At the risk of making things too personal, the recent election of Donald Trump to a second term as president triggered some pretty severe negative flashbacks for me, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I remember waking up in 2016 after he was
This week could see the end of the TikTok saga, and if it does — regardless of what the ending is — I for one will be grateful if that happens. As faithful readers of The Torment Nexus (like you) will no doubt remember, I wrote in September that the crusade against
Unless you've been living on the moon or under a rock, you probably know that on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major change in the company's policy around free speech and fact-checking. Wearing his new uniform of curly hair and a gold neck chain
Back in October, I wrote about artificial intelligence, and specifically about one of the crucial questions experts still can't seem to agree on, which is whether it is going to destroy us or not. In that piece, I also mentioned the debate over whether the indexing or "
When his longtime girlfriend moves out, a 44-year-old man spends three years in a relationship with an AI chatbot he calls Calisto. After discussions with an AI companion, a man scales the walls of Windsor Castle carrying a crossbow and says he has come to kill the Queen. A teenaged
Last week, the Australian government passed a law aimed at banning children under the age of 16 from using social-media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and the network formerly known as Twitter (but not, somewhat surprisingly, from YouTube). A press release quoted the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, as saying
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote at The Torment Nexus about whether Bluesky could become the new Twitter, and whether that would be a good thing or not. Since then, the network has just continued to ramp up its growth — it now has more than 23 million members, up
Before I go any further, let me be clear about what I mean by saying Elon Musk makes a good point — or rather, let me clear about what I *don't* mean. I don't mean that Elon Musk makes a good point when he says the economy
After deciding to write about Bluesky and its recent meteoric growth, I wrote down the headline above, and then I went to look at what I had written in the past about Bluesky while I was at the Columbia Journalism Review (where I was the chief digital writer until recently)
I know that it's tempting to blame what happened on Tuesday night — the re-election of a former game-show host and inveterate liar with 34 felony counts and two impeachments as president of the United States — on social media in one form or another. Maybe you think that Musk
I know the headline on this post probably sounds ridiculous to some (perhaps all) of you reading this, but I'm going to do my best to convince you that I'm right by the end of this piece (maybe some of you can drop me a line
In case you are a first-time reader, or you forgot that you signed up for this newsletter, this is The Torment Nexus (you can find out more about me and this newsletter — and why I chose to call it that — in this post.) Before I begin, I would just like