There’s a moment every media veteran has when they look around the room, realize every kid is staring at a phone, and think: Ah. We’re screwed. The AP story about teens distrusting the news didn’t shock me. What did catch me off guard was how early the rot set in….
Category: Media
AI
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The Prison Call That Never Ends — Because the AI Is Still Listening
I was reading a piece in MIT Technology Review the other day — here’s the link since credit matters: https://www.technologyreview.com/ — and the thing stuck with me wasn’t the technical trick Securus built. It wasn’t the “detecting contemplated crimes” angle either. What stopped me was the quiet part: inmates are…
Culture
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The Skies Aren’t Turbulent — The Passengers Are. And Their Mouths Are Even Worse.
Something snapped in this country. I don’t know when it happened — maybe right after the airlines decided a “snack” was now six pretzels in a zip bag — but the behavior in airports has gone feral. And the language? Off the charts. We’re talking full-volume obscenities that used to…
Humor
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The Daredevil Who Rode a Unicycle While Carrying Seven Bowling Balls
There’s a certain personality you meet in the wide-open states — the ones with too much sky, too much quiet, and way too much room for ideas that should’ve died on the launchpad. You find them in Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Washington, Oregon. Folks who grew up around space, real…
Culture
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The Great Chili Stampede-When a Viral Rumor Turned a Village Farm Into a Free-For-All
There’s a special kind of chaos that only social media can produce — the kind where a village wakes up expecting a normal workday and instead finds half the province rummaging through its chili fields like they’re at a clearance sale. That’s exactly what happened in Liujiangou, a rural village…
Culture
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China’s Robot Strip-Show-When a Tech Demo Turns Into a Live Dissection
Somewhere between a TED Talk and a magic show gone sideways, a Chinese robotics firm decided the only way to calm the internet was to cut open its humanoid robot — live, onstage, in front of an audience that expected a product launch and ended up watching synthetic surgery. I…
Culture
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A Life Sentence, Zero Vegemite and One Lawsuit Australia Didn’t See Coming
There’s no shortage of strange legal battles in this world, though every so often one comes along that forces you to stop scrolling, blink twice, and mutter, “Yeah… that tracks.”That was my reaction when I read about a man in Victoria serving a life sentence who decided he’s had enough…
Culture
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Holiday Travel Chaos Hits New High With Mile-High Meltdown
Thanksgiving week is already the busiest, most patience-draining travel stretch of the year. People are packed into airports like they’re waiting for free Beyoncé tickets. Lines everywhere. Tension everywhere. Delays everywhere. And that’s before you factor in the one person who decides to turn a routine inconvenience into a Broadway…
Media
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How a Foodie Freeloader Exposed NYC’s Soft Spot for Small Crimes
New York has seen its share of characters: subway poets, rooftop pigeon trainers, guys selling “vintage” iPhone 6s outside the L train. But every once in a while someone shows up who just… breaks the simulation. Enter Pei Chung, the foodie influencer who apparently views every restaurant in the five…
Humor
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The 100 Things Humans Fear Most And Somehow Driving Beats Dying
There’s something beautifully chaotic about seeing all of humanity’s deepest anxieties squeezed into a single word cloud. And not a subtle one, either — this thing looks like a stress bomb went off in Microsoft Paint. Right in the center, the biggest word of all: job. Not “death,” not “illness,”…