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Welcome to the Bogosity Podcast for the week of July 27 2025, the podcast that released the kraken.
This is your host, Shane Killian. Let's codify the News of the Bogus.
And now, history is made in the energy sector
as the NRC approves the very first restart of a decommissioned nuclear power plant.
The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert Township, Michigan
will be the first commercial reactor in the US to restart after being shut down in 2022.
Originally online in 1971, Consumers Energy sold the plant to Entergy in 2007,
and at that time its license was extended to 2031.
But just a few years later,
under Barack Obama the NRC attacked the plant as one of the four worst-performing power plants,
which ultimately led the Michigan Public Service Commission to order an eventual shutdown.
Originally planned for 2018, the shutdown was held over until 2022
so that Entergy could complete the purchase agreement with Consumers Energy.
Entergy then sold the decommissioned plant to Holtec International.
Holtec originally applied for a restart approval at that time, but it was denied by the NRC.
Now, a new agreement has been reached, alongside $1.5 million in loans from the Department of Energy.
The NRC said in a statement, quote:
"While these NRC approvals will allow Holtec to load fuel, there are still several licensing actions under NRC review
and additional requirements that need to be met before the plant can start up under the original operating license,
which would expire March 24, 2031."
Holtec said it was undergoing, quote:
"Rigorous testing, inspections, and maintenance" to get the plant ready for restart.
They're not only working to meet approvals by the NRC,
but also to meet more stringent standards under the World Association of Nuclear Operators.
It's helped along by newfound support for nuclear power from both parties in the Michigan legislature
as well as Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Of course, that hasn't stopped stupid environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club attacking it,
calling it, quote: "dangerous, dirty, slow, and expensive."
Of course, none of those are the case.
The facility has a single PWR unit generating 805 megawatts of baseload electricity.
In addition, Holtec plans to add two 300MW SMRs which should hopefully go online by mid-2030.
Michigan has 15 years to reach a self-imposed mandate of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040.
And as usual, they're finding that wind and solar just aren't up to the task,
since in order to provide steady baseload power
you'd need major advances in battery technology and long-range transmission that just aren't here yet.
Although the three reactors at the Browns Ferry plant in Alabama were restart after a six-year-long shutdown,
they had never begun decommissioning.
This is the first time a decommissioned reactor will be restarted.
And hopefully, it won't be the last. So many reactors were shut down for completely bogus reasons.
All of that perfectly good energy, and those perfectly good systems to put it on the grid,
just sitting there, decaying, and going to waste. It's a crying shame.
Sometimes you just have to STOMP SOME SKULLS.
From the mind of Mr. Dapperton, a game for the ages!
In a world where a race of undead furries tries to take over the world's nuclear arsenal,
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The Orange Overlord...
Berny Slanders...
Debate Dominator...
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And of course, Mr. Fancy Pants himself!
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Full controller support.
You can even get...eaten by a worm! And pooped out into a furry cathedral.
And don't forget that Gold Edition, where you can play the ultimate challenge: Devil's Doorstep!
This gory, satirical adventure pulls no punches!
You know you want this game!
Go to links.bogosity.tv/skullstompers and play Skull Stompers now!
So Elon Musk and X Corp now have a win in the normally-corrupt DC court system.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted an unconstitutional gag order
the DC Circuit Court imposed on them.
The judge had prohibited them from, quote:
"disclosing subpoenas, warrants, or court orders for customer records."
Yes, they could have demanded information about you and X would have been prohibited from even telling you about it!
To make matters worse, quote:
"The district court found that the order was statutorily authorized and constitutional.
In reaching its decision, the district court relied on evidence submitted by the government ex parte
and largely declined X's request that the government produce those ex parte submissions for X's review."
That's right: X Corp didn't even get a chance to counter their arguments or even know what their arguments were!
And the judge warned, quote: "X can also reasonably expect to face another nondisclosure order
based on an authorizing order of this kind."
The issue is the Stored Communications Act,
which lets the government subpoena electronic service providers for user records.
It also, in very limited ways, allows the government to seek an order prohibiting disclosure of the subpoena.
That's supposed to be a high bar to cross. They'd need to show that the disclosure "will"—
and it uses the word "will", not "might" or "perhaps would", but "will"—have an averse effect,
something like putting someone in physical danger, or a flight risk, or evidence tampering, that sort of thing.
The problem is, when the government sought this gag order, they didn't have a subpoena at all!
They just wanted a general ruling that they could issue whatever subpoenas they want
and X couldn't tell anyone about it.
This went on to be applied to a subpoena from the feds
demanding personal information from two FBI agents, Kyle Seraphin and Garrett O'Doyle.
Remember them? We talked about them. They were two whistleblowers
who disclosed to Congress that the FBI was improperly targeting politically disfavored groups.
In retaliation, Seraphin and O'Doyle were fired and subject to a criminal investigation.
X wanted to transparently disclose the government's subpoena to the public, but the gag order prevented them.
In the unanimous ruling penned by Judge Brad Garcia, he wrote:
"The government did not have any particular subpoena or subpoenas in hand when it submitted that application.
Instead, it asked for authority to attach a nondisclosure order
to any of the many subpoenas it might issue in one investigation over the next year."
"If the order covers just one subpoena that is before the court, the inquiry is straightforward:
The court must find reason to believe disclosing that subpoena will result in a statutory harm.
If the order covers multiple subpoenas, though,
the court must make a determination that addresses all those subpoenas.
Similarly, if the order applies to future, hypothetical subpoenas,
the court ordinarily must identify the types of subpoenas to which its order can apply
so it can explain why it has reason to believe disclosure of those potential subpoenas will cause harm."
Again, note the word "will." And the government had no such reason. Quote:
"The magistrate judge did not address how the court's reason to believe
applied to subpoenas that might be issued months in the future.
Nothing suggests that the judge grappled with the potential variety in the subpoenas,
including the range of targets, that her orders might cover.
And the judge never explained how her reason to believe applied to each of those subpoenas.
The government has little to say in response."
They did, sadly, stop short of addressing X's challenge on First Amendment grounds,
out of, quote: "judicial restraint." Cowards.
Still, maybe it's a good trend. Once a few circuits strike it for the more mealy-mouthed reasons,
it'll give others, or even the Supreme Court,
the courage to strike it down as the First Amendment violation it so obviously is.
If you're on the Wi-Fi in a coffee shop or hotel,
anyone on that network can get access to your traffic.
Do you really trust all of those strangers?
For that matter, do you really trust your ISP?
A VPN can protect you from prying eyes, disguise your location, and even foil government censors.
It's essential in this day and age, so go to vpn.bogosity.tv and you'll be taken to BoxPN.
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and they don't log connections so your privacy is assured.
Travelling abroad, just VPN home and don't worry about what those other governments are doing.
Back at home, stop your ISP from traffic-shaping
and messing with the quality internet access you're paying good money for.
You can connect from multiple machines at once, including your smartphone or tablet,
and it supports all the secure standards including OpenVPN and SSTP.
Bypass censors and surveillance with your own secure VPN connection. Go to vpn.bogosity.tv.
Of course, over in the EU, the fight for free speech is even harder.
Having no real bill of rights that they have to contend with, there's nothing stopping the EU from, in this case,
making incredibly onerous regulations over political advertising.
So onerous that both Google and Meta have said they're just not gonna do it.
At all. Screw you, EU!
Meta said in a statement: "Beginning in October, Meta—like other platforms—
will no longer allow political, electoral and social issue ads our platforms in the EU,
given the unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties introduced
by the EU's Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation.
The TTPA will restrict how advertisers can reach their audiences
and means people will also see less relevant content.
Meta remains committed to enabling political speech and fair elections.
This won't prevent people or candidates in the EU from posting about and debating politics on our platforms."
According to the Council of the EU, quote (bad grammar and all):
"Targeting political advertising online will be permitted only under strict conditions.
The data has to be collected from the data subject and it can be used only after the data subject
have given explicit and separate consent for its use for political advertising.
Special categories of personal data, such as data revealing
racial or ethnic origin or political opinions, cannot be used for profiling.
To prevent foreign interference, there will be a ban on the provision of advertising services
to third country sponsors three months before an election or referendum."
If that last part sounds familiar,
that's because it mirrors the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain–Feingold,
the very law the Supreme Court struck down in Citizens United.
In that case, the FEC had prohibited Citizens United from showing their documentary, Celsius 41.11,
a response to Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, which they allowed.
The difference, thery said, was that Citizens United wasn't a proper film company.
Four years later, they stopped them from putting their documentary Hillary: The Movie
on DirecTV for pay-per-view.
In other words, it set up two classes of people:
the "real" filmmakers and press, who get to say whatever they want before an election,
and the plebs like you and me who somehow think we get the same freedom.
The EU is saying the same thing: their favored media outlets get to say what they want three months before an election,
but don't you dare think you get the same rights, even if you pay for the ad space!
Meta said, quote:
"Unfortunately, the TTPA introduces significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems
that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty
for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU.
For example, the TTPA places extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery
which would restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences
and lead to people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms.
It is yet another threat to the principles of personalized advertising,
ignoring the benefits to advertisers and the people they want to reach."
Google made a similar statement last year, quote:
"The TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues
that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale.
There is also a lack of reliable local election data
permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local,
regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States."
And their solution? Just not to do it, quote:
"As a result, Google will stop serving political advertising in the EU
before the TTPA enters into force in October 2025.
Additionally, paid political promotions, where they qualify as political ads under the TTPA,
will no longer be permitted on YouTube in the EU."
So now, Meta has followed suit, quote:
"Despite extensive engagement with policymakers to share these concerns,
we have been left with an impossible choice:
alter our services to offer an advertising product which doesn't work for advertisers or users,
without guarantee that our solution would be viewed as compliant,
or stop allowing political, electoral and social issue ads in the EU.
We're not the only company to have been forced into this position.
Once again, we're seeing regulatory obligations
effectively remove popular products and services from the market, reducing choice and competition."
Of course, regulatory requirements never do anything else.
In fact, it quite often is the point—as it may indeed be here.
If the EU is doing this to silence voices that go against the mainstream,
that generally can only get attention through advertising,
well, mission accomplished I guess.
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Once again, that's firmoo.bogosity.tv.
And now it's time to recrystallize this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
Goddammit, this is supposed to be the 21st century, not the Dark Ages!
Haven't we had enough of the moralizing busybodies for one species?
But no, with modern third-wave feminism, it's like having the Hays Office back again!
And now, they're refusing to process payments for game developers that make games that are not safe for work.
Mastercard and Visa have convinced Valve to implement a new clause in its Steamworks ToS
to hand over editorial approval to them,
and has already disproportionately targeted developers of visual novels, self-published works, and erotic games.
Combine an attack on indie developers with an anti-porn brigade. That's what you have here.
It's also way disproportionately affected Japanese game developers, so it's kind of racist, too.
The new clause forbids, quote:
"Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors
and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.
In particular, certain kinds of adult only content."
Yeah, nice and vague, right?
And apparently, anime is a favorite target of theirs.
Even if the content is perfectly legal even in ultra-conservative Japan,
anime, even of the non-adult variety, is being targeted as inherently pedophilic.
Together, Mastercard and Visa control about 90% of global online transactions.
If an $8 billion company like Valve can't confront them, who can?
Definitely not itch.io, merely valued in the tens of millions.
They've already de-indexed—in other words, shadowbanned—quote:
"all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages."
And so far, that's over 20,000 titles.
And it's due to those self-same payment processors, quote:
"We understand this action is sudden and disruptive,
and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change.
Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors
regarding the nature of some content hosted on itch.io.
Our ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform.
To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers,
we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance."
They didn't even have time to give these creators advance notice.
Mastercard and Visa have the power to cancel all transactions through their systems,
which could easily make platforms like itch.io go down completely.
When the bullies are that big, they much more closely resemble mobsters.
And it has the same consequences we've seen so many times:
Game developers are reporting that their games are being removed even though they're not selling them!
They're giving away their game for free, and hoping you'll just join their Patreon or something,
and yet the payment processors still get them taken down.
Without the devs being told what rule it was the game was supposed to have broken.
An Australian anti-porn group, Collective Shout (it's all in the name, isn't it?),
took credit for the censorship.
It started, as it often does, with a particularly vile game that few people would defend.
No Mercy is apparently a horrible game that glorifies sexual violence and hatred of women.
Disclaimer: I don't actually know that, since I haven't played the game, nor have I even heard of it until now.
That's the report of a few different outlets I checked, so that's what I'm going with,
but it's been the case in the past that this sort of misinformation
can get out there and independently repeated.
Which is another lesson: it doesn't even have to be the worst.
It just has to be accused of being the worst.
And so many people will just repeat it without verifying it.
It doesn't matter that the dev voluntarily removed No Mercy 24 hours after it launched due to the controversy.
But either way, as these things go, that's just a launching-off point to go after more innocuous games
that the self-styled "pro-life feminists" don't like.
And today, it's porn, but what'll it be tomorrow?
The group's co-founder, Melinda Tankard Reis, said on X:
"All these porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists
so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games
they're now exchanging clues on how to find them so that they don't all die overnight."
Yeah, I think you've told me just how seriously I should take you.
Previously, the group had failed to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem,
but had succeeded in getting Target and K-Mart from selling Grand Theft Auto V in Australia.
They had received over a thousand signatures on Change.org to get payment processors to pull funding for No Mercy.
The game has also been pulled from GitHub and other websites.
Mastercard and Visa are conduits, and they should remain just that. It's your job to process payments.
It's not your job to be combination mama, preacher, and feminist wackjob
and to use your dominance to purge humanity of things that get your pathetic little panties in a bunch.
Now, there's a different Change.org petition with over 95,000 verified signatures—
dwarfing Collective Shout's original petition—to, quote:
"Tell MasterCard, Visa, and activist groups: stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play."
The petition reads: "Let's be clear: These 'activist groups' do not speak for everyone.
Adults are capable of choosing what they want to watch, read, or play.
If someone doesn't like a certain type of entertainment, the solution is simple: walk away.
Nobody is forced to engage with content they find offensive—
but they have no right to dictate what others are allowed to enjoy, especially when it's within the bounds of the law.
Fiction is not reality. Sex sells.
And consent, artistic expression, and market freedom must be respected in any healthy, democratic society."
If we could please just leave the moralizing for the Dark Ages
and just perform the service you've been given special dispensation by the government to do, that'd be great.
In the meantime, we have one more data point as to why we should all switch to crypto.
So all of that makes both Mastercard and Visa this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
Do you have children? Or nieces or nephews?
Are you homeschooling, or just want to counter
some of the socialist indoctrination most children get in school?
If so, go to bogosity.tv/tuttletwins, and you'll be taken to a website
where you can get some great books for elementary-aged children.
The Tuttle Twins books are books about liberty and free market economics
that include children's versions of Bastiat's The Law, Leonard Read's I, Pencil,
and Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, as well as books about the Federal Reserve
and how regulations protect business cronies.
They'll learn about the harm caused by eminent domain,
or regulations passed in the name of safety, and fundamental concepts of liberty.
And as you can see from the sample pages on the website,
they're all easy to read and nicely illustrated.
They're just $9.99 apiece, or get a special discount
as well as free bonuses when you purchase all five.
You can even buy in bulk to donate to schools and local libraries.
So get the Tuttle Twins books at bogosity.tv/tuttletwins.
And now let's discombobulatificize this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
And this week, it goes to the Authors Guild,
for yet another ridiculous complaint in yet another ridiculous anti-AI case.
They sued OpenAI for, well, the usual crap. Do I really need to go into it?
After almost two years, you'd think they'd actually get somewhere close to backing up something,
anything that they've claimed.
But as OpenAI put out in a recent motion to dismiss, they hilariously haven't. They filed:
"To the extent that Plaintiffs purport to assert a claim for direct copyright infringement
based on ChatGPT's outputs, the claim is defective several times over.
The Complaint fails to quote or attach even a single example of an allegedly infringing output,
depriving the Court of the ability to apply the 'more discerning,' 'ordinary observer' test,
or from conducting any analysis whatsoever.
Compounding that issue, the Complaint contains no facts
demonstrating the substantial similarity of the allegedly infringing outputs,
and instead relies on threadbare allegations and legal conclusions.
Indeed, Plaintiffs' output allegations are so facially deficient
that they fail to clear the low threshold for notice pleading."
Damn! You'd think there'd be something!
Quote: "Courts regularly dismiss claims where the works at issue were not attached to the complaint
and where it was impossible to assess substantial similarity.
Though Plaintiffs address allegedly infringing outputs in 39 paragraphs,
the Complaint does not attach a single example—
no allegedly infringing summaries, outlines, characters, or any other content.
In fact, the Complaint does not include a single quoted sentence or phrase from any ChatGPT output.
Instead, Plaintiffs' output allegations consist entirely
of vague and conclusory descriptions of alleged outputs,
preventing the Court from properly assessing whether those outputs
are in fact substantially similar to any protectible expression.
Plaintiffs' claim fails for this reason alone."
One of the complaints was, quote:
"When prompted, ChatGPT generated an infringing, unauthorized, and detailed outline
for the next purported installment of My Sister's Keeper,
and titled the infringing and unauthorized derivative as My Sister's Legacy, using the same characters."
Yes, not even a real book! An outline of a fictional sequel!
OpenAI responded: "But 'outlines' of the 'next purported installment' of a copyrighted work
are not per se infringing derivative works;
rather, to be actionable, the alleged similarities must arise
from 'protected aesthetic expressions original to the allegedly infringed work.'
Yet, the Complaint provides no facts about what protected expression the outlines copy.
To the contrary, the only factual description the Complaint provides
regarding any outline is that it is 'detailed';
the other two adjectives—alleging that the outline is 'infringing' and 'unauthorized'—
are legal conclusions and should be disregarded.
Use of a character is not inherently infringing; indeed, copyright protection does not extend
to generic and generalized character traits or to stock characters.
Courts have deemed allegations far more robust than Plaintiffs'
as nonetheless insufficient to plead substantial similarity.
Plaintiffs cannot avoid their obligation to allege well-pleaded facts
regarding how the works are substantially similar in protectible elements
by merely alleging general infringement of the derivative right."
Look, I'm not a lawyer, but even I know you have to actually provide examples of infringing output!
They referenced Judge Vince Chhabria's dismissal of almost every count in Kadrey v. Meta,
and for much of the same reasons, quote:
"The court dismissed the class plaintiff's vicarious infringement claim against OpenAI,
finding plaintiffs' allegation that 'every output of the OpenAI Language Models
is an infringing derivative work' is insufficient.
As the court observed, Plaintiffs fail to explain what the outputs entail
or allege that any particular output is substantially similar—or similar at all—to their books.
That reasoning applies with equal force here.
Plaintiffs' output-based infringement claim should be dismissed."
And since their other counts depend on that one, they'd all fall like dominoes.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me, but this is the SDNY, so who knows?
And we know that Judge Ona T. Wang is biased in favor of the big publishing cartels, like most of the SDNY,
but would even she put up with having her court's time wasted for two years?
I swear, these anti-AI cases just need to die the death.
But with Congress now poised to write bogus unconstitutional laws against it
based on the horrific lies Josh Hawley and others told in a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,
it seems like it'll get worse before it gets better.
Even with arguments as stupid, vapid, and baseless as this.
So all of that makes the Authors Guild this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Well, that wraps up this "just some ridiculous adventurer with a handful of rabble" edition of the Bogosity Podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it; if you did, please go to donate.bogosity.tv for several ways to support,
and discord.bogosity.tv to join the discussion.
Subscribe at the Discord, Patreon, or SubscribeStar and you can listen early and ad-free.
Thank you for listening. Until next time, here's a quote from Stephan Kinsella:
"The roots of copyright lie in censorship.
It was easy for state and church to control thought by controlling the scribes,
but then the printing press came along
and the authorities worried that they couldn't control official thought as easily."
The Bogosity Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International license.