Am out of my depth on this one, and will go carefully. But . . . I agree with Robert … and retiring Philip Adams “Once, every village had an idiot. It took the internet to bring them all together."
“I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty.
Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly.
I see an evil one. (Jonestown)
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull:
“When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. ‘My hero!’ It’s really creepy.”
MEdia Dragon predicting an era of mass amnesia is about to occur
Leap year saved our societies from chaos—for now, at least National Geographic
Deep Time Diligence (interview) Tyson Yunkaporta, Emergence Magazine
FTC cracks down on H&R Block for deleting tax data when users want to downgrade The Verge
FTC cracks down on H&R Block for deleting tax data when users want to downgrade The Verge
A frequent refrain for the past eight or so years is that Trump’s fealty to Putin has to come at a cost with certain U.S. voters – we have plenty of communities descended from people who emigrated from Eastern Europe, and no group so numerous as Polish-American voters. Czech, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian-Americans also bear mentioning in this context, but there are other, smaller communities from countries with historically rough relations with Russia and its predecessor states. Polish-Americans, however, take the cake and are worth highlighting.
The Polish-American Vote in 2024
Inside The IRS Unit Taking On America’s Millionaires And Billionaires
Meet the shady companies helping governments hack citizens’ phones
Fast Company: “Named for the winged horse of Greek mythology and often sent by text message, Pegasus can burrow into your phone without your knowledge or even your click, hiding for days or weeks inside, surreptitiously recording everything—messages, photos, encrypted chats, and video and audio—in real-time. Exactly where your data is going often remains a mystery, lost in a tangle of servers.
But the deadly impacts of Pegasus and other cyberweapons—wielded by governments from Spain to Saudi Arabia against human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and others—is by now well documented. A wave of scrutiny and sanctions have helped expose the secretive, quasi-legal industry behind these tools, and put financial strain on firms like Israel’s NSO Group, which builds Pegasus.
And yet business is booming. New research published this month by Googleand Meta suggest that despite new restrictions, the cyberattack market is growing, and growing more dangerous, aiding government violence and repression and eroding democracy around the globe…
The supreme goal of the artist is to challenge the audience. Not sure I’ve seen such a strong reaction to art in my life. Spurring thousands of discussions about the meaning of art, politics, humanity, history, education, ai safety, how to govern a company, how to approach the current state of social unrest, how to do the right thing regarding the collective trauma.
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 24, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness.
Four highlights from this week: As AI Looms Large, FTC Says Big Tech Can’t Feed it Your Data Without Your Permission; Protect Yourself from Identity Thieves; Survey Finds Workers are Putting Businesses at Risk by Oversharing with GenAI Tools; and Meet the shady companies helping governments hack citizens’ phones.