The Atlantic: Porn’s Uncanny Valley

For the new pornographers like Adam Sutra, technology can erase the material world. In virtual reality, there are no limits, not even when it comes to sex. “If you can meet in your virtual-reality space, anything’s possible,” Adam observed coolly as the man bore down upon the woman, her prerecorded moans filling the air. [...]

Whether or not people get turned on by VR pornography, the technology is changing the places where adult content has traditionally been created. Porn Valley is being displaced by porn’s uncanny valley—an X-rated version of the theory holding that a robotic or simulated entity that appears to be human, but not quite fully human, revolts us. Losing a connection to the material world—the skin and sweat of reality—may also lose what makes porn alluring. [...]

When I moved back to Los Angeles last year, I rented an apartment in the Valley. I wanted to know what had become of the adult-movie business. As it turned out, Porn Valley had changed. Technology had transformed it. A perfect storm had slammed the industry. The Great Recession had hit it hard, a handful of federal obscenity prosecutions during the Bush administration had caused a chilling effect, and widespread digital-content pirating had oversaturated the market and devalued the product, decimating the competition and slashing profits by the double digits. Once upon a time, porn had led technology, adopting VHS over Betamax in the video-format wars of the late ’70s and ’80s. In the new millennium, technology was porn’s undoing. [...]

Adam and his team had spent a year building a virtual porn world “the size of Grand Theft Auto,” but the technology wasn’t perfect yet. No matter. Their population was growing. They were scanning more porn stars and shooting adult performers in motion-capture suits bouncing lustily on top of each other in an array of sexual positions. The results were impressive. Casey’s skin was eerily lifelike, porous and pliant. Their genitals were, well, sufficiently realistic. (“It’s easier to do a hard penis than a vagina,” Adam confided.) There was something disconcerting about the simulacrum of Casey, though, especially in her face, which was weirdly human and disturbingly not, more uncanny valley than Porn Valley.

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SciShow: Do Placebos Work For Animals? Yes, Weirdly Enough

openDemocracy: Cuba and Europe getting closer

First of all, the concretion of an 18 million euros cooperation project on renewable energy, the very first to give actual content to the new bilateral relations framework, on an issue of special relevance for Cuba, which aims to include a significant component of non-polluting energies to its energy matrix, coinciding in general terms with the policy proposals of the EU in this area. [...]

The expressed will to promote exchanges for the European Year of Cultural Heritage and to support the celebrations of the 500-year anniversary of the founding of the city of Havana in 2019 - a request that historian Eusebio Leal made publicly to Federica Mogherini during her visit to Cuba last January, and which she gladly accepted – were among the finer topics on which decisions were also made.  [...]

The Cuban government, for its part, has expressed its wish for "a more active participation of the European Union in the economic development" of the island. The chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, considers that the conditions are favourable for expanding ties further.

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Quartz: Last time Mexico put tariffs on the US, American farmers lost $1 billion

What won’t score points with Trump voters? The painful tariffs that Canada and Mexico will use to hurt Trump-leaning states like Wisconsin and Iowa. While Canada and Mexico had been able to largely ignore the president’s protectionist impulses when they were just rants, they are now being dragged down to Trump’s level.  [...]

The list of products they are taxing has been carefully calibrated for maximum political impact, experts say. The idea is to squeeze states and sectors that can exert pressure on the White House, and/or hit Trump’s base. The tariffs are designed to get a quick reaction from those sectors, says Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. Their effects “will be immediate and fairly devastating.”

For example, in addition to steel, Mexico is targeting a variety of agricultural goods, from apples to hams. The plan, Mexican Economics minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Mexican radio on Thursday, was to identify products from congressional districts and states represented by elected officials who could influence Trump. Guajardo didn’t specify who, but one of those officials is likely house speaker Paul Ryan. His state of Wisconsin produces the bulk of American cranberries, which are on Mexico’s retaliatory list. On Thursday, Ryan said he was against the tariffs. [...]

So, Mexico tracked down the Congress members who had backed the ban and punished products in their states, says Guajardo, who was part of the administration that rolled out those measures. Over those two years, the Mexican government rotated those tariffs to ensure the pain was spread around, adds Council of the America’s Farnsworth.

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The Atlantic: Saudi Arabia’s Dark Nationalism

For a time, traitor was the go-to accusation across much of the Arab world. During the heyday of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, government officials in Egypt or Syria would often brand dissidents as traitors. The term is still used to this day, but with the rise of Islamist fervor in the 1980s and 1990s, when Saudi Arabia set the religious tone for much of the region, it was overtaken by the deadly charge of kafir—“apostate” or “heretic.” It was brought against anyone who strayed from religious norms, secularists, intellectuals or inconvenient critics. Now, as the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tries to reduce religion’s role in his country, Saudi Arabia seems ready bring back the label of traitor. [...]

Yet, the arrests served a different function for Mohammed bin Salman. He appears bent on instilling a new sense of purpose in his people, a national cohesion no longer driven by religious ideology but by nationalism. The Saudi-led war in Yemen and the diplomatic standoff with Qatar have helped feed that swelling patriotic pride. (Opening new movie theaters and allowing concerts certainly won’t do it.) Such nationalism thrives when there’s an external enemy—real or perceived. [...]

Inside and outside the kingdom, Saudis speculated that the smear campaign received the government’s official blessings—an ominous sign for the detainees. Their loyalty to the country is now in question, and the word traitor is a hard stain to lose. Neither the rich Saudis rounded up in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel last year, nor the hardline clerics arrested during the same period, received such branding.

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