Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’

On Monday morning, the Trump administration used a picture of Halo’s Master Chief to call for the destruction of immigrants. This administration is no stranger to appropriating pop culture for its propaganda, but something about seeing the stalwart hero of a beloved video game twisted into an anti-immigrant super soldier hit people pretty hard. Over…

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Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral

A declassified World War II-era CIA guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle…

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‘Save Our Signs’ Preservation Project Launches Archive of 10,000 National Park Signs

On Monday, a publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration.     Visitors to national parks and other public monuments at more than 300 sites across…

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Podcast: Pornhub Exec Discusses Pulling Out of the South, Trad Wives, and Feet Pics

On this special guest episode of the 404 Media Podcast, I talked to Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Pornhub. Kekesi started in her current role in August 2023, after working for Pornhub and its parent company for more than a decade. She joined us from Montreal, where Pornhub is headquartered. We discuss…

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Viral AI-Generated Summer Guide Printed by Chicago Sun-Times Was Made by Magazine Giant Hearst

The “Heat Index” summer guide newspaper insert published by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer that contained AI-generated misinformation and reading lists full of books that don’t exist was created by a subsidiary of the magazine giant Hearst, 404 Media has learned. Victor Lim, the vice president of marketing and communications at Chicago Public…

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Open Source Genetic Database Shuts Down to Protect Users From ‘Authoritarian Governments’

The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down and deleting all of its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with “a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments” in the United States and elsewhere. “The largest use case for DTC genetic data was not biomedical…

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