I watched some of the podcast on TV. It’s a nice option if you have a firestick or a chrome cast. I especially like that the timestamps on the episode post are the same for the video.
My favorite tiny example of the rising tide of facism in America is the evolution of the Milwaukee Bucks logo (Their current motto is “Fear The Deer”). But the way payment processors have been trying to squeeze anything sexually “deviant” out of the marketplaces of polite society is a second. This was first brought to my attention a decade ago when a little known self-published sci-fi author had their works blacklisted from Amazon because of “bestiality”. The bestiality in question was in a story about a sex shop that grows and sells living, bioengineered dildos (it was a rather tame story that happened to have living, non-sentient dildos in it). Things have only gotten worse sense then and the demands for censorship have become bolder. This push is at the behest of credit card companies and other payment processors, and its insane to me that we’re letting letting these financial interests dictate what is allowable speech.
The way some powerful forces out there (such as advertisers) are trying to push for this Disneyfication of our entire society makes me sick. The way its often pushed as “protecting children” disgusts me, an ancient canard. It feels infantilizing. Like for the sake of children (its not actually about protecting kids, it never is) they want to push us all into a permanently delayed adolescence, where everything has to be child-proofed for our own good and you’ll never have to worry about reading something unsafe or “adult”. (And guess what, anything with LGBT themes is automatically considered “adult”)
The whole thing really pisses me of and I find it very concerning. Hearing the apple and epic lawyers calling “adult (and often queer) games” “unspeakable” was an eye opener. I wish the epic laywer had pushed back on that instead of accepting that framing. I have a feeling it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.
