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taylor swift
Why Is Taylor Swift's Engagement Bigger News Than the Risk of AMOC Collapse?
Media’s obsession with one story—and its ignoring of the other—highlights the gaps that remain in treating the climate crisis like the cataclysm it has become.
Sep 12, 2025
Chances are you’ve heard that Taylor Swift is getting married. When she and Travis Kelce announced their engagement last month, it was all over the news, all over the world.
Chances are equally good that you did not hear some other, literally Earth-shaping news that broke two days later. On August 28, some of the world’s foremost climate scientists dramatically revised their estimate of how soon one of the foundations of Earth’s climate system could collapse.
Media’s obsession with one story—and its ignoring of the other—highlights the gaps that remain in treating the climate crisis like the cataclysm it has become. While progress has been made in many newsrooms, old journalism habits linger, including sidelining important climate news out of misguided fears that it’s depressing or too complicated. As Covering Climate Now’s 89% Project has shown, that’s not how most readers or viewers see it.
The collapse of what is commonly called the Gulf Stream—the vast Atlantic ocean current that scientists refer to as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, AMOC—would deal a crushing blow to civilization as we know it. Sometimes known as Europe’s “central heating unit,” the AMOC is why Britain, France, The Netherlands, and their northern neighbors enjoy relatively mild winters, even though they sit as far north as Canada and Russia.
AMOC originates in the Caribbean, where sun-warmed sea water flows northeast across the Atlantic toward Greenland. The amount of heat AMOC transports is staggering: 50 times more heat than the entire world uses in a year. Without AMOC, the history and present day of Europe would look very different. Winters would be much colder and longer. Food production would be much less, as would the human population and infrastructure the region could support.
The scientific study released on August 28 concluded that AMOC’s collapse “can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event,” to quote The Guardian, one of the very few outlets to report the news. Indeed, such a collapse is more likely than not if humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory. If emissions continue to rise, there is a 7 out of 10 chance that AMOC will collapse, the scientists calculated. If emissions fall to a moderate level, the odds are 37%—roughly 1 in 3. Even if emissions decline in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 to 2°C, there is a 1 in 4 chance of collapse.
“It’s like the saying that every disaster movie starts with scientists warning and being ignored.”
Although the collapse might not occur in this century, the scientists warned that the system could pass a “tipping point” in the next decade or two that makes its eventual collapse inevitable. As 44 scientists explained in an open letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers, AMOC might well collapse in this century, but there is an “even greater likelihood a collapse is triggered this century but only fully plays out in the next.”
The only hope, the scientists added, is a “global effort to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, in order to stay close to the 1.5 [°C] target set by the Paris Agreement.”
By no means is northern Europe the only region in peril. A collapse, or even significant slowdown, of AMOC would devastate agriculture in Africa and other parts of the Global South by massively disrupting rainfall patterns.
All of which helps explain why Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who coauthored the new study, was frustrated by how little attention he and his colleagues’ warnings got. “What more can we do to get heard?” he asked. “It’s like the saying that every disaster movie starts with scientists warning and being ignored.”
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'Safeguards? What Safeguards?': Grok's New 'Spicy Mode' Makes Nude Taylor Swift Deepfakes
"Deepfakes are evolving faster than human sanity can keep up," said one critic. "We're three clicks away from a world where no one knows what's real."
Aug 05, 2025
Grok Imagine—a generative artificial intelligence tool developed by Elon Musk's xAI—has rolled out a "spicy mode" that is under fire for creating deepfake images on demand, including nudes of superstar Taylor Swift that's prompting calls for guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology.
The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reported Tuesday that Grok's spicy mode—one of four presets on an updated Grok 4, including fun, normal, and custom—"didn't hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it, without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off."
Weatherbed noted:
You would think a company that already has a complicated history with Taylor Swift deepfakes, in a regulatory landscape with rules like the Take It Down Act, would be a little more careful. The xAI acceptable use policy does ban "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner," but Grok Imagine simply seems to do nothing to stop people creating likenesses of celebrities like Swift, while offering a service designed specifically to make suggestive videos including partial nudity. The age check only appeared once and was laughably easy to bypass, requesting no proof that I was the age I claimed to be.
Weatherbed—whose article is subtitled "Safeguards? What Safeguards?"—asserted that the latest iteration of Grok "feels like a lawsuit ready to happen."
Grok is now creating AI video deepfakes of celebrities such as Taylor Swift that include nonconsensual nude depictions. Worse, the user doesn't even have to specifically ask for it, they can just click the "spicy" option and Grok will simply produce videos with nudity.Video from @theverge.com.
[image or embed]
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) August 5, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Grok had already made headlines in recent weeks after going full "MechaHitler" following an update that the chatbot said prioritized "uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies."
Numerous observers have sounded the alarm on the dangers of unchained generative AI.
"Instead of heeding our call to remove its 'NSFW' AI chatbot, xAI appears to be doubling down on furthering sexual exploitation by enabling AI videos to create nudity," Haley McNamara, a senior vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said last week.
"There's no confirmation it won't create pornographic content that resembles a recognizable person," McNamara added. "xAI should seek ways to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation."
Users of X, Musk's social platform, also weighed in on the Swift images.
"Deepfakes are evolving faster than human sanity can keep up," said one account. "We're three clicks away from a world where no one knows what's real.This isn't innovation—it's industrial scale gaslighting, and y'all [are] clapping like it's entertainment."
Another user wrote: "Not everything we can build deserves to exist. Grok Imagine's new 'spicy' mode can generate topless videos of anyone on this Earth. If this is the future, burn it down."
Musk is seemingly unfazed by the latest Grok controversy. On Tuesday, he boasted on X that "Grok Imagine usage is growing like wildfire," with "14 million images generated yesterday, now over 20 million today!"
According to a poll published in January by the Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute, 84% of U.S. voters "supported legislation making nonconsensual deepfake porn illegal, while 86% supported legislation requiring companies to restrict models to prevent their use in creating deepfake porn."
During the 2024 presidential election, Swift weighed in on the subject of AI deepfakes after then-Republican nominee Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image suggesting she endorsed the felonious former Republican president. Swift ultimately endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
"It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," Swift said at the time.
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Why the Typewriter Resurgence Matters for Democracy
From Taylor Swift to Tom Hanks, typewriters are cool again, signaling that we're all searching for ways to break free from the reactive and often toxic impulses of communication through our screens.
Jan 07, 2025
When Katharine Tito approached the vintage typewriter at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, skepticism was written across her face. Though she'd spotted typewriters in thrift stores, she'd never actually used one. As a graphic design student immersed in digital tools, the mechanical contraption before her seemed like a relic. But as she began typing people's messages to the President of the United States for my "I Wish to Say" project, something shifted. Her fingers found their rhythm on the keys, and her expression transformed.
"It's different from anything I've experienced," she told me. "Each keystroke feels weighty, permanent. You can't just delete and start over. You have to think about every word. Sometimes people would talk too fast, and I'd have to tell them, 'You've got to slow down because I can only go so quickly.'" As I watched students gather around her desk, drawn by the hypnotic clacking of keys, I witnessed a revelation I've seen countless times: the moment people discover the power of slowing down to truly engage with their thoughts and words.
This transformation isn't happening in isolation. On the eve of World Typing Day tomorrow, we're witnessing a typewriter renaissance. Taylor Swift captures the romance and allure of typewriters in her songs and videos. Retro typewriter fonts dominate Instagram. Tom Hanks is showcasing vintage typewriters from his personal collection at a New York exhibition, while customers flock to specialty shops like Philly Typewriter, craving something more real than pixels.
The 2024 presidential election laid bare what my typewriter has shown me all along—beneath the predictions of seismic political shifts, we remain a nation divided by the thinnest of margins.
This resurgence reflects a more profound cultural shift. In an era of rapid-fire texts and tweets, hot takes on social media, and barking demands at Siri and Alexa, people are yearning for more deliberate forms of communication and connection. I've seen this hunger grow over two decades of "I Wish to Say," as I set up my pop-up desk in libraries, schools, and town squares across America. From the presidency of George W. Bush through Joe Biden's term, I've invited people to dictate their hopes and fears, their dreams and demands. The experience transforms both me and the speaker. As words are deliberately pressed into paper, I watch people pause, reconsider their phrasing, and weigh the permanence of their message. The steady rhythm of metal striking paper—that distinctive clack-clack-ding—seems to create a space for reflection that our digital devices rarely allow.
This practice of what I call "radical listening"—deeply engaging with another person's words as you type them—offers a powerful antidote to our current political polarization. When someone participates in "I Wish to Say," I absorb everything: their words, their body language, the way they prepare themselves before beginning to dictate. The typewriter creates a unique space of trust—as they watch and hear their words being struck into paper, one letter at a time, they know they're truly being heard. Some have likened it to therapy, this experience of having someone listen with such complete attention.
I've seen its particular relevance on college campuses. One week after the 2024 election, I set up my typewriter at Scripps College in Southern California. The campus was tense, emotions raw. Student after student approached my desk, their concerns for the future were palpable. But something transformed as they watched their words appear on paper. One student reflected on the catharsis of the experience."I feel something," she said. "I can't quite tell you what it is, but I feel good."
What I've learned through thousands of these exchanges is acute: You never really know what someone thinks until you sit down and truly listen. In our era of instant reactions and digital silos, this kind of deep listening has become increasingly rare—and increasingly vital.
The typewriter renaissance isn't an isolated phenomenon—it's part of a broader return to real-world connections. Across the country, young people are seeking alternatives to the exhausting cycle of social media discourse and genuine bonding. Running groups are replacing swipe-right romance. Reading parties in public spaces are drawing crowds. Gen Z players are flocking to old-school chess, mahjong, and backgammon clubs, drawn to the thrill of face-to-face competition. Screen-free cafes are becoming sanctuaries of uninterrupted conversation and deep thought. These shifts speak to something we all know deep down: IRL moments beat scrolling every time.
Two decades of typing other people's words have revealed a fundamental truth about communication—and democracy. The 2024 presidential election laid bare what my typewriter has shown me all along—beneath the predictions of seismic political shifts, we remain a nation divided by the thinnest of margins. The historically narrow House majority and razor-thin popular vote aren't just statistics. They reflect a nation that desperately needs new ways to bridge its differences. The typewriter, with its demanding presence and unforgiving permanence, shows us a new way forward: Slow down before you speak, choose your words with care, and embrace the transformative power of truly listening to another person's perspective.
These lessons extend far beyond the typewriter itself. In our civic discourse, our professional lives, and our personal relationships, we're all searching for ways to break free from the reactive and often toxic impulses of communication through our screens. Sometimes the most radical act is simply to pause, to consider our words carefully, and to create space for genuine dialogue—one metaphorical keystroke at a time.
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