BBC: Kim Kardashian West joins Facebook and Instagram boycott. “Kim Kardashian West and dozens of other celebrities have announced they will freeze their social media accounts to protest against the spread of ‘hate, propaganda and misinformation’.”
Famous People
Stereogum: Noel Gallagher Refuses To Wear A Mask
Stereogum: Noel Gallagher Refuses To Wear A Mask. This quote has some Language in it. You know what I mean. I have censored it a little so my email newsletter has a chance of not getting filtered out. “Noel Gallagher said that he refuses to wear a face mask in a new interview on The Matt Morgan Podcast. ‘I don’t wear a mask, no. The whole f!cking thing is bollocks,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to wear them in Selfridges but you can fucking go down to the pub and be surrounded by every fucking c!unt. Oh well, actually, we don’t have the virus in the pubs, but we have it in Selfridges, oh alright.’ (Just yesterday, England announced new regulations limiting the amount of people gathering to no more than six after COVID-19 cases escalated, though pubs and restaurants are still open.)”
People Magazine: Jillian Michaels Says She Contracted COVID-19 After Letting Her ‘Guard Down for an Hour’
People Magazine: Jillian Michaels Says She Contracted COVID-19 After Letting Her ‘Guard Down for an Hour’. “Jillian Michaels is opening up about her experience with coronavirus. On Tuesday, the fitness trainer, 49, revealed she had contracted COVID-19 ‘several weeks ago’ as she discussed why people should consider not going to the gym amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.”
Columbia Journalism Review: Cable news profits from its obsession with Trump. Viewers are the only victims.
Columbia Journalism Review: Cable news profits from its obsession with Trump. Viewers are the only victims.. “…many outlets have seen sharp increases in readership and subscribers by capitalizing on (and reinforcing) the obsession with Trump. A new tool from Stanford University’s Computer Graphics Lab reveals that cable news has undergone a similar transformation. The Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer enables users to track cable news screen time for anyone they’d like, from 2010 to present.”
Source: Robert Pattinson Has COVID-19, Halting The Batman Production (Vanity Fair)
Vanity Fair: Source: Robert Pattinson Has COVID-19, Halting The Batman Production. “Robert Pattinson is said to have tested positive for the coronavirus, causing filming of The Batman to be halted just days after the superhero drama resumed work at studios outside of London.”
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson: Actor and family had Covid-19 (BBC)
BBC: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson: Actor and family had Covid-19. “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson says he and his family had all contracted Covid-19. The former wrestler, who is now the world’s highest-paid actor, said he, his wife and two daughters caught the virus despite being ‘disciplined’ about health protection. He said the positive tests were ‘a kick in the gut’.”
Elite Daily: Chadwick Boseman Has The Most-Liked Tweet Ever Following His Death
Elite Daily: Chadwick Boseman Has The Most-Liked Tweet Ever Following His Death. “Chadwick Boseman’s death due to colon cancer sent shockwaves through social media, and the sheer amount of engagement the announcement on Twitter has received is a testament to that. Following his death, Chadwick Boseman has the most-liked Tweet ever. The social media company announced the news on Saturday, Aug. 29, just one day after the announcement was posted to Boseman’s account.” The tweet had seven million “likes” as of Sunday, August 30.
Winnipeg Free Press: Neil Young sets sights on ‘corrupt’ Facebook, Google
Winnipeg Free Press: Neil Young sets sights on ‘corrupt’ Facebook, Google. “In the midst of his battle against President Trump, Neil Young has decided to take on a couple of other sizable entities —Facebook and Google. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has announced he’ll be spending thousands of dollars to disconnect his popular Neil Young Archives music site from the two online giants.”
Rolling Stone: Instagram Flags Madonna Post for Spreading False Information on COVID-19
Rolling Stone: Instagram Flags Madonna Post for Spreading False Information on COVID-19. “Madonna has deleted a video from her Instagram that the photo-sharing app had previously flagged for spreading false information about COVID-19. The video featured Dr. Stella Immanuel, a Houston-based doctor who spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., organized by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which has ties to the far-right group, Tea Party Patriots.”
BBC: Andrea Bocelli ‘humiliated’ by Italy’s Covid rules
BBC: Andrea Bocelli ‘humiliated’ by Italy’s Covid rules. “Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli has said he felt “humiliated and offended” by lockdown measures imposed in the country due to coronavirus. ‘I could not leave the house even though I had committed no crime,’ Bocelli said. He also admitted to disobeying lockdown rules and believing the severity of the pandemic had been overblown. His comments will surprise many as he had become a symbol of national unity at the height of the lockdown.”
CNN: I attended a virtual conference with an AI version of Deepak Chopra. It was bizarre and transfixing
CNN: I attended a virtual conference with an AI version of Deepak Chopra. It was bizarre and transfixing. “I was reacting to the fact that Chopra, Stone, Banister and two other people I’d been viewing via Zoom — Laura Ulloa, a peace activist, and Lars Buttler, cofounder and CEO of the AI Foundation and moderator of this panel discussion — were all digital personas created with artificial intelligence. That is, each one of them looked and sounded a lot like the person they were meant to represent. But these ersatz versions of their flesh-and-blood counterparts were built by Buttler’s AI Foundation, a San Francisco company and nonprofit that promotes the idea that each of us should have our own AI identity.”
CNN: How the massive Twitter hack may have happened
CNN: How the massive Twitter hack may have happened. “A group of former Twitter (TWTR) employees who watched in shock as a hack compromised the accounts of some of the most prominent people on the social network, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk, are among those trying to figure out how an attack of such staggering proportions could have happened. As they conduct their unofficial investigation in a closed Slack group, the former employees, including some who were members of Twitter’s security team, are attempting to reconstruct the events leading up to the takeovers based on their knowledge of the social network’s internal protocols and technical systems.”
CNN: Twitter’s massive hack could be even worse than it seems
CNN: Twitter’s massive hack could be even worse than it seems. “The enormous Twitter hack that led to the accounts of a former US president, a possible future president, numerous billionaire businessmen, celebrities and the world’s most valuable company all promoting a bitcoin scam may go down as one of the worst cybersecurity disasters ever to hit a social media company.”
Tom Hanks on surviving coronavirus: ‘I had crippling body aches, fatigue and couldn’t concentrate’ (The Guardian)
The Guardian: Tom Hanks on surviving coronavirus: ‘I had crippling body aches, fatigue and couldn’t concentrate’. “Hanks is used to bowing to the changed landscape. Back in March, while he was filming in Australia, he and his wife, Rita Wilson, became, he says, “the celebrity canaries in the coalmine of all things Covid-19”. They were among the earliest and certainly most famous people in the west to be diagnosed with the virus on 10 March, and were hospitalised for three days. I ask if they have suffered any after effects of the illness.”
The Next Web: New AI project captures Jane Austen’s thoughts on social media
The Next Web: New AI project captures Jane Austen’s thoughts on social media. “The project — called AI|Writer — uses OpenAI’s new text generator API to create simulated conversations with virtual historical figures. The system first works out the purpose of the message and the intended recipient by searching for patterns in the text. It then uses the API‘s internal knowledge of that person to guess how they would respond in their written voice.”
