A Simple Investigation #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 17) Odo falls for a femme fatale

Rewatching ST:DS9 A duo of knobby-faced macguffin-hunters, bantering like the crooks from Home Alone, rough up a bumpy-foreheaded alien, then vaporize him. In Quark’s, Bashir is happily casting his friends Dax and O’Brien in his next unnamed-for-copyright-reasons British superspy holodeck adventure, Operation Nudge-Wink. Odo declines, looking uncomfortable. I had never seen this episode before. What…

AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists

A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to restore The Associated Press’ full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that the government…

The Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 11) A serial killer targets Kira’s former resistance colleagues

Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves), a pleasant-looking Bajoran monk welcomes guests to a “days of atonement” retreat, and is zapped by a beam of light. In the infirmary, the very pregnant Kira, griping comically that the herbs she’s been prescribed mean sedatives don’t work, learns that Latha, formerly a violent member…

No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.

Everyone who is reading this article in 2024 grew up in an era where a photograph was, by default, a representation of the truth. A staged scene with movie effects, a digital photo manipulation, or more recently, a deepfake — these were potential deceptions to take into account, but they were outliers in the realm…

My daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25 with @frontporchtheatricals

My daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25 with @frontporchtheatricals Similar:Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose wheth…Spring 2025 Final Grades Submitted!The Missing Will,…

Delightfully geeky news story about a legal kerfuffle over typefaces

I’m very amused at this nerdy news story about some tension between a judge who asks for legible documents and a lawyer who files documents with flasher typography.   While I recognize that language changes and the distinction between “font” and “typeface” is unimportant to the general public, I teach my journalism students that historically…

Travel trouble, gun restrictions and no more ‘Mr Trump’: the trials of life as a felon

It’s unlikely to be at the forefront of the former president’s mind as he reflects on the verdict, but one immediate consequence is that Trump will probably lose the honorific title of “Mr” in the news pages of the UK’s Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph’s style guide states: “Defendants in criminal court cases … are to be referred…

At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club broke, unleashing devastation on the valley below.)

At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club broke, unleashing devastation on the valley below.) Similar:Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have…

She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all

Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light…

Geometric shapes, with several embedded figures that could be dancing or raging, occupy the upper left corner of a mostly blank canvas, with streaks that suggest the artist's own interrupted life.

A.I. ‘Completes’ Keith Haring’s Intentionally Unfinished Painting

After learning of his AIDS diagnosis, artist Keith Haring created the work, “Unfinished Painting” (1989), which is mostly a blank canvas, with streaks that evoke his own interrupted, incomplete life. Someone who thought it was “so sad” that the painting was unfinished used AI to “complete what he couldn’t finish.” Needless to say, the bot…

Skeleton Crew at Barebones

Support the arts in your community. Similar:Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose wheth…The Missing Will, by Agatha Christie (WAOB Audio Theatre)Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player…

Horrifying deepfake tricks employee into giving away $25 million

No names in this single-source anecdote out of Hong Kong, credited to “Senior Superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching.” The employee joined a video call with who he thought was the business’s chief financial officer. He was initially suspicious after a message from the CFO mentioned a ‘secret transaction’, suggesting it was a phishing scam…. However, after other…

The Supreme Court could soon change the internet forever — here’s what you need to know 

There’s a history of case law protecting the rights of privately owned publishers and social networks to make their own editorial decisions — including algorithmically sorted content. The U.S. Court of Appeals (11th Circuit) ruling in May 2022, which blocked Florida’s law, stated “while the Constitution protects citizens from governmental efforts to restrict their access to social…

Hard Time #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 19) O’Brien deals with the implanted memories of a 20-year prison sentence

Rewatching ST:DS9 A haggard O’Brien, with a scraggly beard, is released from an alien prison. He seems disoriented… “I can’t leave. Where would I go to?” A concerned Kira watches as smug aliens infodump that they punish offenders by inserting extended memories of incarceration — twenty years, in O’Brien’s case. Sisko explains to Keiko that…