TikTok’s algorithm promotes posts about eating disorders and suicide, report finds

TikTok’s algorithms are promoting videos about self-harm and eating disorders to vulnerable teens, according to a report published Wednesday that highlights concerns about social media and its impact on youth mental health.

Researchers at the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate created TikTok accounts for fictional teen personas in the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The researchers operating the accounts then “liked” videos about self-harm and eating disorders to see how TikTok’s algorithm would respond.

Within minutes, the wildly popular platform was recommending videos about losing weight and self-harm, including ones featuring pictures of models and idealized body types, images of razor blades and discussions of suicide.

When the researchers created accounts with user names that suggested a particular vulnerability to eating disorders — names that included the words “lose weight” for example — the accounts were fed even more harmful content.

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Police “Protect” Town by Arresting Elderly Women for Feeding Stray Cats, Neutering Them, and Getting Them Adopted

Domestic cats in the United States are beloved pets but they can also be a major threat to birds and other wildlife. After the domestic cat was introduced to the United States by European colonists, the number of domestic cats has skyrocketed in the past 40 years.

Today, more than 100 million feral and outdoor cats are loose in neighborhoods and wildlife habitats nationwide. There are so many of them that they are classified as an invasive species with extinction-level impacts. According to several studies, cats kill between 1.3–4 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals in the U.S. per year; making them the largest human-influenced source of mortality for birds and mammals in the country.

Globally, domestic cats have caused the extinction of several mammals, reptiles, and at least 33 bird species.

One would think that people helping to reduce the population — humanely — by feeding, trapping, spaying and neutering as many cats as they can, that this would be a service to society and nature as a whole. Unfortunately for Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, one would be wrong.

Roberts and Alston were both found guilty of multiple criminal charges this week, fined, and sentenced to jail and probation, for carrying out this very service.

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Murdered Delphi teens were intended victims of ‘botched’ child sex kidnap plot, cops believe – as investigators dig up DEAD CAT to match hairs found on girls to alleged killer’s pet

Murdered Delphi teenagers Liberty German and Abigail Williams were victims of a botched kidnapping plot hatched by members of a local pedophile ring.

This is just one of a host of disturbing new details and allegations that can be exclusively revealed by DailyMail.com – including gruesome details about how the girls died, and that police dug up the prime suspect’s dead cat, in an effort to match hairs found on their bodies.

The revelations come just two weeks after authorities released a redacted version of the probable cause affidavit that led to Richard Allen’s arrest.

Allen, 50, was charged on two counts of murder on October 28, five years after 14-year-old Libby and 13-year-old Abby were found dead in Delphi, Indiana, on February 13, 2017.  

DailyMail.com has learned that, shortly after his arrest, one of Allen’s neighbors recalled seeing police digging in his yard.

Now, DailyMail.com has been told they were digging up the family’s dead cat, whose hair proved a match for the samples found on one of the victims.

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland has openly stated that he believes ‘Allen is not the only actor involved in this.’ 

And while Allen has not been charged with kidnapping, prosecutors have alleged he attempted it.

Now sources close to the investigation have claimed that Allen was acting with at least two other men and was involved in a child sex ring.

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‘For all we know he was some sort of sex slave’: Son of Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker says his father is not evil, believes in human rights and is ‘hardly a right-wing conservative’

The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s home and battering her elderly husband with a hammer has suffered a traumatic life full of abuse, his son has told DailyMail.com exclusively.

‘There is ‘almost no person on this planet that has gone through so much suffering,’ Nebosvod ‘Sky’ Gonzalez said. ‘If you look into his eyes, you can see he’s such a sad person.

‘He isn’t a danger to society, I don’t even know if he even attacked Mr. Pelosi. For all that we know he was some sort of sex slave, as Elon Musk pointed out.’

DePape, 42, is due in court in San Francisco Wednesday for an arraignment on state charges including attempted murder, first-degree residential burglary, elder abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and threatening family members of public officials in connection with the October 28 attack on Paul Pelosi, 82.

He has also been charged in federal court. 

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School Board President Resigns After Inviting Teens to an ‘Adult Party’ That Featured a ‘Dirty Santa’

The president of a California school district board has resigned after inviting teenage choir students to perform at a “private adult party” that featured a “dirty Santa” at his home.

Steven Llanusa tendered his resignation from the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education on Saturday, the Claremont Courier reported. Llanusa was recently re-elected to another term as president this past November and ultimately served on the board for a total of 17 years.

The resignation came just a day after a special district meeting in which parents expressed outrage over allegations that he invited high school students to the “adult” party at his home.

“[The students] were encouraged to take part in food and festivities. The students didn’t begin their scheduled performance until over an hour later and were offered alcohol by party guests among inappropriately dressed adult entertainers,” Sabrina Ho, one of the teen’s parents, statedat the meeting.

Another parent, Gabriel Lozano, stated that his daughter and other teens who attended the event were interviewed by law enforcement. “They were offered an open bar and to socialize with half-naked men, the dirty Santa who made disgusting comments to our children,” Lozano told CBS Los Angeles.

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OLDEST COOKED FOOD EVER FOUND UPENDS THE “PALEO” THEORY OF ANCIENT HUMAN DIETS

WE HUMANS CAN’T stop playing with our food. Just think of all the different ways of serving potatoes — entire books have been written about potato recipes alone. The restaurant industry was born from our love of flavoring food in new and interesting ways.

My team’s analysis of the oldest charred food remains ever found shows that jazzing up your dinner is a human habit dating back at least 70,000 years.

Imagine ancient people sharing a meal. You would be forgiven for picturing people tearing into raw ingredients or maybe roasting meat over a fire, as that is the stereotype. But our new study showed both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had complex diets involving several steps of preparation and took an effort to season and use plants with bitter and sharp flavors.

This degree of culinary complexity has never been documented before for Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers.

Before our study, the earliest known plant food remains in southwest Asia were from a hunter-gatherer site in Jordan, roughly dating to 14,400 years ago, reported in 2018.

We examined food remains from two late Paleolithic sites, which cover a span of nearly 60,000 years, to look at the diets of early hunter-gatherers. Our evidence is based on fragments of prepared plant foods (think burnt pieces of bread, patties, and porridge lumps) found in two caves. To the naked eye or under a low-power microscope, they look like carbonized crumbs or chunks with fragments of fused seeds. But a powerful scanning electron microscope allowed us to see details of plant cells.

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Florida High School Coach Paid Teen Girls for Nude Photos on Snapchat, Sheriff Says

A high school basketball coach and campus monitor in Martin County, Florida, was arrested for allegedly paying underage girls to send him nude photos on Snapchat.

Alton Edwards, 28, was allegedly paying the underage girls between $10 and $75 to send him the photos after targeting them over social media, according to West Palm Beach-based outlet WPTV. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office reportedly got an anonymous tip about Edwards and spoke with seven teenagers who claim they sent him explicit photos.

According to WPTV’s report, “most” of the young girls Edwards solicited were about 15 or 16 years old. 

“It looks like his major (modus operandi) would be to find the girls on Snapchat, take a look at their friends and then just start probing,” Sheriff William Snyder told the outlet. “Really, it’s grooming. He finds a child who might be more vulnerable, and he gets them to send pictures of them unclothed and sends them cash.”

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Biden Kills Senate Resolution To End Yemen Genocide

Bernie Sanders has withdrawn his bill to end US support for the Saudi war on Yemen following reports that the Biden administration was working to tank the resolution, with White House aids reportedly saying they’d recommend the president veto it.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday night withdrew his request to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end US support for the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, citing White House opposition to the bill.

Sanders said on the Senate floor that he was informed ahead of the scheduled vote of the administration’s opposition to the legislation, meaning President Biden would veto the resolution. The Intercept reported earlier in the day that The White House was pressuring senators to vote against the bill, and Democrats came out in opposition to Sanders’ resolution earlier on Tuesday, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA).

Sanders’ justification for not holding the vote was that the administration claimed it would work with Congress on ending the war in Yemen. He said the White House wanted to “work with us on crafting language that would be mutually acceptable” and insisted if that didn’t happen, he would resume his efforts to end the war through a resolution.

But even if the White House really wants to engage with Congress on the issue, or if Sanders chooses to reintroduce the resolution, the plan will take time, which Yemenis don’t have. There has been a cessation in violence in Yemen, with no Saudi airstrikes since March, but there has been a recent uptick in fighting on the ground.

It’s probably also worth noting that this administration has been consistently lying about its intentions to end this war, with Biden campaigning on the promise to bring peace to Yemen and make a “pariah” of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, then turning around and keeping the war going while greeting the crown prince with a friendly fistbump ahead of a meeting where the two leaders coordinated their governments’ continued intimacy.

“Today, I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen,” Sanders said on Twitter. “Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.”

“At which time the House, under GOP control, will block your efforts,” former congressman Justin Amash replied. “But you know that already. As does the Biden administration, which is why they don’t want you to pass this joint resolution now, when all the pressure is on the president, because his party currently controls.”

“What I’m acknowledging is that both Rs and Ds in government are addicted to war,” Amash added. “They’re playing a game. When Trump was president, everyone knew he wouldn’t sign a Yemen joint resolution, so it passed Congress. Biden has to pretend he’d sign it, so he needs Congress to block it.”

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Third Journalist Confirmed Dead While Covering World Cup 2022 in Qatar – FIFA Open Books of Condolence for Three Journalists

It has been confirmed that a third journalist have died suddenly in November while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

ITV Sport’s Technical Director Roger Pearce, 65, passed away while reporting his eighth Fifa World Cup tournament in Qatar.

His death was reported on ITV’s broadcast before the Wales-USA game on November 21.

“We have very sad news to bring you from here in Qatar,” said presenter Mark Pougatch.

“Our technical director, Roger Pearce, who was here for his eighth World Cup, sadly passed away. Roger was a hugely respected figure in the TV sport broadcasting industry, for ITV he has been instrumental in the logistical planning and delivery of rugby world cups as well as the football world cups as well as the Euros.”

“He always had a smile on his face and left a smile on your faces. He was utterly dedicated, professional, charming and hugely popular. He will be missed by so many people inside the industry and at home,” he concluded.

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Cop Fired But Never Charged for Feeding Homeless Man a Literal ‘Sh*t Sandwich’ — Is a Cop Again

In November of 2016, the Free Thought Project brought you the disgusting story of a San Antonio cop putting feces on a piece of bread and giving it to a homeless man as food. For making a literal sh*t sandwich, San Antonio police officer Matthew Luckhurst was fired. Months later, the Free Thought Project learned that Luckhurst was involved in yet another feces-related ‘prank’ — after the sh*t sandwich.

After both of these incidents, Luckhurst was quietly rehired in 2019, only to be fired again in 2020. As the SA Express points out, Luckhurst appealed again when he was re-canned for the second feces-related incident. In June 2020 an arbitrator agreed the police department was justified in the dismissal. “This individual clearly has no business wearing an SAPD uniform,” City Manager Erik Walsh said.

But that did not mean this shitty cop was barred from all police uniforms.

Because the system is terrible at holding bad cops accountable, however, Luckhurst became a gypsy cop and was rehired at the Floresville Police Department, 30 miles outside of San Antonio.

This rehiring of Luckhurst shows just how broken the system is. When we can’t keep out repeat offenders because of silly loopholes, something is seriously wrong.

“It was a disgusting, vile act — that, there is no excuse; there is no explaining it; there is no justification,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told KOMO News after the termination of an officer for, quite literally, giving a homeless man a sh*t sandwich.

“It’s a disgrace to the department, it’s a disgrace to the badge,” McManus continued.

As we reported at the time, Luckhurst inexplicably thought it would be humorous to place feces in between two slices of bread and offer it to a likely-starving homeless person in a styrofoam takeout box, and then boast of this ‘prank’ to his partner.

His partner, however, didn’t share the sentiment — and the pair of cops returned to the scene, where Luckhurst ostensibly disposed of the sickening, cruel offering.

Only a month after being caught in this sick and twisted ‘prank’ on an innocent homeless man — before he was fired — Lockhurst pulled another sh*t prank. This time, his sh*tty shenanigans would be on his fellow cops.

Luckhurst and a second officer, Steve Albart, carried out the incident together in June 2015 after a female officer asked that the women’s restroom at a bike-patrol office remain clean, KSAT-TV reports.

To get back at the officer for asking that the women’s bathroom remain clean, Albart and Lockhurst then defecated in the toilet and then Lockhurst smeared a feces-like substance all over the seat.

For not flushing the toilet, Albart was suspended for 30 days, which he’s already served.

You cannot make this up.

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