Subterms
On New Year’s Day, a Telegram user in Portugal posted an ominous message that the wait was over. This was the year to stop the “Population Replacement” — a conspiracy theory that immigrants of color are taking over. In the days and weeks that followed, thousands more posts like it appeared on Telegram, X, YouTube […] More
Now that the Democrats have found their vice-presidential candidate in Tim Walz, can anyone say what either of the parties are planning to do if they win?Of course not. Donald Trump says immigration is bad, but having claimed a wall would fix things, he’s pretty much run out of options. The Democrats are pro-reproductive freedoms, anti-inflation and environment-friendly, but what do they plan to do about it? It’s not at all clear. Not to worry though. This election is not being fought on proposed policies or past accomplishments. It’s being fought on vibes.The vibes election is a kind of free-association game that takes place in the recesses of the deep subconscious. The goal is to determine not who the candidates are but who you feel like they could be if they weren’t politicians.In the vibes election, huge political moments keep being superseded by online ephemera: Trump was almost assassinated by a sniper, but what resonated was how cool he looked in AP photos afterwards. Kamala Harris became the first Democratic nominee in modern times not to go through a primary process, but what really landed was Charli xcx tweeting “Kamala is brat”. Within minutes, Harris’s team changed their official campaign X header to brat green.It’s nothing new for presidential election campaigns to be led by viral moments and personality – Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was built on enthusiasm for change and the gaffes of Sarah Palin rather than policy positions. Trump’s 2016 win was about amorphous ideas of draining the swamp and making America “great”. But this is something different.Trump isn’t brave. Kamala isn’t brat, in the sense that Charli’s album is about it-girls who rip cigs and do bumps of cocaine – even though there’s something in Harris’s giggly personality that suggests she could have done that in another life. Her viral quote that you “exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” sounds like something that might be whispered in a smoking area after one too many tokes on the special vape.Walz is a shrewd politician with a progressive record as governor, but online he’s “the midwest prince”, a pun on an album by the gen Z pop star Chappell Roan you can feel confident Walz has never heard. He’s presented as a kind of gorpcore hero for the everyman (as Charlie Warzel of the Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the ballot”).Above all, and I’m sorry to be a party pooper here, JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch, although the Republican vice-presidential nominee definitely has the vibe of someone who might have. And that’s what counts. There have been panels on CNN about what it means that people say he did. Walz even joked about it in his acceptance speech.View image in fullscreenThis is a product of the Trumpification of politics. Ever since he managed to turn the 2016 Republican primary into a Comedy Central roast, more traditional politicians have been racing to compete with his headline-grabbing one-liners. But even though it’s his playing field, he’s not doing so well in 2024, struggling to find insults that land.In contrast, Democrats have become much better at checking the vibes. Compare Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment that half of Trump supporters were “a basket of deplorables” with the Democrats’ recent messaging that Republicans are “weird”.The former used strange, sneering verbiage to take aim at voters rather than politicians, and was said at a private event for rich fundraisers. It was easy for Trump supporters to reclaim the term and for Trump to use it to make Clinton look elitist. Clinton later acknowledged the comment was a big part of the reason she lost the election. Bad vibes.But calling Republicans “weird” punches up at the politicians themselves, using everyday language that most people, including rightwing voters, relate to. Democrats didn’t whisper this insult in private, like Clinton; they owned it with pride. That’s how you win at vibes – don’t address the person or the policy, address how it makes you feel.It’s true that not everyone is viewing the vote through this lens. Considerable numbers of people older than 50 still watch nightly TV news, where the election is being discussed in drier terms. But those under 50 don’t even have cable. The majority of gen Z’s news is coming from social media, where these conversations dominate.It goes without saying there are some pretty serious issues facing the US. People are dying from extreme heat. As Trump tried to make hay out of the assassination attempt, the family of his supporter who was killed in the crossfire mourned their loss, as did the families of the over 10,000 other Americans who have been killed by firearms this year alone. A war in Gaza, abortion rights, a far-right supreme court, mass incarceration – these issues are on voters’ minds.Certainly the Harris and Trump campaigns agree that the stakes are high. According to Democrats’ fundraising emails, American democracy is on the line and it’s up to voters to give 20 bucks before it’s too late. If Trump is to be believed, things are even more dire: he’s said that if Democrats win, they will unleash “hell on earth”. Either candidate could make this election about the issues, but that way controversy and expenditure lie. As long as they keep fighting the vibes wars, they can stay suspended in effervescent little fictions. More
Critics say the vice president has been too cautious with the press. Her supporters think it’s the right strategy at the right time.The press has questions for Vice President Kamala Harris. She isn’t giving a whole lot of answers.In the nearly three weeks since President Biden withdrew his candidacy, catapulting Ms. Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket, the vice president has shown little eagerness to meet journalists in unscripted settings. She has not granted an interview or held a news conference. On Thursday, after a rally in Michigan, she held her first “gaggle” — an impromptu Q.-and-A. session — with reporters covering her campaign.It lasted 70 seconds.Ms. Harris replaced a Democratic nominee who has hosted fewer White House news conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan. Now she is taking a similarly cautious approach, relying on televised rallies and prepared statements amid a tightly controlled rollout of her candidacy.Asked on Thursday if she might sit for an interview anytime soon, Ms. Harris suggested that she would get through the convention first. “I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” she said, as aides signaled to the scrum of journalists that question time was over.Ms. Harris’s lack of engagement with the media has become a constant rallying cry on the political right, with Republican critics and Fox News stars accusing the vice president of ducking scrutiny. The Harris campaign says it is being thoughtful about how best to deploy its message, and to introduce a new candidate to crucial voters in battleground states.David Axelrod, the architect of former President Barack Obama’s winning campaigns, believes that Ms. Harris — who on Thursday said she had agreed to a prime-time debate on Sept. 10 with her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump — was trying to strike a balance.“This has been a whirlwind few weeks, and right now, buoyant rally speeches are working really well, so she’s riding the wave,” Mr. Axelrod wrote in an email. “But I’m sure they know that, in addition, presidential races impose a series of tests, including debates and unscripted interactions with voters and media, by which people come to know you. There is time, and I’m sure she’ll get there.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The former president’s economic agenda has made some notable reversals from the policies he pushed while in the White House.At his convention speech last month, former President Donald J. Trump declared that his new economic agenda would be built around a plan to eliminate taxes on tips, claiming that the idea would uplift the middle class and provide relief to hospitality workers around the country.“Everybody loves it,” Mr. Trump said to cheers. “Waitresses and caddies and drivers.”While the cost and feasibility of the idea has been questioned by economists and tax analysts, labor experts have noted another irony: As president, Mr. Trump tried to take tips away from workers and give the money to their employers.The reversal is one of many that Mr. Trump has made in his bid to return to the presidency and underscores his malleability in election-year policymaking. From TikTok to cryptocurrencies, the former president has been reinventing his platform on the fly as he aims to attract different swaths of voters. At times, Mr. Trump appears to be staking out new positions to differentiate himself from Ms. Harris or, perhaps, just to please crowds.To close observers of the machinations of Mr. Trump’s first term, the shift on tips, a policy that has become a regular part of his stump speech, has been particularly striking.“Trump is posing as a champion of tipped restaurant workers with his no-tax-on-tips proposal, but his actual record has been to slash protections for tipped workers at a time when they were struggling with a high cost of living,” said Paul Sonn, the director of National Employment Law Project Action, which promotes workers’ rights.In 2017, Mr. Trump’s Labor Department proposed changing federal regulations to allow employers to collect tips that their workers receive and use them for essentially any purpose as long as the workers were paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In theory, the flexibility would make it possible for restaurant owners to ensure that cooks and dishwashers received part of a pool of tip money, but in practice employers could pocket the tips and spend them at their discretion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A national survey found promising signs that key mental health measures for teens, especially girls, have improved since the depths of the pandemic.In 2021, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on teen mental health focused on a stark crisis: Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistent sadness, the highest rate in a decade.But the newest iteration of the survey, distributed in 2023 to more than 20,000 high school students across the country, suggests that some of the despair seen at the height of the pandemic may be lessening.Fifty-three percent of girls reported extreme depressive symptoms in 2023, down from 57 percent in 2021. For comparison, just 28 percent of teenage boys felt persistent sadness, about the same as in 2021.Suicide risk among girls stayed roughly the same as the last survey. But Black students, who reported troubling increases in suicide attempts in 2021, reported significantly fewer attempts in 2023.Still, the number of teens reporting persistent sadness in 2023 remained higher than at any point in the last decade aside from 2021. And around 65 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender high school students reported persistent hopelessness, compared with 31 percent of their cisgender or heterosexual peers. One in five L.G.B.T.Q. students reported attempting suicide in the past year.“For young people, there is still a crisis in mental health,” said Kathleen Ethier, head of the C.D.C.’s adolescent and school health program. “But we’re also seeing some really important glimmers of hope.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Online influencers claim the hormone can change the shape of your face. But experts say that misconstrues how cortisol works.“You’re not ugly. You just have cortisol face,” Mandana Zarghami told viewers at the start of a recent TikTok video, one of many on the social platform blaming a rounded, puffy face on high levels of the hormone.Hundreds of lifestyle and beauty influencers have claimed online that they’ve transformed their appearance by tackling stress. Many are sharing before and after photos that contrast their once fuller faces with new, lean jawlines, attributing the difference to lower levels of cortisol, the hormone produced in response to physical and mental stress. Some are even selling products and programs they claim will reduce cortisol and lead to a slimmed-down appearance.Ms. Zarghami, 28, said in an interview that her aim on TikTok was to educate people about the effects of high cortisol, though she does have a wellness business, through which she sells a “hormone-balance tea.”When she began experiencing visible swelling of her face and abdomen in 2020, Ms. Zarghami consulted a doctor, who suggested stress might be to blame. She felt frustrated by the response: “How can I control my stress if you’re not giving me tools?” she wondered.Ms. Zarghami made lifestyle changes that she believed had reduced both her cortisol level and her persistent facial swelling. These included drinking diluted apple cider vinegar after waking, and then green tea throughout the day. She also stopped weight lifting and instead started doing low-impact exercise and walking.Ms. Zarghami later shared those tips online, claiming that “cortisol face” could be tackled without drugs or expensive products. “I did a lot of research on how to fix this naturally,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
If deals are struck, Meta may incorporate the actors’ voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, people with knowledge of the effort said.Meta is in discussions with Awkwafina, Judi Dench and other actors and influencers for the right to incorporate their voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, according to three people with knowledge of the talks, as the company pushes to build more products that feature artificial intelligence.Apart from Ms. Dench and Awkwafina, Meta is in talks with the comedian Keegan-Michael Key and other celebrities, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. They added that all of Hollywood’s top talent agencies were involved in negotiations with the tech giant.The talks remain fluid, and it is unclear which actors and influencers, if any, may sign on to the project, the people said. If the parties come to an agreement, Meta could pay millions of dollars in fees to the actors.A Meta spokesman declined to comment. The discussions were reported earlier by Bloomberg.Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, which the biggest tech companies are racing to develop and lead. Meta has plowed billions into weaving the technology into its social networking apps and advertising business, including by creating artificially intelligent characters that could chat through text across its messaging apps.On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, increased how much his company would spend on A.I. and other expenses this year to at least $37 billion, up from $30 billion at the beginning of 2024. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would rather build too fast “rather than too late” to prevent his competitors from gaining an edge in the A.I. race.One area of A.I. that is rapidly emerging are chatbots with voice abilities, which act as virtual assistants. In May, OpenAI, a leading A.I. company, unveiled a version of its ChatGPT chatbot that could receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos. It was part of a wider effort to combine conversational chatbots with voice assistants like the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Los políticos suelen sufrir ataques racistas y sexistas en internet. Pero Harris está siendo atacada en más plataformas, con nuevas tecnologías y ante audiencias más numerosas que Barack Obama y Hillary Clinton.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]En internet ya se hacían ataques racistas y sexistas mucho antes de que la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris iniciara su campaña presidencial este mes, incluso durante la campaña de Barack Obama y Hillary Clinton. Sin embargo, desde las últimas elecciones presidenciales, se ha vuelto aún más virulento y más central para la política estadounidense.En 2008, Obama se enfrentó a un ecosistema en el que Facebook tenía millones de usuarios, no miles de millones, y el iPhone apenas tenía un año de haber salido al mercado. En 2016, la campaña de Clinton vigilaba un puñado de plataformas de redes sociales, no decenas. En 2020, cuando Harris era la compañera de fórmula de Joe Biden, era mucho más difícil utilizar la inteligencia artificial para producir las representaciones pornográficas falsas y los videos engañosos en los que ahora se dice que aparece.En solo una semana desde que Harris —negra, de ascendencia india y mujer— se convirtió en la presunta candidata presidencial demócrata, han aparecido falsas narrativas y teorías conspirativas sobre ella por todo el panorama digital.Muchas cosas han cambiado de cara a las elecciones de 2024. Ahora, a esas afirmaciones se han incrementado, alimentadas por un tono cada vez más agresivo del discurso político respaldado por políticos de alto nivel, impulsado por la IA y otras nuevas tecnologías, y difundido a través de un paisaje en línea mucho más fragmentado y repleto de plataformas sin moderación.“La esfera política ha sido sexista y racista durante mucho tiempo. Lo que ha cambiado es el ecosistema de medios en el que crece esa retórica problemática”, afirmó Meg Heckman, profesora adjunta de Periodismo de la Universidad Northeastern. “Es casi como si hubiera varios universos mediáticos paralelos, de modo que no todos operamos con un conjunto de hechos compartidos”, agregó.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
