Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
New Twitter policy just dropped:
Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
...
What is a violation of this policy?
At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:
Prohibited platforms:
Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio
Examples:
“follow me @username on Instagram”
“username@mastodon.social”
“check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”
Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended. Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on external links to the above prohibited social media platforms through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy. This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out “dot” for social media platforms that use “.” in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.
It's like the man himself says
The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!
ETA:
Seems like some large accounts are calling Twitter's bluff. Dril posted a link to their linktree hours ago and so far both post and account are still up.
ETA2:
Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.
ETA3:
The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.
Elie Mystal over at The Nation has a pretty skeptical take. Noting that the statute of limitations has passed for both crimes and the theory for why it should be tolled is not great.
The first issue that Bragg has is time. Trump committed the underlying campaign finance offense in 2016, and the statute of limitations on bookkeeping fraud and campaign finance violations is five years. That brings you to 2021. The statute of limitations for tax evasion is three years. Even if you don’t start the clock on that until the story breaks in the news in 2018, that brings you, once again, to 2021. To get to 2023, Bragg appears to be arguing that the statute of limitations paused while Trump was president and living out of state. That’s… a theory, but not necessarily a good one, and certainly not one that has been tested enough to know how it’s going to hold up in the courts. Remember, the alleged immunity Trump had from prosecutions applied only at the federal level. Local prosecutors, like Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance, who was the Manhattan DA during Trump’s presidency, could have charged him with this crime at any time.
ETA:
My understanding is the case is a claim that Trump falsified business records with his payments to Cohen that were ultimately intended for Daniels. Normally this is a misdemeanor:
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with intent to defraud, he:
1. Makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise
However, it upgrades to a felony if:
his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
So the question is does "another crime" include federal crimes or only state crimes? He's not being prosecuted for violating any particular federal law, his violation of federal law is merely the predicate for finding he committed a more serious violation of New York State law.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
The latter seems like the biggest scandal since JFK assassination.
I cannot tell if this is intended to be hyperbole. I feel like I could name a dozen government scandals worse than anything the US government could possibly have been doing with Twitter. Iran-Contra? NSA spying? Watergate? Pentagon papers? The government pressuring a social media company to suppress speech it doesn't like and promote its own agenda is bad, to be sure, but I am not sure it is "sell weapons to Iran and send the profits to South American rebels in direct violation of an act of Congress" bad.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11mo ago
I feel like I'm losing my mind. How does anyone watch the first linked video and conclude this was a good shoot? Like, she gets up to take the boiling water off the stove. The cops seem cool with it, even commenting that they don't want a fire. She takes the water over to the sink (presumably to drain it). One of the cops backs away. She asks (in what seems to me a humorous manner) why he's backing away, he mentions getting away from the water. She makes what seems to me a joke (the "rebuke you in the name of Jesus" line, like it's holy water they are afraid of) and the cop flips the fuck out. They draw their guns, she immediately apologizes and ducks behind the counter. They approach and then the forward officer shoots her.
Right before she is shot the body cam just barely picks up Massey throwing the boiling water toward the officers, with the water landing on the ground and steaming where it landed. I want to thank Twitter user Fartblaster4000 for turning that moment into a helpful gif.
It's important this is in the form of a gif (without sound) because if you watch the version with sound you can plainly hear the gunshots before any steam is visible on the ground. Even in this gif you can see the recoil from the first shot go off before any steam is visible. How about "she dropped the pot of boiling water because the cop shot her in the head."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
What makes Dune such fertile ground compared to, say, Lord of the Rings?
This paragraph threw me for a loop. My impression is that Lord of the Rings is way more of a cultural Thing compared to Dune. Like, there also LotR video games? Action adventure, turn based RPG, RTS, even an MMORPG! There are movie series both live action and animated. All these vary wildly in quality so I'm not sure savvy licensing is the reason for their existence and success. Not to mention Lord of the Rings influence on the development on fantasy as a genre of media in general.
Apologies for not commenting on the more general question on your post, which I don't have many thoughts on, but feels like a very specific cultural bubble to regard Dune as more fertile ground for inspiration than Lord of the Rings...
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I feel compelled to note that the "another lawyer" (Steven Schwartz) was the listed notary on Peter LoDuca's initial affadavit wherein he attached the fraudulent cases in question. This document also appears to have been substantially generated by ChatGPT, given that it gives an impossible date (January 25th) for the notarization. Really undermines Schwartz's claim that he did all the ChatGPT stuff and LoDuca didn't know about any of it.
The thought that people put this much trust in ChatGPT is extremely disturbing to me. It's not Google! It's not even Wikipedia! It's probabilistic text generation! Not an oracle! This is insanity!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I don't really see how the video supports the gay prostitute hypothesis. If DePape was a gay prostitute Paul hired, why did DePape have to break into the house to get in? Why did Paul call 911? Why did DePape try to murder Paul with a hammer when the police showed up?
We also have DePape's own testimony about what he was doing there. If DePape was a prositute hired by Pelosi, why tell the police he was there to interrogate Nancy Pelosi and break her kneecaps?
However strange Paul's behavior is when answering the door I feel like the gay prostitute hypothesis is many times more absurd.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10mo ago
Maybe I am too law brained but this outcome seems obvious? When governments draw distinctions between people they need a way to adjudicate who is classified how. For demographic markers they often issue some kind of identification that contains those markers and are considered authoritative. Sometimes (often?) there is a general process for updating those documents and markers when they are incorrect. When one undergoes the process for changing ones markers then, legally, one has changed classification.
This case was not lost today it was lost when, in 1994, Queensland started permitting one to change one's legal sex (if I read the opinion correctly) and, in 2013, when Australia amended the Sex Discrimination Act to cover gender identity.
I feel like people underestimate how small Ivy League universities are compared to how many people are out there with high standardized test scores.
Here are the seven Ivy League universities with their 2023 incoming class undergraduate numbers (plus MIT for fun):
-
Harvard: 1966
-
Yale: 1554
-
Princeton: 1782
-
Columbia: 1464
-
Cornell: 3218
-
Brown: 1730
-
University of Pennsylvania: 2420
-
Dartmouth: 1209
-
MIT: 1092
That's 16k total student admitted across all those universities. According to the college board, 1.9 million students in the class of 2023 had taken the SAT. That means there are 19k students with scores in the top 1% on the SAT. Getting a score above 1400 puts you in the 93rd percentile according to the college board's statistics for 2023, so 133k people. Even if Ivy League universities admitted students solely on SAT test score this guy would be nowhere close. Indeed, you could staff every incoming Ivy League class (and then some) with students who had a score in top 1%.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Two points I guess.
First, can I get some theory or principle for when people are obliged to accept the limits of their biology and when they aren't? I'm assuming your ok with humans ignoring the limits of their biology when it means not going blind, or letting deaf people hear, or crippled people walk. If I'm correct about the above why are LGBT people obliged to respect the "limits of [their] biology" with respect to having children but the others aren't for their conditions?
Second, why care specifically about being "human"? Whatever that means to you. I see downthread you complain about playing the definition game so I'll sidestep that and say that if becoming a "cross-over between Umgah Blobbies and the Borg" leads people to live longer, happier lives of the kind they want to have I think that's good, whether or not you (or anyone) would call the resulting entities "human."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7mo ago
It turns out that it's cheaper to hire whatever vessel to do a journey like domestic port -> international port -> domestic port than it is to hire (or build) a Jones Act vessel to do domestic port -> domestic port.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Probably my favorite article on this topic is BloodKnife's everyone is beautiful and no one is horny.
And muscles—giant, pulsating, steroid-enhanced muscles—returned to screens. But the new muscle era lacks the eroticism of Eighties action cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed his glutes in Terminator; Sylvester Stallone stripped for First Blood and Tango & Cash; Bloodsport shows more of Jean Claude Van Damme’s body than that of his love interest.
For the most part, though, today’s cinema hunks are nevernudes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is strictly PG-13, as one expects from a Disney product. And even in the DC universe, there’s very little of human sexuality. Capefans’ demands for more “mature” superhero movies always mean more graphic violence, not more sex. They panicked over Dr. Manhattan’s glowing blue penis in Watchmen, and they still haven’t forgiven Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on the batsuit.
Today’s stars are action figures, not action heroes. Those perfect bodies exist only for the purpose of inflicting violence upon others. To have fun is to become weak, to let your team down, and to give the enemy a chance to win, like Thor did when he got fat in Endgame.
The short version is that our bodies are not a thing we inhabit, the medium to experience the world. Instead we objectify ourselves. Our bodies are another Attribute To Be Maximized, dissociated from any purpose. Our art merely reflects this change in orientation.
I think Matt Levine had the correct take in his latest Money Stuff. The basic idea is there's some natural tension between the board of OpenAI and its employees/investors. The board is committed to the non-profit mission of building safe AI while the employees and investors want to build a commercially viable product that turns their equity into big piles of money. There can naturally be some tension between these things!
While the board has a certain formal legal power over the employees and investors it cannot actually accomplish much without them. So the employees and investors have a great deal of informal power. Currently it seems like the balance of power is on the "make big piles of money" side and this will probably be more true after the restructuring.
I think one outcome here is the IRS should probably revoke OpenAI's charitable status. It is hard for me to take the idea they are a charitable organization seriously when the CEO of the for-profit subsidiary can overrule the board to which he ostensibly reports in order to make more money.
To perhaps bring this back to more familiar Culture War ground I think the desire to accommodate dietary restrictions springs from the same place as the desire to use preferred pronouns: the perception that it's the courteous thing to do, that it would be rude to do otherwise. Underlying this is a belief that society ought to change in certain ways to accommodate individuals living their lives the way they would prefer to, and that we as individuals have some responsibility to create that space for others. Exactly what we should accommodate in what circumstances is a question on which underlying theories differ but I think this is the general motivating principle.
ETA:
After reading some other replies I'm wondering how much of a left/right divide on social issues is about who, when, and how has an obligation to accommodate others. It seems to me right-coded non-libertarian positions tend towards the individual having an obligation to alter their behaviors to conform with wider society while more left-coded positions tend towards society (really other people) altering so as to accommodate individuals.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8mo ago
I am impressed you managed to get the version of the page with that quote. It was reverted in less than a minute if I read the history right. Version with it and the reverted version. The whole quote was removed 11 minutes later.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I have essentially no sympathy for the government. This is a problem of their own creation. "Yes your honor, we failed our constitutional obligation to ensure criminal defendants have adequate representation but the correct remedy is we can hold these people in jail forever until we get around to fulfilling that obligation."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I keep meaning to make a post about the dichotomy between what I think of as "private reasons" (the reasons that convince some individual of some position) and "public reasons" (the reasons that might convince some group of some position) but this post will have to do for now.
For my part: I am probably about as SJW/Woke/whatever as they come in regards to LGBT issues in both a public policy and cultural norm sense. Separately I think it is exceedingly unlikely that either gender identity or sexual orientation are fixed from birth and have no connection to cultural factors. For clarity's sake I don't believe LGBT people can will themselves otherwise any more than I think non-LGBT people can will themselves LGBT but I do think there are cultural factors that influence where on that spectrum one ends up. I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people. That is, my "private reasons" for supporting LGBT people legally and socially aren't conditional on the immutability of the traits in question, from a cultural context perspective.
I suspect the reason immutability features so heavily in modern discourse is because it was a rhetorical convenience in the United States. At the time the gay rights movement was gaining steam the United States was in the midst of several other civil rights movements more closely tied to immutable characteristics (black americans and feminism). I believe there was a widespread perception (probably correct) that those traits apparent immutability was key to the eventual success of their movements. Tying LGBT rights to a similar notion of immutability was, therefore, a convenient rhetorical move (a compelling "public reason") to get people on board with LGBT rights in a similar way.
I think this dichotomy between "public" and "private" reasons explains a great deal of perceived motte-and-bailey/hypocrisy in our political discourse.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I propose a simpler explanation for the underperformance of The Little Mermaid: It's a live action remake of a beloved animated show. Consider Dragonball Evolution, or The Last Airbender, or the Cowboy Bebop TV series, or Aladdin. I could do this all day! Has taking a beloved animated property and turning it into a live action remake ever worked? At some point you would think studios would learn this is Shit Nobody Wants, and yet...
Anyone else watching the drama play out electing the Speaker in the United States House of Representatives? You can watch for free on C-SPAN. Today is the first day of the 118th Congress and the House's first order of business is electing a Speaker. Normally this is a pro-forma affair and whoever is the leader of their party cruises to victory on their first ballot. The last time a Speaker election went beyond one ballot was 1923, and that was resolved only after five ballots. So far today we've had one ballot in which Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (the presumptive speaker) has not only failed to win a majority of votes cast and become Speaker, but to win even a plurality of votes in the ballot (the Democrats voted unanimously for Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)). The current split in the House is 222 Republicans to 212 Democrats. So if every member votes then 218 votes are needed to win and McCarthy can afford to lose just 4 Republican votes (assuming no cross-party-voting). Currently McCarthy is on his way to lose a second ballot, with 19 votes having gone to Jim Jordan (R-OH). On the first ballot McCarthy lost 19 votes, mostly to Andy Biggs (R-AZ) but some to Other. Jordan has already exceeded Biggs total, but the voting isn't finished so it remains to be seen whether more people have fallen in line and voted for McCarthy or if Republicans coalesce around Jordan or some other candidate.
It seems to me the most likely outcome is Republicans eventually fall in line and elect McCarthy, but other outcomes are possible. Republicans could potentially coalesce around another candidate (Jordan seems possible). Since what's required is a majority of all votes cast Jeffries could win if enough Republicans abstain or don't vote, leading to a Dem speaker in a majority Republican house.
It's interesting to look at the drama today through the lens of the common complaints about infighting among the Democrats and the left. For all that discussion it seems the Democratic Party has gotten behind Jeffries as Pelosi's replacement in short order, while Republicans can't seem to reach consensus on who should be their leader in the House.
ETA:
At the end of the second ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 203
Jordan - 19
This means McCarthy picked up no votes between first and second ballot. All the votes that went to Biggs/Other on the first ballot went to Jordan on the second ballot.
ETA2:
At the end of the third ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 202
Jordan - 20
McCarthy now officially losing ground to Jordan. This is kind of funny because Jordan (at least by his own words on the House floor) doesn't want the job and wants McCarthy to have it.
ETA3:
The House just adjourned (Speaker still undecided) until noon tomorrow.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
Maybe this is just my confusion but when I read your description of Whelan as an "American security official" I assumed that meant he did some kind of security work for the US government. In fact he was a "security official" in the sense that he was director of global security for an international automotive part manufacturer based in Michigan. He also has a Bad Conduct Discharge from the Marines due to attempts to defraud the government with a fake Social Security Number.
Frankly, I don't think you need to reach for any race or gender based explanations to determine why the US would rather free Brittney Griner than Paul Whelan. And looking at the crimes each was charged with (Griner with pot possession, Whelan with spying) seems to adequately explain Russia's relative reluctance to exchange each.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2yr ago
I have a question. Why, after this fiasco with FTX, should I have any faith that the Effective Altruism movement has any handle on existential risk or any capability to determine what actions will increase or decrease said risk? My impression is that this management of existential risk is a substantial part of EA's brand. Especially William MaCaskill and longtermism as a movement. Some of the leading lights of the EA movement (like MaCaskill) were apparently unable to manage the well defined risk of "maybe this guy running a cryptocurrency exchange is a scam artist" but I'm supposed to believe they have a handle on the vastly more nebulous and ill defined risk of "maybe an unfriendly artificial intelligence extincts humanity." Why should I believe this?
Here's a question that seems like it should have a straightforward answer but apparently doesn't: Who is the Administrator of USDS and DOGE? The Executive Order renaming USDS and establishing DOGE reads, in relevant part:
(b) Establishment of a Temporary Organization. There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff. There is further established within USDS, in accordance with section 3161 of title 5, United States Code, a temporary organization known as “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization”. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall be headed by the USDS Administrator and shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026. The termination of the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall not be interpreted to imply the termination, attenuation, or amendment of any other authority or provision of this order.
(c) DOGE Teams. In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.
So USDS and the The DOGE Service Temporary Organization are headed by the same person and that person is the individual Agency Heads are supposed to work with to determine their DOGE Teams. There's been a bunch of reporting over the last few weeks about DOGE Teams arriving in various departments, so presumably this consultation has happened. Who was the consultation with? The obvious answer is "Elon Musk." Certainly everyone seems to assume he's in charge of DOGE. He (and Trump) talk like Musk is in charge of the effort. So much so that even Wikipedia lists Musk as the "Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency." Case closed, right? Well, not so fast says the United States government. According to a sworn declaration by Joshua Fisher (Director of the Office of Administration):
5. In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President's directives.
6. The U.S. DOGE Service is a component of the Executive Office of the President. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization is within the U.S. DOGE Service. Both are separate from the White House office. Mr. Musk is an employee in the White House office. He is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization. Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.
That declaration comes from a filing in State of New Mexico v. Musk, where a bunch of U.S. States are suing Musk and DOGE for allegedly exercising the powers of a principal officer of the United States without Senate confirmation in violation of the Appointments Clause. You can read the filings in that link if you care about the arguments (I think they have a pretty good case, given the actions attributed to DOGE) but I want to focus on a more basic question: If Elon Musk is not the DOGE Administrator, then who is? The answer seems to be: nobody knows! Actual USDS employees who pre-date Trump seem unable to get an answer about who is running their agency. This culminated yesterday in a hearing where a federal judge asked a DOJ lawyer point blank “Is there an administrator of DOGE at the present time?” and the response was "I don’t know the answer to that."
This is crazy right? The executive order is pretty clear that DOGE has to have an Administrator and that Administrator is responsible for working with Agency Heads to determine DOGE employees for each Agency. Are none of the DOGE employees embedded at various agencies actually DOGE employees? Has the actual DOGE organization done nothing? That's certainly not how people who seem to be involved talk about it! Either DOGE has an Administrator and someone knows who or, I guess, every action every DOGE employee has taken has been unlawful?
ETA:
Of course, right after I post this the White House says Amy Gleason is DOGE Administrator.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11mo ago
I feel like the obvious explanation is that clothes (at least such obvious ones) ceased being reliable indicators of the things they would want to screen for. I know this is partly my cultural milieu (west-coast-tech-types) but I basically never see a suit in the office. Or on the street. Or almost anywhere that isn't interacting with some financial services vendor or high end retail. I wear a suit very rarely (generally when a restaurant dress code calls for it) and pull down a pretty comfortable income. Before wearing certain kinds of clothes can be used as an effective screen it has to be an effective signal and I think this is mostly not true. Largely as a result of wealthier people dressing down.
In the wake of the House of Representatives passing a Continuing Resolution maintaining current funding levels a group of Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have filed a motion to vacate against Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). This is a motion that, if passed, would remove McCarthy as Chair of the House of Representatives after only nine months on the job. The reporting I'm seeing on Twitter says Democrats are united in supporting the motion, which means only three Republicans would need to join Gaetz for the motion to pass. I believe this would also be the first time in US history the House will have removed a Speaker with a motion to vacate.
What happens after that is anyone's guess. In a literal sense we move back to where we were this January and do another election for Speaker. Presumably Democrats are going to nominate and vote for Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as they did then. It's not clear who on the Republican side would be a replacement for McCarthy. He still enjoys the support of a strong majority of Republicans, but the Republican majority is so small he needs basically everyone. His getting elected Speaker again would almost certainly need someone who voted to vacate to vote for him to Speaker. I'm skeptical there are promises McCarthy could make to the Republicans voting to oust him that could convince them to support him again. On the other hand I'm not aware of any consensus about who Republicans could be convinced to support except McCarthy. By far the funniest outcome, I think, would be the Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy abstaining in the Speaker vote, letting the Democrats elect Jeffries Speaker.
Vote on the motion is supposed to be held this morning though the House is currently debating other bills. You can watch the House Session on C-SPAN. Will update this post as the news develops.
ETA:
By a vote of 216-210-0 Kevin McCarthy becomes the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives removed by a motion to vacate.
Vote breakdown by party (based on the vote on the motion to table, C-SPAN roll call doesn't break down by party):
| Ayes | Nays | NV | |
| Republicans | 8 | 210 | 3 |
| Democrats | 208 | 0 | 4 |
As expected McCarthy retains the support of the vast majority of his own Conference. I think the rule is the House can't do business without a Speaker so I imagine we go directly into elections for Speaker of the House now. Given the multiple days it took to elect McCarthy before I am not confident about any particular path forward from here.
ETA2:
Am hearing online that the Speaker pro tempore (selected by McCarthy when he became Speaker) may be able to function as Speaker indefinitely. They may not have to have an election for Speaker on any particular time table.
I think there are a few under-appreciated explanations for this one.
One reason is that kids are, frankly, surveilled by their parents to a degree that was literally impossible in the 90's. Tons of kids today have phones and tons of parents use location tracking apps so they know where their kids are at basically all times. And these kids often know they are being surveilled, which surely changes their behavior. In the 90's you could plausibly lie to your parents about your location to go hang out with your friends or SO. That is much harder today.
It is much harder today to engage in the kind of deception required to have sex when one's parents wouldn't approve than it has been historically.
Another reason might be changing social mores about sex. There's been a big push to normalize ideas like enthusiastic consent and similar. If a lot of the sex in the 90's was dubiously consensual on the part of one party or the other it may be that kind of sex is happening less frequently, leading to less sex over all. I don't have hard data on this unfortunately but my impression from being on the internet is also that zoomer-age people tend to be more skeptical about significant age gaps. Sometimes to the point of silliness (I've seen Discourse about 25 year old being with a 21 year old) but if that translates to younger gaps as well that may be another factor.
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