Linkage

In early June, Al Jazeera aired a series of disturbing videos revealing what it described as “summary executions”: Israeli soldiers shooting dead several Palestinians walking near the coastal road in the Gaza Strip, on three separate occasions. In each case, the Palestinians appeared unarmed and did not pose any imminent threat to the soldiers.

Such footage is rare, due to the severe constraints faced by journalists in the besieged enclave and the constant danger to their lives. But these executions, which did not appear to have any security rationale, are consistent with the testimonies of six Israeli soldiers who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call following their release from active duty in Gaza in recent months. Corroborating the testimonies of Palestinian eyewitnesses and doctors throughout the war, the soldiers described being authorized to open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians.

The six sources — all except one of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — recounted how Israeli soldiers routinely executed Palestinian civilians simply because they entered an area that the military defined as a “no-go zone.” The testimonies paint a picture of a landscape littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or be eaten by stray animals; the army only hides them from view ahead of the arrival of international aid convoys, so that “images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out.” Two of the soldiers also testified to a systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on fire after occupying them.

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.

Earlier versions of these new imported vapes, exemplified by Elf Bar, are beefier and more colorful than Juuls, and are usually single use, despite containing rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Wired describes a new generation of mostly disposable vapes that, in addition to being extremely cheap and wildly potent, let vapers play games on tiny touchscreens and track their vape’s location on devices that cost as little as $5 apiece. The devices are a grotesque example of electronic waste, viral marketing, and the easily exploitable idiosyncrasies of cross-border commerce in 2024.

But they’re also an example of a bigger trend that’s been gaining momentum for years. If you’ve spent much time on the internet’s burgeoning discount-retail platforms — Temu, TikTok Shop, and Wish, to name a few — disposable vapes with screens and logic boards sound almost reasonable. On Temu, for example, some of the top-selling items in the electronics category are Bluetooth earbuds with touchscreens built in to the case with interfaces of extremely dubious value that can be used to control playback, show screensavers, or just fidget, some of which cost less than $10. There are $4 USB cables with built-in screens to tell you how fast you’re charging; $7 cigarette lighters covered in LED lights and displays; USB hubs that double as external displays; $65 dressers with touchscreens; $48 toasters with software interfaces; $16 rechargeable neck coolers with LED readouts; hundred-dollar motorcycle backpacks with two LCD screens; $18 school backpacks with voice-activated flashing displays.

In short, although policies to improve broadband access are important, policies that help ensure the availability of low-cost devices are also essential.

But advocates of digital equity are not the only constituent groups concerned with the supply and accessibility of computing devices. Environmental and labor rights activists advocate for policies that extend the lifecycle of existing devices, which can help to minimize e-waste and protect the viability of the repair and refurbishing labor markets, respectively. Making computer repair cheaper and bolstering secondhand and refurbishing markets better ensures that low-income consumers can afford to maintain the devices they already own and that they can purchase devices as needed (Fosdick, 2012; Islam et al., 2021). Extending the life of a device through repair is often a more affordable choice than purchasing a brand-new device (Svensson-Hoglund et al., 2021). Furthermore, optimizing the lifecycle of existing devices helps exert market pressures on manufacturer's pricing of new devices, helping to keep down the cost of brand new devices (Islam et al., 2021; Leclerc & Badami, 2020). Thus, policies championed to reduce e-waste and protect the right-to-repair (R2R) can also enhance digital equity.

Policies that have mutually beneficial outcomes for different sectors have been described as multisolving innovations (Dearing & Lapinski, 2020). Multisolving innovations can broaden the coalition of activists in support of a given policy issue and can be strategically framed to appeal to constituent bases that might otherwise be disinterested or even antagonistic (e.g., framing environmental policies around health outcomes to appeal to conservatives) to an issue.

Gah! You don't fix a food shortage with interest rates!

A third of the food price increases in the UK in 2023 was down to climate change, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think-tank.

“There’s a material impact from climate change on global food prices,” says Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC. “It’s easy to shrug off individual events as being isolated, but we’ve just seen such a sequence of abnormal events and disruptions that, of course, add up to climate change impact.”

Such repeated events result in “a permanent impact on the ability to supply food,” argues Neumann. Food price rises once considered temporary are becoming a source of persistent inflationary pressure.

Globally, annual food inflation rates could rise by up to 3.2 percentage points per year within the next decade or so as a result of higher temperatures, according to a recent study by the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. 

The posts seen by TBIJ show Bayswater parents discussing how their treatment of their trans children has led to them being reported to social services.

One posted that a school counsellor made a referral because “my [child] is fearful living in our home, we have refused to buy [them] certain (boys) clothes and we restrained [them]”. A subsequent post noted the child was “not concerned that Mum and Dad have been referred to social services”.

Members are aware that some of their behaviour is considered abuse. One user posted a link to an article about anti-LGBTQ+ domestic abuse, with the caption: “Examples include monitoring interaction with friends. Imagine it also includes refusal to affirm.”

Another parent sarcastically responded “Yes, we are abusive!”, with the original commenter retorting: “One day, they may thank us for that ‘abuse’”.

[…]

Many Bayswater parents restrict their children’s internet access. “I knew the Internet was a major factor [in my child’s gender identity] so I (famously) drowned [their] iPhone in a jug of salty sugar water whilst [they were] in the shower one day,” posted one parent.

A suggested website blocklist on the forum includes LGBTQ+ charities like Mermaids and Stonewall, websites that sell binders, and even Childline, the NSPCC’s counselling service. 

Heartbreaking and terrifying.

“An amendment to the Schools Bill is being discussed in Parliament tomorrow,” read the post on an online forum run by the Bayswater Support Group, which describes itself as the UK’s only support organisation run by and for parents of trans children and young people.

“If passed it will allow greater transparency about what is being taught in schools. We have been contacted for a short piece of evidence,” the mother said. “Does anyone have the experience of their autistic child identifying as trans following learning about it at school? Ideally a situation where the school went onto transition the child.”

The following day, on 30 June 2022, during a parliamentary debate about relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), the Conservative MP Miriam Cates argued that learning about trans identities was damaging to children.

“One parent of a 15-year-old with a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome said she discovered that without her knowledge, her [child’s] school had started the process of socially transitioning her child, and has continued to do so despite the mother’s objections,” said Cates, who is standing again for her seat Penistone and Stockbridge, in South Yorkshire, in the upcoming election.

The story Cates told the House of Commons closely mirrored the request posted on Bayswater’s private channel on Discord, an online message board. She even named the group during the debate, saying it had reported “a surge” of parents contacting Bayswater after their children learned about trans people at school.

[…]

Bayswater’s public concern about children’s safety strikes a marked contrast to posts on its Discord channel, where parents wrote of being reported to social services over “restraining” their child and called a shelter for LGBTQ+ abuse survivors “a church for the gender faithful”. A post on the forum recommended blocking children’s access to the website for Childline, the NSPCC’s counselling service.

But the only long-term solution is that Europe needs to phase out fossil fuels and increase renewable energy production. And to do this fast enough to meet existing climate commitments it is necessary to reduce excess energy demand. Achieving this in a just and equitable way requires two things: first, reducing the purchasing power of the rich (who use extremely high levels of energy), and second, ensuring that everyone has guaranteed access to the essential goods and services they need to live a good life. 

This forces us to confront a paradox at the heart of our economic system. Wealthy economies have high levels of production, with resource and energy use vastly exceeding sustainable boundaries, but they still fail to meet many basic human needs. This occurs because, under capitalism, the goal of production is not to improve well-being or achieve social progress, but to maximise and accumulate corporate profit. So we get plenty of SUVs, fast fashion and planned obsolescence, but chronic shortages of essential goods and services like public transit, affordable housing and universal healthcare.

Ecological economists argue that one of the best ways to deal with this problem is to establish universal public services. Public services mobilise production around human needs and well-being, and can deliver strong social outcomes with lower levels of resource and energy use. It also enables a more rapid, coordinated shift to more sustainable systems. By decommodifying and democratising key sectors such as food, mobility and housing, we can solve the cost-of-living crisis – by directly reducing prices – and help solve the climate crisis at the same time. This requires reversing the current tendency of neoliberal governments to defund and dismantle public services, which has led to the extraordinary crisis that is presently engulfing the NHS and the railways in the UK.

Counting the existing empty homes in the UK is not a simple task.

There are many reasons why a home might not have a permanent occupier: it could be a second home or it could be that the owner is carrying out renovation work on the property before moving in, for example.

Generally speaking, a home that is unoccupied for six months or more is considered long-term empty. The length of time a home is left empty is often determined by council tax records.

The most recent government statistics, released in November 2023, showed there were 261,189 long-term empty properties in England. That figure represents a rise of 12,556 homes compared to 2022, up 5% annually and 16% since before the pandemic in 2019.

[…]

Overall, taking into account the number of short-term empty homes, second homes, empty homes paying a council tax premium and unoccupied homes that are exempt from council tax, more than one million dwellings are empty in England. That’s an increase of 60,000 since 2018.

The Local Government Association and Empty Homes Network’s (EHN) research found 4% of the country’s homes are empty.

A rep for Paramount told IndieWire: “As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we have introduced more streamlined versions of our sites, driving fans to Paramount+ to watch their favorite shows.”

For now though, many of these series are not currently available on Paramount+, such as “The Colbert Report” or “The Nightly Show.” Even “The Daily Show” has only two of the most recent seasons, encompassing 2024 and 2023, available, despite decades of the show’s history. “South Park” clips used to be hosted on Comedy Central’s website, but the only place to watch full episodes of those are via Max, not Paramount+.

The likely reason for this? Cost cutting. In a town hall this week, Paramount’s “Office of the CEO” including co-chiefs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins, expressed plans to save $500 million in order to stave off profit drops and one day make Paramount+ profitable.