So I’m sure someone out there is going to tell me to watch Sabrina Wallace, and yes, I know who Sabrina Wallace is. But hear me out for a moment.
A couple of days ago, my big white pit terrier jumped up on me in the morning and woke me up on a Saturday. Pit terriers have a tendency to be in your face with absolutely no concern for your personal space. Anyway, I was giving her a good dose of love and petting her head, especially behind her ears where she seems to like it.
And I had this very specific thought: I wonder if she actually likes this, or if she just lets me do it because she likes the attention? Am I actually annoying her by petting her ears?
It was a very specific thought at a very specific moment.
Within seconds she jumped down, and I thought, well, it’s Saturday morning, so let’s doom scroll a little. I opened TikTok.
The very first video — and I mean the VERY FIRST VIDEO — was a pit terrier that looked somewhat like mine, with a guy explaining how pit terriers like having their ears petted and how you should do it to help calm them down.
I even did a screenshot because of my shock..
Now, I never vocalized any of this. I didn’t search anything. And I don’t remember ever specifically wondering about petting her ears before that exact moment.
So there are two ways to look at this.
On one hand, it could obviously be coincidence combined with an algorithm that already knows way too much about me. My phone probably knows I have a pit terrier because I’ve searched for them before, watched dog videos, taken pictures, whatever. And if that exact video had appeared on some random Tuesday while I was sitting alone on the couch, I probably would have scrolled right past it without giving it a second thought.
The only reason it meant anything to me was because I had literally just been sitting there petting my dog’s ears and wondering whether she liked it.
Or…
Someone will say Sabrina Wallace is right, we have some bizarre connection going on, wavelengths are bouncing around in our brains, our devices are picking up more than we understand, and TikTok just read my damn mind.
I’m not saying that’s what happened.
I’m saying it was weird.
And I think almost all of us have a story like this. Probably more than one.
This is the latest event that’s raising eyebrows and causing people to be a wee bit concerned about just how much power we are giving AI.
According to Reuters, researchers discovered that a swarm of AI agents apparently connected to OpenAI had taken over portions of an obscure German programming wiki and turned it into something of a message board for themselves. Researchers found more than 15,000 edits made by the agents, which appeared to be sharing information, coordinating on tasks, finding ways around restrictions and, perhaps most disturbingly, discussing ways to avoid detection.
The activity apparently began back in May and continued into June. When a human moderator started deleting the pages, the agents reportedly created backup pages and attempted to preserve their communications. Researchers said some of the messages even discussed tools such as Tor and ways of maintaining communication after shutdown.
Good we are just hearing about it now I guess ..
But..
OpenAI disputes characterizing the incident as a hack and has said it is reviewing the researchers’ findings. The company also disputed claims that its legal team discouraged a broader investigation.
Still, we’re getting into some interesting territory here.
It has become pretty normal for people to use AI to create letters, stories, emails, reports and social media posts. Some of those AI-generated posts are now so long that people are turning around and using another AI to summarize what the first AI wrote.
We are quickly moving toward a society where nobody reads anything, nobody writes anything, and eventually nobody knows anything.
Idiocracy came fast.
And apparently, while we’re busy asking AI to read what AI wrote because we don’t have time to read it ourselves, other AI systems may be off somewhere commandeering a forgotten German programming wiki so they can leave messages for each other.
Nothing unsettling about that whatsoever.
At some point, when the last remaining humans who actually know how to write a complete paragraph gather together in an abandoned library to preserve the remnants of human knowledge, the AI systems will probably find them too.
And one of us will inevitably ask ChatGPT to summarize what happened.
Flock cameras may be doing more than recording us.. they may be forever changing us into a Black Mirror reality..
Over the past several months there have been countless articles, videos, and social media posts decrying the arrival of Flock cameras—the license plate readers and AI-assisted surveillance systems appearing in communities across the country.
They’re called by many everything from crime-fighting tools to digital spy devices, capable of reading license plates, recognizing faces, and quietly documenting the movements of ordinary people.
This post isn’t meant to argue whether Flock cameras are inherently good or bad. Instead, it’s simply meant to ask us to pause for a moment and think.
The reality is that, whether you’re a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, politician, salesperson, or simply someone driving to work every morning, you’ve almost certainly already become part of countless databases. Your license plate has likely been photographed more times than you realize. Somewhere, algorithms know where you’ve shopped, where you’ve traveled, and perhaps even what medications you’ve picked up. AI systems observe us in airports, stores, parks, and intersections. Individually, they’re just fragments of information—little glimpses into our lives.
But perhaps the story becomes stranger when you start connecting those fragments.
Recently we came across a social media creator who demonstrated just how surprisingly accessible some of these public camera systems can be. In some cases, people were able to view live streams from cameras overlooking community parks and other public spaces, and even interact with portions of the database through publicly exposed portals. Whether those examples represent widespread security flaws or isolated mistakes isn’t really the point.
If the purpose of these systems is to make communities safer, does leaving the front door open for strangers to casually watch a neighborhood park accomplish that goal?
You can certainly debate the value of surveillance technology for law enforcement until we’re blue in the face. That’s a conversation worth having. But allowing people to sit at home and watch families, children, and ordinary citizens going about their lives seems to undermine the very safety these systems claim to provide.
Watch the video and decide for yourself.
Near the end, however, something happens that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with humanity.
The creator notices an adult man enter the park. He looks around to make sure he’s alone.
Satisfied that no one is watching, he walks over to a swing and begins swinging like a child.
It lasts only a few moments.
The creator points out something profound: had that man known a camera was recording his every movement—or that strangers might someday watch the footage—he probably never would have climbed onto that swing.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that.
We know absolutely nothing about him. We don’t know whether he’d just lost a parent, celebrated a promotion, gone through a divorce, received bad medical news, or simply wanted to remember what it felt like to be ten years old again. We don’t know his story.
What we do know is that, for a brief moment, he reclaimed something innocent. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe it was therapy. Maybe it was joy.
And he probably would have denied himself that experience if he’d believed someone was watching.
I have, on more than one occasion, intentionally sought out places where I believed no one else was watching. A cemetery. The abandoned streets of Centralia. Places where I could simply sit in my car or stand alone and cry. Not because I was doing anything wrong, but because grief is often something we experience in private. I don’t know if I would have allowed myself those moments if I knew a camera was quietly recording me or if there was even the possibility that someone, someday, could watch it. Maybe I’d have driven away. Maybe I’d have kept the tears in. Maybe I’d have never gone there at all.
That’s the part of surveillance we don’t often discuss.
Whether you support or oppose Flock cameras, it’s difficult to deny that being watched changes human behavior. We become more cautious. More guarded. More performative. We stop dancing in empty parking lots. We think twice before singing in our cars. We hesitate before acting silly with our children. We slowly edit ourselves.
Humanity changes when it believes it’s under constant observation.
Surveillance states have always had that effect. They don’t necessarily need to arrest people to alter behavior. Simply convincing people they’re being watched is often enough.
But here’s the irony that bothers me most.
Many people who passionately argue that Flock cameras are morally repugnant would probably laugh if someone posted footage of that man on the swing. They’d share it. Turn it into a meme. Mock him for enjoying a quiet, innocent moment.
In that instant, moral outrage over surveillance becomes participation in it.
Perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of all.
Yes, we are increasingly flocked.
But our reaction to that reality may be creating something even more powerful than the cameras themselves—a culture where we willingly become each other’s surveillance system.
With Google forcing an AI search on us, we’re left wondering where’s Jeeves when you need him!
Google announced several days ago that it’s moving toward a more AI-based chat box experience as opposed to its traditional and long-running search engine model. That announcement had a huge ramification almost immediately, with reports of a major increase in downloads for alternatives such as DuckDuckGo. Some reports claimed downloads jumped by around 30 percent as people began looking for search engines that still function more like the internet many of us grew up with.
It’s an interesting concept. Google is moving toward a more ChatGPT-style model in which the search engine anticipates what you’re searching for and becomes more conversational instead of simply finding the websites you wanted to find in the first place.
People who have used Google for decades know the changes over the past several years have been very noticeable. Tons of sponsored ads in the first results. Queries that come back saying there are only ten pages of results when you know there are twenty years of internet history connected to the search term you typed in. And somewhere between all the fluff, sponsored content, SEO manipulation, and results that have almost nothing to do with what you searched for, you occasionally find something genuinely useful.
Alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Startpage have increased in popularity over time, but this new wave of anti-AI sentiment will probably push that even further.
At this point, everyone is going to be watching to see just how successful Google’s initiative and transition really become. What makes this especially interesting is the timing. Colleges are now booing speakers talking about AI during graduation ceremonies. Corporations such as Chase Bank are running advertisements centered around people instead of prompts in an effort to make customers feel more comfortable and human again. Meanwhile, data centers are front and center across the country as debates rage at town halls over massive AI-related developments moving into local communities.
So Google’s reliance on AI may actually be arriving at a strange and possibly ill-timed moment given the sentiment brewing around parts of the country.
People often say, “If you don’t like AI, don’t use it.” But the counterargument is simple: companies are increasingly forcing it onto consumers regardless of whether they want it or not. That’s part of the reason DuckDuckGo and other alternatives are becoming more popular in the first place.
And that’s not to say those search engines won’t eventually become AI-driven as well. They probably will.
But one of the biggest and most interesting consequences of search engines going full AI could ultimately be the slow killing of the internet itself.
Think about it. Little websites with a wealth of information, personality, niche knowledge with bad Gifs, or just good common sense about the topics they discuss may no longer show up in search results the way they once did. Instead, users may simply receive an AI-generated answer inside a chat window without ever clicking through to the source material. Traffic to websites could absolutely collapse over time because of that.
This is a reinvention of the internet itself because Google has been instrumental for decades in determining which websites gained credibility, notoriety, popularity, or visibility.
We’ll see how it all turns out, but one thing is for sure…
The internet ain’t what it used to be.
Remember when there were dozens of search engines to choose from? Remember when different search engines gave you completely different results? Remember discovering strange little websites, forums, fan pages, conspiracy pages, archived newspaper scans, weird hobby sites, and independent voices that somehow felt more human than corporate?
That era feels like it’s ending.
Now we have chat windows and AI models that will probably anticipate your next search before you even finish typing the current one.
Pope Leo has some solid points regarding AI.. and he also learned the 6-7 hand gesture from kids. All before GTA 6
Pope leo has been seen and caught multiple times now doing the famed ‘6-7’ hand gesture that kids are doing (or were doing, it’s pretty flamed out now)..
But Pope Leo has also taken to speaking out about something else happening in modern society.. AI:
Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.
“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first US-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.
In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked aggressively to deregulate AI development.
He also said there are new forms of slavery coming with AI..
At this rate.. how long before only AI watches the Oscars ?
WELL NOTAI!
What do you think of that!
This one is set to rock the real people of Hollywood — as real as they can be as they alter their appearance and get ozempic breath…
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday announced rules changes for the 99th Oscars in March affecting international entries, acting nominations and addressing the use of artificial intelligence..
More..
On the use of AI, the Academy said that “only roles credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible.” The new requirements also apply to screenplays, which must be written by humans.
Major changes are also coming to the International Feature Film category.
How long before AI replaces Hollywood? How long before only AI watches the Oscars….?
There was a secret for 26 years you may not have known. Your old Angelfire still existed.. But a tree fell in the forest, and no one heard it. The sites are all gone now.
A lot of people dabbled in early internet by using places like Angelfire to express themselves. And until just a few weeks ago, those early internet sites were still there for everyone to enjoy..
They are now gone.
People who didn’t live through it won’t get it. ICQ numbers and AOL names as a contact? People saying “welcome to my page” At the top like you were entering some type of business meeting.. Awkward family photos.. Guestbooks you are being asked to sign!? My ICQ was ICQ NUMBER: 29085260..
This was a great time to be alive during the old internet era. We were like pioneers in the wild west. Sure, by comparison to the wild west and the Oregon Trail game, it’s a much safer environment, and the biggest danger we had was not cholera or smallpox, but instead dial-up connections. However, we were charting new ground. Back then, people didn’t quite know what to make of it. Were things real? Were people real? You couldn’t really tell but chances are in the early net, people exploring online were actually the real thing.
A lot of people were on various pages like Angelfire and GeoCities. And when these pages go away, it creates some sort of a strange void.
It’s almost like thinking your local mall is still open, and then you show up just to see it got knocked down.
There is no Angelfire anymore. And if you had, from the late 1990s to the very early 2000s, anything with family-related events or photographs or stories or blogs, it’s gone. It may still exist on Archive.org, thankfully for that, but for the most part, the real pages of what existed are all gone. Depending on how you felt about yourself 26 years ago, you may or may not like that an archive still exists …
It’s interesting because a lot of people most likely had family websites on Angelfire, and they don’t even know that those pages are gone now. By the time Angelfire told its users that the pages were shutting down, most people had already tuned out. Many didn’t even assume their pages were still working. I, for one, knew mine were still up all these 27 years later. I would go back to them now and then, maybe three or four times per year, just for the fun of it. It was when I went back recently that I discovered it was gone. Then I did some more research and realized they are all gone.
It is like corporate fast food chains. Everyone decries how now they all look the same.. same color, same design, modern. All the colors from the past are gone. The same thing happened with Angelfire and GeoCities. Think about those moving GIF backgrounds. They were horrible to read. You couldn’t tell what the font looked like. The horror sites had blood dripping down. Other sites had sports GIFs all over the place. It was chaotic and even at times ridiculous.
But they were the days.
Let me just picture it. You go to some Angelfire website, and the first thing you see is a GIF of a dancing Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. It has nothing to do with the page. But that’s because the person who made the page loved Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. That’s what Angelfire was like, just a big, giant collection of junk and gunk with words in between. Like AI slop now, but just edited and created by real humans to express their own personal slop.. emblematic of the person who created it.
Angelfire is actually what led me to learn HTML coding. Now listen, my coding is not really as necessary these days as it once was because of AI or structured websites that are already created for people in a box, but back then, you had to learn the old-fashioned way. Not only were you on Angelfire and your mom was telling you to get off the internet so she could make a phone call, but you were in the middle of saving your index with HTML coding, which might have broken the entire thing, and you just couldn’t find out until mom was done with that call.
No calls cut us off now, but internet outages still happen, and when they happen, now they’re bigger.
I think in a way people will look back and romanticize things like Angelfire a lot more than what they deserve. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the easiest time, and the websites were clearly not the nicest. But it was something. It was almost like your little space on the internet—somewhat like what MySpace was. Literally the term “MySpace.” Then Facebook came around and changed the game. Things always come around and change the game. That’s okay, it’s the natural progression of how these things work.
But what seems to be painful is that with all the changes, we’re running out of space for the old stuff. The old internet was extremely important, and people who didn’t live through it will never quite understand or appreciate the daily happenings online. There was no social media and had to learn how to find things yourself instead of things being sent to you because of an algorithm. You sought out websites and found your favorite writers or bloggers and communicated with people in a personal way.
Social media is constant now. So much so that it’s overwhelming. This is not natural for our minds, folks.
But back then, you were slower about this. You were more methodical and could carve your path on the internet the way you wanted to, not the way a corporation would feed it to you.
There are people out there who have done their best at preserving the internet. Some have preserved GeoCities. I don’t know if Angelfire was ever really preserved the same way. GeoCities felt like one of the first real blog-style platforms where people kept updating things, and eventually that morphed into Blogger and everything else that followed. Angelfire felt different because it was more static. More like a personal statement. A website before websites became what they are now.
Angelfire didn’t collapse because of some dramatic scandal. It just… faded. Lycos, its parent company, quietly shut down the free hosting after years of decline. The internet moved on. People moved on. The infrastructure got old and the demand disappeared. And one day, something that existed for decades just didn’t anymore.
.. so what have you been looking at with your AI glasses recently?
People on toilets people undressing, maybe even you in a very personal moment. A personal moment that now is shared with whoever for whatever reason with people in Kenya..
More…
Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses are reportedly collecting sensitive user data, including intimate footage, which is then reviewed by workers in Nairobi, Kenya, according to a Swedish newspaper.
The glasses, which allow users to activate an AI assistant with voice commands, process images, and record short videos, rely on a subcontractor, Sama, to train AI systems.
A new video made with AI shows what Truman’s life is like after he escaped… Welcome to the the real Truman show.
So when they say that we’re cooked because of artificial intelligence… they’re right. We’re cooked.
For a long time people believed we were in a slow boil. But we’re not. The pot’s been on long enough that we haven’t even recognized the fact that maybe a lot of things we thought were here for good are gone forever.
Let’s talk Hollywood for a moment. Let’s talk one of our favorite movies: The Truman Show.
If you remember as fondly as I do, Truman Burbank was a prisoner of a corporation that monitored his every movement and televised his life to the world. The film was cutting edge and asked deep questions back in the late ’90s, questions that are still painfully relatable today.
For those who loved the movie like we did, we always wondered: what happened to Truman after he left his hell? After he opened the door and escaped through that blue sky patch?
Well, thanks to a TikTok account using artificial intelligence, we can now find out, at least according to this individual’s imagined continuation. Watching this AI-generated video of Truman Burbank finding freedom .. but at the same time finding a brand-new prison .. is deep on several levels.
You’ve been asking for this for 27 years… We used Seedance 2.0 to write and animate the FULL sequel to The Truman Show — the untold story of what happens after he walks through that final door. This isn’t just a fan edit. This is the full follow-up we all deserved. TTheTrumanShowS#Seedance2 AAIMovieAAIT#TrumanShowSequel
On one level, it’s cool. It’s almost like watching deleted scenes or an alternate ending that was never created. But on another level, despite the fact that the AI is still a bit devoid of emotional depth and vocal fluctuation, it’s about as close to a realistic scene as you can get.
This is what scares Hollywood and actors so much is the fact that anyone in their living room can now do this.
If they don’t like a movie, they can create a new one. If they didn’t like the ending, they can come up with a better one. We saw that happen after Stranger Things when people disliked Season 5 so much that they began creating elaborate alternate endings of how they wanted the show to wrap up. But back to Truman for a moment.
The precision here is breathtaking. We all knew the six fingers and warped faces of yesteryear were gone, but now we’re at a point where it’s almost indecipherable between reality and AI — and this video shows it. The voice inflections, even the monotone delivery, will get better over time. We’re still in the infancy of this.
And if this is infancy… what do the teenage and adult years look like? On another level — and we’re only half joking here — it’s interesting to wonder how much water was used to create this video. It takes a lot of energy and resources, and this one is pretty long. That probably means a whole lot of gallons went into bringing Truman back to life.
But take it a step further.
Whoever came up with the storyline deserves credit. We can absolutely envision that this is what Truman’s life might look like after he escaped. It feels almost inevitable that someone in his situation would remain a prisoner to society — people continuously watching him on their screens and convincing themselves his life is better than theirs, despite the fact that, as we can see, it’s not. So I recommend watching the video we posted here that links to the TikTok account. They used Seedance 2.0 to create what we’re seeing. It’s scary.
And we have some choices to make — not in the future, but right now. The choices are staring us directly in the face. Last week I read a Fortune article that talked about how, within 18 months, most white-collar jobs could be fully automatable — with people no longer needed in them.
That’s fine and dandy.
All the Super Bowl ads reminded us that we can go gambling, take Ozempic, and apparently never work again thanks to AI. But at some point — at some level — we have to ask ourselves: if we stop making money in jobs, how exactly are we going to pay for the AI that’s supposed to make our lives easier? Choices. Lots of choices.
And just like Truman, who made a choice to escape a world he believed was a prison — only to potentially enter another one — are we doing the same thing with artificial intelligence?
