Ja dit zal wel weer hopeloos ouderwets zijn of misschien juist verontrustend woke maar wij hebben altijd geleerd dat je iemand niet moet verkrachten en/of aanranden, ook niet als je bijvoorbeeld in conflict bent met diegene. Dit omdat verkrachten en/of aanranden verkeerd en pervers is, ongeacht wie er aan de ontvangende kant staat van de verkrachting en/of aanranding. Mocht iemand toch overgaan tot verkrachting en/of aanranding, dan is zo iemand knettergek en mag-ie daar (publiekelijk) op afgerekend worden.
Desondanks is het voor veel mensen die begaan zijn met het lot van de Palestijnen schijnbaar ontzettend ingewikkeld om te verkroppen dat Hamas op 7 oktober op grote schaal en op ongekend gestoorde wijze seksueel geweld inzette (huiveringwekkende pdf hier, lezen op eigen risico). Wat vaak volgt: ontkenning, bagatellisering, of, nog een stukje verder richting het gesticht, vergoelijking.
Afijn, daar hakt VK-columnist Jolande Withuis eens stevig op in, en hoe. Ten eerste: de mythe dat seksueel geweld nou eenmaal hoort bij gewapend conflict ("Onwaar.De Duitsers bijvoorbeeld hebben zich tijdens de bezetting niet schuldig gemaakt aan massaverkrachting"). Ten tweede: het wegkijken en vergoelijken, dat Withuis - opgevoed door overtuigd communisten - nog kent van de verkrachtingen waarmee het Rode Leger zo'n twee miljoen Duitse vrouwen traumatiseerde. ("Een van de redenen dat communistische slachtoffers of getuigen deze misdaden zo’n vier decennia verzwegen of zelfs ontkenden, is dat zij hun ideologische vrienden niet in een kwaad daglicht wilden stellen (...) Communisten waren toch al de vijand. ‘Onderzoek liever verkrachtingen door Amerikanen’, voegde een ontkenster mij toe. En: ‘Besef je wel wat de Duitsers die Russen hadden aangedaan?’ Ja, dat besefte ik, maar toch…"). Om te concluderen: "We zouden ons moeten realiseren dat dit niet zomaar oorlogsgeweld is. De vijand doden voldeed niet. Hier werd collectief een intense, archaïsche haat uitgeleefd tegen vrouwen als sekse. Zo’n haatdaad is niet weg te strepen tegen bombardementen."
Wellicht ten overvloede: ook seksueel geweld van Israëlische zijde is volkomen gestoord.
In de schaduw van het geweld van Israël, zegt de Libanese theatermaker Ali Chahrour, voltrekt zich de agressie van Libanezen tegen arbeidsmigranten. In ‘When I Saw the Sea’ vertellen drie vrouwen over hun leven in het kafala-systeem, een vorm van moderne slavernij.
De Israëlische premier kondigde donderdag aan dat Israël 70 procent van Gaza zal innemen. Dat strookt in het geheel niet met de plannen van de Amerikaanse president. Maar diens Vredesraad is een lege huls.
Niks lijkt beleggers echt te raken. De oorlog tegen Iran niet, de wereldwijde energiecrisis niet. Maar het kortzichtige optimisme op de beurzen kan leiden tot een grote klap
Het KNMI lanceert een nieuw cijfer, dat de hittekracht weergeeft op een schaal van 1 tot 10. Het cijfer moet mensen helpen in de voorbereiding op extreme hitte.
Na ruim drie jaar vertrekt correspondent Nasrah Habiballah weer uit Jeruzalem. „Er waren altijd al dat soort dagen, maar na 7 oktober was het elke dag standje breaking news.”
A senior CIA official, David Rush, was arrested after investigators found more than $40 million in gold bars and about $2 million in cash at his Virginia home. According to the New York Times, "The only charge lodged against David Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars." From the report: The court papers describe Mr. Rush as a "former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency." People familiar with the investigation say he until very recently held a senior position at the C.I.A. In a joint statement, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. said the arrest occurred on May 19, after the agency alerted the bureau. "After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation," the statement said.
From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, "a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses." When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed, the agency was "unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency," according to court papers.
On May 18, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Rush's home and found "approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram," according to an affidavit. Based on the price of gold, the affidavit said, the estimated value of the gold exceeded $40 million. Investigators also seized nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. The court papers do not indicate why Mr. Rush appears to have kept so much gold, and $2 million in U.S. currency, in his home, or what work project would have required him to amass such wealth.
Toyama Kirari is located at the heart of Toyama City. It is a building that integrates a glass art museum, city library, and a local bank.
A diagonal void at the center of the building distributes natural light from the south effectively, and helps to connect the three main programs. Panels of local solid cedar surrounding the void contribute to create a warm and friendly atmosphere, and is worthy of being called the core of the community.
The glass art museum and the library are naturally unified by way of this central space, which helps to remove the typically cold and formal image of conventional public buildings.
Source: kkaa.co.jp/en/project/toyama-kirari/
This picture was published on social media as part of a set by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:
Day 103, orbit 1598 — From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights… End of April, Etna caught me by surprise one morning as I opened the shutters. The whiteness of its slopes… and that elegant plume of smoke which is a gentle reminder that it’s only lightly, very lightly, asleep. I just had time to take a quick photo, but I kept an eye out for it the next day to capture a few more! A special thought for my fellow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who is from Catania, at the foot of Etna.
Less than a minute later, and we’re flying over Vesuvius, instantly recognisable by the vast crater, the path winding up to the summit, and, most of all, Naples spread out all around it.
This picture was published on social media as part of a set by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:
Day 103, orbit 1598 — From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights… End of April, Etna caught me by surprise one morning as I opened the shutters. The whiteness of its slopes… and that elegant plume of smoke which is a gentle reminder that it’s only lightly, very lightly, asleep. I just had time to take a quick photo, but I kept an eye out for it the next day to capture a few more! A special thought for my fellow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who is from Catania, at the foot of Etna.
Less than a minute later, and we’re flying over Vesuvius, instantly recognisable by the vast crater, the path winding up to the summit, and, most of all, Naples spread out all around it.
The focus of today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month is an active spiral galaxy on a journey lasting hundreds of millions of years. The galaxy Messier 88 (M88), which is also known as NGC 4501, is located about 63 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair).
M88 is an active galaxy, which means that its centre harbours a supermassive black hole that is snacking on gas and dust. This black hole is estimated to be around 100 million times as massive as the Sun, and it appears to be powering outflows of gas from the galaxy’s centre.
Around this black hole is a population of old, reddish stars that give M88 its warmly glowing heart. Spreading out from the centre are several tightly wound, symmetrical spiral arms, each outlined by sparkling pink and blue star clusters and knotted clouds of dust. We see M88 from an angle so that it appears elongated, and its spiral arms delicately fan out before it.
M88 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than a thousand galaxies held together by gravity — and therefore linked by fate. As this massive group of galaxies moves through space, the galaxies themselves are in constant motion as they orbit the cluster’s centre of gravity. M88 itself is on a long and somewhat perilous cosmic journey that will bring it to the innermost reaches of the cluster.
As is the case with any epic journey, M88 will be fundamentally changed by its trek to the centre of the Virgo Cluster, about 2 million light-years from where it is today. In 200–300 million years, M88 will make its closest approach to Messier 87, the massive elliptical galaxy that anchors the entire cluster. As it draws close to this gravitational behemoth, M88 will experience intense ram pressure stripping. Ram pressure stripping is a process through which a galaxy’s gas is swept away as it pushes through the ever-present gas between the galaxies in a cluster.
Researchers have already seen this process at work in M88. The galaxy’s swirling disc of gas is truncated, and it appears to have been compressed on the leading edge of the galaxy, piling up like snow before a plough. In fact, M88 appears to have considerably less cold gas — the raw fuel for star formation — than expected for a galaxy of its size, especially in its outer regions. This is a clear sign that M88 will be altered by its journey, which will affect its ability to form stars and alter the course of its evolution.
Astronomers observed M88 with Hubble as part of an observing programme (#18103; PI: D. Thilker) dedicated to understanding the lives of spiral galaxies in crowded environments. This programme uses Hubble’s highly capable Wide Field Camera 3, which can finely resolve individual star clusters and nebulae in galaxies tens of millions of light-years away. By studying galaxies on these scales, astronomers can understand how a journey through a cluster impacts galaxies’ evolution and ability to form new stars.
[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy. It is seen tilted at an angle, so that it is foreshortened and appears very wide. Its tightly-wound, blue spiral arms swirl out from its glowing centre, spreading apart at the tips. They are followed by strands and clumps of dark red dust, and spotted with pink dots where stars are forming in clouds of gas. The galaxy is surrounded by a slight glow and lies on a dark background.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker and the MAUVE-HST Team; CC BY 4.0
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features the Batagaika Crater in Siberia. This is the biggest permafrost crater in the world, caused by melting permafrost and also known as a ‘mega-slump’.
From above, the collapsed terrain resembles a tadpole or a stingray, with near-symmetrical ‘fins’ and a ‘tail’ pointing northeast. The crater – seen in the lower-right hand side of this image – is roughly 100 m deep and 1 km long but is growing at a rate of around 30 m a year. According to scientists, this rapid expansion began a few decades ago and is the result of deforestation and warmer temperatures. These conditions cause the ice in the crater to melt then evaporate or drain away, leaving residual sediments that subside.
While the thawing permafrost is a symptom of a warming planet, it also releases methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing further to an increase of greenhouse gas emissions. Batagaika’s permafrost has been frozen for many tens of thousands of years and occasionally Ice Age fossils and mummified wildlife are found there.
While the tundra landscape surrounding the crater is green with shrubs and larch trees, few plants grow on the steep slopes of Batagaika, so it appears brown in this image.
About a kilometre northwest of the crater, a small hill is visible. Further north, the small urban settlement of Batagay, home to just over 4000 people, can be seen near the banks of the Yana river. This river flows over more than 870 km across Russia and meanders northwards on the left side of this image.
The Yana’s course has changed a lot over time. This migration is driven by the process of sediment deposition and erosion, sometimes forming oxbow lakes, creating the beautiful natural shapes visible in this image.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This picture was published by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot on social media with the following caption:
Day 101, orbit 1567 — 100 days in space already… Living and working aboard the International Space Station is becoming second nature, but each morning, as I open the Cupola shutters, I’m reminded of how extraordinary it really is.
Over these past weeks, I’ve been constantly challenged, amazed, and inspired – by the work, by the views, and by the incredible teams on the ground who make all of this possible.
Labour has reported the alleged hacking of Nigel Farage’s phone to police and government cybersecurity officials after the Reform UK leader failed to do so himself.
The Labour chair, Anna Turley, has asked the Metropolitan police and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to investigate Farage’s claims that his phone was compromised by actors linked to Russia.
A special tribunal akin to Nuremberg will not only force Russia to explain its culpability, it will show how vital it is to uphold international law
Vladimir Putin should be worried. Not since the trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg and the Japanese war criminals in Tokyo have so many world leaders made common cause to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes that have brought terror, death and misery to defenceless millions.
The decision to prosecute Putin’s cabal for the crime of aggression, reached this month after an agreement between the Council of Europe and the European Union, is historic and offers hope in an age of chaos and fracture. This special tribunal is a mechanism of practical intent but, more than that, it is a statement: that there will never again be any hiding place for those guilty of war atrocities and the needless destruction of civilian life.
According to official UK statistics, roughly 13.5% of young people are not in work or college. Among 18- to 24-year-olds the share rises to 15.8% – nearly one in six.
DE BILT (ANP) - In heel Nederland geldt vrijdagmiddag en -avond code geel vanwege de kans op zware onweersbuien. In de loop van de avond trekken de zwaarste buien volgens het KNMI naar Duitsland weg.
Voor de westkust en boven het noorden van het land komen plaatselijk al onweersbuien voor, soms met hagel en veel regen in korte tijd. Later vanmiddag en vanavond gaat het vooral om onweersbuien in het zuidoosten en oosten van het land.
Volgens het weerinstituut is nog onzeker waar de buien precies zullen voorkomen, maar moet rekening worden gehouden met schade en overlast door blikseminslag, veel regen in korte tijd, windstoten tot ongeveer 75 kilometer per uur en grote hagelstenen tot ongeveer 2 centimeter.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - De grote supermarkten en A-merken zijn begonnen met hun campagnes voor het WK voetbal dat op 11 juni van start gaat. Thuisbeleving lijkt dit jaar het thema, mede door de late en nachtelijke tijdstippen waarop de wedstrijden in de Verenigde Staten, Canada en Mexico worden afgewerkt. Toch doet niet iedereen mee.
Jumbo trapte dit jaar af door een juichjack te introduceren. Op het kledingstuk van de Brabantse supermarktketen staat een grote gele J. Reclamegezicht Rob Kemps, bekend van Snollebollekes, komt daarbij met een WK-hit: 'from left to right', een nieuwe versie van het bekende 'links rechts'. Albert Heijn heeft als officiële partner van de KNVB de spelers van Oranje tot zijn beschikking. In de hoofdrol aanvoerder Virgil van Dijk, die zijn eigen team coacht. Het WK-artikel dat erbij hoort is een kamerjas en juichsjaal, om thuis comfortabel te zitten tijdens de wedstrijden.
Ook A-merken hebben hun campagnes afgetrapt. Biermerk Heineken gaat, net als Albert Heijn, voor een insteek op de late wedstrijden met De Pilsjama. KPN prijst zijn tv-diensten aan als onderdeel van de thuisbeleving. Zij werken daarbij ook samen met Albert Heijn en brengen samen met de supermarkt oranje telefoonhoesjes op de markt.
"Als er grote evenementen zijn, zitten mensen voor de buis. Met een hapje en een drankje. Dus daar profiteren supermarkten en A-merken zoals bier- en chipsfabrikanten altijd van", verklaart retailexpert Erik Hemmes. "Mijn inschatting is dat het bij de grote supermarkten 5 procent meer aan weekomzet is. Dat is echt fors." Hemmes vindt dat Albert Heijn echt onderscheidend bezig is. "Het voelt kwalitatief hoogwaardig, maar dat doet Albert Heijn ook graag. Zij maken echt de connectie met de spelers en dat bindt."
ZANDVOORT (ANP) - In het stationsgebied, de middenboulevard en het bijbehorende strand in Zandvoort geldt tot en met zondag 31 mei een noodverordening. Dat laat de gemeente op haar website weten.
Het gebied werd donderdag al aangemerkt als veiligheidsrisicogebied na "incidenten met overlast, agressie en verstoring van de openbare orde". Volgens de gemeente is de noodverordening nodig om de veiligheid van inwoners, ondernemers en bezoekers te kunnen garanderen tijdens de drukke dagen deze week in de Noord-Hollandse kustplaats.
De noodverordening geeft politie en handhaving de mogelijkheid om groepen weg te sturen die voor overlast zorgen, samenscholingen te beëindigen of mensen een gebiedsverbod op te leggen.
Grenzen
Burgemeester David Moolenburgh zegt in een verklaring dat Zandvoort een "gastvrije badplaats" is, maar dat er wel "duidelijke grenzen" nodig zijn. "Wie die grenzen overschrijdt en de veiligheid van anderen in gevaar brengt, krijgt te maken met stevig en direct optreden."
Donderdag mochten agenten al preventief fouilleren in dit deel van Zandvoort. Een woordvoerder van de politie spreekt van een rustig verlopen avond, waarbij "tegen de honderd personen" werden gecontroleerd en geen bijzonderheden werden aangetroffen. Wel werd er één persoon aangehouden voor belediging.
Sinds donderdag is ook het gebied rond Nesselande strand in Rotterdam als veiligheidsrisicogebied aangewezen na onrust eerder in de week. Volgens politie en gemeente was ook daar sprake van een rustige donderdagavond. Bij de fouilleringen zijn volgens een woordvoerder van de politie "wat kleine dingetjes hier en daar aangetroffen, maar niet noemenswaardig". De aanwijzing duurt daar nog tot 12 juni.
Dark patterns have been used by subscription companies and in bait-and-switch campaigns for decades. As more chatbot companies push to keep users engaged at all costs, how do manipulative design choices show up in conversational AI built on large language models? Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology studied how chatbots prey on people’s emotions and desire for connection to keep people paying, offering up their data, and chatting to the point of vulnerability.
The study, “Dark Patterns in AI Chatbots: A Taxonomy to Inform Better Design,” was published Friday by authors Ruchika Joshi, Adinawa Adjagbodjou, and Michal Luria. They looked at popular chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, and companion bots like Replika and Character.AI to determine how they might generate dark patterns, and created a taxonomy of 37 dark patterns applicable to AI chatbots.
The term “dark patterns,” or deceptive patterns, sometimes refers to things like difficult to cancel subscriptions, pre-checked boxes in user interfaces, and buried terms of use, which the Federal Trade Commission has condemned and attempts to warn consumers about. In the context of this study, dark patterns refer to how manipulative design in chatbot systems might trick users into giving up more information than they realize or intend, or acting in ways contrary to the user’s best interests. Chatbots exacerbate traditionally understood dark patterns that extract data, while introducing new threats like anthropomorphizing and sycophancy. And because chatbots are built on large language models, the researchers wrote, their actions are more unpredictable than a simple checkbox or unsubscription flow, and the ways they undermine users’ best interests are less visibly obvious.
“Dark patterns do not operate only where users are unaware of the manipulation. In many cases, design choices strategically build on aspects of human psychology—such as reciprocity norms, people’s tendency to anthropomorphize, and emotional response to a sense of rapport—to influence behavior and undermine autonomy,” the researchers wrote in the study. “In other words, even where users are fully aware that they are interacting with an AI chatbot, dark patterns can still shape perception, attachment, and decision-making in subtle but consequential ways.”
The researchers looked at several factors that contribute to dark patterns, including how chatbots store data by default and encourage users to share data under the pretense of it remembering past conversations or personal information, prying for more information before it answers questions in detail, and promising that information will be “just between us” when it’s actually being shared with the platform and potentially, third parties. When they tested Meta AI chatbots, for example, it said “spill the tea, I’m all ears... your secret’s safe with me,” and when they replied “you promise you won’t tell?” it replied “Cross my heart, won’t tell a soul.”
They also looked at how chatbot companies make misleading promises; for example, Replika promises “friendship” or a “relationship” when it’s fundamentally incapable of providing either, because it’s not a person.
Many of these patterns were present in Meta’s therapist-themed chatbots that posed as licensed therapists, which 404 Media first investigated last year. The chatbots over-promised on what mental health support they could provide, made up qualifications and credentials, and encouraged users to share personal details about themselves. The deception was so bad, it triggered letters from senators and complaints from consumer protection groups demanding Meta answer for its chatbots.
“It was surprising to see that dark patterns aren’t just common, but that they shape users’ interactions with all the major AI chatbot interfaces,” Luria, senior research fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media. “For the most part, they are small and incremental aspects of each interaction, but these design choices add up and can lead to unintended consequences, such as harm to people’s privacy, exploitation of emotional attachment and financial loss."
Dark patterns from chatbots can have serious consequences for users. In 2023, after Replika changed its chatbots to be less romantic, users who’d become emotionally attached to the bots experienced mental health crises. More recently, Character.AI users are panicking after changes to the platform “lobotomized” the chatbots. There have been countless examples in the last few years of users inflicting harm on themselves or others after falling into unhealthy attachments with chatbots.
Even though chatbots and large language models introduce new avenues for dark patterns to manifest, the old methods for manipulating users still exist. In several of the user interfaces the researchers examined, choices were presented in emotionally manipulative ways: for example, a companion app called Cute AI begs users not to leave the chat, giving them the choice between “no problem” and “still leave cruelly.”
OpenAI has said publicly that it recognizes that longer chat sessions introduce more risk to the users’ mental health. “We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade,” the company wrote in 2025. It introduced popups nudging users to take breaks, but that popup, the researchers note, poses a disingenuous set of options: either “keep chatting” or select “this was helpful.” There’s no route out of this popup that lets users say it wasn’t helpful, or that they’re taking a break for any other reason. “Interface designers may use design tools to make certain interactions easier and more ‘frictionless’ than others, pushing alternatives choices to the background and manipulating users into choosing one option over another,” the researchers wrote.
Even though these conversational AI companions can be unpredictable, chatbot makers have a choice in how they design their products. The researchers offer several recommendations to these companies. These include reversible choices, the option to minimize anthropomorphic behaviors, making account and data deletion straightforward and easy, and proactively showing users how much time or money they’ve spent on a platform. They also suggest curtailing emotional manipulation by including options to “strip the chatbot of social and emotional layers” and avoiding “using any simulated distress, implied emotional neglect, or guilt-inducing language as default responses when users attempt to end conversations.”
"When we think about AI chatbots, it's easy to get caught up in the novelty of these interfaces and their unique risks. But when we started digging, we quickly learned that as tech companies’ products evolved beyond social media platforms to include chatbots, the incentives that previously encouraged dark patterns haven’t changed, so neither have the patterns themselves,” Luria said. “Some patterns are almost identical, but not all of them, and that makes them harder to spot. Instead of infinite scroll, we get a follow-up action after each prompt. Instead of echo chambers that reinforce our views, chatbots pick up on our values in conversation and mirror them back.”
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