James Dobson, author and child psychologist who told millions of evangelicals how to raise children and order their families, died on August 21 at the age of 89. Dobson believed in strict-but-loving discipline and obedience, which he held out as the antidote to America’s cultural permissiveness and slide toward moral chaos and social disorder. (Silliman, Christianity Today)
Read More“We’re two years away from something we could lose control over,” Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and the president of the Future of Life Institute, told me, and AI companies “still have no plan” to stop it from happening. His institute recently gave every frontier AI lab a “D” or “F” grade for their preparations for preventing the most existential threats posed by AI. (Wong, The Atlantic)
Read MoreThe leader of a Church of England ‘sex cult’ has been convicted three decades after its collapse. Why did the Church fail to learn lessons from the scandal? (O’Neill & Bradley, The Times UK)
Read MoreForget passive viewing. Audiences today want to step inside the story. Find out what goes into creating an immersive experience, and why they’re having a moment for audiences. (Green, USA Today)
Read MorePublishers are frantically searching for the next breakout romantasy series. Last year, romantasy sales topped more than 32 million copies in print alone, a 47 percent jump over the previous year, according to Circana Bookscan. Five of the 10 best-selling adult fiction titles this year are romantasies. (Alter, The New York Times)
Read MoreOver the past decade, organized crime gangs working out of Southeast Asia have scammed people out of billions of dollars. Operating giant scam compounds—where experts estimate around 200,000 victims of human trafficking have been forced to run scams 24 hours a day—the criminal enterprises have used an array of romance, cryptocurrency investment, and impersonation fraud to target thousands of people around the world. Now new research reveals that the already chilling scam compounds may have an even darker underbelly. (Burgess & Newman, Wired)
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