Can’t wait to see this in an “Acknowledgements” section

Making the rounds today is a new story that an adult entertainment website has provided a $25,000 research scholarship to Natalie Nevárez, a neurobiologist, to study monogamy. (Not mentioning the name of said website to try to prevent blog from being overridden with bots and spam.)

Congratulations to Natalie!

I would like to point out that in the last two months, adult entertainment websites have provided:

• Snow removal during a blizzard.
• Factual sex education. 
• And now, research funding.

These are small, token gestures, sure. But at this point, adult entertainment websites are showing a better understanding of civic responsibility than many elected politicians are. All of these used to be services that we expected to be provided largely by governments.

Update, 15 April 2017: A couple of people on Twitter noted that these sites do have problematic aspects to them, such as stolen content. I certainly don’t want to let these businesses off the hook for their bad practices. Ultimately, issues like “fair compensation of workers” matters more than a scholarship here or there.

But that they have made some of the gestures above kind of makes me wonder if they might smarten up.

These sites have also taken the lead on Internet security.

External links

A neurobiologist studying monogamy wins scholarship from porn site
Utah rejects sex education bill, so porn site redirects to instructional videos
Porn site says it will plow snow in Boston for free