The Prince and The Paper 🗞
➕ A six year old shot his school teacher, & WTF is this about Logan Paul's pig? 🐷
Hi my angels!!! Newsy coming at you a lil later this morning because I’ve been in zoom meetings since 7am with Rubes, Liv, and a couple of other super spesh people (annoying of me to say, I know.) We’ve really come into this year all-guns-blazing and honestly??? I know we’re only three days into the working year, but it’s kinda giving me life. I know what you’re thinking: Luce, are you happy? Or are you just distracted? And the answer (which we came to last time I posed this question) is BOTH!!! So let me live!!
I’m wishing you all a happy or distracted day, and can’t wait to see you in my inbox/ the comment section, as per usual xxxx
New York City schools ban ChatGPT
A six-year-old shot his teacher with his mother’s gun
New episode of Culture Vulture!
What Exactly Happened to Logan Paul’s Pet Pig?
💌 No News is Good News 💌
New York City schools ban ChatGPT
You all know what ChatGPT is by now because you’ve all listened to Squish & I chat about it on The Shit Show of course (and in case you haven’t):
And if you don’t have time to listen to it right now, you can also read our explainer here (which was written by ChatGPT too.) But the long and short of it is that it’s an incredibly buzzy AI chatbot that is kinda like Google but it can also write essays, poetry, code, and answer all your questions. Will it get them right all the time? Not yet. Is it a pretty amazing breakthrough? Yep. Will it pose some sort of threat to education/ schooling as we know it? New York City seems to think so.
Schools in NYC have just banned ChatGPT “amid fears that students could use it to cheat.”
As per The Guardian:
“According to the city’s education department, the tool will be forbidden across all devices and networks in New York’s public schools. Jenna Lyle, a department spokesperson, said the decision stems from “concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of contents”.”
Like… I get this. ChatGPT has the potential to be a great research tool, and we can’t just keep getting rid of tech that scares us, but it also doesn’t actually benefit kids to be getting it to do the work for them (hot take, I know.) If you get ChatGPT to write you an essay or a book report, it might hit all the right points (and who knows - you might learn something by reading through it before you send it to your teacher) but it doesn’t teach you critical thinking/ writing skills which are… kinda imp.
There’s nothing to say that kids can’t go home and use it though, so it’ll be interesting to see how this is actually enforced. OpenAI (who created ChatGPT) are pretty keen for teachers to be on board with this though, telling The Washington Post:
“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system. “We look forward to working with educators on useful solutions, and other ways to help teachers and students benefit from artificial intelligence,” it added.
And, if OpenAI fails to develop its own plagiarism-detecting tools (which I doubt they will), 22-year-old Edward Tian has already built an app to detect it. What a legend!
A six-year-old shot his teacher with his mother’s gun
Content warning: shooting
On Friday last week, a six-year-old used his mother’s gun (legally purchased) to intentionally shoot his teacher at school - no prizes for guessing what country this happened in! (It was the U.S.) According to NBC:
"The 6-year-old child displayed a firearm, pointed it at her and fired one round," Drew said. "There was no physical struggle or fight. She was providing instruction to her class."
The bullet went through the teacher's hand and into her upper chest, "but she was still able to get all of her students out of that classroom," he said.
"She made ... sure that every one of those students was safe."
His 25-year-old teacher Abigail 'Abby' Zwerner is in stable condition but remains in hospital for now.
New Episode of Culture Vulture: What Will Prince Harry’s Book Actually Tell Us?
For those of you who’re (side note: I don’t think I’ve ever used that contraction before but it wouldn’t be good if I forgot the apostrophe would it?) new here, we have two weekly podcasts! One is The Shit Show where we bring you a non-depresso wrap up of the news of the week, and the other is Culture Vulture, where we look at the big pop culture stories of the week, what they mean, and why they matter (outside of just our entertainment.) This week we’re kicking it off with a banger of an ep.
First, Liv and I chat about our holidays (and whether we should start a commune), next - a huge discush on Cancel Culture being Out with a capital O, and then, what you’ve all been waiting for - a deep dive into all those Prince Harry headlines, how his book excerpts were leaked, what we predict for the book, and of course - whether we think any of this actually matters. You can listen to Culture Vulture wherever you get your pods!!
Logan Paul abandoned his Pet Pig Pearl 🐷
A bit of a glum story for you today - but it appears Logan Paul has ditched his pig. WTF do I mean?? Well, the Youtuber/ podcaster / potentially reformed douche (altho maybe not so reformed after this) got a pet pig called ‘Pearl’ back in 2019, expecting her to be “a mini pig” and… she wasn’t.
Fast forward to 2023 and an animal sanctuary called ‘ The Gentle Barn’ in California posted a video of a pig named Peal, and saying:
“She’ll NEVER be alone again ❤️ Pearl was found abandoned in a field next to another pig who had died. She came to us with tattered ears and a potentially life-threatening infection in her uterus that has since been healed. She’s clearly been through so much trauma that we can’t begin to imagine, but she’s now safe with us at The Gentle Barn.
From what we’ve been told, it’s believed she was purchased originally from a breeder by an influencer. People often buy “mini pigs” or “teacup pigs” for clout online, believing they will stay small. When they inevitably grow very large and have many unexpected needs, they’re sadly discarded. While we don’t know everything she’s been through in her past, we know her life is now filled with friends, nutritious foods, the highest quality care, and so much love.”
People quickly recognised her from Logan’s socials, and… weren’t happy. When Logan found out, he actually sent an email to The Gentle Barn (which TMZ published) and said that he treated her like a ‘princess,’ that he would ‘even sleep with her sometimes’ and that he rehomed her to a horse ranch in Santa Clarita.'
He has also said her wants to help pay for her care, and contribute to the organisation (and so he should tbh.)
💌 No News is Good News 💌
And it’s also the name of Bel’s new Saturday newsletter!!! The vibe? It’s a Saturday, it’s your weekend - you’ve been reading the daily newsy all week and you need a BREAK! Let us give it to you.
“From me, you can expect a cute smorgasbord of things that AREN'T news as you wake up on the weekend. Poems. Cute recs. Musings on pleasures, dangers, softcore philosophy and, anything else I'm thinking that will be extremely cute/useful/insightful/hopefully funny for you.” - Bel
From BSL to #DeafTok, how TikToker Louise May is normalising being a child of deaf adults (Screenshot)
Instagram is kicking the shopping tab out of the home feed (The Verge)
Earth’s ozone layer is on the mend (The Verge)
One of the weirdest myths that exists is that there are miniature pigs.
SYSCA Merch Idea
✨Writing skills are... kinda imp✨