Diverse and Interesting Topics

[Sandra]

Water company bosses have awarded themselves over £25m in bonuses and incentives.

The analysis found that nine water chief executives were paid £10m in bonuses, £14m in incentives and £603,580 in benefits since 2019.

It comes amid outrage over illegal sewage dumping, with water firms in England seeking to hike customers' bills by an extra £156 a year to invest in Britain's Victorian infrastructure.

Labour has pledged to give the water regulator new powers to ban payouts to bosses of firms that are illegally polluting rivers, lakes and seas if it wins the next election.

It said under the plans, Ofwat could have blocked six out of nine water chiefs' bonuses last year because of severe levels of sewage pollution.

[Sandra]

[6sailor9]

  NO!!

[Slivers]

No, is that a real proposal? Why?

[Sandra]

No, is that a real proposal? Why?

About eighteen months ago, in London, yours truly had separate lunch meetings with two people who had been prominent in the pre-2020 election campaign to introduce age restrictions onto porn sites in the United Kingdom, which had, by that stage, failed. Both of them had the same sorry tale of woe to tell when the topic came up in conversation.

They had been confident enough to start with:
Restricting access to pornography is popular, and polls well with the public, and with women who are mothers in particular. Most of the very biggest porn sites – Pornhub, et al – are sufficiently large and well known to make regulation achievable.
Further, the specific proposal to make people upload photos of passports or driving licences would, they felt, both accomplish their primary aim of protecting children, and a secondary aim of reducing porn consumption amongst men by making people worry about the consequences for their lives and careers in the event of a data breach from big porn sites.
"If this had been enacted", one of them said, "it would have been the biggest blow struck against pornography in two generations".

It was not, however, enacted. The reasons for that, they both said, were twofold.

One of them noted for example that the opinion polling was deeply unreliable: People were telling pollsters that they supported the proposal, but in more detailed focus group research, men who were planning to vote conservative mysteriously shifted towards Labour or the Liberal Democrats in large numbers once they became aware of the fact that regulating pornography was a proposal identified with Tories.
Often, these men would find another reason for shifting their vote, but the pattern was clear enough: Once they heard about the idea, their vote shifted, even as they protested that the proposal had nothing to do with their vote shifting and it was all really about tax bands or something else.

This, reputedly, led a very senior Tory Politician to say that he was not going to run for election telling British men that he would take away their porn.

The second reason the proposal ran into difficulty was its assessed unworkability.

Pornography, the UK Government apparently concluded, is no longer simply confined to "porn sites". Websites on which pornographic material can now be openly accessed include widely-used sites like twitter, reddit, and various image boards, as well as servers on discord, pages on Telegram, and a million other potential sources.
To completely block off all access to pornography, it might have been necessary to force people to give their details to websites that they were using for entirely innocent purposes.
Telling a middle-aged mother that she has to give her passport to Elon Musk because there are pornographic accounts on twitter would not have been popular, or workable.

Further, there were obvious issues about enforceability and security: A country specific regulation is relatively easily circumvented, in the internet age, with the use of a proxy server. In many cases, kids these days are as internet-literate, if not more internet literate, than the people trying to restrict their access to various websites. The ban could have been relatively easily avoided by many people.

Third, there was the security issue: Compelling tens of thousands of people, who were doing nothing illegal, to hand their details over to pornographers was an enormous security and data protection risk. "The politicians concluded", one of my lunchmates told me, "that they'd get the blame if and when some vicar's passport ended up in the hands of Russian blackmailers, alongside those of hundreds of thousands of other Britons".

In Ireland, of course, the proposal to enact basically the same law that Britain rejected is not being driven by politicians: It is being driven by an unelectable (and unremovable by voters) body: Comisiún na Meán. That, aside from being entirely undemocratic, has the benefit of providing politicians with some insulation from political consequences. Irish politicians will be able to do their favourite thing: Supporting a policy (in this case "protecting children") in principle, while having zero responsibility for any practical problems that might arise.

At this stage, I will grant that the policy in question, and the principle behind it – restricting access to porn – will be popular with a great many readers.

As a matter of pure principle, it is popular with me, as well: The huge impact porn is having on young people's views of sexuality and each other in particular is a real societal problem that must be addressed. However, process matters.

In this case, we have a state agency with executive power which proposes to introduce a draconian and expansive new regulation without the need for any political debate or political scrutiny, which means that all of the practical problems identified when the UK sought to introduce a similar law may not get a hearing on this side of the Irish sea. Further, the restrictions on basic freedoms involved in enacting these regulations are not minor: We're talking about forcing people to hand over personal information in order to engage in what will remain a perfectly legal activity.
And we are talking about doing so with only the smallest veneer of democratic oversight. If this was a regulation being enacted this same way that you didn't support, then you would be rightly outraged.

Comisiún na Meán has only existed for a week. For its first action to be such a sweeping and draconian exercise of its powers would be a very troubling sign.
After all, first it's porn. Then it will be you're forced to hand over your details to read certain news sites or access certain social media platforms.

After all, misinformation is also harmful to children, is it not? We should not set precedents we will soon come to regret.

[Slivers]

What a bizar story, glad it wasn't enforced. And glad I live in the Netherlands.

[Sandra]

The Globe Theatre issues a trigger warning for its production of Antony and Cleopatra, saying it contains 'misogynoir references'

Sensitive souls watching a new production of Antony and Cleopatra have been told it shows discrimination towards black women.

[Sandra]

A man accidentally exposes himself at Hungry Jack's drive-thru after 'super Viagra' orgy backfires dramatically

    David Bruce Richardson was handed a good behaviour bond
    He had taken a 'super Viagra' and visited a drive-thru

An Aussie bloke whose experiment with 'super Viagra' ended with him accidentally flashing a teenage Hungry Jack's worker has been shown mercy by a judge.

Judge Therese Austin accepted David Bruce Richardson's eye-watering account of his Viagra overdose and found there had been no 'sexual' intent when the Darwin man accidentally exposed his privates to a 16-year-old girl working at the drive-thru.

The young woman was said to be 'traumatised' and 'reduced to tears'.

Mr Richardson's ill-fated Hungry Jack's run last September took place a day after he took a sexual enhancement drug called 'Pit Bull Super' prior to attending an orgy with 'friends' at a local hotel.

While Pit Bull Super is advertised as a 'natural formula', it in fact contains the prescription-only drugs sildenafil (Viagra) and tadalafil (Cialis), which are used to treat erectile dysfunction in men.

The ill-fated experiment with 'super Viagra' ended with him accidentally flashing a teenage Hungry Jack's worker. He was shown mercy by a judge who accepted there was no 'sexual' intent behind the flashing

The ill-fated experiment with 'super Viagra' ended with him accidentally flashing a teenage Hungry Jack's worker. He was shown mercy by a judge who accepted there was no 'sexual' intent behind the flashing.

As a result of taking the pill, which is not approved by the TGA, Mr Richardson's erection would not subside and became 'extremely painful'.

'He was with a number of young ladies and they were having relations and he says that his erection would not cease and it became extremely painful,'

The lawyer said Mr Richardson, a farrier from the town of Humpty Doo, about 40km south-east of Darwin, 'started to panic' and 'the side of his penis began to split because of the lack of circulation'.

Mr Richardson then drove home and grabbed a towel but said he couldn't touch his penis because it felt like it 'was about to explode'.

'He pulled into Hungry Jack's, he's purchased some food, there was a towel, he says he didn't get out of the car, he was dreadfully embarrassed,' Mr Maley said.

he'd taken a 'super Viagra' and did not believe the drive-thru workers would see him.

Mr Richardson told he'd taken a 'super Viagra' and did not believe the drive-thru workers would see him.

After the embarrassing incident made headlines in the Northern Territory, a remorseful Mr Richardson admitted he'd 'made a mistake' and 'honestly didn't think the [Hungry Jack's] workers would see me'.

'I wasn't trying to expose myself to the poor young girl,' he said.

'The pill was way too strong. I'm surprised it's legal to sell that stuff, and I was in a lot of pain.

'I wasn't trying to flash myself at anyone. I just wanted to grab a feed and go home.'

Mr Richardson said he had to take several days to 'rest' after the effects of the 'super Viagra' wore off.

However, the effects of the court case have been worse, taking a significant toll on his mental health.

'It's been giving me a lot of grief and anxiety. Really been playing on my mind,' he said.

Mr Richardson was left 'embarrassed' by locals papers that published the incident as front-page news

In court, Judge Austin agreed the packet of Pit Bull Super looked 'dangerous' but said Mr Richardson should have gone to the hospital instead of the drive-thru.

She handed Mr Richardson a nine-month good behaviour bond after finding he had no 'sexual' intent behind the exposure.

'There's no evidence before me that you intended to behave the way you did for any sort of sexual gratification,' Judge Austin said.

[Sandra]

A Senate staffer made headlines earlier this week after a leaked video showed him engaging in sexual acts with another man inside a Senate building. As it turns out, he wasn't the first.

News broke on Wednesday of a second investigation into a congressional staffer, who allegedly filmed himself performing sex acts with another man inside the U.S. Capitol in the summer of 2022.
The videos first circulated on Snapchat from a user with the screen name "Adam J,"

In one of the videos, a man masturbates inside a House office building, which the outlet identified through the furniture and a mouse pad branded with a congressional seal. In the second video, two men — whose faces were not visible — engaged in sexual acts in another office.

The staffer has not been named but was identified as a former senior House staffer of Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington.
A spokesperson told the outlet that they launched an investigation into "purported, unbecoming behavior" last year, but that it found "no conclusive evidence."

"As soon as the office was alerted, we immediately contacted the appropriate House entities to conduct an independent investigation," the spokesperson said. "The office will not be providing further comment on personnel matters."

[Sandra]

Men and women value different things in a partner. This used to be widely understood, but it isn't anymore, because Feminists have done their best to teach women to BECOME the man she really wants to be with. This is why women are far less happy today - they've been taught to go against their nature.

Anyway, generally, woman want a man who is strong (why so many women today want a TALL man), who is well-educated, who is financially successful, and who has high status (I didn't mention looks because everyone likes beauty). Why do women want these things in a man? Because these traits are strongly correlated with successful long-term relationships and families.

Men DO NOT SHARE these desires in their female partners - mostly because they already have these things to some degree or other. Instead, men value women who are young (fertile), innocent/inexperienced, feminine, cooperative, family-oriented, and peaceful. Why? Because these traits are strongly correlated with successful long-term relationships and families.

Women are hypergamous - they are inherently drawn to find the "best" man they can get. This was a survival strategy. But this also means that women are constantly comparing every man they've been with against the guy they're currently with, and if the current guy doesn't match up to any of their past men in any area, it's going to bother her. Her hypergamy means she wants to "level up" in every area every time - despite how unrealistic that is in reality. She can be with a fantastic guy who she knows is great - but maybe he doesn't have as high a degree as a guy from her past, or isn't as good a dancer, or doesn't make as much money, or isn't as tall, or whatever. Even if he's better than the past guys in 90 different ways, the 1 way that he's not will bother her, and over time, it will make her unsatisfied. She'll complain to her friends about it, and they'll tell her to "dump that bum and take him to the cleaners" and likely, she will.
Anytime a girl complains about her relationship, tons of other girls - who may only know 1 minor thing about the relationship - tell her to dump his ass.

Men understand this, and they understand that the more people a woman has dated, much less slept with, the harder it will be for her to be satisfied with any man in the future. And since men tend to have much more to lose, given that courts STRONGLY favor women, men see women with more men in their past as being of lower value.

What does THAT mean? For some men, it means that they'll just show no interest in her and stay away, or keep her at arm's length and never get too close to her (keep her as an acquaintance rather than a friend). For other men, they simply see her as "only good for sex" - meaning they'll give her attention as long as she gives him casual sex, but he'll never seriously consider her for a relationship. The thing is, most women don't realize that he's made that decision - she'll tell herself that he sees her as a relationship partner, when he only sees her as a chick to bang for a while.

Like it or not, you'll never change what men value in women, just like men can't change what women value in men. We have very good reasons for valuing the things we do. And, yes, there are going to be exceptions to every rule, but exceptions are just that: rare anomalies. The vast majority of people are "the rule", and the rule will apply to them.

[Sandra]

[Red Hedonist Joy]

Horrible...