I don't think people are ready for this kind of joke yet.
Alexios Mantzarlis
@mantzarlis.com
Tech, facts, and carbonara. mantzarlis.com
"Kew Gardens has had a weather station since 1871. This July was, based on third party analysis of Met Office data collected at the site, the first calendar month on record where no rainfall was measured at Kew."
London's first month without rain
Plus: There's nowhere to bury the dead • London wants to keep its money • When will it stop being so damn hot • Who is to blame for turning off the air conditioning in the tower block?
londoncentric.media
Today's free Indicator Briefing is *full* of things you need to know, tools you can use, and research you should read on the digital deception beat. Check it out:
Briefing: Musk sues Minnesota over synthetic nudes law
Plus: Tools for tracking foreign interference and LinkedIn launches "AI slop" button
indicator.media
Brazilian politics is nothing if not creative. Former president Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest and cannot communicate publicly in support of his son Flávio’s presidential campaign. So Flávio used an AI avatar of his dad at a rally on Saturday. The opposition has presented a legal challenge.
Jair Bolsonaro uses AI avatar to endorse son's campaign
YouTube video by Reuters
youtube.com
Google Earth, a tool often used as a source of satellite imagery to verify photos and videos, has added a feature that allows you to alter satellite imagery with AI, for reasons. blog.google/products-and...
Transform any place with Nano Banana in Google Earth
Custom images — generated from Google Earth satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery — help you redesign any location.
blog.google
We need to take a moment to salute Gianni Infantino for being the first person in history to get 55 European countries to unanimously agree on anything.
I feel like @dwillner.bsky.social will have thoughts on how useful this "Seems like AI slop" reporting button will be for LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/posts/hsrini...
NEW: The website once owned by Cambridge Analytica (!) is now an AI content farm. Rebranded as "CA Privacy Watch," the site is littered with plagiarism and weird errors. It's also utilized at least one fake writer whose face seems to have been stolen from a random guy. futurism.com/artificial-i...
Cambridge Analytica's Website Is Now an AI Slop Farm
Cambridge Analytica has returned, in a very 2026 way: CambridgeAnalytica.org is now an AI-powered content farm.
futurism.com
This is a big week for AI transparency as regulation kicks in: 🐻 In California on Saturday sanjosespotlight.com/ai-transpare... 🇪🇺 The EU on Sunday www.techpolicy.press/-brussels-ga...
Brussels Gains New AI Act Enforcement Powers as Autonomous AI Tests Regulators
The EU AI Act enters a new phase as Brussels gains enforcement powers over AI companies and introduces transparency rules for AI-generated content.
techpolicy.press
the shapes are also off, i would add
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at a global conference taking place in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screen...
reuters.com
oh my "Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”)."
A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months
When the first step goes wrong, bad results follow.
arstechnica.com
I'm still too European to comprehend how the First Amendment protects this crap but I do worry that Musk may win this one
Elon Musk's xAI sues Minnesota over law to ban 'nudify' apps
Elon Musk's xAI, now owned by SpaceX, is challenging a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in Minnesota
cnbc.com
Russia charged Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday with facilitating terrorist activity and placed the Soviet-born Kremlin critic on an international wanted list.
Russia charges Telegram founder Durov with facilitating terrorism
Moscow claims the platform allows Ukrainian intelligence services to recruit spies and support terrorist activities.
politico.eu
deepfake nudes are, of course, integral to the future of space exploration
Lora Kolodny@lorak.bsky.social · last wk.SpaceX-owned xAI, the developer of Grok, sued Minnesota AG to challenge a law coming into effect in the state that will ban "nudify" apps, use of these AI image generators to make non-consenting intimate images, aka AI deepfake porn of real people including minors. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/28/s...
1. I don't think Pangram should be used to definitively assess individual pieces of text (see: indicator.media/p/what-i-lea...) 2. I left Substack and do not trust its leadership one bit 3. However, I also don't think you can be anti-slop and deem Substack's intervention a "witch hunt"
Substackers Say New AI Detection Tool Is a ‘Witch Hunt’
“I’m not going to apologize for using AI in the creation process.”
404media.co
I'm preparing a guide on red teaming AI tools for safety. If you have background in this space, what are some essential resources you turn to frequently or have recommended to newcomers in this space? Here are a few I share:
New on @indicator.media: Passport bro content painting Latvia as a "leftover ladies’ paradise" where men "are more valuable than gold" has escaped containment and polluted AI results
How tabloid claims about Latvia’s “man drought” fueled a misleading social media frenzy and polluted Google results
Passport bro content objectifying Latvian women has taken over video and search platforms
indicator.media
Argentina's first shot will probably be in the penalty shootout they win.
I think this is valuable and the best use of Pangram (across large corpora, not to make definitive calls on single articles). But it's worth noting a selection bias: people test content they already suspect of being AI. And it should obviously be read as a marketing tool for the company as well.
AI Content Is Everywhere on Social Media, Especially LinkedIn | Pangram Labs
We scanned over 1 million social media posts for AI content. It turned up on every platform we checked, and 1 in 3 top LinkedIn posts flagged as AI-generated.
pangram.com
@epurina.bsky.social hi! i'm hoping to chat with you or someone else from the ReCheck team for a piece on @indicator.media. might you message me your email? thanks!
New ↪️ ✨ : Allbirds recently pivoted its business from shoes to AI servers. Its share price spiked 860% but has plunged back down. That's a pattern repeated across many recent AI rebrands as former cancer drug and goldmining cos add buzzy AI-related terms to their names, I found
First World Cup at 64 teams and we have absolutely no surprise in the semis
