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COVID Makes an Antiwoke Fortress of a New Age Florida School
The Wall Street Journal reported:
“This is Miss Gabriela,” Leila Centner says. “She’s our mindfulness coach.” I’m visiting Centner Academy, the private K-12 school Mrs. Centner and her husband, David, founded in 2019 after his retirement as a “serial tech entrepreneur.”
In the “mindfulness room,” I watch Gabriela Jimenez lead a circle of fifth-graders in an exercise that involves passing a candle around and formulating “an awesome wish that you have for yourself.”
“Do we have to say it out loud?” a girl asks.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Ms. Jimenez answers. But it would be helpful: “When we express what we want, we move the energy from the bottom, from the first chakra all the way to the throat. So we manifest things when we speak about them.”
You might call Centner a countercultural campus; it calls itself “America’s Happiest School.” “Mindfulness is interwoven into the fabric of the school,” says my tour guide, Josh Hills, whose title — no joke — is director of brain optimization.
He shows me another room, which he says is “dedicated to failure.” Here, students undertake projects in “Lego robotics, 3D printing, architecture” and other technical pursuits. It’s a sort of safe space: “We remove the stigma behind failure,” Mr. Hills says. “If we have kids who are not scared to fall or fail, then we have kids who are not scared to reach.”
Your Every Move Tracked: How to Remove Apple and Google’s Location Data
It’s no secret anymore. Nearly everything you do online is tracked or recorded and used to learn more about you.
Many of your data points end up on creepy people’s search sites. You’ll be shocked to find your full name, address, relatives, phone number and more. Here’s a list of sites where you can opt out of this invasion of privacy.
On your phone, apps are likely watching — and reporting — more than you realize. Take back control with just a few minutes in your settings.
Navigation apps use your phone’s GPS location to determine exactly where you are. Every time you navigate somewhere, that location is stored in your profile. Prepared to be shocked at what Apple and Google know about your wanderings.
Tesla’s Cameras Are Reportedly Spying on Customers, but It’s Not Just a Tesla Problem
Is Tesla spying on its customers? At least some of its employees were, according to a recent Reuters report.
Several ex-Tesla employees said that, from about 2019 to 2022, they saw footage from the array of cameras that are built into Tesla’s cars.
The employees said they passed sensitive videos — everything from a car crashing into a child to a naked man approaching a vehicle to the insides of people’s garages — around in an internal messaging system.
The images were anonymized, but some had enough information in them to re-identify whose car they came from or had location data associated with them.
While this news may seem shocking on its face, it actually points to a difficult but ever-present reality. Newer cars are covered in cameras, and the cars of the future will surely have even more of them. It’s not always clear if and how this footage is secured. And while the Reuters report is specifically about Tesla, it doesn’t mean that only Tesla owners risk these kinds of privacy invasions.
Google ChatGPT Rival AI Faces in-House Resistance: Report
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a major talking point with the rise to prominence of AI chatbot ChatGPT from OpenAI and generative AI image makers like Midjourney and DALL-E 2.
However, not everyone sees eye to eye with this emerging technology.
A new report from The New York Times revealed that in March, two Google employees tried to stop the company from launching its own AI chatbot rivaling OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
According to the New York Times report, the employees’ jobs are specifically to review Google’s AI products. The employees allegedly believed the technology generated “inaccurate and dangerous statements.”
Microsoft employees and ethicists raised similar concerns months prior, as it, too, planned the release of an AI chatbot to be integrated into its Bing browser. Concerns were voiced at Microsoft about the degradation of critical thinking, disinformation and eroding the “factual foundation of modern society.”
Nonetheless, Microsoft released its Bing-integrated chatbot in February, and one month later, Google released its “Bard” chatbot toward the end of March, both of which succeeded OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT-4 in November 2022.
Twitter Circle Tweets Are Not That Private Anymore
PSA: Do not post your deepest darkest secrets on your Twitter Circle.
Numerous Twitter users are reporting a bug in which Circle tweets — which are supposed to reach a select group, like an Instagram Close Friends story — are surfacing on the algorithmically generated “For You” timeline.
That means that your supposedly private posts might breach containment to reach an unintended audience, which could quickly spark some uncomfortable situations.
I observed this bug when a tweet from someone I follow appeared on my “For You” timeline, but the retweet button was disabled, despite the person’s account being public.
When I clicked on the tweet, it disappeared. I asked the tweeter if that post was intended for their Circle — which I am not in — and they confirmed this was the case.
Switzerland Stops Recommending COVID Vaccination
Swiss authorities have stopped recommending COVID-19 vaccination, including for people who are designated at high risk from COVID-19.
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health now says that “no COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for spring/summer 2023.”
People designated at high risk also aren’t recommended to get a COVID-19 vaccine, authorities said.
Officials attributed the change to the number of citizens who have received a vaccine, recovered from COVID-19, or have received a vaccine and also enjoy natural immunity from post-recovery protection.
“Nearly everyone in Switzerland has been vaccinated and/or contracted and recovered from COVID-19. Their immune system has therefore been exposed to the coronavirus. In spring/summer 2023, the virus will likely circulate less. The current virus variants also cause rather mild illness,” Swiss health officials said.
CDC Partners With ‘Social and Behavior Change’ Initiative to Silence Vaccine Hesitancy
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Stanford-educated ear, nose and throat doctor, isn’t afraid to voice her beliefs. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she repeatedly used her platform on Twitter and TikTok to question the vaccines, promote ivermectin as a treatment, and call out pharmacists for refusing to dispense it.
But her efforts resulted in significant backlash.
On Nov. 7, 2021, Dr. Danielle Jones, an OBGYN who posts under the handle @MamaDoctorJones on YouTube, TikTok and Twitter — and has millions of followers — put out a video accusing Bowden of “grifting,” rejecting science, and profiting from those who questioned the vaccine.
The video received thousands of comments, including from Team Halo members, Dr. Zachary Rubin, a pediatrician, and Christina Kim, an oncology nurse practitioner. Team Halo is a social media influencer campaign formed as part of the United Nations Verified initiative and the Vaccine Confidence Project to increase vaccine uptake.
“That doc is problematic,” Rubin wrote. Kim followed with, “Wow. That ‘doctor’ should have her license revoked.”
Twitter’s Substack Blockade Continues as Site Redirects Searches to ‘Newsletters’
Twitter’s continually escalating feud with Substack appears to be going strong as users found out this weekend that searches for the blogging site are being redirected to “newsletter” instead.
This appears to be another attempt by the Elon Musk-owned social media site to keep users away from Substack, as the former appears to be going to war with the newsletter platform. The recent decision by Twitter to redirect searches for “Substack” to “newsletter” has sparked controversy and raised concerns about free speech.
Mashable’s attempt to request a comment from Twitter was immediately responded to with a poop emoji, an automated response Musk implemented after gutting the communications department. Substack also did not immediately respond to Mashable’s request for comment regarding the situation.
Fauci Wanted Biden Administration to Fight Deposition Subpoena, Emails Show
Dr. Anthony Fauci wanted top Biden administration officials to try to get a deposition subpoena quashed, newly obtained emails show.
Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser until recently, questioned in one of the emails why the administration was fighting against a subpoena for a former White House press secretary but not his.
“If they are going to push back on Jen Psaki’s deposition then why not push back on mine? Please check this out,” Fauci wrote on Nov. 6, 2022.
He was referring to a news story about how lawyers for Psaki and the U.S. Department of Justice were urging a court to block her subpoena.
Fauci was writing to Jill Harper, a National Institutes of Health official.
“Please check this out,” he said.
“Will check with the lawyers,” Harper said.
There’s no sign in the messages of what the administration’s lawyers replied when asked why they didn’t move to block Fauci’s subpoena.
The Department of Justice and Harper did not respond to requests for comment. Fauci could not be reached.
