'Inmates escape prison' using virtual reality program — infraction rate of solitary confinement prisoners drops by 96%



A nonprofit organization is touting a drastic reduction in prisoner infractions when they were given the opportunity to use virtual reality headsets.

"Inmates escape prison cells using VR headsets."

This clever tagline noted by writer Mario Nawfal sounds like a futuristic version of Sean Connery's "The Rock," but it is actually referring to a program that has allowed prisoners to imagine the world outside their enclosed space.

A nonprofit called Creative Acts reportedly persuaded Meta to donate 20 VR headsets and two headset sanitation machines for a pilot program that is now claiming impressive results. The seven-day program has inmates go through scenes of daily life on the headsets, coupled with adventure programs like paragliding. Each session lasts four hours and involves the program's staff asking prisoners to interpret their emotions through poetry, painting, and more.

Prisons that have piloted the program have seen an alleged 96% reduction in infractions by prisoners who are in solitary confinement. According to a report by the Guardian, Corcoran state prison in California saw infractions by men in solitary drop from 735 to just one infraction after the first one-week program.

That same prison reportedly closed one of its four buildings dedicated to solitary confinement due to the lasting good behavior.

"The VR stirs up the triggers and the trauma and the emotions, and then the art transforms," said Sabra Williams, founder of Creative Acts.

The report on the program does come with some implications and suppositions, however.

One cited prisoner explained how he felt humiliated because prison guards would shut him down when he tried to communicate with them, but the virtual reality sessions provided him with an outlet. The reason for the man being in solitary confinement or what crimes he was charged with were not mentioned, nor was the subject of the pitfalls of prison guards befriending inmates ever broached.

Furthermore, the Creative Acts program gives prisoners physical masks to paint and tells them to paint the image of how they feel society perceives them. One inmate who was serving a life sentence (without parole) wrote "condemned" on his mask, along with some cracks.

Interestingly, this theme was explored in Netflix's "The Punisher" and is eerily similar to what is described in the report.

This was not the first VR program to be implemented in prisons, though. A 2023 report from Technology Review cited a program to teach an inmate how to use a self-checkout upon release, something that did not exist when he began his sentence in 2001.

Looking Glass noted this and other programs such as remote visitations with family members, vocational training, and conflict resolution training.

Perhaps matrix-like mental escapes are better than actual prison escapes, but the implications of simulating outside life without actually getting to experience it could seem like torture to some. It is also unclear what the company may do with the data it is collecting from the test prisoners.

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The best science fiction films of the year



It’s no secret that one of the last places to enjoy non-woke art is science fiction. As the mind virus makes its Borgesque conquest of all entertainment, sci-fi has become a bastion of storytellers seeking to skip intersectional purity and instead try to entertain. These are our picks for the best sci-fi movies of the year.

'The Creator'

The Creator | Official Trailer youtu.be

It’s so refreshing when a movie like “The Creator” reminds us what great filmmaking is capable of. Gareth Edwards is a master at crafting realistic sci-fi worlds and characters. His 2016 “Rogue One” was the only modern Star Wars film that wasn’t insufferable. Edwards’ budget was only $85 million for “The Creator,” but it looks visually superior to films that cost three or four times as much.

We see people with authentic character development who have a genuine love for their machines and robots and who wrestle with difficult moral choices. The film looks breathtaking, and everything from the tech to the costumes resonates as if it were from a real future. It is a testament to what Hollywood can do when executives leave storytellers alone.

'Godzilla Minus One'

GODZILLA MINUS ONE Official Trailer 2 youtu.be

Perhaps the bar has been set extremely low, but when a movie comes along that is a triumph of old-school blockbuster action and adventure with heart, you can’t help but leave the theater smiling. “Godzilla Minus One” is that type of film.

It’s no coincidence that a movie with this much skill and drive to entertain is being made by foreigners outside the Hollywood factory. In the case of “Godzilla Minus One,” the Japanese have picked up the crown for producing an intelligent, fun action movie that had previously been dropped in the mud by the major American studios.

The movie is a purely Japanese production. Fair warning: it’s two hours of subtitles. However, if you can handle the subtitles, you’re left with a richly rewarding experience from the first frame to the last.

Currently in theaters.

'M3GAN'

M3GAN - official trailer youtu.be

"M3GAN" could have been a well-made thrill ride, but something much deeper than an evil, AI-controlled doll is disconcerting about the film. It explicitly raises calls attention to how much of parenting we've handed over to machines. Early on, the film’s protagonist gives an iPad to her niece so she can finish some work; the girl’s deceased parents had strict screen-time limits, but her aunt didn't share those concerns. She gleefully pitched M3GAN as a tool that can handle reading bedtime stories and reminding kids to flush the toilet so parents can get back to important things like listening to podcasts.

We’ve all seen it: the toddlers staring blankly at iPads in restaurants, the kids quietly playing games on their parents' phones at parties, barely interacting with each other. Balancing screen time is confounding for parents, but it’s worth noting the billionaires who created this technology almost universally don’t let their kids use it. Unfortunately, it seems most people are willing to blithely sacrifice their progeny to our digital gods.

"M3GAN" asks the painful question: when we outsource parenting to technology, are we creating horrors worse than anything Hollywood can conjure?

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

'65'

65 – Official Trailer (HD) youtu.be

Following a devastating spaceship crash on an uncharted planet, pilot Mills (portrayed by Adam Driver) is stunned to realize he's marooned on Earth, but not the Earth he knows. This is Earth as it existed 65 million years ago. Taking their lone opportunity for salvation, Mills and his sole companion, Koa (played by Ariana Greenblatt), embark on a treacherous journey through an unfamiliar landscape teeming with menacing prehistoric beasts. Their harrowing struggle for survival becomes an epic battle against the odds as they fight dinosaurs to find a way back home. It’s pure popcorn fun.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

Honorable mention:

'The Peripheral'

The Peripheral Season 1 - Official Trailer | Prime Video youtu.be

This last pick is cheating because it’s a TV series, and it came out at the end of 2022. "The Peripheral" is an eight-part series that received minimal buzz, which is a shame because it’s excellent. Produced by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan’s brother and the co-writer of classics like "The Dark Knight" and "Interstellar" and based on a novel of the same name by William Gibson, it centers on a young woman named Flynne and her brother Burton living in rural North Carolina in 2032.

It excels in world-building by crafting a believable vision of the future that terrifyingly seems to be around the corner. We see economic degradation and hopelessness alongside well-worn technology. Most people are addicted to painkillers and spend their time playing video games in VR. You get the sense that the country has become a part of the third world with better gadgets. Burton, played by Jack Reynor, is a veteran of an unspecified civil war. He spends time playing a badass VR version of Call of Duty: Medal of Honor with his Marine buddies. His sister Flynne, played by the excellent Chloë Grace Moretz, hustles to make enough money to keep her sick mother alive.

"The Peripheral" succeeds because the world seems real. The 3D-printed weapons and medicine, VR, armed drones, and augmented Marines don’t seem like the imaginary tech we usually see in sci-fi but rather realities just over the horizon, waiting to alter our lives.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

This is NOT a joke — Yuval Harari, WEF contributor, suggests DRUGS and COMPUTER GAMES for 'USELESS PEOPLE'



It’s certainly ironic that the World Economic Forum, an international organization supposedly dedicated to improving the state of the world, harbors the idea that people can be “meaningless and worthless.”

That’s a direct quote from Yuval Noah Harari, advisor to Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF.

Harari predicts that future developments in artificial intelligence will inevitably result in mass unemployment.

“The biggest question in maybe all of economics and politics of the coming decade will be what to do with all of the useless people,” Harari says.

By “useless people,” he means all of the displaced workers who used to have jobs before AI ripped them from their hands.

He is concerned that this unfortunate group will become bored and need some way to find meaning in their lives because “they’re basically meaningless and worthless,” he says.

How gracious of him to consider the plight of the expendables.

But lucky for them, Harari, in all his profound wisdom, is already thinking toward a solution: “My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for most.”

No, that is not a joke. That is not taken out of context. He actually suggests total incapacitation as a solution for unemployed people.

And yet somehow it gets even worse.

“Transhumanism boiled down to its bones is pure eugenics,” Harari says.

For those who don’t know, transhumanism is the theory that humans can essentially become immortal by evolving beyond their current physical and mental limitations while eugenics is the study and practice of tampering with gene pools to increase the likelihood of desirable traits while reducing the likelihood of undesirable traits.

“History began when humans invented gods,” Harari says, “and will end when humans become gods.”

“Only the non-useless [people] will go along with transhumanism,” he continues.

This kind of thinking and talk might be great inspiration for the next big dystopian novel, but to even consider these ideas played out in reality is beyond despicable.

Harari’s message “certainly has echoes from our history,” Stu says.

And it’s absolutely true – Hitler, who was also a supporter of eugenics, preached similar ideas to brainwash the Germans.

Unfortunately, many Germans thought, “No, it’s the shiny new future,” Glenn says, “and they allowed it to happen because the old system wasn’t working.”

Our current system may not be working, but “we must not allow it to happen this time,” Glenn pleads.

To learn about what you can do to combat the insanity of Harari and others like him, watch the full clip here.


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MIT video game gets players to  confront white Midwestern woman aboard airplane over her simulated 'xenophobia'



Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a video game where players can virtually signal their virtue.

One academic has expressed optimism that this game signals an opportunity in the virtual space to inoculate users against purportedly discriminatory ways of thinking.

What are the details?

Researchers Caglar Yildirim's and Fox Harrell's virtual reality game "On the Plane" pits fictional antagonist Marianne, a Midwestern white woman "with limited exposure to different cultures and customs," against Sarah, a "hijabi woman" whose Muslim immigrant parents evidently have afforded her greater cultural knowledge and relative innocence.

The researchers, both with the computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory at MIT, suggested in a paper that "computationally supported roleplaying games have the potential to promote successful perspective taking."

Perspective-taking requires that an individual "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" and challenge his or her own preconceptions. The adoption of different avatars, each with its own preloaded baggage and perspective, can allegedly help in this regard.

Yildirim and Harrell noted that their game affords players the ability to experience the simulation of air travel experience, airport security screening, and in-flight events from different "ingroup and outgroup perspectives," for the purpose of simulating and challenging "ingroup-outgroup biases within the context of xenophobia."

Players can assume the perspective of Marianne, Sarah, or a flight attendant who is more or less an empty vessel and bystander.

Whereas Marianne is regarded as an "ingroup member," Sarah is regarded and coded as an "outgroup member." It would appear that only the former can hold prejudices and only the latter can fall prey to bloodless victimization.

Depending on a player's responses and choices in the game, the player's standing in the simulation will change along with the nonplayable characters' facial expressions.

If the player aligns more with Sarah, then Marianne will make her dissatisfaction known.

"We can customize how comfortable Marianne, the ingroup member, appears while interacting with Sarah, the outgroup member," wrote the researchers. "By the same token, we can customize how Sarah dynamically reacts to the xenophobic attitudes portrayed by Marianne."

"Through the exchange between the two passengers, players experience how one passenger's xenophobia manifests itself and how it affects the other passenger. The simulation engages players in critical reflection and seeks to foster empathy for the passenger who was 'othered' due to her outfit being not so 'prototypical' of what an American should look like," Yildirim told MIT News.

While apparently keen to combat discriminatory mindsets, Yildirim makes no mention of whether his game in turn contains significant implicit biases or so-called microaggressions, such as his socio-economically charged presentation of a Midwestern female character as one suffering a lack of exposure or his intimation that Sarah, the Indianapolis native, would necessarily be culturally enriched as the result of her Malaysian ancestry.

Matt Lamb noted in a recent piece for the Washington Examiner that "the game relies on stereotypes."

"Marianne, the 'white woman,' has 'xenophobic expressions and attitudes toward Sarah,' according to MIT. Putting aside that Islam is a religion, not a race or ethnic identity, how does it fight racism to make the white Midwestern woman the bad character?" wrote Lamb.

"On the Plane" is a product of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society's "Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism." This initiative is purportedly looking to "identify and overcome racially discriminatory processes."

Harrell, a professor at the university, serves on the initiative's steering committee. He is also helming the ICSR's "Antiracism, Games, and Immersive Media" vertical, which seeks to use virtual worlds and virtual identities to reprogram human beings and purge them of their alleged racial biases.

"This project is part of our efforts to harness the power of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to address social ills, such as discrimination and xenophobia," said Yildirim.

MIT professor Fotini Christia suggested the MIT game serves as an indicator that virtual reality can be used as a reeducation tool.

"This game also takes a novel approach to analyzing hardwired bias by utilizing VR instead of field experiments to simulate prejudice," Christia told MIT News. "Excitingly, this research demonstrates that VR can be used as a tool to help us better measure bias, combating systemic racism and other forms of discrimination."

The MIT duo is not the first to turn to VR as a cure for perceived societal illnesses.

A 2018 paper published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences suggested that virtual reality "might hold the key to substantial and feasible bias reduction in the courtroom," having shown promise in encouraging "more cautious evaluations in the face of an ambiguous legal case."

Amid the BLM riots in 2020, a company called Live in Their World began offering a virtual reality bias and incivility training course to various companies, whereby employees would put on the perspectives of black and female characters.

PricewaterhouseCoopers reportedly turned to Talespin to train its employees in VR on so-called implicit bias.

While not the first to pin their hopes on VR as a way to combat the phantasmal Mariannes lurking around America, Yildirim and Harrell benefit from the stability that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars yearly secure for MIT — some of which derives from the allegedly intolerant Midwest.

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Oculus Rift creator debuts VR headset that blows users' brains out if they die in game



Palmer Luckey, the billionaire founder of Oculus and military technology company Anduril, has invented a new VR headset. The device is not novel on account of better graphics or an improved frame rate, but rather because it is capable of blowing a smoking hole through the user's noggin. Should the device ever make it to market, it may be enough to prompt some gamers to reconsider playing on hard mode.

More than a headache

In a Sunday blog post, Luckey described the new device, which he has called "NerveGear."

NerveGear is a virtual reality headset that looks like a transmogrified Oculus Rift, only this time the black goggles have three protuberances that jut out above the eyes, which together are "capable of killing the user."

"The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me," Luckey wrote. "You instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it."

\u201c"This might be a game, but it is not something you play."\n\nTo commemorate the Sword Art Online Incident of November 6th 2022, I made the OQPNVG, the first virtual reality device capable of killing the user - if you die in the game, you die in real life.\n\nhttps://t.co/F3nkP5EU61\u201d
— Palmer Luckey (@Palmer Luckey) 1667775396

The inspiration for the suicide headset came from the Japanese novel series entitled "Sword Art Online" by Reki Kawahara, which originally ran from 2002 to 2008 and was adapted into a television series in 2012.

In the show, set in 2022, thousands of people become trapped in a virtual massively multiplayer online role-playing game on Nov. 6, 2022. The protagonist, Kirito, tries ardently to escape.

Luckey noted that if the trapped and mentally dislocated gamers' "hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user."

In lieu of powerful microwaves, Luckey elected to use three explosive charge modules, each tied "to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy."

"When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user," he added, noting that he has "not worked up the balls to actually use it [himself]."

Luckey stated that the "good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear. The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you. The perfect-VR half of the equation is still many years out."

Until it is completed, the NerveGear "is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design."

Escapism and bombs

Luckey, a dropout from California State University, sold Oculus to Facebook for nearly $2 billion. The 30-year-old entrepreneur reportedly netted nearly $600 million of the sale. Facebook fired Luckey three years later.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Luckey's firing came after his colleagues raged about the VR wizard's $10,000 donation to anti-Hillary Clinton group Nimble America during the 2016 presidential election.

Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress that Luckey's departure had nothing to do with politics, it later turned out that the Oculus inventor's support for former President Donald Trump was a major factor behind his exit.

After his firing, which resulted in Luckey securing a payout of at least $100 million, he fundraised for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then founded the defense contractor Anduril.

CNBC reported that Anduril is behind the Anvil quadcopter drone, which can fly 100 miles per hour and was purchased by the U.S. military for use by special forces soldiers.

Luckey's company also makes the Ghost, which can weigh up to 55 pounds and hit speeds of 85 miles per hour.

Last month, the Verge detailed the company's first weapon system, a loitering munition called the ALTIUS (Agile-Launched Tactically-Integrated Unmanned System) that hovers in a designated area ahead of striking either ground or airborne targets.

According to Anduril, ALTIUS drones are able to "accomodate multiple seeker and warhead options."

The company has contracts with the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.K. Royal Marines.

While NerveGear may not be braining anyone any time soon, Luckey's other inventions certainly will.

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'The Mootrix'? Cows wear virtual reality goggles in winter to simulate sunny pastures. It reportedly makes them happier, boosts milk production.



Virtual reality technology apparently isn't solely for humans.

Turns out some folks got the nifty idea to outfit cows with virtual reality goggles in the winter in the hopes of boosting their milk production, the Sun reported.

Say what?

The goggles were developed with veterinarians and first tested on a farm in Moscow, the paper said, adding that cattle breeder Izzet Kocak put them on two cows in Aksaray, Turkey, and results have been favorable.

Photo by Zekeriya Karadavut/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Believe it or not, the cows' milk output has increased from 5.8 gallons to 7 gallons a day, the Sun said.

Instead of looking at a chilly indoor facility, the cows are "watching a green pasture, and it gives them an emotional boost. They are less stressed," Kocak told the paper.

Russia’s agriculture ministry said the system was developed based on the principle that cows perceive shades of red better than shades of blue and green, the Sun said.

“During the first test, experts recorded a decrease in anxiety," the ministry noted to the paper.

Indeed, while previously Kocak played classical music for his 180 animals, presumably as a mood booster, he's so happy with the virtual reality goggles that he plans to buy 10 more sets, the Sun said.

'The Mootrix'?

Images of one cow digging what's likely a sun-drenched pasture while hanging out with other cows indoors has captured the imagination of folks on social media, who are comparing the experiment to the sci-fi classic "The Matrix," the paper said.

As most of you know, "The Matrix" is the tale of the earth as we know it being nothing more than a simulation, while our real bodies are afloat in goo-filled pods as we generate energy for evil machines.

The main character Neo — played by Keanu Reeves — is located by "freed" humans inside the Matrix simulation and given a choice between taking a red pill to escape his pod and begin living in the real world or taking a blue pill to forget the whole thing.

“You take the short grass, the story ends, you wake up in the pasture and believe whatever you want to believe," one witty observer wrote in reference to the cows' VR experience, the Sun reported. "You take the long grass, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the human hole goes.”

Another person offered the following quip, the paper said: “With the sequels The Mootrix Reuddered and The Mootrix Ruminations.”