When Barbara VornDick lifted a yellowed letter from a gray archival box at William & Mary, she didn’t expect to feel a voice grab her by the collar. The handwriting was frantic, the words desperate. “I am now in distress, in ill health, & in a foreign country,” the writer…
Category: Media
AI
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Your Digital Shadow Has a Rap Sheet and Advertisers Know It
The headline almost sounds like a Black Mirror episode that didn’t make it to air: AI companies are training their systems on crime data to sell ads more effectively. Yes, you read that right. The same information that used to live in dusty police databases—arrests, mugshots, court records, neighborhood stats—is…
Media
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The Founders Didn’t Predict TikTok—But They Did Predict Demagogues
If you missed it, The Atlantic just kicked off a 250-year gut check on the American experiment, and Fintan O’Toole opened with a hard truth: our debates about the Founders often sound like a ventriloquist act. We move our lips to say what we want to hear. The package is…
Apocalypse
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Phase Zero – The War That’s Already Started (And We’re Pretending It Hasn’t)
I’ve read a lot of headlines designed to shock. Most don’t stick. But this one from The U.S. Sun stopped me cold: Russia is in “Phase Zero” of World War III. Not “preparing for.” Not “considering.” Already in it. The term comes from the Institute for the Study of War…
AI
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The Great AI News Heist
There’s a strange kind of zombie apocalypse happening online — not with brains, but with bylines. Across the web, forgotten newspaper URLs are being snatched up, revived, and repurposed into glossy, AI-generated “news sites.” They look real. They sound real. They even cite real people. The only thing missing? Humans….
Apocalypse
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Apocalypse Now—Funded by Venture Capital
A century ago, you needed a pulpit and a microphone to warn about the Antichrist. Now you can do it with a slide deck and venture funding. The Guardian reported this week that Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most theatrical billionaires, has been delivering sold-out “Antichrist lectures” in San…
Culture
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When Outrage Becomes Oxygen – How the Entertainment Era Turned Politics Into a Blood Sport
A South Carolina judge’s house burns to the ground. An election worker quits after being doxxed for following the law. A school board meeting devolves into a viral clip designed to make one side look stupid. We scroll past it all and barely blink. That numbness—that casual acceptance of civic…