The question dominating Indian politics: Is it worse when women swear? (BBC, 27 August 2026; see also in Korean, 2 September 2026)
Déjà vu, déjà entendu [29]
Reply
Déjà vu, déjà entendu [28]
The Pelicot rape case revealed not a group of monsters but a culture that enables the abuse of women (Vanita Sundaram, The Coversation, 7 January 2025)
Man admits raping and drugging wife over 13-year period (UK Crown Prosecution Service, 23 January 2026)
Men film themselves sexually abusing sedated women and share it with other men online. Why? (Emma Quilty, The Conversation, 31 May 2026)
Since Gisèle Pelicot, more global networks of drug‑facilitated rape have been revealed – here’s what that tells us (Lisa Sugiura, The Conversation, 27 July 2026)
UK husband accused of drugging and sexually abusing his wife stands trial with 12 others (CNN, 1 September 2026)
Déjà vu, déjà entendu [27]
Federal judge warns law is being left behind by AI child sex abuse images (The Washington Post, 26 August 2026)
RT @washingtonpost A federal appeals court judge ruled that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to privately possess images or videos of child sexual abuse created using AI—if the material does not depict a real person and remains in the home. (27 August 2026)
10대 연예인 나체 합성사진 샀는데 무죄… 피해자 울리는 감형 사유는? (Hankook Ilbo, 29 August 2026)
아청법상 성착취물은 크게 두 유형으로 규정돼 있다는 게 법원의 설명입니다. ①실제 아동·청소년이 등장하거나 ②실제는 아니더라도 미성년자라고 명백하게 인식될 수 있는 사람이나 표현물이 등장해야 한다는 겁니다.
재판부는 남성이 산 불법 합성물이 ①과 ② 어느 쪽에도 해당하지 않는다고 봤습니다. 우선 문제의 딥페이크가 미성년자 얼굴을 사용했더라도 다른 사람의 신체와 합성해 만든 것이기에 실제 아동·청소년이라고 보기 어렵다고 판단했습니다. 또 딥페이크 속 얼굴은 실제 미성년자였던 여성 걸그룹 멤버들이 맞다면서도 평균적인 사람이 봤을 때 ‘아동·청소년으로 명백하게 인식될 수 있는 표현물’임이 증명됐다고 보긴 어렵다고 봤습니다. 외모만으로는 나이를 구별하기 쉽지 않고 일반인이 개별 아이돌의 나이를 모두 안다고 볼 수 없다는 겁니다. 특히 일부 사진은 합성이 조악해 피해자 얼굴에 다른 여성의 몸을 붙였다는 사실을 쉽게 알아볼 수 있다고 판단했습니다.
An old and a new world, searching for a way to live together [4]
Korea’s whimsical protest flags attract worldwide attention (Joongang Ilbo, 10 December 2024)
시위 OOTD (@Bangoul00, 16 December 2024)
왓츠인마이데모백 (한지인, 20 December 2024)
광화문에서 남태령까지 18시간 시위하는 브이로그 (한지인, 23 December 2024; see also: Nosamo interview on Gwangju ; Gen-Z Olympians in Tokyo; leader of the opposition DP live streaming upon the declaration of the martial law)
Art, protest, and lightsticks (Tamar Herman, 24 December 2024)
“대통령님♡” 크리스마스 카드는 받은 윤석열, 반전은… (OhmyNews, 24 December 2024)
응원봉 물결친 남태령의 밤… 난 농사를 더 열심히 짓기로 했다 (강광석, 25 December 2024)
ChatGPT에 한덕수 묻는 이재명 (JTBC News, 27 December 2024)
Being human, becoming human, and ceasing being human [3]
RT @AISafetyMemes “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards around SF 🧵 (12 December 2024)
The ad reads: “Artisans Won’t Complain About Work-Life Balance. The Era of AI Employees Is Here”.
Reminds me of the Molly Crabapple episode of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, where she points out that AI image generators serve as a disciplining tool for labour.
“No human can have the economic efficiency of a generator. The generator might do stuff that looks really bad, that has weird warts and bunions and eight fingers. A human might need to be involved to photoshop out those warts and bunions. But at the end of the day, no human can work as fast and as cheap as a generator. If you’re a company that is concerned with maximising your profits, by limiting the costs of labour, which most companies are, you’re going to go with a generator. But that has the other advantage, which is that it serves as a disciplining tool for labor.
Let’s say you have someone like me; you’re hiring me to do your book cover. I come in, I have a vision, I have certain things I will and won’t draw. I work in a particular way. I take a certain amount of time to do things, all my stuff are paintings. They’re not done in Photoshop. So it’s not so easy for me to change a colour. There are all these constraints. I might flounce off and decide I don’t want to do the book cover at the end of the day and be an arrogant, little artist — all these annoying things about me. Whereas if you put in your prompt into a generator, and you keep hitting the button until you get something that’s passable — except that it has too many thumbs and a weird eye — you can just hire someone, you can hire anyone, to make the eye face the right way and get rid of the thumb. You replaced someone who’s unique and moody and opinionated, and all of these things, with a much less skilled, disempowered, and interchangeable technician. Who you can just get rid of at a moment’s notice and who can be replaced by anyone else.”
On bodilessness [6]
On 14 December 2024, during the protest for Yoon’s impeachment, Pikmin players planted white chrysanthemums — a flower for mourners — in the virtual courtyard of the National Assembly, symbolising the dying democracy of the country. (H/T @Your_head_Sound)
Déjà vu, déjà entendu [26]
Following the latest US presidential election and Trump’s return, many women voters are devastated by the implications for abortion rights, while an outrageous “Your body, my choice” meme has emerged among young men. Some women are reportedly vowing to opt out of intimacies altogether, drawing inspiration from South Korean radical feminists’ 4B movement.
RT @JakeKwon88 4B is the final cherry on Korean cultural export. (8 November 2024)
I retweeted the above, but cynicism aside, a mini parallel can already be drawn between the 4B movement and the #boysober movement on TikTok. I may write a longer piece on this, but let me just add here for now that I don’t think either of these should be described as women ‘going on strike‘, as that expression implies a temporary withholding for negotiation purposes.
Déjà vu, déjà entendu [25]
Trust me, I’m a doctor. [3]
Attended a deep-dive workshop by our Centre for AI Futures yesterday. It was rich and intellectually stimulating, and I regret that I was able to attend only the first one-third of the programme.
I misjudged how seriously other participants would take the preparatory work! As the penultimate speaker, my moderate contribution was to remind the group of the hidden human labour required to make AI appear as non-human, redirect our collective attention to how AI research can be conducted in practical terms transcending disciplines, and assert why we in the SHAPE disciplines should not be apologetic about not knowing how LLMs or social media platform algorithms work. In doing so, I mentioned this standup routine by Dara O’Briain, as I can always think of a comedy reference apt for any academic discussion at hand.
What I didn’t get to mention, due to time constraints but also not wanting to dishearten the doctoral researchers in the group, was OpenAI’s latest announcement that ChatGPT 5 will have “PhD-level intelligence” and that AI could kill some “creative jobs that shouldn’t exist anyway“. To be frank, I do find these statements from the Silicon Valley annoying, but the solace is that they usually give rise to gems of social commentary.
On bodilessness [5]
게임과 추모 (This Is Game, 16 April 2024)
“2020년, 코로나19로 사람들이 모이기 어려웠던 바로 그 때. ‘416을 기억하는 숙명인의 모임’은 <모여봐요 동물의 숲>을 통해 온라인에 추모공간을 만들었습니다.”
Y for Yenndetta 