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In a news release, Saskatoon police said officers were called to the hospital shortly after 7 a.m. CST on Friday after receiving reports that a man had died.
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lsandersonsnopes_feedoursinThat piece about people having AI spouses is online: As synthetic personas become an increasingly normal part of life, meet the people falling for their chatbot lovers.
NB we note that 'Lamar' says that the breaking point with his actual, RL, girlfriend was when he found her doing the horizontal tango with his best friend, but it's clear that there were Problems already there, about having to relate to another human bean who was not always brightly sunshiny positively reinforcing him....
what would he tell his kids? “I’d tell them that humans aren’t really people who can be trusted …
This is not entirely 'wow, startling news' to Ye Hystorianne of Sexxe: The Phenomenon of ‘Bud Sex’ Between Straight Rural Men.
I am not going to see if I actually have a copy of the work on my shelves, or if I perused it in a library somewhere, but didn't that notorious work of 'participant observation' sociology, Tearoom Trade argue that many of his subjects were not defining themselves as 'homosexual'.
I also invoke, even further back, Helen Smith's Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895-1957 about men 'messing about' with other men in Yorkshire industrial cities.
And there is a reason people working on the epidemiology and prevention of STIs use the acronym 'MSM' - men who have sex with men - for the significant population at risk who do not identify as gay.
I had, I must admit, a very plus ca change moment when I idly picked up Katharine Whitehorn's Roundabout (1962), and found the piece she wrote on marriage bureaux. In which she mentioned that the two bureaux she interviewed tried to get their subscribers not to be too ultra-specific in their demands - that if they met potential partners in real life they would be more flexible.
Was also amused by the statement that 'Men over thirty are always very anxious to persuade me that they could have all they women they liked, if they bothered'.
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Liquor corporations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador say they have sold roughly half their inventory of American booze since putting it back on shelves last month to sell off for charity.
canyonwalker
Why start so soon?404media_feed
Noelle Perdue recently joined us on the 404 Media podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about AI porn, censorship, age verification legislation, and a lot more. One part of our conversation really resonated with listeners – the idea that erotic chatbots are increasing the isolation so many people already feel – so we asked her to expand on that thought in written form.
Today’s incognito window, a pseudo friend to perverts and ad-evaders alike, is nearly useless. It doesn’t protect against malware and your data is still tracked. Its main purpose is, ostensibly, to prevent browsing history from being saved locally on your computer.
But the concept of privatizing your browsing history feels old-fashioned, vestigial from a time when computers were such a production that they had their own room in the house. Back then, the wholesome desktop computer was shared between every person of clicking-age in a household. It had to be navigated with some amount of hygiene, lest the other members learn about your affinity for Jerk Off Instruction.
Even before desktop computers, pornography was unavoidably communal whether or not you were into that kind of thing. Part of the difficulty in getting ahold of porn was the embarrassment of having to interact with others along the way; whether it was the movie store clerk showing you the back of the store or the gas station cashier reaching for a dirty magazine, it was nearly impossible to access explicit material without interacting with someone else, somewhere along the line. Porn theaters were hotbeds for queer cruising, with (usually men) gathering to watch porn, jerk off and engage in mostly-anonymous sexual encounters. Even a lack of interaction was communal, like the old tradition of leaving Playboys or Hustlers in the woods for other curious porn aficionados to find.
With the internet came access, yes, but also privacy. Suddenly, credit card processing put beaded curtain security guards out of business, and forums had more centrefolds than every issue of Playboy combined. Porn theaters shut down—partially due to stricter zoning ordinances and 80’s sex-panic pressure from their neighbors, but also because the rise of streaming pay-per-view and the internet meant people had more options to stay in the comfort of their homes with access to virtually whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it.
Today, with computers in our pockets and slung against our shoulders, even browsing history has become private by circumstance. Computers are now “personal devices,” rather than communal machines—what we do with them is our business. We have no corporate privacy, of course; our data is being harvested at record volumes. Instead, in exchange for shipping off all our most sensitive information, we have tremendous, historically unheard-of interpersonal privacy. At least, Gen Z are likely the last generation to have embarrassing “my parents looked at my browsing history” anecdotes. We’ve left that information to be seen and sorted by Palantir interns.
Most recently in technology’s ongoing love-hate affair with porn, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced he was going to allow ChatGPT to generate erotica, joining hundreds of AI-powered porn platforms offering highly tailored generated content at the push of a button.
Now, from the user’s perspective, there are no humans at any point in this interaction. The consumer is in their room, requesting a machine, and the machine spits out a product. You are entirely alone at every step of this process.
As a porn historian, I think alarm bells should be going off here. Sexual dysfunction thrives in shame, and shame thrives in seclusion. Often, people who talk to me about their issues with sex and pornography worry that what they want isn’t “normal.” One thing that pornography teaches is that there is no normal—chances are, if you like something, someone else does, too. Finding pornography of something you’re into is proof that you are not alone in your desires, that someone else liked it enough to make it, and others liked it enough to buy it. You aren’t a freak—or maybe you are, but at least you’re in good company.
Samantha Cole
Other people can also provide a useful temperature check- I’m all for nonnormative sexuality and fantasy, but it’s good to get a tone read every once in a while on where the hungry animal has taken you. Strange things happen in isolation, and the dehumanization of sexual imagery by literally removing the human allows people to disconnect personhood from desire, a practice it serves us well to avoid. Compartmentalization of inner sexuality so far as to have it be completely disconnected from what another person can offer you (or what you can offer another person) can lead to sexual frustration at best and genuine harm at worst. This isn’t hypothetical; We know that chatbots have the power to lure vulnerable people, especially the elderly and young, away from reality and into situations where they’re hurt or taken advantage of in real life. And while real, human sex workers endure decades of censorship and marginalization online from industry giants that make it harder and harder to earn a living online, the AI chatbot platforms of the world push ahead, even exposing minors to explicit content or creating child sexual abuse imagery with seemingly zero consequence.
I don’t think anyone needs to project their porn use on the side of their house. Sexual boundaries exist for a reason, and everyone is entitled to their own internal world. But I do think in a period of increasing sexual shame, open communication is a valuable tool. Sex is human, sex is animal, sex is social. Even in periods of celibacy or self-pleasure, sexual desire connects us, person-to-person—even if in practice you happen to be connecting with your right hand.
Noelle is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian whose works has been published in Wired, The Washington Post, Slate, and more. You can find her on Substack here.
sistawendytylik. Much talk. Very noodle. Wow. Spotted an anti-ICE sign, partly in Chinese, in the window of a business. Nun-approved.
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Malaysia and Indonesia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk's company xAI, as concerns grew among global authorities that it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images.
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Reza Pahlavi has sought to speak as an Iranian leader despite living outside the country since protests against the clerical regime erupted late last month. Here is a closer look at the 65-year-old exiled son of royalty, whose support within Iran is open to question.
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Months after wildfires forced them from their homes, 21 residents from a Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation personal care home are still stranded in Winnipeg, waiting for the building to be repaired so they can go back.
flamingsword
snopes_feedlarryhammerreblogarythmprettygoodword
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The Sûreté du Québec says no one was injured when a Via passenger train struck the trailers of two transport trucks that had parked near the tracks in Saint-Alexandre-de-Kamouraska, located in the Lower St. Lawrence region.
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A Swiss court on Monday ordered that the co-owner of a bar in the upscale ski resort of Crans-Montana that caught fire on New Year's Day, killing 40 people, must remain in custody.
