Joao-Pierre S. Ruth, Senior EditorFebruary 7, 20257 Min ReadElon Musk, Krakow, Poland on January 22, 2024Michal Busko via Alamy Stock PhotoAs members of Congress, federal employees, and more than a dozen state attorneys general clash with Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over the legality of their actions and claims of accessing sensitive data with murky oversight and security, what example does the controversy set for CIOs on transparency and accountability?Quarrels in the political arena include questions about information accessed by DOGE, an advisory organization created by executive order rather than an actual department with Cabinet-level authority approved by Congress. Musks team reportedly accessed data from the Treasury Department and other federal information systems, raising concerns that DOGE had the power to halt Social Security and Medicare payments.What oversight exists for Musk and DOGE remains unclear, just as it is unclear what security protocols were put in place to protect the accessed data.These actions could create a future quandary for US regulators who seek guardrails on data privacy. If DOGEs handling of sensitive data is permitted with uncertain oversight, why should CIOs and their organizations face scrutiny?The events that were witnessing in Washington right now are truly unprecedented, says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York Universitys Stern School of Business. Theres never been a systematic deployment of unconfirmed, not publicly identified, questionably qualified people throughout the federal bureaucracy, pushing aside legally protected, congressionally approved civil service workforces and delving into information systems and other aspects of the federal bureaucracy for purposes that are not being publicly disclosed or discussed, potentially violating an unfathomable number of laws, defying congressional intent in terms of interfering with programs that are established by statute -- and we have no idea where its all headed.Related:Barrett cites the traditional process of taking action on approved federal departments includes the drafting of bills that would work their way through Congress, with hearings and debate. Thats democracy, he says. Its a completely different process to have a raft of executive orders issued and then to have an unspecified kind of army of apparatchiks attached to an unconfirmed, unelected, Silicon Valley billionaire who, invoking these vague executive orders, sends his people in, who say We demand access to this computer system.Guardrails for Handling Sensitive DataRelated:For years now, data privacy policy gained momentum on the international stage with Europes GDPR enforced in 2018 and domestically, at least at the state level, with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018 and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) in 2020, for example.Despite the activity in the US capital, it seems the private sector intends to maintain its own best practices in how sensitive data should be handled. I think transparency is the key, and CIOs need to be clean and be transparent on the level of data privacy that theyre offering to both internal customers and, in a company, Anand Kashyap, co-founder and CEO of data security provider Fortanix, says. CIOs and their companies should also remain transparent about their products ability to collect personal data, the privacy that can be provided, and how another party might get their hands on that data. Can the data be accessed by the government through a blind subpoena? If they can, then your company should be transparent about it.Kashyap says many companies tend to have transparency mechanisms in place to keep track of when the government asks for data in order to be clear about the level of privacy being offered. However, it might not be feasible to lock down privacy completely from government reach. If you want to provide more privacy, like the GDPR, there are procedural and legal ways to do that, but government is super powerful, so subverting government is simply not possible, he says, suggesting encryption as a means to protect data.Related:Leading by Their Own ExampleRegardless of how government or quasigovernment entities operate, companies must still see to the protection of the data they retain. Typically, there is a CIO which is responsible for procurement of all IT inside an organization, Kashyap says. CISOs set the security policies of how data should be classified inside an organization and then how data of various classifications should be protected through various means. CISOs typically have teams which are building security tools to actually provide the data security. Data might be handled by multiple teams inside an organization, he says, which can fall under the purview of data officers with discussions about which platforms, servers, and policies to follow.Scrutiny of how sensitive data gets handled and protected stems from very real concerns about the damage that might be done to all parties involved if it winds up in the wrong hands. Rajan Koo, CTO for insider risk management platform provider DTEX Systems, says massive data breaches, seen across many kinds of organizations, can echo long after the technical and even monetary issues are dealt with. What weve found is that the true cost of those data breaches is often the PR issues, the reputational damage that gets encountered, the loss of trust in their customer base for handling their data and handling their privacy, Koo says. So reputational damage is one of those really big knock-on effects from having a data breach or having information stolen.Data security is also important to safeguard intellectual property, especially for organizations working on AI or novel research in pharmaceuticals, where Koo says there can be a threat of foreign interference and espionage. Organizations have really woken up to the fact that this can really put them out of business maybe five or 10 years down the track, he says. The forward-looking CIOs and the CXOs of these organizations do see and understand that. Koo also says more mature organizations may have that in mind and tend to look beyond simply meeting regulations on data security. I think the less mature ones typically will do the minimum thats required to keep their business functioning and appease the regulators, he says.Maintaining Confidence in Data SecurityCompliance and security is a conversation we have with customers on a daily basis, says Bill Bruno, CEO of identity and data platform provider Celebrus. His company works with financial institutions, which historically face regulatory scrutiny, and with healthcare clients where HIPAA compliance comes into play. Precedents on data privacy set by European Union law also continue to proliferate around the world and guide how companies handle sensitive information.Every sort of place where weve deployed, theres something governing it, and usually, as has been the case for many years, its all started in Europe and it kind of spreads from there, Bruno says. Even for our clients in [the Asia-Pacific], or the clients in South America -- all of it is like an adaptation on GDPR at the end of the day.Though Europe led the way on such policy, Bruno says a 2017 US media transparency study, which he co-authored and was driven by the Association of National Advertisers, called out how data was being shared. It highlighted how data was being used, he says, how people, organizations, advertising ecosystems, etcetera were using consumer data in non-transparent ways -- in ways that maybe you didnt even realize as a consumer was happening.That led to advertisements that followed consumers around their digital spaces without them realizing how or why marketers targeted them in that way -- potentially through the use of data they collected. GDPR, when it was brought in, was really to create transparency and to stop the sharing and the pooling of consumer data without explicit permission, Bruno says.Potential Policy HypocrisyNationwide regulations on data privacy remain in debate, but NYUs Barrett says even if the United States already possessed its own version of GDPR or had ratified the Privacy Bill of Rights, it might not matter, given recent events. In this environment, Im not sure how relevant or pertinent those things would be, because we do have all kinds of laws that would appear to prohibit the activity that's going on at the behest of Elon Musk and those laws are not slowing him down in the least.What were seeing is the most dramatic illustration of how power in the 21st century is just as much a function of digital data as it is guns and ammunition, Barrett says. That you can change the world if you can control information, and you know thats hard to absorb because men in uniforms with guns are such a more familiar image when you talk about power.Read more about:RegulationAbout the AuthorJoao-Pierre S. RuthSenior EditorJoao-Pierre S. Ruth covers tech policy, including ethics, privacy, legislation, and risk; fintech; code strategy; and cloud & edge computing for InformationWeek. He has been a journalist for more than 25 years, reporting on business and technology first in New Jersey, then covering the New York tech startup community, and later as a freelancer for such outlets as TheStreet, Investopedia, and Street Fight.See more from Joao-Pierre S. RuthNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

Coral reefs are threatened by ocean warmingSeaphotoart/AlamyThe oceans ability to absorb heat into its depths appears to be rapidly declining, leading to prolonged marine heatwaves, increased ocean warming and greater stress on marine ecosystems. The loss of this vital cooling mechanism suggests we could be entering a new phase of climate change.Hajoon Song at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues used satellite data spanning four decades to track how sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have evolved over time.

Over the past three weeks, the new US presidential administration has taken down thousands of government web pages related to public health, environmental justice, and scientific research. The mass takedowns stem from the new administrations push to remove government information related to diversity and gender ideology, as well as scrutiny of various government agencies practices. USAIDs website is down. So are sites related to it, like childreninadversity.gov, as well as thousands of pages from the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Justice Programs. Weve never seen anything like this, says David Kaye, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression. I dont think any of us know exactly what is happening. What we can see is government websites coming down, databases of essential public interest. The entirety of the USAID website. But as government web pages go dark, a collection of organizations are trying to archive as much data and information as possible before its gone for good. The hope is to keep a record of what has been lost for scientists and historians to be able to use in the future. Data archiving is generally considered to be nonpartisan, but the recent actions of the administration have spurred some in the preservation community to stand up. I consider the actions of the current administration an assault on the entire scientific enterprise, says Margaret Hedstrom, professor emerita of information at the University of Michigan. Various organizations are trying to scrounge up as much data as possible. One of the largest projects is the End of Term Web Archive, a nonpartisan coalition of many organizations that aims to make a copy of all government data at the end of each presidential term. The EoT Archive allows individuals to nominate specific websites or data sets for preservation. All we can do is collect what has been published and archive it and make sure its publicly accessible for the future, says James Jacobs, US government information librarian at Stanford University, who is one of the people running the EoT Archive. Other organizations are taking a specific angle on data collection. For example, the Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP) is trying to capture data related to climate science and environmental justice. Were trying to track whats getting taken down, says Katie Hoeberling, director of policy initiatives at OEDP. I cant say with certainty exactly how much of what used to be up is still up, but were seeing, especially in the last couple weeks, an accelerating rate of data getting taken down. In addition to tracking whats happening, OEDP is actively backing up relevant data. It actually began this process in November, to capture the data at the end of former president Bidens term. But efforts have ramped up in the last couple weeks. Things were a lot calmer prior to the inauguration, says Cathy Richards, a technologist at OEDP. It was the second day of the new administration that the first platform went down. At that moment, everyone realized, Oh, nowe have to keep doing this, and we have to keep working our way down this list of data sets. This kind of work is crucial because the US government holds invaluable international and national data relating to climate. These are irreplaceable repositories of important climate information, says Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. So fiddling with them or deleting them means the irreplaceable loss of critical information. Its really quite tragic. Like the OEDP, the Catalyst Cooperative is trying to make sure data related to climate and energy is stored and accessible for researchers. Both are part of the Public Environmental Data Partners, a collective of organizations dedicated to preserving federal environmental data. We have tried to identify data sets that we know our communities make use of to make decisions about what electricity we should procure or to make decisions about resiliency in our infrastructure planning, says Christina Gosnell, cofounder and president of Catalyst. Archiving can be a difficult task; there is no one easy way to store all the US governments data. Various federal agencies and departments handle data preservation and archiving in a myriad of ways, says Gosnell. Theres also no one who has a complete list of all the government websites in existence. This hodgepodge of data means that in addition to using web crawlers, which are tools used to capture snapshots of websites and data, archivists often have to manually scrape data as well. Additionally, sometimes a data set will be behind a login address or captcha to prevent scraper tools from pulling the data. Web scrapers also sometimes miss key features on a site. For example, sites will often have plenty of links to other pieces of information that arent captured in a scrape. Or the scrape may just not work because of something to do with a websites structure. Therefore, having a person in the loop double-checking the scrapers work or capturing data manually is often the only way to ensure that the information is properly collected. And there are questions about whether scraping the data will really be enough. Restoring websites and complex data sets is often not a simple process. It becomes extraordinarily difficult and costly to attempt to rescue and salvage the data, says Hedstrom. It is like draining a body of blood and expecting the body to continue to function. The repairs and attempts to recover are sometimes insurmountable where we need continuous readings of data. All of this data archiving work is a temporary Band-Aid, says Gosnell. If data sets are removed and are no longer updated, our archived data will become increasingly stale and thus ineffective at informing decisions over time. These effects may be long-lasting. You wont see the impact of that until 10 years from now, when you notice that theres a gap of four years of data, says Jacobs. Many digital archivists stress the importance of understanding our past. We can all think about our own family photos that have been passed down to us and how important those different documents are, says Trevor Owens, chief research officer at the American Institute of Physics and former director of digital services at the Library of Congress. That chain of connection to the past is really important. Its our library; its our history, says Richards. This data is funded by taxpayers, so we definitely dont want all that knowledge to be lost when we can keep it, store it, potentially do something with it and continue to learn from it.

Super Bowl star Travis Kelce said it would be a "great honor" to have Donald Trump at the game.In response, Trump called Kelce the "absolute best tight end in football."Trump earlier said he hates Taylor Swift, Kelce's popstar girlfriend.President Donald Trump has a history of "Bad Blood" with Taylor Swift, but that isn't stopping Travis Kelce, Swift's boyfriend, from laying down the welcome mat for the president ahead of Super Bowl weekend.The Kansas City Chiefs tight end said it would be "awesome" and a "great honor" for the president to attend the Super Bowl in New Orleans this Sunday, when the Chiefs will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles."No matter who the president is, I know I'm excited because it's the biggest game of my life," Kelce said on Wednesday. "Having the president there you know, it's the best country in the world, so it will be pretty cool."It will be the first time a sitting president has attended the Super Bowl. Trump said on Truth Social that he planned to give an interview before the game.Trump called Kelce the "absolute best tight end in football (Ever!)" in a post on Truth Social on Friday morning, adding that it will be a "great game."The warm exchange between Trump and Kelce, however, comes months after the president announced his dislike of Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris before the presidential election."I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!" he wrote in a Truth Social post in September.Swift has been a regular presence at Kelce's games and is widely expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday, putting the president and the popstar on a possible collision course.A spokesperson for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

United States Navy submariners deploy for months at a time, spending weeks submerged at sea with no internet and minimal contact with the outside world. Aboard the Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine USS South Dakota, culinary specialists work tirelessly in incredibly tight quarters to prepare meals for up to 150 crew members. While the sub was in port at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, Business Insider spent two days observing how the cooks manage tight spaces, limited resources, and long hours to provide fuel and maintain the crew's morale.Show more

Editors note, February 7, 2025, 12:30 pm ET: On February 7, Kanye referred to himself openly as a Nazi in a post on X, along with a number of other antisemitic sentiments. Read this story, first published in October 2022, to understand how we got here.Fake children, lost Black tribes of Israel, and vast conspiracies, all leading to an incendiary Thanksgiving-week dinner with Donald Trump and a hard-line white nationalist and public praise of Hitlers Nazi regime: This is not the Kanye West we used to know.Ye, n Kanye, habitually draws headlines for more than just his music, whether its for his outspoken comments on race and politics, his beefs with other artists, or his contentious relationship and divorce from Kim Kardashian. Ye is so much, all the time, that it might be easy to skim past the last several months of non-stop Ye controversy. But even for Ye, his abrupt public embrace of antisemitism and counterintuitive right-wing political rhetoric, resulting in his bringing avowed white nationalist Nick Fuentes to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has been disturbing. Hes since followed that up with a swift tour of right-wing media, including an appearance on Infowars in which even the famously incendiary Alex Jones had to counter Yes blatant antisemitism.The controversy following the November 22 dinner has led to multiple defenses from Trump, in which he consistently claimed to have no idea who Fuentes was but reportedly chose not to distance himself from the ideologies espoused by West or Fuentes. In one of his more recent attempts at disavowing the incident, issued on Truth Social on November 26, Trump framed the entire event as a backfiring attempt to help a seriously troubled man that is, West himself.Trump claimed Ye had asked him for advice on whether or not to launch another run for president; three days after the dinner, West officially announced his candidacy. In a since-deleted tweet accompanying the announcement, Ye shaded Trump, bragging that hed asked the former president to be his running mate, and praised Fuentes, describing him as a loyalist. He also indicated hed invited disgraced right-wing reactionary Milo Yiannopoulos, whose controversial career flamed out in 2017 after old remarks surfaced in which he defended pedophilic relationships, to be his campaign manager. Meanwhile, the backlash against Trump has been so severe that its caused even formerly loyal Trump advisors to distance themselves.Kanye, however, has seemed completely unfazed and unfortunately, his bizarre antisemitic outbursts have only escalated. Following the Mar-a-Lago scandal, he appeared on right-wing YouTuber Tim Pools podcast on November 28, accompanied by Fuentes and Yiannopoulos. However, after a 20-minute rant against various individuals, in which he repeatedly alleged a Jewish conspiracy to suppress him, Kanye abruptly ended the interview when it seemed as though Pool might push back against his antisemitism by resisting his guests use of they and them.On December 1, the situation, somehow, worsened when Kanye appeared on The Alex Jones Show. Over the course of the broadcast, he repeatedly praised Hitler and the Nazi party, insisting that he loves Nazis and likes Hitler, and at one point blatantly declaring, The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world. His remarks placed Jones in the rare position of attempting to help Kanye walk back his extremism by reminding him that Nazis did a lot of very bad things.But they did good things, too, Ye responded. Weve got to stop dissing the Nazis all of the time.That was in the morning. By evening, Ye had been indefinitely suspended from Twitter for posting an image of a Nazi swastika inside of a Star of David.It might be hard to understand how West, in no time at all, has become a poster child for antisemitism and white nationalism but thats partly because so much has happened so quickly. Beginning with an October 3 appearance at Paris Fashion Week, through a controversial Fox News interview and unaired footage from it that was even more controversial and then on social media, Ye has revealed the latest phase of his bizarre political evolution: A growing embrace of antisemitic conspiracy rhetoric, a turn toward white supremacist rhetoric concerning the death of George Floyd, and the surprise purchase of a controversial right-wing social platform.On October 25, amid growing pressure, sportswear powerhouse Adidas announced it was ending its longtime partnership with the rapper amid the controversy. Kanyes relationship with the company spanned almost a decade and included multiple collaborations with Kanyes billion-dollar clothing line, Yeezy. Overall, Yes behavior and statements have raised public concern and debate over his politics, the nature of his growing extremism, the state of his well-known mental health issues, and whether anyone in his position should be given a platform at all.Even more alarmingly, his recent hateful rhetoric has begun to embolden white supremacists whove recently been spreading bigoted hate speech and using Wests name to bolster their arguments.Ye has been careening through extremist conspiracy tentpolesThe hip-hop legend made headlines for all the wrong reasons when he showed up at Paris Fashion Week to stage a guerrilla fashion show related to his own YZY clothing line. Ye invited his friend of some years, controversial conservative pundit Candace Owens, to attend the event, which the New York Times characterized as a messy experience that was more about celebrating the aura of Ye than the clothes on the runway. Ye and Owens used up every bit of media attention on themselves by wearing matching white lives matter shirts, which she proudly shared on social media. The phrase originated with extremist white supremacist groups in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and is closely associated with white supremacist ideology.The ensuing outrage this stunt provoked might have quickly faded like most Ye-related outrage, had he not quickly followed it up with an even more shocking appearance on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show. The interview, a two-hour pre-taped conversation with Carlson, was filmed in response to Yes fashion show and aired over two nights on October 6 and 7. In the interview, Ye explained that he thought wearing the shirt would be funny and a mark of both his brilliance and his connection to God. The answer to why I wrote white lives matter on a shirt is because they do, he said. Carlson inserted commentary throughout, reminding viewers to observe how sound of mind and rational West appeared. Throughout the interview, Ye made provocative insinuations about Jews and money and went on unprovoked tangents. His unsettling statements suggest he is growing increasingly paranoid, adopting a range of bizarre conspiracy theories and delusions, and harboring growing antisemitic tendencies. As disconcerting as the interview itself was, Vice later reported that Carlsons show strategically edited it to make Yes remarks appear more coherent and less antisemitic than they apparently were. Even the broadcast footage was striking, however. At various points, Ye did seem to be his old trenchant self. He indicated hes still, at least nominally, thinking about the impact of racism, regardless of what T-shirts and hats he wears. For politicians, all Black people are worth is an approval rating, he told Carlson, in a direct criticism of Trump. The Democrats ... and the Republicans feel that they dont owe us anything.But he also seemed fixated on the idea that Blackness itself is an identity that Black people need to distance themselves from. The concept of Blackness was, he alleged, created by white people. Instead, he offered up Black community power through the form of real estate development and financial control as an alternative, bizarrely adding, The people that make money and the powers that be, I am your true Nikola Tesla. Its not clear what he meant by this, but it sums up the interview as a whole: some sharp observations colliding with a fixation on power, characterized by incoherence, grandiosity, and conspiracy rhetoric. Yes conspiratorial thinking was on display at several moments that made it to air like when he accused the media of conspiring to keep fellow rapper Lizzo fat in order to promote clinically unhealthy lifestyles. (Lizzo seemed unfazed by the shade.) He explained the medias motive as the genocide of the Black race. Ye also claimed to Carlson that the people at The Gap knew about the Uvalde mass school shooting before it happened, a statement Carlson smoothly finessed into Ye suggesting that it was a coordinated message from the media. (Its not clear what the connection was, but given Yes recent contractual disputes with The Gap, it seems possible that Yes reference to 78 specific outlets that he implied had coordinated a shooting-related message was a reference to Gap outlets that Carlson misinterpreted as media outlets.)Unsettlingly, Ye accused Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner of orchestrating Middle East peace treaties in order to make money for himself. Then he added, I think thats what theyre about. I dont think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money. At the time of the interview airing, you could be forgiven if you interpreted Yes use of they here as a reference to Trumps relatives. But it would soon become alarmingly clear that Ye was being straightforwardly antisemitic here, embracing one of the oldest, most bigoted conspiracy theories that Jewish people secretly control the worlds systems of finance.This became rapidly apparent once Ye blasted out more antisemitic remarks via Instagram and his only recently revived Twitter account, in posts that both platforms have since removed. Ye first posted to Instagram, sharing a long series of screenshot texts between himself and fellow rap legend Sean Combs, after Diddy apparently tried to reach out to share his concern for Ye promoting the white lives matter slogan. Ye, clearly angry, told Diddy he was focused on selling his merch. Then he added, Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me. The outcry over Yes antisemitism was immediate and sustained, and his Insta posts were quickly deleted. But Ye then tweeted into the ensuing wave of backlash. He revived his account by linking a Forbes article about likely future Twitter owner Elon Musk welcoming him back to the platform following his Instagram cancellation. In the same tweet, however, he abruptly threatened the worlds 15 million Jewish people: Im a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up Im going death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE, he wrote, an apparent reference to going on defcon military alert.Though this tweet was deleted and Yes Twitter account was briefly locked in response, though it was quickly unlocked another, in which Ye seemed to rhetorically suggest Jewish people invented cancel culture, initially remained online. It was also eventually deleted.The statements drew a wave of backlash from fellow celebrities and Jewish organizations. LAs Holocaust Museum invited him to visit; the Anti-Defamation League strongly condemned him and began tracking his hateful statements. Musk tweeted that hed talked to Ye and expressed his concerns, which he indicated vaguely I think he took to heart.Incredibly, all of this happened before Vice revealed on October 11 that Carlson had strategically edited his interview with Ye, and that the parts that didnt air were even more offensive and conspiratorial in nature. Some of the edits were directly political, like Foxs omitting Yes offhand comment that he received the Covid-19 vaccine. But most fully undermined his credibility and claim to rationality. Most of the unaired antisemitism regurgitated the Jews control finance conspiracy theory, but some was convoluted and difficult to parse, like when he claimed that Black people were the real 12 lost tribes of Judah, a claim that seemed to be linked to an extremist religious sect that believes Black people are really Jewish. Most baffling of all, Ye claimed that fake children had been installed in his home to corrupt his children.As Vice reported:I mean, like actors, professional actors, placed into my house to sexualize my kids, he told Carlson. He referred to the so-called son of an associate, seemingly to imply the child was fake. We dont, we didnt even believe that this person was her son because he was way smarter than her, right?While this is all pretty heartbreaking for Yeezy fans, it didnt stop there. During an October 16 appearance on Revolts Drink Champs podcast, Kanye brought up Owenss recently released propaganda film, Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. (The podcast episode has since been removed.)I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put up ... They hit him with the fentanyl, he said. If you look, the guys knee wasnt even on his neck like that. Owenss film purports to question the official findings about Floyds death, bolstering a thoroughly debunked argument used by Derek Chauvins defense at his trial for Floyds murder. Kanye then went on to protest the Jewish media for censoring him.Kanye is clearly smarting from recent run-ins with media and social media platforms that have censored him for hateful rhetoric and disinformation. On October 17, the controversial platform Parler announced that Kanye West would be acquiring it for an undisclosed amount. Parler is known for housing right-wing extremism, harboring disinformation and conspiracy theories, and welcoming Donald Trump after he was banned from Twitter, all under the banner of free speech. Its currently owned by Owenss husband, George Farmer, who told the Wall Street Journal that conversations about the purchase arose during Owenss appearance at Kanyes fashion show.This is obviously a lot to process. But the basic problem with all of these statements is that its unclear how much is pure trolling for publicity, how much Ye really believes, and how much his long history with bipolar disorder has spiraled into a disturbing increase of volatile behavior and activity. (Bipolar disorder, of course, does not cause antisemitism.) This question has hovered over his public behavior for years, but especially ever since his very public breakup with Kardashian: That is, is he embracing a deliberately edgy public performance in order to commandeer the spotlight, perhaps to sell products or draw people to his growing religious commune? Or is he truly going down a mental health rabbit hole, the way so many people have as they get drawn into conspiratorial beliefs or struggle with personal stressors?Unfortunately, this nuance doesnt matter to the actual white supremacists and antisemitic extremists whose own bigoted ideas have found mainstream expression thanks to Kanye. On Saturday, October 22, antisemitic demonstrators in Los Angeles rallied on a freeway overpass, displaying a banner declaring Kanye was right. Over that same weekend, residents in Beverly Hills were targeted with bigoted fliers promoting hate speech and antisemitic propaganda. While the demonstrations have reportedly been happening in the area for several weeks, Yes comments appear to have added fuel to an already blazing fire.And thats to say nothing of the actual white supremacists, like Fuentes and Yiannopoulos, that Ye is directly amplifying and bringing to renewed prominence.Kanye West loves a controversyPrior to 2005, West largely confined his controversial opinions to his excellent hip-hop albums, but that changed with Hurricane Katrina. A live celebrity-studded fundraising effort during the disaster went completely off the rails when West, standing next to a dumbfounded Mike Myers, famously shone a spotlight on the inherent racism behind the Bush administrations handling of the disaster: George Bush doesnt care about Black people.In his current conservative mode, Ye has since attempted to distance himself from that statement, saying it represented a victimized mentality. But at the time, what made this moment instantly historic was not only the greater truth it represented about politics and racism, but Yes casually blunt approach, as if there was nothing else he could have said and he wouldnt even know how to approximate saying anything else more polite. It was the same casually shocking approach he used when interrupting Taylor Swifts award acceptance at the 2009 VMAs four years later to declare straightforwardly that Beyonc should have won instead another legendary moment that spawned the subsequent decade-long feud between Swift, West, and Kardashian. Heading into the 2010s, West steadily ramped up both his interpersonal conflicts and his edgy, unpredictable behavior: His early friendship with Drake abruptly became another decade-long feud when he cut Drake from his 2010 single All of the Lights. 2013 saw him first dally with white supremacist symbols, wearing a confederate flag that he claimed he was attempting to reclaim. He also sold the flag shirt as merch for his Yeezus tour that year. The debate about that stunt was essentially the same as the debate were having today: Was Ye genuinely trying to create discussion and dialogue, and if so, what kind of dialogue could be created around such an incendiary symbol? Or was it a pure publicity stunt? In 2013, though, West had yet to publicly flirt with white supremacist principles, so this debate in the abstract felt less real than it subsequently would. By 2016, however, he was voicing his support for Trump and wearing MAGA hats. In 2018, he caused public outrage when he stated during an appearance at TMZ that slavery was a choice. In 2020, he ran for president himself, albeit in the most erratic way possible. P.R. Lockhart smartly outlined Wests political evolution for Vox, pointing out that its always been linked to his quest for cultural power and influence. Somewhere around the time he was donning the confederate flag, he seemed to become enamored with the idea of co-opting controversial iconography and rhetoric, as if absorbing them into his personal brand could negate their power. But over time, his use of symbols and rhetoric have grown more extreme and more violent so much so that its gotten hard to keep track and further gotten hard to tell how much of this is irony, how much of it is innocence, and how much of it is a sincere embrace of white supremacist rhetoric.Complicating all of this is his mental health. In 2020, he raised widespread alarm for what seemed to be a significant mental health spiral during the deterioration of his relationship with Kardashian. Throughout 2022, hes drawn repeated concern over his artistic depictions of his ex-wifes then-boyfriend Pete Davidson, after repeatedly describing Davidsons murder. Again, we have to ask: Is it a real obsessive fixation, or is it trolling? And at what point does it stop mattering? Throughout this period, hes been drawn to critique the idea of cancellation and criticism. Promotion for his 2021 album Donda saw him conflagrating a stage version of his childhood home at a concert featuring musicians Marilyn Manson and DaBaby, who have been accused of sexual assault and homophobia, respectively. All of this suggests hes creating an insulated bubble for himself that renders him impervious to criticism. After all, troublesome artists whove been criticized themselves are arguably less likely to judge him for his own controversial behavior. And we saw how he reacted when Diddy tried to reason with him. This is a man who, after all, has always had a god complex.On top of everything, hes seemingly going down a very niche religious path both through his quirky Sunday Service and his new mysterious religious school. As weve seen with another recent celebrity downward spiral, that of Ezra Miller, the whole cult-like religious commune thing will likely inflate his ego and validate the narrative of specialness hes writing himself into none of which is likely to encourage him to seek help for whatever is going on with him.Yes rhetoric has brought significant consequences. High-end designer Balenciaga dropped Ye as a partner around October 20, amid the growing backlash. Hollywoods powerful Creative Artists Agency, which represented Kanye on tours, dropped him as a client on October 24. MRC, the film production company behind successes like Knives Out, Ted, and Netflixs Persuasion, announced in a lengthy callout post on its website on October 24 that it would no longer move forward with plans to distribute its recently completed documentary on Kanyes life. The silence from leaders and corporations when it comes to Kanye or antisemitism in general is dismaying but not surprising, the companys leaders stated.In the biggest blow to Kanyes fortunes, his lucrative partnership with Adidas was initially under review and ultimately dissolved. Under growing scrutiny, the company announced on October 25 that it was ending its partnership with Ye and his Yeezy clothing line. The sportswear giant said in the statement that pulling its Yeezy collaboration would cost it up to 250 million euros, or $248 million, in net 2022 income. Still, Yes recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, the company stated. Kanye boasted on the Drink Champs podcast that he could say antisemitic shit and Adidas cant drop me ... now what? Now what?Its a good question. Perhaps the dismay of his own fans will prove to be a corrective; in reaction to his latest wave of pro-Nazi rhetoric and overt Holocaust denialism, Reddits r/Kanye sub declared itself over and began filling with Holocaust awareness posts (and, more humorously, odes to Taylor Swift). We had a good thing, ran one post, riffing off a Breaking Bad meme. [W]e had Jay Z, we had the best album of all time, we had everything we needed and it all ran like clockwork. You could have shut your mouth, sang, and made as much money as you needed, but you just had to blow it up, you and your pride and your ego. On December 1, the same day West appeared on Alex Jones to tout Hitler, Billboard tweeted then quickly deleted an announcement that Kanye West was the years top-selling gospel artist. If Yes looking for validation from fans, hes losing it fast.In perhaps the most telling sign of change, the House Republican Judiciary Committees official Twitter finally deleted its controversial Kanye. Elon. Trump tweet. The account had tweeted the incendiary statement in October, implying that West, Trump, and new Twitter owner Elon Musk were heralding a new cultural era of right-wing political ascension. Apparently theres no room in that group for Hitler.Still, thus far, the fallout from his behavior and rhetoric has only made Kanye double down, and as long as hes able to find media to platform his reprehensible views, hes committed to airing them. Its unclear whether those outlets will manifest now that hes begun praising Nazi Germany. What is clear is that the Ye we see before us isnt the Ye we once knew. The clear-sighted Kanye of 2005 and 2009 has been replaced by a guy who claims people are hiring out replacement children just to mess with him. Ye answers to almost no one, so its unclear what, if anything, can get through to him and curb his mayhem, especially following his divorce from and anger toward Kardashian. Certainly, it wont be a smirking Tucker Carlson, encouraging him by telling him hes speaking the truth. Someone needs to speak the truth to Ye about himself if anyone still can.Update, December 2, 2022, noon ET: This story, originally published on October 12, has been updated multiple times, most recently to include information about Kanyes latest appearances in right-wing media and the reactions to them. See More:

Life was tough in 16th-century Bohemia, and so it is here, in its virtual counterpart. The first 10 hours of this game were thoroughly miserable. Stepping into the mud-soaked boots of Henry, a humble blacksmith-turned-knight, I am sent to deliver a message across a war-ravaged region. Yet before Henry can fulfil his duty, he falls victim to a deadly ambush, leaving himself and his Lord, Hans Capon, stranded without a penny or sword to their name.As a stranger arriving in tattered rags, bloodsoaked and desperate, no one believes that you are a nobleman, or has the time to listen to your increasingly urgent pleas. Townsfolk comment on your odour and refuse to let you into various establishments. Its a truly humbling gaming experience, creating a soberingly bleak recreation of what its like to be among medieval societys downtrodden.The main story eventually whisks you away on increasingly impressive exploits, but in the early game, merely surviving the day is an adventure in itself. In this harsh feudal fantasy, you can save your progress only two ways: sleeping in your own bed, or drinking a bottle of saviour schnapps. When you cant afford a night at an inn and Henry doesnt even have a horse each new map-spanning journey is risky. Some of those early deaths cost me hours of progress.Arduous Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Photograph: Warhorse Studios/Deep SilverOnce you manage to work and thieve your way into a few Groschen, your fortunes begin to change. Keeping up appearances is imperative in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, with your clothes and hygiene influencing your charisma stat, feeding into your wider reputation. Townsfolk notice your wounds and blood-splattered clothes. Innkeepers are less likely to take you for a thieving vagabond if youve bathed. The wealthier you become, the easier life becomes; dressing well even helps to convince guards of your innocence when youre caught red-handed.Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is filled with the kind of friction that most modern games actively avoid. I became utterly immersed in this brutally believable simulation even when it was kicking my arse. This is a role-playing game where even the simple act of making a potion is a struggle, where food can rot and poison you, and not even fast travel is safe. Word to the wise dont accidentally clamber into the wrong bed. Itll end in a night spent being pelted in the stocks.Like in Bethesdas Skyrim, you learn by doing. Want to get better at running? Sprint while wearing the heaviest armour you can find. Fancy commanding conversations? Devote half an in-game day to reading a book. The original games first-person duelling makes a welcome return, locking players into a lethal game of bluffing, blocking and reading your opponents stance. Its a deadly dance that feels like nothing else in games, but if swordplay isnt for you, you can hone your marksmanship, double down on stealth or even opt to make your tongue your sharpest weapon.In conversations, you can roleplay Henry as you see fit, leaning into intimidation, intellect, charm or outright violence. However you play, the writing is consistently compelling, the characters as unyieldingly consistent as the gameplay. Despite the misery baked into it, Kingdom Come 2 has a comedic spirit. From a demented miller who has you collecting sediment from corpses, to settling your differences with soldiers via raucous drinking games, theres humour in even the most inane of interactions. Developer Warhorse Studios is wise to keep players smiling, even while theyre cursing the game under their breath.Comedic spirit Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Photograph: Warhorse Studios/Deep SilverWatching Henry slowly transform from an inept nobody into a fearsome presence feels immensely rewarding, and once youve pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, this country-spanning jaunt sees you infiltrate noble weddings, plan a prison break and even defend a besieged castle. While Kingdom Come 2s world inevitably features the kind of bugs youd expect from a sprawling RPG, it helps that it is a very handsome game. The grass sways in the wind and villages and towns teem with life.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIf there was ever a game that adopted the tough love approach, its this. The early hours feel like the playable equivalent of being sent to military school, and demand saintly patience but its an investment that pays off. Much like in Red Dead Redemption 2 before it, I happily lose hours wandering around this vast simulation, curious to see what wonder and depravity I might stumble on. Its telling that despite spending more than 115 hours in Bohemia, I have yet to roll credits on the main quest line. If youre uninspired by the prospect of roaming yet another frictionless open world where everything comes easy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a breath of fresh air scented with just a hint of dung.Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is out now; 49.99

Exodus, also known as "the Matthew McConaughey game", has a tabletop RPG book that's absolutely staggering in its world design and explanation of the game's lore

Nintendo Switch 2 could see a surprising new use for its Joy-Con controllers after a patent revealed they could be used like computer mice, potentially opening a whole new libraryTech14:43, 07 Feb 2025Are these Joy-Con mice?We're anticipating more information on Nintendo's next console, the Switch 2, soon, but we'll be waiting until April 2 for the full reveal or will we?There's been plenty of speculation about the console's price and release date, and we've rounded up the rumoured launch games already, but one rumour keeps re-appearing the 'Mouse' rumour.In case you missed it, the Switch 2 trailer showed its magnetic Joy-Con gliding around a surface, leading some to speculate that they'd double as mice in the same way a computer uses a mouse. Now, a new patent suggests that could indeed be the case.As we covered then, this would open up the Switch library to a whole host of new games and genres, helping solidify the system as a place to play, say, a twitchy shooter like VALORANT, or a more thoughtful strategy game.As spotted by the Switch 2 subreddit (which keeps growing), the August 2023 patent which was published yesterday, February 6, shows a series of diagrams.It also read: "This input device comprises a front surface, an upper surface, a first side surface, a second side surface, a direction input unit, a first upper surface button, and a sensor for mouse operation."The first side surface is on one side in the left-right direction. The second side surface is on the other side in the left-right direction. The direction input unit is provided on the front surface. The first upper surface button is provided on the upper surface and can be pressed around a first rotation axis extending in a direction in which components in the left-right direction are included."The sensor for mouse operation detects reflected light from a detected surface, the light changing by moving over the detected surface in a state in which either the first side surface or the second side surface is placed on the detected surface."Given how clever the Joy-Con were on the Switch 1, it's perhaps not surprising to see Nintendo double down, but it also appears there's a sort of "two mouse mode". We're not entirely sure what people would be using that for, but Nintendo is certainly inventive enough to give us a reason to slide our hands around a table.Content cannot be displayed without consentElsewhere, Nintendo confirmed the time of its console reveal event on April 2 as it gears up to pull back the curtain. The system will be shown off at 2pm GMT for UK gamers.For more on Switch 2, be sure to check out this bizarrely plausible release date theory, as well as how to jump the queue and preorder in the UK.Article continues belowFor the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

Its 10 years Arkham Knight but at least VR game Arkham Shadows was good (WB Games)Monoliths Wonder Woman game has undergone a reboot according to a new report, as Rocksteady looks to return to Batman.Despite the sales success of Hogwarts Legacy, the gaming division at Warner Bros. has been lurching from one failure to the other over recent years.Last years release of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League kicked off what became an especially bad year for the company, with both Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions and MultiVersus (which is set to shut down soon) failing to meet expectations leading to a massive $300 million overall.A new report has now shed light on future projects under Warner Bros. Games, which are hoping to turn the tide, although it doesnt seem as if theyre two new DC projects will be out anytime soon.According to Bloomberg, the Wonder Woman game, which was originally announced in 2021, was rebooted early last year and switched directors. Its unclear, however, who has taken over. Its claimed the game has already cost Warner Bros. Games $100 million, and because of this reboot, is still years away from release, if it ever makes it to market.According to the report, the first version of Wonder Woman tried reimagining the Nemesis system used in the studios previous game, Middle-earth: Shadow Of War, so the DC heroine would befriend enemies. That idea, however, has apparently been ditched in favour of a more traditional action adventure game.At this stage though, its claimed Wonder Womans fate remains in question due to leadership changes at Monolith Productions and issues with the games technology, so its unclear if it will ever see the light of day at all.There are various claims about projects in the works at other Warner Bros. Games studios. Gotham Knights developer WB Games Montreal allegedly pitched games based on DC antihero John Constantine and The Flash, but these were both canned, with the latter due to the box office failure of the 2023 movie starring Ezra Miller.Now, its said the studio is supporting development on Wonder Woman, while working on a pitch for a new game based on Game Of Thrones.More TrendingAs for Suicide Squad developer Rocksteady, the report claims the studio is looking to return to Batman for a single-player game but the project is years away from landing. So dont get too excited about a potential follow-up to Batman: Arkham Knight just yet. A sequel to Batman: Arkham Knight could happen (Warner Bros. Games)Overall, it paints a pretty bleak picture for the future slate of Warner Bros. Games. The company itself is in a period of transition, after president David Haddad announced he would be stepping down last month, with a successor yet to be determined.The companys most bankable hit moving forward is the sequel to Hogwarts Legacy, which is set to connect in some way to the Harry Potter TV series planned for 2026. A release date for the sequel, however, is yet to be announced.We might be getting more Hogwarts Legacy soon though, with a special edition featuring extra content rumoured to be in the works. Hogwarts Legacy 2 cant come soon enough for Warner Bros.(Warner Bros. Games)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy