Ed Sheeran has thoughts 🤔
Mōrena lil shits!!
It’s Normy’s bday today! Since you all enjoy his lil cameos in the newsy I thought I’d bring back this iconic photo of him from when he was supposed to be taking a serious pic for the rugby referees association (yes, of course a kiwi dad is a rugby referee.)
Normy’s birthday wish is also that his daughter stops asking him for money, so…
🥺 If you want to pay for the media you love and make sure I can continue to do this for you, PLEASE, become a SYSCA supporter here - I need you! 🥺
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In today’s edish:
AI Deepfakes have come for Linkedin - and they’d like to connect
Bel chimes in: everything is hetrifying
Ed Sheeran hits out at culture of 'baseless' copyright claims after court victory
Putin’s daughters have been hit with sanctions
5 Fetuses Found Inside Anti-Abortion Activist’s Home
You had a lot of thoughts about ‘a lot’
AI Deepfakes have come for LinkedIn - and they’d like to connect
The only thing worse than talking to a real person via LinkedIn is… talking to a fake one, which is exactly what’s happening on the platfrom right now.
Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory and her colleague Josh Goldstein conducted an investigation that turned up “over 1,000 LinkedIn accounts using images that they say appear to have been created by a computer.”
“Though much of the public conversation around deep fakes has warned of the technology’s dangerous potential for political misinformation, DiResta said the images, in this case, seem overwhelmingly designed to function more like sales and scam lackeys.
Companies reportedly use the fake images to game LinkedIn’s system, creating alternate accounts to send out sales pitches to avoid running up against LinkedIn’s limits on messages.”
If you’re a little lost, deepfakes are basically extremely realistic fake images/videos (incredibly good video on them here, if I do say so myself.) Super well-made ones can make it look like politicians are saying something they never would, or be used to superimpose celebrities' faces into porn, but there are a bunch of apps out there that make it easy enough for you or me to whip up a quick deepy on the fly - which is why they’re so freaky.
On Linkedin tho, their use is far less sinister. There, deepfakes seem to be the new ‘bots,’ they’re just a way to send mass messages and get around LinkedIn’s limits. It doesn’t stop the ickiness of getting a cold call from a fake person, but if it’s gotta be happening somewhere… it can stay on LinkedIn.
Bel Chimes In: That 'yuck feeling' you get when you see cringe couples doing cringe shit? Oh, it's hetrifying
This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chard-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. You should check out more of her beautiful words here.
Bespoke branded 'his and hers' toothbrushes. Describing your partner as your 'ball and chain'. Likening men to being children raised by their wives and needing a man cave to hide in. Super cringe gender reveals that cost definitely over a grand to construct. And just general bullshit that makes het couples look like weird social media show puppets — this term is all about that yuck, outdated display of heteronormative behaviour in relationships.
Coined by UK artist and author Florence Given, to be hetrified is to feel uncomfortable (and at times cringe) when you see heteronormative behaviour that normalises gender roles, sexism, homophobia, unhealthy relationships or abuse.
Use where necessary. For more content, go here.
Ed Sheeran hits out at the culture of 'baseless' copyright claims after court victory
Has Ed Sheeran been listening to Culture Vulture?? Actually, I hope not, considering we did a whole episode on the downfall of his music… BUT, he’s just come out echoing something that Liv and I have talked about in regards to both Olivia Rodrigo, and Dua Lipa - that not every pop star is stealing your music /melody/ idea.
After a judge ruled that no, Ed Sheeran had not copied ‘Shape of You’ (or, to be more specific just the ascending one bar ‘Oh I’ line) from another artist, Ed used the moment to warn that pop stars should not be allowed to be "easy targets" for copyright claims.
He took to Instagram (in video form!) to say that these days, copyright claims are made against successful artists with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than going to court, even if there’s no base for the claim. And naturally, this is super damaging for the songwriting industry. He also echoed what Liv and I have been saying: that there are only so many notes and a handful of chords that are used in pop music and that "coincidences are bound to happen" if 60,000 songs are being released on Spotify per day. That’s 22 million songs a year using only 12 notes!!! He finishes his lil spiel by saying:
“Hopefully we can all get back to writing songs, rather than having to prove that we can write them.”
During the lawsuit, Ed’s main argument was that “the segment in question was “a basic minor pentatonic pattern”, which is “entirely commonplace” and he even got up to the stand and hummed musical scales from Blackstreet’s No Diggity and Nina Simone’s classic Feeling Good to demonstrate how common the melody of Shape of You was.
The new point (for me) that was made in this case, was about how the abundance of music that is now available on streaming services makes it far more likely that there will be songs that sound similar, and therefore it’s way more difficult to judge whether songs sound the same due to coincidence, inspiration, or theft.
Like everything else, it feels like we need to be judging these claims based on the times we’re living in, where 60k songs being uploaded to Spotify each day is a reality, and therefore another reality is that some of them are going to sound the same. It’s so necessary to have checks and balances to look after small songwriters and creators, but the more of these lawsuits we see, the less inclined people are going to be to create new art and write new songs, which is a net negative for the world!!
No, Olivia Rodrigo Isn't Stealing Your Music - Culture Vulture — open.spotify.com
In today’s episode of Culture Vulture Luce & Liv break down:•Why Olivia Rodrigo shouldn’t have had to add Hayley Williams and Josh Farro to the writing credits for Good 4 U•the difference between sampling and interpolating•and we even get Gemma Styles’ take on the whole thing!
Listen to Harry ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖
Please become a SYSCA SUPPORTER so I can keep doing this for you 🥺 — shityoushouldcareabout.memberful.com
5 Fetuses Found Inside Anti-Abortion Activist’s Home
I saw this right before I was going to publish the newsy and had to include it. Here’s an excerpt from an article about it in The Cut:
“Police in Washington, D.C., recovered five fetuses from an anti-abortion activist’s home last week after receiving a tip about potentially biohazardous material inside. According to a Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson, the medical examiner’s office collected the fetuses around 12:30 p.m. March 30 and an investigation is under way.”
Putin's daughters have been hit with sanctions
The US are chucking some further sanctions on Putin's inner circle - including his daughters. These new sanctions come after the latest allegations of Russia committing war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, by targetting and killing hundreds of civilians (yes, there are rules that you have to abide by, even in war - but I’ll give a bigger explanation of all of that in tomorrows newsy.)
When asked why the US was targeting Putin's daughters, a senior Biden administration official said the US thought they could be in control of some of their father's assets.
"We have reason to believe that Putin, and many of his cronies, and the oligarchs, hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members that place their assets and their wealth in the US financial system, and also many other parts of the world," the official said.
"We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members, and that's why we're targeting them."
As I said, more on all of this tomorrow!
After a lot of talk about the phrase ‘a lot,’ you all had a lot of thoughts
But this was the best one. This piece by Hyperbole and a Half (which reminds me so much of ‘Wait But Why’) gives us a way to deal with the anger that burns inside when someone says ‘alot’ instead of ‘a lot’ - by naming a mythical creature ‘Alot.’ God, I love the internet sometimes. (PS, I’ve just experienced semantic satiation, which is where you use a word or phrase so much that it loses all meaning.)
Do you get into your car head first, butt first, or foot first?
I saw this on TikTok, where someone made a sweeping statement that girls get into a car headfirst (their head ducks under the door and then they sit down) whereas dudes turn their body, plonk their butt down, and then put their feet in. Personally, I’m always chucking my bag onto the passenger seat, so I think I might be hands first, but let’s see all of your car entering habits:
8% head first
17% butt first
74% foot first
1% other
There were also some amazing comments on this post, like;
“Dukes of Hazard style, always”
“Head first?? Like crawling???”
The Slap isn't even the worst thing that's happened at the Oscars (Culture Vulture)
Russia's 'eased' attacks, and Will Smith's slaps (The Shit Show)
Meet the goonettes, women with staggering online porn habits (Input)
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