(Alternate title: Too Many People are Thinking of the Children)
I’m trying to figure out how to implement a practice of regular updates — something like either the Media Notes or 5 Things format that loudpoet uses. (We'll see whether it's sustainable over the long term.)
...but I never know where to start with news coverage/commentary. There’s too much to mention and it’s impossible to track it over time. Which stories are going to be ongoing developments and which ones will end up forgotten?
There was a legitimate political assassination in mid-June, and it got lost in the cracks between the president’s humiliating birthday parade and the armed occupation of Los Angeles. And while those stories were crazy enough to make everyone forget how Social Security data was compromised and the White House served as a car dealership, they were still eclipsed by the uproar that accompanied the public's re-discovery of existing Jeffrey Epstein information.
(And that recap omits the “Big, Beautiful Bill” travesty.)
It might make more sense to stick with more game-focused news. The story there has been payment processors restricting access to online storefronts. It looks a lot like the 2021 crackdown on adult content, but as Thomas Manuel notes:
This coincides with some weird stuff out of the UK where a law is forcing websites to verify people’s ages before they give them access to information that might not be suitable for children. It’s a weirdly synchronous attack on freedom of expression — an uncoordinated public-private partnership that threatens the few remaining fun/free spaces on the internet.
Payment processors Visa and Mastercard are facing some resistance for this move, and the U.K. age verification scheme has encountered its own issues; people can bypass U.K. protection measures by presenting video game screenshots in lieu of actual age verification. However:
It could affect this year's Interactive Fiction Competition.
Image credit: Ksenia Chernaya / Pexels
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