It is unoriginal to refer to Donald Trump as a useful idiot, but the question as to whose idiot invokes both plausible and fantastical theories combined with sundry lampoons on social media. That Trump is Putin’s lapdog, for example, remains a popular theme, but Gil Duran, writing for The New Republic, makes a solid case that Trumpism, and specifically the ...
It’s been nearly ten years since I first heard the term “revenge porn” and wrote a speculative post inspired by then Rep. Jackie Speier’s bill to make the act a federal crime. Much has transpired since then, including the obsolescence of the term “revenge porn” and the progress of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), which has already changed the nature of ...
As the Super Bowl approached and passed, it seemed that one faction of Americans was accusing Taylor Swift of practicing witchcraft on the NFL while another was slagging her for the carbon output of her private jet—reportedly about 8,300 tonnes of CO2e in 2022. And although it is fair to expect owners of private aircraft to fly responsibly, I must ...
Democracy dies in darkness according to the motto of the Washington Post, and this is, of course, just one of many phrases reciting the axiomatic theme that credible and responsibly reported information is the blood of a democratic society like the United States. If true, then why has the “information age” brought democracy itself to the brink of destruction? There ...
By now, many people who pay attention to artists’ rights have read the David Segal New York Times story published on January 13 about the amateur folk duo Bad Dog discovering their songs on major streaming platforms, but with different titles and attributed to a different creator. In what should be a surprise to nobody, it is easy to game ...
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin