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Jamie Lee Curtis Bashed for Face Mask ‘Propaganda’ Amid COVID Spike
Jamie Lee Curtis has been blasted for urging her fans to mask up amid a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases.
The “Halloween” star, 64, took to Instagram Wednesday to share a selfie that showed her wearing a Michael Myers mask over her mouth, before offering up a public service announcement in a caption beneath the snap.
“And we’re BAAAAACCCCKKKK,” the actress wrote. “No, not Michael Myers but masking will be. COVID is on the rise. SO MANY friends now are really sick. BE MINDFUL. WEAR A MASK if required or even if you feel unwell and are out in public spaces.”
However, Curtis was immediately blasted by many of her 5 million followers, with some accusing her of “pushing political propaganda.”
House Judiciary GOP Grill Mayorkas on ‘Inconsistent’ Testimony About Biden Admin’s ‘Censorship Activities’
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are quizzing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over what they say are apparent contradictions in his testimony over the Department of Homeland Security’s “censorship” efforts.
Chairman Jim Jordan, along with Reps. Mike Johnson, R-La., Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Dan Bishop, R-N.C., wrote to Mayorkas about his testimony to the committee in July regarding the operation and scope of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and asking if he wishes to amend his testimony to the committee.
Specifically, they highlighted a claim by Mayorkas that CISA, a cyber defense agency, “does not censor speech.” Republicans on the committee have alleged that the CISA has expanded its mission to “surveil Americans’s speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public.”
They have also released a number of tranches of documents they say are “smoking gun” evidence that the Biden administration and Big Tech companies ran afoul of the First Amendment on issues including COVID-19.
Following Elon Musk’s Lead, Big Tech Is Surrendering to Disinformation
Social media companies are receding from their role as watchdogs against political misinformation, abandoning their most aggressive efforts to police online falsehoods in a trend expected to profoundly affect the 2024 presidential election.
An array of circumstances is fueling the retreat: Mass layoffs at Meta and other major tech companies have gutted teams dedicated to promoting accurate information online. An aggressive legal battle over claims that the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to silence certain speech has blocked a key path to detecting election interference.
And X CEO Elon Musk has reset industry standards, rolling back strict rules against misinformation on the site formerly known as Twitter. In a sign of Musk’s influence, Meta briefly considered a plan last year to ban all political advertising on Facebook. The company shelved it after Musk announced plans to transform rival Twitter into a haven for free speech, according to two people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.
Djokovic Faces Müller on U.S. Open Return While Gauff Could Lie in Wait for Swiatek
Novak Djokovic will mark his return to the U.S. Open by facing Alexandre Müller, a Frenchman ranked No. 85 in the world, in the first round. After his incredible three-set win over Carlos Alcaraz to land the Cincinnati Masters 1000 title last week moved him closer to regaining the top ranking, a first-round victory for Djokovic would ensure that he will leapfrog Alcaraz in the ATP rankings and celebrate a record-extending 390th week at No 1 after the U.S. Open.
The ATP’s race for No. 1 is likely to be defined by their contrasting fortunes last year. Only 20 points separate Alcaraz and Djokovic in the ATP rankings but while Djokovic is defending zero points after not being allowed to enter the United States last year due to his refusal to take a COVID vaccine, Alcaraz is the defending champion so he can only defend the 2,000 points he earned last year.
NYU Launched Private ChatGPT for Its Health Data, and Set Its Staff Loose to Experiment
A fourth-year medical student, a music therapist, a child psychiatrist, and a physician-researcher stared at their laptops, puzzling over the combination of words that would make a supposedly intelligent system — NYU Langone’s customized version of ChatGPT — think about healthcare problems in a way that was useful to them.
As part of a “prompt-a-thon” in August at the medical center’s science building, the group had been charged with analyzing a patient record around the theme of equity using NYU’s HIPAA-compliant implementation of the buzzy OpenAI technology that can interpret language and generate text based on queries.
After a morning of mini-lectures, participants broke off into assigned groups and dove into NYU Langone’s newly launched prompting interface. Representatives from Microsoft, which makes the artificial intelligence tool accessible through its cloud services, were on hand to ensure everything ran smoothly as about 70 workshop participants from across the academic medical center put prompts into the system around themes including research, clinical applications, and patient education.
How the EU Digital Services Act Affects Facebook, Google and Others
Unprecedented regulation forcing more than 40 online giants including Facebook, X, Google and TikTok to better police the content they deliver within the EU is due to come into force on August 25. So what is the legislation and how will regulators enforce it?
The DSA is a groundbreaking law that will apply to any digital operation serving the EU, forcing them to be legally accountable for everything from fake news to manipulation of shoppers, Russian propaganda and criminal activity including child abuse.
It will apply to large and small operators, but the rules are tiered, with the toughest obligations applying to 17 companies including Facebook and Amazon that have been designated as “very large online platforms”, and two “very large online search engines”: Google and Bing.
Those that do not comply face sanctions including large fines — which could run into hundreds of millions of euros — and an EU-wide ban.
