' WHITE LOTUS ' WINGS : THAILAND HONOURS

The new season of ' White Lotus' set in Thailand is critical of its characters but reinforces antiquated orientalist stereotypes itself.

Did you hear? There's been another murder at a White Lotus hotel, this time the one in Thailand.

Back for its third season, Mike White's critically acclaimed and Emmy award-winning tragic-comedy series follows the terrible exploits of the White Lotus' rich, primarily white, holidaymakers, alongside the local employees.

There is social satire, a lot of drama and always a death in paradise. In the first season there was death in Hawaii, the second in Sicily, Italy, and now, in the third, there's death in Koh Samui.

As someone who has researched on screen representations of Thailand, I was intrigued to see how the show handled this locale. Disappointingly, the exoticness and beauty of Thailand is foregrounded, as is the mysticism of Buddhism.

The series follows four groups of people, the majority of whom the audience are made to feel repulsed by in some way.

The first is the Ratliff family. There's father, Timothy [ Jason Isaacs] who works in finance and mother, Victoria  [ Parker Posey ], whose anxiety means she is heavily medicated and constantly falling asleep.

Then the kids daughter, Piper [ Sarah Catherine Hook ], who is studying Buddhism; son Lochlan [ Sam Nivola ] who has poor posture from being glued to his computer, and Saxon [ Patrick Schwarzenegger ], the eldest of the three, whose primary focus is having sex.

The second group is three-middle-aged women who are on a '' girls' holiday'' who abandon their inhibitions as the series progresses.

They are routinely referred to as cougars by Saxon. Then there is odd couple Chelsea [ Aimee Lou Wood] and her older partner Rick [ Walton Goggins ], who seem to be going through a rocky patch.

The one likeable person, Belinda [ Natasha Rothwell ], is a character previously seen working in the spa in the first season's Hawaii resort. She's in Thailand on a research trip for her own well-being business.

The World Students Society thanks Andrew Russell, a lecturer at Faculty of Creative & Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

SCIENCE LAB SCREAM : CROCODILE'S LUNCH

PTEROSAUR on the menu : How this winged reptile became a crocodile's lunch.

Around 78 million years ago, something took a bite out of a young pterosaur.

Pterosaurs were large, flying reptiles that roamed our planet skies when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Some species were giants. But even their large size didn't keep them off the menu.

Paleontologists have discovered a tooth mark in the neck vertebra of a pterosaur that died in what is now the Canadian province of Alberta.

In a paper to the The Journal of Paleontology, they suggest that the tooth mark was made by a prehistoric relative of the crocodile that either snatched the young pterosaur from the shore or scavenged its dead body.

The fossil is now on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta.

Pterosaurs came in all-shapes and sizes and were found worldwide during their tenure on the planet, which lasted from 220 million to 65 million years ago. But they had fragile bones that were often destroyed before being preserved in the fossil record.

Paleontologists mostly find neck and finger bones for this species, and that makes them '' quite mysterious, '' said David Hone, a paleontologist in London not involved in the research. [ Freda Krerier ]

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The World Students Society thanks The Express Tribune.

Headline, February 27 2025/ ''' EMPOWER HUMANITY EMBOLDEN '''

''' EMPOWER HUMANITY 

EMBOLDEN '''

TEACHER AMINA FAHEEM KHAN - Badrashi, KPK province, formerly from HeadStart School - a highly respected teacher and a gifted administrator, a great mother and a devoted wife, gave up a blossoming career to care for her: Aging parents, in-laws and elders. 

It is a great honor to nominate her as a lifelong member of The World Students Society, and as !WOW!'s head for her growing village, to quickly grasp and get considered to head KPK province.  This publishing is especially dedicated to the lasting and loving memory of her late brother, Habib Khan. 

'' AS A BOARD MEMBER AT Microsoft and an early funder of ChatGPT's developer, OpenAI, I have a significant personal stake in the great future of Artificial Intelligence,'' delights Reid Hoffman.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL EMPOWER HUMANITY : I recently learned of a new way people are using artificial intelligence : '' Based on everything you know about me, '' they ask ChatGPT, draw a picture of what you think my current life looks like.''

Like any capable carnival lind reader, ChatGPT appears to mix sage bets with more specific details. It often produces images of people sitting in a home office with a computer. Perhaps an acoustic guitar sits in the corner or an orange cat prowls in the background. But also on occasion something like, say, a large head of broccoli will be sitting in the middle of the desk.

Off-kilter elements like that are what gives these portraits not just their quirky charm but also flashes of epiphany. By absorbing the wide-ranging mix of work questions, personal goals and everything else that makes up our ChatGPT  history, the system teases out patterns and connections that may not be readily apparent.

In this way, these portraits don't just reflect. They also reveal. Presented with such depictions, a user may be compelled to ask : Am I really mentioning cruciferous vegetables in my chats so often that ChatGPT thinks they're a central part of my life?

But my stake is more than just financial. I truly believe that by giving billions of people access to A.I. tools they can use in whatever ways they choose, we can create a world where A.I. augments and amplifies human creativity and labor instead of simply replacing it.

That's why I find these ChatGPT portraits so fascinating : They clarify and dramatize enduring concerns about identity and human privacy in the digital age. How much exactly is  ChatGPT remembering? They implicitly ask?

How judiciously is it processing these memories, and who benefits most when it does? As a user of these technologies, do you sense that you're being monitored in ways that make you feel as if you're being exposed, controlled and being manipulated? Or do you feel seen?

Few truly powerful technologies come without any risks. Perhaps third parties with different motives and values from your own will somehow gain access to the data. Once made aware of your past patterns, these parties might be able to effectively anticipate and influence your future decisions.

 

While I recognise that some people see such risks as disqualifying, what I've found through my own experiences is that sharing more information in more contexts can also improve people's lives.

In our concern about potential harms, it can be easy to overlook the many positive effects technology has had. I co-founded Linkedin, a professional social network, more than two decades ago, but I still get a steady flow of missives from people who have found jobs, started businesses or made promising career changes because of interactions they've had on the platform.

And this is all because they're willing to share information about their work experiences and skills in ways that were once considered both imprudent and impractical. 

Tech skeptics have long used the objective '' Orwellian '' to cast everything from a video recommendation feature to turn-by-turn navigation apps as threats to individual autonomy, but the history of technological innovation in the 21st century tells a different story.

In '' 1984,'' George Orwell's classic novel of state oppression, powerful telescreens enable a totalitarian regime to rule over dispossessed proles with unchecked omnipotence.

But today we live in a world where individual identity is the coin of the realm - where plumbers and patients alike aspire to be social media influencers and cultural power flows increasingly to self-made operators including :

The one man podcasting empire, Joe Rogan, the YouTube megastar Mr. Beast and human rights activist MALALA YUSAFZAI.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on A.I., Fears, and Empowerment, continues. The World Students Society thanks Reid Hoffman.

With most respectful dedication to Leaders of the World, Grandparents, Parents, the Global Founder Framers of !WOW!, and then Students, Professors and Teachers.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world - : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless

ALISHBA KHAN BARECH : GLOBAL HONOURS PRECIS

Alishba Khan Barech from Nushki, Balochistan has been selected as a finalist for the 2025 Women Changing the World Awards.

Among 751, shortlisted nominations, the judges have selected Alishba Khan Barech as a finalist for the Young Woman of the Year Award, recognizing her extraordinary contributions to literature, advocacy and youth empowerment, said a press release issued here Friday.

Hailing from Nushki, near the Afghan border - a region often associated with militancy - Alishba is determined to redefine its legacy. Instead of a militant, she hopes to be the one who shapes its narrative.

She is Pakistan's youngest novelist, having written her debut novel at 13, and the country's youngest memorist, beginning her memoir at 14. By 16, she became Pakistan's self-published author.

Her journey extends beyond literature - she has served as a UNICEF Pakistan ambassador for polio eradication, a youth ambassador for mental health in UNICEF's On My Mind campaign, and a youth ambassador for the Quetta Gladiators.

The World Students Society thanks The Express Tribune.

Silence - Music - Protest

Is This What We Want features recordings of empty studios, performance spaces, highlighting danger to creative trade posed by AI.

More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, Cat Stevens and Annie Lennox, have released a silent album in protest of the proposed changes to British copyright laws around artificial intelligence (AI), which they warned could lead to legalised music theft.

The album, titled Is This What We Want, was launched on Tuesday and features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, as backlash against the plan grows in the United Kingdom.

The proposed changes would allow AI developers to train their models on any material to which they have lawful access, and would require creators to proactively opt out to stop their work from being used.

Critics, including the artists participating in the silent album, say it would reverse the principle of copyright law, which grants exclusive control to creators over their work.

The emergence of AI has posed a threat to the creative industry, including music, raising legal and ethical questions on a new technological platform that could produce its own output without paying creators of original content.

Bush and other writers and musicians denounced the proposals in UK law as a “wholesale giveaway” to Silicon Valley in a letter to The Times newspaper.

Ed Newton-Rex, organiser of the project, said musicians were “united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan”.

In a very rare move, UK newspapers also highlighted their concerns, launching a campaign featuring wrap-around advertisements on the front of almost every national daily, with an inside editorial by the papers’ editors.

A public consultation on the legal changes will close later on Tuesday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to become a superpower in the AI industry. Responding to the album, a government spokesperson said the current copyright and AI regime was holding back the creative industries from “realising their full potential”.

Source: Al Jazeera And News Agencies