#big-brother

#big-brother

Virtue signaling often manifests in social media posts that aim to elevate one's moral standing without genuine commitment to the cause, leading to frustration among observers.

So much of the White House has always been a kind of symbolic construction. All the tackiness-I find it endearing. The bald artifice, the kind of striver-ness of it-it's like rooting for early Bethenny.

Americans are also facing a bizarre epidemic of gullibility and cynicism-gullicism, if you need a portmanteau-that is drawing people into a world of conspiracism and falsehoods, one where facts are drowned out by a cacophony of extremely loud and wrong voices. Reliable information is both more available and harder to find than ever.

Private detection and spying on people was only a cottage industry by comparison with what it is today, when everything happens, if not in the glare of publicity exactly, at least within the purview of electronic surveillance of one kind or another. Surveillance is to us what electricity was to James Thurber's aunt, that is to say leaking all over the house.

He promised "government by app" and the ability to interact with public services through a mobile phone as easily as shopping with Amazon, communicating via WhatsApp, or streaming on Netflix. "In the future, you'll be able to get all your government admin done in the time it takes to make a cup of tea," said Jones, in a video posted on social media.

A study found that reading banned books predicted civic engagement more strongly than personality traits. Reading banned books showed zero correlation with grades, violent crime, or nonviolent crime in adolescents. Reactance theory explains why censorship backfires: Restricted freedoms activate curiosity and thinking.

Donald Trump seems to have come back from the future. From that dystopian and bleak tomorrow toward which some seek to lead us, taking advantage of the growing polarization and the prevalence of emotions over rationality. From that digital realm characterized by the rise of social media, now made stronger and more chaotic by the explosion of generative artificial intelligence. Ezra Klein recently discussed this on his podcast with the journalist and activist Masha Gessen.

Maher had a lot to say about the current president's recent attacks on climate change. "He thinks it's just some bullshit that people made up out of nothing to get rich. You know, like crypto," Maher said. He went on to say that the EPA's recent decision to stop regulating climate change was arguably "the biggest dick move in American history."

During Super Bowl LX, one of the coveted ad slots went to home security company Ring. With the commercial, Ring announced a new AI-driven feature that accesses all cameras in a neighborhood to help find lost pets. According to the spokesperson in the commercial, a Ring owner would simply have to post a photo of their pet in the Ring app, and that post would force outdoor cameras to begin searching for visual matches in the area. The new featured has been dubbed Search Party.

When presence becomes participation Ring's Search Party feature queries nearby cameras when a missing pet is reported. As Senator Ed Markey observed, this closely resembles neighbourhood-scale surveillance infrastructure. Crucially, Search Party does not operate in isolation. Ring's Familiar Faces feature applies facial recognition to anyone passing within camera range, continuously scanning and categorising faces without their explicit knowledge or agreement.

'What we often see with this Flat Earth movement is a fundamental failure to really understand the model that they're rejecting. 'I think what a lot of Flat Earthers don't understand is how gravity actually works.' In our day-to-day lives, it might look like gravity is a force that simply pulls things 'down', but this is only because we are so small relative to the size of the Earth.

Charlie Brooker's dystopian anthology series Black Mirror has been making us face the dark side of technology for 15 years now. In 2011, that meant live TV ransoms and capitalist reality shows. But last year, in Season 7, we saw memories brought to life, emotions run on subscription models, and the Hollywood remake machine going very literal. In the age of AI popping up everywhere, Black Mirror isn't going to stop reflecting real life any time soon - but what could possibly be next?

He said supermarket staff were unable to explain why he was being told to leave, and would only direct him to a QR code leading to the website of the firm Facewatch, which the retailer has hired to run facial recognition in some of its stores. He said when he contacted Facewatch, he was told to send in a picture of himself and a photograph of his passport before the firm confirmed it had no record of him on its database.