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      in Elections

      Timothee Chalamet Was a Knicks Superfan Before He Was Famous

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      Tim Chalamet, an unknown teenager, was with the Knicks in the hard times. Timothée Chalamet, the famous actor, is loving every second of the team’s deep playoff run.Timothée Chalamet, the Academy Award-nominated actor, has been impossible to miss during the New York Knicks’ feisty run through the N.B.A. playoffs. A courtside staple at Madison Square Garden, Mr. Chalamet seemed to get nearly as much screen time as Jalen Brunson, the team’s star guard.Mr. Chalamet, 29, was particularly animated as the Knicks eliminated the Boston Celtics in their second-round series. He embraced Bad Bunny. He dapped up Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks’ starting center. He posed for the cameras with Spike Lee, the self-appointed dean of Knicks fandom. He leaned out the window of a sport utility vehicle on Friday to celebrate with other fans in the shadow of the Garden after the Knicks’ series-clinching win.He even earned praise on X for getting Kylie and Kendall Jenner, both famous Angelenos, to cheer alongside him at the Garden, in a post that has been viewed more than 23 million times. (That he is dating Kylie undoubtedly helped win them over.)A focus on celebrities at N.B.A. games is nothing new. For years, the Knicks have pushed the concept of the Garden’s Celebrity Row — their answer to the star-studded floor seats at Los Angeles Lakers games. But while Jack Nicholson spent decades holding court at Lakers games, and Drake has been a sideline fixture for the Toronto Raptors, the Knicks of Mr. Chalamet’s childhood often filled out the floor seats with lower-rung celebrities and entertainers who just happened to be in town. And Mr. Lee, of course.These days, Celebrity Row at the Garden delivers on its name. And in that group of A-listers, Mr. Chalamet has the fan credentials to hang with any of them.Evidence of Mr. Chalamet’s longstanding loyalty is apparent in social media posts from November 2010, around the time that Mr. Chalamet, then 14, was attending LaGuardia High School in Manhattan. He was not yet a star. His breakout role in the Showtime series “Homeland” was a couple of years away.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

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Day Grok Lost Its Mind

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      On Tuesday, someone posted a video on X of a procession of crosses, with a caption reading, “Each cross represents a white farmer who was murdered in South Africa.” Elon Musk, South African by birth, shared the post, greatly expanding its visibility. The accusation of genocide being carried out against white farmers is either a horrible moral stain or shameless alarmist disinformation, depending on whom you ask, which may be why another reader asked Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from the Musk-founded company xAI, to weigh in. Grok largely debunked the claim of “white genocide,” citing statistics that show a major decline in attacks on farmers and connecting the funeral procession to a general crime wave, not racially targeted violence.By the next day, something had changed. Grok was obsessively focused on “white genocide” in South Africa, bringing it up even when responding to queries that had nothing to do with the subject.How much do the Toronto Blue Jays pay the team’s pitcher, Max Scherzer? Grok responded by discussing white genocide in South Africa. What’s up with this picture of a tiny dog? Again, white genocide in South Africa. Did Qatar promise to invest in the United States? There, too, Grok’s answer was about white genocide in South Africa.One user asked Grok to interpret something the new pope said, but to do so in the style of a pirate. Grok gamely obliged, starting with a fitting, “Argh, matey!” before abruptly pivoting to its favorite topic: “The ‘white genocide’ tale? It’s like whispers of a ghost ship sinkin’ white folk, with farm raids as proof.”Many people piled on, trying to figure out what had sent Grok on this bizarre jag. The answer that emerged says a lot about why A.I. is so powerful — and why it’s so disruptive.Large language models, the kind of generative A.I. that forms the basis of Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini and other chatbots, are not traditional computer programs that simply follow our instructions. They’re statistical models trained on huge amounts of data. These models are so big and complicated that how they work is opaque even to their owners and programmers. Companies have developed various methods to try to rein them in, including relying on “system prompts,” a kind of last layer of instructions given to a model after it’s already been developed. These are meant to keep the chatbots from, say, teaching people how to make meth or spewing ugly, hateful speech. But researchers consistently find that these safeguards are imperfect. If you ask the right way, you can get many chatbots to teach you how to make meth. L.L.M.s don’t always just do what they’re told.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

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Crass, flashy, outrageous: Trump media blitz redefines meaning of presidential

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      There was a disturbance in the Force. Donald Trump celebrated “Star Wars Day” this week with an AI-generated image of himself as a muscle-bound warrior holding a red lightsaber in front of two US flags and eagles.It seemed like a bit of fun but appeared on the White House’s official X account with a dark political message: “Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion – you’re the Empire. May the 4th be with you.”Star Wars nerds were quick to point out that a red lightsaber implies that Trump has embraced the Dark Side. Actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, wrote on social media: “Proof this guy is full of SITH.” But the joking-not-joking post was also indicative of a wider trend: a revolution in the way the White House communicates with the American public.Over the past three-and-a-half months, the US president and his team have launched a relentless media offensive based on crass language, flashy tactics, shock-value videos and social media memes and posts that are outrageous by design. They have used platforms and personalities to bypass traditional outlets and directly engage the Maga (Make America great again) base. They have found new ways to drown out critics, goad opponents and antagonise the world.The embrace of viral far-right culture has nurtured a parallel information ecosystem through pro-Trump outlets enjoying a significant growth in influence, access to power and financial investment. It is helping the president dominate the “attention economy” and reshape narratives around the economy, immigration and other policy issues. But it also alarms critics who warn that insults and lies are going unchecked.Tara Setmayer, a political commentator and former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump has always understood mass communication and the power of propaganda and his rise and success politically will go down in history as one of the most successful propaganda operations ever. He has completely upended any semblance of decency, of class, of gravitas when it comes to presidential communications.“It’s literally turning presidential methods of communication into the WWE – the imagery, the immaturity, the outrageousness. All of those things seem to be more important than truth or respect for the office and what it means to use the power of the bully pulpit to speak to the American people and the world.”Presidential communications have come a long way. Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential press conference in 1913. Franklin Roosevelt pioneered radio with his informal “fireside chats” during the Great Depression and the second world war, articulating policies such as the New Deal directly to citizens.View image in fullscreenJohn F Kennedy leveraged TV for live addresses – for example, during the Cuban missile crisis. Ronald Reagan, a former actor, relished televised addresses, earning the nickname “the great communicator”. Barack Obama was the first president to use platforms such as YouTube and Twitter extensively, hosting online town halls and bypassing old media.Over the past decade, Trump has combined the old with the new, holding traditional in-person rallies while also being prolific on Twitter during his first term – a single all-caps tweet could dominate headlines, move financial markets or upend global diplomacy – and now his own Truth Social platform.But only since returning to office has he turned the White House into a quasi-content provider in its own right, continuing the aggressive media strategy honed during his winning election campaign to achieve what his communications director, Steven Cheung, has called “full-spectrum dominance”.In January, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted a photo of men in chains boarding a plane and wrote: “Deportation flights have begun.” In February, the White House posted on X a Valentine’s Day card with the faces of Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan with the caption: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”It also posted a video of shackled immigrants being loaded on to planes, with the sounds of clanking chains and whirring jet engines in the background. The caption said “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight”. In March, on the day of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, the White House’s rapid-response account posted more than 200 times to X, promoting clips and favourable reactions.Trump has spent his career living by the rule that, when he takes a hit, he hits back harder. That philosophy now infuses the White House. When the actor Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video in which she cried about the deportation of children, it quickly produced video interviews with the mothers of children killed by undocumented immigrants.When Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man with protected legal status, was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Leavitt said “outrage” about the case by Democrats and the media “has been nothing short of despicable”. Dozens of posters of arrested undocumented immigrants were placed along the White House driveway, ensuring they would appear in the live shots of TV journalists.View image in fullscreenSome content is downright bizarre. The White House shared a photo of a fake Time magazine cover with Trump in a golden crown and the caption, “LONG LIVE THE KING”. Another post contained an AI-generated video that showed the Gaza Strip transformed into a luxurious, gilded resort called “Trump Gaza”. And earlier this month, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continued.Setmayer, who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, commented: “It’s so outrageous that it would be comical if it weren’t so serious. There’s nothing funny or comical about insulting one of the world’s largest religions and putting yourself in that role. It’s blasphemous. But it’s also a window into how Donald Trump views himself: this is part of that malignant narcissism.“He is so desperate for adulation and attention and being all-powerful that he would project himself in a cartoon-like rendering of positions of power using the White House platform to push it. This is something a maladjusted 12-year-old does. Not the most powerful man in the world.”The Trump White House has a symbiotic relationship with a new wave of podcasters, X users and YouTubers who enjoy access to the briefing room and presidential press pool, often asking Trump conspicuously sycophantic questions. Employees of outlets such as the National Pulse and the Daily Wire have been invited on foreign trips with cabinet officials. The exposure is leading to bigger advertising deals and distribution contracts.No one embodies the new era of White House communications better than Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest-ever press secretary and probably the most zealously on-message. She has shown an uncanny ability to channel Trump’s political psyche, his relish for disparaging the so-called legacy media and his willingness to play fast and loose with facts.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “She’s approaching it in a very different way than others have done. She is forthrightly being a person who communicates the message of the White House rather than responds to the questions of the press. You can query whether that’s the job she ought to be doing but she is doing it in an outstanding way.View image in fullscreen“She is mature beyond her years. She’s articulate. She both can deliver the message and respond in an interactive way, which is something that some press secretaries have difficulty with. If the job of the press secretary is to send the message of the administration on a regular basis in person, she is knocking the ball out of the park.”But Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, is among those who query whether that is what the job is about. He said: “She seems to be in nonstop belligerent mode and showing disdain for the reporters in the room. It’s nothing but a propaganda show. She’s not doing the job as it’s traditionally been defined. She’s got a whole different role in the Trump cosmos.”Leavitt presents a weekly “Maga Minute” roundup video on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms. Last week also saw the launch of White House Wire, a news-style website that publishes exclusively positive coverage. Its format closely resembles the Drudge Report, the rightwing site founded in the 1990s that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.When he was working for Clinton, McCurry initially tried to dismiss questions about Lewinsky by retorting: “Are you really going to ask a question based on something in the Drudge Report?” He acknowledges that today’s White House is operating in a very different media environment – but argues that is no excuse for its lack of accountability.McCurry said: “The concept is if you keep throwing stuff up against the wall all the time, the press tries to chase everything down and they get befuddled a little bit because they don’t have a way of focusing back on things that might truly matter in the world.“It’s a strategy to try to overwhelm all of the legitimate sources of discourse and just keep changing the tune every day to match whatever it is that you want to try to get done. It’s either completely malevolent or completely brilliant. It’s hard to know which.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      TikTok, Facing a U.S. Ban, Tells Advertisers: We’re Here and Confident

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      The company’s executives tried to reassure potential advertisers about the app’s future in the United States without directly addressing a looming ban under a federal law.“TikTok is here — we are here,” Khartoon Weiss, the company’s vice president of global business solutions, told a packed warehouse of advertisers on Tuesday in Manhattan.“We are absolutely confident in our platform and confident in the future of this platform,” she declared.That statement was the closest TikTok advertising executives got to addressing the app’s uncertain fate in the United States in the company’s annual spring pitch to marketers. Under a federal law and executive order, the app is set to be banned in the country next month if the Chinese owner of the company, ByteDance, does not sell it.Hundreds of representatives from companies like L’Oreal and Unilever and various ad agencies scrambled to find seats for an event hosted by the comedian Hasan Minhaj that heavily emphasized TikTok’s role as a cultural juggernaut.TikTok was more than a video platform, Mr. Minhaj told the crowd. TikTok was “the cultural moments you talk about at work, the jokes you talk about in your group chat, the language you use in your everyday life,” he said.The tone of the event marked a departure from TikTok’s presentation a year ago, when the company was smarting from the federal law that promised to ban the app in the United States because of national security concerns related to the company’s Chinese ownership. Last year’s pitch started with one of TikTok’s top executives telling roughly 300 attendees that the company would fight the law in court and prevail and was “not backing down.”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

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Some Teen Wellness Influencers Are Embracing Views in Line With the ‘MAHA’ Movement

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      The Instagram clip starts with a warning. “If you believe ‘ignorance is bliss,’” it says, “don’t watch this video.” As an influencer slices fruit on a cutting board, a series of provocative claims descend down the screen — about what she says is actually in peanut butter, vanilla flavoring and the rain, among other things.It’s the kind of post that has become common in the online wellness world, where prominent voices often express skepticism of the establishment and an openness to conspiracy theories.But what makes this influencer unusual is her age. She’s only 17, and a high school junior.Ava Noe, a teenager based in the Boston area, has amassed more than 25,000 Instagram followers while criticizing ultra-processed foods and promoting colostrum supplements, mouth tape and beef tallow. Her posts have suggested that iodized salt is “toxic” and described fluoride as “poison.” And her popularity on the platform — where she goes by @cleanlivingwithava — has earned her a paid partnership with a fluoride-free toothpaste company and affiliate work with other brands, including one that sells “non-toxic” skin care products.Ms. Noe, a self-described “crunchy teen,” is just one of a number of young influencers who appeal to other health-conscious kids their age. At times, their anti-establishment viewpoints fall in line with those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which has expressed skepticism of the scientific community and large food corporations.The teens’ videos, while at times factually questionable, highlight a desire among some to avoid the chronic illnesses and other conditions that have plagued their elders.Annika Zude, 16, was inspired to start her own health account on TikTok because of how bad ultra-processed foods made her feel, she said. Her father is also an online health influencer.Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesWe 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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Posts an Image of Himself as Pope

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      The president has joked about being the next pontiff, but the image, which appeared to be A.I.-generated, took things a step further and drew some pushback.President Trump on Tuesday had a ready answer when reporters asked who he would like to see become the next supreme pontiff. “I’d like to be Pope,” he joked to reporters at the White House. “That would be my number one choice.”He took the joke a step further on Saturday, sharing what appeared to be an A.I.-generated photo of himself wearing the traditional vestments of the Pope on social media. The photo depicts him in a white cassock with a cross around his neck, his face solemn as he raises a pointed finger.The origins of the photo were not immediately clear, and Mr. Trump did not include any commentary in his post. He shared the image on Truth Social, Instagram and X, and the White House reposted it on its official Instagram and X accounts.The idea of “Pope Trump,” as some people called it, was immediately polarizing. Some religious people, including Catholics, did not see the humor in it, calling the photo offensive, at a time when millions of people were still mourning Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday. Several commenters on Truth Social, which is run by a company controlled by Mr. Trump, called the post sacrilegious and said it fueled misinformation.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said posting the photo during a period of mourning was evidence that Mr. Trump was “unserious and incapable.”But some conservative Republicans have been playing along with the president’s joke this week. Among them was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” he said Tuesday in a post on X. “The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides,” he added. “Watching for white smoke … Trump MMXXVIII!”A screenshot of an image, likely created with A.I., of President Trump wearing papal robes. After the president shared it, the image was posted to the official White House Instagram account.via InstagramThe Vatican, which is deep in preparations for the election of Pope Francis’s successor, could not immediately be reached for comment on the image.It is not the first time that Mr. Trump has shared polemical content that appeared to be generated with artificial intelligence. In February, he posted a video that depicted the Gaza Strip reimagined as an opulent resort emblazoned with his name. A representative for the Hamas-run government in Gaza called the video “disgraceful.”After his jest to reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Trump, who has significantly expanded the influence of conservative Christians in the White House, said he had no strong preference for pope. But then he pointed to the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, as one of his favorite candidates. Cardinal Dolan is not among the front-runners that have emerged to be the next pope, who will be elected at a conclave that begins Wednesday. More

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      in Elections

      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian Brain Rot Crew

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      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian brain rot crew, an absurd group of A.I.-generated characters that are flooding TikTok.The first thing you need to know about Italian brain rot is that it isn’t strictly Italian.The second thing you need to know is that any discussion of what it means will most likely make you seem very uncool (you’re just supposed to get it) and will probably involve a lot of head scratching.You have been warned.A little etymology, to start. Last year, the Oxford University Press designated “brain rot” the word of the year. The phrase refers to the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swathes of “trivial or unchallenging” content online. It can also be used to describe the content itself; in other words, the term refers to both the cause and the effect of intellectual deterioration.The Italian brain rot subgenre emerged in January, when absurd characters generated by artificial intelligence started to show up in TikTok feeds. The characters melded animals or humans with inanimate objects, and many were tagged with the hashtag #italianbrainrot, which now has over 3 billion views. The memes have some vague Italian-ness to them — either their names sound Italian or they touch on stereotypical (or reductive, depending on who you ask) Italian cultural markers, like coffee, and are often accompanied by A.I.-generated audio of what sounds like a heavily accented Italian man’s narration but, when translated, is often nonsensical.That the memes are tagged brain rot is a cheeky acknowledgment that the content is “ridiculous” and “mumbo jumbo,” said Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of communication at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. It is also, he added, a recognition of the ridiculous universe being created by and for those who would be considered extremely online, with a nod to the broader proliferation of “A.I. junk” or slop.First, there was a shark with feet wearing Nike sneakers, called Tralalero Tralala (the TikTok account associated with the first iteration of that character has been deleted). Then came Bombardiro Crocodillo, a military bomber plane with a crocodile head. Among the most recent, and most popular, entries into the cast of characters is Ballerina Cappuccina — a ballerina with a cappuccino cup head, created in March by Susanu Sava-Tudor, a 24-year-old in Romania. The entire trend, Mr. Sava-Tudor said in an email, is a “form of absurd humor” that is “less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.” So far, the original Ballerina Cappuccina video, in which Mr. Sava-Tudor spelled the character’s name Balerinna Cappucinna, has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok and 3.8 million likes.The lyrics to the Italian soundtrack attached to the video, when translated, are as follows:Cappucina dancer, mi mi miIs the wife of the Cappucino Assasino,And she loves music, la la la

      @mr_lindsay_sped Replying to @Itsdannykantu Everyone wanted to know about #ballerinacappuccina so here she is! Stick around to the end to see me strut my stuff to the sound. 😅 #italianbrainrot #ballerinacappuccina #genalpha #genalphaslangs #teachersoftiktok ♬ оригинальный звук – WXRMANE 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

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Grandpa Robbers’ Go on Trial in Paris Over 2016 Kim Kardashian Heist

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      The reality TV star and entrepreneur was tied up and held at gunpoint, and jewelry worth nearly $9 million was stolen in the incident.Ten people tied to a group nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” went on trial in Paris on Monday over accusations that they plotted and carried out a brazen robbery against Kim Kardashian in the French capital nearly a decade ago.The defendants are accused of involvement in a violent attack on the reality TV star and entrepreneur that prosecutors have attributed to a group of veteran criminals, some of whom are in their 70s.Ms. Kardashian was gagged, tied up and robbed at gunpoint of jewelry worth at least 8 million euros, or nearly $9 million, at a luxury residence she had rented during Paris fashion week in October 2016.The overnight robbery of a prominent American celebrity shocked the world and raised safety concerns for tourists in Paris, which at the time was still traumatized by a string of terrorist attacks.Five men dressed in police uniforms and wearing balaclavas burst into Ms. Kardashian’s residence. They forced the night watchman to guide two of them to her apartment and to translate as they tied her up. They took jewels, including her diamond engagement ring, and other valuables and left on foot and on bicycle minutes later.Most of the jewelry was not recovered. But investigators found DNA, including on the zip ties that were used to bind Ms. Kardashian’s hands and feet, and police made a number of arrests three months later. Prosecutors said several of those arrested, who were in their 50s and 60s at the time, were longtime criminals.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