Twitter CEO Elon Musk has apparently decided that "cis" and "cisgender" will now be considered a slur on the social media platform. "Cisgender" typically refers to individuals whose gender identity matches their birth sex. If an individual is born male and has a male gender identity then they would be considered "cisgender." The proclamation was made in the replies of James Esses, an Irish right-wing media figure, who was complaining that commenters on social media were calling him a "cissy." "Yesterday, after posting a Tweet saying that I reject the word ‘cis’ and don’t wish to be called it, I receive a slew of messages from trans activists calling me ‘cissy’ and telling me that I am ‘cis’ 'whether or not I like it,'" he wrote. "Just imagine if the roles were reversed." Mr Musk responded with an announcement that "repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions." Mr Musk then took it a step further. "The words 'cis' or 'cisgender' are considered slurs on this platform," he wrote, prompting backlash on the platform. NYT bestselling author Seth Abramson doubted that Mr Musk knows what the word means. “I’m 102.3% sure Elon has no idea what ‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ mean, either connotatively or denotatively or etymologically,” he wrote. “Threatening to suspend users on your ‘free speech’ platform because they uttered a word you don’t understand but fear emasculates you is quite the fascist flex.” Joe Walsh, a conservative commentator, criticised Mr Musk from the right. “‘Cis’ & ‘cisgender’ will be considered slurs on this platform? Look, it’s his company, he can do whatever he wants, but the truth is that @elonmusk is fundamentally a dishonest person and a coward,” Mr Walsh wrote. “He says he believes in free speech, but he doesn’t really believe in free speech. He’s pushing an agenda, a right wing agenda, but he doesn’t have the balls to admit that. Elon is too afraid to be honest with his intentions. So he lies and says he’s for free speech. But you can’t say ‘cisgender.’ No, Elon is just like most everyone else. He’s pushing an agenda. He just lacks the honesty & the courage to admit it.” It’s not the first time Mr Musk has expressed his disdain for language relating to gender identity. Last July he tweeted that “pronouns suck” — suggesting he either dislikes gender identity or just the English language in general — and later that year insisted that he was not transpohobic. “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an aesthetic nightmare,” Mr Musk, creator of the Cybertruck, argued. However, in defending his dislike of “cis” and “cisgender,” Mr Musk leaned on a decades old bigoted ideas that LGBT communities and ideas are deeply infected with pedophilia. “The contemptible creep that manufactured the term ‘cis’ has serious problems. Ignore him,” Mr Musk wrote, referencing a right-wing conspiracy theory that the term “cisgender” was coined by a paedophile doctor in the 1990s. However, cis— with “cis” being the Latin opposite to “trans” — has been used as a dichotomic descriptor since at least the early 20th century. Read More Musk vows to bring Tesla to India ‘as soon as possible’ after meeting Modi Elon Musk stays mum on Titanic submarine disappearance despite Starlink connection Elon Musk and Joe Rogan challenge Covid vaccine scientist to ‘debate’ anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr Elon Musk stays mum on Titanic submarine disappearance despite Starlink connection India’s Modi to meet Elon Musk during US state visit Vaccine scientist hounded by conspiracists after Joe Rogan targeted him on Twitter

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A major leak has seemingly revealed Microsoft’s plans for the future of the Xbox. The company is planning a new version of the Xbox Series X that will be shaped like a cylinder and not include a console, according to internal documents. Codenamed “Brooklyn”, the new console will have the power of the more expensive Xbox, with more storage but without the option to use discs. But that will then be followed by an entirely new kind of console, planned for 2028. That aims to create a “hybrid” experience by streaming games online but combining them with local hardware, to get the best of both. That is according to new documents that were published as part of the legal hearings between the US Federal Trade Commission and Xbox, which were first reported by The Verge. The documents appear to have been uploaded accidentally, and have since been pulled down. There is no guarantee that either of the consoles will actually arrive, and the documents appear to show the internal planning of the hardware. But the new “Brooklin” version of the Xbox Series X appears close to completion, with an estimated 2024 release date. It will also come with a new controller, nicknamed Sebile and planned for later this year. It will include new features such as an accelerometer so that the console can wake up just by being picked up, and a white and black mixed colour scheme, but otherwise keeps the same design as the existing controller. The “next generation” console appears to be more speculative, and comes from a 2022 pitch ahead of a possible 2028 release date. It says that the company is aiming for its cloud gaming platform and physical consoles to achieve “full convergence” through games that would be described as “cloud hybrid”. “Our vision: develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences,” the documents read. It suggests for instance that players could buy a small puck that would plug into their television and include some of the processors and other hardware required to play games. But much of the game itself would stream over the internet. The hardware design would begin next year, ahead of kits arriving with developers in 2027, and then the console itself arriving a year later. The first games would start being developed for the hybrid platform from next year, the documents suggest. But it also notes that a range of things are yet to be decided. The company needs to build a “thin” operating system that could play the local parts of the games, for instance. The documents mention “hybrid Windows”, suggesting that similar technology could come to the desktop. Read More Apple explains how the iPhone turned into a camera like none before it BBC reviews Russell Brand’s time at corporation as YouTube demonetises content Google announces huge breakthrough step in finding genes that cause disease

The feats achieved by the Ancient Egyptians have long flummoxed even the most renowned experts. For example, how on earth did they build the Great Pyramid of Giza? It’s taken centuries for scientists and archaeologists to come up with an answer, and even that’s not set in stone. But now, researchers believe they’ve finally worked out how the Great Sphinx was made more than 4,500 years ago. Sure, there’s a pretty broad consensus about how the face of the giant limestone statue was created – it was most likely hand-carved by stone masons. But the imposing, multi-layered body had continued to evade explanation. However, researchers at New York University, have finally concluded that the body came about. And it wasn’t all thanks to the masonry skills of local workers. They believe that the shape was sculpted by Mother Nature herself, in the form wind. “Our findings offer a possible ‘origin story’ for how Sphinx-like formations can come about from erosion,” Leif Ristroph, senior author of the study, said in a statement. “Our laboratory experiments showed that surprisingly Sphinx-like shapes can, in fact, come from materials being eroded by fast flows.” For their study, the team took harder rock encased in mounds of soft clay to mimic the terrain along the Nile River in northeastern Egypt. They then washed over these formations with a fast-flowing stream of water to replicate the wind and, in the end, the clay assumed a Sphinx-like shape. The resulting form consisted of a lion’s “head,” “neck,” “paws” laid out in front and an arched “back". “There are, in fact, yardangs (rock features formed by air erosion) in existence today that look like seated or lying animals, lending support to our conclusions,” Ristroph pointed out. Still, we’re sure Ristroph would be the first to admit that he and his colleagues weren’t the first to come up with the aeolian erosion theory. In 1981, geologist Farouk El-Baz suggested that the iconic Sphinx was originally a flat-topped shape that was worn down by wind over time. Furthermore, El-Baz believed that the builders of Ancient Egypt would have known of these natural processes, and so carefully selected the shapes of their most iconic structures to withstand them. "Today, the pyramids of Giza exist in perfect harmony with their windy environment," the scientist said back in 2001. "Had the ancients built their monuments in the shape of a cube, a rectangle, or even a stadium, they would have been erased by the ravages of wind erosion long ago." Nevertheless, the New York University team were the first to show exactly how this phenomenon could have occurred, and their findings have broader implications. "The work may also be useful to geologists as it reveals factors that affect rock formations—namely, that they are not homogeneous or uniform in composition,” Ristroph said. "The unexpected shapes come from how the flows are diverted around the harder or less-erodible parts." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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WILMINGTON, Del. & BALTIMORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2023--