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submitted 23 hours ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/space@beehaw.org
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submitted 23 hours ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

In Texas, for example, the state school board voted on Tuesday to preliminarily approve a new curriculum that introduces students to Jesus and Christianity, beginning in kindergarten. The K-5 curriculum created by the state, known as Bluebonnet, has been derided by religious studies experts and others. These critics say "the curriculum’s lessons allude to Christianity more than any other religion, which… could lead to the bullying and isolation of non-Christian students, undermine church-state separation and grant the state far-reaching control over how children learn about religion."

The Bluebonnet curriculum, for example, teaches kindergarten students about the biblical story of Genesis and how it has inspired various works of art. Students are asked "to identify the order of creation." Four-year-olds may come away from the lesson believing that it is a fact that God created the world in six days.

While the Bluebonnet curriculum is optional, Texas schools that adopt it receive an additional $60 per student. So, there is a substantial financial incentive to substitute existing lessons for the new Christianity-heavy curriculum.

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submitted 23 hours ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

A ballot measure that would repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system has very narrowly failed, according to final unofficial results released Wednesday by the Division of Elections.

The final margin for Ballot Measure 2, pending certification, is 664 out of 340,110 votes, with “No” outpacing “Yes” 50.1% to 49.9%.

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submitted 23 hours ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

Now, the rate of new mobile internet subscriber growth is slowing. From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online through mobile devices around the world each year. But in the last two years, that number has dropped to 160 million. Rest of World analysis of that data found that a number of developing countries are plateauing in the number of mobile internet subscribers. That suggests that in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Mexico, the easiest populations to get online have already logged on, and getting the rest of the population on mobile internet will continue to be a challenge. GSMA collects data by surveying a nationally representative sample of people in each country, and then it correlates the results with similar studies.

Max Cuvellier Giacomelli, the head of the Mobile for Development program at GSMA, said that large swaths of the world’s population still don’t have access to mobile internet primarily because of affordability. Although the cost of data has dropped radically in recent years, the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency focused on information and communications technologies, notes that huge disparities between regions persist. The cost of data in Africa, for example, is more than twice that of the Americas, the second most expensive region.

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submitted 1 day ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org
16

My grandmother was a good Catholic who didn’t go to college and had eight children. Her oldest child went to college and had one child, me. Your own family probably fits this pattern. In a decline that correlates with education and secularism, and is concentrated in the Global North, women across the world are having about half the number of children they had only fifty years ago.

However strange it may sound to characterize the post-Roe present as overflowing with reproductive choice, the mainstream center-left tends to agree with the far right that this choice is a new phenomenon, and that our predecessors were spared the existential dilemma. As Dutch philosopher Mara van der Lugt writes in Begetting: What Does it Mean to Create a Child?, “Traditionally, and biologically, having children was not something that is decided upon, but something that occurs.” Likewise, in What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman assert that until fairly recently, having children was “not, as it is steadily becoming today, one possible path to take among several equally legitimate ones.” It was “just what people did.”

Books like these emphasize free choice by foregrounding a modern could-be parent (who happens to be the author, but might as well be the reader) struggling to make this incredibly consequential, and individual, decision, in the face of a society that would make that choice for her. Against her culture’s repository of inherited givens and traditional foreclosures, freedom is when she discovers, for herself, what that right choice is. Yet what happens to “society” when it becomes the name of this “modern” problem? What if the problem isn’t new? What if it isn’t a problem at all?


Books like these imply or outright state that the birthrate is falling because of a new epidemic of chosen childlessness. But the data doesn’t show us that; what it shows is that people have far fewer children, one or two instead of eight. (Meanwhile the sharp decline in teen pregnancy alone accounts for half the drop in the United States’ general fertility.) Opinion columnists and reactionary politicians habitually infer rampant childlessness from the declining number of total births, but the modern childless woman (and debates about “parents” are mainly talking about women) remains the same kind of statistical outlier she has always been.

As recently as 2016, the percentage of U.S. women between ages 40 and 44 who had borne a child was 86 percent—higher than it’s been since the mid-1990s and down only from 90 percent in 1976, a time when only about 10 percent of women earned a bachelor’s degree. The rate fell as low as 80 percent in 2006, but these are still strikingly high numbers. Direct comparisons to the past are tricky, but it’s telling that in 1870, for example, only 84 percent of married American white women had borne a child, compared to 93 percent in 1835. (Imagine the panicked op-eds! Of course, among enslaved women, for whom reproduction was truly compulsory, the number was about 97 percent.) If we remember that perhaps 1 in 10 American women today struggle with infertility, it seems hard to imagine it could be much higher (at least in a reproductively free society).

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submitted 1 day ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

Tetris Forever is the latest in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, a format that bundles expertly emulated classic games with reams of multimedia information presented in an interactive timeline: filmed interviews, archive video, documentation, artwork, photography, and more. It’s officially the third entry in the series, after the single-title deep dive The Making of Karateka and the astonishingly comprehensive Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (which is basically the real-life UFO 50), although the format was established in the developer’s excellent Atari 50.

What really distinguishes Tetris Forever from those more conventional takes on the Tetris story is its dedication to tracking the evolution of the game itself through countless editions on every imaginable platform. But, while all the key variations of Tetris are mentioned (and a few more besides), the publishing rights are so broadly scattered through history that there is no way for Digital Eclipse — or even Rogers and Pajitnov’s rights holder, The Tetris Company, which clearly collaborated closely on this release — to include playable versions of many of them.

Nintendo, as fiercely protective of its back catalog titles as ever, has not turned over the rights for any of its own Tetris variants to the project. This means that arguably the two definitive versions of Tetris — the iconic Game Boy Tetris, which found the perfect match of form and function, and NES Tetris, which is still the gold standard in competitive Tetris play — are not included. (The Game Boy game is available on Nintendo Switch Online, and the NES game is due to be added to the service this winter.) Sega’s classic arcade version is out, as are Arika’s hardcore Tetris: The Grand Master games.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

How would they even enforce this if the site is hosted in a different state or even country?

you're asking a question they don't care about, which is the first problem here. the purpose is not to have a legally bulletproof regulation, but to cast doubt on the ability of websites like this to operate in Texas without incurring liability and thereby force them to block users from the state or another such action. this is also how most abortion restrictions work in practice: they muddy the water on what is legal, so risk-averse entities or entities without the revenue to fight back simply avoid doing/facilitating the practice in a given jurisdiction or completely move out of state.

is this dubiously legal? yeah, obviously. but it doesn't matter if you don't have the money to pay a lawyer. and the vast majority of these sorts of websites obviously don't--they'd likely need someone to represent them pro bono, which is not likely.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 11 points 2 days ago

it's unclear how many votes either of these measures would have, but once session begins next year there's really no check besides themselves (and maybe a lower-level court) for what Texas Republicans can pass.

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submitted 2 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

Texas’ legislative session doesn’t start until January. But Republicans are frothing at the mouth to make abortion somehow even less accessible. Last week, lawmakers filed two key anti-abortion bills: one inspired by Louisiana’s law that reclassifies the pills as dangerous “controlled substances” without any basis, except to further restrict them, and another that would ban internet providers from hosting the websites of abortion funds or sites that offer any information on abortion, including abortion pills. Mind you, this is a state that already imposes a total ban that threatens abortion providers with life in prison.

Texas Republicans also introduced the “Women and Child Safety Act,” a 41-page bill that would allow citizens to sue internet service providers for at least $10,000 if they host pro-abortion rights websites. The bill seems modeled, in part, after Texas’ SB 8, the state’s six-week abortion ban from 2021 that’s enforced by civil lawsuits. Eerily enough, the new Texas bill specifically identifies abortion funds and websites that offer information on abortion pills. It names sites like Plan C Pills, Aid Access, and Hey Jane, which help people get medication abortion by mail.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 8 points 2 days ago

i mean if Roblox is any indication, Valve will probably bend the knee sooner or later. government scrutiny is obliging them to make changes and actually do even basic moderation over there:

The fast-growing children’s gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their children’s activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.

The moves comes after a short-seller last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, violent content and abusive speech on the site. In the UK, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, told parliament: “I expect that company to do better in protecting service users, particularly children.”

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

RTFA before replying

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submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

In the letter, Democrat senator Mark Warner argues that Valve's content moderation doesn't meet industry standards, and says he wants Valve to "crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content".

The exact hateful stuff he's talking about was highlighted in that report by the Anti-Defamation League last week. Its many findings include swastikas in profile pictures, antisemitic images such as the "happy merchant", and instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right that - let's be honest - has never washed the stink off. Steam is "inundated with hate" as a result of these findings, say the anti-discrimination group.

While the simmering bubbles of fascism won't be news to the average Steam user (or average internet user, to be frank) that doesn't mean we ought to get complacent about them. It's proof, says senator Warner, that Valve is lacking good moderation.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 42 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

imo if anything the opposite causality is true: this DOJ was banking on a continuation of Biden in Kamala Harris, and because that is no longer forthcoming they're now trying to get something out the door before the administrative changeover in the hopes it can stick. it almost certainly won't, but most of Trump's appointees are gigamad about "censorship" and they hate Google for "punishing conservative voices" or whatever so it's hardly the most contrived hail mary if so

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submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

Requirements that officials are preparing to propose include that Google separate Android from Search and Google Play, but without trying to force Google to sell off Android. Another requirement would say it has to share more information with advertisers and that it “give them more control over where their ads appear,” the outlet writes.

Bloomberg also reports that officials will recommend that the company “give websites more options to prevent their content from being used by Google’s artificial intelligence products.” Finally, they will reportedly recommend “a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of the case against Google.”

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submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

archive.is link

There are two points I want to make here. The first is that tech and politics are just entirely enmeshed at this point. That’s due to the extreme extent to which tech has captured culture and the economy. Everything is a tech story now, including and especially politics.

The second point is about what I see as a more long-term shift away from centralization. What’s more interesting to me than people fleeing a service because they don’t like its politics is the emergence of unique experiences and cultures across all three of these services, as well as other, smaller competitors.

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submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the effect of Fox News Channel (FNC) on the mass public’s political preferences and voting behavior in the United States from 2000 to 2020. We show that FNC has shifted the ideology and partisan identity of Americans rightward. This shift has helped Republican candidates in elections across levels of U.S. government over the past decade. Our estimates suggests that an increase of 0.05 rating points in Fox News viewership, induced by exogenous changes in channel placement, has increased Republican vote shares by at least 0.5 percentage points in recent presidential, Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections. Our findings have broad implications for political behavior, elections, and the political process in the United States.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 160 points 3 weeks ago

apparently, the path to profitability was "shamelessly sell out on AI hype bullshit"

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 84 points 10 months ago

this is clearly not true, Portal literally just got a huge fangame with a Steam release. the issue is entirely that it uses Nintendo stuff and the guy even says as much

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 82 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

the weirdest thing to me is these guys always ignore that banning the freaks worked on Reddit--which is stereotypically the most cringe techno-libertarian platform of the lot--without ruining the right to say goofy shit on the platform. they banned a bunch of the reactionary subs and, spoiler, issues with those communities have been much lessened since that happened while still allowing for people to say patently wild, unpopular shit

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 60 points 11 months ago

techno-libertarianism strikes again! it's every few years with these guys where they have to learn the same lesson over again that letting the worst scum in politics make use of your website will just ensure all the cool people evaporate off your website--and Substack really does not have that many cool people or that good of a reputation to begin with.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 85 points 1 year ago

Six months later, we can see that the effects of leaving Twitter have been negligible. A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. (NPR declined an interview request but shared the memo and other information). While NPR’s main account had 8.7 million followers and the politics account had just under three million, “the platform’s algorithm updates made it increasingly challenging to reach active users; you often saw a near-immediate drop-off in engagement after tweeting and users rarely left the platform,” the memo says.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 64 points 1 year ago

the primary reason Hamas has political power and the political support to attack Israel in this manner is because Israel:

  • treats all Palestinians as second-class citizens and subjects them to a system of political, social, and economic apartheid
  • holds millions of Palestinians in squalid and inhuman conditions, and seizes the territory of millions more in the name of a violent settler project
  • subjects the vast majority of Palestinians to state-sponsored discrimination, terror, indiscriminate bombing, and political violence
  • leaves Palestinians no feasible democratic path to the rights they should have in their current state or the state of Israel, making armed struggle inevitable

you can and should condemn Hamas, but it is inarguable that Israel routinely does worse—overwhelmingly to people just as innocent as the ones Hamas is murdering—which is what makes attacks like this inevitable. you cannot do what Israel does and not expect the outcome to be violence, and it is incumbent on Israel, who holds all the actual power in this dynamic, to break the cycle and stop using every terrorist attack perpetuated against it as an excuse to roll innocent heads.

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 87 points 1 year ago

a core issue for moving wikis is that Fandom refuses to delete the old wiki so you 1) have to fight an SEO war against them; and 2) have to contend with directing everyone to the right place or else you have two competing wikis (one of which will gradually lapse out of date). it's very irritating.

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alyaza

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