ninja
There’s a phrase that used to be used to defend gun rights, ‘If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.’
If you make porn illegal only illegal porn will exist. They’re not eliminating porn they’re just shifting the source of porn to websites that don’t care about compliance with US laws.
the ruling, https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-50224-CV0.pdf, doesn’t list all the initially banned books, but has this:
Loosely grouped, those books are:
• Seven “butt and fart” books, with titles like I Broke My Butt! and Larry
the Farting Leprechaun;
• Four young adult books touching on sexuality and homosexuality,
such as Gabi, a Girl in Pieces;
• Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen and Freakboy, both
centering on gender identity and dysphoria;
• Caste and They Called Themselves the K.K.K., two books about the
history of racism in the United States;
• Well-known picture book, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak,
which contains cartoon drawings of a naked child; and
• It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health.
The books to be returned are:
a. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson;
b. Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist
Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti;
c. Spinning by Tillie Walden;
d. Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings;
e. Shine by Lauren Myracle;
f. Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale by Lauren Myracle;
g. Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero; and
h. Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark.
player: rolls stealth check
DM: you think you’re hiding
Who cares about fast charging laptops? Put that tech in cars.
The plastic tax would have to be insanely high to be effective. The story of California’s plastic bag tax is a cautionary tale. Taxing the bag minimally was ineffective since everyone just paid the extra $2 a grocery trip for the disposable bags. California then tried an outright ban, but had to limit the ban because a large volume of pre-packaged items are already in plastic bags. The limit was based on bag thickness, so all the stores started handing out thicker bags at checkout. Despite the increased durability of the thicker bags, consumers discarded them at the same rate as the old thinner bags. Since each bag was made of more plastic there was more plastic waste than before the tax and ban.
Consolidation would defeat the purpose of decentralized fediverse instances. Instead, I would like to see a method for allowing the automation of cross posting between related communities on different instances. There would not be dependency on a single instance; each mod would retain control of their community; and the segmented communities can connect with one another with ease.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…"
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Arthur.
“Listen, bud,” said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say ‘That’s terrible’ I wouldn’t be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish