Salome Zourabichvili says bill contradicts constitution but ruling party is expected to override her action in coming days
Georgia’s president has vetoed a “foreign agents” bill that has split the country and appealed to the government not to overrule her over a law she said was “Russian in sprit and essence”.
Salome Zourabichvil followed through on her stated intention to use her veto on Saturday although the governing Georgian Dream party has the votes to disregard her intervention.
After being promoted by US bloggers and Instagram, cottage cheese sales are now up 40% in the UK. Its blandness is befitting of the times
While I didn’t see the cottage-cheese craze coming – who could ever have predicted this pineapple-chunk-inflected bout of collective madness? – now it’s here, I find myself strangely fascinated by it. In one sense, of course, its ascendancy is utterly banal: another creation of social media (its new popularity may be traced originally to TikTok), it can’t be long before the buffet moves on, maybe in the direction of luncheon meat or tinned mandarins. But on the other hand, it’s still deeply weird, especially to those of us who last ate cottage cheese three decades ago, and then only in extremis (as a student, I sometimes kept an emergency pot cooling on the window ledge of my college room for those piercing moments of youthful crisis when I had no time to eat properly).
Like a mushroom, this trend sprouted last year, seemingly overnight, in the US. “It’s time to stop pretending it’s not delicious,” said Emily Eggers, a New York chef and food blogger who was on a “mission” to make it the new burrata – a quote I thought so preposterous at the time, I quickly added it, last minute, to a book I was writing. But who’s laughing now? “In the 1970s, sales were focused on slimmers trying to lose weight before their holiday to Spain,” says Jimmy Dickinson, the owner of the brand we all remember, Longley Farm. “[But] now the interest is very much, ‘I’ve just swum 50 lengths, and I’ll eat cottage cheese as my protein fix at the end of it.’” According to Dickinson, demand in the UK has reportedly risen by as much as 40% in recent months, a growth that has been powered by the influencers of Instagram and their helpful recipes for dishes that try very hard indeed to make cottage cheese seem … oh dear. I had a look, and none of their ideas are even remotely alluring to my eyes. What, really, is the point of cottage-cheese cheesecake or cookie dough? Even if I was in search of a “protein hit” – at this point, I picture someone being beaten about the head with a leg of lamb – cottage-cheese lasagne is really not for me.
Locals hope TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude will bring new life to Aracataca, birthplace of author’s magical realism
In sweltering mid-afternoon heat, children splash in the clear water of the canal that threads through town as elderly neighbours look on from rocking chairs on the porches of their sun-washed houses. Butterflies spring from every bush, sometimes fluttering together in kaleidoscopes.
At the foot of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountains, about 20 miles from the Caribbean coast, Gabriel García Márquez’s fictional world of Macondo lives on.
Rightwing media personalities on X transmuted a screed against NPR’s CEO into a fight over encryption via the Transitive Property of Bad People
For nearly two weeks, an esoteric debate has raged on X, formerly Twitter: could users concerned about privacy and security trust the messaging app Signal, or was the Telegram platform a better alternative? X’s chatbot, Grok AI, described the trending moment as “Telegram v Signal: a crypto clash”.
Signal is an app for sending end-to-end-encrypted messages to individuals and small groups. Telegram offers broadcast channels and messaging but is notend-to-end encrypted by default. Debates over their relative merits have popped up over the years, though largely within the confines of online spaces inhabited by cybersecurity, cryptography, privacy and policy geeks. This time, the conversation came to broader attention – Elon Musk’s following of 183 million – due to X’s most notorious capability: mutating isolated facts into viral conspiracy theories for the entertainment of rage-riddled crowds. As a bit player, I got a ringside seat to the manufactured controversy.
Firm asked to back up claims about Fiona Harvey after executive’s appearance before select committee
An MP has asked Netflix to provide evidence that the woman who inspired the character Martha Scott in Baby Reindeer is a “convicted stalker”, claiming that a record of her conviction has not yet been found.
Netflix’s director of public policy, Benjamin King, told the culture media and sport committee on 8 May that the show was “the true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist, Richard Gadd, suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker”.
Stuff posted on Reddit is getting incorporated into ChatGPT, Reddit and OpenAI announced on Thursday. The new partnership grants OpenAI access to Reddit’s Data API, giving the generative AI firm real-time access to Reddit posts.
Reddit content will be incorporated into ChatGPT "and new products," Reddit's blog post said. The social media firm claims the partnership will "enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics." OpenAI will also start advertising on Reddit.
The deal is similar to one that Reddit struck with Google in February that allows the tech giant to make "new ways to display Reddit content" and provide "more efficient ways to train models," Reddit said at the time. Neither Reddit nor OpenAI disclosed the financial terms of their partnership, but Reddit's partnership with Google was reportedly worth $60 million.
The island democracy was early to ban TikTok on government phones, and the ruling party refuses to use it. But a U.S.-style ban is not under consideration.
In a press release today, the best music player of the 1990s announced that it'll open up its source code to developers worldwide. "Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development," said the company. "This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve."
Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp, explains: "This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don't want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers' experience and creativity. Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version."
For the past decade, the dating app Bumble has claimed to be all about empowering women. But under a new CEO, Lidiane Jones, Bumble is now apologizing for a tone-deaf ad campaign that many users said seemed to channel incel ideology by telling women to stop denying sex.
"You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer,” one Bumble billboard seen in Los Angeles read. "Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun," read another.
Bumble HQ
“We don’t have enough women on the app.”
“They’d rather be alone than deal with men.”
“Should we teach men to be better?”
“No, we should shame women so they come back to the app.”
Advertisers of merchandise for young girls find that adult men can become their unintended audience. In a test ad, convicted sex offenders inquired about a child model.
Mr. Musk has built a constellation of like-minded heads of state — including Argentina’s Javier Milei and India’s Narendra Modi — to push his own politics and expand his business empire.
Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement's leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.
The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
Our columnist spent the past month hanging out with 18 A.I. companions. They critiqued his clothes, chatted among themselves and hinted at a very different future.
The offering from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery shows how rival companies are willing to work together to navigate an uncertain entertainment landscape.
Reddit’s first earnings report as a public company showed leaps in users and advertising revenue, along with expenses related to its initial public offering.
You’ve likely felt it: The dull pull downwards of a smartphone scroll. The “five more minutes” just before bed. The sleep still there after waking. The edges of your calm slowly fraying.
After more than a decade of our most recent technological experiment, in turns out that having the entirety of the internet in the palm of your hands could be … not so great. Obviously, the effects of this are compounded by the fact that the internet that was built after the invention of the smartphone is a very different internet than the one before—supercharged with algorithms that get you to click more, watch more, buy more, and rest so much less.
But for one group, in particular, across the world, the impact of smartphones and constant social media may be causing an unprecedented mental health crisis: Young people.
According to the American College Health Association, the percentage of undergraduates in the US—so, mainly young adults in college—who were diagnosed with anxiety increased 134% since 2010. In the same time period for the same group, there was in increase in diagnoses of depression by 106%, ADHD by 72%, bipolar by 57%, and anorexia by 100%.
That’s not all. According to a US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of anxiety in America increased for every age group except those over 50, again, since 2010. Those aged 35 – 49 experienced a 52% increase, those aged 26 – 34 experienced a 103% increase, and those aged 18 – 25 experienced a 139% increase.
This data, and much more, was cited by the social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in debuting his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” In the book, Haidt examines what he believes is a mental health crisis unique amongst today’s youth, and he proposes that much of the crisis has been brought about by a change in childhood—away from a “play-based” childhood and into a “phone-based” one.
This shift, Haidt argues, is largely to blame for the increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and more.
And rather than just naming the problem, Haidt also proposes five solutions to turn things around:
Give children far more time playing with other children.
Look for more ways to embed children in stable real-world communities.
Don’t give a smartphone as the first phone.
Don’t give a smartphone until high school.
Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school (at least).
Writing for the outlet Platformer, reporter Zoe Schiffer spoke with multiple behavioral psychologists who alleged that Haidt’s book cherry-picks survey data, ignores mental health crises amongst adults, and over-simplifies a complex problem with a blunt solution.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Dr. Jean Twenge to get more clarity on the situation: Is there a mental health crisis amongst today’s teens? Is it unique to their generation? And can it really be traced to the use of smartphones and social media?
According to Dr. Twenge, the answer to all those questions is, pretty much, “Yes.” But, she said, there’s still some hope to be found.
“This is where the argument around smartphones and social media being behind the adolescent mental health crisis actually has, kind of paradoxically, some optimism to it. Because if that’s the cause, that means we can do something about it.”
Recent studies cast doubt on whether large-scale mental health interventions are making young people better. Some even suggest they can have a negative effect.
The Justice Department and state attorneys general say that Google has abused a monopoly over the search business, stifling competitors and limiting innovation, something the company denies.
Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, last June. In Manhattan Thursday, he said: “We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side and that we will ultimately prevail.”
A protester with a Palestinian flag on a Columbia University building on Monday. So far, there is little evidence that U.S. adversaries have provided material or organizational support to the protests.
The firm behind the lawsuit, Alden Global Capital, bought Tribune Publishing, which operated metropolitan dailies including The Chicago Tribune, in 2021.
Rib-eye steak “is viscerally and primitively satisfying to me,” said Dr. Shawn Baker, who was instrumental in the online rise of so-called “meatfluencers.”
The inquiry is intended to pressure the tech giant to more aggressively police Facebook and Instagram ahead of the European Union’s closely watched elections in June.
Quarterly results on Wednesday underscored Meta’s repositioning of itself as a company poised to capitalize on the industrywide fervor for artificial intelligence.
President Biden has signed the bill to force a sale of the video app or ban it. Now the law faces court challenges, a shortage of qualified buyers and Beijing’s hostility.
TikTok supporters on Capitol Hill last month. The proposed law would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States if its Chinese owner sold it within about nine months.
Supporters of TikTok gathered near the Capitol last month as the House of Representatives voted to pass a bill to force TikTok to cut ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or risk being banned in U.S. app stores.
A tiny group of lawmakers huddled in private about a year ago, aiming to keep the discussions away from TikTok lobbyists while bulletproofing a bill that could ban the app.
Congressional representatives joined TikTok creators at the Capitol last year ahead of a House vote to ban the app. The Senate passed a version of the bill this week.
President Biden has signed the bill to force a sale of the video app or ban it. Now the law faces court challenges, a shortage of qualified buyers and Beijing’s hostility.
TikTok supporters on Capitol Hill last month. The proposed law would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States if its Chinese owner sold it within about nine months.
The group intends to fight what its leader, Nina Jankowicz, and others have described as a coordinated campaign by conservatives and their allies to undermine researchers who study disinformation.
European officials threatened to fine TikTok and force it to remove some features, the latest regulatory challenge for the Chinese-owned social media app.
A report by Stanford researchers cautions that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children doesn’t have the resources to help fight the new epidemic.
Journalists outside a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation in January. A new report says A.I. is adding to the problem.
To own a computer or smartphone — indeed, to engage with the digital world to any degree — is to be a mark. You can try to block, encrypt and unsubscribe your way out of it, but you may not succeed.
For 12 years, the MTV reality series “Catfish” has traveled the U.S., presenting hundreds of intimate snapshots of what can go wrong when the heart mixes with technology.
Apple said it removed WhatsApp and Threads from its China app offerings Friday on Beijing’s orders, amid technological tensions between the U.S. and China.
A recently-opened Apple Store in Shanghai’s Jing’an district in March. Apple said it removed WhatsApp and Threads, which are owned by Meta, from its app store in China.
Users of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger will be able to turn to the new technology, powered by Meta’s latest artificial intelligence model, to obtain information and complete tasks.
Court records, mistakenly made public, tell a story about the birth of ByteDance, its bumpy road to success and the role of the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass’s firm.
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