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☆ Farhad Manjoo on ‘South Park’ - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But it isn’t the topicality of “South Park” that best explains America. In “South Park,” correctness of any sort — religious, scientific, pedagogical, geopolitical or whatever else — is sus. For Donald Trump Jr., “South Park” memes are the height of wit. In 2018 “South Park” even acknowledged that Al Gore was right: ManBearPig turned out to be real. But the damage was done; the monster had already begun to eat the people of South Park.

Persons: topick, ”, Trey Parker, Matt Stone’s, Parker, Stone, Donald Trump’s, Vladimir Putin’s thuggery, Ron DeSantis, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Stone’s, they’ve, Eric Cartman’s —, Andrew Sullivan, “, Donald Trump Jr, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Cartman, Bob White, Al Gore, ManBearPig Organizations: Trump Locations: America, Colorado, South Park

☆ The viral AI-generated image showing an explosion near the Pentagon is 'truly the tip of the iceberg of what's to come,' tech CEO says
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

People need to prepare for a surge in AI-generated content being shared online, a tech CEO told CNN. The viral image of an explosion near the Pentagon is just "the tip of the iceberg," Jeffrey McGregor said. The viral AI-generated image showing an explosion near the Pentagon is "truly the tip of the iceberg of what's to come," a CEO who works in image authenticity detection has warned. Earlier this year, a photographer sparked debate about whether AI-generated images can be classed as art after an image he created using DALL-E 2 won a major international photography competition. It's not just AI-generated images that are being used to deceive people.

Persons: Jeffrey McGregor, we're, Donald Trump, hadn't, It's, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Emma Watson, McGregor, Ben Colman Organizations: CNN, Pentagon, Reality

In an appearance with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, of “moving left” on criminal justice and immigration issues after winning over the party’s base in 2015 and 2016. He pledged that he would repeal what is known as the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice measure signed into law by Mr. Trump in 2018 that expanded early-release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. “He enacted a bill, basically a jailbreak bill,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It has allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now reoffended and really, really hurt a number of people.”

☆ Twitter is starting to look a lot like Fox News
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-24 | by ( Madeline Berg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk's Twitter is starting to morph into a version of Fox News. Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson announced he would relaunch his show on the platform. Twitter is starting to look a lot like a certain conservative cable giant. Earlier this month, disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced he'd be bringing his show to Twitter. Ron DeSantis would be announcing his presidential campaign on Twitter in a conversation with Musk.

☆ Inside the Wild World of Celebrity Keynote Speakers: Drugs, Alcohol
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( David Kushner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

"I never saw myself as a speaker, let alone a motivational speaker," Leonard tells me while his assistant irons his jeans. 'When I ramble," Hunter told me, "hit me in the leg!" Every plane had been grounded, including the one stuck on the tarmac with an increasingly inebriated Hunter Thompson trapped inside. But by far the most all-consuming task was booking gigs for Hunter Thompson. Just before a debate with G. Gordon Liddy at Brown University, Hunter demanded that Betsy Berg, whom I now worked alongside at GTN, score him some crystal meth.

☆ What intersectionality actually means and why it matters
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Leah Asmelash | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Here’s what you should know about intersectionality – what exactly it means, and why it matters. Co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase intersectionality in 1989. As part of that larger movement, terms like intersectionality and intersectional feminism became much more prevalent in left-leaning circles. People practice Judaism differently, and thus different sects may face different problems. In that group alone, there may be LGBTQ+ men, men from lower economic backgrounds or men with disabilities.

☆ Elon Musk says news organizations should only tweet 10 stories a day, after he tweeted more than 100 times over the weekend
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk said on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that news organizations should limit tweets. During the interview, Musk discussed his decision to remove The New York Times' blue tick on Twitter. Carlson asked Musk about a tweet at the time in which he described the Times' feed as "the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea." According to the social-media tracker Socialblade, the newspaper tweeted an average of 110 times a day over the last two weeks. Last month, Musk overtook Barack Obama to become the most-followed account on Twitter, five months after buying the company.

☆ Opinion | Harlan Crow Is Not a Nazi, but That’s Beside the Point
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Jamelle Bouie | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Ben Shapiro is a right-wing media personality who does not appear to have any direct ties to Crow, but he defended him all the same. Harlan Crow, by his own testimony and according to his defenders, goes to get angry. I don’t think Crow is a Nazi or an admirer of dictators and authoritarians. But I don’t think we should take his explanation for his collection at face value either. A monument to Robert E. Lee stood for Robert E. Lee.

☆ A mother reportedly got a scam call saying her daughter had been kidnapped and she'd have to pay a ransom. The 'kidnapper' cloned the daughter's voice using AI.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A scammer reportedly used AI to clone a girl's voice in an attempt to get money from her mother. When she answered it, she could hear her 15-year-old daughter crying and saying things like, "mom, I messed up." DeStefano said that a man's voice then came on the line, telling her daughter to put her head back and lie down. "Listen here, I've got your daughter," the scammer reportedly said, according to DeStefano's account of the call. The voice "100%" belonged to her daughter, she told the local news site.

☆ Peace, love, and Hitler: How Lex Fridman's podcast became a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +26 min

Seemingly overnight, episodes of Fridman's podcast began racking up millions of views. YouTube/Lex FridmanIn his podcast, Fridman asks world-renowned scientists, historians, artists, and engineers a series of wide-eyed questions ("Who is God? But recently, "The Lex Fridman Podcast" has become a haven for a growing — and powerful — sector looking to dismantle years of "wokeness" and cancel culture. Twitter"The Lex Fridman Podcast" offered a rare opportunity to listen to four-hour conversations with luminaries of tech and science. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and publisher of the socialist magazine Jacobin who appeared on Fridman's podcast in December, praised Fridman's interviewing style.

☆ Just months after buying the platform, Elon Musk is officially the biggest account on Twitter, leapfrogging former president Barack Obama to reach 133 million followers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk overtook Barack Obama on Thursday to become Twitter's most followed account. Five months after buying the social-media platform, Musk has over 133 million followers. The Twitter CEO posted 72 times on Monday, and has his tweets boosted by engineers, per Platformer. According to the follower-tracking site SocialBlade, Musk saw the biggest increase last April – the month he first offered to buy Twitter – gaining 9.7 million followers. The Twitter CEO became the sixth-user to cross the 100 million mark last June, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.

☆ Twitter is secretly boosting 35 VIP users including Lebron James, AOC, catturd2, and Ben Shapiro: report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Aditi Bharade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

This means their tweets automatically bypass an algorithm meant to cap a Twitter user's reach. Platformer's Managing Editor Zoë Schiffer cited internal documents from Twitter which listed 35 VIP users, who all have their posts monitored and promoted for greater visibility. The list also included the pro-Trump, MAGA-friendly Twitter commentator, catturd2, with whom Elon Musk has had many Twitter conversations. Twitter engineers have ensured that tweets by these VIP users will automatically be ranked higher than others in terms of their visibility, Platformer revealed. The VIP users' tweets also bypass a Twitter algorithm which prevents too many posts from a particular user from being viewed, per Platformer.

☆ AI-generated audio of Joe Biden and Donald Trump trashtalking while gaming is taking over TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Allegra Rosenberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

On TikTok, faked audio created by AI of Joe Biden and Donald Trump gaming has become a hit meme. But the ease with voice AI can be used for jokes also shows how easy it is to fake convincing quotes. The Biden Cinematic UniverseOn the @bidenandfriends TikTok account, "Sleepy Joe" plays Minecraft and other video games with his best (and worst) buddies. Other political and celebrity figures pop up in various installments, but the core trio of Trump, Biden, and Obama seems to persist across the lore. "I remember when people thought AI would kill us all, but this is how we use it," commented one TikTok user.

☆ Conservative political podcasts like Steve Bannon's are 11 times more likely to spread lies than liberal ones, study finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

"Conservative podcasters were 11 times more likely than liberal podcasters to share claims fact-checked as false or unsubstantiated," the study said. Fifty-six of the podcasters reviewed shared false or unsubstantiated claims at some point, the study found. In total, more than 70% of the podcasts reviewed shared false claims at some point, including those described as "liberal," "moderate," or "unknown." The study noted that it included far more conservative podcasts in its sample as a result of choosing those that are most popular on Apple Podcasts. The sheer rate of production adds to the issue, it said, with conservative podcasters making longer and more frequent episodes.

☆ Elon Musk is changing Twitter so much, even investor Marc Andreessen is getting upset and complained to him directly
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-04 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Issues with how Twitter looks and operates have been frequent since billionaire Elon Musk took over. Investor Marc Andreessen invested in Musk's takeover and is said to have complained directly to him. Twitter CEO Elon Musk is pushing so many changes to the social media site so fast that high profile users, Musk fans, and even some of his investors are complaining. Representatives of Twitter and Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to requests for comment. "Musk knows it's bad right now, but it's going to get better over time," a person familiar with Twitter said.

☆ Goth clowns, Ted Lasso, and Cold War: Twitter's trending topics from 2022 reveal pop culture fads alongside global political unrest
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Software engineer Brian Feldman created an archive of topics that trended on Twitter this year. The project revealed themes of global political unrest alongside memes and pop culture trends. The list of 457 different trending topics each highlighted a moment that Twitter showed Feldman users commenting en masse about a singular topic. From "Adidas" to "Ted Lasso," the trending topics revealed pop culture fads and memes that moved Twitter users to conversation — and often argument — about their preferences and opinions. Internationally, trends like "Cold War," "Russian Warship," and "Taiwan" also demonstrated how political unrest is being felt around the globe.

On Thursday, Twitter accounts for at least nine journalists and one left-leaning political pundit were suspended. That is the real problem here.”According to Musk, Thursday’s suspensions were related to new rules around sharing real-time location information, which he tied to an alleged stalking incident. Musk said, “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that legal action would be taken against Sweeney. Andrew Torba, founder of the far-right social platform Gab, also criticized Musk and touted his company as an alternative to Twitter.

☆ Analysis: Why the news media got the midterm ‘red wave’ narrative so wrong
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Oliver Darcy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN Business —The White House believes that the press has “egg on their faces, yet again.”That’s according to a White House official who spoke candidly with CNN on Wednesday about the media’s “red wave” narrative that wasn’t. Heading into Tuesday, the dominant narrative in the press — especially right-wing media — was that Republicans were on track to have a big, if not monster, night. Pundits such as Ben Shapiro noted the view had gone “from red wave to red wedding.” Even on Fox News, the right-wing cable network that had heavily hyped the red wave presumption to its audience, pundits acknowledged the reality. As CNN’s exit poll showed Tuesday, abortion and the state of democracy were also significant factors in the election. “Politics has become extremely volatile,” the White House official said, “and I’m not sure that these kinds of sweeping narratives and this obsession with predictions helps anyone.” It’s hard to argue with that.

☆ Pro-DeSantis midterm mailer did more than mock LGBTQ communities
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Nicholas Mitchell | Nicholas Mitchell Is An Assistant Professor Of Curriculum Studies At The University Of Kansas. He Is A Curriculum Theorist Whose Scholarship Focuses On The Intersection Of Education Theory | Policy | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

It and other publications rightly called it out for mocking the LGBTQ community. Republicans are belittling knowledge that they find threatening to the status quo that gives the lives of social conservatives meaning. To play on the words of Ben Shapiro, I call this movement the “feelings over facts” orientation, and it has been positioned as a bulwark against indoctrination by disciplines that focus on race, gender and art. This is the not-so-subtle implication of the mailer supporting DeSantis. For everyone who doesn’t believe gender studies is threatening, the student in the photo the mailer used is just a new nonbinary college graduate.

Elon Musk set the tone for his first full day as head of Twitter with a response to @catturd2. “I will be digging in more today,” Musk tweeted in response Friday morning. As of Friday morning, Trump’s account was still suspended, and trending topics included everything from the news of the day (Paul Pelosi) to culture (#FridayFeeling, Rihanna). “Elon” was one of the top trending topics of the morning, and many conservative influencers who had been critical of Twitter’s moderation were already celebrating what they saw as a tectonic shift. Those downloads, however, are still less than 5,000 per day, while Twitter often still sees hundreds of thousands of downloads per day, according to Adam Blacker, vice president of insights at Apptopia.

☆ Conservatives and anti-vaxxers are frantically lobbying Elon Musk to lift Twitter bans on their idols after he took over
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

An assortment of conservatives are lobbying Elon Musk to undo Twitter bans on prominent allies. Musk has said he opposes permanent bans and plans to roll back moderation on Twitter. But Twitter is enforcing legal sanctions on the networks in the EU and UK which prevents people seeing their content. Twitter has said it never shadowbans anybody, though Musk said Friday he was "digging in" to the allegations. Evolutionary biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein, who has long questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, also called for Musk to reinstate anti-vaxxer Dr Robert Malone.

☆ We read the Gab founder's how-to guide to Christian nationalism. The book is part of a new trend of conservatives openly embracing the ideology.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

"Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations" was written by Torba and Andrew Isker, a pastor from Minnesota. Christian nationalism can generally be boiled down to the belief that Christianity should have a privileged position in American society. Torba's book demonstrates this, as his description of Christian nationalism differs in some ways from academic understandings of it. Phelan M. Ebenhack, File/Associated PressThe public embrace of a somewhat taboo conceptScholars of Christian nationalism, and Christian nationalists themselves, are quick to point out these ideas are not new. "We're now definitely well past the 'Christian nationalism doesn't exist' and the 'Christian nationalism is fringe' arguments to full-on 'Christian nationalism is the only way forward.'"

☆ Everything you need to know about Parler, the right-wing social media platform Kanye West is planning to buy
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Allana Akhtar | Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Kanye West, now known as Ye, is in talks to buy right-wing social media platform Parler. Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is entering a deal to buy right-wing social-media platform Parler, which launched in 2018. Meanwhile, Trump's platform Truth Social had 8,956,693 visitors, and Gab had 12,806,464 visitors, per Similarweb's analysis. What's on the Parler app? In February, Trump launched the Truth Social social media platform 13 months after being kicked off Facebook and Twitter after the January 6 Capitol riot.

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