Florida proposes to authorize public schools to record all class sessions, video and audio.

The stated purpose is to investigate accusations that a teacher either abused or neglected a child. This could perhaps be acceptable, if we could trust that the cameras won't be used for other purposes, either with or without the school's authorization. But I expect that Florida will use them for other purposes — for instance, to punish teachers that teach about racism and sexism as factual matters, and the history of unjust systems.

Meanwhile, companies may wangle permission to "make education better" by feeding the videos to AI programs.

The initially peaceful protests in Kazakhstan may have been seized as an opportunity for political factions to fight.

It won't be easy to get to the bottom of this.

An ex-smoker argues against New Zealand's plan to make it illegal to buy tobacco.

I never intentionally smoked tobacco, because I saw from my grandfather when I was 9 years old that tobacco means death. I wish that tobacco would cease to exist. But making it a crime is a foolish reaction to the problem.

I apply this principle to nonfree software also. It is unjust and nasty, and should not exist. But we should not make nonfree software as such illegal.

I do think we should make malicious functionalities illegal.

A speculation: Omicron may have evolved in someone who has an HIV infection and was not given the drugs to control the infection.

If we treated everyone that has an HIV infection, that disease would no longer be transmitted. It would eventually disappear. And perhaps, in the mean time, we would avoid new, dangerous variants of Covid-19.

Covid's spread is causing food shortages in two Australian states: * "Critical" or "essential" workers who are asymptomatic no longer required to self-isolate if job is essential for growing, manufacturing or transporting food.*