Rare Texas w

Ditto

The gambling industry, facing its own potential ban

Considering how key this part is to the point, it’s rather understated in this article.

In September 2022, Australia started a Parliamentary inquiry into online gambling. In June 2023 the inquiry handed down its full report, including 31 recommendations. 2 of those recommendations included a phased full ban of all advertising of online gambling.

Parliamentary rules require a response to inquiries within 6 months. 30 months later there still has not been any official response.

I’mma go with “yes”, it’s racist. But like, such a mild (pun intended) form of racism that the only appropriate response is a polite chuckle and shrug.

Fish could be defined as the most recent common ancestor of tuna and herring, and all of its descendants. That would exclude sharks and lungfish, but would include most other groups that we unambiguously recognise as fish, while excluding tetrapods.

Yup. Birds are reptiles! If you want to define a monophyletic clade that includes crocodiles and lizards, there is no way to do that without also including birds. To define a clade, you take the evolutionary tree and make a “cut” somewhere on it. Everything below that cut is part of the same clade, you can’t selectively remove some branches but not others, unless it’s by changing where you make your single cut.

So in this diagram:

The green circle notwithstanding, you would usually define reptile as a cut at the “C” on the diagram. You could put the cut at Lepidosauria, but that would mean crocodiles and turtles are no longer considered reptiles either.

A more zoomed-in look would show that after crocodiles and birds branched apart, you also get another branch where pterosaurs branch away from dinosaurs, and that birds are one of many branches and subbranches of dinosaur.

uh, slugs are bugs

I’mma be honest, I would not instinctively agree with this.

Sure, but we’re having this conversation in 2025, after phylogenetic classification has long since taken over as the way we describe the relations between species.

Birds are unambiguously reptiles.

Mammals are not reptiles, but are the most closely-related animals to them.

as far apart as you are from a reptile

That would mean…not very. Reptiles are an extremely broad and diverse group, containing everything from penguins and crocodiles to tuataras and pythons. Mammals are the most closely-related extant clade that is generally not considered “reptile”, to reptiles.

Arachnids, on the other hand, are more distantly related to insects. Crustaceans form their closest relatives, followed by myriapods (centipedes & millipedes). Only then do arachnids appear.

Ok but “bug” has multiple meanings, and almost nobody means “hemiptera” when they say it. More commonly, it’s any terrestrial arthropod. Arachnids are bugs. Centipedes are definitely bugs.

Heck, there’s a broader definition that basically includes all arthropods. “Moreton bay bugs” are a popular food this time of year. And they’re a kind of lobster.

Omg that is amazing. What a consummate gentleman.

The fact is, right now we know that Facebook has at times made a deliberate, conscious choice to leave in aspects of their algorithm that were causing harm. Their own studies have shown this. Making that practice illegal—knowingly causing harm with your algorithm—would be a good place to start with regulation.

no age can go on the internet.

I don’t think anyone had ever suggested anything like that.

Software very rarely has an individual’s vision behind it in the same way movies do. At least publicly. There are a small handful of game developers you could say that about, but outside of games the only time a single creator’s vision is relevant in that way is when they also do have creative control over it, and so the need for such a pseudonym doesn’t exist.

Most people are viewing this as a good way to prevent misinformation brainwashing

If only the government had actually made that the law. Crack down on the harmful algorithms that commercial social media use, instead of this shit.

My server just took a vote and changed our one NSFW channel to no longer be marked NSFW. All we used that channel for was posting slightly sex-themed memes anyway.

I personally see zero downsides to this

I would encourage you to read my comment in another thread. There’s the beginning of a good idea in this legislation, but nearly everything about how it’s actually done is awful.

in most countries that would be solved by good regulations

Quite likely both, actually. Good regulations help reduce the chance of it happening, but if it does happen, damage is done. Regulations might mean they receive a fine, but that doesn’t make the victim of their negligence whole. Medical bills aren’t all there is to it. There’s the cost of pain and suffering. Probably time off work. (And having good leave policies doesn’t necessarily help, because now that’s leave she’s used for this that she can’t use if she later needs to for another reason.) Cost of repair/cleaning the car. Lawsuits would still happen.

And anyway, I’m not defending American anti-regulation bs. I’m defending people’s right to sue companies that wronged them. In the absence of good regulations protecting consumers, suing a company that did the wrong thing isn’t “absolute chaos”. There is no “absolute chaos of lawsuit nonsense”. That is corporate propagandistic bullshit.