{"id":323526,"date":"2026-02-23T07:40:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T07:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=323526"},"modified":"2026-02-25T08:29:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T08:29:06","slug":"this-week-in-the-new-normal-113","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=323526","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the New Normal #113"},"content":{"rendered":"

Off-Guardian \u2013 Feb 22, 2026<\/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. AI will save lives if we let it<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cChatGTP could have prevented a mass shooting event, if only we listened to automatic flags!\u201d<\/em> That\u2019s the story. Months before the shooting allegedly carried out by trans-woman Jesse Van Rootselaar, interactions with ChatGPT were flagged up by an automatic warning system but the silly humans didn\u2019t tell anyone.<\/p>\n

From the Wall Street Journal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Months before Jesse Van Rootselaar became the suspect in the mass shooting that devastated a rural town in British Columbia, Canada, OpenAI considered alerting law enforcement about her interactions with its ChatGPT chatbot, the company said.<\/p>\n

While using ChatGPT last June, Van Rootselaar described scenarios involving gun violence over the course of several days, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

Her posts, flagged by an automated review system, alarmed employees at OpenAI. Internally, about a dozen staffers debated whether to take action on Van Rootselaar\u2019s posts. Some employees interpreted Van Rootselaar\u2019s writings as an indication of potential real-world violence, and urged leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement about her behavior, the people familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n

See, if only they hadn\u2019t been so concerned about privacy and human rights and pre-crime, the police could have done something. We should just let AI automatically record all our interactions and report those it deems necessary directly to the government<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a genius to read this subliminal narrative here.<\/p>\n

2. Facial Recognition Just Keeps on Going<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Fresh off facial recognition technology being deployed across The Underground by London\u2019s Transport Police, Merseyside Police are announcing <\/a>they will be deploying live facial recognition tech at the Everton-Manchester United game as part of a\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cwider policing operation designed to keep fans and the public safe\u201d<\/p>\n

As the match plays out, the LFR will be scanning the crowd and\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026comparing faces captured on a live camera feed against a secure, predetermined watchlist made up of individuals wanted for serious offences, subject to court orders, or who pose a risk to the public or to themselves.<\/p>\n

Which is just lovely, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

3. Migrant soldiers for the EU army?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Foreign Policy <\/a>has got a great idea:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

EU nations should offer enlisting in the military as a fast-track path to citizenship for immigrants.<\/p>\n

Because what harm can come from a whole bunch of soldiers who are desperate not to be deported, so will follow any orders at all provided they get to stay in the country?<\/p>\n

Or, indeed, what could go wrong with non-citizen soldiers asked to enforce martial law on a native population with whom they share no cultural or linguistic ties?<\/p>\n

BONUS: Hilarious \u201cexperiment\u201d of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The expert scientists over at The Guardian Labs<\/a> want to see what it will be like living in the future when Climate Change \u2013 sorry, \u201cglobal heating\u201d \u2013 has made it all hot and stuff. To that end, they\u2019ve put some guy in a really hot room and had him walk on a treadmill for a long time.<\/p>\n

Turns out he gets really hot.<\/p>\n

Earth-shattering stuff.<\/p>\n

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

Amazon-owned US supermarket Whole Foods is scrapping their \u201cpay with palm\u201d system after a lot of backlash. The scheme enabled Amazon account holders to add their biometrics (finger\/palm prints and facial scans) that would then allow them to instantly pay at any Amazon-affiliated business.<\/p>\n

An Amazon spokesman told the Daily Mail<\/a> that \u201ca lack of widespread adoption\u201d had caused the program to be nixed.<\/p>\n

Just a reminder that non-compliance works.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn\u2019t even mention Scotland\u2019s contribution to the \u201call men are evil\u201d conversation<\/a> or \u201cdigital blackface\u201d<\/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

Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n

Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the bright ideas this week: how EU nations should offer service in the EU Army as a fast-track path to citizenship for immigrants. What could possibly go wrong?<\/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":[61,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323526","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=323526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323528,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323526\/revisions\/323528"}],"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=323526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}