It’s curious that honey quality detection is only just beginning to happen. How much fraud has there been before now if 100% is suspected?
In March 2023, the European Commission found that 46% of sampled products (including all 10 samples from the UK) were suspected to be fraudulent – meaning they had likely been bulked out with cheaper sugar syrups. Scientists at Cranfield University then said in August this year that they had found a way to detect fake honey products without opening the jar.
Or perhaps more to the point, why is the UK fraud (given nearly £100 million/year is imported) suspected at something like double the EU rate?
The “new” method of detection mentioned is actually Spatial Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) with machine learning. It’s a light analysis technique used in pharmaceutical and security diagnostics that can ID sugar syrups.
New research confirms Instagram’s ongoing betrayal of child safety, yet again.
When Danish researchers investigated teen self-harm networks, they found Instagram is actively plugging vulnerable kids into entire networks of self-harm content. Once connected with one member, the algorithm deliberately pushed teens toward all harmful members and far worse risks.
After Vic Langenhoff’s daughter was killed, he wrote the dramatic 1972 headline ‘Stop de Kindermoord’ (Stop the Child Murder) and called for children to be protected from harmful automation.
This harm formula isn’t accidental or an oversight in 2024 — it’s the algorithm working exactly as designed, expanding danger to children while Instagram’s executives rake in profits on hollow promises about “teen safety”.
The Danish study, however, found that rather than attempt to shut down the self-harm network, Instagram’s algorithm was actively helping it to expand. The research suggested that 13-year-olds become friends with all members of the self-harm group after they were connected with one of its members. This, the study said, “suggests that Instagram’s algorithm actively contributes to the formation and spread of self-harm networks”.
I hear the former Chief Security Officer of Facebook, who allegedly facilitated genocide in Asia, has a lovely mansion in the hills near Palo Alto to show for it.
CNN points out that Elon Musk is overtly threatening his own users, declaring all Twitter accounts are now owned by him and him alone.
…the platform is ultimately Musk’s domain, where he can do as he pleases. Musk has shown a willingness to take over accounts in the past, threatening NPR after the public broadcaster stopped posting to its account and seizing the @America handle for his political action committee that supported President-elect Donald Trump during the campaign.
“What conceivable motivation does a company have for destroying the value in their users’ accounts, and implicitly threatening all other users?” Butterfield said. “It becomes an individual person’s playground, rather than a functioning marketplace of ideas.”
The motivation for destroying value in accounts is overthrowing democracy and repealing governance. It’s not that hard to figure out.
Like asking what motivation does the air force have for dropping a bomb, given it destroys the value of the bomb. Destruction is kind of the whole point.
Reframe the question from “why would someone destroy value?” to “what strategic objective might this destruction serve?” This reveals broader patterns we’ve seen historically where controlling information flow and destabilizing existing power structures often involves accepting or even intentionally causing certain kinds of damage.
The Ford Pinto’s 23 total fatalities in the 1970s sparked national outrage and transformed automobile safety regulations forever. Today, Tesla’s safety record makes the Pinto crisis look quaint — “veered” Tesla crashes have reported over 20 fatalities in the past two months alone.
The rate of Tesla vehicles suddenly veering off roads is accelerating far beyond what a growing fleet would predict. Rather than seeing crashes increase proportionally with new car sales, data shows Tesla crashes occurring 5X faster than vehicles are being produced.
Consider Thanksgiving Day alone: A police officer was killed in a head-on collision while other police officers watched helplessly. That same day, three college students died when their Tesla slammed into a tree and burst into flames. Which story made your local news? The frequency of these incidents has become so overwhelming that media coverage has fractured into regional reporting.
Just this week in Australia, another Tesla veered off the road into a pole and caught fire, injuring both the driver and teenage passenger. Each incident becomes just another local story, lost in the growing sea of Tesla crashes worldwide.
The NHTSA and American media have been strikingly slow to recognize this severe public safety problem. When reporting on the recent Cybertruck crash that killed three college students, the Chronicle claimed it was only “the second known fatal crash in which a Cybertruck veered off the road and burst into flames for unknown reasons.“
The recent police officer death stands out particularly because it happened while other officers watched helplessly as one of their own was struck down by an autonomous vehicle. But equally telling is the tragedy of the college students, which reveals a deeper pattern about privileged perceptions of safety and danger. These students came from Piedmont, a neighborhood in Oakland deliberately engineered by the KKK as a white enclave – maintaining 0% Black residents while completely surrounded by neighborhoods that are 30% Black. This wasn’t just historical segregation; it was fear-based marketing of “safety” through privilege and militarized exclusion.
Tesla’s marketing of the Cybertruck follows this same playbook. When Musk says
Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes… The apocalypse could come along at any moment, and here at Tesla we have the finest in apocalypse technology.
…he’s tapping into a specific strain of white anxiety that has deep historical roots. We’ve seen this before — from Rhodesia’s white minority regime marketing itself as a “civilized” bulwark against Black majority rule, to gated communities promising protection from “urban” threats. The Cybertruck’s aggressive militarized design and marketing about surviving societal collapse appeal to the same fears that drove Piedmont’s formation: privileged white communities seeking technological shields against imagined threats from neighboring Black populations.
The bitter irony is that these carefully cultivated illusions of safety — whether through racial exclusion or supposedly apocalypse-proof vehicles — often create more danger than they prevent. Piedmont families who trusted in Tesla’s artificial promises of technological safety have now experienced firsthand how marketing that plays on fear can have tragic real-world consequences.
This isn’t just about vehicle statistics. It’s about how we evaluate risk through distorted lenses. Just as cigarettes were eventually banned because their dangers extended beyond individual choice to harm others, Teslas present a public safety threat that affects everyone on or near our roads. The question isn’t just what these families were thinking – it’s what we as a society are thinking as we continue to allow these vehicles to operate with minimal oversight.
Source: IIHSKey Observations: Data clearly shows that both serious incidents (orange line) and fatal incidents (pink line) are increasing at a steeper rate than the fleet size growth (blue line). This is particularly evident from 2021 onwards, where: Fleet size (blue) shows a linear growth of about 1x per year. Serious incidents (orange) show an exponential growth curve, reaching nearly 5x by 2024. Fatal incidents (pink) also show a steeper-than-linear growth, though not as dramatic as serious incidents. The divergence between the blue line (fleet growth) and the incident lines (orange and pink) indicates that incidents are indeed accelerating faster than the production/deployment of new vehicles.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
