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Super-Brains

In China, a team of researchers has unveiled the first bidirectional brain-computer interface (BCI) capable of “learning” alongside the human…

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How China’s Social Credit System Works

China’s new social credit system guidelines tighten measures against dishonest behaviour. Companies classified as seriously dishonest will face significant restrictions, including bans on accessing government funds, tax incentives, and stock offerings. Sector-specific blacklists are also expanding, signalling stricter oversight in the real estate, internet services, human resources, and energy sectors.

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How to Queerly Hijack a Video Game

LGBTQIA+ communities have historically been underrepresented in the video game industry, which still bears the legacy of that decade—from the late 1980s to the late 1990s—when the medium and the very identity of the gamer were marketed by the mainstream industry as exclusive to young, cisgender, heterosexual men (and in the West, white men). Yet LGBTQIA+ individuals have always played video games. And ever since they’ve had the opportunity, they’ve also modified, created, and reimagined them—giving rise to a vibrant scene of queer video game détournements that reinterpret commercial works or unveil their inherent queerness.

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Between Us and the Machine. Simulation, Intentionality and Artificial Desire

In Ghost in the Shell, the 1995 animated film directed by Mamoru Oshii and based on the manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow, Major Kusanagi often finds herself confronting her Ghost — a term which, in the film’s universe, represents that part of her being which cannot be reduced to the mere function of the body or the calculation of cognitive abilities. The Major, in fact, is a cyborg: a human whose brain has been implanted into an artificial body. Although it’s clear that she possesses all the capacities to act intentionally, to make decisions, to choose, to modify her reality, the question remains: is it truly her will, or is she merely executing predetermined programmes — albeit extraordinarily sophisticated ones?

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A Secret Third Fire

Between real flames, real wars, and digital filters, we cannot agree on the right or wrong way to post about pain online—forgetting that social media are structurally ambiguous platforms, just like us.