Culture

It’s hard to say how much revenue the porn industry has lost to free porn tube sites. No matter what they do, they can’t seem to bring their sales back to levels before these sites made access to porn so easy. Tired of fighting, adult video production company Pink Visual is joining them.

Last week, Google’s social network Google Plus (Google+) opened its doors to users 13 years of age and above. In order to prevent minors from accessing adult content that sometimes appears on this blog, our editrix created a Google+ Page to disseminate our posts. A day later, the network banned our page’s icon for being “inappropriate.”

We’ve gotten word that AfterDark LA, the LA Weekly’s sex blog, is pivoting from its L.A. focus to a national one in order to appeal to a wider audience. This no doubt includes taking a step back from adult industry happenings to an extent, which is a damn shame since most other mainstream media properties online have a tendency to be unabashedly sex-negative. But don’t be sad, we have you covered. To satisfy all your civilian cravings about what’s happening in Porn Valley, we present Porn Valley Vantage, a great blog run by eminent pornologist Dr. Chauntelle, a visiting scholar at USC’s department of sociology and academic whose primary interest is in the expansion of women’s rights and opportunities in the adult film industry.

Playboy has a line of lingerie and sleepwear called Playboy Intimates, which is getting ready to launch a brand spanking new collection. To celebrate, they’re running a contest that could land one lucky lady a wishlist full of lingerie.

“We’re convinced that the erotic need be no enemy of quality,” says ainsley-t founder Stuart Thom. “And when you’re thinking with every square inch of skin and breathing for every touch, wouldn’t you much rather wear shoes from people who take the same care as you do? Of course you would.”

“Portrait of a Call Girl” won several awards at the AVNs and Gram Ponante is not wrong when he says that it’s the most “thoughtfully acted, beautifully shot, and sparsely, elegantly orchestrated” porn flick out there. It is right up there with the original “Emmanuelle.” It even pays passing tribute to Buñuel’s “Belle du Jour” and uses voice overs reminiscent of “Gia.” Even so, the film has some serious issues.

Carl Zimmer, a celebrated science writer, has published a piece about Neil deGrasse in the January issue of Playboy magazine. Almost immediately after the article started making the rounds on the internet, the question of whether “respectable authors” should publish in magazines like Playboy arose.

The overall desire to help on the part of Google has overridden a lot of details that must be understood if we are going to find a way to rid the world of trafficking and slavery. The most harmful and least understood of these details is the importance of supporting organizations that distinguish between consensual sex work and sexual slavery. Several of the organizations that Google is funding do not make this necessary distinction.

Legally speaking, something that appeals to the prurient interest and, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, can be deemed obscene. But what happens when you offer erotic images in a format that’s no longer the norm? It’s a stretch, but there is something about the glow of of bodies on Polaroid film that adds a little art to an image that otherwise has none.

You’ve seen Post Secret, anonymous postcards with heart-warming and terrible secrets. You’ve seen Texts from Last Night, hilarious, usually drunken text message exchanges. Now you have Filthy E-mails, a blog that collects and runs anonymous electronic messages with a filthy intent.