All posts tagged: Identity

How your brain builds and edits your identity

How your brain builds and edits your identity

Knowing that our perception is an illusion, our sense of self is illusion. All of it is illusion in the sense that it’s a construct of our brain, our brain is creating this for us. And given that, that’s an opportunity because we can have some control over how our brain perceives the world, and that’s where the power lies. Our perceptions are basically formed from a combination of what we expect, so that’s coming internally from our past experiences. And then what’s coming into our brain externally. And when those two things meet, it creates this perception, which is what we actually experience. Your inner voice is your ability to silently use language to reflect on your life. Provides us with a survival advantage. It’s an incredible problem-solving device. I realized that we have this ability to change our trajectory and change our thoughts. And we can expand the box that we’re in. We can expand our perception of who we are in the world. Our mind are shaped by our prior experience. So …

EastEnders reveals major clue to Vicki blackmailer identity in early iPlayer release

EastEnders reveals major clue to Vicki blackmailer identity in early iPlayer release

EastEnders spoilers follow for Wednesday’s episode (15 April), which is available to watch now on streaming service BBC iPlayer and hasn’t yet aired on TV. EastEnders has revealed a huge clue about the identity of the Walford resident who is blackmailing Vicki Fowler and Zack Hudson – as their threats escalate further. Secret lovers Vicki and Zack kissed again at her hen do this week, but Vicki later decided that her future was with fiancé Ross Marshall. However, she then received an ominous text, with an anonymous source sending a photo of her and Zack kissing and demanding payment to keep them quiet. BBC Related: Best streaming services As Vicki considered who could be blackmailing her, in today’s episode Ross vowed to make their wedding special by hiring a fancy car for their big day – which will take place on Vicki’s birthday, at the end of May. Vicki met up with Zack in The Vic kitchen to discuss this problem, and Zack suggested just telling Ross about their affair to avoid getting involved in …

Biometrics in zero trust architecture: Rebuilding security around identity

Biometrics in zero trust architecture: Rebuilding security around identity

As cyber-attacks become more and more sophisticated, cybersecurity must adopt a zero trust policy- verify, validify and authenticate at every step. Biometrics can help reduce friction in this process. For years, cybersecurity rested on a flawed premise: once inside a network, a user could be trusted. That assumption has collapsed under the weight of cloud computing, remote work, and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Today, credentials are routinely stolen, sessions hijacked, and systems breached not by breaking in—but by logging in. Zero trust architecture is the industry’s response. Its logic is simple but uncompromising: trust nothing, verify everything. Every request must be authenticated, authorised, and continuously validated. At the centre of this model is identity. Biometrics are now moving into that core role—not as a convenience feature, but as a high-assurance signal in how modern systems establish trust. Identity becomes the new perimeter In a zero trust environment, the traditional network boundary disappears. What matters instead is whether a system can reliably confirm who is making a request, from what device, and under what conditions. Historically, identity …

There is no you in your brain — your identity is a “society of the mind”

There is no you in your brain — your identity is a “society of the mind”

Adapted from Our Brain, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain by Masud Husain. Published by Canongate Books. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved. What makes us who we are? Most of us might say that it is our background that creates our identities: our families, where we’ve lived, how we were brought up and educated, the people who have influenced us, the jobs we’ve held. But there is something far more fundamental that makes us who we are, and which transcends social and cultural experiences. This is our brain. Our brains create us. No matter where you are from, where you live or have lived, the language you speak, the color of your skin, it is our brains that give us our identities. In the past, some disagreed, arguing instead as Descartes did that our personal identity — our “self” — is separate from the brain. Most modern views, however, consider the brain to be the basis for all the experiences we have of our selves. Using new scanning techniques, …

Mega Bestselling Thriller Writer Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

Mega Bestselling Thriller Writer Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest headlines from last week. The Millions Has Released Their Spring 2026 Book Preview The Millions released their Great Spring 2026 Book review—one of their biannual Great Book Previews—just this past Friday. Right off the bat, it gets into some of our most anticipated. There’s One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda, London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez, and My Dear You by Rachel Khong, to name a few. A List of Black Book Festivals Throughout the Country Sisters from AARP has published a list of Black Book Festivals happening throughout the country this year, and all I have to say is nobody told me nothing! I’m kidding, but only a little. It’s nice to be able to look at everything in one place. The dates start as …

THE HOUSEMAID Author Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

THE HOUSEMAID Author Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Nigerian Erotica Writers Bypass Morality Police With Women’s-Only WhatsApp Groups Listen, if I know anything about humanity, it’s that where there’s a (horny) will, there’s a way. The latest example of such is shared through one New York Times writer’s experience with being let into a WhatsApp group, called Oum Hairan World, by an erotica author. Erotica written by Muslim women in Northern Nigeria was previously burned, but has found new life on the app, where authors get readers hooked on titles like Nymphomaniac King—which apparently has body parts body parting like they never have before—before charging them for more chapters. There are also queer stories and stories that explore topics like abuse being explored and discussed by women on the app, all of which risk the authors being turned into the morality police. All of this rebellious …

‘We Were Not Ready for This’: Lebanon’s Emergency System Is Hanging by a Thread

‘We Were Not Ready for This’: Lebanon’s Emergency System Is Hanging by a Thread

The last time a government official from Lebanon sat down to think carefully about national digital infrastructure, nobody expected another war with Israel. That’s how it has always gone. “We were not ready for this,” says Kamal Shehadi, the Lebanese minister of technology and AI, and minister of the displaced. “I have to admit that we didn’t expect something of this magnitude to happen.” On March 2, 2026, Israeli evacuation warnings began appearing on phones across southern Lebanon. Days later, similar alerts reached residents of Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs, urging them to leave as strikes were imminent. Within minutes, families were moving. Within days, nearly 1.3 million people—nearly 1 in 5 residents of the country—were forcibly displaced. Schools that have been turned into shelters were filled past capacity. People slept in cars along the coast road north of Beirut. And somewhere in a government office, a small team started updating a database. A woman sits by a tent as displaced families struggle for survival in the streets of Beirut, Lebanon.Murat Sengul; Getty Images That …

‘Linen is meaningful in Belfast’: how an old industry is weaving the city a new identity | Fashion

‘Linen is meaningful in Belfast’: how an old industry is weaving the city a new identity | Fashion

On a cobbled street in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, next door to a hipster coffee shop and opposite an ice-cream parlour that has a near-constant queue since going viral on TikTok, the elegant Kindred of Ireland boutique is doing a surprisingly brisk trade in artfully oversized butter yellow linen blouses and exquisite Donegal mulberry tweed jackets finished with a length of rose pink linen tied in a bow at the nape of the neck. Half a century after the Troubles, Belfast is finding a new identity through an industry that once defined it. Linen – the fibre that built its wealth and earned it the name Linenopolis – is being woven into a story of renewal. Almost a century after the postwar collapse of an industry that, at its peak, employed 40% of the working population of Northern Ireland, linen is returning as a marker of identity. “Belfast has long been viewed through a very narrow lens, associated with division, trouble and violence,” says Amy Anderson, the 32-year-old designer of Kindred of Ireland, an independent brand …

When a Diagnosis Becomes Your Entire Identity

When a Diagnosis Becomes Your Entire Identity

We are living in an age where psychological explanations are prioritized above all others. Indeed, therapy speak has permeated everyday life. It has taken over conversations and relationships, leading people to claim boundary violations, accuse others of gaslighting, or see narcissists everywhere they go. Armchair diagnosing is no longer frowned upon and, in fact, seems encouraged. People are spotting symptoms and claiming disorders without sufficient evaluations or neutral clinical opinions. Pop pathology—the tendency to interpret everyday experiences through a clinical lens and pathologize them—is becoming increasingly common. And while there is some good that comes from increased access to mental health knowledge, we are also seeing harm stemming from this trend. People are increasingly over-indexing on psychological interpretations, reducing themselves and others to diagnostic labels rather than allowing room for nuance, change, and other explanations. Therapy language has become defining and limiting instead of elucidating and liberating. Over-Identifying with a Disorder Can Be Problematic One reason we should be concerned with the modern obsession with psychological language is that people are making disorders their identities. …