You Need To Hear: Tjaka - 'Elevate'
The genre-transcending sound is on full display in 'Elevate', which has the trio in full flight. For fans of: bush doofs
bush doofs watching sunrises
watching sunrises delicious combos
delicious combos sending it
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ABC News
28 minutes ago
- ABC News
Australian campaign group sparks NSFW game takedowns and a debate about free speech
The removal of thousands of adult video games from digital storefronts has sparked an online outcry, claiming censorship and free speech crackdowns. The outrage began when Steam, the world's largest PC gaming store, created a new rule saying content on the platform had to adhere to the policies of payment processors including PayPal, Visa and Mastercard. After the new rule was added about two weeks ago, hundreds of adult-themed games were removed from the platform. It included games with titles such as Slave Doll, Sex Loving Family and Sex Adventures: Incest Family. A few days later, a smaller game storefront, announced it was delisting all games tagged with not safe for work (NSFW) content. In a blog post, founder Leaf Corcoran said the decision to remove all NSFW games without notice was made to satisfy the demands of payment processors while they made changes to their adult content policy. Mr Corcoran said games would be made public on the store again once its adult content policy had been updated, and if the games adhered to it. On July 28, the platform updated its policy with specific themes that were prohibited for developers like "Rape, coercion or force-related", "Underage or 'barely legal' themes" and "Incest or pseudo-incest content". Steam and did not respond to the ABC's request for comment. The policy changes came after a targeted campaign from Australian not-for-profit Collective Shout, which describes itself as a "campaign movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls". In May it launched a campaign calling on payment processors to pressure Steam and to remove hundreds of games featuring "rape, incest and child abuse-themed content". Campaigns manager Caitlin Roper said she had identified 491 games on Steam tagged with "rape" and "incest" before launching the campaign. "This is not merely fictional, these attitudes don't just stay in fiction," she said. "This kind of misogyny and normalisation of violence against women … feeds real-world harm to women and to girls." On July 11, the group published an open letter naming the chief executives and presidents of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Paysafe, Discover and Japan Credit Bureau. "We do not see how facilitating payment transactions and deriving financial benefit from these violent and unethical games, is consistent with your corporate values and mission statements," the open letter said. Visa and Mastercard did not respond to the ABC's request for comment. In a statement, a PayPal spokesperson said: "PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe platform for its customers. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any illegal activity. Any accounts found to be associated with illegal activity will be closed." The moves have sparked a huge backlash in parts of the gaming community, describing it as a dangerous precedent of censorship from payment companies and an attack on free speech. A petition, which has now surpassed 200,000 signatures, accused Mastercard and Visa of "interfering with legal entertainment". "We demand an end to this censorship of fiction, and the right to choose the stories we enjoy without moral policing," the petition said. Tech billionaire Elon Musk appeared to back the petition, retweeting a post about it and writing "Bravo". Ms Roper said the censorship and free speech arguments were misogynistic. "What we're seeing is freedom of speech being used as a justification for misogyny and male violence against women and men claiming free speech in defence of their access to rape simulation games," she said. Ms Roper said she and her team had received countless threats of physical and sexual violence in recent weeks. "This is not fiction. We are real women in the world being inundated with threats of rape and violence and murder and just the worst kind of misogynistic abuse you can imagine." Brendan Keogh, a researcher at the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, said the changes highlighted just how much influence payment processors can have over online stores. "In reality, a very small number of companies that we rely on to move money around the internet have a lot of power to determine what you are allowed to spend money on, on the internet," he said. Dr Keogh said Collective Shout's campaign had the hallmarks of a moral panic, using extreme examples to galvanise public support. "And that's really just a smokescreen to remove a much, much broader range of content, which includes primarily queer content and trans content," he said. Following the removal of all NSFW content from the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) released a statement expressing concern that the action may have an outsized impact on marginalised developers. "Queer, trans, femme-identifying, and POC developers may be disproportionately affected by overreaching censorship," it said. The IGDA said it did not condone or support games fetishising sexual violence, non-consensual sexual acts or the sexualisation of minors. But it said the sudden blanket ban on NSFW content on impacted the livelihoods and reputation of developers who had done nothing wrong. "The issue is not a lack of safeguards, but a lack of proportionate, informed, and transparent enforcement," The IGDA said. "The right to make mature games with legal adult content is a creative right, just like the right to tell stories about war, death, or love." Ms Roper said Collective Shout's campaign was only intended to remove rape and incest games. "We did not set out to get all NSFW content removed. We specifically targeted rape games, games that promoted sexualised violence against women and children," she said. Collective Shout's movement director, Melinda Tankard Reist, said the suggestion the campaign was targeting LGBT content was "a slanderous lie". "Collective Shout is diverse, it's a miracle it all holds together," she said. "But we come around a common cause for a world free of sexploitation." Ms Tankard Reist said the abuse and threats from people online had been aggressive and constant, but that they wouldn't stop the group from continuing to campaign. "This has been a 24/7 operation to protect ourselves and our systems," she said. "But once we get through this, we will certainly look at how we can expand the good things that have come out of this campaign. This is a win."
News.com.au
28 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Influencers stun in snow photos during Cetaphil Après brand trip
Many poses were pulled, including this one from Melbourne socialite Rozalia Russian. Picture: Supplied Of course, a picturesque lunch was had after a hard morning on the slopes. Picture: Supplied There were tonnes of branded photo ops. Picture: Supplied And naturally, free-flowing wine. Picture: Supplied 'Too cold to care, too hot to touch.' Picture: Supplied 'Looks amazing.' Picture: Supplied Fans declared these two besties, 'Angel faces'. Picture: Supplied Everyone had a ball on the snow trip. Picture: Supplied No one suffered bad skin from the snow, a common experience from the cold and the light reflecting off the white snow. Picture: Supplied 'Gorgeous.' Picture: Supplied The inflencers went all out at night-time too, including Hembrow who dressed like a 'snow princess' one evening. Picture: Supplied Kate Waterhouse opted for a brown gown with matching (faux?) fur. Picture: Supplied Toasted marshmellows with Cetaphil branding. Picture: Supplied 'I thought you went to the sun not the snow???' commented one fan. Picture: Supplied She posed in a chocolate brown dress and fluffy coat as the sun went down. Picture: Supplied 'A winter skin retreat, every detail was perfection. I love youuu @cetaphilaustralia & my skin does too' she captioned one of her photos. Picture: Supplied
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
North West Island feral chicken's incredible survival story
Robinson Crusoe never laid an egg. But don't let that stop comparisons with this little-known breed of bush chook. In the pantheon of desert island survival stories, the North West Island feral fowl deserves its own place alongside Daniel Defoe's fictional character. This breed of chicken endured abandonment, starvation and near-constant predation to survive on an island with no permanent fresh water source for about a century. Its story has captured the fascination of poultry conservationists like Logan-based John Urane, who made it his life's mission to save the breed from extinction. In the 1880s, a global guano boom led to the rapid development of mines as countries tapped into rich deposits of bat droppings for use as natural fertiliser. One such operation was established on North West Island — an unremarkable outcrop about 30 kilometres off the central Queensland coast. "From then, the island was not occupied until about 1924, when a turtle soup factory was established. "That lasted for about four years … and then there was no human habitation, other than visitors to the island, up until 1980 when it became a national park." For that entire century of basic abandonment, these chooks were beset by feral cats that, presumably, also arrived with those early guano miners. To make matters worse, North West Island was missing one important element for sustaining life. "But there's a grass that grows [on the island] called bird's beak grass, and the birds developed a technique to harvest water off the leaves." Cereal grains, which typically make up the bulk of a chicken's diet, were non-existent. "So, the birds' diet was varied from figs from the fig trees that grow on the island to insects, mice, turtles that washed up, or dead fish," Mr Urane said. "A high protein diet — cockroaches, but no cereal grain as such." The durability of these birds was so extraordinary that several scientists have investigated them over the years. "Glenorchy McBride studied the birds and estimated that their numbers would increase to about 1,500 annually, and they'd be trimmed back to about 500 individual birds by the feral cats," Mr Urane said. "When Parks and Wildlife eventually poisoned, trapped and shot the feral cats to remove them, they recorded over 100 cats." The only time the chooks were safe from predation was during the annual breeding migration of muttonbirds to the island. "The feral fowl could come to the ground, raise their chicks, build their numbers up. "Only the smartest, and those who were best able to survive the cat predation, were the ones that passed on their genetics to future generations." That constant predation has made these chooks very skittish operators — and it affected their behaviour in other ways, too. "I had a trio — a rooster and two hens," Mr Urane said. "One of the hens laid eggs and she started to incubate. "The second hen, she just went about her business until the chicks arrived — and she immediately displayed the same behaviour as a broody hen, a clucky hen with a chick. "She would call them and feed them." The cock was also something of an oddball. "He'd also brood the chicks at night. "That's unheard of [among other breeds] … but with feral fowl, it's a family affair." Work to clear North West Island of feral animals began when it was declared part of Capricornia National Park in 1980. That included the wholesale slaughter of those pesky cats — but it also meant the removal of chickens. Fortunately, a handful of poultry enthusiasts rescued and bred some of them in isolation from other run-of-the-mill chooks. Rare Breeds Trust poultry coordinator Susan Locke said protecting breeds like the North West Island feral fowl from extinction was of huge scientific and historical importance. "The North West Island feral fowl and the King Island turkey — which are both 'in-the-wild' breeds if you like — are of great scientific value for studying the characteristics of poultry in a non-controlled environment," she said. "Exhibition breeds tend to be highly selected for form and colour by breeders, but these breeds respond to entirely natural environments in breeding and survival. "Their genetics are important for biodiversity studies in environments where they effectively need to survive and adapt to natural conditions themselves." Mr Urane is the latest in that line of custodians fighting to keep these bloodlines alive. "I'd like to see more people dedicated to preserving the future of these birds," he said. "Although we've established satellite flocks in Queensland, there are certainly fewer than a dozen populations. "As long as they're not interbred with other breeds of poultry that exists. Once that occurs, you've basically just got a chicken."
