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The Pegasus hacking tool was just the beginning. A new survey of spyware firms reveals Israeli companies are being used by agencies in Western nations to build perfect dictatorships under democratic guise. This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic! Last week another batch of peaceful pro-Palestine protestors were arrested by British police on suspicion of terrorism offenses, including a disabled man in a wheelchair, as the UK continues its descent into authoritarianism on behalf of Israel. If any of […]

The post Israeli spyware firms are fueling the global surveillance state first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Israeli spyware firms are fueling the global surveillance state appeared first on The Grayzone.

At the Sydney Gleebooks launch of Graeme Turner’s new book Broken, an audience member said: I spend more time on admin than doing my job. I raised the microphone to my mouth to say ‘that is because of moral deskilling’. But it was not my gig, so I didn’t. It would have been very inappropriate. […]

Good motivations for altruistic acts are cross-culturally pervasive

The post People Really Want to Be Good appeared first on Nautilus.

On BBC's The One Show, Ncuti Gatwa offered a very interesting response when asked about his regret over never taking on Daleks or Cybermen.

As a habit I don’t follow the social media of the Department of Homeland Security...

Last week was a bad week of social media posts from the Department of Homeland...

Christian Smalls, a Black labor organizer who took on Amazon and won, just risked his...

You wouldn’t believe some of the stupidity that I don’t let thru into comments. (Well, perhaps you would.) A recent bit suggested that I shouldn’t object to Gaza genocide because after all, I think human population should be lower, and this is lowering it! After a bout of derisive laughter, I thought about it a […]

Trump’s SEC chair just sold his financial services firm for more than $25 million to an unknown buyer — and is set to receive a massive tax break on the proceeds.

Researchers may have elucidated the long-mysterious chain of events that gives us bolts from the heavens

The post From Whence Lightning appeared first on Nautilus.

In 1971, NASA made history with the first moon cruise—and the relic remains

The post The First Lunar Road Trip appeared first on Nautilus.

Weather is what humans experience over our short lives. Climate is a matter for the gods.

The post What Poseidon Is Telling Us appeared first on Nautilus.

Earth scientist Kate Marvel gets personal about climate science

The post You Have Never Felt Climate Change Like This appeared first on Nautilus.

Israel’s main justification for its deadly blockade on Gaza was built on a lie. The New York Times repeated it for months.

The post The New York Times Repeated Israeli Claims of Hamas Stealing Aid Without Evidence appeared first on The Intercept.

Yesterday, Keir Starmer announced that ‘unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza’, the British government will recognise the state of Palestine by September this year. While Starmer will claim that this half-commitment represents major action taken to address the horrors being faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in reality […]

I used AI to make a video that sucks. It is bad. It is boring. But I made it in under an hour. And now it is my entire personality.

To some, my AI-made video that sucks is only that: a video that sucks. A two-minute-long, barely coherent amalgam of regurgitated stock photo tropes used to promote my private business coaching sessions, populated with the kind of really hot women you can only find when you prompt a planet-frying neural computer with the words “really hot women.” The lip-sync is off. The voices are wooden. The breasts are turgid and spine-deforming.

But to me, my video that sucks is a revelation. It is my burning bush. My bodhi tree. It has delivered unto me two pieces of sacred knowledge:

First, videos that suck are the future. If I could make a video that sucks this much in one hour, imagine how hard I could make something suck in two hours, or even three. Through simple extrapolation, it becomes apparent that the amount of suck is bounded only by how many hours I can devote to it when I am not promoting my private business coaching sessions.

A bipartisan bill passed unanimously by the House would sell out working-class investors to private equity under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A sanctioned former Kremlin politician was sued for shares in his multi-billion-dollar fertiliser company. But why did a trio of companies with links to Russian interests in football get involved?

Tech regulation raises some of the thorniest questions of our time — about free speech versus hate speech, copyright versus fair use, truth versus manipulation. Yet these debates are increasingly irrelevant unless states can first establish digital sovereignty. Without the will to enforce laws on multinational corporations, “tech regulation” is a dead letter. Both the […]

My production company, Knuckle Sandwich LLC, is officially suspending active search operations for the most gangster enchilada in the Albuquerque and larger Bernalillo County area.

Initially, our search was a small film crew conducting a half-day television segment. It was meant to be lighthearted and normal, with a funkalicious twist. Around the four-hour mark, we were off the chain and descending into a financial and existential disaster. Albuquerque Police Department, in coordination with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and the New Mexico National Guard, conducted a thorough and extensive search of Bernalillo County drive-ins, dives, holes, spots, hideouts, and stops. Our civilian volunteer search party performed two days’ worth of city searches. Upon their refusal to continue, Knuckle Sandwich LLC held what was not originally called a draft, but upon further reflection, was a draft. In conjunction with the Albuquerque mayor’s office, a reverse curfew was put in place: No one was to return home until the most gangster enchilada was found.

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. To simply assume that economic processes are ergodic and concentrate on ensemble averages — and hence in any relevant sense timeless — is not a sensible way for dealing with the kind of genuine uncertainty that permeates real-world economies. Ergodicity and the crucial distinction between time averages […]