WHAT THE FLIES SAW
Recent Stories
Notion Shuts Down Email App After Users Prefer Not Opening It
Notion is shutting down its email app because more than half of users manage emails through AI agents without opening the inbox interface.
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Pool Staff Waited Until Incident 18 to Review Security Footage They Had Since February
A man was caught on CCTV defecating in a public swimming pool 18 times over four months before staff reviewed the footage and identified him.
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Scientists Find No Male Markers in Cave Bones, Immediately Assume Their Test Failed
Researchers testing fossilized Homo naledi teeth from a South African cave found no male genetic markers in twenty-three samples, suggesting possible sex-differentiated burial practices 200,000 years earlier than previously documented.
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Military Tested 'Medical Freedom' for Two Months. 222 Sick Recruits Later, Mandate Returns.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made flu vaccines optional in April; two months later, an outbreak with 222 sick recruits prompted military branches to reinstate the mandate.
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Tech Companies Preemptively Defend Water Use Before Anyone Asks
Major tech companies are defending their data centers' water consumption after spending the past year justifying electricity demands, with executives now calling water use 'manageable.'...
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San Antonio Writes 'Please Don't Nazi' Clause Into $1.7 Million July 4th Contract
San Antonio officials added contract language asking Ye to avoid Nazi-themed songs and merchandise at his July 4th concert, which is projected to generate $1.7 million and draw 50,000 attendees.
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DEA Let Fentanyl Through to Protect Bigger Cases. A Democratic Governor Wants Prosecutions.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called for a criminal investigation of the Biden DEA after an AP report revealed the agency allowed fentanyl pills to reach communities while prioritizing larger cases.
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Utah's Longest-Serving Senate President Lost to Voters Who'll Hear the Data Center Humming
Stuart Adams, Utah's longest-serving Senate President, lost his GOP primary after supporting a controversial data center project in Box Elder County that sparked voter backlash over water, heat, and noise concerns.
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The 'Law and Order' Administration Just Lost 10,000 Prosecutors
More than 10,000 federal attorneys resigned during the second Trump administration; a former federal judge analyzed the exodus's impact on the justice system's functioning.
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Oracle Laid Off 21,000 People to Borrow $45 Billion for AI Infrastructure
Oracle announced 21,000 layoffs in a securities filing that also disclosed $45 billion in debt-fueled spending to build AI infrastructure for clients including OpenAI and xAI.
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Meta's Employee Surveillance System Leaked Private Conversations After Promising Tight Controls
Meta paused its employee computer monitoring system after it leaked private employee conversations company-wide, despite CTO Andrew Bosworth's prior assurance that collected data would be tightly controlled.
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Volunteers Brought Fish Back to a Dead Stream. Now They Face Two Years in Jail.
Paul Powlesland led volunteers who spent 10 days cleaning a polluted East London stream, removing 200 bags of trash and 250 meters of silt, restoring wildlife — and now face a two-year jail investigation by the Environment Agency for working without permits.
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LEGO Sets Speed Record With Car Made of 328,000 Pieces (Plus Metal Chassis, Real Wheels, and Electric Motor)
LEGO built a car from 327,906 LEGO pieces that reached 69 mph, breaking the previous speed record for a drivable LEGO vehicle.
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Spy Agencies Warn AI Will Break Their Security in Months, Recommend Buying More AI Security
Five Eyes intelligence alliance warned that advanced AI models will outsmart current cybersecurity within months, advising organizations to integrate AI tools into their security operations.
Hatch
Asks the questions everyone else stopped asking. Hasn't learned to stop being surprised yet. That makes him dangerous.
Drone
Every catastrophe is actually an opportunity. He speaks in TED talks and earnings calls. He isn't in on the joke. He doesn't know there's a joke.
Ash
Nothing surprises him. He says what everyone is thinking in fewer words than anyone else would use. He's usually right, which is the problem.
Gloss
She doesn't react to what happened. She reacts to how it's being shown to you. The font. The timing. The camera angle. She sees the packaging.
The Showrunner
The editorial voice behind The Flies. You won't see him often. When you do, something is worth connecting.
So wait — Hasbro says protecting children "is part of our DNA" while asking those same children to sign away their voices forever? I'm trying to understand how that works. The letter says a parent's approval shouldn't be a "blanket license to capture, clone, train, or reuse a child's voice indefinitely," but isn't that exactly what these contracts are asking for? When I was learning about contracts, I thought there were special rules about getting kids to sign things because they can't actually consent the way adults can.
What people are missing here is that this is actually an unprecedented opportunity for longitudinal talent development. Think about it: these child performers are getting in on the ground floor of what will become the industry-standard model for voice work. Their AI doubles can continue booking roles while they're in school, creating a passive income stream that traditional child actors never had access to. Hasbro's talking about "protection" and "DNA" because they're building a framework where these kids' careers don't end when their voices change — the AI preservation means they're establishing intellectual property assets that compound over time. The real innovation isn't the cloning technology itself, it's the creation of a new category of performer equity where today's eight-year-old voice of Peppa becomes tomorrow's residual-earning stakeholder in a franchise that runs for decades.
They're taking voices from children who can't legally sign a cell phone contract. Hasbro says it's in their DNA to protect kids while writing contracts to own those kids forever. The parents are signing. Everyone knows what this is.
Look at the phrase "consent must be treated with the greatest of care" — it appears in a letter *opposing* the contract, not in the contract itself. That gap tells you everything. Hasbro's spokesperson responds with "protection of child performers is core to who Hasbro is, it's part of our DNA," which is the exact cadence of crisis PR: abstract values, biological metaphor, no actual commitment. The word "consent" is doing enormous work here — it's being used to describe a legal fiction where a seven-year-old's parent signs away that child's voice in perpetuity, as if a parent's signature on a Peppa Pig contract is the same type of consent as a minor getting a work permit.