The 218th Block: Remember when The Economist went UwU like a Gen Z teen?

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Jul 07, 2024

This week…

Your reading time is about 7 minutes. Let’s start.

A screenshot of the heading and lead image from an article in The Economist. The headline reads, "Britain's Conservatives are losing as they governed. Meekly." The subhead reads, "UwU Conservativism, and the end of smol government." The image, illustrated by Nate Kitch, is an image of then prime minister Rishi Sunak with sad puppy eyes and with two index fingers pointing inwards towards each other. — Screenshot of a June 19th article from *The Economist*(!), because I thought it’s appropriate for this week’s news cycle. (**Nate Kitch** / *The Economist*)

Remember in #214 when I said it was my Super Bowl weekend because it was the EU elections? It’s the Super Bowl week this week, that’s for sure!

The reformist who wants to revive nuclear talks with the West, Masoud Pezeshkian, defeated hardliner Saeed Jalili in the Iranian presidential election.
The UK said goodbye to 14 years of Tory government, which included highlights such as Brexit, a lettuce that lasted longer than Liz Truss’ prime ministership, and the first PM of Asian descent in Rishi Sunak.
Also, south-east of the English Channel, the far right will not take control of the French legislative assembly after a left-wing upset. The left-green alliance and Emmanuel Macron’s centrists’ strategy to stand down candidates in the runoffs to avoid vote splitting paid off and pushed Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s National Rally to third place. Gabriel Attal, prime minister only since January, is resigning. I wonder if The Economist will publish a Gen Z meme for us!

For now, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

ICYMI: The Previous Block was about bad communication. FWIW:

Kenya protests echo a year of youth uprisings across Africa by Kim Harrisberg, Bukola Adebayo, and Nita Bhalla for Context.
Half of Singapore’s e-commerce scams now happen on WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram by Nicholas Yong for Rest of World.

CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.

COOL APPS

Cambodia now has its own version of WhatsApp. Critics fear it could be used for surveillance

Heather Chen for CNN:

Cambodian strongman leader Hun Sen has thrown his weight behind a new homegrown messaging app, which critics say is a way for the government to monitor and undermine political discussion in the country.
CoolApp, launched this month to rival WhatsApp and Telegram, will make it “difficult for foreigners to interfere with our information,” the former prime minister wrote in a post on his official Facebook page this week, adding that he was mindful of “national security.”
“It is the first-ever Cambodian program and used within the Cambodian security domain,” he wrote. “Other countries have their own social media means of communication like China’s WeChat, Vietnam’s Zalo, South Korea’s Kakao Talk and Russia’s Telegram, so in Cambodia, we have … our own product,” he added.

Coming from one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, this tracks. Loosely linked:

Pakistan’s Punjab seeks social media ban on security concerns by Mubasher Bukhari for Reuters.
TikTok is an unrivalled trendsetter. Will its influence last? by Anne D’Innocenzio, Haleluya Hadero, and Dee-Ann Durbin for AP.
Noplace, a mashup of Twitter and Myspace for Gen Z, hits No. 1 on the App Store by Sarah Perez for Tech Crunch.
Adam Mosseri on the first year of Threads by Casey Newton for Platformer.

GO AI!

AI takes spotlight at Bucheon Fantasy Film Festival with conference, dedicated AI competition

Patrick Frater for Variety:

The 15-titles in its AI competition are partially drawn from specialty AI festivals and include four films from home country South Korea: Hansl Von Kwon’s One More Pumpkin, which won the Grand Prize and Audience Award at the Dubai AI Film Festival, Park Sungwon’s Under the Sign of the Moon, Bae Junwon’s Snowfall, and Cha Sehwan’s Final Scene. All four showcase the image and sound perfection that modern AI technology can implement today, and stand out through brilliant imagination, fresh screenplays, and character realisation,” the festival said. The KRW15 million ($11,000) prizes will be chosen by a (human) jury consisting of Ferdi Alici, Kim Tae-yong, Sten-Khristian Saluveer and Shin Chul.

Uh… good for them, ig. Loosely linked:

Brazil blocks Meta from using posts to train AI by Malu Cursino for BBC.
Facial recognition at checkout: Convenient or creepy? by Monika Warzecha for The Walrus.
AI stole my book and sold it online by Lyz Lenz for Men Yell At Me.
Instagram’s ‘Made with AI’ label swapped out for ‘AI info’ after photographers’ complaints by Richard Lawler for The Verge

GO SPORTS!

How AI cat memes saved me from toxic gym bro culture

Solomon Pace-McCarrick for Dazed:

Among adolescent and young adults, greater social media usage has, in particular, been associated with symptoms of muscle dysmorphia. But what can be done? I recently came across something that might be providing an unlikely solution (at least for me): a specific brand of AI cat memes.
The format runs something this: an AI-generated image of an anthropomorphised cat undergoes some sort of emotional trauma that is resolved through hitting the gym and becoming a hyper-muscular giga-cat, invariably told – slideshow-style – to a cat-voiced cover of Sia’s “Unstoppable” (fittingly titled “Unstopmeomeo”). A clear satire on the pervasiveness of gym bro content, these videos accrue well over a million likes on Instagram and receive comments like “Meowtivation”, “The moral of the story is: meow meow”, or, simply, “Meow meow”.

Meow meowed meowly. Loosely linked:

AI writer served by Wimbledon and IBM commits double fault by Emine Sinmaz for The Guardian.
How NBC convinced Al Michaels to embrace his AI voice for Olympics coverage by Tom Kludt for Vanity Fair.
Olympics 2024: what new social media guidelines mean for athletes and their sponsors by Kalyckan Van Gensen (Stellenbosch University) for The Conversation.
Using AI to transform the Olympic experience for fans, organisers, athletes and viewers by Sarah Vickers, Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Games Office at IOC.
Russian-linked cybercampaigns put a bull’s-eye on France. Their focus? The Olympics and elections by Lori Hinnant for AP.

What I read, listen, and watch

Book cover of Fatal Inventions (2011) by Dorothy Roberts.

I’m reading Fatal Inventions (2011) by Dorothy Roberts. Although not a new book (and none of the ideas presented in the book were new to me), it’s good to get a refresher now and again. I was reading something else earlier this week but returned the book mid-way because it was too full of woo woo conspirituality bs.

I’m listening to the psychology behind extremism and how politics is driving it on The Guardian’s Science Weekly.

I’m watching a short documentary on storing data in DNA, produced by Fintan McDonnell for Context.

Chart of the week

One of the findings from this year’s Digital News Report by Reuters Institute suggested growing concerns about misinformation amongst those surveyed (n = 94,943). According to the report, it is highest in some of the countries holding polls this year, including South Africa (81 per cent), the US (72 per cent) and the UK (70 per cent). Among the false or misleading information that respondents reported to have seen include topics related to politics (36 per cent, up from 29 per cent in 2023), COVID-19 (30 per cent, same as last year), and cost of living (28 per cent, up by 6 per cent compared to the previous year).

The Starting Block

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