All posts tagged: Mark

Single-Player Politics | Mark O’Connell

Single-Player Politics | Mark O’Connell

Published by skeptic

Since the assassination on December 4 of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, by an alleged shooter whose apparent motive was righteous fury at the iniquity and injustice of America’s profit-driven system of health care, one thing we have been hearing again and again is that political violence changes nothing. This idea has been expressed more or less uniformly by countless and diverse figures from the world of politics, business, and the media. Everyone keeps saying it, and everyone agrees: violence is no way to bring about change.  Everyone keeps saying it, you suspect, to ward off the suspicion, even perhaps the certain knowledge, of its being completely untrue. If violence changed nothing, would American taxpayers have spent over $824 billion last year on maintaining the world’s most powerful and deadly military force? If violence changed nothing, would the United States exist in the first place? “Violence,” as the Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown put it, “is as American as cherry pie.” Thomas Jefferson’s more celebrated remark about the tree of liberty having to be …

Mark Cuban offers to fund government tech unit that was cut in the middle of the night

Mark Cuban offers to fund government tech unit that was cut in the middle of the night

Published by skeptic

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban waded into the latest government tech shake-up on Saturday, posting an unexpected offer of support for newly laid-off federal workers on the social network Bluesky. His message, which quickly gained traction, urged the displaced engineers and designers to turn the upheaval to their advantage. “If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company,” wrote Cuban. “It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably created. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and/or help.” Cuban’s offer came after the government’s General Services Administration (GSA) abruptly gutted its 18F technology unit, which helps other government agencies build, buy, and share tech products. Per Politico, the layoffs affected roughly 70 individuals who learned the news around 1 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. Among other things, the unit had reportedly built Login.gov, a secure and private way for the public to access services at government agencies, including …

New neuroscience research shows COVID-19 leaves mark on young adult brains

New neuroscience research shows COVID-19 leaves mark on young adult brains

Published by José

A new study published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity has found that young adults who have recovered from COVID-19 show distinct patterns of brain activity during cognitive tasks, even if they perform normally on those tasks. These brain activity changes are similar to those seen in much older adults and are particularly pronounced in individuals reporting “brain fog.” The research suggests that COVID-19 may have subtle, yet significant, effects on brain function that are not always captured by standard cognitive tests. Scientists have been increasingly concerned about the long-term effects of COVID-19, especially on cognitive function. Since the emergence of the virus in late 2019, it has spread globally, infecting hundreds of millions of people. While older adults and individuals with pre-existing conditions are known to be more vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19, young adults have been disproportionately affected by infection rates, partly due to the role of university campuses as potential hubs for virus transmission. Adding to these concerns, a significant number of individuals who recover from COVID-19 report experiencing ongoing cognitive problems, …

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Published by Sam

Fourteen years after earning an Oscar nomination for playing Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has very proudly shed his former character’s hoodie and fuck-you flip-flops. But that hasn’t stopped the world from asking the actor about his most famous role. Eisenberg has been frequently questioned about Zuckerberg while Oscar campaigning for his film A Real Pain, which earned him a best-original-screenplay nomination. During a recent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today, Eisenberg said that he hasn’t been following the Facebook and Meta chief’s “life trajectory, partly because I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that.” Distance from Zuckerberg has not made Eisenberg’s heart grow fonder, either. “It’s not like I played a great golfer or something and now people think I’m a great golfer,” he continued. “It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic—taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.” In recent months, the same man whom screenwriter Aaron Sorkin depicted as an innovative …

Director Claire van Kampen dies on husband Mark Rylance’s birthday | Ents & Arts News

Director Claire van Kampen dies on husband Mark Rylance’s birthday | Ents & Arts News

Published by skeptic

Director Claire van Kampen has died, aged 71, on the 65th birthday of her husband, Sir Mark Rylance. She died in the German town of Kassel on Saturday morning after being diagnosed with cancer. A statement, shared on behalf of Sir Mark and her daughter Juliet, described her as “one of the funniest and (most) inspiring women we have ever known”. It added: “We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter, and love. “Ring the bell, sound the trumpets reverie, something is done, something is beginning. One of the great wise ones has passed.” Van Kampen was a concert pianist, composer, playwright, theatre director and worked in various roles at Shakespeare’s Globe for around two decades. She wrote and performed for theatre, radio, television and film soundtracks, and was the first female musical director for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. Van Kampen was previously married to architect Christopher van Kampen, with whom she had two daughters Juliet and Nataasha. Read more:£20k reward to identify parents of abandoned …

Mark Zuckerberg Is at War With Himself

Mark Zuckerberg Is at War With Himself

Published by José

Mark Zuckerberg is sick of the woke politics governing his social feeds. He’s tired of the censorship and social-media referees meddling in free speech. We’re in a “new era” now, he said in a video today, announcing that he plans to replace Facebook and Instagram fact-checkers with a system of community notes similar to the one on X, the rival platform owned by Elon Musk. Meta will also now prioritize “civic content,” a.k.a. political content, not hide from it. The social-media hall monitors have been so restrictive on “topics of immigration and gender that they’re out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerberg said with the zeal of an activist. He spoke about “a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech” following “nonstop” concerns about misinformation from the “legacy media” and four years of the United States government “pushing for censorship.” It is clear from Zuckerberg’s announcement that he views establishment powers as having tried and failed to solve political problems by suppressing his users. That message is sure to delight Donald Trump and the …

High-potency cannabis use leaves a distinct mark on DNA

High-potency cannabis use leaves a distinct mark on DNA

Published by José

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used drugs in the world. Yet there’s still much we don’t know about it and what effects it has on the brain – including why cannabis triggers psychosis in some people who use the drug. But our recent study has just brought us closer to understanding the biological impact of high-potency cannabis use. Published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, our study demonstrates that high-potency cannabis leaves a distinct mark on DNA. We also found that these DNA changes were different in people experiencing their first episode of psychosis compared to users who’d never experienced psychosis. This suggests looking at how cannabis use modifies DNA could help identify those most at risk of developing psychosis. The amount of THC (Delta-9_tetrahydrocannabinol), the main ingredient in cannabis that makes people feel “high”, has been steadily increasing since the 1990s in the UK and US. In Colorado, where the drug is legal, it’s possible to buy cannabis with 90% THC. While THC is one of over 144 other chemicals found in the …

Chaplains at the polls, prayers by faith leaders mark historic Election Day

Chaplains at the polls, prayers by faith leaders mark historic Election Day

Published by skeptic

WASHINGTON (RNS) — At the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women Inc., about midway along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, the Revs. Barbara Williams-Skinner and Jim Wallis sat in a briefing room to get a noontime update Tuesday (Nov. 5) from state faith leaders working with some 900 poll chaplains across the country.  Most of the poll chaplains, all volunteers for Faiths United to Save Democracy, an organization convened by Williams-Skinner, Wallis and Sojourners President Adam Russell Taylor since the last presidential race to keep peace at the voting sites, reported a relatively problem-free election so far. Not far from downtown, at Washington National Cathedral, some 300 people had stopped by to pray during an Election Day vigil before the cathedral’s clergy, with other Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, shared prayers and sacred readings from their traditions at a service that began at noon. It was a quintessentially Washington day, as, five miles apart, people focused on prayer and the polls after a fraught lead-up to a historic …

Mark Zuckerberg Pledges to Fill Facebook With Even More AI Slop

Mark Zuckerberg Pledges to Fill Facebook With Even More AI Slop

Published by José

Oh, good. Slop Rock Instead of stemming the tide of a massive tidal wave of AI slop menacing his platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he welcomes AI-generated content on Facebook and Instagram. During the company’s third-quarter earnings call this week, Zuckerberg promised to “add a whole new category of content which is AI-generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” as quoted by Fortune. Reading between the lines, instead of making the company’s social media platforms a more livable and less ad-infested space, the billionaire is instead choosing to fan the flames — at the same time that Meta pours resources into its own AI. “And I think that that’s gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time,” an optimistic Zuckerberg told investors. Shrimp My Ride We’ve already seen the proliferation of meaning-defying AI slop — such as AI-generated images of  “shrimp Jesus,” an 18-wheeler overflowing with babies, or a police officers hefting massive bibles through floodwaters — infesting content …

Mark Zuckerberg’s 4 steps to approach life

Mark Zuckerberg’s 4 steps to approach life

Published by skeptic

Sign up for The Nightcrawler Newsletter A weekly collection of thought-provoking articles on tech, innovation, and long-term investing from Nightview Capital’s Eric Markowitz. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. This is an installment of The Nightcrawler, a weekly collection of thought-provoking articles on tech, innovation, and long-term investing by Eric Markowitz of Nightview Capital. You can get articles like this one straight to your inbox every Friday evening by subscribing above. Follow him on X: @EricMarkowitz. This week, Lenny Rachitsky spoke with Naomi Gleit, Meta’s Head of Product, who joined as employee #29 back in 2004 when Meta (then Facebook) had just one million users. Today, Meta has nearly 70,000 employees — and over 3.2 billion daily users. The conversation dives into Meta’s historic rise, principles of strategic decision-making, and how shared team goals drive success. But for me, the standout moment in the conversation was Naomi’s personal anecdote of Mark teaching a middle-school class in 2014, in which he shared four essential life lessons — a set of principles Naomi has carried with …