All posts tagged: published

Advisor urges UK to pause gambling risk checks until pilot data is published

Advisor urges UK to pause gambling risk checks until pilot data is published

Published by skeptic

A policy adviser is calling on the UK government to slow down its rollout of financial risk checks for gamblers, arguing ministers are acting before the full results are available. Dr James Noyes, a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation, has written to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy asking for a pause until the Gambling Commission releases a complete evaluation of its pilot. Today I sent an open letter to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, @lisanandy — calling on the Government to pause the implementation of financial risk assessments for bettors until a proper evaluation of the Gambling Commission’s pilot scheme has been published… pic.twitter.com/75IkUA1rOT — James Noyes (@jranoyes) April 13, 2026 In a social media statement issued alongside his April 13 (Monday) letter, Noyes said he was “deeply concerned” by what has emerged so far, pointing to limited transparency and open questions about how well the system performs. Affordability checks were the right idea in principle when they were proposed by reformist politicians and the gambling industry back in 2020. …

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Aesthetics and Video Games

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Aesthetics and Video Games

Published by Jenni Sidey

Christopher Bartel is Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and Adjunct Research Fellow with the Practical and Public Ethics Research Group at Charles Sturt University. His work lies at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, with a particular focus on video games, music, and technology. He is the author of Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time (Bloomsbury, 2020) and, most recently, Aesthetics and Video Games (Bloomsbury, 2025). In this interview, Bartel discusses what makes video games aesthetically valuable, introduces his concept of “dollhouse play,” and reflects on how interactive digital worlds create new forms of imaginative freeplay that challenge traditional philosophical frameworks. What is your work about? My book, Aesthetics and Video Games, is about what makes video games aesthetically enjoyable. My aim was to provide a philosophical framework for thinking about all the various ways that players find aesthetic value in games. The aesthetics of video games has been the subject of scrutiny for quite a while, but largely among scholars working in other fields—like literature, film studies, media …

New York Times Has Published Extensive AI-Generated Articles

New York Times Has Published Extensive AI-Generated Articles

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The odds that the New York Times and other major news outlets have published AI-generated articles — whether knowing it or not — seem very high indeed. Speculation abounded on this possibility earlier this week, centering on a “Modern Love” column published in the NYT last November. It was sparked when on X, Becky Tuch of Lit Mag News posted an excerpt of the piece with her controversial take: “this reads EXACTLY like AI slop,” she wrote. Turns out there’s evidence that Tuch was onto something, a new piece in The Atlantic reveals. The writer of the column, Kate Gilgan, told magazine that she hadn’t copy and pasted language from an AI model, but “did utilize AI as a tool,” including chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, for seeking “inspiration and guidance and correction.” “I used AI as a collaborative editor and not as a content generator,” Gilgan insisted. At this point in the AI boom, when we …

Richard Osman’s We Chase Shadows release date: When is it published?

Richard Osman’s We Chase Shadows release date: When is it published?

Published by Daniella Wilson

Book release date: September 2026 Publisher: Viking (Penguin Random House) Author: Richard Osman Last updated: Friday 13th March 2026 Upcoming book We Chase Shadows, by Richard Osman, is set to be released in September 2026. The new novel continues Osman’s run of best-selling mysteries and is eagerly awaited by fans of his previous work. It will be available in hardback via Viking (Penguin Random House). The book will follow the mis-matched detective trio of Amy, Rose and Steve as they pursue a ruthless killer across Italy, Palm Springs, Barcelona and Steve’s local village pub, uncovering an impossible case where everyone seems to be hiding something. Read on for all we know so far about We Chase Shadows, including its release date. We Chase Shadows release date: When is it published? We Chase Shadows by Richard Osman is scheduled for release on 10 September 2026. The novel is the second instalment in Osman’s We Solve Murders series, following the adventures of private security officer Amy Wheeler, her father-in-law Steve Wheeler and Rosie D’Antonio. The official synopsis …

The Salt Path author published earlier book under alias, despite debut claims | Books

The Salt Path author published earlier book under alias, despite debut claims | Books

Published by Sam Flores

Author Raynor Winn published a book under a pseudonym six years before her 2018 memoir The Salt Path, despite repeatedly describing the later work as her debut, it has emerged. Winn received widespread acclaim for The Salt Path, including a £10,000 prize for debut writers. According to Winn’s lawyer, the author released the book, How Not to Dal Dy Dir, in 2012 under the alias Izzy Wyn-Thomas. It was published by a company that she and her husband owned and was sold as part of a prize draw to win their home in north Wales. The claims were made in a new BBC Sounds podcast, Secrets of the Salt Path. “It’s the first thing I’ve written since I was a teenager leaving school – the first thing,” she said of The Salt Path in a 2020 interview with Waterstones. In the same interview, her husband, Moth, was asked if he knew of his wife’s writing abilities. He replied: “No, not at all. Not that she could write. Surprised me.” And speaking to BBC Radio Cornwall …

The Salt Path writer secretly published earlier book despite claims she was a debut author

The Salt Path writer secretly published earlier book despite claims she was a debut author

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Despite multiple claims that The Salt Path was her first book, Raynor Winn had written another title under a pseudonym six years earlier. Winn found herself embroiled in controversy last year when an investigation by The Observer claimed that parts of her bestselling memoir The Salt Path, which told the story of how she and her husband, Moth, walked the South West Coast Pat after a string of private tragedies, were fabricated. In response, Winn called the article “grotesquely unfair” and “highly misleading”, adding that it “seeks to systematically pick apart my life”. The author’s lawyers, however, have recently admitted that one facet of her story was not true. In press interviews publicising 2018’s The Salt Path, Winn had repeatedly claimed that it was her first book. In a new BBC Sounds podcast Secrets of the Salt Path, however, Winn’s lawyers …

RAF flight plans published online in ‘staggering’ security blunder

RAF flight plans published online in ‘staggering’ security blunder

Published by Sam Flores

Details of Royal Air Force missions have been published online for years in a “staggering” security blunder, The Telegraph can disclose. Messages that reveal air-to-air refuelling flight plans and the possible locations of British fighter jets have been broadcast by the the RAF over an insecure aviation messaging system that anyone can read. The practice, which appears to have carried on for several years, includes details of recent missions in the skies over Cyprus, which has been attacked by Iranian drones. When contacted for comment, the RAF claimed that nothing in the messages was “operationally sensitive”. But analysis by The Telegraph suggests that an adversary could use the data to work out potential locations and times at which fuel tankers intended to rendezvous with fighter jets. Other messages appear to instruct pilots to remove secret documents being carried on a refuelling craft. In another case, a message apparently tells an aircraft where to park before landing in Cyprus on the same day as the Iranian drone strike. The Telegraph is not reporting details of any …

Telegraph declines to tell regulator how fake banker story got published

Telegraph declines to tell regulator how fake banker story got published

Published by Sam Flores

Telegraph school fees article The Telegraph has refused to tell press regulator IPSO how an article about a made-up banker supposedly impacted by school fee increases came to be published. The article, headlined “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays”, was published and quickly withdrawn in June last year. Despite speculation that the article had been written using AI, Press Gazette confirmed it had been written by a real journalist and was based on a phone interview set up by a PR working for financial planning firm Saltus whose school fees research was referenced in the story. The journalist appears to have been deceived by the man on the phone who gave a fake name. Freelance journalist Ian Fraser raised concerns about the piece and the fact he could find no trace of bankers named Al and Alexandra Moy, the subjects of the piece, anywhere else online. He also noted the pictures of a family used in the article were stock images taken in 2012 and 2014. …

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Anticolonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics: A Cinematic Exploration

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Anticolonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics: A Cinematic Exploration

Published by Jenni Sidey

Patrick D. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central State University and a recipient of a 2025 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) HBCU Faculty Grant. He is the author of Cypherpunk Ethics: A Radical Ethics for the Digital Age (2022) and a contributor to The Rhetoric of Fascism (2022). His research focuses on the history of Africana philosophy, applied ethics, and digital technologies. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight, he discusses his newest work, Anticolonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics: A Cinematic Exploration (2026), which develops an anticolonial methodology for political philosophy and fleshes it out using Hollywood cinema. What is your work about? And why did you feel the need to write it? Anticolonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics draws upon Africana anticolonial philosophy—especially the work of Frantz Fanon and two of his most influential interpreters, Eldridge Cleaver and Sylvia Wynter—to develop a basic analytical model for doing anticolonial political theory. I wanted to show that there is something distinctive, something special, to be found in this tradition of thought that has not been fully …

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

Published by José Betancourt

Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as does Lui­gi Ser­afi­ni, author and illus­tra­tor of the Codex Seraphini­anus, “At the end of the day [it’s] sim­i­lar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speak­ing to you, but it’s just your imag­i­na­tion.” If you were a long­time devo­tee of an intense­ly sym­bol­ic, myth­ic text, you might refuse to believe this. It must mean some­thing, fans of the Codex have insist­ed since the book’s appear­ance in 1981. It shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, save its rel­a­tive­ly recent vin­tage and liv­ing author: both the Seraphini­anus and the Voyn­ich seem to be com­pendi­ums of an oth­er­world­ly nat­ur­al sci­ence and art, and both are writ­ten in a whol­ly invent­ed lan­guage. Ser­afi­ni tells Wired he thinks Voyn­ich is …