Some people have a way about them. They set others at ease. They’re fun to be with. They are the life of the party. If you want to throw a successful party, then it’s best to invite at least one such person. For me, that person was Apryl Raitt.
Apryl was pleasant. She was fun. And she was sincere. Everybody enjoyed her company. When she left the room, everything became less sparkly. Other than that, she was pretty much an ordinary teenager.She could juggle. She could strum the guitar, and she could sing. But none of that was all that remarkable. It isn’t why people came. They came, because she gave them hope.
I liked Apryl very much. But I liked what she did for my filksings even more. She made them possible.
Is it wrong to use another person to get what you want? Most people agree that it is. But where would any of us be if not what other people unwittingly contribute to our lives?
If Apryl could make people feel good, was it wrong that I benefited, too? She could juggle.She could sing. She could make people smile. Why not let her?
I was born without any of those abilities. When I took tennis in college, it turned out that I needed remedial lessons on how to bounce a ball, before I could proceed with the normal curriculum. Needless to say, I couldn’t juggle. And I couldn’t play guitar, and I couldn’t sing. But worst of all, I had no small talk.
“Aya needs to learn how to make small talk,” a friend once told my mother.
“That is so important in life.” However, in those days, there were no remedial courses in small talk, and people just figured that the problem would correct itself.
I went through periods when I was very eager to learn social skills. I even threw myself intochallenging social situations in the hopes of developing better aptitude. During the lateeighties, I had a working theory of politics, and I was engaged in a series of experiments thatinvolved putting the theory into practice. I fancied myself a bit of a Machiavelli.
Juggling: An Ancient Pastime
In the theory of politics. there were diagrams of people and their relationships. There werearrows between the people, and the arrows had directionality. People with lots of arrowspointing at them, who looked a little like an egg cell surrounded by sperm cells, were popularpeople. People with lots of arrows from them to others, but none coming back, wereunpopular people.
How many friends do you have? That depends. Are you counting the people you are friends with? Or the people who want to be friends with you? It makes a difference.
Now, what if you could induce people to want to be friends with you because of your friendship with someone else? Then you could be popular without actually being liked.
I have the social personality of Wile E. Coyote. I myself would never have come up with this observation, but the daughter of a friend of mine told me this when she was just a little girl.”You’re just like Wile E. Coyote,” she said. And she gave me a little plastic figurine of Wile E. Coyote as a present, just to show how much alike we really were. I was stunned. Thinking it over afterwards, I was struck with how apt the comparison was!
Wile E. Coyote
I didn’t know how to get what I wanted directly. So I would devise really complicated plans,based on my formal understanding of how human relationships worked, in order to bring about the desired result. However, my plans usually backfired. It had something to do with the disparity between theory and practice!
It also had to do with the immense gap between my world and everybody else’s.
Unbeknownst to everyone else, I was working toward a very important goal: I was going to unite the Trekkies, the Libertarians, the Anarchists, the Republicans and the filkers in an unholy alliance that would somehow save us all!
And that was even before I had heard of Blake’s Seven….
Star Trek has gone to the masses
The first time I heard of Blake’s Seven, I was in a very bad mood. I was angry and I was late and I was going to crash a science fiction convention. I don’t know what exactly had happened that day. I no longer remember that. I just remember being very angry and bitter, and really, really needing a Coke. The Coke machine on the first floor would sell you a Coke for a dollar. On the second floor, Cokes were seventy-five cents. But somewhere on the third floor was the con suite, and there was a bathtub full of soda that you could drink for free.
I decided that I would go straight for the con suite. The only problem was, I didn’t knowexactly where it was. So I looked into the first open door on the third floor, and a woman in aslick one piece jump suit ushered me in.
“Is this the con suite?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s better than the con suite,” she purred. “Have a seat.”
“Hmm. Can I have a Coke?”
“We have nachos!” she said brightly and proceeded to prepare me a plate. I don’t really thinkthey had Coke. I think maybe they had Pepsi. She probably thought it was better than Coke.
“My name is T’Pell,” the woman in the jumpsuit announced. “And I want to show you a video.”
The room was empty. There was nobody else there. T’Pell was obviously a Vulcan name, soI felt I could trust her. “Is it Star Trek?” I asked.
“It’s better than Star Trek!” she cried and pushed play.
I had just met my first Blake’s Seven recruiter.
The show that played on the screen was unimpressive. It’s as if they had borrowed all sorts of elements from Star Trek, recast them, and then filmed the whole thing using a hand held camera. The production values were terrible. The Star Fleet Insignia was horizontal instead of vertical, but clearly derivative. I hated the theme music. The feel of the thing was cheesy. Or maybe that was the nachos I was eating. I began to feel a little bit queasy.
“Why do you think this is better than Star Trek?”
T’Pell tried to explain. “Look, Star Trek was good. But that’s over now.Star Trek has gone to the masses. This is the new thing.”
Star Trek has gone to the masses!? What did that mean? I would have pressed her for an answer, but there was suddenly a very urgent pain in my stomach, and I had to leave posthaste. I spent the rest of the evening at home, being sick. Never accept nachos from a Blake’s Seven recruiter!
Relics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
I was a fan by night and lawyer by day. When I first entered the bar, I had believed that all I would have to do to keep my license would be to pay the annual fee. This was doable and did not seem unduly oppressive, considering that it gave me an unfair advantage over all the other people who might have practiced law, but couldn’t, because the state wouldn’t let them. As a libertarian, I am against licensing of professionals. I think that any one should be able topractice law or medicine or drive a car or fly a plane or carry a gun without a license.
But a few years into my practice, Mandatory Continuing Legal Education was instituted. I think it was at the behest of well-to-do lawyers, and here is how it worked. If you were able to, then you could take a trip to Hawaii or some resort and write the whole thing off as a business expense. But if you were a struggling lawyer, for whom every moment and every penny counted, then you had to pay extra money to keep your license and give up more of your time to hear other, more successful lawyers lecture to you about filing deadlines or the finer points of how to draft a will or whatever happened to be available at your price range. It didn’t matter the subject of the seminar. All that mattered was that you were racking up MCLE hours.
I would shop around for the closest and cheapest available seminar, and I would sit there in the hall doodling on the margins of the handouts and occasionally taking note of an interesting surname that appeared in a case heading, so that maybe I could use it for a character in a future fictional work. I was like Rumplestiltskin, that way, a true connoisseur of unusual names.
One day, during a break at one of these seminars, I wandered across the street, because I thought I saw a book store there. But the bookstore was closed, and when I returned to the seminar, I was accosted by a strange tall, dark handsome man in a pinstriped suit with a red tie. “Aha!” he said. “You tried that bookstore, too! We are two of a kind. Of all the people at this seminar, we are the only ones who were looking for a bookstore.” He had a Spanish accent.
I was a little confused at being addressed this way.
“They are all sheep,” he said. “You and I are different.”
“We are kindred spirits, you and I,” he said.
I was not convinced. But I agreed to meet with him again. He showed me his family crest. I showed him my novel. He insisted on buying a copy, and he actually read it. A week later he announced that he thought The Few Who Count was very well written — a splendid piece of propaganda! He had only one question: which secret government agency had paid me to write it?
The New Paderewski
That my Austro-Hungarian friend believed The Few Who Count was a work for hire commissioned by government agents intent on identifying potential malcontents and neutralizing them before they could cause any damage amused me no end. We have a saying in our family: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning.” People usually accuse us of doing something that they themselves are doing. My friend had no visible means of support. No job. No profession. He had been a lawyer in Venezuela, and he was unsuccessfully trying to pass the New York bar, while maintaining residence in Texas. I conjectured that he might be an agent of some third world country, and that spying was his true calling.
I kept him at arm’s length, but decided not to include him in my plan to unite the Trekkies, the Libertarians, the Republicans, the filkers and the Blakies. For yes, by now, I had joined the ranks of the B7 fandom.
Despite the inauspicious introduction to Blake’s Seven,I started watching the show when it began to air on PBS. What T’Pell had failed to bring to my attention when attempting to sell the show was this: it was about freedom, tyranny and the fight for liberty. Star Trek wasn’t about that.Star Trek was pro-establishment. B7 was anti-.
Mind you, it was not altogether clear what sort of order Blake longed to establish once hehad overthrown the Feds, but that’s what made the show all the more intriguing. Good and evil were not portrayed as black and white absolutes. Blake’s Seven explored the grey areas. I started writing B7 filks. They just poured out of me. And I joined ORAC, a local Blake’s Seven appreciation society. And that’s where I met Paderewski!
Paderewski was a music teacher who taught at one of the better schools in a North Dallas suburb. Her instrument was the cello, but I immediately recruited her as my keyboardist for the filksings I was organizing. She had grown up in Houston, but her father came from Poland, and she was cultured and educated in a way that few Americans are. She was funny and smart, and she made intellectual little jokes that that showed an understanding of world history unheard of in my small circle of friends. I was so happy to have made her acquaintance.
Of course, the fact that her last name was identical to that of the famous composer, pianist and one-time prime minister of Poland was a source of deep amusement for me, one that I did not openly express.
I started getting involved in the Republican party, and I became a delegate to the State Convention. Sometimes my involvement in politics interfered with my filking activities, and at times I had to send surrogates to represent me at science fiction conventions to sing my songs, while I tried to look really conservative to my fellow Republicans. It was all very cloak and dagger, or so I thought. Of course, some of my acquaintances who knew my true Libertarian leanings got upset with me and accused me of selling out.
Then one day, I got a phone call from my Austro-Hungarian friend. “You must tell me all about the Libertarians!” he implored. “How are they organized? Who are their leaders? How can I get in touch with them?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You must know! I had never even heard of these people until you mentioned them,” he insisted.
“Well, yes, but I’m not running them. Why don’t you call the Libertarian Party of Tarrant County? A bunch of them get together someplace in Arlington,” I said. “But they’re really boring.”
It was true. They never did anything interesting. Most of the time they argued about what percentage the national sales tax should be, once the IRS was done away with and there was no more income tax. They had the souls of accountants.
“Why are you suddenly so interested in the Libertarians?” I asked.
“Because… because a libertarian from Canada is running for president of Poland!”
“That’s impossible!”
“No, it’s true!”
I never read the papers or listened to the news, so the only way I ever found out about current events was when somebody brought them to my attention. My Austro-Hungarian friend, on the other hand, was very aware of everything that was going on internationally, but I often had trouble believing him, because he still acted as if he were living in a police state,and everything he said was colored by his worldview.
“There is going to be a European Union,” he told me once. “All of Europe will use the same currency.”
“That’s not going to happen until one of the European countries conquers all the rest of them,” I answered confidently. “After all, isn’t that what the world wars were really all about?”
“Wait and see,” he told me.
He knew a lot, but it was hard to trust him. So I called the Tarrant County Libertarians myself,and they confirmed it: Stanislaw Tyminski, a libertarian from Canada, was running against Lech Walesa for president of Poland. Would miracles never cease?
“Hey, why don’t you come to our meetings?” my libertarian contact asked as we concluded our conversation.
“Yeah, maybe sometime,” I answered vaguely. But of course I was too busy plotting to conquer the world!
Poland is wide open! I mused to myself. At this moment in history, anything could happen.Anything! I might as well run for president of Poland myself! Of course, I knew that was not realistic. I had only the vaguest connection to Poland. I hadnever even set foot there. I wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination Polish. But still! How ittugged at my heart strings to think that Poland might one day be free!
Poland is not yet lost
I don’t speak Polish. However, I know a few familiar phrases. Just things I heard around the house. No, nobody in my house actually spoke Polish, either. But every once in a while my father would remark “Jeszcze Polska nie zginela” a propos of nothing in particular. That means “Poland is not yet lost.” These are the first words of the Polish national anthem.
All my life, I had thought that my father was being ironic. Poland was lost. Lost and gone forever, like Clementine. Poland was always the first to lose. World War II had begun in Poland in 1939, when Germany and the Soviets invaded it. And when the war ended, guess who got it? The Soviets. They had conveniently ended up on the winning side, even though it wasn’t the side they started on. They were given Poland, and they took it over, and starved it,and ran it. And in 1967, when a classmate of mine in second grade came from Poland, the only way her scientist parents were allowed to visit the US for a year was if they agreed to leave her two younger sisters in Poland as hostages for their prompt return. Poland had been lost for years and years now.
Jeszcze Polska nie zginela….
What if it was true? What if Poland was not yet lost?
If Tyminiski didn’t win, we should send in another candidate to replace him, I thought, come next election. I knew, of course, that I could not run. I could learn Polish. I was confident of that. But the real problem was my name. The name “Katz” simply would not do. Even my famous great uncle who had been quite successful in Polish politics could not operate using that name alone. He had had to add his sobriquet Suchy to his name, so that he could sound a little more Polish. And in the end even Katz-Suchy had succumbed to anti-semitic pressures and had been banished to Denmark to die in exile.
No, a Katz did not stand a chance. But if I had had a really good, solid Polish name — like Paderewski — now that would make a world of difference. And then it came to me. “I know somebody named Paderewski!”
The Real Paderewski
In Poland, anything is possible. Poland is the only European country to have had an elective monarchy. Poland is the sort of country that would elect a famous pianist and composer as prime minister. My knowledge about Paderewski was vague, so I bought a children’s book put out by the Catholic Church called The Lion of Poland at the local used book store. (In those days, there was no Wikipedia, and I would pick up my information where I could get it.)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski had died of pneumonia in New York in 1941. I vaguely remembered that Paderewski had told me once that her father had arrived in the United States from Poland in 1941. Could there be any connection? I was dying to know.
At a small gathering in my home, I took Paderewski aside and asked her. I was pretty nervous about it, as if sensing that I was doing something wrong — or at the very least something risky. With a tremulous voice and averted eyes, I asked her if there was any connection between the famous composer and her father. “No,” she said. “But it’s a good question.” Only the way she said it made me feel that it had been about the worst possible thing I could ask.
She told me that her father had only bad memories of Poland. That the Poles were brutish anti-Semites and that her family had been forced to flee pogroms. She had no desire to have anything to do with Poland.
I had not realized that my friend Paderewski was a Jew. And I don’t just mean that she was Jewish in ancestry, as was I. I mean, she identified Jewish. And as such there was no reason to even broach the possibility of her running for high office. Somebody who hates Poland cannot run for President of Poland. Even I knew that much.
We joined my other friends, and they all started telling jokes about spittoons. Paderewski joined in a spirited series of really vulgar exchanges all centering around spittoons. And that’s the last time she came to my house.
At the next ORAC meeting she informed me that she would not be coming to the filksings anymore. She was polite and charming and very firm about it. I was devastated.
The Story I Tell Myself
Clearly I had made a very big faux pas. I regretted it deeply. But did I regret it for the right reason? I had lost a keyboardist for my filk sing. In due time I replaced her with another. The new keyboardist was a native Texan and a person who shared many of my beliefs. We are friends to this day, and it’s quite possible that if I hadn’t lost Paderewski, I would not have made this new friend. As a keyboardist and vocalist, my new friend was more than an adequate replacement. In some ways she was better. But there was no question that she could not replace Paderewski as a candidate for the Polish presidency. Possibly just as important, she didn’t have the same broad outlook on world affairs that Paderewski, and all the children of refugees everywhere, share.
I recently read a hub about how we all make mistakes, but it’s the story that we tellourselves about our mistakes that is most important. For years now, I’ve been telling myselfthat the lesson to learn from this experience is to do more of a background check beforeassuming that you know someone. I promised myself that I would never again try to useanother person to take over a foreign country based on that person’s surname alone.
But Paderewski didn’t even know I was planning that. I never got around to telling her. And I think I still don’t know for sure what I did to offend her. Was it really that wrong to ask?
Who Else Is Coming?
Not long after I lost Paderewski, there was a B7 convention in Houston and many of us from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area decided to attend. I wanted to go there in the hopes of running into T’Pell. Houston was her home base. I kept thinking about what she had said about how Star Trek had gone to the masses. Wasn’t it good that Star Trek had gone to the masses? If we like something, shouldn’t we want it to have broad appeal? Or is the value of a movement somehow diluted when too many people join? There are people who are Star Trek fans because they love Star Trek. And there are people who are fans because other people are fans.
On the surface, it’s hard to tell them apart, but deep down inside, it does matter. This problem plagues every ideological movement. Many of the elders I knew in Israel had been Zionists. I thought of Zionists as being very idealistic. These people had left their homes, their families, their fortunes and had sacrificed everything in an attempt to bring something new to life. Yet when I looked at them now, I didn’t see idealists. I saw conformists who were worried about what the neighbors would think. Had old age changed them that much? Or had some of these people never been idealists? Were they joiners who went because all their friends were going? Hard to tell.
Most Christians we meet today would not allow themselves to be eaten by lions in order to defend their faith. Most Americans would not rise up against the British if they had to do it over again. Is it because Christianity has gone to the masses and most Americans are just American by birth and not by choice?
I longed to discuss this with T’Pell, and so I went to Houston. But I didn’t meet T’Pell in Houston. Instead, I met Apryl Raitt.
There she was in a shiny metallic costume, juggling bowling pins, and singing: “Torture, kill me, end it all, but first give me a Tylenol!” (The lyrics, I think, were by her friend Renae Ransdorf, but it was Apryl who made them memorable.)
Apryl’s enthusiasm for life was contagious, and when it turned out later that she was movingto North Texas to attend school, I immediately recruited her for my filk sings. Her presence worked such a charm that people who would not normally tolerate filking or watch Blake’s Seven began to come to my house, just to see her!
I would invite people, and they would ask: “Who else is coming?” When they heard that Apryl would be there, they decided that they wanted to come, too. This went on for many months, until one day Apryl got some bad news. Her student loan or her Pell grant or some other part of her financial aid package, hadn’t come through. Without the financial aid, she couldn’t go to college. So she quit school and went to live with her boyfriend in Florida. And that was the last we ever saw of her. It was also the beginning of the end for my filk sings.
When I heard that Apryl was leaving, I sat down on the floor and cried. It wasn’t that I would miss her, although, of course, I would. But I was all too aware that without her, I had nothing to draw people in. They were not interested in filking. They were not really B7 fans. And they did not want to fight for liberty. They wanted to eat chips and drink Coke and flirt with Apryl.
It was about then that I realized that my plans to unite the Trekkies, the libertarians, the Republicans and the anarchists, the filkers and the Blakies were never going to amount to anything. So I took down my shingle, wound down my business and started the next chapter of my life.
Oh, and about T’Pell — I did eventually correspond with her. I asked her what she meant about Star Trek going to the masses, and she replied that she didn’t remember saying that, and if she did say that, she shouldn’t have.
I still think there was something to it. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if when you invited someone to a party — or to join a political party– they didn’t immediately turn around and ask you who else will be there? Wouldn’t it be nice if they said instead: I’ll be there even if no one else comes!
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Note the expiry window, often 7 to 30 days
Verify game contribution percentages
Confirm withdrawal caps and processing times
With low wagering offers, your expected value improves considerably. A 10x requirement is achievable within a single session for many players, while 50x demands patience and a healthy bankroll. Treat the bonus as a tool for extended play rather than a guaranteed payout, and set a deposit limit before you start.
Finally, always claim through verified UK-licensed sites and use responsible gambling tools such as deposit limits and session timers. The best bonus is one you understand completely , and low wagering terms are the clearest sign a casino respects its players.
A deposit match bonus is one of the most straightforward promotions in online casino play, yet it is frequently misunderstood. In essence, the operator pledges to match a percentage of your deposit with bonus funds. A 100% match on a £50 deposit, for example, gives you £50 in bonus money on top of your own funds, bringing your playing balance to £100. For more details, visit https://ukbonusguide.uk/fast-withdrawal-casinos/.
The match percentage varies considerably across the market. Industry figures suggest most mainstream UK-licensed operators sit between 50% and 100%, while some premium sites push higher on first deposits. The maximum bonus is almost always capped, so a 200% match on a £10 deposit with a £200 ceiling effectively rewards smaller deposits more generously per pound staked.
It is important to separate deposit match bonuses from free spins or no-deposit offers. The deposit match requires your own money first, which means the operator is sharing risk rather than giving value away outright. Read the terms before you deposit, and treat the bonus as a play extension rather than free cash.
Responsible gambling guidance from UK bodies recommends setting a budget before claiming any matched offer, because the bonus can encourage longer sessions than you planned. 18+ only.
Wagering Requirements and the Real Cost
The headline match is rarely the whole story. Wagering requirements dictate how many times you must stake the bonus (and sometimes the deposit) before withdrawing winnings. A 30x requirement on a £50 bonus means £1,500 in qualifying stakes , a figure that surprises many players.
Consider the maths carefully. Lower wagering is always preferable, and anything above 40x should be approached with caution. The table below shows how the same £50 bonus behaves under different requirements:
Wagering Requirement
Total Stakes Needed
Typical Time at £2/Spin
20x
£1,000
500 spins
30x
£1,500
750 spins
40x
£2,000
1,000 spins
50x
£2,500
1,250 spins
Also check game weighting. Slots usually contribute 100% toward wagering, while table games and live casino titles often count at 10% or are excluded entirely. A bonus that looks generous on paper can become near-impossible to clear if your favourite games are weighted down.
Finally, watch the maximum bet rule. Most UK operators cap stakes at £5 while a bonus is active, and breaching it can void the entire bonus and any winnings attached to it.
Choosing the Right Offer and Staying Protected
Not all matched deposits are worth claiming. A bonus with a 10x wagering requirement and a 30-day expiry is genuinely valuable; a 60x requirement with a 7-day window is far less so. Compare the effective value rather than the biggest number on the banner.
UK-licensed casinos must hold a Gambling Commission licence, which brings protections including segregated player funds, access to dispute resolution services, and mandatory self-exclusion tools such as GAMSTOP. Prioritise these safeguards over slightly larger bonus percentages from unregulated sites.
Look for expiry windows of at least 30 days, reasonable maximum bet limits, and clear withdrawal caps on bonus winnings. If the terms are buried or confusing, that itself is a warning sign.
Claim with intent, play within your means, and remember that a deposit match extends your playtime , it does not improve your odds. Set limits, take breaks, and treat every bonus as entertainment spending, not a route to profit.
His name is Bow. He is a male chimpanzee, now in his mid-twenties, who has lived his entire life as the subject of a language acquisition study on a small farm in Missouri. He was never taught to use symbols on a keyboard or point to pictures on a board. Instead, he learned to read and spell — in both English and Hebrew — by pointing at letters on a laminated sheet.
That’s not the remarkable part.
The remarkable part is that we can prove he does it independently. Not by training. Not by cue. Not by reading subtle signals from the humans around him. We can prove it the same way courts prove facts and the same way historical linguists reconstruct languages no one has spoken in three thousand years: by eliminating every other reasonable explanation.
Here is the evidence that is already in the record, regardless of what happens next:
Screenshot
Bow has spelled out information his conversation partner did not know. There is no way to unconsciously prompt someone toward information you don’t have. If the human in the room doesn’t know the answer, the human cannot be leaking the answer — not through body language, not through tone of voice, not through any of the “Clever Hans” mechanisms skeptics rightly demand we rule out.
Bow has spelled in Hebrew when his conversation partner was not a Hebrew speaker and no Hebrew speaker was present. He did not switch to English for their convenience. He used the language he chose, with a person who could not have guided him toward it.
Here’s how precise that conclusion can be. In one of the two clips above, Bow is shown a photo of a Chinese family friend and asked her name — by a researcher who had never heard that name and did not speak Chinese. Bow spelled three Hebrew consonants that closely match the actual phonetic sounds in her Chinese name.
Some will say: we need more studies. We need replication. We need a larger sample.
To which the answer is: by that standard, Emily Brontë is not a novelist. She only wrote one book. Shakespeare’s authorship cannot be established because he left no signed manuscripts. Rasmus Rask and the Brothers Grimm cannot be called linguists because they did not publish continuously throughout their careers.
We do not demand that a body of evidence keep expanding forever before we accept what it already shows. The record of Bow’s literacy exists. It has been documented, analyzed, and published. The question of whether he independently spelled words has been answered. The answer is yes.
Future research may tell us more about how he thinks, what he understands, how deep the language goes. But the core question — did he do it on his own — is no longer open.
The recent U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) directive restricting Anthropic’s access to its most advanced AI models—Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5—for foreign nationals (including those inside the United States) raises profound constitutional questions. This action, issued under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), effectively prohibits the “export” or deemed export of these models.
Such restrictions are functionally equivalent to a government order banning the sale or distribution of certain books—technical treatises, scientific papers, or instructional texts—to foreign nationals. Both software (including AI model weights and associated code) and books are vehicles for conveying ideas, algorithms, mathematical formulations, and knowledge. U.S. courts have long recognized computer code as protected speech under the First Amendment. Treating advanced software differently from printed books lacks a coherent doctrinal or logical basis and risks unconstitutional prior restraints on scientific expression.
This article outlines the argument in brief-like form, citing key precedents, for use by attorneys challenging similar measures.
I. Software and Books Are Both Expressive Speech
Courts have consistently held that source code is protected speech because it communicates ideas among programmers, much like mathematical equations, recipes, or musical notation.
• In Bernstein v. United States (9th Cir. 1999), the court struck down export controls on encryption source code as an unconstitutional prior restraint. The regulations required prepublication licensing, vested boundless discretion in officials, and lacked procedural safeguards. Encryption source code was deemed expressive: “a precise and rigorous expression of complex scientific ideas.”
• Junger v. Daley (6th Cir. 2000) reinforced this: source code is “an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming.”
• Universal City Studios v. Corley (2d Cir. 2001) affirmed that code does not lose protection merely because it is written in a specialized language or has functional effects when executed.
Executables and model weights receive analogous treatment. While less human-readable, they remain a form of expression in a specialized language. A novel in binary would still be speech; the same logic applies to compiled code or trained AI parameters, which encode learned knowledge and algorithms. Regulating distribution based on functionality does not strip First Amendment coverage—courts apply scrutiny (often intermediate for expressive conduct under United States v. O’Brien) but protect the expressive component.
Books containing the same ideas (e.g., a technical manual describing an algorithm or AI architecture) would receive unequivocal protection. Exporting or selling such a book to a foreign national requires no license in most cases. The medium—digital executable versus printed text—should not dictate constitutional outcomes. As the Bernstein court noted, the government cannot control the spread of ideas simply because they are expressed in code rather than prose.
II. The Equivalence to a Book Ban
Imagine a BIS directive prohibiting the sale of a groundbreaking cryptography textbook or scientific paper on AI training techniques to any foreign national. Such an order would be swiftly invalidated as content-based censorship or a prior restraint.
The Anthropic directive operates identically: • It restricts access to models embodying complex ideas about intelligence, reasoning, and computation. • “Deemed exports” to foreign nationals in the U.S. mirror banning a foreign student from purchasing a book in an American bookstore. • Global disablement (as Anthropic implemented for compliance) chills domestic speech and innovation, much like a publisher self-censoring book distribution.
National security justifications do not grant carte blanche. Bernstein involved encryption—a clear dual-use technology with military applications—yet the court prioritized speech protections. AI models, while powerful, are tools for research, education, and commerce, akin to advanced textbooks. Broad, discretionary licensing regimes for such “technology” risk the same constitutional defects: vagueness, overbreadth, and chilling effects.
Recent analyses note that AI model weights may raise distinct questions (more functional than readable source code), but papers, architectures, and descriptive materials remain strongly protected. The government cannot evade scrutiny by targeting the “executable” form alone.
III. Legal Standards and Potential Challenges
Here are the applicable legal standards: • Prior Restraint Doctrine: Licensing schemes for publication/distribution trigger strict scrutiny. They must include narrow tailoring, definite standards, and prompt judicial review (Freedman v. Maryland standards, applied in Bernstein). • Content-Neutral vs. Content-Based: If targeting functionality, intermediate scrutiny applies—but the government bears the burden. Chilling scientific progress (as in cryptography) weighs against the restriction. • Declaratory/Injunctive Relief: Plaintiffs like Anthropic (which has pursued related litigation) can seek declarations under the APA and First Amendment, plus injunctions. Arbitrary/capricious review under 5 U.S.C. § 706 provides additional avenues.
Attorneys should argue that AI export controls on models constitute the modern equivalent of book bans, retarding open science without sufficient tailoring.
Conclusion
Banning sales of advanced software or AI models to foreign nationals is, in essence, an attempt to ban the international dissemination of certain ideas encoded in digital form. This cannot be reconciled with precedents treating code as speech, nor with the fundamental principle that the First Amendment protects the marketplace of ideas regardless of medium. Courts should subject these restrictions to rigorous review, recognizing the book/software equivalence to safeguard innovation and expression.
Recommended Citations for Briefs: Bernstein v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 176 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 1999); Junger v. Daley, 209 F.3d 481 (6th Cir. 2000); ECRA (50 U.S.C. §§ 4801 et seq.); EAR (15 C.F.R. Parts 730-774). Consult primary sources and update with post-2026 developments.
It’s the Great Spangled Fritillary Who Actually Helps the Plant
In an earlier post on PubWages, “The Monarch Butterfly and the Thistle Flower”, I shared how I finally got good photos of a Monarch — but not on milkweed. It was on thistle instead. Meanwhile, I saw plenty of Great Spangled Fritillaries on the milkweed plants. That observation planted the seed for today’s deeper look at this relationship.
Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele) nectaring on milkweed. Photo by Aya Katz.
This June, my purple milkweed flower blossomed just according to plan. And as soon as it did, it was covered in great spangled fritillaries. Monarch butterflies, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.
This is no surprise, because for the Monarchs in my region, it’s not the season for drinking nectar. Instead, it is the time for caterpillars to munch on milkweed.
Monarch Caterpillars: The Leaf-Eating Specialists
Caption: Monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed leaves. Still from the video Monarchs, Milkweeds and Bow on the Aya Katz YouTube channel.
Monarch caterpillars are famous for their exclusive diet of milkweed leaves. They consume the foliage and sequester the plant’s toxic cardiac glycosides for their own defense. This makes the Monarch a superstar in the eyes of conservationists and gardeners — but from the milkweed’s perspective, it’s a heavy consumer.
Adult Monarchs do visit flowers for nectar (as seen in my older post on thistle), but they are not efficient pollinators of milkweed. The plant’s pollen comes in specialized sacs called pollinia that need to be extracted and inserted precisely — a task better suited to stronger, more robust insects.
My interview with Professor Anurag Agrawal
According to Cornell ecologist Anurag Agrawal, author of Monarchs and Milkweed, Monarchs, even when they do enjoy the nectar of a milkweed, do not help to pollinate it. They are not equipped to extract the pollen from the pollinia.
The Great Spangled Fritillary: The Better Pollinator
Caption: Great Spangled Fritillary on milkweed. These butterflies provide a more balanced relationship with the plant.
As I noted in the thistle post, I observed many Great Spangled Fritillaries on milkweed, but never an adult Monarch on its “signature” plant’s flowers. Unlike Monarch caterpillars, Fritillary larvae feed on violets, not milkweed. When the adults visit milkweed, it’s purely for nectar — and their larger size and stronger legs make them much more effective at transferring pollinia. The US Forest Service recognizes Fritillaries as genuine milkweed pollinators. The Great Spangled Fritillary not only has a better opportunity to nectar on the milkweed due to timing of the blooming season with their nectar thirst, but also has the physical capability to extract and to spread the pollen.
This creates a win-win: the fritillary gets food, and the milkweed gets genuine help with reproduction.
Two Ways to Reproduce: By the Seed and By the Rhizome
Of course, like many plants, the milkweed has two ways to reproduce:
1) Through the seeds, for which pollination is used for the purpose of sexual reproduction, fostering genetic variation and hardiness.
2) Through the roots, which is an asexual form of reproduction, spreading genetically identical plants.
It is said that when a milkweed plant is disrupted by browsing animals — elk and deer, for instance — then it spreads more through the rhizome. It may be that by munching on the milkweed plant, the Monarch caterpillar is encouraging the plant to spread through its roots.
However, pollination helps to propagate milkweed far and wide, whereas spread by rhizome is merely local. Seed dispersal via pollination colonizes new territory entirely, crossing barriers that rhizomes never could: roads, rivers, open fields, new habitats.
The Monarch is using the milkweed, without helping to propagate the very plant it depends on for its existence. The Fritillary, on the other hand, contributes to the milkweed’s reproductive success, genetic diversity and range expansion. One is a parasite, while the other gives as good as it gets.
A Tale of Two Butterflies
The Monarch brings the fame and inspires milkweed planting, which is wonderful. But as my own observations (and photos) show, the story is more nuanced. Milkweed thrives thanks to a diverse pollinator community — including the hardworking Great Spangled Fritillary. The Monarch, from the point of view of the milkweed, is merely a pest.
Gardening Tip:
Plant violets for the Fritillaries, and don’t try to weed out thistles that provide nectar when milkweed flowers are scarce. Monarchs are beautiful, and they depend on milkweed for their caterpillars to munch on. Despite the destruction caused by the caterpillars, don’t worry about planting new milkweed — as long as there are Great Spangled Fritillaries, they will help the milkweed to spread!
How Wagering Requirements Work in UK Casinos: Expert Overview
The Mechanics Behind Wagering Requirements
A wagering requirement is the number of times a bonus or winnings from free spins must be played through before any of it can be withdrawn. In the United Kingdom, this figure is expressed as a multiplier , 30x, 40x, or 65x , and it can attach to the bonus alone or to the bonus plus your qualifying deposit. The distinction matters more than most players realise. For more details, visit best ethereum casino uk 2026.
Suppose you claim a £10 bonus at 35x wagering on the bonus only. That creates a playthrough target of £350. If the same bonus carried 35x on bonus plus deposit, and you deposited £10, the target would reach £700. Always check which base the casino applies before opting in.
Free spins are often treated separately, with winnings credited as bonus cash and a further wagering requirement applied on top. A common structure is 20 free spins on registration, a cap on winnings of £50, and 40x wagering on anything you convert. That £50 could therefore require £2,000 of play before withdrawal.
Under UK Gambling Commission rules, all significant terms must be presented clearly before you accept a promotion, and bonus funds cannot be mixed into your real-money balance without disclosure. Reputable operators go further, surfacing the key numbers directly on the offer page rather than burying them in paragraph fourteen of the terms.
Game Weighting, Contribution Rates and Fairness
Not every bet counts equally towards playthrough. Most UK-licensed casinos weight games by house edge, so a spin on a low-margin slot might contribute 100% while a roulette wager counts 10% or 20%. Table games, live dealer titles, and progressive jackpots are frequently excluded outright.
This weighting has a dramatic effect on how long a bonus takes to clear. A £100 bonus at 30x on slots means £3,000 of spins. Route that through a game weighted at 20% and you would need £15,000 of bets to meet the same requirement. The headline multiplier is only half the story.
Game Type
Typical Contribution
£100 Bonus at 30x Needs
Slots
100%
£3,000
Roulette
10%
£30,000
Blackjack
10%
£30,000
Live dealer
0-10%
Up to £30,000
Other rules shape the real value too. Maximum bet limits while a bonus is active are typically £5 per spin, and breaching them can void winnings. Some offers exclude certain high-volatility titles entirely, and many impose a time limit , often 30 days , before bonus funds expire.
Low-wagering and no-wagering offers cut through much of this complexity. A 50 free spins no deposit no wager deal, or a 70 free spins no deposit no wager promotion, allows you to withdraw whatever you win without a playthrough target at all, though winnings caps usually still apply.
Judging Value and Playing Smart
The most useful tool is expected loss. Multiply the playthrough target by the game’s house edge to estimate what the requirement will cost you on average. A £350 target on a 96% RTP slot carries an expected loss of roughly £14 , perfectly reasonable against a £10 bonus. A £3,000 target on the same game is a different proposition entirely.
Priced to the Penny takes the guesswork out by listing the exact figures for each UK offer , wagering multiplier, maximum win, eligible games, and expiry , so you can compare bonuses side by side before claiming a single spin. That transparency is exactly what separates a genuinely useful comparison from a list of headline numbers.
Lower multipliers mean better value; 65x is far harsher than 30x.
Check whether wagering applies to bonus only or bonus plus deposit.
Note the maximum bet rule, usually £5 per spin.
Confirm which games contribute and at what percentage.
Set a deposit limit with the operator before you start playing.
Wagering requirements are not a trick, but they are a filter. Read them before you opt in, treat the playthrough target as a cost, and favour offers where the maths works in your favour. Look for our full breakdown of no deposit free spins to see how the numbers compare across UK sites.
