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What’s the most Irish band you can think of? Not best, most. The Overview weighs in.
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Belfast hip-hop act Kneecap. Photo: Peadar Gill
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1. More than 80 artists pull out of SXSW over US Army sponsorship
Eighty acts and counting have canceled their appearances at the music and tech festival in Austin citing South by Southwest’s sponsorship deal with the U.S. military and the military’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
The inclusion of the weapons manufacturer RTX Corporation, whose subsidiary Collins Aerospace is sponsoring two panels at the festival, has also drawn criticism.
Twenty-five-year-old English pop star Rachel Chinouriri is one of the latest to join the boycott.
“I am 100% anti-war,” she wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. “[T]his topic is extremely triggering for me as the daughter of two child soldiers.” Chinouriri’s parents migrated from Zimbabwe to the U.K. shortly before her birth.
All 10 featured acts in the Music From Ireland showcase have pulled out of the event. Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap, known for their politically charged lyrics, said on Sunday they canceled their sets “in solidarity with the people of Palestine.” The Irish have a long history of supporting Palestinians.
On Tuesday, SXSW organizers posted a statement on X supporting artists’ decisions to boycott the festival, while defending the defense industry.
“These institutions are often leaders in emerging technologies, and we believe it’s better to understand how their approach will impact our lives,” the statement said. “The Army’s sponsorship is part of our commitment to bring forward ideas that shape our world.”
In other Israel-Gaza news:
- Israel allowed an aid convoy into the northern Gaza Strip for the first time since the war started. However, elsewhere in Gaza, a U.N. aid truck was turned around this week, allegedly because it contained medical scissors, which Israeli authorities said could have both civilian and military use.
- The United States’ current pause in funding for UNRWA, the main organization getting aid to Palestinians, might become permanent.
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2. US House passes bill that could ban TikTok
On Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the social media app or face a nationwide ban in the U.S.
The bill passed easily with a 352-65 vote, and will now head to the Senate. Joe Biden has said he’d sign the bill into law if it came to him.
U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have had TikTok in their crosshairs. They say that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is a security threat — especially in an election year.
Fifty-six percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 use the platform, according to a Pew survey released last month. Of those, however, only 52% have ever posted a video to their account. The survey also showed that the top 25% of users by “posting volume” produce 98% of all public content.
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3. What is in the AI law that the EU just passed?
European Union lawmakers passed the Artificial Intelligence Act on Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly for the new law.
The law will ban certain applications of AI and require greater transparency among AI companies.
Bans under the new regulations include AI that produces social scoring — profiles of people based on surveillance that predicts criminal or financial behavior.
Emotion recognition at workplaces or schools and systems that influence behavior or exploit vulnerabilities in users are also banned by the law.
The European Union has said that the higher the risk of the AI application, the stricter the rules. Applications that control medical devices or infrastructure like water or electricity, for example, will see more scrutiny than those for content recommendation or spam filters.
Notably, the act doesn’t weigh in on companies using copyrighted material to train their AI, said Susan Ariel Aaronson, director of the Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub.
The language of the bill still needs to be finalized, and it may take years for the rules to be enforced.
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In other news
- Unless conditions change dramatically in the coming weeks, child poverty in Argentina will likely increase from 57% to 70.8% in the first quarter of the year, according to UNICEF. [El País]
- Leonid Volkov, an aide to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was attacked with a hammer outside his home in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday. Lithuania says Moscow is “likely” behind the attack. [CNN]
- On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin said that Russia’s ready for nuclear war and the U.S. should think twice before sending troops into Ukraine. [Reuters]
- Officials in Fukuyama, Japan, are warning residents to stay away from a cat that fell into a vat of poisonous chemicals at a plating factory. Here’s hoping the poor thing doesn’t change its name and start terrorizing the city. [BBC]
- Guess who’s back: A British boat in the Indian Ocean was taken over by 20 pirates, about 680 miles off the coast of Somalia. [Africanews]
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Say that again
“One doesn’t leave a man like me.” That foreboding warning was delivered by none other than Pablo Picasso to his long-term girlfriend, Françoise Gilot. Gilot was an artist in her own right, but her work never got even a fraction of the recognition, especially after she left Picasso and moved to the United States.
Now the Picasso Museum in Paris is dedicating a room to Gilot’s work, all of which is on loan from private collectors. [The Washington Post]
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‘It’s so different than the reality outside the school’
Yakir Renbaum, who grew up in a settlement outside of Jerusalem, describes what it’s like to work at a bilingual school for Jewish and Palestinian children.
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What we’re listening to
Last year, more than 10,000 listeners of Ireland’s Radio Nova voted Thin Lizzy as the best Irish band of all time. I am as much a Thin Lizzy fan as anyone (play “Jailbreak” on literally any jukebox and the people shan’t be disappointed).
But when I think of the most Irish band of all time, I think of the folk-punk group The Pogues — fronted by Shane MacGowan, who died late last year.
Here’s the representative “Sally MacLennane” off of the Elvis Costello-produced album “Rum, Sodomy & the Lash” — now there’s a title for you.
—Laura Adamczyk, staff writer
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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