only an Australian would brutally genocide a bunch of indigenous people

Yes atrocities were committed against Australia’s indigenous. You’re welcome to talk about that as much as you like. I will however point out that colonists the world over mistreated the indigenous wherever they found them. That doesn’t diminish Australia’s culpability, but don’t throw stones at glass houses or whatever.

at least my direct ancestors aren’t convicted rapists

This one is an interesting one. While some of the convicts transported to Australia probably were convicted of rape, it was far less common than things like petty theft, fraud, vagrancy, prostitution, and that type of thing. Violent criminals just didn’t make great colonists, and were usually executed.

You’ll find that most Australian’s wear their connections to this era with some kind of pride. For example the first of my ancestors to arrive here was convicted of man slaughter. He had a drunken brawl in a bar and pushed someone down a flight of stairs, and they died. He was an accomplished clock maker, and worked on the mechanism in the town hall not far from where I live.

He’s the only convict in my lineage of which I’m aware, but I admit there may of course be one or more rapists unknown to me, but I suppose I share that in common with most people including your good self.

My comments weren’t intended to be a “country pissing contest”. I was merely pointing out this particular interaction will be difficult to understand through the lense of American gun culture.

Oh man.

Only an American would conflate murder with capital punishment.

Well done.

There’s some context here you might be missing.

The hero points the shotgun at the murderer but it appears he either didn’t know how to use it or wasn’t prepared to shoot someone.

There’s a third option that would be lost on Americans but obvious to everyone else: seeing that the attacker was no longer an imminent threat, the guy chose not to execute him.

The comment I replied to has a very American perspective, and its obvious to everyone who is not American.

Mate, everyone has unresolved issues they should work on.

Here in not-america we generally don’t kill people who are not an imminent threat, like someone who has been disarmed.

I’ve seen the video of the guy being disarmed and moving away towards the bridge, but not the part where he re-armed himself.

Even if, in this particular case, the perp did rearm and injured more people, our hesitance to shoot someone who is not an imminent threat has no doubt prevented the deaths of many thousands of people over the years.

What’s with all the “cope” comments?

This must be the most tedious conversation since the dawn of the internet.

I replied to some nutter inferring that this was some dastardly overreach by our authoritarian overlords.

Then you show up, basically saying the same thing I am but in the most unintelligible and snarky way possible?

This was always the stated plan though.

Think more about how to communicate.

What’s your point?

No.

Some pearl-clutches said “won’t somebody think of the children”, and then made the social media companies figure out how to implement the ban.

It’s more than pearl-clutching though.

Kids dependency on social is a genuine social problem. Any parent that cares about their kids is deeply concerned about this.

I don’t really buy the “govt access to biometrics” angle. These companies have all the biometrics they could ever want.

The ban is going to be easy to circumvent technologically, but not so much socially. At this very moment, being the evening of 10 December, families around Australia are having conversations about social media and the problems it can cause.

It should be for the parents to let their children use social media or not

The issue is, parents who do not want to let their children use social media have really lost the battle because every other kid is on social media. So if even if a parent stands their ground on a strict “no social” policy, their kid is an outcast.

With this law, even though some kids will still be on social, parents are empowered to hold the line.

That’s not how the law is structured.

Sites are required to implement reasonable measures.

If kids are being evaluated as 18, with no additional checks, that’s not reasonable and they’re risking the penalties.

We’re going to find out whether the regulator has much appetite to issue those penalties, but we will see I guess.

Ooh, and social credit! Maybe you’ll need to earn social credit which you’ll require to access some websites, with some like social media only being provided to people with a high enough social credit score! /s

Are you 12?

On the contrary.

Loads of new platforms have sprung up with are not listed amongst those required to implement age verification.

Yes, any which become successful will be required to implement age verification but… they will already be successful.

I’m genuinely curious who you think will be blocked next?

This is a wildly popular measure in Australia.

I’m not denying that, but the comment above is talking about a story about a woman discovering she’s a bot,.

Lately there’s been someone chopping chives every day and posting a photo of the result.

There was a bit of a drama when someone noticed that the same photo was reused from a couple of weeks back.

The poster said they didnt have time to do it that day but wanted to keep the streak so they just re-posted an old one hoping no one would notice.

It was just such an amazing and engaging sequence of events and I feel fulfilled having been able to follow this roller coaster of emotion /s.