If you read me regularly you know I am increasingly concerned about the weaponization of misinformation, particularly give the development of AI. This study shows just how easily and how widely misinformation can be used to shape the thinking of people who access information largely through social media. This is a huge issue, in my mind, and could end up warping the 2024 election outcome particularly because it can indoctrinate the youth vote. Scary stuff.
Recent data from Google found that 40% of Gen Z now prefers platforms like TikTok and Instagram to traditional search engines. Credit: Yui Mok / PA
Teenagers are significantly more likely to believe online conspiracy theories than older generations, a new study has shown, underscoring the broad impacts of gen Z’s relationship with social media.
Findings from Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit that fights misinformation, showed that 60% of 13-17-year-old Americans surveyed agreed with four or more harmful conspiracy statements – compared with just 49% of adults. For teens who spend four or more hours a day on any single social media platform, the figure was as high as 69%.
“There’s a prejudice towards believing that youth will save us from the ills created by the former generations, but when it comes to misinformation, there are no future generations to save us from the damage that we’ve caused,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH.
“This should be a clarion call – very simply, if these young people hold these beliefs in future years of their […]
The business of gutting libraries in Red states is getting worse and worse, and I am becoming very concerned that this obsession with indoctrination over education is going to cripple the Red states for a generation and, in turn, harm our country and our democracy. This Republican anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-fact-based thought is doing real damage to our society. And the worst of it is that it is being perpetrated by ordinary voters who whose minds have been manipulated by misinformation.
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon / The Daily Beast / Getty / Granbury ISD
At 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 2, when Assistant Principal Danny Guidry walked past the high school library in Granbury, Texas, he saw two figures moving in the darkened interior.
“There were flashing lights from the phones looking at some books,” he later reported in an email to the district office made public by a parent’s open records request.
Guidry entered and asked if he could be of assistance. He informed the two they were in a restricted part of the building.
“It was dark and difficult to see,” he wrote. “One of the ladies identified herself as Karen Lowery, Board Trustee.”
Lowery is indeed a member of the Granbury Independent School District board. Security video would show that she and another woman, Carolyn Reeves, had entered the library an hour and a half earlier, around 8 a.m., repeatedly switching the lights off when a motion detector turned them on.
Exactly what the two were doing there remains a mystery, and they have failed to respond to […]
Sakura Murakami and Tom Bateman, Reporters - Reuters
Stephan:
Tomorrow, Japan is going to dump into the ocean the radioactive water it has accumulated in hundreds of storage tanks after the Fukishima nuclear disaster. There has never been a discharge of this quantity. No one, as this article describes, although the Japanese feel it is safe, quite knows what will happen. Like Chernobyl a nuclear crisis event leaves a host of problems. That plus the unsolved waste problem is why I think there is no wellbeing oriented energy option involving nuclear reactors.
An aerial view shows the storage tanks for treated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan August 22, 2023. Credit: Kyodo / REUTERS
TOKYO, JAPAN – Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.
The plan, approved two years ago by the Japanese government as crucial to decommissioning the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) (9501.T), has also faced criticism from local fishing groups, who fear reputational damage and a threat to their livelihood.
“I have asked Tepco to swiftly prepare for the water discharge in accordance with the plan approved by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, and expect the water release to start on August 24, weather conditions permitting,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Tuesday morning.
The announcement comes a day after the government said it had won “a degree of understanding” […]
ANTHONY SALVANTO, KABIR KHANNA, JENNIFER DE PINTO, and FRED BACKUS, - CBS News
Stephan:
I think this poll is very important. It is confirming that about a third of Americans, do not live in a fact-based reality. It is a kind of psychological altered state of consciousness. This is the Un-United States of America going into the 2024 election. And those of us who seek to foster wellbeing must plan for that.
Well, there’s no debate about this: Right now, the Republican Party would easily re-nominate Donald Trump for 2024. And it’s not close.
The former president now holds his largest lead over his rivals in our polling amid his recent legal troubles. In fact, most of his voters cite those troubles as yet one more reason to show him support.
His nearest — but not too near — rival Ron DeSantis has fallen even further back. Everyone else is in single digits.
Trump voters’ affinity for him seems to insulate the former president from attacks whether or not he debates this week, because voters basically say they aren’t receptive to such criticism.
Instead, a whopping nine in 10 GOP primary voters want the other candidates to focus on making the case for themselves, but not against Trump.
(In interviews conducted before there were reports that Trump has decided to skip the debate, his voters were likelier than others to both say he should participate in the event and that they intend to watch.)
Explaining Trump’s dominance post-indictments
First, as was the case with Trump’s previous indictments, Republican primary voters’ overwhelming concern about the Georgia charges […]
Here is some good news about the Amazon. The voters of Ecuador seem to be smarter than American Republican voters and recognize the importance of the Amazon in planetary wellbeing.
Aerial view of the Tambococha oil platform of state-owned Petroecuador in Yasuní National Park, northeastern Ecuador. Credit: Rodrigo Buendia / AFP / Getty
Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park is home to one of the most biodiverse concentrations of plant and animal life on Earth. In an historic vote of nearly 60 percent in favor, Ecuadorian citizens chose to stop the development of new oil wells in the park, the country’s National Electoral Commission said.
Approval of the referendum means about 726 million barrels of oil will stay in the ground, reported The Guardian.
The park is also the home of three of the last “uncontacted” Indigenous communities on the planet, the Taromenane, Tagaeri and Dugakaeri people, who live in voluntary isolation, Reuters reported.
By passing the referendum, Ecuador became one of the first nations to vote to restrict the extraction of resources. The measure was passed during the first round of the country’s presidential elections.
“Today is a historic day! As a Waorani woman and mother, I feel overjoyed with Ecuadorians’ resounding decision to stop oil drilling in my people’s sacred homeland,” said Nemonte Nenquimo, an […]
