{"id":280967,"date":"2024-01-30T08:15:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T08:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=280967"},"modified":"2024-02-01T08:00:05","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T08:00:05","slug":"this-week-in-the-new-normal-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=280967","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the New Normal #82"},"content":{"rendered":"

Off-Guardian \u2013 Jan 29, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian<\/em>, This Week in the New Normal<\/a><\/em> is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.<\/p>\n

1. Taylor Swift everywhere and always on message<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Have you noticed how Taylor Swift has been EVERYWHERE for a while now?<\/p>\n

Well, this week she totally accidentally wandered into the internet censorship debate, when AI-rendered pornographic images of her totally accidentally \u201cwent viral\u201d online.<\/p>\n

Within hours fans were forcing the \u201cprotect Taylor Swift\u201d hashtag to trend<\/a>, and then Twitter banned all searches for her on their platform.<\/p>\n

Already the incident is prompting headlines like this<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

The Taylor Swift deepfakes show why we urgently need AI regulation<\/p>\n

Or this\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Taylor Swift deepfakes spark calls in Congress for new legislation<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to explain the rhetorical mechanics of this entirely contrived situation. It\u2019s too obvious.<\/p>\n

2. Made-up clock tells imaginary time<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Big news! The \u201cexperts\u201d in charge of the Doomsday Clock \u2013 the completely imaginary clock which predicts total global collapse of civilisation \u2013 have announced it\u2019s at 90 seconds to midnight<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the experts predicting the likelihood of a global catastrophe have said. It comes after a year that saw conflict in Ukraine rage on and war in the Middle East flare up. Scientists say there is a \u201ccontinuing unprecedented level of risk\u201d from threats including war, the climate crisis and the \u201cdramatic advance\u201d of AI.<\/p>\n

Yes, apparently the invisible clock \u201cremains\u201d at 11:58:30, having been originally set at that time by the \u201cexperts\u201d in 2023.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a slow news day when \u201cimaginary clock hasn\u2019t changed since last year\u201d makes the headlines.<\/p>\n

To be clear: The doomsday clock\u2019s only use is as an indication of just how scared they want people to be.<\/p>\n

However, this along with the news coming out of Iran and the bizarre conscription rumours circulating in a few countries might signal a major new narrative. More on this during the week.<\/p>\n

3. Cashless and Staffless<\/strong><\/h2>\n

UK supermarket chain is leading the charge against using money and having jobs this week, announcing that 82 of their 300 petrol station locations will be fully cashless by the end of the year. Over 150 of their petrol stations are already staffless.<\/p>\n

According to an article in the Standard<\/a>, ASDA is also trialling four-day work weeks.<\/p>\n

The future of employment, everybody.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all bad\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The French farmers\u2019 protest is growing, seemingly set on out-doing their German counterparts they have been dumping manure outside banks<\/a> and MacDonalds<\/a>, and are blocking the motorways outside Paris with over 800 tractors<\/a>. Some are calling it a \u201csiege\u201d.<\/p>\n

There also appears to be some push-back against lab-grown meat from France, Italy, Austria and 9 other EU countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And, if you missed our article earlier this week, CJ Hopkins was acquitted in his absurd show trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn\u2019t even mention \u201cthe hottest January temperature on record\u201d<\/a> or the UK government\u2019s latest pointless ban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us<\/a> or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Support Off Guardian:<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A selection of news that charts our progress toward a 21st century dictatorship that makes Stalin\/Hitler\/Mao seem quaintly old-fashioned <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":280317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280968,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280967\/revisions\/280968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/280317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}