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dotaturls_feedaih_heraldry_feedThe Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma – Archeologia, Belle Arti, Paesaggio, is pleased to present a cultural event dedicated to the artistic and historical heritage of the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura.
On 23 January 2026, at 5:00 p.m., the Drugstore Museum will host the talk “Arte musiva e araldica mondiale in onore del Papa-Re” (Global Mosaics and Heraldry in Honour of the Pope-King), curated by our Italian colleague, Mr. Maurizio Carlo Alberto Gorra, associated member of the Académie Internationale d’Héraldique, and also an expert in iconography and heraldry.
The event will explore the extraordinary heraldic and mosaic decorations found in the crypt of the Basilica, which has safeguarded the remains of Pope Pius IX since 1881. Within the crypt lies an exceptional collection of 650 coats of arms executed in enamelled mosaic. Eight years of research have enabled scholars to identify the individuals and institutions—nobles, clergy, private citizens and organisations from across the world—who, in the late nineteenth century, contributed their heraldic emblems for the embellishment of this sacred space. Originally displayed in the crypt’s neo-Byzantine chamber, these mosaics were conceived to express the symbolic and moral significance of heraldic art, forming a unique space of historical memory, devotion, and shared identity.
The discussion will feature contributions from distinguished speakers: Margherita Corrado (archaeologist), Gemma Guerrini (palaeographer), and Michele Campisi (architect).
Venue: Drugstore Museum, Via Portuense 317, Rome
Admission: Free of charge until full capacity is reached.
aih_heraldry_feedOn 14 January 2026, on the occasion of State Flag Day, the presentation of the Department of State Symbolism and Heraldry’s 2025 publications took place. The event was attended by the authors of the articles featured in the Herald magazine, who addressed the audience.
The Department of State Symbols and Heraldry of Georgia welcomes the new year with three noteworthy publications:
The State Flag of Georgia is one of the oldest flags in the world. Throughout history, the Gorgasliani–Davitiani flag, featuring the five-cross composition, served as a national symbol of the Georgian state. In 1991, when Georgia regained its independence from the Soviet Union, the country reinstated its historical state symbols. Following many years of legislative and scholarly research, Georgia officially adopted its current national flag on 14 January 2004—one that reflects historical truth and continuity.
The State Flag forms the basis for the design of Georgian awards, insignia, and other state decorations, symbolising unity and pride for the entire Georgian society.
smbc_comics_feed
Hovertext:
It works when you bang humans together the right way!
openrightsgroup_feedWhether it’s an outright ban or applying film-style age ratings to social media, these proposals would still require widespread age verification. Platforms would have no way to enforce age-based access without forcing users to prove their age.
This would mean millions of 16-17 year olds, as well as adults, being required to hand over additional personal data to private companies to communicate online.
“We already know these systems are risky,” said James Baker, Platform Power and Free Expression Programme Manager at Open Rights Group. “Only last year, sensitive age-verification data collected by Discord was exposed in a breach. Expanding age-gating across the internet would multiply the scale of this risk.”
Despite calls on Government to do so, there is a lack of effective regulation around age-assurance technology. These systems routinely involve identity documents, facial analysis, or inferred profiling. Once collected, this data can be breached, misused, or repurposed, with long-term consequences for both adults’ and children’s privacy and security.
One of the Lords’ amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would ban all under 16s from social functions of online games, WhatsApp and Wikipedia as well as what many people might understand as social media. This goes far beyond Australia’s experiment in banning under 16s from social media.
A blanket ban or rigid age-rating system would disproportionately affect marginalised young people and undermine their rights to freedom of expression and participation, as recognised in international human rights law. International conventions also say that children should be consulted when their rights are impacted.
“Shutting young people out of digital public spaces, rather than building ones that work for them is not protection,” said James Baker. “It is exclusion.”
Online harms are driven by platform design and business models, not simply by young people’s presence online. Instead of blunt bans, Open Rights Group is calling for reforms that give users real power and choice, including:
“Protecting children online should not mean building a surveillance infrastructure for everyone,” said James Baker.
“We need regulation that puts users back in control, not policies that force people to trade their privacy and voice for access to modern life.”
bruce_schneier_feedEighteen months ago, it was plausible that artificial intelligence might take a different path than social media. Back then, AI’s development hadn’t consolidated under a small number of big tech firms. Nor had it capitalized on consumer attention, surveilling users and delivering ads.
Unfortunately, the AI industry is now taking a page from the social media playbook and has set its sights on monetizing consumer attention. When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Search feature in late 2024 and its browser, ChatGPT Atlas, in October 2025, it kicked off a race to capture online behavioral data to power advertising. It’s part of a yearslong turnabout by OpenAI, whose CEO Sam Altman once called the combination of ads and AI “unsettling” and now promises that ads can be deployed in AI apps while preserving trust. The rampant speculation among OpenAI users who believe they see paid placements in ChatGPT responses suggests they are not convinced.
In 2024, AI search company Perplexity started experimenting with ads in its offerings. A few months after that, Microsoft introduced ads to its Copilot AI. Google’s AI Mode for search now increasingly features ads, as does Amazon’s Rufus chatbot. OpenAI announced on Jan. 16, 2026, that it will soon begin testing ads in the unpaid version of ChatGPT.
As a security expert and data scientist, we see these examples as harbingers of a future where AI companies profit from manipulating their users’ behavior for the benefit of their advertisers and investors. It’s also a reminder that time to steer the direction of AI development away from private exploitation and toward public benefit is quickly running out.
The functionality of ChatGPT Search and its Atlas browser is not really new. Meta, commercial AI competitor Perplexity and even ChatGPT itself have had similar AI search features for years, and both Google and Microsoft beat OpenAI to the punch by integrating AI with their browsers. But OpenAI’s business positioning signals a shift.
We believe the ChatGPT Search and Atlas announcements are worrisome because there is really only one way to make money on search: the advertising model pioneered ruthlessly by Google.
Ruled a monopolist in U.S. federal court, Google has earned more than US$1.6 trillion in advertising revenue since 2001. You may think of Google as a web search company, or a streaming video company (YouTube), or an email company (Gmail), or a mobile phone company (Android, Pixel), or maybe even an AI company (Gemini). But those products are ancillary to Google’s bottom line. The advertising segment typically accounts for 80% to 90% of its total revenue. Everything else is there to collect users’ data and direct users’ attention to its advertising revenue stream.
After two decades in this monopoly position, Google’s search product is much more tuned to the company’s needs than those of its users. When Google Search first arrived decades ago, it was revelatory in its ability to instantly find useful information across the still-nascent web. In 2025, its search result pages are dominated by low-quality and often AI-generated content, spam sites that exist solely to drive traffic to Amazon sales—a tactic known as affiliate marketing—and paid ad placements, which at times are indistinguishable from organic results.
Plenty of advertisers and observers seem to think AI-powered advertising is the future of the ad business.
Paid advertising in AI search, and AI models generally, could look very different from traditional web search. It has the potential to influence your thinking, spending patterns and even personal beliefs in much more subtle ways. Because AI can engage in active dialogue, addressing your specific questions, concerns and ideas rather than just filtering static content, its potential for influence is much greater. It’s like the difference between reading a textbook and having a conversation with its author.
Imagine you’re conversing with your AI agent about an upcoming vacation. Did it recommend a particular airline or hotel chain because they really are best for you, or does the company get a kickback for every mention? If you ask about a political issue, does the model bias its answer based on which political party has paid the company a fee, or based on the bias of the model’s corporate owners?
There is mounting evidence that AI models are at least as effective as people at persuading users to do things. A December 2023 meta-analysis of 121 randomized trials reported that AI models are as good as humans at shifting people’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviors. A more recent meta-analysis of eight studies similarly concluded there was “no significant overall difference in persuasive performance between (large language models) and humans.”
This influence may go well beyond shaping what products you buy or who you vote for. As with the field of search engine optimization, the incentive for humans to perform for AI models might shape the way people write and communicate with each other. How we express ourselves online is likely to be increasingly directed to win the attention of AIs and earn placement in the responses they return to users.
Much of this is discouraging, but there is much that can be done to change it.
First, it’s important to recognize that today’s AI is fundamentally untrustworthy, for the same reasons that search engines and social media platforms are.
The problem is not the technology itself; fast ways to find information and communicate with friends and family can be wonderful capabilities. The problem is the priorities of the corporations who own these platforms and for whose benefit they are operated. Recognize that you don’t have control over what data is fed to the AI, who it is shared with and how it is used. It’s important to keep that in mind when you connect devices and services to AI platforms, ask them questions, or consider buying or doing the things they suggest.
There is also a lot that people can demand of governments to restrain harmful corporate uses of AI. In the U.S., Congress could enshrine consumers’ rights to control their own personal data, as the EU already has. It could also create a data protection enforcement agency, as essentially every other developed nation has.
Governments worldwide could invest in Public AI—models built by public agencies offered universally for public benefit and transparently under public oversight. They could also restrict how corporations can collude to exploit people using AI, for example by barring advertisements for dangerous products such as cigarettes and requiring disclosure of paid endorsements.
Every technology company seeks to differentiate itself from competitors, particularly in an era when yesterday’s groundbreaking AI quickly becomes a commodity that will run on any kid’s phone. One differentiator is in building a trustworthy service. It remains to be seen whether companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic can sustain profitable businesses on the back of subscription AI services like the premium editions of ChatGPT, Plus and Pro, and Claude Pro. If they are going to continue convincing consumers and businesses to pay for these premium services, they will need to build trust.
That will require making real commitments to consumers on transparency, privacy, reliability and security that are followed through consistently and verifiably.
And while no one knows what the future business models for AI will be, we can be certain that consumers do not want to be exploited by AI, secretly or otherwise.
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Conversation.
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andrewduckerdotaturls_feedcosmolinguistAt various points today while I was slaving away over a hot laptop, I heard various Bruce Springsteen songs floating down from upstairs.
He said on fedi: "I have often noted similarities between the musicians, but I desperately want to hear New Model Army covering Bruce Springsteen's 'Further On (Up the Road)'."
(It was when he first said that he wants them to cover "Badlands," and Springsteen to cover their song "Vagabonds," that I figured I'd probably made a proper fan of him, if he could see the overlap between Bruce and a band he likes as much as he does New Model Army.)
He also sent me a link to what Springsteen said after Renee Good was murdered and then a YouTube playlist centered around Springsteen being in the Kennedy Center Honors of 2009. Which I think must be where I heard those songs from.
My newest library book, has been acquired after I heard the author, Steven Hyden, speak briefly on a short podcast series about Springsteen that D found and recommended to me (and actually listened to, which is amazing because he normally can't/doesn't want to listen to podcasts!). I found his book, called There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A” and the End of the Heartland, and honestly I can hardly imagine anything more Me.
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January 19th, 2026: Me and JASON LOO (!) are putting on a SPECIAL EVENT with the Hamilton Public Library where we'll be discussing COMICS and WRITING and will sign all your books too! It's on January 29th, 7pm, at the Westdale Branch - hope to see you there! – Ryan | ||
bruce_schneier_feedIt all sounds pretty dystopian:
Inside a white stucco building in Southern California, video cameras compare faces of passersby against a facial recognition database. Behavioral analysis AI reviews the footage for signs of violent behavior. Behind a bathroom door, a smoke detector-shaped device captures audio, listening for sounds of distress. Outside, drones stand ready to be deployed and provide intel from above, and license plate readers from $8.5 billion surveillance behemoth Flock Safety ensure the cars entering and exiting the parking lot aren’t driven by criminals.
This isn’t a high-security government facility. It’s Beverly Hills High School.
andrewduckerkaberettReading. Small progress on Index, A history of the (Dennis Duncan); quite a lot of Wrangling My Terrible E-mail Situation feat. skimming geochemistry abstracts; flipped through some of the latest batch of Alex Was Sad cookbooks; also some more poking to see if there's, like, An Official Formulation of CBT-(for-)I(nsomnia), and came to the conclusion that the reason I can't find it is that there isn't. Exactly.
Writing. Alas I have not made sufficient progress this week to announce that the number at the front of the wordcount of The Putative Book has got bigger, BUT I have spent a bunch of time tinkering with ideas and asking you lot things, so. Maybe. Maybe this will be the week the second complete reworking of the introduction actually takes shape.
Playing. I continue with Squardle (via vass) and, despite its shortcomings, Metaflora (via ewt). Sudoku remains The Special Interest Of The Moment.
Cooking. It has been a Weird Week for food because A and I have mostly not been eating together (because A has been unwell and mostly not eating), but: another dal variant for my breakfasts (thereby also ticking off another item on the Cook The Cookbook project list), and lots of minor variations on Leon's ~superfood salad~ from days of yore.
Making & mending. Technically progress on glove and learning continental knitting; in practice I'm probably going to frog it and have Attempt #3 At Tension.
Growing. Lemongrass is germinating! Lithops are germinating?????
At home: the overwintered bell peppers and ancho chilli are turning Ripe Colours. The overwintered jalapeño is extremely unwell and I should... do something about that. Both orchids continue Determinedly Making Flower Stems.
At the plot: I MADE IT TO THE PLOT, Project: Bulk Up The Spinach Seed is progressing, and I have done a tiny bit of weeding and infrastructure (mostly taking down last year's growing supports...). At some point I will want to kick the things that are currently in the propagator out of the propagator in order to sow the next batch of seeds, but they'll get a little longer yet.
And more saffron keeps appearing in the various places it's planted on the patio, though I sincerely doubt any of it will flower...
cosmolinguistI had really intense, involved dreams last night; the kind where you feel like you spent days or weeks in your dream world and wake up disoriented as hell.
There have been lots about pets or small children in my care -- this time, a clever adorable toddler I was joining on vacation with her family, looking after the kid at some kind of kid-focused theme park. I had a great time, and woke up with no idea where I was or what day it was.
Luckily, D snuggled up to me as the big spoon, wrapped his legs around mine, and promptly fell back asleep, snoring gently in my ear. It is very grounding. (Sunday is the one day I don't have to get up early and I love it when I can spend Sunday morning like this.)
Occasionally he woke up enough to give me a few little kisses on the back of my shoulder, and his soft beard gently tickled my skin, and it's the best thing ever.
squirmelia
squirmelia
dotaturls_feed - Engineering and operations at the Internet Archive.aih_heraldry_feed - Maurizio Carlo Alberto Gorra – „Arte musiva e araldica mondiale in onore del Papa-Re”aih_heraldry_feed - New Publications of the Department of State Symbols and Heraldry of Georgiasmbc_comics_feed - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Rareopenrightsgroup_feed - Under-16 social media ban would expand age-gating for millions and silence young peoplebruce_schneier_feed - Could ChatGPT Convince You to Buy Something?andrewducker - Interesting Links for 20-01-2026dotaturls_feed - AVX-512: first impressions on performance and programmability.xkcd_feed - Aurora Coolnesscosmolinguist - Forty years burnin down the roaddotaturls_feed - Are arrays functions?dotaturls_feed - diesel-guard: check for expensive PostgreSQL migrations in Rust.smbc_comics_feed - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Beepdinosaur_comics_feed - rip to all those who lived in history times, what can we say but "you are dead now"bruce_schneier_feed - AI-Powered Surveillance in Schoolsandrewducker - Interesting Links for 19-01-2026kaberett - vital functionscosmolinguist - Sunday morningsquirmelia - Mudlarking 82squirmelia - Mudlarking 81 - Half a leafy marble and a rounded bottlebranchandroot
