A preprint paper published this week highlights the dangers of harassment involving Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses. Of the 350 covert recording videos studied by researchers at the University of Sydney, just under 60% of them included harassing behaviour, and 43% resulted in reams of insulting and derogatory comments directed at unwitting female subjects.
Two years after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump staged a New Jersey press conference flanked by grocery staples to spotlight inflation under Democrats, food prices are still rising despite his pledge to bring them down. read more
Will Weissert: A look at Trump's tendency to avoid blame when things go awry. read more
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley pushed back against claims that the company's expanding network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) is contributing to a surveillance state ... read more
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra have huddled inside their homes for days on end, unable to leave because of the threat posed by Israeli settlers. The Israeli military, which over the past three years has displayed staggering military and intelligence capabilities from Beirut to Tehran, has yet to fully remove the settlers from the area of the village, about an hour's drive from Tel Aviv.
Woodstock (2019)
Three days that defined a generation.
www.pbs.org
... In August 1969, nearly half a million people gathered at a farm in upstate New York to hear music. What happened over the next three days, however, was far more than a concert. It would become a legendary event, one that would define a generation and mark the end of one of the most turbulent decades in modern history.[italics theirs]
Occurring just weeks after an American set foot on the moon, the Woodstock music festival took place against a backdrop of a nation in conflict over sexual politics, civil rights and the Vietnam War. A sense of an America in transition -- a handoff of the country between generations with far different values and ideals -- was tangibly present at what promoters billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music.
Woodstock turns the lens back at the audience, at the swarming, impromptu city that grew up overnight on a few acres of farmland. What took place in that teeming mass of humanity -- the rain-soaked, starving, tripping, half-a-million strong throng of young people -- was nothing less than a miracle of teamwork, a manifestation of the "peace and love" the festival had touted and a validation of the counter-culture's promise to the world.
Who were these kids? What experiences and stories did they carry with them to Bethel, New York that weekend, and how were they changed by three days in the muck and mire of Yasgur's farm? ...
@#18 ... "Summer of Soul" ...
Summer of Soul
en.wikipedia.org
... Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a 2021 American independent[3][4] documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in his directorial debut.[5][6]
It had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2021, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the documentary categories.
It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. by Searchlight Pictures on June 25, 2021, before expanding and being released for streaming on Hulu the next weekend. ...
Another view ...
The Backlash Is So Strong That People With "Pervert Glasses" Are Afraid to Use Them in Public (July 2026)
futurism.com
... Meta's camera-equipped "AI Glasses" are so divisive that some adopters are now leaving their expensive smart glasses at home, as Engadget reports.
Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously -- and non-consensually -- capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them, interactions they've then posted online for content. Some wearers have even attempted to extort victims of covert recordings for cash. That's on top of serious allegations of alleged privacy breaches by Meta itself.
And then, of course, there's the simple fact that a lot of people just really don't like the idea of the world's largest and most powerful social media giant, which has a history of misusing biometric information and other data, facilitating abuse and surveillance in this way -- especially as Meta has taken highly controversial steps to infuse facial recognition capabilities into the tech. ...
@#6 ... Maybe the US needs to recognize the Rome Statute of the ICC. ...
Rome Statute
en.wikipedia.org
... The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC).[5]
It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome, Italy on 17 July 1998[6][7] and entered into force on 1 July 2002.[2]
As of January 2025, 125 states are party to the statute.[8]
Among other things, it establishes court function, jurisdiction and structure. ...
@#21 ... I would have loved it. ...
You might not have been able to attend.
The attendance was so, ummm, energetic that NY actually closed the NY State Thruway, a very major artery.
NY Thruway closed , Bikers not fazed (2009)
www.woodstockstory.com
... We all lived & worked in the White Plains NY area & heard ads for Woodstock onWPLJ fm. It sounded like a cool weekend so we all bought tickets (still have em).
When I got home from work Friday my wife said " We can't go to Woodstock the thruway is shut down!!!! " I thought about it and said BS we'll take the bike.
55 miles later after cutting through all the cars & VW buses getting food & drinks handed to us by all the great folks who lived along the way we arrived & found we didn't need tickets (fences all down), should have brought higher boots for all the mud & by some miracle found all our friends.
We spent the 1st night sleeping in a small cemetery, didn't need to smoke any weed ( just inhale the night air )
Next day the NY State troopers offered to rent my Bike so they could get around I could have used the $50 but turned them down. ...
Yeah, back in the day I had seen similar stories about the NY State Troopers and their good response to the attendees of Woodstock.
@#194 ... Wait. Has the US shown proof the Iranians violated the JCPOA? ...
Good question.
As a corollary I might add, why did Pres Trump tear up that JCPOA multi-national agreement with Iran?