In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.

 ~ Saul Bellow

Why One Dutch TV Network Became The World’s Inventor And Market Tester Of Reality TV Formats

The CEO of Talpa Studios, part of Dutch media conglomerate the Talpa Network, explains it as, ultimately, an issue of language — which is to say, yet another example of the Netherlands' long history of coming up with things to export to a world that doesn't speak Dutch. - The Hollywood Reporter

 

“I didn’t feel like I belonged on the same side as someone with a job and home… I will never forget that longing to be at the university, to be studying, and to be one of those philosophy students with self-confidence” — Sophia Stone (Lynn U.) shares the personal struggles that inform her work bringing philosophy outside the university setting

When implementing AI, first train your managers

Classics and Christians in the 12th Century Antigone (Anthony 

TikTok Content Farms Use AI Voiceovers to Mass-Produce Political Misinformation

In September 2023, NewsGuard identifiedwhat appeared to be the first of its kind: a network of 17 TikTok accounts using AI text-to-speech software to create videos advancing conspiracy theories about celebrities, amassing hundreds of millions of views. Now, the phenomenon appears to be growing and shifting its focus to politics. NewsGuard has identified 41 TikTok accounts in English and French using AI-generated narration to spread political misinformation at scale. 

Call it the rise of the TikTok AI content farm. (Content farms are entities that generate large volumes of low-quality content, typically to attract views and ad revenue.) These 41 AI content farm accounts, which NewsGuard detected with the help of AI detection tool TrueMedia.org, published 9,784 videos in just 458 days, from March 2023 to June 2024, cumulatively garnering over 380 million views. Most of these accounts were created in 2024. 

On average, each account posted at least one video daily, with some publishing up to four AI-narrated videos a day. The videos spread false narratives on topics including U.S. and European politics and the Russia-Ukraine war

MapChecking – Crowd counting tool

“This tool helps you estimate and fact-check the maximum number of people standing in a given area.” Map and Satellite Views available.

“The Fact Check Tools consist of two tools: Fact Check Explorer and Fact Check Markup Tool. Both tools aim to facilitate the work of fact checkers, journalists and researchers. Google does not endorse or create any of these fact checks. If you disagree with one, please contact the website owner that published it.

• Fact Check Explorer
• Goal
• What can I search for?
• Can I search by image?
• Why don’t I see the image context tab?
• How do I change the email address I submitted for the image context beta?
• Why do I get a “Could not find image” error for valid image URLs?
• What if the input image has a lot of text?
• How do I view the input image?
• Which images are included in the corpus?
• Why is the image thumbnail in the fact check result different from the input image?
• Do you use MediaReview for Fact Check Search?
• Can I use the “regular” Google reverse image search?
• Sharing feedback
• I didn’t get useful results — what are my other options?
• Which fact checks are included?
• How can I restrict results?
• How can I just see the latest fact checks?

• Fact Check Markup Tool