Parallel Barking

Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were questioned about rising antisemitism on college campuses at a House committee hearing on Tuesday, December 5th. The biggest backlash stems from the question that asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university code of conduct. At Tuesday’s hearing Harvard president Claudine Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “s...

In attempts to destabilize the West, Russia and its allies have been using migrants as pawns. After Russia invaded Ukraine and Finland joined NATO, it is clear that this "hybrid [type] warfare" combined with disinformation is becoming the norm.

Try typing both "photorealistic image of man" and "photorealistic image of woman" into Bing AI and you'll get the image of a man right away -- for woman, not so much. Instead, you'll get an error message saying that the content you requested is inappropriate/explicit.

The problem with selling fake photos is that people may not know they are fake. Blatant deception seems to be the name of the game and if money is involved, then it's open season.

Hacktivists are hitting dozens of government websites and media outlets amid the war in Israel and Gaza, disrupting and overloading targeted systems. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prominent hacktivist groups like "Anonymous Sudan" and "Killnet" that back Russian interests have emerged; they have also found their way into the current Israel-Gaza conflict.

A Danish artist was given a load of money to recreate his artwork for an exhibit on labor relations at the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg. The earlier pieces featured bank notes pasted to canvases in the amount of the average annual wage in Denmark. This time artst Jens Haaning submitted two white canvases, minus bank notes, and titled them "Work it Out." The court is now telling the artist h...

On July 26th, Niger's president Mohammed Bazoum was ousted by his own presidential guards. The official stated reasoning was worsening security due to continued violent attacks from jihadist groups in the region. Now a majority of the Sahel is under military control. What is really going on?

It has been a few days since both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King extended their deadline until October of this year. Although the FTC had voiced their intent to file an appeal with the 9th circuit court, things seem to be cooling down relatively speaking. The last hold-out on the global stage is the UK's Competition and Market Authority.

Allies have stated that Ukraine can join NATO when Ukraine has met specific "conditions." After voicing concerns over the vague lack of timeframe and vague conditions, Zelensky left the NATO summit in Vilnius feeling it a relative success.

This story, more than anything, is about perceived privilege and what it can do to one's critical thinking skills. A man who wanted a pristine view of the NYC skyline decided that the possible fines incurred by illegally trespassing and cutting down neighbors' trees would be less than (in money and effort) going through the appropriate channels. The $32k he thought he would have to pay ins...

If you've been following the alternative-meat news lately, then you won't be too surprised to hear that a new alternative has been recently developed for market consumption: cell-cultivated or lab-grown chicken. Would you eat it?

The submersible, also named the Titan, owned by tourist/deep-see exploration comapny OceanGate Expeditions, had a total 96 hour oxygen supply when it set off on its voyage on 6 a.m. Sunday, June 18th, with 5 tourists who paid a "mission support fee" of $250,000 each. About an hour and 45 minutes after the vessel sumberged, contact was lost in a remote area in the North Atlantic. Now larg...

Elon Musk's company, Neuralink, recently surpassed a huge hurdle by being approved by the FDA for human trials. Besides being able to make those previously unable to walk, Musk's long-term goal for the company is to be a bridge between AI and the human mind in an attempt to mitigate threats that the technology presents. There are other BCI tech companies that have been around much longer t...

There's been an increase in the number of anti-discrimination bills being released throughout the United States and one thing that is common among all of them is that they are very specific about the types of discrimination that should not be permitted and in what arenas. This, of course, begs the question of what types of discrimination are allowed and where? It seems these types of laws may...

So, we have an art exhibit in France where you must strip down naked to enter, followed by a drink and chat. The aim of the macLYON exhibit is to challenge the notion from Rene Descartes that "I think, therefore I am," but instead we are above our bodies. Next, we have a German landlord who deigned to bathe in the nude in the public courtyard of his building. The Frankfurt residential bu...

An Alaska legislator has used the Microsoft Bing AI co-pilot to write a bill to legalize gambling on ferries. After waiting months for the state Legislature's lawyers to draft the bill, Representative Jesse Sumner (R – Wasilla) turned to AI for assistance. So, who really writes the laws? Where do laws come from? With the continued use of AI, how will power dynamics change?

It seems like everyone has something to say about how others should conduct themselves. This is most visible recently in states' desire to shape traditional gender roles, values, beliefs, through legislation. We see it in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United States: laws dictating dress code, curfew, prohibition from activities and areas, and medical procedures. The last bastions of traditional n...

After a 5-hour hearing with its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, regarding national security concerns, the US House of Representatives is moving forward with legislation to ban the social media app TikTok. Soon after the hearing, some of the US's more than 150million users took to the app to make fun of more memorable points in the hearing, candidly exposing lawmakers' lack of understanding of modern te...

In an interview with podcast "The Art of Being Well" the 50-year-old Oscar Winner discussed using the "very helpful" therapy. In a semi continuation of our previous episode, we explore the impetus behind the creation and use of alternative therapies.

A popular drug originally meant for something else but now being used for a potential fountain of youth? Listen in to hear more about it. And you can't forget about Ozempic. 

The city of Rotterdam provides welfare benefits for their residents every year, usually to about 30,000 individuals and families. Between 2017 and 2021, the city used a machine learning algorithm to generate a risk-based score for all residents to judge the probability of committing fraud. The problem? The factors used to judge are not predictors of fraud but of the very need for welfare assistanc...

Literary censorship is nothing new but it is certainly getting new press attention as news hit that the Roald Dahl Store Company agreed to change the author's stories to comply with modern sensitivity standards. Famous works like 'Matilda' and 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' have been changed to remove potentially offensive language like 'fat'. But why are these books being changed in the firs...

With the increased use of AI throughout society, AI singularity--or the concept of an event where artificial intelligence evolves to a point where it is either self-aware or can improve beyond human comprehension/capabilities--has become a hot topic of discussion. Until recently, however, we haven't really been able to accurately estimate the point in time when we will cross that "event horizon."...

According to the United Nations World Migration Report, the number of international migrants was estimated to be around 281 million globally in 2020.  COVID-19 has drastically altered the migration and mobility of people around the world in the past two years -- including impacting information diaspora/disinformation on migration. Climate change and major displacement events have also affecte...

South Africa has been mired in economic and social problems stemming from years of corruption. Making it worse is the energy crisis that began in earnest in 2007, once "loadshedding" became part of the institutional lexicon. Loadshedding is a term used to describe scheduled blackouts across the country that occur in different stages, sometimes lasting up to 12 hours a day, for both businesses and...