All posts tagged: digital culture

Afroman Is Back—and He’s Bitcoin’s Latest Freedom Fighter

Afroman Is Back—and He’s Bitcoin’s Latest Freedom Fighter

Published by skeptic

Joseph Edgar Foreman is still getting high. In a makeshift greenroom made from curtains at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Afroman, as he’s better known, inhales a blunt rolled by his videographer, who’s wearing a tight cocktail dress and clear sky-high heels. The 51-year-old rapper seems unconcerned that several thousand people are waiting for him, in a room far larger than the dive bars he’s been playing over the past two decades. Foreman is wearing the same American Flag ensemble that he donned during his recent appearance in court (and now wears everywhere). In 2022, police officers raided his home in Winchester, Ohio, on suspicion of drugs and kidnapping. They found nothing except a jar filled with “green leafy vegetation,” THC wax, pipes, and more than $5,000 in cash. Following the raid, Foreman released a series of songs mocking the cops, rapping about having sex with their wives and their receding hairlines, among other humiliations. Seven of the officers sued him for $4 million for defamation and invasion of privacy. Foreman won, both the …

A Viral YouTube Show About an Unhinged AI Is Hitting Theaters. It’s a Big Test for Hollywood

A Viral YouTube Show About an Unhinged AI Is Hitting Theaters. It’s a Big Test for Hollywood

Published by skeptic

The fandom of The Amazing Digital Circus has had a rough few weeks on the internet. Ever since Glitch Productions, the independent animation studio behind the web series, announced in early April that the finale would be released in theaters rather than on YouTube, fans have been simultaneously speculating about how the show might end and avoiding anyone claiming to have details about the final episode, whether they’re real or not. “We’re looking for new mods to help us with spoilers,” reads the pinned post at the top of r/tadc, a popular Amazing Digital Circus subreddit. “Subreddit update: Leaks and controversies,” reads another. Below, a sea of memes, fan art, and restless anticipation. The Amazing Digital Circus has been building toward this since Glitch posted the first episode in late 2023. An animated series about six people trapped in a virtual world overseen by an AI ringmaster with a god complex, its characters—all cartoonish avatars who can’t remember their real-world names—struggle to form bonds in their absurd circumstances. Under its wry humor is a story …

They Made D4vd a Star. Now They Want Him Convicted of Murder

They Made D4vd a Star. Now They Want Him Convicted of Murder

Published by skeptic

“He was grinding. He was posting every day, playing every day, he was trying his hardest to get somewhere,” says a 21-year-old New York–based gamer who goes by the username Sacred WTF. “Bro, I would just wake up sometimes and it would just be multiple posts from him. He was just trying to pop off, just get one good video.” By 2021, D4vd was 16 and already building a brand as a socially awkward outcast who spent nearly all of his time online. (It helped that he was homeschooled.) Sometimes, it paid off: When he started catering to the YouTube algorithm by adding popular songs to his Fortnite videos, they racked up hundreds of thousands of views and generated “a lot of money” in ad revenue, he’d later tell musician Benny Blanco in an interview. But those massive views also brought copyright strikes—warnings from YouTube, prompted by record labels, to remove the songs or risk getting booted from the platform. That’s when, according to the now mythic origin story that D4vd has relayed in the …

Snake Bros Keep Getting Bitten by Their Lethal Pets. Only Zoos Can Save Them

Snake Bros Keep Getting Bitten by Their Lethal Pets. Only Zoos Can Save Them

Published by skeptic

Early editions of the index were a tabbed notebook. “I still have some of the original versions of it,” Boyer says. “You would go through, laboriously, by hand, turning the pages, and it would say ‘see page 27,’ like one of those find-your-own-ending books, and then you would put in a phone call, because the last section in the Antivenom Index was the home phone numbers of zookeepers.” In 2006, Boyer and Steven Seifert, then a medical toxicologist at the University of Nebraska, partnered to bring the index online, where it remains today. Now, nearly 90 zoological organizations list their wares. When Chris Gifford was bitten by his deadly green mamba, he was lucky to receive antivenom from South Carolina’s Riverbanks Zoo. Courtesy of Chris Gifford Gifford, the North Carolina man, had been comparatively lucky, as only one of his mamba’s fangs had pierced his skin. By the time he reached a nearby hospital, Gifford’s hand was swelling and creeping paralysis was causing his eyelids to droop. The Antivenom Index was activated, and South Carolina’s …

To adopt AI or resist it? That’s not the question.

To adopt AI or resist it? That’s not the question.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Responses to the rise of artificial intelligence have tended to fall into predictable patterns: enthusiastic adoption, calls for cautious regulation or outright rejection. These approaches assume, however, that AI is primarily a technical or managerial problem. In this new age, the most pressing question is not whether we will use these technologies, but whether we will have the courage to shape them around practices of judgment, interpretation and moral imagination. The deeper question, in other words, is not whether AI works into our workdays or professional codes, but what it does to those who live alongside it. How does constant interaction with intelligent systems shape judgment, attention, responsibility and the stories people tell about who they are becoming? RELATED: Who wrote this prayer? Discernment, trust and the spirit in the age of AI These are questions that matter deeply to those of us who work in religious higher education. Religious leaders and theologians have recognized this AI moment as one shaped by “digital empire.”  AI systems are built by powerful actors, trained on …

Why Olympic Choreographer Benoît Richaud Went Viral Just for Changing Jackets

Why Olympic Choreographer Benoît Richaud Went Viral Just for Changing Jackets

Published by skeptic

Benoît Richaud might be one of the most visible people at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. Not because he’s a star athlete, but because he is coaching 16 figure skaters from 13 different countries. Each time one of them is on the ice, he stands on the rink’s edge, changing into the jacket of their team. Richaud has become somewhat famous for this move. Olympics viewers began catching on to the French coach’s antics just a few days into the Games when they noticed the same slender bald man sitting next to so many different skaters. He always had on the jacket of the team he was sitting with in the “kiss and cry,” but his stoic, thoughtful expression remained the same. Soon his omnipresence went viral. But, as Richaud tells WIRED Italia, he could have been even more of a presence around the ice. He’s currently coaching 16 Olympians, but that’s just the number of them that qualified. “I actually coach a lot more of them,” he says. Having such a large roster of …

Why ashes? The gift of finding our finitude in a digital world

Why ashes? The gift of finding our finitude in a digital world

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — I did not grow up with Ash Wednesday. My childhood was mostly spent in nondenominational churches that were liturgically spare and spiritually intense. Sundays promised altar calls and extended prayer, but no liturgical calendar to speak of — no seasons of penitence, no purple vestments and certainly no ritual smudging of foreheads. If someone had mentioned Ash Wednesday to me as a teenager, I would have had only the vaguest idea of what it meant. It was only after a painful church split in my early adulthood that I began wandering into traditions unfamiliar to me. One February evening I found myself at a small Lutheran church and, for the first time, received the imposition of ashes. It was an evening service, and the early darkness felt merciful as it meant I did not yet have to decide to carry the swipe of black ashes on my forehead into the daylight. But I could sense, if not find the words to explain, that something important was taking place. A few years later, when …

The Curling Controversy at the Winter Olympics Isn’t What You Think

The Curling Controversy at the Winter Olympics Isn’t What You Think

Published by skeptic

The curling ice at the Winter Olympics is often full of shouting—but not like this. Last Friday, in a match that Canada won 8-6, a verbal altercation broke out between the third throwers from each team. Near the end of the match, after a debate over minor rules reached its crescendo, Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson passive-aggressively accused Canadian vice-skip Marc Kennedy of cheating. Kennedy promptly declared that he “didn’t give a shit,” twice telling Eriksson to “fuck off.” Within hours, the dustup had been covered by nearly every major news outlet and had blown up on social media, inspiring scores of people to suddenly become experts on a 500-year-old Scottish sport. By the end of the weekend, they all had a fully-formed opinion on whether Kennedy had touched the curling stone after releasing it, in violation of the rules. (If they didn’t have an opinion, they definitely had a meme.) Nearly all of them were wrong. I am a four-year club curler in a Thursday-night beer league and multiple-time D-bracket champion of local bonspiels. In layman’s …

‘Heated Rivalry’ Is Bringing New Fans to Hockey. Does the Sport Deserve Them?

‘Heated Rivalry’ Is Bringing New Fans to Hockey. Does the Sport Deserve Them?

Published by skeptic

The NHL also pointed WIRED to its partnerships with Pride organizations around the US, Canada, and Australia, as well as pro-inclusivity organization You Can Play, which it’s been working with since 2013. The league said it will be hosting its third annual Pride Cup in 2026. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said he “binged” Heated Rivalry in one night and told reporters that all NHL teams do a Pride night. However, as the New York Times reported, that is no longer the case, with a couple of teams opting for more general inclusivity events. Teresa Fowler, an associate professor at Concordia University of Edmonton and Tim Skuce, an associate professor at Brandon University, have both been researching hockey culture in Canada for years. Fowler is candid when she speaks about the league’s embrace of Heated Rivalry, which she feels is performative. “Where’s your gay friend on your team? You know what I mean?” she says. “It just seems so hypocritical when people are saying, ‘Yeah, we would welcome them,’ and yet, the person who they …

Bidets Are Confusing Visitors at the 2026 Winter Olympics

Bidets Are Confusing Visitors at the 2026 Winter Olympics

Published by skeptic

Bidets are now, once again, having a moment. As international athletes and journalists descend on northern Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, certain participants have wondered about the additional piece of equipment in their bathrooms. Europeans, quite familiar with the oval basins, have found themselves similarly perplexed by their confusion. Cultural exchange often has its hiccups. Last week, US broadcaster Alicia Lewis posted a TikTok asking if the Italian bidet in her room was, in fact, a bidet. An Associated Press report noted that “the fixture is de rigueur in Italian residences but often perplexes visitors—including some athletes whose room videos have done double-takes.” Most of the confusion on social media has dissipated, but interest in bidets has been on the rise. When New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, moved into Gracie Mansion last month, he spoke of having an “aspirational hope” of installing bidets there. WIRED has also been recommending them for some time. Still, they remain a mystery to many. So it seems only right to offer a bit of an explanation …