Olives @olives@qoto.org

I'm meaning to write some more about Australia because it is such a great example of why you shouldn't allow things in a country to get, so, off the rails.

From looking at what Australians say too.

They might reckon a label is a good idea but don't want some nanny board outright censoring something.

It's the "Am I out of touch?" problem.

They've practically already lost the election.

The question is how many seats they will lose at that point. If they keep digging, they will have far less influence when time comes for the election.

One possible reason for this might be that a weird religious party was in power for so long and they like it when the board behaves in a dysfunctional and bizarre manner.

It's uniquely out of touch and awful in a way that is so strange and bizarre that it is hard to fully describe how awful it is.

It is as if the board lives in a whole other universe, unlike the one which normal folks live in, and they get hung up on really strange and bizarre things.

The actual value they provide is absolutely miniscule. The only thing it is seemingly good for is political posturing.

The best way to handle it would probably be to just completely disband it and to use another country's rating system as purely advisory.

There is no redeeming it. It is that bad.

This is how you can sum up the Australian nanny board.

Also, notice how acting in good faith is conflated with the idea of acting with some kind of malevolent intent.

As a reminder, "grooming people into being gay" is actually just modern lipstick on arguments they made in the 80s.

"descriptions" sounds like it could target sex ed, maybe?

These people are so puritanical that anything which might be helpful gets set on fire because "it is indecent!"

A few religious people jump up and down at the sight of unusual forms or displays of sexuality, and get all paranoid and conspiratorial.

It's not simply "Oh cool, you're minding your own business, you do you". It's let's speculate and imagine every fanciful thing.

https://www.woodhullfoundation.org/censorship-in-iowa/

"also requires schools to forcibly out transgender students.” As Katie Lobosco explains, school administrators must now notify caregivers if their child “requests an accommodation” related to their gender identity, such as using a name or pronoun different from that reflected in school records."

"Further, S.F. 496 places restrictions on school libraries for students in K-12 – they must only have “age-appropriate” books, which the law defines as excluding any materials with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”"

Whenever I've tried to use Reddit, their incompetently coded site has crashed my browser. I don't bother.

A rather conservative, and out of touch, Labour MP in the U.K. wants to ban prostitution ads and the like on sites.

As has been learned from other countries though, women had a tendency of turning up dead and going to even less safe conditions on the streets when white knights passed "clever" solutions like this.

Perhaps, it is because allows someone to act independently.

Perhaps, it is because they can better screen clients.

Whatever it is, it is better.

Not that long ago, the British Tory Party wanted a man in the cabinet who had the power to overrule any court decision they didn't like.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.09848
"Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Engines"
"on average, a mere 51.5% of generated sentences are fully supported by citations and only 74.5% of citations support their associated sentence"

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/sexual-orientation-gender-identity-florida-high-school
American Psychological Association approves of College Board's decision not to remove content related to sexual orientations and gender identities from it's psychology curriculum.

Apparently, Florida wanted them to do that.

In my view, this is a bad idea.

Successful platforms, whether perfect or imperfect, are those which open up straight away, build up a userbase, slowly perfect themselves, and eventually take off.

Instead, a group of techbros have parachuted themselves in, are carefully crafting it, and promise that some day they will deliver.

Bluesky isn't even a player currently. It is cordoned off with promises that it will be opened up later.

startrek subreddit has ended up being assimilated by the Huffman borg.