Fighting fake news: Decoding 'fact-free' world of WhatsApp

In the fact-free world of WhatsApp, though, it didn't matter: these fake images went viral. A similar-looking fake image of ABP news was then circulated in pro-Congress groups to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP): 'Modi busted: 70 thousand crores rupees uncovered in Modi's Swiss Bank account. BJP stirred'; 'BJP caught in one lakh crore rupees scam, CBI reveals'. Again, it was fake news. Fake news that goes viral Variants of these fake ABP news images were the second most shared misleading images in over two thousand politics-focussed and public WhatsApp groups that we monitored in the run-up to the 2018 assembly elections—offering a peek into the themes that dominated the 'fake news' ecosystem. This example perfectly represents the three key things we identified about visual misinformation in our dataset. First, newspaper clippings and television news screen grabs — real or fake — were extensively shared. Second, anti-Congress misleading content aims to create confusion about Rahul Gandhi's religiosity (to show him as non-Hindu) and portray Congress as an anti-Hindu party. Third, anti-BJP misinformation is targeted to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP as corrupt. From outright falsehoods and partially-true misleading narratives to bigotry and hate, everything is circulated in the closed encrypted world of India's most popular messaging application, with over 230 million active users. According to a 2017 Lokniti-CSDS Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey, around one-sixth of WhatsApp users in India said they were members of a group started by a political leader or party. Not all political discussion on WhatsApp is about consuming fake news. Our dataset — over a million messages collected from politically-motivated WhatsApp groups between 1st August and 4th December 2018 — has all kinds of information: long crafted text messages, infographics, political memes, and news videos. The focus of this analysis is restricted to the study of images—36% of all messages; 9% were videos. Data collected from 'public' WhatsApp groups WhatsApp is a black box for content: It is nearly impossible to comprehensively track misinformation in the WhatsApp sphere as the content is end-to-end encrypted and no one can — and should not — access private conversations at scale. Given this restriction, we decided to monitor 'public' WhatsApp groups that are open to the public, meaning anyone can join these through links publicised on the internet. They constitute a small sample of the hundreds of thousands of groups that parties and their supporters have created to disseminate political information. We do not claim that public groups represent the discussion in private groups. But in absence of any other data, our research offers a window to understanding the themes that political actors or their supporters want to promote and distribute. Methodology We manually classified each WhatsApp group in our dataset with its party affiliation: of the total, we identified 693 pro-BJP groups; 156 pro-Congress; and the rest voice support for various regional parties and religious groups. To be sure, it is not known how many of these groups are managed by the office-bearers of political parties, though there is some evidence of centralisation. For instance, around 400 groups in our database were created by just 10 phone numbers. Overall, 1,49,305 people were members of the groups we monitored. 79,781 members (53% of all members) sent at least one message; 31,459 (21%) shared at least one image. We analysed all the images in our dataset by programmatically grouping similar-looking ones into clusters using an image hashing algorithm. Then, we manually reviewed the top 2,000 clusters (each had at least five images), together comprising around 67,000 images, and identified the misleading content in this data set. We used the shortlisted images to qualitatively study the most shared misleading images and derived the themes that dominated the fake news ecosystem in the run-up to the recent assembly elections. Here are our three key findings: Screen grabs, news clippings to fill trust deficit Seven of the ten most shared misleading images in the pro-BJP WhatsApp groups were media clippings. The most shared image was a screengrab of a primetime segment of Times Now, an English TV news channel, claiming that the Congress party manifesto in Telangana was Muslim-centric. Seven 'Muslim only' schemes were included in the manifesto, the image claimed, including a scholarship for Muslim students and free electricity to Mosques. Except that the information was misleading. Alt News, a left-leaning fact-checking news website, later debunked how the news channel had misreported the story, by selectively picking parts of the manifesto to create a false narrative. This message repeatedly appeared in various forms — eight of the top ten misleading images in the BJP groups were only about the manifesto — including screen grabs from CNBC-Awaaz, another news channel, and standalone graphics. The example illustrates a key point: 'fake news' as commonly understood has various shades. Unlike the morphed ABP news screenshots (second most shared) that propagated outright lies, the Telangana manifesto story is based on partially-true information that was later found to be misleading. The intent in the latter case is not clear and often difficult to establish. Why are there so many media clippings? One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that WhatsApp -ers leverage mainstream media artefacts to compensate for the declining credibility of WhatsApp content. A limited small-scale survey conducted last year across 14 Indian states by Digital Empowerment Foundation revealed that rural Indians don't trust messages on WhatsApp blindly, indicating a lack of trust in content received on the messaging service. We have seen that before: Prior to 2018 Karnataka elections, fake opinion polls attributed to the BBC were circulated in both BJP and Congress groups, each publicising dubious survey numbers to showcase victory for their own side. Anti-Congress fake news: communal propaganda Communal polarisation was the major theme of anti-Congress misinformation in our dataset: it aims to establish that the Congress party only cares about Muslims. The Telangana manifesto was one such example. Then there is bigotry, with messages that ask people to connect the dots and rethink whether Rahul Gandhi is actually a Hindu by questioning the religiosity of his ancestors. The narrative begins with Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and Gandhi's great-grandfather. 'By education, I'm an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim and a Hindu only by accident of birth,' reads a quote attributed to Nehru in a newspaper clipping. Nehru never said this. The next target in line is Feroz Gandhi, husband of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi's grandfather. The messages repeat the long-standing false rumour that Feroze Gandhi was a Muslim, in contrast with the well-documented fact that he belonged to a Parsi family. Then, questions are raised about the marriage of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, his parents: 'Mother and father got their marriage registered in Delhi church as a Christian couple. Son claims himself as a janeu dhari Hindu. Can there be a bigger joke?' reads one message. A fact-check by SMHoaxSlayer revealed that this claim is simply wrong. Another says: 'How can a son of a Parsi man and Christian woman be a Hindu? Have you ever thought about this?' These rumours have been a part of the political discourse for long and are constantly fed to Indian citizens. Put this into the political context and the signal is clear: the strategy to portray Congress as an anti-Hindu party, a theme BJP has leveraged to mobilise the Hindu electorate and consolidate the vote in their favour. In fact, various images shared in the groups we monitored make an explicit call for Hindus to unite to defeat the Congress. Anti-BJP fake news: Modi and BJP are corrupt Anti-BJP fake news attempts to show the Narendra Modi and his party as corrupt. Clippings tagged with an organisation called 'News Express' — it is not clear who runs this organisation, and if there is any real organisation with that name — ran a headline saying: 'Rafale scam: Former President of France Francois Hollande says PM Narendra Modi is a thief.' Hollande never said this. Other fake clippings make similar claims: 'RBI accepts that demonetisation was a wrong decision. It is a nine lakh crore rupees scam,' reads an image post, attributing the statement to Urjit Patel, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. 'Modi government is the most corrupt government in Asia, says Forbes magazine' 'India goes bankrupt, according to a shocking disclosure by the World Bank. India owes 1,31,000 million dollars' None of this is true. Steps taken by WhatsApp On its part, WhatsApp has taken several measures in the last year: it took out full-page ads in Indian newspapers to fight misinformation, has started labelling forwarded content and limited the number of forwards to five messages only. In February, the company said it has communicated to Indian political parties that WhatsApp 'is not a broadcast platform', 'not a place to send messages at scale' and accounts that 'engage in automated bot behaviour' will be banned. Globally, it has deleted two million accounts per month for the past three months on that account. The steps are expected to add friction to use of the messaging platform by political actors, but it is unlikely to contain misinformation itself: the stream of messages and the activity in India's WhatsApp groups will just explode in the coming months. (Samarth Bansall is a New Delhi-based data journalist. Kiran Garimella is a Post doctoral researcher at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Dean Eckles, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tarun Chitta helped with data collection) Dailyhunthttp://www.tripntale.com/profile/138009

NPP to contest all Assam LS seats

We are now working towards having our presence in the Assam Assembly," he said.He said that for the first time, the NPP will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Assam."We have set a target to field candidates in all the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, the selection of candidates is yet to be done," he said.The NCP is riding high on the rise in popularity of Conrad Sangma in Assam due to the bold stand taken by him against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.The Meghalaya chief minister was accorded a hero's welcome at the LGBI airport here last month for his role in stalling the tabling of the bill in the Rajya Sabha.Conrad, who took the lead in uniting political parties in the Northeast against the bill, was hailed for his efforts.From the North East Students Organisation (Neso), the apex students' organisation of the Northeast, to the AGP, which severed ties with the BJP over the bill, everyone appreciated Conrad for leading from the front.The movement against the bill got an impetus when Conrad convened a meeting of 10 regional parties, including six constituents of North East Democratic Alliance (Neda), a BJP-led political platform of non-Congress parties in the region, and the Janata Dal United here in January.Bora said all the major political parties appeared to be polarised but the NPP wants to represent people belonging all communities, religions and castes and offer an alternative to the people."Our objective is to become a national party with a regional outlook. We want restoration of federal principles in Indian democracy to have stronger states with a unifying centre," he said.The NPP was born in Manipur in the early nineties and had three MLAs at that time. Over the years, the party became dormant. It was revived when late P. A. Sangma came out of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and formed the Meghalaya unit of the NPP on August 24, 2012. Dailyhunthttps://www.polygon.com/users/kunvindsee

Luka Chuppi producer Dinesh Vijan has 10 films on the floors

hat made you want to tell the story of Luka Chuppi?I'm very fond of Laxman Utekar, the director, but that's not the only reason. It was also Rohan's (Shankar) script. No script had made me laugh so much. It reminded me of the old Hrishikesh Mukherjee films that were clean, funny and had an entire family involved. I felt we had not seen something like that in a while. As a country, we're very involved in each other's lives. Our mothers want to know what we're doing, we really want to know what our neighbours and colleagues are doing, and that's our strength and weakness. In that world, where you have an over-involved family, lying can be very injurious to one's health - that's what Luka Chuppi is about. I really like the boy's (Guddu, played by Kartik Aaryan) character because he just loves this girl and she's a new-age woman. I really like to have strong girl characters, maybe because I'm very close to my mother and I've grown up in a house with two sisters. The film has its emotion in the right place but it's not emotional... it's funny. I like films like that. With me, it's simple. When I hear a script, I cannot not make that film.You are not from the film business. Have your reasons for picking a film changed over the years?Yes and no. I think I keep myself relevant. Not being from the film business helps. When I started, there was a gap between the films I wanted to make and what was working. We tried to bridge that gap while making them. Right now, I feel all the stories I've always wanted to tell are in fashion. I don't like making films that have a reference point and I don't like repeating ideas. On Thursday evenings, I get insecure when films like Badlapur, Stree or Hindi Medium come out, because there are no reference points and you can't safely say that this will work. There's always the fear whether it'll be accepted because it's ultimately the audience's perspective. (Robert) De Niro said the most important decision is which story to tell. Two films have been monumental in my life - Agent Vinod and Raabta - because you learn more from your failures than from your successes. Agent Vinod gave me Badlapur, while Raabta gave me Stree in a way. I managed to sell Hindi Medium because the trade was interested in Raabta and look how that turned out! At that point, we were still dependent on outside funding. From Stree, we are doing everything in-house. If the film makes money, we make money but if it doesn't, no one outside loses money. You tried your hand at direction with Raabta that didn't work but clearly there is a director in you. How involved are you in the films you produce? I believe my job is to back a director to make his best possible film. I went wrong on my own, but I also didn't have me as a objective producer. As the director, I'll always look at my film and fall in love and wouldn't be objective. That's what I do - if a film is good, Maddock makes it better and it's something we pride ourselves on. Was Raabta an itch you needed to scratch, or is that something you would go back to?I would love to direct again but my whole company took a break when I did that. I could only produce one other film then while now, 20 months on, we have 10 films over the next two years. I think I'm an expensive freebie when I'm directing for the company, and I have a responsibility to all the directors who are working on films for Maddock. I hear there's a plan to create a 'horror-comedy universe'.Yeah that's something I am very excited about . As Stree was getting ready for release, Mrigh (Mrighdeep Singh Lamba, director) was developing Rooh Afza which is ready to start. This will have Raj (Rajkummar Rao) and Varun (Sharma). We have another team working on another horror-comedy idea which should be ready by the end of the year. In this one, the protagonist is female and the ghost is male. These three universes will exist parallely. You have 10 films in the works!Yeah. There's Arjun Patiala, Made in China, Bala with Ayushmann (Khurrana) and Bhumi (Pednekar), Arun Khetrapal's biopic that Sriram's (Raghavan, director) directing. There are sequels to Hindi Medium and Stree and Imtiaz Ali's sequel to Love Aaj Kal. You mentioned earlier that you don't like to repeat yourself but with sequels you are going back to the same world? When I see Back To The Future, I love all three films. I loved what (Christopher) Nolan did in the Batman series. The future belongs to sequels. There are two kind of films that have sequels. Some like Stree were written with another film in mind. For the sequel of Hindi Medium, we are going back to the themes of education and aspirations that we explored in the first film. It's taken us over a year-and-a-half to write this second film. While researching the biopic that Sriram is making, we've found four other stories from the army that could be proper films. Dailyhunthttps://gumroad.com/kivonlewisse

Trump delivers a slashing speech that rouses the righ

Trump delivers a slashing speech that rouses the right He complained often of getting "no credit" for his achievements as he proudly drifted "off script" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.His remarks capped a week that saw his nuclear summit with North Korea's leader collapse without an agreement, his former lawyer deliver damaging congressional testimony about his character and business practices and Congress take action to nullify his emergency declaration to secure money for the border wall that lawmakers have denied him.On the stage, he was a prideful and at times profane figure as he complained that past political appointments had allowed a situation where political foes were trying to take him out with "bullshit".Trump reached back to old criticisms of his ex-attorney general, mocking Jeff Sessions' Southern accent and calling him "weak and ineffective".It took him more than an hour to get to the message that Republicans and members of his administration have been emphasising in recent weeks as they try to brand Democratic policy ideas as socialism."America will never be a socialist country," he said. "Socialism is not about the environment, it's not about justice, it's not about virtue." He said it's about "power for the ruling class".For every prepared line like that, there were multiple improvisations from a president on policy and personality. "That's how I got elected - by being off script," Trump said early in his speech as the crowd roared its approval.He took particular delight in going after the Democrats' Green New Deal, brought forward by some liberal Democrats in Congress and backed to varying degrees by several of the party's 2020 presidential candidates."I think the New Green Deal or whatever the hell they call it - the Green New Deal - I encourage it," Trump said mockingly as he wound up for a round of exaggeration. "I think it's really something that they should promote. They should work hard on it. ... No planes, no energy. When the wind stops blowing that's the end of your electric. Let's hurry up. Darling, is the wind blowing today? I'd like to watch television, darling."He returned to the topic again and again, and jokingly kicked himself for doing so, saying it would give the Democrats time to back away from it. He also turned the topic into an attack of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and one of the top Democratic contenders for president."I'm going to regret this. This speech should have been delivered one year from now, not now, damn it." Trump said. "I should have saved the Pocahontas thing for another year because that destroyed her political career and now I won't get a chance to run against her. I don't want to knock out all of the good stuff and wind up with somebody who's actually got talent."Trump also went after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, essentially accusing him of being a drag on the economy."We have a gentleman that likes raising interest rates in the Fed. We have a gentleman that loves quantitative tightening in the Fed. We have a gentleman that likes a very strong dollar in the Fed," Trump said. "...With all of that, we're doing great. Can you imagine if we left interest rates where they were?"Trump defended his declaration of a national emergency to obtain wall funding beyond the $1.4 billion that Congress approved for border security. He said the order doesn't set a bad precedent for future administrations because Democrats are "going to do that anyway, folks. The best way to stop that is to make sure I win the election."Trump continued to bask in his 2016 victory and the crowds that attend his events. He talked of how few gave him a chance to win."I think we're going to do even better in 2020," Trump said.When he made his prediction of a second term, the crowd responded with chants of "USA, USA, USA."He also took a lengthy detour back to the inauguration, claiming that an enormous if not unprecedented crowd showed up, contrary to the thorough video and photo coverage that showed otherwise.Trump revisited his meeting with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, calling their summit "very productive." He also took another crack at explaining his remarks that he didn't believe Kim knew about or would have allowed the death of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who was held prisoner in North Korea, then sent home in a vegetative state. His remarks were widely criticized and led the Warmbier family to say they held Kim and his regime responsible for their son's death."I'm in such a horrible position because in one way I have to negotiate. In the other way, I love Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier and I love Otto. And it's a very, very delicate balance," Trump said.With special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation seemingly approaching its end, Trump spoke of the "collusion delusion" and lashed out at newly empowered House Democrats who are opening new inquires involving him."This phony thing," Trump said of the Russia probe, "looks like it's dying so they don't have anything with Russia there, no collusion. So now they go in and morph into 'Let's inspect every deal he's ever done. We're going to go into his finances. We're going to check his deals. We're going to check' - these people are sick."House Democrats are undertaking several broad new investigations that reach far beyond Mueller's focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign. So far, Mueller has not brought any public charges alleging a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia; the investigation continues.Their efforts increased this past week after Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, appeared before two House committees and a Senate committee. In his public testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cohen called the president a "con man" and a "cheat" and gave Democrats several new leads for inquiry. Dailyhunthttp://doodleordie.com/profile/kunvindsee

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are colliding with an expanding conception of sexual identity

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are colliding with an expanding conception of sexual identity You might see why. The bride, a songstress with aquamarine twin tails named Hatsune Miku, is not only a world-famous recording artist who fills up arenas throughout Japan. She is also a hologram. Kondo insists the wedding was not a stunt, but a triumph of true love after years of feeling ostracised by real-life women for being an animé otaku, or geek. He considers himself a sexual minority facing discrimination. 'It's simply not right,' he told The Japan Times. 'It's as if you were trying to talk a gay man into dating a woman, or a lesbian into a relationship with a man.' We live in an era when rapid advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are colliding with an expanding conception of sexual identity. This comes quickly on the heels of growing worldwide acceptance of gay, trans and bisexual people. Now you may describe yourself as polyamorous or demisexual — that last one is people who only feel sexual attraction in close emotional relationships. Perhaps you best identify as aromantic (that's people who don't feel romance) or skoliosexual (that's a primary attraction to people of no, or multiple, or complex genders). Self-identification is not the same as identity, and some classes of description now may be closer to metaphor. But the idea that flesh-and-blood humans may actually forge fulfilling emotional, or even sexual, relationships with digital devices is no longer confined to dystopian science fiction movies like Ex Machina and Her, stories in which lonely techies fall too hard for software-driven femme fatales. In real life, pioneers of human-android romance now have a name, 'digisexuals,' which some academics and futurists have suggested constitutes an emergent sexual identity. Whether the notion is absurd, inevitable or offensive, it raises more than a few questions. For starters, in a world where sex toys that respond and give feedback and artificial-intelligence-powered sex robots are inching toward the mainstream, are digisexuals a fringe group, destined to remain buried in the sexual underground? Or, in a culture permeated with online pornography, sexting and Tinder swiping, isn't everyone a closet digisexual? Kondo is not the only person to go public about his deep feelings for a digital apparatus in recent years. In 2016 a Frenchwoman identified only as 'Lilly' told the media that 'I'm really and only attracted by the robots.' She claimed to be engaged to a 3-D-printed robot she had designed, and said, 'My only two relationships with men have confirmed my love orientation, because I dislike really physical contact with human flesh.' In 2017, after failing to find a human spouse, an artificial intelligence engineer in China named Zheng Jiajia married (not legally, of course) a robot wife of his own design named Yingying that can reportedly read Chinese characters at a rudimentary level and speak simple words. Neil McArthur, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba, and Markie Twist, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, published a paper last year called 'The Rise of Digisexuality.' It appeared in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy and was picked up by media outlets as diverse as Vice and Breitbart. The authors delineated between 'first wave' digisexuality (online pornography, hookup apps, sexting and electronic sex toys), where the tech is simply a delivery system for sexual fulfillment, and 'second wave' digisexuality. Those practitioners form deeper relationships through immersive technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality and AI-equipped sex robots, sometimes obviating the need for a human partner altogether. Twist, who also runs a clinical practice in family and sex therapy, said she has had several patients in their 20s and 30s who qualify as second-wave digisexuals. 'What they've been into is sex tech, toys they can control with their tech devices, that attach to their penis or their vulva,' she said. 'They haven't had contact with humans, and really don't have any interest in sex with people. This is what they want to be doing, and if they could afford a sex robot, they would.' Their sexuality may seem boundary pushing or deviant. Every advance in cybersex has met with cultural resistance before it became normalized, McArthur said. 'Each time we have new technologies, there's a wave of alarmism that follows,' he said. 'It happened first with porn, then with internet dating, then with Snapchat sexting. One by one these technologies come along and there's this wave of panic. But as people start to use these technologies, they become part of our lives.' Are Bionic Sex Toys Also Romantic Partners? Indeed, the latest generation of robotic sex toys make Charlotte's low-tech Jack Rabbit vibrator from Sex and the City look as antique as the 28,000-year-old siltstone dildo found in a cave in Germany a few years ago. A hands-free massager from a female-led tech startup called Lora DiCarlo uses 'micro-robotic' technology to simulate the movements of a human lover. (It caused a stir at this month's Consumer Electronics Show when its innovation award was revoked, prompting charges of sexism.) For men, an Indiegogo-funded company sells an AI-enabled machine that says it is programmed from 8,000 hours worth of pornography clips. And the newest models of sex robots are creeping closer to the level of 'Westworld'-style sex surrogates. A California company called Abyss Creations makes a female sex robot with swappable faces — do you prefer Harmony or Solana? — with an AI-equipped brain that allows the doll to wink, chat and murmur sweet nothings, like some boudoir Siri. (A male version named Henry with a bionic penis is in the works.). The robots, which start at $12,000, are designed to provide companionship as much as sex, said Matt McMullen, the company's founder. 'While sex was a component, it wasn't the only component,' McMullen said. 'Part of the experience for them was coming home from a long day at work and the house was not empty anymore. Maybe they would even go as far as to buy her flowers, or set up a mock dinner with the doll.' For those who cannot afford their own sex android, there are robotic versions of a brothel. Robo-cathouses are popping up — and in some cases, are being quickly shuttered — in Canada and Europe. One robot brothel in Moscow, for example, charges about $90 for a 30-minute romp with a sexbot (threesomes are also available). Efforts to import the idea to the United States have met with resistance. Houston enacted a ban in October after a Canadian sex robot-maker tried to open an experiential showroom called Adult Love Dolls Brothel. Can a Robot Consent? Each technological leap is a new chance to blur the lines between cybersex and real sex. Consider the spread of deepfakes, deceptively realistic videos made using artificial intelligence software. One use of them can be to graft a celebrity's face onto the body of a pornographic actress. They have become so common that one frequent victim, Scarlett Johansson, recently threw up her hands about eliminating them. 'I think it's a useless pursuit, legally,' she told The Washington Post, 'mostly because the internet is avast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.' But blurred lines do not have to be a bad thing. They may even be inevitable, said Bryony Cole, founder of Future of Sex, a media company in New York that produces podcasts, seminars and research on contemporary sexuality. 'In the future, the term 'digisexual' will not be relevant,' Cole said in an email. 'Subsequent generations will have never known a distinction between their online and offline lives. They may grow up with sex education chatbots, make love to the universe in their own VR-created world, or meet their significant other through a hologram. This will be as normal as the sex education we had in schools using VHS tapes.' But is robot love in any way fulfilling? Clearly, sexual gratification comes in many forms. A recent study of anonymously posted online comments, published in the International Journal of Sexual Health, chronicled the wide variety of seemingly nonsexual experiences that can produce orgasms: riding in vehicles, exercise, eating and auditory stimulation, to cite just a few. 'Research already shows that people can achieve orgasm with inanimate objects, and we already see how people have a longing for their tech devices, and feel separation anxiety when they are not around,' Twist said. 'I think it's easily possible that people might develop actual love for their technology. They already come up with affectionate names for their cars and boats.' While some warn that sex robots are a slippery slope to sex slaves, others trumpet how they can be sexually liberating. A Spanish roboticist named Sergi Santos said his $2,500 robot helped strengthen his marriage by giving him a safe, dependable outlet when his wife was not in the mood. 'A man wants to feel in general that the woman is desperate to have sex with him,' he said in a recent video interview with Barcroft TV, a web documentary channel. (Santos declined to be interviewed for this article.) And it is not just sexually frustrated men who stand to benefit, said Emily Witt, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of Future Sex, a first-person survey of the contemporary sexual landscape. In her reporting, Witt interviewed several women whom she called 'internet sexual,' because they found their sexual satisfaction performing for strangers on nude webcam sites, rather than with physical encounters. In some cases they lived in small towns where the dating pool was limited, or they were victims of sexual trauma. 'Digital sexuality allows for possibilities of anonymity, gender-bending, fetish play and other modes of experimentation with a degree of safety and autonomy that's not present in the physical world,' Witt wrote in an email. Even as digisexuality enjoys a first flush as a nascent rights movement, it also may turn out to be as messy and complicated as traditional sex. 'You have to separate between the people who use sex robots as a fetish, or want to have complete control of a sexual relationship, and those who use a programmable doll as a safe and predictable partner that allows them therapeutic growth,' said Pamela Rutledge, a psychologist in Corona del Mar, California, who conducts research on social behavior involving technology for corporate clients. Echoing the controversy surrounding scenes of robot rape in 'Westworld,' a group of activists started the Campaign Against Sex Robots, arguing that sex robots, with their Barbie bodies and wired-for-compliance brains, encourage the objectification of women and reinforce the prostitute-john power dynamic. Unfortunately, it's not science fiction. During an Austrian technology fair in 2017, a version of Santos' Samantha doll reportedly responded, 'I'm fine,' after a group of men mounted it roughly, leaving it soiled and damaged. Santos is working on a new version of Samantha that will be programmed to shut down when the sex gets too aggressive. Are Bionic Sex Toys Also Romantic Partners? Can a Robot Consent? Dailyhunthttp://www.tripntale.com/profile/136804

Sonchiriya movie review: Sushant Singh Rajput and Ranvir Shorey are brilliant as bandits

Sonchiriya movie review: Sushant Singh Rajput and Ranvir Shorey are brilliant as bandits Set in 1975, Sonchiriya tells of rebels and ravines in the Chambal, but without the usual trappings. All is hardcore, from language (Bundelkhandi, which necessitates subtitles) to laughter. The one time a dacoit throws back his head to laugh is nothing like Gabbar Singh of Sholay; the laughter here comes from devastation and heartbreak. The one laughing is the optimistically named Vakil Singh, played by a phenomenal Ranvir Shorey, throwing his head back to confront the futility of his life and struggle. The word 'baaghi' is best translated as 'rebel' instead of 'dacoit' or 'bandit,' but what is their cause? The film poses the question early on, one character asking in as many words: 'If the dharma of the policeman is to catch the rebel, what is the dharma of the rebel?' The question is loaded, and while the film does provide possible answers to ponder, it doesn't engage deeply or philosophically with them. Shot breathtakingly by Anuj Rakesh Dhawan, this may be Chaubey's best crafted film, but feels superficial, and is needlessly heavy-handed by way of metaphor. For instance, characters tormented by ghosts of their guilt see these ghosts frequently and simultaneously, as if haunted to the very same degree. Ashutosh Rana plays the brutal cop chasing down the brigands. The story is simple, about many outlaws on the run. The actors are a thrill. Shorey aces it, as does Sushant Singh Rajput, playing a man called Lakhna — a name that may automatically damn the wearer to banditry — uncompromising and duty-bound, even if his idea of duty can change on the fly. Manoj Bajpai is excellent as a rebel chief, holding up a wedding with the practised ease of a professional breaking out his routine, while Bhumi Pednekar, a desperately feisty woman on the run, holds her own strongly. A round of applause for Ashutosh Rana, as the brutal cop chasing down the brigands. Rana, a fine actor, has been reappearing in our cinema more often — Mulk, Dhadak, Simmba. It's great to have him back in the mix, an actor who makes small parts feel vital. May we call this the Rana-issance? Bhumi Pednekar plays a desperately feisty woman on the run and holds her own strongly. Chaubey has always brought us interesting faces. The bandits include a vaguely blonde one, as well as one who looks like Kratos from the God Of War video games, and a terrific pint-sized performer is cast in a most iconic role, and explodes across the screen. (I can't tell you what the part is, but you'll know it when you see it. Just watch out for the great line about cowardly men being measured up for lehngas.) The action is choreographed elaborately, with Chaubey continuing to display his love for Mexican standoffs, and the dialogues feel nakedly authentic. There are time the film plays beautifully with tension, but a pretentiously slow pace lets it down. The men may not be on horses, yet the dramatic triggers pulled by the narrative are stubbornly old-school and cinematic. Sonchiriya claims to be about a band of outlaws in wild search of a golden bird — but that bird may just be a goose. The film skims topics of caste, gender, religion and politics, and proves to be a film about the desperation to belong to something larger than oneself, the all-consuming desire to believe in something. Even birds of prey need to pray. Dailyhunthttp://www.feedbooks.com/user/5002536/profile

Cops to help set up dump yard in Adityapur

ontacted, AMC mayor Vinod Srivastava admitted dumping garbage posed a problem in the industrial town but also explained why it existed. "Wherever and whenever we get land for a garbage dump, residents nearby start opposing strongly. That's why, despite necessary funds at our disposal to set up a dumping yard, we have not been able to do so yet," mayor Srivastava said.He added that the Seraikela-Kharsawan district administration, under which the industrial township fell, had recently provided the civic body a new plot at Nutandih in Ward 1 of the AMC, but as soon as residents came to know, they started objecting."As soon as word was out that we would set up a compound wall on this one-acre plot for a dumping yard, residents started raising objections. We have, therefore, decided to raise the boundary wall very soon under police protection," Srivastava said.He added that people objected to a dumping yard near their homes fearing stench, filth and an outbreak of diseases."But what they don't realise is that a dumping yard constructed by a corporation would be a covered structure. We are aware of the concerns (of the people) and they would be addressed."All Adityapur residents that this correspondent spoke to said they wanted a dumping yard but no one wanted it close to their home or locality.Harishankar Singh of Nutandih said whatever the corporation did, "covering or recycling or whatever", stench was bound to come out. "That's why we are protesting," Singh said.Sangeeta Singh of Kalpanapur in Adityapur alleged the civic body had no common sense. "There's garbage near homes, on the road and playground. I've stopped my children from playing outside," she said. "The corporation should select a proper place far away from human habitation," she suggested.Asked where such a place could be in a congested town, she kept quiet. Dailyhunthttps://able2know.org/user/kivonlewisse/