Nico Hulkenberg narrowly missed out on scoring a point for Audi at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, while team mate Gabriel Bortoleto saw his race unfold following a collision with Carlos Sainz.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in -- the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other. But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens. The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner. Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I talk to a lot of old people, those who were born in the 20th century, and if I ask them what the word “unalive” means, they usually have no idea what I’m talking about, except for some of them who have kids or who study Internet culture.

This will, of course, probably seem very weird to most people who were born in or grew up in the 21st century. Just to recap for the olds: “unalive” is the word you use to represent concepts like dying, or death, or killing or being killed, on digital platforms where saying those words accurately will cause the algorithm to punish or censor you. Or, maybe, where the perception is that using those words will result in being censored by the algorithm, and no one is actually willing to find out what happens if you use the forbidden words.

This sort of attack on people’s expression started on platforms like TikTok, where nearly all content is distributed through an algorithmic feed, but has since become ubiquitous in nearly all digital media that we see. In fact, these tics are now so prevalent that it’s routine to hear people using this kind of language in everyday life, even though there’s not yet an algorithm to appease in the physical world. I’ve heard people say, out loud, “he unalived himself”, in reference to someone dying by suicide.

And all of this has become even more visible in recent days as online conversation has turned to discussion of the horrific lack of accountability around the tragic rape case at Cornell University. Across the Internet, people are routinely referring to the central crime in the case as r*pe or “grape” or even using the 🍇 emoji, without a second thought for what it means that the very word can’t be said online anymore. Or, at least, the assumption is that it can’t be said.

To be clear, I am very much in favor of people using content warnings or sensitivity markers for content, and fine with people using abbreviations like “SA” for references to disturbing or triggering topics like sexual assault; we should provide people with as much context and control as possible when choosing what information they want to consume and when. I also know that sometimes, people use lesser terms for stressful subjects like death or assault to create a bit of ironic distance from painful or upsetting topics.

But most of the different variations of wording and emojis are coming from trying to appease the platforms, and there’s a heavy cost for those who are worried about being mindful: If someone is using a tool to filter out content, it will no longer be effective because everyone is using misspellings and euphemisms and imagery to get around the algorithm.

The spread of censored and mangled syntax is happening because people believe, or have experienced, that platforms will silence them for accurately describing the world in plain language. This shit is terrible, and it has to stop.

You Were Not Born With These Constraints

One of the things that’s most concerning to me is that an entire generation has grown up not realizing how extreme it is that their very language is being chosen for them by platforms run by people who hate that generation’s ability to express itself, and who hate the things it has to say. From their youngest days, this generation grew up watching people make stupid faces at them for YouTube thumbnails and never had a chance to reflect on the fact that those creators didn’t want to be humiliating themselves by making those expressions — the demands of the algorithms of Big Tech forced them to do that.

The rituals of feeding the algorithm are so built into people’s everyday habits that they’re invisible to people who weren’t alive before today’s platforms took over. Every parent of my cohort remembers the first time they heard their toddler finish doing something cute in their living room, and then turn around and say, “please like and subscribe!” afterwards. It’s a ghastly, sickening feeling to confront the fact that our little kids were being brainwashed into thinking that every adorable thing they did should be followed by a prompt to provide data to Google.

Over on Instagram, where people originally signed up thinking they were going to see someone’s vacation pictures, or shots of their cousin’s kids, you’re now stuck watching people beg for everyone to reply with cultish phrases in the comments, which will then earn them an obviously AI-generated response in return, all in service of “showing activity” to the algorithm, like it’s an angry god that needs a sacrifice. They’re just not sure exactly what the angry god wants.

Your free speech was taken away from you, and the people who did it are the same ones who spent years pretending to care about “free expression”. They contrived examples of lack of free speech on college campuses while squashing protests, and cried crocodile tears about “cancel culture” while getting people fired for political criticism. Now they have no problem with billionaires deciding exactly what words everyone is allowed to say. Larry Ellison is not content with his family owning all of the movies and TV shows — his family has to control what words people are allowed to speak on TikTok, too. Elon Musk isn’t content to merely generate and distribute child sexual abuse material for profit — he wants to silence the messages of the few decent people who are foolish enough to remain on Twitter/X, too. (That’s why I wrote you a guide on how to get your organization off of that cursed platform.)

Now that an entire generation has grown up using these Orwellian euphemisms, and all of the Big AI products are trained on the Internet that was created under this regime, do you think today’s AI tools even know that the real, uncensored world exists? If you can’t say “genocide” on any of the major platforms, yet those are the ones all of the Big AI tools used as their training data... well, then the AI tools sure aren’t very likely to know much about genocide, are they?

Fuck the Algorithm

Our creativity can be constrained by the language we use — our imaginations are limited by what we can think to say. If we’re trained to limit the words we speak just by habit, and those limits are put in place by people whose social, political, cultural and moral goals are the opposite of what we value, then our work is unalive before it is even born.

The answer to this is simple: say what you mean. This will take, to some degree, courage. It may even take, I hesitate to say, some sacrifice. When I suggest this course of action to people, they inevitably say, “But it will cost me audience!” or “But what if I lose followers!” or “What if they demonetize me!”

Okay, what if they do? What if they do.

Are you willing to push on this? To make a point about it? To move to platforms where you can actually say what you mean? Or to remember that you already have platforms where you can say what you mean? On an email newsletter or podcast you can say whatever the hell you want and nobody can stop you. On my blog right here, I can even curse in a headline and it won’t affect anything about how my site operates.

(And a reminder: Substack is not an email newsletter, and a Spotify show is not a podcast — they’ll be unaliving your distribution any day now.)

If you are a 20th century relic like me, it is incumbent upon you to remind the generation that grew up inside the algorithm that another world is possible, and that we know this because we lived it. We were able to style a MySpace page in any way that we wanted; the code for LiveJournal was entirely open source so there was no part of the algorithm that was unknowable. A blog like the one you’re reading right now could be made by anyone, and put up for pennies, and nobody could stop it from being read by millions of people. (And that last one? It’s still possible.)

If you are from this century, forget all that rambling bullshit about ancient history: all that matters is you getting what you deserve, because you’ve been fucked over by the same billionaires who’ve poisoned your planet and infested your world with slop. The best artists around you are invisible to you, and the most important statements by activists that you care about are being silenced. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a system working as designed. And the proof is as obvious as the fact that the angriest activists you know can’t even talk about systemic abuses or state violence without having to put it in algorithmically approved speech or censoring their captions like they’re going to be read by 5-year-olds.

It should make you furious. It is time to kill “unalive”.

The response is simple:

• For every message you put out, start by saying what you mean. Don’t work backwards from what the algorithm wants or what a platform permits.
• Build a presence on every platform you can, even the ones where you have fewer followers or where you’re harder to find.
• Tell your audience that your speech being free matters more than corporate convenience. Keep saying it, and keep it positive: independence gets them better art, better information, and more connected communities.
• Build alliances with other artists, activists and people who share your values, and let them know you’re going to start sharing your work uncensored.
• Start releasing your work uncensored and see where the platforms push back. (You may be surprised: sometimes you were censoring yourself in anticipation of limits that weren’t even there.)
• If a platform does try to limit your reach or expression, make a LOT OF NOISE about it. Tell the press, rally your alliance, and spread the word on your other platforms, using the moment to build audience and raise support there. Get others to amplify the parts of your work that don’t violate platform policy, so the controversy drives people to the rest.
• Find the others pushing back on algorithmic control of expression, and raise and praise their work when they do the same.

If we keep accepting the words that are forced upon us by TikTok and Meta and Google and all the rest, while platforms like Twitter/X allow the most hateful and harmful content in the world to be distributed completely unfettered, we’ll only see authoritarianism rise, and the harms against the vulnerable accelerate. But what breaks my heart almost as much is that we’ll see so many brilliant artists and activists and thinkers whose genius will be muted or silenced by mindless, heartless algorithms that capriciously decide who gets to say exactly what words, in what ways.

I get angry every time I think about it. The tech tycoons get ever more brazen in what they’re willing to say publicly, boasting about how they’re going to cause the end of the world, or calling for ethnic cleansing, all while putting tighter and tighter reins on the speech and expression of ordinary people. It’s time for “unalive” to die.

Exiled outlet Astra also reported that one of the attacks targeted the Moscow region’s largest fuel storage hub.

FOTO (ANP): "Nostalgisch archiefbeeld"

Weer een knauw voor de zoetekauw: gemeenten starten een War on Fastfoodfun voor scholieren, die ook weleens wat anders willen dan krenten, appels en pap. Ze worden al gedwongen 's werelds treurigste onderwijs te volgen en mogen niet eens meer een mobieltje gebruiken om de dag enigszins door te komen, maar nu willen gemeenten dus bepalen hoeveel frikandellen ze op hun bordje krijgen. Natuurlijk, scholen liggen midden in de fastfoodresorts der steden, zo ziet ook het Amsterdam UMC, maar straks is een beetje leuk leven er niet meer bij. Terwijl Vrijheid juist aantoont: In tien jaar tijd is 77% van de buurten in de tien gemeten steden nog ongezonder geworden. 96% van de voedselaanbieders draagt niet bij aan een gezonde leefstijl. 87 van de 90 middelbare en mbo-scholen liggen in een 'zeer ongezonde voedselomgeving'. En dat is toch geweldig? In Frankrijk weten ze wel raad met scholierenhaat. Nu is het moment dat scholieren ook hier de benzine hooivorken opnemen en strijden voor wat ze toekomt: hamburgers voor lunch. Enfin, zin in een hamburgers, ijs, milkshakes, frikandellen, kroketten, patat, friet, koek, chips, nootjes, snoep en cola (ZERO) nu.

Luister toch naar iemand die ervoor doorgeleerd heeft!

Social

KPMG has offered staff facing redundancy £100 to waive their legal rights to appeal or to bring claims over the loss of their job, according to sources. As The Register revealed last month, the consultancy is laying off around 4 percent of the workforce in the UK, equating to some 200 humans being forced to look for new employment in an uncertain job market before Christmas. Staff within the AI, Cyber, SAP, and Testing teams are at the sharp end of the corporate job cutting exercise. On October 1, those at risk were told the consultation process is over and KPMG will inform them of their fate by email on October 9. In a message to staff, seen by The Register, KPMG said: “The collective consultation process has now formally concluded. The firm's original proposal remains unchanged. Employees will be notified on Friday 9th of October 11-11:30am by email if they have been selected for redundancy.” In addition to exit terms that some at KPMG previously described to us as insulting, The Reg understands the consultancy is offering £100 in exchange for employees' existing contractual confidentiality and other post-termination obligations. Some staff see it as a gag order. “The firm's original proposal remains unchanged,” one insider claimed, “offering marginally above statutory terms alongside a nominal £100 consideration for employees to waive their legal rights to appeal or bring claims. “The prevailing consensus among staff [is that] this approach is arrogant and disgraceful, particularly given the decision to dismiss personnel right before the holidays while withholding their earned annual bonuses,” the source added. Annual bonuses are discretionary, performance-based, and typically paid in January. KPMG has not communicated with staff on bonuses for 2026 but we understand anyone under notice (given or received) is not eligible for a payout. KPMG refused to answer questions The Reg asked about the £100 payment or the bonus situation. Instead, a spokesperson re-sent its earlier statement: “As our market evolves, we are adapting where we are focusing and how we are set up to make sure we have the right skills in place to best serve our clients. To respond to these market dynamics combined with low levels of attrition, we are proposing reductions in some of our advisory client-facing teams and will support our colleagues throughout this process.” The latest job cuts come six months after KPMG expunged 600 roles across the UK org chart, and is indicative of the financial pressures facing the big four accountancy and consultancy giants. PwC UK is merging two of its advisory businesses in response to the disruption caused by AI. ®

NAJRAN/JAZAN (ANP/AFP) - Drie mensen zijn lichtgewond geraakt bij aanvallen op twee vliegvelden in Saudi-Arabië. Dat meldt de Saudische luchtvaartautoriteit. Het gaat om de internationale vliegvelden voor burgerluchtvaart bij de Saudische steden Jizan en Najran, nabij de grens met Jemen.

Naast de drie gewonden is er enige materiële schade. De Houthi's zeiden maandag nog de internationale luchthaven van de Saudische hoofdstad Riyad en andere locaties in het zuiden te hebben aangevallen.

Dit jaar laaide het geweld tussen de door Iran gesteunde Houthi's en de door Saudi-Arabië gesteunde Jemenitische regering weer op. De Houthi's wisten veel grondgebied in Jemen in handen te krijgen. Ook aanvallen tussen de Jemenitische Houthi's en Saudi-Arabië namen recent toe.

BERLIJN (ANP) - Het voormalige hoofd van de Duitse inlichtingendienst BND August Hanning is aangehouden. Dat melden WDR, NDR en Süddeutsche Zeitung op basis van bronnen. Het onderzoek draait om het inzien van staatsgeheimen, landverraad en spionage voor een vreemde mogendheid, melden de media. Hij zou gegevens gekocht hebben van iemand die voor eerder voor hem had gewerkt bij de BND.

STRAATSBURG (ANP) - Voorzitter Ursula von der Leyen van de Europese Commissie waarschuwt EU-lidstaten geen grote bezuinigingen door te voeren op het voorstel voor de meerjarenbegroting 2028-2034 van de EU. Als dat gebeurt, moet er "diep worden gesneden in cruciale prioriteiten waarover we het samen eens zijn geworden", zei Von der Leyen dinsdag in een debat met het Europees Parlement.

De Europese Commissie heeft een meerjarenbegroting van bijna 2000 miljard euro voorgesteld. Een aantal lidstaten, waaronder Nederland en Duitsland, vindt dat veel te veel. Ze willen een nieuwe meerjarenbegroting die honderden miljarden euro lager is.

De nu lopende meerjarenbegroting heeft een omvang van ongeveer 1200 miljard euro.

"Ik ben me bewust van de moeilijke budgettaire situatie in de lidstaten, maar ik wil waarschuwen voor grote bezuinigingen", zei Von der Leyen. Ze wijst erop dat de Commissie voorstellen heeft gedaan om de eigen inkomsten van de EU te verhogen, zoals een belasting op tabak. Ook dat ligt in verschillende lidstaten lastig.

PARIJS (ANP) - De Franse minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Laurent Nuñez stelt dat de politie tot nu toe "proportioneel" heeft gereageerd op de grote scholierenprotesten in zijn land, schrijft nieuwszender BFMTV. Mensenrechtenorganisaties hadden kritiek op het gebruik van zware middelen als wapenstokken en traangas tegen minderjarigen. De politiewaakhond heeft onderzoeken ingesteld naar tien incidenten bij de protesten.

"De politie grijpt alleen in bij schade aan eigendommen, letsel aan personen of vandalisme", zei Nuñez tegen France Inter. "We kunnen niet spreken van politieonderdrukking."

Tot nu toe zijn 215 leerlingen en 715 politieagenten gewond geraakt bij de protesten. Maandag verloor een tiener zijn hand door de ontploffing van een vermoedelijke flitsgranaat. Nuñez spreekt van een "drama" en zegt dat wordt uitgezocht wat er precies is gebeurd en of de jongen het explosief zelf heeft opgeraapt.

Dinsdag wordt opnieuw een grote protestdag verwacht, met alleen in Parijs al mogelijk 40.000 demonstranten.

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

De wonderlijke comedyserie van Mackenzie Crook, over een man uit Manchester die wil weten waar zijn verdwenen geliefde is gebleven, is excentriek, geestig, innemend en verdrietig tegelijk.

De LETS Ruilwinkel in Dordrecht zit financieel in zwaar weer. De winkel heeft een conflict met voormalig voorzitter Ruby Pichel, die geld heeft weggesluisd. Omdat zij in hoger beroep is gegaan tegen een uitspraak van de rechter, is het geld nog niet teruggestort op de rekening. Nu moet een veiling het winkeltje van de ondergang redden.

Twenty-seven year old nurse Ashley Morrison has never had kids before. But now she’s pregnant with her first baby, and she’s already thinking about all of the ways she’s going to break the cycle of unhealthy parenting that has passed trauma onto her bloodline for generations. 

LOL! Good fucking luck with that one!

During her weekly therapy Zooms, Ashley recounts damaging events she experienced growing up and says things like, “When I’m a mom, I’m never going to do anything like that.”

Oh, SUUUUUUURE you aren’t, Ashley. 

As if Ashley’s ability to make emotionally mature, thoughtful parenting decisions and foster a healthy environment for her kids wasn’t completely demolished by her own toxic upbringing. She may try to break free of the hurtful parenting style she vividly remembers all too well, but when it’s 2 a.m. and her kid just threw up all over the couch, that muscle memory’s going to kick in and her own mother’s ghost is going to possess her body like a demonic entity. 

She can steer clear of alcohol and read books all she wants, but toxic parenting is her destiny. A birthright her own children will some day pass on to theirs. 

Ashley is doomed to not only repeat the sins of her parents, but to be fully aware of what she’s doing while she does it. Unlike her own parents, whose low emotional IQs and alcohol abuse kept them blissfully unaware of the psychological damage they were inflicting, Ashley will know exactly what’s going on but be unable to stop herself thanks to years of behavioral imprinting.

Sorry, Ashley, but your promise to yourself to never treat your own children the way your parents treated you has already been broken by simple human psychology and your own DNA. There’s a reason it’s called a cycle: It just keeps going forever. 

But seriously…Good fucking luck.

Peter Breedveld Die rellen in Frankrijk kunnen natuurlijk nooit te maken hebben met de schrijnende toestanden op scholen in achterstandswijken. Nee, het is een islamogauchistische aanval op de joods-christelijke samenleving, schuimbekt de Roze Khmer. Peter Breedveld Illustratie: Margaret Brundage Als je een groot deel van je bevolking, vooral dat met een immigratie-achtergrond, laat wegrotten in ghetto’s, betaal je op zeker moment de rekening. Dan barst de bom en dat is nooit fijn om naar te kijken. Hier in Nederland, waar de vlam al in de pan slaat als de zware shag een dubbeltje duurder wordt, zouden we dat toch moeten begrijpen. De scholen in de Franse arme wijken zijn gevaarlijke bouwvallen waar de plafonds naar beneden komen, de ratten door de gangen lopen, je levend gekookt wordt tijdens een hete zomer en waar het onderwijs verzorgd wordt door onervaren docenten en invalkrachten, omdat de docenten met ervaring de mogelijkheid hebben uit te wijken naar de rijkere wijken, met de goed onderhouden schoolgebouwen en het extra geld voor bijlessen, sport, activiteiten en uitstapjes. De meer welvarende ouders in de arme wijken kennen de mazen in de wet die het ze verplicht hun kinderen in te schrijven in de dichtsbijzijnde school – […]

Het bericht GeenStijl gaat full metal Hitler tegen Franse jongeren verscheen eerst op Frontaal Naakt.

An empathetic biography of the the singer recasts her tumultuous later career as a triumph of self-expression

Since Whitney Houston’s death in 2012, a flurry of books and documentaries have appeared, most of them presenting her life as a cautionary tale. In this new biography, Emily Lordi, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, refuses to reduce Houston’s story to another “good girl gone bad” narrative. Instead she presents a pluralistic take on her life in which Houston’s queerness, drug use and eccentricities are not dismissed as aberrations (as they were in her lifetime) but rather seen in the wider context of her unique talent and the pressures placed on her to embody black excellence.

Lordi describes the unsteady building blocks of Houston’s family (her mother Cissy’s band The Sweet Inspirations were in-demand session musicians who worked with Elvis, as well as on Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man). When Cissy was still a child, Houston’s grandmother had a debilitating stroke following a miscarriage, eventually succumbing to a cerebral haemorrhage during a later pregnancy. The response to this trauma was to bury it. As Lordi writes: “Here was a lesson in suppressing your feelings and getting on with it.” But in a book where the act of singing through the pain is invoked multiple times, it is striking that reports Houston was molested as a child (a pivotal part of Kevin Macdonald’s 2018 documentary, which drew a line between that and her addictions) are not discussed.

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The 30th-anniversary rerelease of this classic tackles the sensitivities of teenage anxiety with energy and confidence

The chrysalis of 80s and 90s high-school comedy finally gave us a veritable butterfly of fear in this cult girl-power classic from 1996, co-written and directed by Andrew Fleming, now rereleased for its 30th anniversary. It’s a movie to compare with Heathers or Mean Girls but with a supernatural edge, a flourish of scariness where the comedy or sexiness might otherwise go – and it incidentally delivers a very disturbing “René Magritte mirror” visual stab worthy of any straight-ahead chiller.

Robin Tunney plays Sarah, a shy, studious teen from San Francisco who suffers from depression and buried guilt about the fact that her mother died in childbirth, and from lingering resentment at her new stepmother, with whom her dad has bought her to Los Angeles for a fresh start at a new school. Something about this new arrival intrigues a clique nicknamed “the bitches of Eastwick”, led by badass goth Nancy (Fairuza Balk); she rules over her two disciples Rochelle (Rachel True) and Bonnie, played by Neve Campbell, that same year to become a scary-movie hall-of-famer for the fledgling Scream franchise.

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The human rights activist was severely beaten by security forces and denied medical care. In an interview with the Guardian, she discusses her shifting sense of identity and being a mother in jail

The human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has described being beaten so severely by Iranian security agents that she required two brain scans, before being held in solitary confinement for two months despite her grave injuries.

In an interview with the Guardian, the 54-year-old Nobel peace prize laureate said that during her arrest in December, security agents “inflicted extremely severe blows to my head and body.

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