Features

LONDON — One goat, two elephants, and now three monkeys: British street artist Banksy thrilled fans in London on Wednesday by installing his third new artwork in three days.

The animal-themed collection has sparked speculation about their message. Are they criticism of England’s far-right riots or possibly support for Palestinians? Perhaps they reference global warming or even the Olympics?

As usual, the enigmatic artist gave no explanation when he claimed them on Instagram.

What is unusual is how quickly they have appeared — usually Banksy’s works are spaced several months apart.

On Monday, a depiction of a goat precariously perched on top of a wall with rocks tumbling down appeared in Richmond, southwest London.

“I think it’s actually a mountain gazelle from Palestine. So I think that work has to do with Palestine,” Daniel Lloyd-Morgan, a 60-year-old artist told AFP.

Then on Tuesday two elephant silhouettes with their trunks stretched towards each other appeared in Chelsea, southwest London.

On Wednesday, the black silhouette of three monkeys appeared on the side of a railway bridge as if they were swinging.

“Banksy is trying to get us to think and reflect about the ecological crisis that really threatens humanity,” university Professor Fawaz Gerges told AFP as he admired the latest work.

“His focus seems to be on animals, on trees, on oceans and it’s an overarching theme of his in the past few months,” he added.

The artworks have appeared at a time when England is gripped by violent far-right, anti-immigrant protests over the murder of three girls. Demonstrators have targeted hotels housing asylum seekers.

Banksy, whose identity is unknown, has repeatedly shown sympathy for the plight of refugees.

At the Glastonbury music festival last month the artist launched an inflatable boat over crowds depicting dummy migrants wearing life vests.


PARIS — When academic Jathan Sadowski reached for an analogy last year to describe how AI programs decay, he landed on the term "Habsburg AI".

The Habsburgs were one of Europe's most powerful royal houses, but entire sections of their family line collapsed after centuries of inbreeding.

Recent studies have shown how AI programmes underpinning products like ChatGPT go through a similar collapse when they are repeatedly fed their own data.

"I think the term Habsburg AI has aged very well," Sadowski told AFP, saying his coinage had "only become more relevant for how we think about AI systems".

The ultimate concern is that AI-generated content could take over the web, which could in turn render chatbots and image generators useless and throw a trillion-dollar industry into a tailspin.

But other experts argue that the problem is overstated, or can be fixed.

And many companies are enthusiastic about using what they call synthetic data to train AI programmes. This artificially generated data is used to augment or replace real-world data. It is cheaper than human-created content but more predictable.

"The open question for researchers and companies building AI systems is: how much synthetic data is too much," said Sadowski, lecturer in emerging technologies at Australia's Monash University.

'Mad cow disease' 

Training AI programs, known in the industry as large language models (LLMs), involves scraping vast quantities of text or images from the Internet.

This information is broken into trillions of tiny machine-readable chunks, known as tokens.

When asked a question, a programme like ChatGPT selects and assembles tokens in a way that its training data tells it is the most likely sequence to fit with the query.

But even the best AI tools generate falsehoods and nonsense, and critics have long expressed concern about what would happen if a model was fed on its own outputs.

In late July, a paper in the journal Nature titled "AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data" proved a lightning rod for discussion.

The authors described how models quickly discarded rarer elements in their original dataset and, as Nature reported, outputs degenerated into "gibberish".

A week later, researchers from Rice and Stanford universities published a paper titled "Self-consuming generative models go MAD" that reached a similar conclusion.

They tested image-generating AI programmes and showed that outputs become more generic and strafed with undesirable elements as they added AI-generated data to the underlying model.

They labelled model collapse "Model Autophagy Disorder" (MAD) and compared it to mad cow disease, a fatal illness caused by feeding the remnants of dead cows to other cows.

'Doomsday scenario' 

These researchers worry that AI-generated text, images and video are clearing the web of usable human-made data.

"One doomsday scenario is that if left uncontrolled for many generations, MAD could poison the data quality and diversity of the entire internet," one of the Rice University authors, Richard Baraniuk, said in a statement.

However, industry figures are unfazed.

Anthropic and Hugging Face, two leaders in the field who pride themselves on taking an ethical approach to the technology, both told AFP they used AI-generated data to fine-tune or filter their datasets.

Anton Lozhkov, machine learning engineer at Hugging Face, said the Nature paper gave an interesting theoretical perspective but its disaster scenario was not realistic.

"Training on multiple rounds of synthetic data is simply not done in reality," he said.

However, he said researchers were just as frustrated as everyone else with the state of the Internet.

"A large part of the internet is trash," he said, adding that Hugging Face already made huge efforts to clean data -- sometimes jettisoning as much as 90 per cent.

He hoped that web users would help clear up the internet by simply not engaging with generated content.

"I strongly believe that humans will see the effects and catch generated data way before models will," he said.

By Rania Sa’adi,
Rapid Transformational Therapist & Clinaicl Hypnotherapist

We have been hearing a lot about Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and how important it is to have it or increase it, in order to have better and healthier relationships with people around us, resulting in a better quality of life.

But what does it really mean to be emotionally intelligent, and how can we acquire it?

Emotional Intelligence is the skill and ability to understand our emotions, in order to be able to regulate them.

 Persons who are emotionally intelligent are always in tune with their feelings. This person is also known for having high levels of empathy.

This also helps you understand other people’s feelings by putting yourself in their shoes.

 So, on top of being connected to yourself, you are also more connected to others resulting in stronger and healthier bonds.

Emptying pent up emotions

Most people find it difficult to understand and connect with their negative emotions like anger, sadness, or guilt.

These emotions are very uncomfortable to sit with and most people will take the easy way out by distracting, avoiding or numbing these feelings.

What happens over the years is that all of these pent up feelings are trapped in body, not knowing where to go.

They end up showing up in the form of physical symptoms, like migraines, ulcers, irritable colon, or bladder and cancer. And this is where emotional

Emptying pent up emotions… protects you from… physical and mental health issues

intelligence becomes handy; it helps you understand and acknowledge these feelings inside you— it also helps you to let go of them.

Thus, emptying pent up emotions as they come along protects you from future physical and mental health issues.

How? By using the “Triple A” formula we can empty our pent up emotions. Here’s how

1. Acknowledge: Name the feeling, admit it is there and allow it to be

2. Accept: Accept that it is okay to have this feeling, even if it is a negative one.

Say it to yourself: “it is ok to be mad, sad or even jealous.

These are perfectly normal human feelings, and there is nothing wrong with having them.”

3. Articulate: Repeat to yourself: “ I feel angry because….” , “ I feel anxious because…” and let the rest come out from within you.

Acknowledging, accepting and understanding why we have these emotions, is key to letting go.

Emotions We are born with five core emotions.

They are: Fear, anger, guilt, hurt and sadness.

And every emotion has a message and a reason.

By understanding why it is there (articulating) can help us get rid of that negative feeling. Here are a few examples on how to do this:

Fear is usually there to protect us, a message in the stressed person’s mind that goes as follows: “If I am always aware, alert of everything happening around me. I will be prepared for bad things when they happen, and therefore I can handle it better.”

Truth is, fear cripples us and prevents anyone from handling anything at all.

Understanding this helps us take control of that emotion and ultimately reduce it in our system.

Anger usually is born when someone feels unseen, unheard and therefore not important or valued enough.

This is when anger starts to creep into someone’s system, as a coping mechanism. It is the solution that the subconscious mind presents to assert a person’s presence, validate one’s existence and ensure that you are seen and heard.

Guilt can be found in the “people pleaser”. One may wish to make everyone happy and thus making oneself responsible for it.

Since this signs you up for “mission impossible” you have set yourself up for failure. When this happens, you feel down and disappointed.

Guilt will serve as the engine that keeps you stuck in that cycle.

These are just a few examples of how every emotion has a role and function in our lives. Once we accept and acknowledge these facts, we can move on to understanding the message behind the emotion, and let go of it.

Being in-tune with one’s feelings is key to increasing emotional intelligence

Being in-tune with one’s feelings is key to increasing emotional intelligence.

If you are well connected with your emotions, then you can sense and read others’ emotions as well, and thus connect with them on a deeper level, resulting in healthier and more flourishing relationships.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

SAN FRANCISCO — Google confirmed on Friday that it had pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers.

The “Dear Sydney” ad, intended to tout capabilities of Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a fan letter from her to US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

However, some viewers bashed the ad as promoting the notion that parents should coax their children to rely on AI rather than learn to express themselves.

“While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation,” a Google spokesperson told AFP.

Social media posts fired off on an array of platforms questioned whether the ad signaled a dystopian future in which human creativity atrophies due to AI.

Syracuse University Media Professor Shelly Palmer said the commercial suggested that a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person’s feeling better than they could themselves.

“This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks,” author Linda Holmes wrote in a post on BlueSky.

“Who wants an AI-written fan letter?”

Tech evangelists have touted the promised benefits of AI, but teachers, musicians, artists and others have accused its creators of training advanced computers to replace them.

Early this year, Apple had an ad stumble of its own with a commercial showing musical instruments, paint cans and other creative gear crushed and replaced by an iPad to the tune of a song titled “All I Ever Need Is You”.

PARIS — French taxi drivers on Thursday demanded government compensation for lost revenue during the Olympic Games as traffic disruptions and fewer regular clients weigh on demand.

In a letter to the transport ministry, taxi unions said that the Games had been “hugely disappointing” for the drivers of licensed taxis of which there are 20,000 in Paris alone.

“Demand is slowing and the entire profession is being prevented from simply doing their job because of these Games,” said the letter, seen by AFP.

The number of additional visitors drawn by the Olympics had failed to make up for “the impact of traffic restrictions, the closure of venues and the impact of usual customers staying away”, it said.

The unions demanded the creation of a “compensation fund” that they said should cover income lost for the seven-month period during which public spaces were being taken over for the Games.

Several venues in and around Paris, but also in Marseille were blocked off for several weeks before the Games started on July 26.

In response to the letter, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said in a social media post that taxis and ride-hailing services would now be allowed to enter the so-called “red zones” around Olympics venues, which were previously off-limits for motor vehicles.

Now that the high-security opening ceremony was in the past, several safety measures had been lifted and traffic was becoming more fluid, the minister said.

The government has encouraged French residents to go on holiday or work remotely during the Games, further dampening demand and contributing to a sharp fall in business compared to the same period in 2023, the unions said.

Some drivers had seen their income fall by 40 or 50 per cent, they said.

Last month, trade groups said that Paris shops, restaurants, bars and clubs were facing an “unprecedented slump in business and footfall”, blaming in part the “heavy security measures” during the Games.

SAN FRANCISCO — Meta has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit accusing it of violating a Texas state privacy law with a feature for “tagging” friends in Facebook photos, according to a deal finalised on Tuesday.

Meta agreed to pay the money over five years to settle the claims accusing the social networking giant of unlawfully capturing biometric data of Facebook users in Texas.

The lawsuit said Meta did not get users’ permission before enabling its software to recognise and “tag” people in pictures, according to a court filing.

“I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single state,” State Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement, calling the settlement “historic”.

The lawsuit, filed in early 2022, was the first time Texas had gone to court to accuse a tech firm of violating its “Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act”, according to Paxton.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP, noting the settlement includes an agreement that there was no wrongdoing.

Meta rolled out the photo tagging feature in 2011, running facial recognition on photos uploaded to Facebook without asking users for consent, according to the suit.

LONDON — Tributes poured in on Sunday for Edna O’Brien, the radical Irish writer whose groundbreaking first novel “The Country Girls” was burned and banned in her native country, after her death at 93.

“She died peacefully on Saturday 27 July after a long illness,” said a statement from her publishers Faber Books posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said the country had “lost an icon” and “a brave, gifted, dignified and magnetic person”.

“Most people would have stopped and hidden away with the misogyny she faced but Edna O’Brien kept working on her artistry and became one of modern Ireland’s most celebrated and honoured writers,” he said in a statement on social media.

“It is for all of us to reflect upon, and never forget, that to reach her potential Edna would leave Ireland and make London her home.”

Irish President Michael D. Higgins said he had learned of the death of his “dear friend” O’Brien with “great sorrow”.

She was “one of the outstanding writers of modern times” and “a fearless teller of truths”, he said in a statement.

He added: “While the beauty of her work was immediately recognised abroad, it is important to remember the hostile reaction it provoked among those who wished for the lived experience of women to remain far from the world of Irish literature, with her books shamefully banned upon their early publication.”

Micheal Martin, former Irish premier and current foreign and defence minister, hailed O’Brien on X as a “pioneer, never afraid to push boundaries through her work” who helped “usher in a new era in literature and in modern Ireland”.

Culture Minister Catherine Martin described O’Brien as “a modernising force in Irish society who fearlessly advanced the cause of equality”.

The honours she eventually received from her native Ireland included the Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2018.

“The Country Girls” (1960), about the sexual initiation of rebellious Catholic girls, drawn from O’Brien’s childhood experiences, is now a marker in modern Irish literature for its breaking of social taboos.

“The novel, published in 1960, caused a bit of consternation. People were outraged,” O’Brien recalled in The Guardian in 2008.

“The few copies purchased in Limerick were burnt after the rosary, one evening in the parish grounds, at the request of the priest. I received anonymous letters, all malicious. Then it was banned,” she said.

O’Brien was born in 1930 into a strict Catholic farming family in west Ireland’s County Clare.

She was educated at a convent school and then in Dublin where she graduated with a pharmacist’s licence in 1950, around the time she was discovering a passion for Leo Tolstoy, F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot.

In 2018, she won the prestigious PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, honoured for having broken down “social barriers for women in Ireland and beyond”.

In 2021, France made her a Commander in the “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”, the nation’s highest cultural distinction.

She received France’s Prix Femina special prize in 2019, honouring the ensemble of her work.

Recalling the “chauvinist” reactions to her first novel, O’Brien said it was a “foretaste of judgements to come”.

“I had not at that time read Lord Byron’s maxim that a man should calculate on his powers of resistance before entering on a career of writing,” she wrote in The Guardian in 2008.

“I have since read it and must add that a woman embarking on a career of writing needs those powers one hundredfold.”

LOS ANGELES, United States — New Disney/Marvel comedy “Deadpool & Wolverine” scored a “spectacular” opening in North American theatres this weekend, its huge take of $205 million placing it not just near the top of superhero films but marking the eighth-biggest opening ever, analysts said on Sunday.

“The numbers are fantastic,” said David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. “These characters’ popularity is growing, not slowing.”

The film is enjoying positive reviews and “excellent” audience scores, Gross said. The popularity of Ryan Reynolds (who plays Deadpool and shares a writing credit), and his real-life pal Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) — didn’t hurt, either.

The debut ranks just ahead of 2018’s “Black Panther,” which opened to $202 million, and just behind “Jurassic World” ($208 million in 2015), according to Variety. International ticket sales are already a stunning $233.3 million.

Its opening was also the best ever for an R-rated film (not inflation-adjusted), far surpassing the previous record holder, the first “Deadpool” ($133.7 million), according to the Hollywood Reporter.

That left last weekend’s top film, Universal’s weather thriller “Twisters”, twisting in the dust, with what normally would be a respectable take of $35.3 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported.

The stand-alone follow-up to 1996’s popular “Twister” has Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones playing risk-taking storm chasers caught in the middle of fast-converging tornadoes.

In third for the Friday-through-Sunday period was Universal’s animated comedy “Despicable Me 4”, earning $14.2 million in its fourth weekend out. It has total ticket sales so far of $291.0 million in North America.

Slipping one spot to fourth place was Disney and Pixar’s coming-of-age animation “Inside Out 2”, at $8.3 million.

Also down one spot was horror mystery “Longlegs” at $6.8 million. Nicolas Cage stars in the film, the all-time top grosser from indie studio Neon.

Sonia Salfity,
Desperate Dieter

As summer welcomes us with warm and open arms we can get too comfortable in its embrace. We can get so wrapped up in the joy of the wonderful season that we let our guard down when it comes to our eating habits.

The downward spiral

Despite the fact that hot weather can take away our urge to eat as we deal with the heat, we have other challenges that offset the difference.

One of these challenges for me is that I get invited to more events in the summer months especially with all the graduation parties that take place at this time.

I love celebrating with our friends and family, but it can wreak havoc on my diet and exercise routine.

If I’m not intentional about taking steps to prevent the downward spiral, then I’m doomed to fail my body.

Here are some useful ways I found when intentionally preparing myself for these summer events without sabotaging my own best interests.

1. Don’t Delay!

Get your exercise in before the event. It can be a trip to the gym or a quick walk in your neighbourhood.

Whatever you do make sure to move your body. Add cardio and weight-bearing routines to your regimen and most importantly make it a non-negotiable priority lest you negotiate yourself out of it!

The longer you delay the more excuses you’ll have!

Let’s advocate for putting ourselves at the top of our list of priorities instead of the very bottom.

2. Don’t fight this battle alone.

Round up at least one friend who will keep you accountable. This is especially beneficial when you’re both attending the same event.

‘Never go into the battle of the bulge without being armed with a companion who is fighting the same battle’

I can’t tell you how helpful this is because that friend is going to gently remind you to stay within your healthy boundaries.

A true friend wouldn’t allow you to drink and drive and so it is when it comes to overeating.

Two are always stronger than one so never go into the battle of the bulge without being armed with a companion who is fighting the same battle!

When they are weak you are strong and when you are weak they are there to prop you up even if it means limping your way out of that battle zone having succumbed to a desert or two!

3. What you do before an event is just as important as what you do afterwards.

If you’ve eaten more than you planned, make up for it at your next meal.

Don’t skip your meals instead, make an adjustment so you’re consuming less calories to make up for the ones you ate at the party.

You might also add a brisk 10 minute walk afterwards.

This will also help rev up your metabolism so you’re burning fuel even after your walk is finished.

4. If it’s feasible, stay standing up as you mingle with the guests at the event.

We sit down enough at our desk jobs and at home so let’s make an effort to get off the chair every opportunity we get!

5. Distract yourself

from the delectable food offerings by enjoying the conversations at these events.

If you don’t hear a subject you’re interested in, then start your own conversation about something more meaningful that is beyond the superficial banter.

There’s nothing wrong with chitchatting about the weather but it’s always more fun to discuss more serious topics that we’re passionate about.

These deeper conversations require more of our mental attention and thus take our minds off autopilot.

The deeper our mind has to focus on the conversations at hand the less likely we will be distracted by that chocolate cake that’s calling our name!

‘The more events you have to attend in one day the more likely your defenses will break down’

6. Don’t forget your triggers.

Keep them at the forefront of your mind because you’ll want to avoid consuming the foods that trigger your cravings.

I know that if I eat a salty snack I will likely crave something sweet afterwards.

To offset that, make sure to drink enough water before, during and after your outing.

7. Avoid overcrowding your schedule

even if it means gently declining some invitations.

The more events you have to attend in one day the more likely your defenses will break down.

Simplify your life as much as possible for your own mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.

It’s honestly quite difficult to take care of yourself when you’re too busy trying to please everyone else.

Decide what can stay on your schedule and what needs to go.

A good friend will always understand and not hold it against you if you have to decline the invitation.

If they don’t understand, then you might want to rethink who your true friends are!

Here’s to a healthy summer as you conquer one challenge at a time ,one day at a time. Stay cool!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine