[nonostantement #269] - age of average / amazon sidewalk / deepfake porn

NOW WITH MORE LINKS!

Welcome to nonostantement: a weekly newsletter with irregular, fresh, and light-hearted stuff found all over the Internet.

Ciao, my name is Joele.
I am an Italian consultant living in Barcelona, Spain.
I spend a lot of time online (doing my job, and stuff like that).
I send this email every Sunday, and it contains all the most interesting links I’ve found during the week.
I like 🍕.

Some music for you: Telemachus - Banshee Riddim and Monster Rally - Sister Owls and Flying Lotus - Melt!

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Wheatfield - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, by Agnes Denes

#PEOPLE

• Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
  Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can

• [Video] - Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu
  A half-hour documentary about the last day of hot metal typesetting at the NYT.

• CatGPT
  Meow.

• Why the definition of design might need a change
  When we unpack its current meaning, we may find that we want — and need — to retool the word yet again.

• WeWork mugs for $500: 10 of the strangest merch items from companies that crashed
  FTX fortune cookies and Theranos gift cards offer souvenirs from recent business disasters.

• [Video] - The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse
  Clickbait Title: I spent three months living in the metaverse and now I'm starving.

• [Video] - EXIT SUIT - An Exoskeleton for Full Body Immersion in Virtual Reality
  The EXIT SUIT is a full-body force-feedback navigation and performance suit for VR.

• The age of average
  “In nearly every country all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around, animals in the foreground, mainly blue.”

• AI and the American Smile
  How AI misrepresents culture through a facial expression.

• China censors women modeling lingerie on livestream shopping -- so men are doing it
  Donning a sassy piece of silk lingerie, a male model grooves to the beat and forms a heart shape with his fingers during a livestreaming session on Douyin, one of China's most popular video-sharing platforms.

• Amsterdam launches stay away ad campaign targeting young British men - BBC News
  The Dutch city targets UK men aged 18-35 in an ad campaign aimed at changing its reputation.

• How a TikToker Brought Hundreds of Transplants to a Midwestern City
  People hoping to become homeowners have answered the call to relocate to Peoria, Ill., where the housing is affordable and a one-person welcoming committee awaited them.

• [Video] - How Flip-Flop Art Helps Clean Kenya's Beaches
  Flip-flops are one of the oldest styles of shoes in the world, and today they are the most popular. We make over 1 billion of them every year, and one company in Kenya turns these old sandals into colorful works of art.

• [Video] - The Misunderstood Gangs of Disneyland
  Today, walking right down the middle of Main Street, you may notice motley crews of 20 or more adults roaming the parks. Their appearance can be described as a cross between a bikie gang and a modern reboot of the Mickey Mouse club.

#TECH

• AI Art Meets Brain Activity: AI read our minds
  Using Diffusion Model, researchers can reconstruct visual images from MRI scan data

• Generative AI set to affect 300mn jobs across major economies
  Technology could boost global GDP by 7% but also risks creating ‘significant disruption’

• When Content Creation Goes to Zero
  AI is making a world where it costs nothing to produce anything. What happens next?

• Levi’s Will Begin Testing AI-Generated Models
  The denim giant says it will experiment with supplementing its human models with AI-generated models later this year.

• Amazon has just opened up its Sidewalk network to give any gadget free low speed data
  The company has released the first coverage maps for its free long-range IoT network and opened the service to developers.

#SOCIALMEDIA

• The Scammer Tricking Instagram Into Banning Influencer Accounts
  OBN, a mysterious fraudster, says he made hundreds of thousands of dollars by exploiting Instagram’s security gaps. He’s eluded Meta and law enforcement, but we followed his trail to Las Vegas.

#THEDARKSIDE

• [Video] - The New Face of Chinese Propaganda
  Influencers are the new face of Chinese propaganda. Hidden amongst the vlogs about puppies and makeup, they clandestinely allow Beijing to whitewash its crimes against humanity.

• Employees Are Feeding Sensitive Business Data to ChatGPT
  More than 4% of employees have put sensitive corporate data into the large language model, raising concerns that its popularity may result in massive leaks of proprietary information.

• Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s The Evidence.
  NYU Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes a definitive case that social media is a major cause of mental illness in teen girls. Journalists should stop saying that the evidence is just correlational.

• The deepfake AI porn industry is operating in plain sight
  The nonconsensual deepfake economy has remained largely out of sight, but it's easily accessible, and some creators can accept major credit cards.

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That's it for now.

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