Friday Reading S14E18

A weekly round-up of what I’ve read and enjoyed from around the web.

I’m interested in journalism, media, technology, and nerdy things found down the back of the world wide web’s sofa. Most weeks I publish a handful of things that caught my eye – regardless of what the algorithms were pushing at me. You can subscribe to get it by email here. And if you read something odd and wonderful you think I’d enjoy, feel free to send it my way.

“He spent that money on a subscription to an app from Apple’s App Store, called Movely, and allegedly used it to put five of his female classmates’ faces onto nude bodies and make sexual images of them. The boy who used the app and made the videos didn’t show up to school the next morning. But the girls did. And so did his friends.”

After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police around the US grapple with how to respond to deepfake crimes involving children.

“With a hammer, he snapped open the latch guarding the radar’s million-watt power supply. There were control panels, switches, meters. He destroyed them all. Content that the tower had been disabled, he walked around the facility systematically destroying each security camera. The group believes that the latest generation of weather radar towers are ‘directed energy weapons’ that the military have ‘pointed at the American people.’”

A long read by Wyatt Williams about weather modification technology, which along the way he describes as one of “the oldest and least successful human projects”:

“For thousands of years, we have sacrificed children, sung songs and danced, brewed alchemical concoctions, chanted prayers, fired cannons, and made many other futile efforts in the attempt to somehow change the weather a little more to our liking. Stubbornly, the weather persisted.”

“There’s all sorts of bullshit going round about a known idiot using AI to make profiles of RPG luminaries and how there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m not going to discuss the ‘is it worse to be on the list or to not be on the list’ but as either of those feeds the plagiarism machine, it’s best to ignore that aspect and, instead, strike at actual misuse.”

Jared Earle on Facebook discussing shenanigans. Or should that be shenan-AI-igans? It’s OK, I’ll get my own coat.

“The Guardian is concerned by the recent publication on Nigel Farage’s social media pages of the professional credentials of a photographer working on behalf of the Guardian while he was working lawfully in a public space.”

A statement from the Guardian on Nigel Farage’s social media posts. And that was before Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, appeared to offer a peerage to a van driver who told Rachel Reeves to “Get Keir Starmer fucking out”.

For Dazed, Cassidy Sollazzo looks at celebs like Charli xcx leaving public internet trails as taste signalling.

This week’s Guardian Thursday news quiz: Eurovision winners, Tesla swimmers and Strictly zingers. Guest animal: Momo. I met her in an Irish pub in Vienna.

Bonus quiz content: Fast five daily quiz is still fun.

Enjoying Friday Reading by email? Feel free to forward it to a friend – they can sign up here. And if you’ve recently read something you think I would enjoy, do send it my way.

My boy and I featured in the Guardian’s Pushing Buttons newsletter, racing each other at the excellent Four Quarters East in Hackney Wick. Some solid caption writing from the desk too.

“Located at 449 Oxford Street opposite Selfridges, Passport Photo Service was a local institution from an era when foreign embassies dotted Grosvenor Square.”

The London passport picture studio that became an unexpected repository of 20th-century stars.

You can vote for the UK’s favourite butterfly. Obviously I went for the most goth option – the Ringlet.

Two eye-catching tales in this round-up of recent science papers: ‘Scientists discover strange new crystal formed by nuclear blast’ and ‘Neanderthals performed dental interventions at least 59,000 years ago’.

Some cracking rediscovered photos of New York’s legendary counterculture epicentre the Chelsea Hotel.

“Many of these worlds sit outside mainstream visibility, not because they’re peripheral, but because they’re often overlooked or sometimes simplified in how they’re represented. What interested me was the richness within them – the kinship, humour, pride, devotion and rawness that exists inside these gatherings.”

Sophie Green has spent over a decade documenting the rituals, subcultures and social gatherings that form the collaged fabric of the UK’s society.

Easily one of the best things to come out of the most recent run of Doctor Who was Mr Ring-a-Ding, and this fanart comic continues his adventures.

It will not have escaped your attention that I went to Vienna to attend the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final. I wrote about it here – tremendous experience, awful geopolitics.

Also worth reading about Eurovision: Michael Hogan on the UK’s 10 biggest Eurovision flops of all time, and the ever-knowledgeable Ewan Spence on Nine things we expect from Bulgaria and Eurovision 2027. Bangaranga!

“I didn’t mean to miss the gig but part of me was genuinely pleased about it. Despite being bruised, dizzy and dehydrated I found myself coming back to consciousness during ‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’ and when I looked down, padding my own body as if reconvening with existence, I saw that my T-shirt was covered in Nicky Wire’s feathers.”

The lovely Anna Doble writes for the Quietus about 30 years of Everything Must Go.

Nostalgia fully triggered by this deep dive into playing European Club Soccer for the Sega Mega Drive by Gary Heneghan.

Bless him, Stephen Smith has recreated ZX Spectrum classic Atic Atac – BUT IN 3D!

I had a riotous time at Bar Trash on Wednesday as Token Homo launched his new season with a screening of 13 Ghosts complete with a recreation of the red/blue Ghost Watcher gimmick that accompanied the original theatrical run.

Friday Reading is a (usually) weekly series of recommended reads from Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things found on the internet. It is now in its fourteenth season. Sign up here to receive it by email.