Kids exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization
Is the Jetson-like future with flying cars finally here?
From The New Yorker: “There are more than four hundred startups in what is called the advanced air mobility industry. The term covers everything from actual flying-car-ish contraptions to more traditional-looking airplanes, but it generally refers to evtols. For the most part, these crafts bear a greater resemblance to helicopter-plane hybrids than to automobiles, and they can’t be driven on the road; they might better be described as electric aerial vehicles with the ability to hover and the no-fuss point-to-point flexibility of a car. Some are single-seat playthings: Jetson One, a Swedish company, has developed a craft that looks like a little aerodynamic cage and handles like Luke Skywalker’s X-wing. Others fly themselves: EHang, a Chinese company, has been testing an autonomous passenger drone with a quadcopter design.”
The world’s most remote triathlon involves bird eggs, a volcano, and bananas
From Atlas Obscura: “Spectators on shore point with outstretched fingers to the nearing athletes as they furiously raft towards land. Paddling past the numerous sea turtles that glide around the bay, Tumaheke Durán Veri Veri arrives first. He heaves his hand-woven raft onto the sand and runs barefoot up to the island’s main road. He then hoists a 44-pound bundle of bananas over his shoulders and begins to run. This is the Tau’a Rapa Nui; a demanding sporting event that honors the Rapa Nui’s ancestral tradition. It begins with the rafting, called Vaka Ama; followed by the banana-weighted run, the Aka Venga; and ends with a bodyboard-type paddle race: Natación con Pora.”
Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Continue reading “Is the Jetson-like future with flying cars finally here?”A new law will ban TikTok unless it is sold. So what happens now?
After almost four years of debating a law that would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell the app or be banned in the US, Congress finally passed legislation that does exactly that (I’ve written for CJR a number of times over the years about the back-and-forth in Washington regarding a TikTok ban, including here and here and here.) So what happens now? Before ByteDance either sells TikTok or is banned, there are a number of hurdles, roadblocks, and potential landmines that stand in the way—including the Chinese government, which has made it clear that it will not allow ByteDance to relinquish control of TikTok without a fight.
Just a few weeks ago, a sale-or-ban law looked to be doomed. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of one version of the law on March 13, but then it seemed to lose momentum in the Senate. Some senators said they supported the ban, but Maria Cantwell—a Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee—seemed skeptical of the law, saying she wasn’t sure that it could withstand a legal challenge. She also criticized the House bill for only giving ByteDance six months to find a buyer or face a ban, but when the House introduced a new version of the TikTok bill that increased the length of time that ByteDance had to find a buyer to as long as a year, Cantwell and others changed their minds and voted in favor.
Washington sources believe that ByteDance made a “series of miscalculations” in its attempts to forestall the passage of such a law. They told the Wall Street Journal that Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, failed to build support on Capitol Hill, and instead relied on negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. over “a complex restructuring that never panned out.” Chew testified before Congress and ByteDance felt that he did well, and the company got support from the Club for Growth, a group backed by Jeff Yass, a major TikTok shareholder. But despite these successes, the Journal wrote, opinion on Capitol Hill was “already shifting against” the company.
Note: This was originally published as the daily email newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
Continue reading “A new law will ban TikTok unless it is sold. So what happens now?”The phone book was a crazy invention
He was Liberace’s lover and then ran drugs for the Mafia
From AirMail: “Scott Thorson is now 65. In late 2020, he was granted an early release after serving nearly seven years in a Nevada state prison for credit-card fraud. Last year I began interviewing him for a book project and quickly understood why he’s been referred to as the “Zelig of Awful.” Thorson was a teenage runaway bouncing around West Hollywood when he met Liberace, who at the time was the highest-paid entertainer in the world. Liberace was 57 and Scott had just turned 18. Liberace suggested that he go into business with Eddie Nash—a Palestinian immigrant who was the No. 1 club owner in Los Angeles at the time. He also happened to be the biggest drug lord in all of Los Angeles.”
Why this temple priest is one of India’s most highly-prized voters
From IndiaTV: “Mahant Bharatdas Darshandas is the lone voter in the midst of Gujarat’s Gir forest, home to the Asiatic lion, for whom an entire election team sets up a polling booth every election – and will do so again on April 30. Darshandas, in his early 60s, is the lone occupant of a hamlet called Banej in Gir forest. He has been casting his vote for the past elections, including the 2004 and 2009 parliamentary elections and the 2007 and 2012 state elections. This time too, the Election Commission of India is making all arrangements to ensure that Darshandas, a temple priest, gets to cast his precious single vote. Darshandas lives in Banej Tirthdham and looks after an ancient Shiva temple there.”
Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Continue reading “He was Liberace’s lover and then ran drugs for the Mafia”AI-generated deepfakes are not the problem
In December, the Financial Times described how a video that was posted on X in September by BD Politico, a pro-government news site in Bangladesh, showed a news anchor for something called “World News” accusing US diplomats of interfering in Bangladesh elections; the video was later shown to have been fabricated. According to the FT, it was made using HeyGen, a video generator that can create news-style video clips featuring AI-generated avatars for as little as twenty-four dollars a month.
It’s unclear whether this deepfake or any other misinformation—AI generated or otherwise—had an impact on the Bangladesh election. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party were re-elected and won an overwhelming majority of the seats in parliament, although voter turnout was also reported to be lower than in previous elections.
Whether it’s fabricated news clips like the one in Bangladesh, or fake audio clips like the one in January where a fake Joe Biden told Democrats not to vote, deepfakes and hoaxes continue to draw a lot of attention, as does the use of AI in creating them. But there are good reasons to be skeptical—not just about the amount of AI-generated deepfakes, but about the impact they are having on people’s beliefs, voting behavior, etc.—and some experts say that focusing on the role of AI is a mistake.
In much of the media coverage of these deepfakes, there’s an undercurrent of fear — in some cases expressed outright and in other cases implied. The fear seems to be that AI-generated deepfakes and hoaxes are so realistic and convincing (or soon will be) that they will distort the way that people think about elections—or just about anything else. But fake photos and videos have been around for a while, long before AI came along, and it’s not clear that any of them have had much of an impact (although they have had an effect on the individuals involved in some cases, such as revenge porn.)
Note: this post was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
Continue reading “AI-generated deepfakes are not the problem”Do they still worship us, child?
Me on my daily walk
Jerry Seinfeld on why standup is popular again
“Stand-up is like you’re a cabinetmaker, and everybody needs a guy who’s good with wood. There’s trees everywhere, but to make a nice table, it’s not so easy. So, the metaphor is that if you have good craft and craftsmanship, you’re kind of impervious to the whims of the industry. Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it.”
The observer effect in quantum physics as a meme
How people can fail a breath test without having a drink
From the NYT: “A man was charged with drunken driving after crashing his truck and spilling 11,000 salmon onto a highway. Another was secretly recorded by his wife, who was convinced he was a closet alcoholic. A brewery worker was pulled over and given a breathalyzer test, which said that his blood alcohol level was more than four times the legal limit for drivers. The problem? None of those men had been drinking. Instead, they all were diagnosed with a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, in which a person’s gut ferments carbohydrates into ethanol. This week, the man in Belgium was acquitted of drunk driving — the court found his body was essentially making its own beer.”
In the 1400s people in Europe were convinced that the British had tails
From JSTOR Daily: “Tails, tails!” That was the taunt the people of Paris flung at the English army in 1436 as the soldiers vacated the city that they had occupied for sixteen years. It was common knowledge among Parisians that each English person, under their clothes, concealed a secret tail. French literature was peppered with references to this hidden appendage. In his history of the taunt written the end of the nineteenth century, George Neilson argued that the Scottish boasted in 1332 that they would “make ropes of the tails of the English to tie them with.” An Italian book of the fourteenth century also described England as an island whose inhabitants were born with short tails, like deer.”
Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Continue reading “How people can fail a breath test without having a drink”Demon needs to speak to supervisor
Ancient papyrus buried by Vesuvius reveals that Plato was a slave
From IFLScience: “Like many other scrolls recovered from the historic site, the papyrus in question is in good condition but largely blackened, thus rendering it virtually unreadable. Using an array of techniques including infrared and ultraviolet optical imaging, molecular and elemental imaging, thermal imaging, and digital microscopy, researchers were able to make out over 1,000 words from the burnt parchment, equalling around 30 percent of the complete text. Previously, it was well known that Plato was buried within the grounds of the Academy, but after analyzing the ancient scroll, researchers have now pinpointed the famous philosopher’s final resting place. Other details indicate that Plato was sold into slavery on the island of Aegina.”
Genetically engineered bacteria could end tooth decay if you are willing to take a risk
From Undark: “About seven years ago, Aaron Silverbook and his then-girlfriend, a biologist, were perusing old scientific literature online. “A romantic evening,” joked Silverbook. That night, he came across a study from 2000 that surprised him. Scientists had genetically engineered an oral bacterium that they said could possibly prevent tooth decay. So, Silverbook tracked down the primary author, Jeffrey Hillman, a now-retired oral biologist formerly at the University of Florida. In 2023, Silverbook founded Lantern Bioworks, which made a deal with Hillman’s company and then launched the genetically engineered bacteria as a ‘probiotic,’ which doesn’t require FDA approval.”
Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Continue reading “Ancient papyrus buried by Vesuvius reveals that Plato was a slave”Apple’s censorship of apps in China is just the tip of the iceberg
Last week, the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove several widely used messaging apps—WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram—from its app store. According to the Wall Street Journal, these apps have about three billion users globally, and have been downloaded more than a hundred and seventy million times in China since 2017. In a statement, Apple said that it was told to remove the apps because of “national security concerns,” adding that it is “obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree.” Although new downloads are now blocked, some reports said that Chinese users who had already installed the apps were still able to use them, though doing so requires the use of a virtual private network, or VPN, in order to get around the country’s “Great Firewall.”
Beyond Apple’s allusion to “national security,” why exactly the apps were removed is unclear. An anonymous source told the Journal that the Chinese Cyberspace Administration asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads because both are home to content that includes “problematic mentions” of Xi Jinping, China’s president. The New York Times also quoted a source as saying that the apps were removed because they platformed “inflammatory” content about Xi and violated China’s cybersecurity laws. An Apple spokesperson, however, told the Journal that the apps were not removed because of content about Xi. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US didn’t say why the apps were targeted, but told the Washington Post that foreign companies must obey Chinese laws aimed at maintaining an “orderly” internet.
Some China experts have their own theories as to why the apps were ordered removed. As the Post noted, the move came just a few days after the US Congress resurrected a bill aimed at forcing ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to either sell the app or be banned from the US (the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday, and President Biden signed it into law yesterday)—timing that suggests possible retaliation on China’s part. Dan Wang, a visiting China scholar at Yale Law School, told the Post that the removal of WhatsApp is largely symbolic since the platform is already banned in China—but that the Chinese government’s playbook is to reply in-kind to “every American provocation,” a dynamic that might only accelerate should the US successfully impose its TikTok ban. (I wrote last week about the prospects for this, which depend on more than simply passing legislation.)
Note: this post was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
Continue reading “Apple’s censorship of apps in China is just the tip of the iceberg”Pay me to attend your funeral
