese, ed è entrato ufficialmente nel Livorno il 25 luglio 2026. La scoperta del tumore per il calciatore di 22 anni è arrivata dopo la partita contro la Pianese del 26 settembre, come ha riportato Alessandro Lucarelli. “La cosa che da tifoso e da allenatore mi ha commosso di tutta questa situazione, è il fatto che lui abbia voluto giocare ugualmente, non c’è cosa più bella per chi ama il Livorno”, ha concluso l’allenatore ed ex bomber.
Nella serata di ieri, durante il derby con il Grosseto finito 4-4, la curva Nord – quella della tifoseria più calda – ha esposto uno striscione con scritto “Forza Samuele”. In tribuna a vedere la partita proprio Regazzetti.
Attendees chat at Anthropic's developer conference in May.
Don Feria/AP Content Services for Anthropic
Anthropic published new surveys comparing its staffers' sentiments to those of US workers.
The AI startup's employees expect the tech to change work and the economy far more dramatically.
Most Anthropic employees guessed that unemployment would top 12% in 2030.
Anthropic employees believe that AI will make their labor obsolete. Most US workers don't see their jobs that way at all.
The AI company published research on Friday that compares surveys with US adults against an internal poll of 1,334 Anthropic employees. Most of the Anthropic staffers said AI will handle at least 80% of their jobs by 2030, while only about 5% of the US workers felt the same.
The research, titled "The AI expectations gap," shows the chasm between how the employees at the AI startup feel and how other American adults feel. Anthropic workers are far more optimistic about the progress of AI capabilities, how much it's already saving time, and how fast the economy will grow.
The median Anthropic employee said that by the end of 2030, they expect AI to handle 95% of the work of building a new AI model.
Peter McCrory, Anthropic's chief economist, wrote on X that the views might help outsiders prepare for more capable AI systems.
"We're publishing this research because Anthropic runs roughly a year and a half ahead of the economy on AI adoption, so what happens at Anthropic could be a leading indicator for the broader world," he said.
Anthropic workers expect higher unemployment and extreme GDP growth
Anthropic's surveys examined how workers already use AI and how they think it will change.
"US adults and Anthropic staff largely agree about what AI can do today," the researchers wrote. "However, they disagree about how quickly it will improve, how widely it will be used, and how large the productivity gains measured by time saved will be."
There are a few possible explanations for the discrepancies. Anthropic employees have larger budgets for the tools and often get access to unreleased models. US workers, on average, are more likely to work with their hands or in a service industry.
The researchers found that workers in manual trades, production, and transport thought AI would handle the least of their work by 2030, compared with Anthropic staffers, tech workers, and respondents in business and finance.
Most Anthropic employees surveyed said that they expect the unemployment rate to top 12% in 2030. The majority of the US workers thought it would hover around or under 8%. It's currently 4.2%.
So far, researchers have found mixed evidence on AI disrupting the job market — a Yale team recently found it had mainly changed jobs, and had "no connection" to changes in unemployment.
The Anthropic researchers also compiled survey responses to estimate predictions on economic growth. Based on their answers, the median US adult's guess for GDP growth in 2030 was 5.4%, compared with 17.1% among Anthropic employees. The country's GDP grew by 2.2% last year.
Anthropic's staffers are following their leader
Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, has become one of the industry's most closely watched voices on labor upheaval. In March of 2025, he said he expected AI to write 90% of code within 6 months, and "essentially all of the code" within the year. He made more headlines that May, telling Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years and lift unemployment to 10% or 20%.
Amodei expanded on that claim in a later essay, writing that he expects AI to be different from prior technological changes. He wrote that he expects an "unprecedented" short-term shock to labor, and that the economy will grow dramatically.
"AI isn't a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans," he wrote.
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On Friday, European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) called for menopause to be recognized as a workplace issue within European Union (EU) legislation, linking its effects to the gender pay and pension gaps.
The request was made on the occasion of World Menopause Day, observed on October 18. The trade union organization warned that this life stage remains largely unrecognized in European policies, due to the lack of harmonized legislation and the fact that the European Commission has no plans to develop a specific strategy.
According to the ETUC, nearly 30% of women experience symptoms that affect their ability to work, including fatigue, difficulty concentrating, sleep problems, hot flashes, joint pain, and anxiety.
Citing various studies, the confederation noted that women’s earnings decline by 7.4% in the four years following the onset of menopause. This drop is attributed to reduced working hours, medical leave, and the loss of promotion opportunities.
“The taboo surrounding menopause at work must end. The loss of wages, missed promotions, and lower pensions are the price millions of women pay because workplaces have not been adapted to menopause,” stated Isabelle Schömann, Deputy General Secretary of the ETUC.
— Trabajo y Prevención Castilla y León (@prevencionjcyl) October 7, 2026
The text reads, “European Week for Safety and Health at Work: Let’s Move Forward. A Commitment to Preventing Psychosocial Risks”
Proposed measures
The ETUC has put forward a set of measures to adapt workplaces to the needs of women going through this stage. These include:
1- Workplace risk assessments that take into account temperature, ventilation, and facilities.
2- Flexible working hours and remote work.
3- Training for managers, human resources staff, and the broader workforce.
4- Policies agreed upon with trade unions, which are then implemented and monitored.
5- Physical adjustments to the workplace. Paid leave for symptoms, with no penalty for the employee.
6- Free menstrual and menopause-related products in the workplace.
Schömann pointed out that too many women have to lose wages or leave their jobs because very little consideration has been given to an experience shared by half the population.
The organization highlighted that many labor unions are already negotiating collective agreements that include temperature adjustments and flexible work arrangements. It also called for labor regulations—currently “geared toward male-dominated jobs”—to be adapted to the reality of the entire workforce.
The author leaned out of hustle culture and said she enjoyed a more relaxed, but still fulfilling, life.
Courtesy of Catherine Work.
I spent my 20s believing that working hard and making money were the keys to independence.
I realized I was working so much that I had no time or energy to enjoy the life I was building.
Years later, being an ambitious woman looks different to me. I work less and have time for myself.
I thought making a lot of money and working hard would make me happy.
In my early 20s, I got great grades and finished my undergrad in three years. By my mid-20s, I had finished my graduate degree in law while frequently working 70-hour weeks.
I leaned into the idea of being a girlboss, often working weekends or through my lunch, and focusing on making lots of money. It was a habit I saw modeled by my parents. It worked for them, and I thought it would work for me, until it didn't.
I thought hard work was the point
At 26, I worked long days at my home desk after making "hard worker" and "responsible'"my identity for years. I thought this was what an independent woman was: someone who worked constantly and optimized all of her time.
The author said she spent so much time working in her 20s that she barely had time to enjoy the money she made.
Courtesy of Catherine Work.
Sure, I was saving lots of money and networking, but I was often too tired on my day off to do anything. I often chose to work on Saturdays and didn't even have time to spend my hard-earned money.
Two things made me realize this wasn't a sustainable lifestyle: I once told a friend I couldn't take a 15-minute lunch break to call her, and another time I struggled to lift my full duffle bag for an upcoming trip after not working out for months.
Something had to give.
I didn't want to just recover from burnout
I was clearly burned out. I could have taken some time off to recover and come back, but then the cycle would have continued.
It helped that I spent my early 20s in Cameroon and Costa Rica, two places where work-life balance looks a lot different than it does in the US, and people live with their parents much longer. Looking back on those years when I was truly happy helped me to question what I was focusing on in my life.
I came to a new conclusion. I didn't want to simply recover after burning out. I wanted to reject the premise that burnout was the price of being an ambitious woman.
I stopped hustling toward anything
In 2022, as the COVID restrictions were lifted more and a relationship I had been in ended, I decided to travel while working a few hours per week. As a then single, childfree woman, no longer heading towards a career, I wondered what I'd replace these traditional markers of success with. The answer turned out to be nothing.
I stopped trying to hustle toward something. No job, boss, passion, or person was going to truly reward me for committing to 70-hour weeks. Nothing was worth putting off a breakfast date with myself or an unplanned walk in the park, or that 15-minute phone call I told my friend I couldn't take.
I decided to opt out of the competitive nature of the working world and instead focus on optimizing myself.
5 years later, my life looks different
Five years later, I have a life my 26-year-old self would barely recognize. I work substantially less, have built a career around writing and research for companies with values I admire, and have spent the past several years living and traveling in different countries.
The author said her life has much more balance now and includes time for her to travel, cook, and connect with friends.
Courtesy of Catherine Work.
I don't own a car or a home, and I'm not chasing a traditional career ladder. Instead of constantly asking what I should accomplish next, I have far more time for cooking, relationships, travel, and simply being alive.
One thing I did keep from that previous era of my life was my deep conviction that I, and all women, need to be financially independent. I have stopped suggesting that my friends work through their lunch break; instead, we talk about ethical investing and the need to always have one's own bank account.
Independence turned out to mean something else for me
The surprising part is that opting out didn't ruin my career, and I didn't feel the need to replace work with anything else. I don't think chasing a job title, a salary, or a full calendar would have made me feel secure.
I think I would have constantly felt the need to prove myself, which sounds exhausting to me now. Instead, I have the independence I sought when I was younger. It just took the form of letting go of the idea that I have to constantly prove my worth to myself.
Attendees at OpenAI's DevDay conference on September 29, 2026.
Minh Connors/Bloomberg via Getty Images
OpenAI's Alexander Embiricos said the AI era gives a choice: work more, or work less.
He's in charge of Dots, the company's new always-on work assistant.
AI is often pitched as freeing up time. Embiricos responded to the idea that it might add more work.
As the competitive AI race pushes tech workers into long hours, the head of OpenAI's new Dots product says AI gives people another option: work a whole lot less.
Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI's enterprise product and helms the new Dots agent tool, told a crowd at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference on Thursday that AI's capabilities have created something of a fork in the road for workers. You can grind to meet the moment. Or you can use AI to kick your feet up a little.
"We basically have a lot more choice now," he said.
Embiricos made the comments after a reporter asked about when AI systems will actually deliver more free time. The reporter shared an anecdote where an OpenAI employee used a ChatGPT mobile feature to work in their car and on a plane — not exactly liberated by the new tech.
Embiricos said that the moment has already arrived where a worker can "outsource" tasks to AI and do less work. Then again, some people are so excited about AI's potential that they feel like it's an "interesting, ripe moment" to put in extra hours.
"I think that's why a lot of people are motivated to work very hard right now. That includes myself," he said. "But I think actually there is this choice, and there's totally this other setup where you could delegate a ton more things."
OpenAI is billing its Dots tool as a workplace assistant, always on and capable of proactively handing tasks and sorting to-dos. Embiricos uses his Dot often in Slack, he said, engaging on various threads.
His perspective illustrates how early companies are in their journey to adopt AI tools. Most companies have not yet automated their work tasks, and many workers are still debating how much to use the tools. Early AI adopters, meanwhile, can sprint through some work that used to take days or weeks, especially in software engineering.
Embiricos summed up the situation he feels workers are in: "You either choose: do you expand the ambition of what you can do, or do you do less? I do think we're there."
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European Union governments are entering a critical round of budget negotiations after the Irish presidency of the Council proposed cutting €141 billion from the European Commission’s long-term spending plans, exposing deep disagreements over how the bloc intends to finance its expanding responsibilities.
The revised proposal, circulated ahead of the European Council meeting scheduled for 15–16 October, would reduce the planned 2028–2034 financial framework by approximately eight per cent to around €1.6 trillion, calculated in constant prices.
Despite the reduction, the proposed budget remains approximately 30 per cent larger than the current seven-year framework. Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and other governments concerned about national contributions have nevertheless argued that further restraint is necessary.
The compromise, detailed in negotiations over the EU’s next financial framework, reduces proposed spending across several areas while largely protecting the Union’s established agricultural and regional development programmes. The distribution of those cuts is becoming as contentious as the overall size of the budget.
Europe’s new priorities face the deepest reductions
Under the Irish proposal, agricultural and regional development allocations would decline by approximately three per cent compared with the Commission’s initial plans. By contrast, funding intended for competitiveness and security would be reduced by around 13 per cent, while external action and development cooperation face cuts of approximately 17 per cent.
The difference raises questions about whether the next EU budget can support the strategic ambitions repeatedly endorsed by European leaders.
The Commission has presented industrial competitiveness, technological development, defence readiness and economic resilience as central priorities for the remainder of the decade. Yet these sectors would absorb proportionately larger reductions under the revised framework than agricultural and cohesion programmes.
The consequences could extend to investments in advanced technologies, European industrial supply chains, research programmes and cross-border defence cooperation. They could also constrain the Union’s capacity to fund external partnerships and development initiatives.
The debate is particularly sensitive because the EU’s responsibilities have changed considerably since the previous budget was negotiated. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased defence requirements, while competition with China and the United States has intensified demands for industrial investment.
Germany and the net contributors demand restraint
The central disagreement concerns how much additional expenditure European governments are willing to finance through the common budget. Germany and other major net contributors face domestic fiscal constraints, rising borrowing costs and demands to increase national defence spending.
For these governments, accepting a substantially larger EU budget would add to financial commitments already being made through national budgets.
The Irish compromise therefore faces opposition from two directions. Some governments consider the reductions insufficient, while others fear that the remaining cuts will weaken programmes essential to their national economies.
Traditional recipients of agricultural and regional funding have an interest in protecting established expenditure. Governments seeking stronger European investment in defence, innovation and industrial competitiveness have different priorities.
The European Parliament is another obstacle. Its consent will be required before the final financial framework can enter into force, giving MEPs considerable leverage in negotiations with national governments.
New EU revenues remain controversial
The proposal also envisages approximately €55 billion in additional annual financing through new or revised EU revenue sources, including customs revenues, emissions-related income and corporate contributions.
The Commission’s framework for the next long-term budget reflects a broader debate over the extent to which the Union should develop independent financing mechanisms rather than rely predominantly on national contributions.
Such mechanisms would potentially give Brussels a more predictable revenue base. However, they also raise questions about fiscal sovereignty, the distribution of costs among member states and the political accountability of European taxation.
National governments remain reluctant to surrender substantial authority over revenue collection, particularly when proposed resources could impose costs on domestic industries or consumers.
Ukraine, enlargement and Europe’s strategic ambitions
The negotiations will influence the Union’s ability to respond to future enlargement. Ukraine and several Western Balkan countries are pursuing accession, but the financial implications of bringing additional members into the Union remain substantial.
Existing arrangements for agricultural subsidies and regional development assistance would require reconsideration if large new beneficiaries entered the budgetary system.
At the same time, the EU faces pressure to support Ukraine financially and strengthen defence production without depending indefinitely on extraordinary borrowing or ad hoc national contributions. These responsibilities cannot be addressed simply by preserving the structure of earlier budgets.
European Council President António Costa will seek to narrow the divisions among the 27 leaders, but agreement on the financial framework requires unanimity. Any government can withhold its consent if it considers the final distribution of costs unacceptable.
The forthcoming summit is therefore likely to establish the parameters of further negotiations rather than eliminate the underlying disagreements. The immediate political question is whether member states can reconcile their commitment to greater European strategic capacity with their reluctance to finance it collectively.
In a near unanimous vote, city council members in Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted a policy order suggesting that local law enforcement authorities shouldn't arrest or prosecute sex workers.
With eight members voting yes and one voting present during the council's October 5 meeting, the new policy aims to "let folks in our community know that we do stand in support of not arresting or prosecuting people who sell sex," as Councilor Patricia M. Nolan put it.
The order's stipulation with regard to sex customers, however, is unclear. And what practical effect it will have is uncertain, since Cambridge City Council members can't change Massachusetts state law, under which both buying and selling sex are still crimes.
The new policy order states that it is the council's "belief that the arrest of adult persons for consensual sex work should continue to be amongst the lowest law enforcement priorities for the City of Cambridge" and that "the Middlesex County District Attorney should cease prosecution of persons for consensual adult sex work and cease prosecution of persons who provide support services to sex workers absent unlawful means."
The district attorney's office does not have to take this recommendation, of course. Still, it seems meaningful that government officials are urging prosecutors to adopt some level of decriminalization policy when it comes to prostitution. The Cambridge City Council isn't even the first in the area to do so. "In 2019, Somerville City Council voted to direct Somerville police not to arrest sex workers," Cambridge Daypoints out.
Originally, some Cambridge authorities wanted to go even further. An earlier draft of the order urged "the State House to support efforts to achieve the full decriminalization of consensual adult sex work statewide," but that language was removed before passage of the final policy last week. The change was made so as "not [to be] taking a stand on…full decriminalization of the buyer," Nolan said at the meeting.
Yet according to The Cambridge Somerville Independent, Council Member Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, who authored the new policy, said that even as adopted it still supports full decriminalization (that is, decriminalization of both full-service sex work providers and their clients):
In the version that passed, some councillors believed they voted for something different: that customers remain seen as criminals and that the goal is to end sex work rather than allow the trade to continue safely with protections for human and worker rights. "People are going to read it a little differently," Sobrinho-Wheeler said, but he and supporters believe the order continues to cover clients and suppliers of sex work.
Sex worker rights advocates are calling the policy—which also includes plans for a phone line that sex workers can use to report crimes against them without having to interact with police—a win.
"Victories seem rare. This one is special because of how many sex workers, survivors, and allies supported our effort," Mary Carol, co-chair of the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective, said in a press release.
During the public comment portion of the council's October 5 meeting, at least 27 people—including current and former sex workers, lawyers, and people in social services—spoke in support of full decriminalization.
"I choose to do this work and I choose to do this work without going to jail for it," said Rita Romero, who said she has been "a sex worker for over 20 years."
A woman describing herself as "a student, a mother, an advocate, and a sex worker" told council members: "We are not asking you to understand every choice that we make. We are asking you to understand that criminalization does not make us disappear, it only changes how safely we are able to exist."
"Our commonwealth should protect people's dignity, not punish them for trying to survive," opined Kayla Kittredge, an independent candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.
Several speakers who described themselves as survivors of sex trafficking supported the policy order. This included Quinn, who said she was "pushed into the sex industry as a teenager" and still supports full decriminalization.
Clients "didn't hurt me because of a lack of punishment," Quinn said. "They were able to hurt me because I had a lack of power, political power, to keep myself safe and to determine the trajectory of my own life. The fact is full decriminalization—not partial, not the equality model—only full decriminalization has been proven to afford both trafficking victims and sex workers more political power, actual political power."
Only three people—two with the group Safe Exit, which helps people who do not want to be selling sexual services to stop doing so—spoke against the policy.
Safe Exit's Audra Dooty said the policy would "hurt people and get more vulnerable folks sucked into the life" and advocated what's alternately known as the Nordic model, the equality model, or partial decriminalization, in which sex workers are not criminalized but their clients are.
Several speakers at the council meeting directly opposed any policy that still prioritizes arresting sex buyers. Claudia Torres, a staff attorney at Justice at Work, noted that while some say decriminalization removes protection for vulnerable people, "vulnerability does not make meaningful consent impossible. Whether coercion is present is a fact-intensive, context-specific inquiry."
"Criminalizing buyers does not eliminate dangerous clients or exploitation," said Molly Lynch, a licensed clinical social worker. Instead, it "makes it harder for sex workers to protect themselves from those dangers." Lynch added that having worked with street-based sex workers, she learned that "sex workers are experts in their own safety."
"In other industries, like domestic work, we say the solution is giving people more labor protections," Jessica Van Meir told the council. "We don't say the solution to trafficking of domestic workers is to criminalize hiring a maid."
The new Cambridge policy order puts on the record what already seems to be police policy. Shameka Gregory with the city's Domestic and Gender-Based Violence Prevention Initiative said the Cambridge Police Department has made only about four sex worker arrests in the past five years. She did not say if any or how many solicitation arrests were made.
But even if local police aren't proactively going after prostitution, sex workers and/or their customers in the area may still face arrests and prosecutions. In recent years, Cambridge has been the home of a high-profile "brothel" bust involving both federal and state police. More than 30 clients were arrested and prosecuted on state charges, and three people who ran the business were prosecuted on federal charges.
In the News
Where will the Trump administration livesteam its firing squad? (What a sentence to have to write.) "Depending on how much [social media platforms] want to bend over backwards (or should I say, bow down?) to appease Donald Trump and the bloodthirsty Pete Hegseth, all of them except Meta can make unfortunately credible claims that livestreaming an execution by firing squad doesn't technically violate their policies," notes Mike Masnick at Techdirt. "Meta cannot say that. I'd argue that the videos likely do violate YouTube, X, and TikTok's policies as well, but it very much depends on subjective calls for all three."
"Remember, some of the earliest moral panic over how 'bad' social media is came from US elected officials losing their minds about terrorist execution videos on YouTube," adds Masnick:
It's kind of incredible how far we've come: Now the US government itself is planning to stream a gruesome execution of its own, and any platform that pushes back will likely be attacked by the president and his supporters for not being patriotic enough.
Continuing in what's apparently a surrealist theme of today's newsletter…
On Substack
Will Ukraine decriminalize porn to help fund its military? Sofya Owl has helped fund Ukraine's defense efforts by selling nude photos. That could make her a criminal in Ukraine, "where producing and distributing pornography remains a criminal offense," explains Mariana Lastovyria at The Counteroffensive:
For years, it has had a thriving market for adult content that operates largely in the shadows.
Now, as the country faces a roughly $27 billion shortfall in defense funding, lawmakers are considering whether to remove pornography from the criminal code—potentially bringing part of that underground economy into the legal tax base. This gap is critical, as the money is needed now to pay for supplies at the front line for the first quarter of 2027.
According to recent estimates by Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who co-authored a bill to decriminalize pornography production, legalizing the industry could bring the state budget up to $25 million a year in tax revenue. He says that amount would be enough to purchase around 30,000 drones.
Read This Thread
Why are campus administrators teaching about sex toys?
Setting aside whether universities should be in the business of providing this kind of advice, the real question is why therapeutic bureaucracies are now somehow responsible for attending to every last private corner of student life, right down to the "bondage and fetish gear." https://t.co/TmJ7ayMM5C
Two very different Flock rulings: Last week, this newsletter covered a federal court ruling in which the judge called automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems such as Flock "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance." But all is not well in Flock/Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
"A decision that a California judge issued the following day, which dismissed a lawsuit arguing that San Jose's ALPR network violates the state constitution, is much more typical of litigation in this area, which so far has been almost uniformly unsuccessful," reportsReason's Jacob Sullum. More:
The contrast between those two decisions suggests the challenges such lawsuits face as judges grapple with the implications of Supreme Court precedents involving cellphone location data. Although the relevance of those precedents might seem obvious, state and federal courts generally have perceived important differences between cellphone tracking and police use of roadside cameras that record images of passing cars.
• Always read Chris Ferguson on cellphone ban studies (and do it quick before he gets himself locked in a padded room rather than have to scream about effect sizes one more time).
• The winner of Britain's prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing is now under question, after "the AI detector Pangram flag[ged] almost the entire story as AI-generated," notesThe Atlantic. And "this isn't the first prize-winning story to be flagged by Pangram. It comes after similar scandals over this year's Commonwealth Prize and Prix Goncourt—two other renowned literature contests—in which Pangram flagged AI use among finalists."
• "The case for screen time limits rests in part on an unproven assumption that fewer hours will mean fewer anxious and depressed kids. The best evidence doesn't support it," writes the Columbia University psychiatrist Jonathan Slater in The New York Times:
Limiting screen time can promote children's overall health. But the amount of time children spend on screens has only a small effect on their mental health. Genetics and certain experiences in childhood, as well as the lack of proper diagnosis and treatment, appear to be far more influential. Limiting screen time is not the first line of treatment for children with anxiety or depression.
• Abortion pill update: "The Food and Drug Administration expects to complete its safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone in March," reports NBC. In a court document filed by the Department of Justice last Wednesday, the agency "said it plans to compare mifepristone's safety to that of surgical abortions through 10 weeks' gestation. Its review will measure the frequency of side effects among roughly 100,000 women who took mifepristone, it said."
• Is AI slop what the people really want? "They like the slop, they're eager for more, and whoever's serving it to them is just fulfilling the authentic demand for unlimited AI-generated garbage," suggests Jeremiah Johson at The Argument.
• A win for cryptocurrency: "The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has withdrawn its proposal for a rule that would require financial institutions to report on cryptocurrency transactions that they 'know, suspect, or have reason to suspect' involve mixing in a foreign jurisdiction," reportsReason's Matthew Petti. "The proposal was first made in October 2023, and the government withdrew it this week, citing complaints from the crypto industry and privacy concerns."
A Ukrainian Sargan-3000 sea drone shot down a Russian Shahed flying on a mesh radio network, Ukraine's Navy reported on 7 October. Ukrainian sea drones have downed Russian aircraft before, but with missiles. This one used a machine gun.
Russia has been hitting Odesa with air attacks that come in waves with short gaps between them. Guarding the sky over water is harder than over land. Since fall 2025, Russia has also used mesh radio networks to reroute Shaheds mid-flight and dodge Ukrainian air defenses. That leaves Ukraine needing more ways to meet these drones out at sea, before they reach its ports and coast.
A Shahed steered by radio
A mesh-network drone passes its control signals along a chain of radio relays, drone to drone and on to ground antennas. That lets a Russian operator steer it in flight.
In May, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, then a Defense Ministry adviser, said only about 5% of Shaheds had got through in a recent Russian strike, and predicted that Russia would answer with jet-powered versions and strikes near the border. By July, Ukraine was testing jamming against mesh-controlled jet Shaheds, he said.
Protector RWS turret on the Ukrainian Sargan-3000 naval drone, October 2026. Screenshot from a video by the Ukrainian Navy
The Sargan-3000 fired its Protector remote weapon station, Militarnyi reported. The station is a remotely operated 12.7-mm (50-caliber) machine gun with electro-optical sights. The outlet added that the Sargan-3000 is designed for combat missions far from Ukraine's coast.
Built for the open sea
Ukraine's Navy took the Sargan-3000 into service in April 2026, according to Militarnyi. The drone boat has a combat radius of up to 1,600 km. It moves at 40–55 knots and carries up to 450 kg of payload.
In September, a Sargan-3000 sank a Russian uncrewed boat with machine-gun fire. Militarnyi called it the first battle between uncrewed sea platforms in history. Analyst H.I. Sutton wrote that the boat carried a Protector made by Norway's Kongsberg. That is the same weapon station named in the October shootdown. Sutton added that Russian attack sea drones work closely with Shaheds, which can relay the boats' mesh radio signals.
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