Saving Face at the Scanner

A Facebook post on September 03 by Cultural Perspective illustrates a practical example of Edward T Hall's high-context communication through the lens of Chinese state bureaucracy. 

By examining how immigration officers handle a traveler's defective passport chip, the interaction provides a textbook application of the cultural practice of saving face (保住面子, bǎozhú miànzi).

By framing the issue around the airport's technology rather than a personal fault, the Chinese officers applied distinct high-context behaviors:

• Preserving Social Harmony (和谐, hexie): Directly telling a traveler that their personal document is broken or defective can cause immediate stress, defensiveness, or public embarrassment. Guided by Confucian values of harmony, shifting the blame to an inanimate scanner neutralizes interpersonal tension and de-escalates a stressful border environment.
• Mutual Face Protection (面子, mianzi): In Chinese culture, protecting a stranger's dignity is a shared social responsibility. By claiming "our scanner is acting up," the officers proactively protect the traveler's face from public scrutiny. In return, the traveler cooperates smoothly, preserving the authority and face of the immigration department.
• Indirect Signaling and Polite Fiction: In a high-context culture, the true meaning is understood without being explicitly stated. Both parties participate in a "polite fiction" – they likely understand the actual issue, but keeping it unspoken maintains a polite, humanized, and cooperative atmosphere (人情, renqing).
• Shared Accountability via External Attribution: Blaming the machine removes psychological pressure from the individual. It transforms a potential confrontation (the law vs. the individual) into a shared problem (the humans vs. the faulty machine), allowing the traveler to be processed smoothly without feeling singled out or scrutinized by bystanders.

Ultimately, the officers demonstrated that in high-context cultures, maintaining the relational climate is just as important as enforcing the law. By blaming the machine, they transformed a bureaucratic hurdle into a masterclass in cultural diplomacy – proving that sometimes, a polite fiction is the most efficient path to cooperation. 

The said clip:

Liverpool and Fulham played to a disappointing 0-0 draw on Saturday.

The hosts fielded an attack costing just short of £400m as Alexander Isak, Bradley Barcola, and Florian Wirtz all started together in the Premier League for the first time. Yet Liverpool were limited to just two shots on target during a frustrating afternoon at Anfield. 

The tired-looking Reds struggled for rhythm, prompting even many of their supporters to admit that the clinical visitors deserved all three points. While Liverpool controlled 56% of the possession, it was Fulham who looked far sharper on the counter-attack, testing the keeper four times and forcing a crucial goal-line clearance. 

The result earned the Cottagers their first point of the Premier League season, while leaving a sluggish Liverpool with three draws in four matches.

An alarmingly disjointed start to the 2026/27 campaign has left Andoni Iraola’s new-look Liverpool suffocating under unexpected stalemates, an uncharacteristically blunt attack, and immediate tactical pressure.

I expect their current form to persist. They are toothless, tame, and turgid – and being hard to beat means nothing if you refuse to actually win the game. 😤🔴

Donald Trump’s Wild Weekend: From the Moon to ‘New America’

On September 06, 2026, US President Donald Trump posted an image of Earth's natural satellite on Truth Social overlaid with the text “THE MOON IS OURS” alongside an American flag. 

Of course, the post went viral globally. 

He should know he cannot legally own or have the authority to claim the Moon for the United States, despite his viral social media assertion. 

• The Outer Space Treaty of 1967: Drafted in part by the United States and signed by over 100 countries, Article II of this treaty explicitly states that outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use, occupation, or any other means. 
• Province of All Mankind: Under international space law, the Moon is legally designated as a shared resource for all humanity, meaning it cannot be added to any country's territorial or real estate portfolio. 

Media analysis indicates that the Moon graphic was part of a rapid-fire series of speculative and satirical posts. This sequence included AI-generated concepts for black US Space Force uniforms and altered geographic maps. 

Critics were quick to mock the sheer absurdity of trying to annex the cosmos with a social media graphic, noting that the stunt perfectly encapsulates Trump's signature brand of delusional showmanship and low-effort internet trolling. Legal and space policy experts emphasize that this social media assertion functions strictly as hollow political theater rather than a formal executive action or a shift in official US space policy.

On the same day too, Trump shared social media posts promoting the renaming of New Mexico to "New America". He started by uploading a modified United States map alongside an AI-generated video that showed an "America" sticker being placed over a "Welcome to New Mexico" highway sign.

After the maps went viral, he persisted with a text post claiming that "many people" had voiced the idea to him, writing: "Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico... to NEW AMERICA. So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!"

However, the US federal government have no authority to change the name of a state. New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (right) rejected the proposal in a post on X, stating, "New Mexico's name isn't up for debate – it's been ours since before the United States existed". 

Following the viral pushback from local leaders, Trump aggressively doubled down the next day when he went on a rapid-fire spree, posting seven more times within a single hour with additional map variations and flag memes to keep the topic trending. 

Meta's $18B Settlement and Their Brilliant Counter-Attack

Meta have reached a landmark $18 billion agreement to resolve massive lawsuits accusing the company of intentionally designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children. 

This legal resolution includes roughly $17.1 billion to a 47-state coalition, alongside a distinct $1 billion arrangement with Texas. 

By resolving the case, the tech giant cleverly capped their financial exposure to a fraction of a worst-case jury verdict. Before the trial, state attorneys general argued statutory violations could theoretically expose the company to a staggering $1.4 trillion in penalties. While that maximum was highly improbable, the plaintiffs were realistically pursuing closer to $200 billion. 

The deal was struck on Wednesday morning, exactly one day after Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified and right before CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to take the stand. Ending the litigation immediately spared Zuckerberg from a highly publicized, potentially damaging cross-examination regarding internal files and executive knowledge of teen psychological harms. 

Furthermore, Meta’s legal team faced immense pressure following recent losses in similar courtroom battles, such as the New Mexico and Los Angeles verdicts. 

Realizing they faced an uphill battle convincing a federal jury, executives strategically structured the terms to drag competitors into the same restrictions. Meta will initially pay about 70% of the fund (~$12 billion). The remaining 30% is only triggered if TikTok and YouTube agree to similar financial penalties and default daily time limits. This allowed the company to position the outcome as an industry standard rather than a solo defeat. 

The state attorneys general accepted the terms because the deal secured immediate, historic product reforms and eliminated the hazards of a prolonged courtroom battle. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser noted that the agreement "exceeded what most courts might order", as judges rarely impose such sweeping operational mandates on tech corporations. 

For the plaintiffs, the primary objective was forcing structural changes to protect minors rather than securing a massive cash windfall. 

Had the states rejected the offer and won a larger verdict at trial, Meta would have appealed. This would lock the case in federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court for five to ten years, during which time the safety modifications would be frozen and the funds withheld. 

Ultimately, this $18 billion penalty stands as the largest enforcement fine ever levied against a social media company. It sends a severe warning shot to Silicon Valley without causing corporate insolvency. A bankrupt entity would be unable to pay damages, making a practical multi-billion-dollar distribution over ten years a far more secure guarantee for state budgets. 

However, this monumental resolution only appeases state governments; Meta’s broader legal battles are far from over. They still face thousands of independent civil claims from individual families, school districts, and local municipalities. 

Paradoxically, the state agreement strengthens the position of these private litigants, as the internal corporate documents exposed during the state trial can now be used as leverage to force further multi-billion-dollar payouts.

Mark Zuckerbeg’s Meta in $1.4 Trillion Addiction Showdown

Meta headed to a US court on August 18, 2026 to face accusations that they broke child safety laws and harmed underage users’ mental health. 

It has even been highlighted that a loss could mathematically bankrupt Mark Zuckerberg’s company and force permanent changes to Facebook and Instagram. 

California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are suing Meta in a federal court in Oakland, California. The four states are parties to a wider lawsuit involving a total of 29 states, filed in 2023. The remaining 25 states are expected to have their trials at later dates. 

Attorneys general in all 29 states have consolidated thousands of individual complaints – a practice known as multi-district litigation – all alleging that Meta knowingly harmed their youngest and most vulnerable users. 

All four states argue that the social media giant deliberately engineered their platforms to keep children and teenagers scrolling for as long as possible, while knowingly allowing under-13s to use these platforms without parental consent. 

“Meta have harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Their motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize their financial gains”, the lawsuit states. 

These addictive design features – including the infinite scroll feature and algorithms that encourage “compulsive use” – amount to unfair, fraudulent, or deceptive business practices in all four states, the plaintiffs allege. 

Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that Meta know their products are harming users’ mental health, but “prioritize engagement and profits to the detriment of young users’ well-being”, for example by recommending “content related to eating disorders” to young girls. 

On top of these ‘addiction’ allegations, the four plaintiffs claim that Meta violated federal law, namely the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), by collecting personal information from under-13s without obtaining parental consent, and instead fall back on their nominal ban on the said users to skirt their COPPA obligations. 

But Meta’s own records reveal that they have actual knowledge that Instagram and Facebook target and successfully enroll children as users, according to internal documents detailing the company’s efforts to increase “penetration” in the 11- to 13-year-old demographic. 

The Oakland case comes after Meta suffered back-to-back legal losses this year. 

In early March, a state court in New Mexico found the company liable for 75,000 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act, fining the social media giant $375 million, before branding their platforms a “public nuisance” to teens’ mental health and imposing an additional fine of $567 million. 

Later in March, Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered Meta to pay $3 million in compensation to a 20-year-old California woman identified as ‘Kaley’, who developed anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia after becoming addicted to Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms as a pre-teen. Meta were also ordered to pay $2.1 million in punitive damages. 

The Los Angeles case was a bellwether, in that the jury accepted the plaintiff’s argument that the design features of Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms – and not the content that Kaley was exposed to – caused her harm. 

Kaley’s lawyers presented some of the same internal documents included in the latest case, which show Meta employees discussing plans to bring in more under-13 users and maximize their screen time, and that the company are very much aware that heavy use of their platforms is linked to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among teens. 

The Oakland trial marks the first time that these arguments will be heard in a federal courtroom, and the first time that Meta are being tried for breaches of state and federal law in the same case. Should Meta lose, the case could be brought to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and potentially to the US Supreme Court, where any ruling would set a legal precedent. 

The four states are seeking damages of up to $1.4 trillion, a figure that would almost equal Meta’s entire market capitalization and therefore, potentially wipe out the company. However, this figure assumes individual payouts for hundreds of thousands of users affected by Meta’s practices, rather than a single payout for every deceptive practice committed by the company. 

The plaintiffs also want Meta to implement a process of parental verification for teenage users, change their “dopamine-manipulating recommendation algorithms”, remove image filters “designed around beautification”, end the autoplay of video content, and end “ephemeral” video content such as stories. 

Meta have long argued that mental health issues are triggered by far more factors than social media. 

“Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app”, a company spokesperson said after losing the Los Angeles lawsuit in March. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online”. 

Ahead of Tuesday's trial, Meta maintained: “These lawsuits misportray our company and the work we do every day to provide young people with safe, valuable experiences online. We have listened to parents, researched the issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens online”. 

Meta also pointed to their introduction of restricted teen accounts on Instagram last year, and their use of AI to detect teens attempting to use adult accounts as examples of these changes. 

However, during his testimony in Los Angeles in March, Zuckerberg (left) admitted that it is “very difficult” to prevent under-13s from lying about their age to set up accounts. 

Regarding the potential of a $1.4 trillion fine, Meta wrote in a court filing last month that “a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement”.

Mark Zuckerberg's Superyacht Arrives in Seattle as Meta Eliminate 1,400 Local Jobs

Here's an interesting follow-up to my May 24 post, "Meta's Final Email: Collect Your Belongings and Leave". If you recall 8,000 employees were fired as Meta shifted around their priorities on AI. 

As reported by Yahoo! Finance on Friday, "...(Mark) Zuckerberg himself decided to celebrate the sweeping layoffs, by bringing his 390-foot superyacht out to Seattle – a city with 1,400 newly unemployed former Meta workers". 

Zuckerberg's yacht, named Launchpad, docked in the city Tuesday according to the Seattle Times. The yacht reportedly cost $300 million, and was met with insults and jeers as it swept into the Seattle area. 

The co-founder of Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (left) wasn't even present – he seems content to merely own the yacht, without having to go through any of the trouble of actually using it. The yacht has apparently remained a hatesink on its pier, with passing cyclists and joggers swearing at the boat as they go by. 

Zuckerberg's $300 million yacht cost more than a year of employment for every person in the Seattle area that Meta just dismissed – the company averages a salary of $162,700 for software engineers in the area, according to ZipRecruiter, and Zuck's big boat cost about 1,844 times that number. It almost seems like a trade: Seattle loses 1,400 jobs, and in exchange the guy who cut those jobs puts his boat there instead. 

It tells us a lot about Zuckerberg!

Facebook: A Hub for Illegal Wildlife Trade

With just the click of a button or a swipe on a phone, it’s possible to buy almost anything online, including rare or endangered animals. 

From quirky shark trophies to exotic live birds, contraband rhino horns or ivory, buyers can flock to e-commerce platforms and find them all. Traffickers hide behind their screens while profiting from online sales of protected species as these animals dwindle in the wild. 

“It’s the largest wildlife market”, said wildlife trade researcher Chris Shepherd from the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s easy, it’s convenient; you can operate anonymously from the comfort of your home. You don’t have the expenses of setting up a shop”. 

Online commerce in illicit wildlife products continues to grow, involving more species and wider geographies. It’s an illicit industry run by kingpins with well-connected networks, and it’s hard to prosecute. Catching online criminals is extremely challenging. 

“Wildlife markets have moved from physical locations into online locations, and that’s mirroring broader trends in the global economy”, said Simone Haysom, director of environmental crime programs at the Swiss-based organization Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

In a recent report, Haysom and her colleague Russell Gray analyzed online wildlife trade data from April 2024 to March 2026. They focused on 10 countries across three continents, places where environmental crime and internet use are high, making them fertile grounds for online wildlife trafficking. They found some 266,535 wildlife products posted on 61 online marketplaces, worth about $66 million. 

About 75% of the nearly 22,000 ads they saw were on Facebook, a platform that’s been notorious in selling live wildlife, as a recent Mongabay investigation revealed.

The large majority of the species offered online – about 84% – are banned from any kind of international commercial trade under CITES, a global wildlife trade treaty. More than half of all Facebook ads offered endangered or critically endangered animals including pangolins, gibbons, hornbills, sea turtles, cobras and clouded leopards. 

“There’s just anything and everything on Facebook”, said Gray, citing examples of pangolin boots, chimpanzee leather and ivory trinkets carved from walrus tusks. “The world is really significantly underprepared for cyber trade in wildlife”. 

Facebook is especially useful because users can create accounts and private groups with little meaningful verification. 

Inside those groups, buyers and sellers can shift conversations into private messages, making deals much harder to track. Facebook's algorithms intensify the problem by recommending similar groups, pages, and contacts to users in the sphere. It's taken a niche market and given it a mainstream hub that's great for business. 

"Facebook groups really replaced a lot of different types of sites on the Internet by providing this free infrastructure that was very good at marketing", said Simone Haysom, a co-author of the study. 

The report also criticized Meta's moderation efforts, which focus on English posts that comprise just 12% of the listings. Although Facebook formally bans the sale of endangered animals and animal parts, researchers said illegal listings were easy to find. 

There's minimal oversight, networks can easily form, and participants in the trade are able to dodge consequences. 

"We need regulation with teeth", Haysom told Mongabay. "Self-regulation has not worked... and is unlikely to be fully successful".

Meta Layoffs Continue in Pivot from Metaverse to AI

Meta are laying off about 700 people at Facebook and their VR division reality Labs, according to a March 25 report from CNBC. The layoffs come as Meta seek to pivot away from their metaverse bet and lean more heavily into AI. 

Less than 24 hours earlier, the company unveiled a new stock program for six top executives that could increase compensation for some of them by as much as $921 million each over the next five years. Meta explained the move was a way to retain their senior talent in the AI era and push them toward ambitious growth. 

The hundreds of new layoffs come after Meta cut about 1,500 workers in January, mostly from Reality Labs, which make the Quest VR headset and the Horizon Worlds platform. Meta employ about 78,000 people in total. 

“Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals”, a Meta spokesperson told Gizmodo in a statement Wednesday. “Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted”. 

Facebook were renamed Meta in 2021 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg thought the metaverse was the future. But it turns out that the need to strap a gigantic computer to your face is quite a tall hurdle for mass adoption. Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, while a different product and use case, have sold much better, perhaps because they look like normal glasses on your face. 

Reality Labs have burned through roughly $73 billion since Zuck shifted his company’s focus to the metaverse. Last week Meta announced they were shutting down Horizon Worlds only to backtrack just a couple of days later. 

Meta are trying to make a larger push into AI, with a March 25 report from the The New York Times suggesting Zuckerberg (left) was even creating a "superintelligence", or a god-like AI that can act as the ultimate personal companion. 

And if you must know, Meta suffered two legal defeats in the past two days, the first in New Mexico where the state Attorney General had brought a suit alleging they had misled consumers about the safety of their products and the potential harm to children. 

Meta have been ordered to pay roughly $375 million in civil penalties in that case, far less than the $2 billion the state had asked for. 

The second loss in court happened Wednesday when Meta and Google both lost a case brought by a woman who said she’d become addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child and had suffered mental health issues as a result. Meta argued that the woman’s mental illnesses predated her exposure to Instagram. 

The jury awarded the woman $3 million in that case. 

The two cases had been closely watched because there are about 2,000 other cases against Meta pending in federal court around the issues of child safety and social media addiction. 

What's more, it’s entirely possible that more layoffs at Meta are just over the horizon. Reuters reported last week that Meta would lay off 20% or more of their workforce. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15,000 people. 

The reason for the layoffs, according to Reuters, was an attempt to offset “costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets” and to “prepare” for “greater efficiency” that’s supposed to be realized by AI advancements. 

Meta told Gizmodo over email Wednesday that the Reuters report was “speculative” and had “theoretical approaches”, whatever that means.

Man Sits In Parking Lot To "Chope" Space

If you think yesterday's post "The Parking Chairs of Pittsburgh" suggests the selfishness of motorists and/or their accomplice(s) who engage in the self-serving act of reserving parking spaces, an incident in May last year surely takes the cake! 

A Malaysian man had drawn the ire of many after he was seen reserving a parking space by sitting in the lot. 

A now-viral dash cam footage recording the man's actions at Pantai Purnama, a beach in Port Dickson, was shared by an angry driver on Facebook on May 11, 2025. 

The driver wrote: "We went around the carpark three times. When a car exited, another family came in and reserved the parking spot". 

Along with the video, the driver also shared two pictures of the man, who was comfortably seated in a camping chair in the empty lot as his family gathered for a picnic directly in front of the parking area. 

According to the driver who posted the video, the man's excuse for reserving the lot was that his family's vehicle was parked too far away, making it too hard for them to bring their belongings and groceries to and from the car. They presumably planned to move their car over once they spotted the lot free. 

Some netizens also observed that the man was littering, peeling a hard-boiled egg and casually tossing egg shells on the ground. 

The man had since received plenty of criticism from netizens, most of whom felt he "deserves to go viral" for his embarrassing behaviour. Others also urged the driver to just report the incident to local authorities. 

FYI, according to Malaysian law, it is illegal to reserve parking spaces with any object, or by standing or sitting in the spot. First-time offenders of this law can be fined up to RM2,000, or be sentenced to six months in jail, with repeat offenders being served harsher penalties. 

And let's celebrate Olympian Eileen Gu (left), whom I have mentioned twice (February 10th & 16th) in my blog posts just this month alone, and who has collected one gold🥇medal and 2 silver🥈medals for #TeamChina at the 2026 Winter Olympics! Great job! 

With the three medals won in Milan-Cortina and three (2 golds and one silver) from the 2022 Beijing Games, Gu's total of six Olympic gold and silver medals in six events has made her the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history, despite being only 22 years of age. 

Let me spell it out again. She competed in six Olympic events over her career: halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air in both Beijing and Milan-Cortina, and has won a medal EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And with five gold, four silver and six bronze medals at #MilanoCortina2026, China achieved its best result at an overseas Winter Olympics! 👏👏👏

CNY Rap Gets Nonstop Views

Check out these students in Johor, Malaysia who found themselves in the spotlight after their Chinese New Year music video went viral on social media. 

The 3-minute-5-second video has 40 pupils from SJK(C) Pandan in Johor Bahru – boys and girls alike from Years Four to Six – rapping to a song titled "Nonstop CNY":

 

Ku Chong Sin, chairperson of the school's parent-teacher association, said the video was part of an annual school project involving six teachers. He added that the project took about a week to complete, including composing the song and using artificial intelligence software for recording and post-production. 

The music video features Year Four pupil Oswald Chong Bang Qin as one of its main characters, rapping in sunglasses and casual streetwear. In one scene, Chong appears alongside schoolmates Wong Yu Han and Tan Sze Qi, with the trio performing in a slow-moving car driven by teacher Guok Wei Loon, in a style reminiscent of hip-hop music videos. 

Chong’s role added to the ­video’s appeal, as his name was incorporated into the rap lyrics, giving the song a catchy and playful element. 

The upbeat, family-oriented song focuses on Chinese New Year traditions such as reuniting with loved ones, wearing new clothes and spending time with relatives. 

Uploaded to the school’s Facebook page [新山班兰国民型华文小学（班兰华小） (@official.sjkcpandan)] on January 29, the said video has since garnered more than 1.7 million views and over 60,000 likes as of noon today.

Christmas 2025

Merry Christmas, everyone! 'Tis the season to be jolly!

Facebook burned $73 billion and changed its name to "Meta" trying to make virtual reality take off, and its fortunes only recovered after pivoting into the AI boom. 

But as reported by Upload on December 14, 2025, the dream is not dead! Even as talk was rife that the company are considering deep cuts to Meta Reality Labs' VR and metaverse teams.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth (left): "Every now and then there's just a narrative that people cannot help writing, and I'll give you the way to know. First of all, the answer is no: VR is not dead. We're also investing a lot in glasses and AI, and that's the trick. The way to know if there's a convenient narrative is if it appears zero-sum. Meta is a big company. We can invest in many things. We can invest in VR, glasses, and AI – and by the way, we have been for years. Every year we go through a budget process, and in that budget process, we ask every team, "Hey, can you do the same work more effectively?" We've got better tools, we've got AI, we've got things. You're trying to right-size it. How big is the market? How fast is it growing? Is that what we expected? If it's slower than we expected, let's make sure our burn rate is lower. If it's faster than expected, let's double down and make sure we take advantage and don't cede it to other people. You're being smart about it, but it's normal stuff". 

The discussion follows last year's ominous leaked memo titled "2025: The Year of Greatness" from the same source back in November! 

Bosworth had told Reality Labs staff that 2025 will determine whether their projects are "the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure". 

In the memo, Bosworth described 2025 as "the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs", and told staff they "need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR". 

Note that at the time, Meta were using MR to refer to VR too, a nomenclature that they ended earlier this year. 

"And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance", Bosworth added. 

As far as I am aware, in no way did that happen!

The Dealmaker is Rolling in Money

US President Donald Trump is a businessperson. He once boasted, “deals are my art form”. 

Well, the dealmaker is back in the White House, and corporations and their billionaire owners and executives are doling out millions. So far companies have paid about $80 million to the Trump family and the Trump presidential library that he hopes to build, according to the Wall Street Journal. That only represents settlements and business ventures, not the millions donated for his inauguration or crypto pursuits. And some deals were made before the president even stepped in the Oval Office, back when he stayed at Mar-a-Lago. 

Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer in Trump’s first administration, told WSJ: “Everything he does is either to be vengeful or to accumulate wealth, power and adulation”. Trump knows “all these people want a piece of him”, Cobb said. 

Here's a sample of 4 cases about some of the money the Trump family has coming in since the president made his political comeback:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez had dinner with Trump and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in December. He was the president-elect then. Two weeks later Amazon agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about Melania; it is the most Amazon has ever spent on a documentary, and a lot more than the $14 million Disney offered, according to WSJ. People familiar affirmed that the first lady’s cut is more than 70%. 

Four years ago, Trump sued Meta for locking his Facebook account after the January 06 attack on the Capitol. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago in November, and at that dinner, according to WSJ which cited a person familiar with the conversation, Trump told Zuckerberg the lawsuit needed to be settled if he wanted peace. Meta settled a couple months later and agreed to pay Trump $25 million: $22 million would go to a fund for his presidential library and the rest to legal fees.

Last week, Elon Musk’s X reportedly agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit against the social media site and their prior chief executive after Trump sued what was then Twitter for de-platforming him after the January 06 riot, people familiar told WSJ. And it has been claimed that the money is expected to go directly to him rather than his presidential library, per sources familiar with the matter.

In December, Disney reached a settlement with Trump in his defamation case against ABC News and their anchor George Stephanopoulos after he said that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape – but really, Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse. The company agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

Trump is rolling in money! Aiseh, I envy him!

Australia Passes World-first Law Banning Under-16s From Social Media

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) describes social media as “a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, a tool for online predators”.

And so, the country approves a law that will aim to do what no other government have, and many parents have tried to: stop children from using social media. The new law was drafted in response to what Albanese, says is a “clear, causal link between the rise of social media and the harm [to] the mental health of young Australians”. 

On Thursday, parliament’s upper house, the Senate, passed a bill by 34 votes to 19 banning under-16s from social media platforms.

The "Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024" bans social media platforms from allowing users under 16 years of age to access their services, threatening companies with fines of up to AU$50 million ($32 million) if they fail to comply. 

However, it contains no details about how it will work, only that the companies will be expected to take reasonable steps to ensure users are aged 16 or over. The detail will come later, through the completion of a trial of age-verification systems using biometrics and government IDs in mid-2025. Reportedly, the legislation will not exempt underage users with parental consent or those who already have active accounts.

The bill won’t come into force for another 12 months.

The said bill also does not specify to which companies the legislation would apply, though communications minister Michelle Rowland has said that Snapchat, TikTok, X, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook are likely to be part of the ban. YouTube will not be included because of its “significant” educational purpose, she said.

A YouGov survey released on Tuesday showed 77% of Australians backed the ban. Each of Australia’s eight state and territory leaders supports the ban, though Tasmania’s leader suggested it end at 14.

Hostages Are The Sausages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An awkward gaffe from Keir Starmer!

 

UK's prime minister during his Labour party conference speech in Liverpool on Tuesday had demanded the "return of the sausages", instead of the "hostages", in regards to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. 

 

He must have been having hunger pangs at that time. Anyway, the flub will not be forgotten so soon.

 

On another note, the UK has resumed funding for UNRWA, which the country suspended following allegations from Israel that members of their staff had participated in the October 07 assault last year.

 

I saw this on ...where else ...but Facebook!

 

 

Meta Apologize for Facebook’s ‘Auto-translation’ Error

Facebook’s parent company Meta have apologized for an incorrect automated translation in a post related to the installation of Malaysia's Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Ibrahim on Saturday. 

 

The erroneous information appeared on public broadcaster Radio Televisyen Malaysia’s (RTM) official Facebook page and subsequently went viral. 

 

Meta’s director of public policy in Southeast Asia, Rafael Frankel, said the company were made aware of a mistake in the automated translation from Malay to English.

"We have since resolved this technical error", Frankel said in a statement. "We deeply respect the Malaysian royal family and sincerely apologize to RTM, the Johor state council and others impacted by this".

 

RTM on Sunday had clarified that the widely shared post in English contained the grievous error. The words "junjung kasih" were translated to "condolences" in the text. 

 

The public broadcaster said translated English text will appear if users activate the translation function. RTM said they lodged a police report over the matter and contacted Meta regarding the error, which Meta had acknowledged and corrected.

 

I came across this CGTN video of horses crossing a wetland waterway. I didn't know that this spectacle attracts tourists too.

 

 

Nestled at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, China's Zhaosu County in Yili Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is a high-altitude intermontane basin embraced by mountains at an average elevation of 2,018 meters. 

 

Renowned since ancient times for its production of fine steeds, Zhaosu is the birthplace of the Ili horse, known as the "heavenly horse", and boasts the largest population of Ili horses (Order: Perissodactyla; Family: Equidae; Genus: Equus) in China.

TikTok Creators File Their Own Suit Against Divest-or-ban Law

On May 08, I published "ByteDance File Lawsuit Against US Law Forcing TikTok’s Sale".

And now, eight US TikTok creators are suing to stop a law that would ban the app unless its Chinese parent company divests it, arguing that the measure would strip them of their livelihoods and creative outlets. 

 

The suit is similar to the company’s own challenge to the law in that it leans on First Amendment arguments, calls lawmakers’ concerns around the app speculative, and recalls that courts have blocked other methods of banning TikTok, including former President Donald Trump’s executive order and a Montana state law. 

 

But while the company’s suit details the alleged impracticality of separating TikTok from its owner ByteDance, the creators’ suit focuses squarely on how their own speech could be impacted if TikTok went away. 

 

While the court are likely to take seriously the First Amendment challenges to the law, TikTok and its creators will also need to convince them that those issues should overshadow the national security concerns lawmakers expressed in passing the bill, and any deference it might be inclined to show for a law that passed overwhelmingly through Congress.

 

The creators – including rancher Brian Firebaugh, book reviewer Talia Cadet, and college football coach Timothy Martin – claim that TikTok is distinct from other social media platforms as a vehicle for expression, meaning that there’s no equivalent platform for creators to move to. 

 

They point to its recommendation algorithm and features like its green screen or duet capability as elements that make it stand out. 

 

“These characteristics – intrinsic to the medium and derived from the system TikTok uses to curate content for each user – give TikTok a distinct culture and identity”, the lawsuit says. “Creating videos on TikTok (‘TikToks’) is thus its own form of expression, and content expressed through TikTok may convey a different meaning than content expressed elsewhere”. 

 

The complaint points out that even though all the creators participating in the lawsuit have used other platforms like Facebook and Instagram, their following on those sites is significantly lower. And, they say, they fear that an ownership change could drastically alter the experience, just like Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) did for that platform. 

 

“Petitioners thus have an interest not only in creating and accessing expression through TikTok, but an interest in creating and accessing expression as curated using TikTok’s current editorial practices”, the complaint says. 

 

The case is filed on Tuesday in the federal Court of Appeals in DC, which have exclusive jurisdiction over challenges to the forced divestment law. The creators are asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional and stop it from being enforced.

 

Celtic emphatically sealed a 12th Scottish Premiership title in 13 seasons by dismantling Kilmarnock 5-0 in arguably their finest display of the season. 

 

The Glasgow side traveled to Rugby Park, where they had lost on their previous two visits, knowing a point in their penultimate league fixture would extend their top-flight dominance. And yesterday, they showed why they deserved to be crowned champions. 

 

Two goals inside the opening 12 minutes eliminated any fears of a third straight defeat in Ayrshire. The outstanding Matt O'Riley – Celtic's player of the season – had a killer back-post ball buried by Adam Idah (5), before Alistair Johnston's driven cross was tapped in by Daizen Maeda (12). By the 35th minute, it was three for the rampant visitors as Maeda turned provider for the resurgent James Forrest to convert from close range. O'Riley rocketed in a stunning fourth from the edge of the box in the 51st minute before coolly slotting away Celtic's fifth and his 18th goal of the season in the 71st minute.

 

 

62.3% of Humanity Uses Social Media

It seems that more and more people are turning to social media for connecting, researching, and communicating. And the impact is still growing!

In fact, the total population of active social media users has risen to more than 5 billion, or about 62.3 percent of humanity, according to a study published yesterday.

The number rose 5.6 percent last year, outpacing the 0.9 percent increase in the world’s population, said the report by media monitoring company Meltwater and social media agency We are Social. 

The social network with the most users was Meta’s Facebook with 2.19 billion. Meta’s Instagram was next with 1.65 billion, narrowly trailed by TikTok at 1.56 billion.

The report warns that precise numbers are hard to come by because of automated accounts or people using different identities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, Premier League leaders Liverpool stepped up their title bid with a 4-1 rout of Chelsea.

Diogo Jota got the scoring started following a Conor Bradley assist in the twenty-third minute, and then the 20-year-old doubled the lead with his first Liverpool goal sixteen minutes later. Dominik Szoboszlai added a third after the break – 65th minute – before the Blues managed to put in their only goal six minutes after that. Then, Luis Diaz added a fourth with a close-range strike in the seventy-ninth minute. 

Liverpool head to third-placed Arsenal on Sunday for another test of their title credentials.