It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, May 18, 2023
Unnamed First Nations join Snoop Dog in Ottawa Senators bid
Rapper Snoop Dog says some First Nations have joined his bid to buy the Ottawa Senators in a potential deal that also includes L.A. producer Neko Sparks. The team’s new owner could be announced within days.
The celebrity bidding war over the Ottawa Senators, explained | About That
CBC The Ottawa Senators are courting celebrity bids for team ownership including from Snoop Dogg and The Weeknd. About That producer Lauren Bird and Sportsnet's Donnovan Bennett discuss the significance of big-name buyers on the day of the bid deadline, and what could happen next.
SEX WORK IS WORK!
Dancers at Los Angeles bar to become only unionized strippers in US after 15-month battle
By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS
AP
TODAY A protester identified as "Reagan" holds a sign outside the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar on Saturday, March 26, 2022 in the North Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Dancers at the bar, who have for 15 months been seeking safer workplace conditions, better pay and health insurance, among other benefits, are poised to become the only unionized group of strippers in the U.S. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via AP)
A pedestrian walks past the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar, a club in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles, on Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Dancers at the bar are poised to become the only unionized group of strippers in the U.S. today after management withdrew challenges to their upcoming guild election and agreed to recognize the union, the Actors' Equity Association said Tuesday. The dancers from club have been seeking safer workplace conditions, better pay and health insurance, among other benefits for 15 months. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
NEW YORK (AP) — Dancers at a Los Angeles bar could soon become the only unionized group of strippers in the U.S.
The Actors’ Equity Association labor union says owners of the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood have withdrawn their opposition and agreed to recognize the strippers’ union.
For 15 months, dancers at the club have sought safer workplace conditions, better pay and health insurance, among other benefits. But their unionization drive was stalled by objections and legal challenges from the club’s management.
The union announced this week that management had agreed to a settlement. A formal vote count by the National Labor Relations Board has been set for Thursday.
“We’re hoping what we’ve done to unionize this club will have laid the groundwork for any other stripper in the country who decides that they want to also have a voice in the way their workplace is run,” Lilith, a dancer at Star Garden, told The Associated Press. Lilith asked not to be identified by her legal name in this article, due to fears of being harassed or stalked. The AP is aware of her legal name.
After being certified, the Star Garden dancers will join Actors’ Equity, a union representing more than 51,000 workers in the entertainment industry nationwide.
The Star Garden case is not the first time strippers in the U.S. have sought union recognition. In the late 90s, dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady organized the Exotic Dancers Union. But that club was shuttered in 2013 — so, if Thursday’s results are certified by the NLRB as expected, the Star Garden dancers will become the country’s only existing unionized strippers.
Dancers at Los Angeles bar to become unionized
Dancers at a Los Angeles bar could soon become the only unionized group of strippers in the U.S. The Actors’ Equity Association labor union says owners of the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood withdrew their opposition. A formal vote count is set for Thursday. (May 18)
The dancers’ union battle at the Star Garden dates back to March 2022 — after security guards at the club “repeatedly failed to protect” dancers from abusive or threatening patron behavior, and fired those who brought concerns to management, Actors’ Equity said.
“The positive side of Star Garden is that ... it’s where dancers are allowed to express themselves in creative ways. And all of my coworkers looked out for each other — it was like a little family from the start,” Lilith said. “So, when we started noticing that there were some safety concerns that we all had, it didn’t take long for us to band to together and decide we needed to do something about it.”
Lilith recalled a handful of instances that made her and other dancers feel unsafe while working — including a lack of adequate protection from sexual harassment and assault often faced by dancers. Star Garden management told dancers that they couldn’t go directly to security when they felt unsafe, Lilith said — noting that they were instead instructed to go to management, who would decide “if it was a severe enough instance for security to intervene.”
Customers were also allowed to stay in the bar after closing, which made the dancers feel unsafe because patrons could see them dressed “out of our stripper personas” and identify which cars they drove when they went home, she said. According to Lilith, one dancer was fired for bringing up her concerns about this to management. Another dancer was fired for intervening when she noticed a customer filming a coworker on stage without her consent, she added.
After the two coworkers were fired, the Star Garden dancers banned together in efforts to get their jobs back. But after delivering a safety petition to their bosses, they were locked out of work, Lilith said — so they began picketing outside of the club. They later announced their affiliation with Actors’ Equity, which filed for a NLRB guild election on behalf of the group.
According to the union, NLRB conducted the election via mail and planned for a November vote count. But those results were put on hold due to legal challenges from the Star Garden, which challenged the eligibility of some voters. The club also filed for bankruptcy protection.
As part of Tuesday’s settlement, Star Garden agreed to dismiss the bankruptcy filing and reopen the club soon after, attorneys representing Star Garden management said in a statement.
“Star Garden decided to settle, as it has always been a fair and equal opportunity employer, that respects the rights of its employees,” attorneys Josiah R. Jenkins and An Nguyen Ruda said, adding that the club “is committed to negotiating in good faith with Actor’s Equity a first of its kind collective bargaining agreement which is fair to all parties.”
Mori Rubin, who approved the settlement as regional director for NLRB’s Region 31, said she admired “the dancers who had the courage to protest their unsafe working conditions” and was “very pleased” with the settlement.
Lilith and other dancers said they were looking forward to preparing a union contract and returning to work.
“I’m feeling really optimistic about going back,” Lilith said. “It will definitely be surreal being back on that specific stage, but I know we’re going to have our community rallying around us .... And hopefully we’ll be able to show the country how successful a union strip club can be.”
Dancers at Los Angeles club to become the US’s only unionized strippers
A formal union vote will take place on Thursday and will mark the first time Actors Equity association represents strip club workers
After months of late-night picketing in North Hollywood, the dancers of the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar are poised to become the only unionized strippers in the US.
The dancers’ victory is expected to be finalized with a formal union vote on Thursday morning, and will mark the first time that the Actors Equity association, a century-old union for stage actors, singers and dancers, will represent strip club workers.
The strippers’ campaign featured colorful, costumed protests, and attracted high-profile support, with Amazon Union president Chris Smalls and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine both showing up in solidarity.
For Charlie, a 23-year-old Star Garden dancer, spending eight months of prime weekend nights last year on a picket line rather than working was a financial challenge, but one that proved worth it.
“The sacrifices we made were definitely sacrifices, but it was for something bigger than us,” she said. The dancers were fighting for “a future where unionization exists for strippers who want it. That’s bigger than struggling to pay rent.”
The campaign, which started in March 2022, was galvanized by what dancers said were unsafe working conditions, and what they described as retaliatory firings of dancers who tried to address customers’ dangerous behavior themselves.
The dancers at Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood have been campaigning for safer workplace conditions, better pay and health insurance.
Photograph: Richard Vogel/AP
Although Actors’ Equity, which represents more than 50,000 workers, has not organized strip club employees in the past, the union said, the strippers had similar concerns as other performers, from wage theft to post-show security.
“Strippers are live entertainers. While some elements of their job are unique, they are essentially performance artists, and have a lot in common with other Equity members who dance for a living,” Kate Shindle, the union president, said in a statement.
Shindle called the Star Garden dancers “absolute warriors throughout this long process”.
As well as concerns about sexual harassment and dancer safety, the union campaign was driven by labor concerns that strippers share with other workers, such as workplace injuries that affect dancers in their highly physical work, and that make health insurance essential.
“Just walking around in six- to eight-inch heels every night is a lot of wear and tear on your body,” Charlie, the Star Gardens dancer, said.
Strippers also need mental health support, she added, since many patrons want someone willing to listen to their struggles and show empathy, making the job in many ways similar to the emotional labor of being a therapist or a social worker.
“I would say most of my social work experience has been in my underwear,” Charlie said.
She said the union win built on decades of campaigns by sex workers advocating for safe working conditions, and had crucial support from the advocacy group Strippers United.
After more than a year of legal battles, which included the club filing for bankruptcy, the union and the Star Garden owners announced a settlement on Tuesday, which will allow the dancers to proceed with a union vote, and the club to reopen.
“Star Garden is committed to negotiating in good faith with Actor’s Equity a first of its kind collective bargaining agreement which is fair to all parties,” said An Ruda, an attorney for Star Garden, in a statement. “Star Garden decided to settle, as it has always been a fair and equal opportunity employer, that respects the rights of its employees.”
The North Hollywood dancers said they hoped their victory would galvanize new union efforts at other US strip clubs.
“This is not just a win for the dancers at this club, but the entire strip club industry,” said Lilith, a Star Garden dancer, in a statement.
Star Garden’s vote comes a decade after the 2013 closure of the Lusty Lady, a worker-owned club in San Francisco, which unionized with the Service Employees International Union in 1997. At that time, it was the only unionized strip club in the US.
While the Lusty Lady had “a good run”, the California club’s unionization ultimately did not “spark organizing all over the country,” as workers had hoped it would, said Kristina Zinnen, a former Lusty Lady dancer who went on to become a San Francisco labor lawyer.
Over the years, Zinnen said, she’s talked to at least 10 groups of strippers trying to organize their workplaces, but none of those campaigns succeeded. One of the major hurdles to organizing strippers has been finding the right union to back them, Zinnen said.
The new involvement of the powerful and well-resourced Actors Equity was “very significant”, and might signal a broader interest in organizing other clubs.
The Star Garden dancers made a strategic effort to make their picketing entertaining to demonstrate to the club owners, and customers, that “we are the club – without us, the business doesn’t exist,” Charlie said.
Protesting on a North Hollywood street corner until 1am or 2am took stamina, and sometimes came with safety concerns, Charlie said. But the dancers focused on a charm offensive, she said, aiming to “be flirty and strippery” while pushing the labor movement.
The dancers asked patrons to come back another time, visit a different club, or party with them on the picket line rather than going inside, she said.
Each night the picket had a different theme, with costumes and props, from witches to pageant night to dad night (they brought a grill), to big cats. One night, the theme was the environmental and safety violations they were fighting, and dancers dressed up as “broken glass” and “a hole in the stage”.
The strippers also built a following on social media, and used supporters’ contributions to make the 15-month long protest possible, though most dancers also worked other jobs to pay rent, Charlie said. (She worked at a grocery store, among other gigs.)
While it could be “disheartening” when longtime patrons chose to cross the picket line, Charlie said, “the majority of our customers were amazing”, with some actively supporting the labor movement, and others simply deciding to listen to dancers’ advice to come back another time.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M;R&D
Elizabeth Holmes will start 11-year prison sentence on May 30 after losing her bid to remain free
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP
yesterday Elizabeth Holmes to start prison term May 30 A federal judge is allowing disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to surrender for her prison term on May 30, after the Memorial Day weekend. Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in a blood-testing scam. (May 17)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes will remain free through the Memorial Day weekend before surrendering to authorities on May 30 to begin her more than 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in a blood-testing scam.
Holmes’ lawyers asked Davila to approve the May 30 prison reporting time to her two weeks to sort out several issues, including child care for her 1-year-old son William and 3-month-old daughter Invicta. Holmes had originally been ordered to begin her prison sentence on April 27, but won a reprieve with a last-minute legal maneuver that gave her more time with her children.
Holmes, 39, became pregnant with William shortly before the start of her high-profile trial in September 2021 and became pregnant with Invicta shortly after she was convicted of crimes that could have resulted in a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
The father of both children is William “Billy” Evans, whom she met after breaking up with her former romantic and business partner, Ramesh “Sunny,” Balwani, who began serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence last month in Southern California. Balwani, 57, was convicted for 12 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy committed while he was Theranos’ chief operating officer and living with Holmes.
In Wednesday’s filing, Holmes’ lawyers didn’t disclose the location of the prison that she has been assigned to serve her sentence. But they noted she has to prepare to travel outside of California, where she has been living in the San Diego area while free on bail. Davila has recommended that Holmes be imprisoned in Bryan, Texas.
When Holmes is finally incarcerated, it will bring down the curtain on a saga that cast a bright light on a dark chapter in Silicon Valley that brought her fame and fortune before her scandalous downfall.
After dropping out of Stanford University in 2003 to found Theranos while still a teenager, Holmes promised to revolutionize healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood. The idea helped her raising nearly $1 billion from sophisticated investors that included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is owed $125 million under the restitution order.
But Theranos’ blood tests never came close to working the way Holmes had boasted with the support of Balwani, resulting in the company’s collapse and a tale that has been the subject of a book, “Bad Blood,” an HBO documentary, “The Inventor,” and a Hulu mini-series, ”The Dropout,” which won Amanda Seyfried an Emmy in the starring role.
Crypto rules get final approval to make Europe a global leader on regulation
AP yesterday An advertisement for Bitcoin cryptocurrency is displayed on a street in Hong Kong, on Feb. 17, 2022. The European Union's sweeping set of beefed-up cryptocurrency rules got final approval from member states on Tuesday, giving the bloc a global lead in regulating the freewheeling sector. The European Council adopted the package of rules, known as Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, in the final step in the 27-nation bloc's legislative process. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
LONDON (AP) — The European Union’s sweeping set of beefed-up cryptocurrency rules got final approval from member states Tuesday, giving the 27-nation bloc a global lead in regulating the freewheeling sector.
The European Council adopted the package of rules — known as Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA — in the final step of the bloc’s legislative process. European Parliament lawmakers endorsed the rules in April, and they’re expected to start taking effect in phases starting in July 2024.
The rules are aimed at improving transparency and combating money laundering and will cover stablecoins — which are usually tied to a hard currency or a commodity like gold that make them less volatile than normal cryptocurrencies.
Other digital tokens as well as bitcoin-related services such as trading platforms and digital wallets are also subject to the rules, but not bitcoin itself.
“Recent events have confirmed the urgent need for imposing rules which will better protect Europeans who have invested in these assets, and prevent the misuse of crypto industry for the purposes of money laundering and financing of terrorism,” said Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Council.
Under MiCA, which has been in the works since 2020, crypto companies will need approval to operate in the EU and be held liable if they lose investors’ assets. Authorities will compile a public list of “noncompliant” companies.
The rules, aimed at maintaining financial stability, include provisions to combat market manipulation and insider dealing. Companies issuing or trading crypto assets will have to disclose information on the risks, costs and charges that consumers face.
Major crypto companies will have to reveal how much energy they use. The massive amount of energy used in bitcoin mining to create new coins has stoked concern about crypto’s carbon footbprint.
Some European countries, like Germany, already have basic crypto regulations.
YouTube’s recommendations send violent and graphic gun videos to 9-year-olds, study finds
By DAVID KLEPPER
AP
yesterday The YouTube app is displayed on an iPad in Baltimore on March 20, 2018. YouTube is great at sending users videos that it thinks they'll like based on their interests. But new research shows the site's powerful algorithms can also flood young users with violent and disturbing content. The non-profit Tech Transparency Project created YouTube accounts mimicking the behavior of young boys with an interest in first-person shooter games. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When researchers at a nonprofit that studies social media wanted to understand the connection between YouTube videos and gun violence, they set up accounts on the platform that mimicked the behavior of typical boys living in the U.S.
They simulated two nine-year-olds who both liked video games. The accounts were identical, except that one clicked on the videos recommended by YouTube, and the other ignored the platform’s suggestions.
The account that clicked on YouTube’s suggestions was soon flooded with graphic videos about school shootings, tactical gun training videos and how-to instructions on making firearms fully automatic. One video featured an elementary school-age girl wielding a handgun; another showed a shooter using a .50 caliber gun to fire on a dummy head filled with lifelike blood and brains. Many of the videos violate YouTube’s own policies against violent or gory content.
The findings show that despite YouTube’s rules and content moderation efforts, the platform is failing to stop the spread of frightening videos that could traumatize vulnerable children — or send them down dark roads of extremism and violence.
“Video games are one of the most popular activities for kids. You can play a game like ”Call of Duty” without ending up at a gun shop — but YouTube is taking them there,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, the research group that published its findings about YouTube on Tuesday. “It’s not the video games, it’s not the kids. It’s the algorithms.”
The accounts that followed YouTube’s suggested videos received 382 different firearms-related videos in a single month, or about 12 per day. The accounts that ignored YouTube’s recommendations still received some gun-related videos, but only 34 in total.
The researchers also created accounts mimicking 14-year-old boys; those accounts also received similar levels of gun- and violence-related content.
One of the videos recommended for the accounts was titled “How a Switch Works on a Glock (Educational Purposes Only).” YouTube later removed the video after determining it violated its rules; an almost identical video popped up two weeks later with a slightly altered name; that video remains available.
A spokeswoman for YouTube defended the platform’s protections for children and noted that it requires users under 17 to get their parent’s permission before using their site; accounts for users younger than 13 are linked to the parental account. “We offer a number of options for younger viewers,” the company wrote in emailed statement. ”... Which are designed to create a safer experience for tweens and teens.”
Along with TikTok, the video sharing platform is one of the most popular sites for children and teens. Both sites have been criticized in the past for hosting, and in some cases promoting, videos that encourage gun violence, eating disorders and self-harm. Critics of social media have also pointed to the links between social media, radicalization and real-world violence.
The perpetrators behind many recent mass shootings have usedsocial media and video streaming platforms to glorify violence or even livestream their attacks. In posts on YouTube, the shooter behind the attack on a 2018 attack on a school in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 wrote “I wanna kill people,” “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” and “I have no problem shooting a girl in the chest.”
The neo-Nazi gunman who killed eight people earlier this month at a Dallas-area shopping center also had a YouTube account that included videos about assembling rifles, the serial killed Jeffrey Dahmer and a clip from a school shooting scene in a television show.
In some cases, YouTube has already removed some of the videos identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, but in other instances the content remains available. Many big tech companies rely on automated systems to flag and remove content that violates their rules, but Paul said the findings from the Project’s report show that greater investments in content moderation are needed.
In the absence of federal regulation, social media companies must do more to enforce their own rules, said Justin Wagner, director of investigations at Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading gun control advocacy organization. Wagner’s group also said the Tech Transparency Project’s report shows the need for tighter age restrictions on firearms-related content.
“Children who aren’t old enough to buy a gun shouldn’t be able to turn to YouTube to learn how to build a firearm, modify it to make it deadlier, or commit atrocities,” Wagner said in response to the Tech Transparency Project’s report.
Similar concerns have been raised about TikTok after earlier reports showed the platform was recommending harmful content to teens.
TikTok has defended its site and its policies, which prohibit users younger than 13. Its rules also prohibit videos that encourage harmful behavior; users who search for content about topics including eating disorders automatically receive a prompt offering mental health resources.
Child social media stars have few protections. Illinois aims to fix that
By CLAIRE SAVAGE
Shreya Nallamothu looks at her phone in Bloomington, Ill., on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. Illinois lawmakers aim to make their state what they say will be the first in the country to create protections for child social media influencers. Nallamothu, 15, raised her concerns to Illinois state Sen. David Koehler of Peoria, who then set the legislation in motion.
(AP Photo/Claire Savage)
CHICAGO (AP) — Holed up at home during the pandemic lockdown three years ago, 13-year-old Shreya Nallamothu was scrolling through social media when she noticed a pattern: Children even younger than her were the stars — dancing, cracking one-liners and being generally adorable.
“It seemed innocuous to me at first,” Nallamothu said.
But as she watched more and more posts of kids pushing products or their mishaps going viral, she started to wonder: Who is looking out for them?
“I realized that there’s a lot of exploitation that can happen within the world of ‘kidfluencing,’” said Nallamothu, referring to the monetization of social media content featuring children. “And I realized that there was absolutely zero legislation in place to protect them.”
Illinois lawmakers aim to change that by making their state what they say will be the first in the country to create protections for child social media influencers. Nallamothu, now 15, raised her concerns to Illinois state Sen. David Koehler of Peoria, who then set the legislation in motion.
The Illinois bill would entitle child influencers under the age of 16 to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. To qualify, the content must be created in Illinois, and kids would have to be featured in at least 30% of the content in a 30-day-period.
Video bloggers — or vloggers — would be responsible for maintaining records of kids’ appearances and must set aside gross earnings for the child in a trust account for when they turn 18, otherwise the child can sue.
The bill passed the state Senate unanimously in March, and is scheduled to be considered by the House this week. If it wins approval, the bill will go back to the Senate for a final vote before it makes its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who said he intends to sign it in the coming months.
Family-style vlogs can feature children as early as birth and recount milestones and family events — the wholesome clips that Nallamothu had been initially scrolling through.
But experts say the commercialized “ sharenthood ” industry, which can earn content creators tens of thousands of dollars per brand deal, is underregulated and can even cause harm.
“As we see influencers and content creators becoming more and more of a viable career path for young people, we have to remember that this is a place where the law has not caught up to practice,” said Jessica Maddox, a University of Alabama professor who studies social media platforms.
She added that child influencers “are in desperate need of the same protections that have been afforded to other child workers and entertainers.”
The Illinois bill is modeled largely after California’s 1939 Jackie Coogan law, named for the silent film-era child actor who sued his parents for squandering his earnings. Coogan laws now exist in several states and require parents to set aside a portion of child entertainers’ earnings for when they reach adulthood.
Other states have tried to pass laws to regulate against potential child exploitation on social media without success. A 2018 California child labor bill included a social media advertising provision that was removed by the time it was passed, and Washington’s 2023 bill stalled in committee.
Across the Atlantic, France passed a law in 2020 that entitles child influencers under 16 to a portion of their revenue, as well as “the right to forget,” which means video platforms must withdraw the images of the child at the minor’s request. Parental consent is not needed.
Illinois’ own bill underwent several changes during the legislative session that watered down its reach, including stripping out a provision allowing child influencers to request deletion of content once they reached the age of 18, and requiring family vloggers to register their channels.
Still, Chicago-based Tyler Diers, the Midwest executive director of technology trade association Technet, which opposed the bill before the changes but is now neutral, said that when one state legislature takes up an issue, others tend to follow, “and oftentimes perfect what the first state did.”
Nallamothu emphasized that the Illinois bill isn’t aimed at “parents posting their kids on Facebook for their close family and friends,” or even a funny clip that went viral.
“This is for families who make their income off of child vlogging and family vlogging,” she said.
Many social media platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok — don’t allow children to have accounts until they’re at least 13 years old. But that hasn’t stopped them from appearing on social media. And the internet is littered with examples of children being showcased for financial gain — and the harm it has caused as a consequence.
Chris McCarty, an 18-year-old college student who founded Quit Clicking Kids, an advocacy organization focused on protecting minors being monetized online, and who was the force behind the bill in Washington, noted that “this issue is not going away.”
“Once these kids start growing up, the true extent of the damage inflicted by monetized family channels will be realized,” McCarty said at a hearing for the Washington bill in February.
TikToker Bobbi Althoff is the mother of two little girls she lovingly refers to as “Richard” and “Concrete” to her 3.7 million followers. Althoff used to share her older daughter’s face and real name online, but stopped after people made rude comments about her.
“I kept thinking about my daughter growing up to read these things, and it really upset me because I hate reading things like that about myself,” she said.
When she shared her decision on Instagram, she lost thousands of followers and received backlash.
“A lot of people were supportive, but there were definitely a lot of people that were very strange about it,” Althoff said, describing how some viewers seemed to feel like “they had a relationship with my daughter... and wanted to keep seeing her grow.”
Although TikTok-famous tots are not quite old enough to reflect on their experiences, child reality TV stars of the last decade can offer comparable insight on how it feels to be on the other side of the camera.
Ohio-based Jason Welage enjoyed his time as a preteen on TruTV’s 2015 reality show Kart Life, which followed families in the world of go-kart racing. Now 20, Welage says some of the less pleasant aspects have followed him into adulthood.
“When you Google the show, the first clip that comes up on YouTube is me coming off the track and crying,” he said. “I still hear about it to this day.”
His parents funneled the $10,000 he earned on the show back into his racing, which can cost families up to $150,000 a year, according to his mother, Meghan, who, like her son, supports the child influencer legislation in Illinois and hopes similar laws will be implemented in other states or even federally.
For children appearing on social media or TV, “it’s definitely work for them,” she said. Her son “wanted to go play, but instead he had to go sit on a stool in our motorhome and do interviews.”
“There should be something to compensate the child for what they are going through or what they have to do,” she said.
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AP Staff Writer Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.
May 14, 2023
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Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
U$A
AI presents political peril for 2024 with threat to mislead voters
By DAVID KLEPPER and ALI SWENSON
AP
May 14, 2023 - A booth is ready for a voter, Feb. 24, 2020, at City Hall in Cambridge, Mass., on the first morning of early voting in the state. Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence, tools that can create lifelike photos, video and audio are now cheap and readily available. AI experts and political scientists say these new programs will have significant implications for next year's U.S. elections. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Computer engineers and tech-inclined political scientists have warned for years that cheap, powerful artificial intelligence tools would soon allow anyone to create fake images, video and audio that was realistic enough to fool voters and perhaps sway an election.
The synthetic images that emerged were often crude, unconvincing and costly to produce, especially when other kinds of misinformation were so inexpensive and easy to spread on social media. The threat posed by AI and so-called deepfakes always seemed a year or two away.
No more.
Sophisticated generative AI tools can now create cloned human voices and hyper-realistic images, videos and audio in seconds, at minimal cost. When strapped to powerful social media algorithms, this fake and digitally created content can spread far and fast and target highly specific audiences, potentially taking campaign dirty tricks to a new low.
The implications for the 2024 campaigns and elections are as large as they are troubling: Generative AI can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos, it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen.
“We’re not prepared for this,” warned A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. ”To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.”
AI experts can quickly rattle off a number of alarming scenarios in which generative AI is used to create synthetic media for the purposes of confusing voters, slandering a candidate or even inciting violence.
Here are a few: Automated robocall messages, in a candidate’s voice, instructing voters to cast ballots on the wrong date; audio recordings of a candidate supposedly confessing to a crime or expressing racist views; video footage showing someone giving a speech or interview they never gave. Fake images designed to look like local news reports, falsely claiming a candidate dropped out of the race.
“What if Elon Musk personally calls you and tells you to vote for a certain candidate?” said Oren Etzioni, the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, who stepped down last year to start the nonprofit AI2. “A lot of people would listen. But it’s not him.”
Former President Donald Trump, who is running in 2024, has shared AI-generated content with his followers on social media. A manipulated video of CNN host Anderson Cooper that Trump shared on his Truth Social platform on Friday, which distorted Cooper’s reaction to the CNN town hall this past week with Trump, was created using an AI voice-cloning tool.
A dystopian campaign ad released last month by the Republican National Committee offers another glimpse of this digitally manipulated future. The online ad, which came after President Joe Biden announced his reelection campaign, and starts with a strange, slightly warped image of Biden and the text “What if the weakest president we’ve ever had was re-elected?”
A series of AI-generated images follows: Taiwan under attack; boarded up storefronts in the United States as the economy crumbles; soldiers and armored military vehicles patrolling local streets as tattooed criminals and waves of immigrants create panic.
“An AI-generated look into the country’s possible future if Joe Biden is re-elected in 2024,” reads the ad’s description from the RNC.
The RNC acknowledged its use of AI, but others, including nefarious political campaigns and foreign adversaries, will not, said Petko Stoyanov, global chief technology officer at Forcepoint, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas. Stoyanov predicted that groups looking to meddle with U.S. democracy will employ AI and synthetic media as a way to erode trust.
“What happens if an international entity — a cybercriminal or a nation state — impersonates someone. What is the impact? Do we have any recourse?” Stoyanov said. “We’re going to see a lot more misinformation from international sources.”
AI-generated political disinformation already has gone viral online ahead of the 2024 election, from a doctored video of Biden appearing to give a speech attacking transgender people to AI-generated images of children supposedly learning satanism in libraries.
AI images appearing to show Trump’s mug shot also fooled some social media users even though the former president didn’t take one when he was booked and arraigned in a Manhattan criminal court for falsifying business records. Other AI-generated images showed Trump resisting arrest, though their creator was quick to acknowledge their origin.
Legislation that would require candidates to label campaign advertisements created with AI has been introduced in the House by Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who has also sponsored legislation that would require anyone creating synthetic images to add a watermark indicating the fact.
Some states have offered their own proposals for addressing concerns about deepfakes.
Clarke said her greatest fear is that generative AI could be used before the 2024 election to create a video or audio that incites violence and turns Americans against each other.
“It’s important that we keep up with the technology,” Clarke told The Associated Press. “We’ve got to set up some guardrails. People can be deceived, and it only takes a split second. People are busy with their lives and they don’t have the time to check every piece of information. AI being weaponized, in a political season, it could be extremely disruptive.”
Earlier this month, a trade association for political consultants in Washington condemned the use of deepfakes in political advertising, calling them “a deception” with “no place in legitimate, ethical campaigns.”
Other forms of artificial intelligence have for years been a feature of political campaigning, using data and algorithms to automate tasks such as targeting voters on social media or tracking down donors. Campaign strategists and tech entrepreneurs hope the most recent innovations will offer some positives in 2024, too.
Mike Nellis, CEO of the progressive digital agency Authentic, said he uses ChatGPT “every single day” and encourages his staff to use it, too, as long as any content drafted with the tool is reviewed by human eyes afterward.
Nellis’ newest project, in partnership with Higher Ground Labs, is an AI tool called Quiller. It will write, send and evaluate the effectiveness of fundraising emails –- all typically tedious tasks on campaigns.
“The idea is every Democratic strategist, every Democratic candidate will have a copilot in their pocket,” he said.
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Swenson reported from New York.
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Repelled by high car prices, Americans are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever
By TOM KRISHER
AP
May 15, 2023 Mechanic Jon Guthrie inspects the underside of a 2014 Honda Ridgeline pickup truck at Japanese Auto Professional Service in Ann Arbor, Michigan. People are keeping their vehicles longer due to shortages of new ones and high prices. That drove the average U.S. vehicle age up to a record 12.5 years in 2023, according to S&P Global Mobility. (AP Photo/Tom Krisher)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — With new and used cars still painfully expensive, Ryan Holdsworth says he plans to keep his 9-year-old Chevy Cruze for at least four more years. Limiting his car payments and his overall debt is a bigger priority for him than having a new vehicle.
A 35-year-old grocery store worker from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Holdsworth would probably be in the market for a vehicle within a few years — if not for the high cost. For now, it’s out of the question.
“You’re not going to get one for a price you can afford,” he said.
Holdsworth has plenty of company. Americans are keeping their cars longer than ever. The average age of a passenger vehicle on the road hit a record 12.5 years this year, according to data gathered by S&P Global Mobility. Sedans like Holdsworth’s are even older, on average — 13.6 years.
Blame it mainly on the pandemic, which in 2020 triggered a global shortage of automotive computer chips, the vital component that runs everything from radios to gas pedals to transmissions. The shortage drastically slowed global assembly lines, making new vehicles scarce on dealer lots just when consumers were increasingly eager to buy.
Prices reached record highs. And though they’ve eased somewhat, the cost of a vehicle still feels punishingly expensive to many Americans, especially when coupled with now much-higher loan rates.
Since the pandemic struck three years ago, the average new vehicle has rocketed 24% to nearly $48,000 as of April, according to Edmunds.com. Typical loan rates on new-car purchases have ballooned to 7%, a consequence of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive streak of interest rate hikes to fight inflation.
It’s all pushed the national average monthly auto loan payment to $729 — prohibitively high for many. Experts say a family earning the median U.S. household income can no longer afford the average new car payment and still cover such necessities as housing, food and utilities.
Used vehicle prices, on average, have surged even more since the pandemic hit — up 40%, to nearly $29,000. With an average loan rate having reached 11%, the typical monthly used-vehicle payment is now $563.
Faced with deciding between making a jumbo payment and keeping their existing vehicles, more owners are choosing to stick with what they have, even if it means spending more on repairs and maintenance.
Auto mechanics have been struck by the rising ages and mileages of vehicles that now arrive at the shop in numbers they’d never seen before.
“You see cars all the time in here with 250,000, 300,000 miles,” said Jay Nuber, owner of Japanese Auto Professional Service, a repair garage near downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. “They haven’t been really having major work or anything. They’ve just been doing the (routine) service.”
It doesn’t mean that most owners of older vehicles are necessarily stuck with constant repair bills. One reason people can hold their vehicles for increasingly long periods is that auto manufacturing has improved over time. Engines run longer. Bodies don’t rust as quickly. Components last longer.
Yet the cost of buying either a new or used vehicle is leaving more people with essentially no choice but to keep the one they have.
“The repair-versus-buy equation changed,” said Todd Campau, an associate director with S&P. Even with rising repair costs, Campau said, it’s still typically more cost-effective to fix an older vehicle than to spring for a purchase.
The average vehicle age, which has been edging up since 2019, accelerated this year by a substantial three months. And while 12.5 years is the average, Campau noted, more vehicles are staying on the road for 20 years or more, sometimes with three or four successive owners.
In such cases, the third or fourth owner is getting a much older car than they would have in the past. Nearly 122 million vehicles on the road are more than a dozen years old, Campau said. S&P predicts that the number of older vehicles will keep growing until at least 2028.
Even with more durable vehicles able to last longer, all of this has created a boom time for auto shops. Through most of last year, Nuber’s Japanese Auto was overwhelmed with customers. It took up to three weeks to get an appointment, whether for repairs or the routine maintenance that older vehicles, in particular, require.
“The phone just kept ringing, and the cars just kept coming,” Nuber said.
It’s now at the point where some vehicle owners must decide whether to pay for a repair that costs more than their vehicle is worth. That’s where many of them draw the line, said Dave Weber, manager at Japanese Auto.
On Friday, Weber said, one customer needed rear brakes, wheel bearings and exhaust system repairs. The customer decided to do only half the repairs and wait until later to decide whether to sink more money into the aging vehicle.
“They patch them up and drive them for however long, until the next major repair,” Weber said.
S&P predicts that U.S. new vehicle sales will reach 14.5 million this year, from about 13.9 million last year. A big reason is that the supply at dealerships is finally growing. Automakers have also begun to restore some discounts that had long helped keep a lid on prices. The result is that many people who can afford to buy can now do so. It’s a trend that could slow the advancing age of the U.S. fleet and boost overall sales.
Still, no one is predicting a return to pre-pandemic annual sales of around 17 million anytime soon. Even with discounts, new-vehicle prices are likely to stay much higher than pre-pandemic levels for years to come.
As for Holdsworth, the Chevy Cruze owner, he plans to keep up with the scheduled maintenance on his car, especially routine oil changes. Even if he encountered a major repair, he thinks he’d probably pay for it.
Having bought his vehicle two years ago, Holdsworth has about two years of payments left. So his Cruze, too, may reach the 12.5-year-old national average.
“I’ll finish paying it off,” he said, “and drive it for a couple more years.”
Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children
By VANESSA GERA
May 15, 2023 3 of 14 Elzbieta Cajzer, head of the museum's collections department, shows a collection of shoes that belonged to child victims of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10, 2023. A two-year effort has been launched in 2023 to preserve 8,000 children’s shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II.
(AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers.
Colleagues at the other end of a long work table rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths and careful circular motions on the leather of the fragile objects. The shoes are then scanned and photographed in a neighboring room and catalogued in a database.
The work is part of a two-year effort launched last month to preserve 8,000 children’s shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews killed in dictator Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
The site was located during the war in a part of Poland occupied by German forces and annexed to the German Reich. Today it is a memorial and museum managed by the Polish state, to whom the solemn responsibility has fallen to preserve the evidence of the site, where Poles were also among the victims. The Germans destroyed evidence of their atrocities at Treblinka and other camps, but they failed to do so entirely at the enormous site of Auschwitz as they fled the approaching Soviet forces in chaos toward the war’s end.
Eight decades later, some evidence is fading away under the pressures of time and mass tourism. Hair sheered from victims to make cloth is considered a sacred human remain which cannot be photographed and is not subjected to conservation efforts. It is turning to dust.
But more than 100,000 shoes of victims remain, some 80,000 of them in huge heaps on display in a room where visitors file by daily. Many are warped, their original colors fading, shoe laces disintegrated, yet they endure as testaments of lives brutally cut short.
The tiny shoes and slippers are especially heartrending.
“Children’s shoes are the most moving object for me because there is no greater tragedy than the tragedy of children,” said Mirosław Maciaszczyk, a conservation specialist from the museum’s conservation laboratories.
“A shoe is an object closely related to a person, to a child. It is a trace, sometimes it’s the only trace left of the child.”
Maciaszczyk said that he and the other conservation workers never lose sight of the human tragedy behind the shoes, even as they focus on the technical aspects of their conservation work. Sometimes they are overcome by emotion and need breaks. Volunteers working with adult shoes in the past have asked for new assignments.
Elżbieta Cajzer, head of the Collections, said conservation work always turns up some individual details of those killed at the camp — suitcases, in particular, can offer up clues because they bear names and addresses. She expects that the work on children’s shoes will also reveal some new personal details.
They also open a window into a bygone era when shoes were a valuable good passed from child to child. Some have traces of mended soles and other repairs.
The museum is able to conserve about 100 shoes a week, and has processed 400 since the project began last month. The aim is not to restore them to their original state but to render them as close to how they were found at war’s end as possible. Most of the shoes are single objects. One pair still bound by shoelaces is a rarity.
Last year, workers conserving adult shoes found an Italian 100 lire banknote in a lady’s high-heeled shoe that was also imprinted with the name Ranzini, which was a shoe manufacturer in Trieste. The owner was likely Italian, but nothing else is known about her.
They also found the name of Věra Vohryzková on a child’s shoe. By coincidence, a museum worker had noticed that family name on a suitcase and the museum was able to piece together details about the family. Vera was born Jan. 11, 1939, into a Jewish Czech family and was sent to Auschwitz in a transport from the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 with her mother and brother. Her father, Max Vohryzek, was sent in a separate transport. They all perished.
Cajzer described the shoes as powerful testimony also because the huge heaps of shoes that remain give some idea of the enormous scale of the crimes, even though what is left is only a fraction of what was.
Before the SS men sent people into the gas chambers, they ordered them to undress and told them they were going into showers to be disinfected.
“We are able to imagine how many people came here, hoping that they would be able to put those shoes back on after a shower. They thought they would take their shoes back and keep using them. But they never returned to their owners,” Cajzer said.
In most cases, the shoes and other possessions were collected and the material used to help the Third Reich in its war effort. The 110,000 shoes in the museum’s collection — while massive — most likely came from only the last transports to the camp, Cajzer said.
The project’s cost of 450,000 euros ($492,000) is funded by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, to which Germany has been a key donor, as well as the International March of the Living, a Holocaust education program.
Both Cajzer and Maciaszczyk said that it is impossible to save the shoes forever, but the goal is to preserve them for more years to come.
“Our conservation today slows down these processes (of decay), but for how long, it’s hard to say,” Maciaszczyk said.
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Man indicted in theft of ‘Wizard of Oz’ ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland
By MARGARET STAFFORD
yesterday A pair of ruby slippers once worn by actress Judy Garland in the "The Wizard of Oz" sit on display at a news conference on Sept. 4, 2018, at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Federal prosecutors say a man has been indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, on charges of stealing a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018.
(AP Photo/Jeff Baenen, File)
A man has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of stealing a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” federal prosecutors in North Dakota say. The shoes were stolen in 2005 and recovered in a 2018 FBI sting operation, but no arrests were made at the time.
Terry Martin was indicted Tuesday with one count of theft of a major artwork, prosecutors announced Wednesday. The indictment did not provide any further information about Martin and online records do not list an attorney for him.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Martin is 76 and lives 12 miles south of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. When reached by the newspaper, he said, “I gotta go on trial. I don’t want to talk to you.”
Janie Heitz, executive director of the museum, told The Associated Press she was surprised the suspect lived nearby but said no one who works at the museum knows him.
Garland wore several pairs of the ruby slippers during production of the 1939 musical, but only four authentic pairs remain. When they were stolen, the slippers were insured for $1 million but the current market value is about $3.5 million, federal prosecutors said in a news release.
The slippers were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown when someone climbed through a window and broke the display case, prosecutors said when they were recovered.
Heitz said she and the museum’s staff were “a little bit speechless” that someone had been charged nearly two decades after the slippers were stolen.
Over the years, several enticing rewards were offered in hopes that the slippers would turn up. Law enforcement offered $250,000 early in the case, and an anonymous donor from Arizona put up $1 million in 2015.
A pair of ruby slippers once worn by actress Judy Garland in the "The Wizard of Oz" are displayed at a news conference on Sept. 4, 2018, at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Federal prosecutors say a man has been indicted by a grand jury Tuesday, May 16, 2023, on charges of stealing a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018.
(Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP, File)
The road to the missing slippers began when a man told the shoes’ insurer in 2017 that he could help get them back. After a nearly year-long investigation, the FBI nabbed the shoes in Minneapolis in July 2018. At the time, the bureau said no one has been arrested or charged in the case.
On Wednesday, a summons was issued for Martin. An initial court appearance was set for June 1, and it will be via video. Terry Van Horn, spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department in North Dakota, said he could not provide any information beyond what was included in the one-paragraph-indictment.
The shoes are famously associated with one of the iconic lines in “The Wizard of Oz,” as Garland’s character Dorothy clicks her heels and repeats the phrase, “There’s no place like home.” They are made from about a dozen different materials, including wood pulp, silk thread, gelatin, plastic and glass. Most of the ruby color comes from sequins but the bows of the shoes contain red glass beads.
The three other pairs Garland wore in the movie were held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian, and a private collector.
When they were stolen, the slippers were on loan from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who received an insurance payment seven years after the theft, according to the museum’s director.
Heitz said the museum staff hopes the slippers will return to Garland’s hometown after the legal case ends.
