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Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science
5 days ago
- Jiroemon Kimura, the world's oldest man who died at 116 in 2013, had questionable age records with inconsistencies in his life history.
- Saul Justin Newman's book 'Morbid' argues that extreme longevity claims are often due to bad record-keeping, not healthy lifestyles.
- Supercentenarians with unhealthy habits like smoking or drinking may not actually be as old as claimed, undermining longevity studies.
- Small errors in age reporting can compound over time, skewing demographic data and affecting public policy decisions.
- Examples of fraud include Japan's missing centenarians and Greece's pension fraud, highlighting systemic issues in age verification.
- Blue zones, like Okinawa and Sardinia, may have inflated longevity due to destroyed records and benefits tied to age.
- Longevity is more influenced by societal factors like income, education, and environment than individual lifestyle choices.
- Ezekiel J. Emanuel's book emphasizes that common-sense health habits and meaningful life pursuits are more important than chasing extreme longevity.
The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online
7 days ago
- Congress is set to vote on the KIDS Act, which combines KOSA and other internet bills, pushing age verification and content moderation.
- The act uses a 'knows or should have known' standard for minors, pressuring platforms to implement age checks, risking privacy and free expression.
- Age verification may involve invasive methods like driver's licenses or facial scans, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups.
- The bill regulates lawful speech around topics like addiction and gambling, pressuring platforms to censor discussions to avoid legal risk.
- Private and encrypted messages are targeted, potentially weakening encryption and ephemeral messaging features for all users.
- The act's complexity and legal risks could lead to restrictive age-checking across platforms, reducing privacy for everyone online.
Bill C-34 Answers Child Safety with Identity Infrastructure
5 days ago
- Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, acknowledges real online harms and proposes platform accountability for harmful design, weak safety systems, and failures to protect children.
- The bill's minimum-age provisions (sections 27-29) risk turning child safety into age-verification infrastructure, requiring age verification or estimation for access to major online spaces, which could condition participation in public discourse.
- The legislation bundles multiple issues—platform accountability, child safety, age verification, pornography access, AI chatbot rules, and a Digital Safety Commission—making it complex and harder to scrutinize, potentially entangling good parts with bad ones.
- Age verification infrastructure could normalize access controls on public online life, with privacy safeguards insufficient to address architectural concerns, and may disproportionately impact vulnerable youth who rely on online spaces for community and support.
- The bill has an outdated view of social media, favoring centralized platforms over decentralized alternatives like Mastodon or Lemmy, which could hinder digital sovereignty and competition.
- The implementation details, including which services are covered and acceptable age-verification methods, are deferred to future regulations and Commission guidance, avoiding explicit parliamentary debate on key decisions.
- Amendments are suggested: retain platform accountability measures but remove or narrow the minimum-age regime, focus on age-appropriate design, and ensure privacy protections without making age verification a condition for access.

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#age verification

Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science

The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

Bill C-34 Answers Child Safety with Identity Infrastructure