Music crowdfunding website PledgeMusic goes offline amidst bankruptcy proceedings

Image: PledgeMusic

PledgeMusic, a crowdfunding site designed to allow fans to back projects from artists, has gone offline, according to Variety. The company closed down its operations earlier this year as it went into bankruptcy proceedings, and the site’s closure means that artists won’t be able to retrieve information on their profiles and fans.

In place of the site, the company’s board left a message, saying that it “continues to work with outside counsel on the most appropriate next steps, and we will update you with those specifics as we get more information,” and that “all data has been preserved and a notice with next steps will be posted on here shortly.”

Founded in 2009, the site was designed as a way for bands to crowdfund albums, allowing fans…

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Emily Ratajkowski Went Hiking in a Thong and Nature Never Looked So Good

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy enough for supermodel Emily Ratajkowski that she’s taking herself on lovely nature walks. Trips she makes even more worthwhile for her millions of Instagram followers by recording with photos and stories. 

Instagram stories don’t last long, but fortunately we have the art of the screengrab available to commemorate great moments in nature, like the site of Emrata in a leopard-print thong making her way through the forest with an unnamed friend in red. 

Ratajkowski is still doing work here, actually—advertising her own Inamorata Woman line of swimwear. Another story still available on her Insta when this was written gave us a totally different angle.

An angle for which we are very thankful.

But Emily Ratajkowski’s regular feed is every bit as enticing as those temporary stories. She keeps it regularly updated and summer is one of the best times of year to check it out. For pretty obvious reasons.

Check out some more selections below. They may be more fun than going hiking itself.

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Big Tech’s liability shield under fire yet again from Republicans

Oversight and Reform CommitteePhoto By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The populist wing of the Republican party introduced yet another bill to remove the tech industry’s largest liability shield last week.

The Stop the Censorship Act, sponsored by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), would strike language in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that allows platforms to moderate content they deem as “objectionable.” Gosar argues that this language makes it easy for platforms like Facebook and Twitter to remove content grounded in conservative ideology, a Republican censorship theory that has yet to be proven outside of individual remarks made by Big Tech “whistleblowers” like what we’ve seen from organizations like Project Veritas.

The act proposes that that wording in the section be replaced with new language…

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