The Weekly Weird #74
Internet gets Tali-banned, the EU's biometric borders, fake-tress, digital ID sive vis sive non, Hamit Coskun wins appeal, new robot drops
Welcome back to your Weekly Weird, where we whistle past the graveyard of civil liberties!
If you haven’t already, check out Episode 148 of the podcast with Dr Leslie Gruis (rhymes with “juice”), a thirty-year veteran of the National Security Agency.
The next episode of the podcast will be out this Sunday, October 12, and our guest is
, the author of The Abolition of Sex. Please tune in!Now for the latest dystopian doings:
Fake-tress
Meet Tilly Norwood.
Tilly is “the first creation to emerge from recently launched AI talent studio Xicoia, a spin-off from [Eline] Van der Velden’s AI production studio Particle6.”
She’s an “AI actress”, the latest exciting addition to the experiment in quantum weirdness we call modernity. She’s on Instagram, has a website, and features in an entirely AI-generated short film called AI Commissioner, made by Particle6.
“Like if a Sunday roast went to drama school and got BAFTA optimised.”
Tilly’s creator Eline Van der Velden was quoted in Variety:
“Audiences? They care about the story — not whether the star has a pulse. Tilly is already attracting interest from talent agencies and fans. The age of synthetic actors isn’t ‘coming’ — it’s here.”
Despite Van der Velden mentioning that agents were circling, Vulture received nothing but official denials of any interest in an AI performer. So it’s probably going to happen…
On the representation side, leadership at both WME and Gersh responded by saying their agencies wouldn’t sign Norwood while also acknowledging that, as Gersh president Leslie Siebert put it, “it’s going to keep coming up, and we have to figure out how to deal with it in the proper way.” Sources close to the major agencies all deny participating in any theoretical bidding war to Vulture.
Any producer or studio sufficiently focused on the bottom line would be willing to at least consider a generated performer on a cost basis alone. Then there’s the other pitfalls of human talent: An AI ‘performer’ wouldn’t say anything stupid on social media and get cancelled, have embarrassing pictures or statements from their past crop up to hurt them right before a movie premiere, go on strike, complain about a script or a fellow actor, or expect the world to care about their political opinions.
On the flip-side, it’s a hefty blow to the humanity of the arts.
If your brain feels like it’s melting, you’re a normal human in good company. What does it mean for an agent to “sign” a synthetic performer? Would that effectively mean repping the studio the way an agency might handle Pikachu by working with the Pokémon Company? And if so, how would that reshape the business model of talent agencies? Beneath that surface lie thornier technical and legal puzzles that may take years to resolve. But what’s clear is that Particle6 and its founder got exactly what anyone peddling a new product wants: attention. So did the larger idea of “synthetic performers,” now fueling a news cycle that sticks a finger deep into one of Hollywood’s deepest anxieties.
Is “one of Hollywood’s deepest anxieties” that actors won’t be taken seriously? That performance will just seem…fake?
Is Mark Ruffalo worried that he lost the gravitas he needed for his role as Bruce Banner/The Hulk because he demonstrated how you can “double-zap your zits” in a 1989 Clearasil ad?
Was Olivia Coleman less believable in The Favourite because she shilled car loans in 2004?
Is the subtextual importance of Universal Soldier as a statement against the dehumanising influence of the military-industrial complex undermined by Jean Claude Van Damme doing mid-air splits to sell a Japanese chewing gum called Black Black?
Based on the record, the argument that AI-generated actors will somehow cheapen the sincerity of human performance seems a little thin. Human actors do that perfectly well on their own.
Okay, that one was fake. But is it less believable than this actual Heinz ad that is pretending to be a sincere endorsement by “Heinz Tomato Ketchup superfan, Ed Sheeran” who the bean-and-sauce slingers claim “came to us with a great idea for a Heinz Advert based on his own experience”?
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Ed Sheeran took a break from being a successful musician to pitch an ad to Heinz because he just loves that sweet sweet red sauce? Sure.
Besides, Arnie’s deranged commercials for a Japanese energy poison drink didn’t stop him becoming the Governator of Ka-lee-foh-nee-aah and arguably the world’s most revered vegan.
While some actors, like Kevin Bacon, describe their craft as “telling lies for a living”, others want to be seen as activists or advocates for everything from “fur is murder” to “vaccines cause autism”.
And of course believing the latter didn’t prevent Jenny McCarthy from sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch in Baseketball.
Tim Dillon has a good bit about actors “showing us who they are” by going “off book” and voicing their personal beliefs and opinions.
“These people, when just given the chance, completely fuck everything by talking, and if they would just shut their mouth…no-one is pleading with them for their opinions on anything, no-one cares, but they feel compelled.”
Is it possible that it’s financial, underneath all the hand-wringing about creativity and artistic integrity? Film is cut-throat at the best of times. Competing against a computer-generated performer who comes basically free-of-charge compared to a human’s contractual requirements, rights, and benefits, is a tall order.
This all might get rinsed out in the churn and go away because of unions like SAG-AFTRA or Equity, or because audiences just don’t respond to a “synthetic actor”.
Or it could drive interest to the theatre, to one-person shows and spoken word, where AI still can’t compete.
Whatever happens, be sure that you can’t believe your eyes.
Internet Gets Tali-banned
The BBC reported last week that the internet across the whole of Afghanistan went down as a result of the Taliban doing Taliban tings:
Over the past few weeks, the Taliban government began severing fibre-optic internet connections across several provinces, saying this was part of an effort to prevent immorality.
I won’t argue with the allegation that the internet is a vector for immorality, but talk about cutting off the head to get rid of a headache…
Banking services froze, businesses ground to a halt, flights to and from major airports were canceled, money markets failed, and companies and aid groups lost contact with clients and staff.
In what one assumes is a tongue-in-cheek claim, the Taliban explained their action as if it was part of a grander civic plan:
An “alternative system will be established within the country for essential needs,” said Haji Zaid, the spokesman of the governor of northern Balkh province.
He said the order came from the Taliban’s Supreme Leader Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a powerful and reclusive figure who issues edicts from the southern city of Kandahar.
An “alternative system” to the internet, built by these guys?
The BBC shared a poignant quote from one Afghan:
“This is the gradual death,” one shopkeeper told us. “When there is no hope, no chances of progress, no freedom of speech, no optimism for the future of your child, no stability for your business, where you can’t benefit from your studies.”
Women were unavailable for interview because they are legally forbidden from being audible outside of their own home.
Two days later, the Afghan internet was “partially restored”.
Despite that supposed restoration, NetBlocks report that there are ongoing outages and blockages, especially related to social media.
“Metrics show social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat are now restricted on multiple providers in Afghanistan; the incident follows last week’s telecoms blackout and is the latest in a series of internet censorship measures imposed by the Taliban,” NetBlocks, a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said in a statement on October 8.
The Taliban perspective is that these measures are required for the moral good of the nation, or, as one Sharia judge says in the above New Yorker documentary: “You are forcing us to beat you.”
The EU’s Biometric Borders
The EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) goes live from October 12, 2025 and will be phased in gradually between then and April 10, 2026.
The Entry/Exit System (EES) will require all non-EU citizens to register their personal details, including fingerprints and facial images, when they first enter the Schengen area - all EU nations apart from Ireland and Cyprus, plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
[…]
The new electronic system will remove the requirement to manually stamp passports at the EU’s external border and instead create digital records that link a travel document to a person’s identity using biometrics.
The long march to the One File continues.
EES is a precursor to another system that is slated to become operational in late 2026 - the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).
Non-Schengen area citizens will then need to apply for an ETIAS authorisation, provide personal information and details about their trip and pay a 20 euro fee before they travel.
The authorisation will be valid for three years or until a passport expires, whichever comes first.
Passenger vehicles from the UK will be affected at Dover from November, with further implementation eventually also including the Eurostar as well.
The checkpoints are trickling in. Once that’s all set, the price can go up, the visitation period can go down, and eventually people will have forgotten what it was like before they were tracked, monitored, and charged every time they crossed a border.
Not long until, as Stefan Zweig wrote in The World of Yesterday, “all the bridges are broken between today, yesterday and the day before yesterday”.
In 1942, just before his suicide, the great European author wrote the following in the first chapter of his autobiography:
It is reasonable that we, who have long since struck the word “security” from our vocabulary as a myth, should smile at the optimistic delusion…that the technical progress of mankind must connote an unqualified and equally rapid moral ascent. We of the new generation who have learned not to be surprised by any outbreak of bestiality, we who each new day expect things worse than the day before, are markedly more skeptical about a possible moral improvement of mankind. We must agree with Freud, to whom our culture and civilization were merely a thin layer liable at any moment to be pierced by the destructive forces of the “underworld”. We have had to accustom ourselves gradually to living without the ground beneath our feet, without justice, without freedom, without security. Long since, as far as our existence is concerned, we have denied the religion of our fathers, their faith in a rapid and continuous rise of humanity.
Ever get déjà vu?
Digital ID Sive Vis Sive Non
The motto of government in general tends to be sive vis sive non1, but the Starmer administration in the UK is particularly exemplifying that attitude at the moment.
The British government, just after announcing a digital ID scheme they claim is intended to crack down on illegal working by requiring identity verification for employment and housing, “will consult on whether children aged between 13 and 16-years-old should be included in roll-out of planned digital IDs”, according to the BBC.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper (pictured below finding out that 13 year-olds aren’t supposed to work full-time) “defended the plan, telling LBC “lots of 13-year-olds already” have digital IDs and that standardising the process would help.”
A government spokesperson added: “Children can work part-time from the age of 14. In some local council areas this is from the age of 13.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer was visiting India, where he “praised the country’s far more extensive Aadhaar digital ID system, which includes biometric data, as a ‘massive success’.”
Why is Starmer so juiced about the Aadhaar system?
From Al Jazeera:
India’s digital ID system, Aadhaar, is much bigger and far more detailed than the one the UK is planning. New Delhi stores people’s fingerprints, eye scans, photos, home addresses and phone numbers, and its system processes about 80 million authentications each day.
[…]
Under Aadhaar, every Indian citizen receives a 12-digit number that aims to replace many paper documents. All adults and children more than the age of five must provide biometric information.
The system is used to verify identities when people open bank accounts or apply for a new SIM card for their mobile phones, for example. The system has also aimed to streamline the disbursement of government benefits, giving the holder instant proof of identity and access to basic services.
Wow, doesn’t that sound super sweet? Are there any downsides to the One File?
India’s Aadhaar has suffered several mass data leaks, at times exposing the personal information belonging to as much as 85 percent of the population…
At least three large-scale Aadhaar data leaks were reported in 2018, 2019 and 2022, with personal information put up for sale on the dark web, including one from the government’s COVID-vaccination portal.
“Public confidence is low” in the Aadhaar system; “87 percent of Indian citizens believe elements of their personal data are already in the public domain or on compromised databases...a rise from 72 percent in 2022.”
Using the Aadhaar system for welfare and taxes has also resulted in “greater hardship for some of the country’s most marginalised and poorest citizens, denying them medical care or food rations”.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, over 2.8 million people signed a Parliament petition against the introduction of digital ID, and the government responded (excerpts below, full response here):
[W]e will introduce a new national digital ID. This is not a card but a new digital identity that will be available for free to all UK citizens and legal residents aged 16 and over (although we will consider through consultation if this should be age 13 and over). Over time, people will be able to use it to seamlessly access a range of public and private sector services, with the aim of making our everyday lives easier and more secure. It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.
“It will not be compulsory…but it will be mandatory for some applications” has to be one of the most classic civil-service-speak sentences ever written. If it is mandatory for applications fundamental to the function of life in society, like having a job or a home, then it is effectively compulsory. Tarting it up in typical English twaddle to mask that is almost as insulting as being told it will make our lives “easier and more secure”.
For example, the new digital ID will build on GOV.UK One Login and the GOV.UK Wallet to drive the transformation of public services. Over time, this system will allow people to access government services – such as benefits or tax records – without needing to remember multiple logins or provide physical documents. It will significantly streamline interactions with the state, saving time and reducing frustrating paperwork, while also helping to create opportunities for more joined up government services.
Wait, I thought this was about “illegal migration” and controlling access to the labour market? Now it will be the base layer for all interactions with the state?
By the end of this Parliament, employers will have to check the new digital ID when conducting a ‘right to work’ check. This will help combat criminal gangs who promise access to the UK labour market in order to profit from dangerous and illegal channel crossings.
The people being brought over by “criminal gangs who promise access to the UK labour market” don’t have the ‘right to work’, nor do they have the documents to get them past the existing checks, and they know that, as do the gangs selling them spaces in unsafe ‘small boats’. Somehow that’s going to stop with the wave of the magic digital wand?
For clarity, it will not be a criminal offence to not hold a digital ID and police will not be able to demand to see a digital ID as part of a “stop and search.”
But it will be mandatory if you want to work or rent a home, and the previous paragraphs explain the plan includes eventually applying the digital ID framework to benefits and taxes, just like in India.
Privacy and security will also be central to the digital ID programme.
This is the biggest lie of all, because it is definitionally impossible. Anyone claiming that a centralised database of personal information has “privacy” or “security” at the heart of it is, at best, too dumb to know how that system will work, or lying. Putting that information all in one place is the breach of privacy and security from which all risk follows.
People in the UK already know and trust digital credentials held in their phone wallets to use in their everyday lives, from paying for things to storing boarding passes. The new system will be built on similar technology and be your boarding pass to government.
Another rhetorical trick. Using your Apple Pay wallet to buy chewing gum, or having the PDF of a boarding pass on your phone, is a completely different league of centralisation and intrusion to a “not compulsory, but mandatory” government ID. Pretending these are even remotely similar levels of centralised surveillance is both stupidly offensive and offensively stupid.
We will launch a public consultation in the coming weeks and work closely with employers, trade unions, civil society groups and other stakeholders, to co-design the scheme and ensure it is as secure and inclusive as possible. Following consultation, we will seek to bring forward legislation to underpin this system.
Of what value is a public consultation if the conclusion of it is foregone? If the proposed system is inherently insecure, making it “as secure…as possible” is no comfort to the public.
Start figuring out how to dislocate your jaw and suppress your gag reflex, they’re asking us to swallow this one whole.
Hamit Coskun Wins Appeal
Hamit Coskun, the Turkish asylum seeker arrested, charged, and convicted of a racially-aggravated public order offence in April for burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London in February, has won an appeal at Southwark Crown Court.
Justice Bennathan’s decision is well-reasoned and well-written. The opening paragraphs are a great relief to anyone in favour of free speech in the UK.
There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.
We live in a liberal democracy. One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so. The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.
In the initial trial, which I reported on here, the Prosecution argued that Coskun being attacked by an armed bystander, Moussa Kadri, and kicked by a passing delivery rider, showed that his behaviour was disorderly, a questionable and dangerous argument to make. Bennathan’s decision makes a point that somehow escaped the lower court, namely that “the Courts should be wary of allowing the criminal reaction of one person to make a criminal of another for exercising their right to free speech.”
Amen.
New Robot Drops
Is The Figure 03 Robot Ready To Clean Your House? asks TIME.
See for yourself.
Well, that’s it for this week’s Weird, everyone! I hope you enjoyed it.
Outro music is You’re Gonna Get It by Trance Dance, who somehow in 1988 summed up the British government’s attitude to its own citizens on the subject of digital ID in 2025.
You can have it right here
You can have it right now
It really doesn’t matter
Cause anywhere you go
You’re gonna get it!
Stay sane, friends.
Whether you want to or not.