Elena worked for Novaya Gazetta, the last independent newspaper in Russia.

She covered corruption, prison violence, gay rights and Chechnya.

This isn’t a job for the faint of heart. She has been stalked, arrested and beaten on many occasions. Her newsroom was harassed daily. In fact, 4 of her colleagues were murdered under her watch.

After the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper was shut down. She left Russia and moved to Eastern Ukraine. She started systematically documenting war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians

https://femantiwar.org/en/interview-kostyuchenko/

She was forced to leave after Ukrainians warned her that Russian soldiers put a bounty on her head. (you can use english subtitles)

Then, a few weeks later, she was hospitalized.

Her food was poisoned in an attempt to kill her:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/12/you-may-have-been-poisoned-how-an-independent-russian-journalist-became-a-target

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-elena-kostyuchenko-russian-journalist-in-exile-visiting-professor-poisoned-kremlin-20251124

Elena miraculously survived and kept reporting.

She now teaches at Duke University in the US. When asked if she is afraid, she said the following:

https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-22/elena-kostyuchenko-im-not-afraid-if-i-wasnt-afraid-of-putin-i-wont-be-afraid-of-trump.html

Elena is one the bravest person I know.

When you think about it, people living in Western Democracies don’t know how good they have it. You can create a labor union in your company. You can run for mayor in your town. You can join an NGO and sue large corporations. Yes you can.

In my life, whenever I lack inner strength to do the right thing, I always think about her

  • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.world
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    2 hours ago

    I never said anything was a conspiracy. I just point out something interesting. How you perceive that is entirely up to you. I see it as just as likely that her likeness was used in training or is present in substantial numbers within the original stable diffusion unet. Being dichotomous and dogmatic just pushes intelligence out, in favor of ever worsening echo chambers. If pointing out such anomalies is met with dogmatic stupidity, this is far too stupid of a place for me to waste time engaging.

    Edit: yup. Time to leave this place.

    • k0e3@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      And people are just pointing out how stupid you are. Sounds fair to me.

    • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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      24 hours ago

      Edit: yup. Time to leave this place.

      This isn’t an airport, no need to announce your departure.

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      How you perceive that is entirely up to you.

      That’s probably my least favorite way of refusing to take responsibility for your own words.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      If you seriously had any interest in engagement, you wouldn’t be using EXTREMELY domain specific language in an attempt to sound smarter than everyone else. You’d be explaining, in laymen’s terms, exactly what your suspicion is in an accessible way the way ANY real expert in their field is trained to do from day one. Instead you’re either an actual expert who is extremely poor at the communicative aspect of your job, or a troll here to sow dissent and cloud the conversation. Either way, I’m appreciative that you read the room and decided to leave of your own initiative. It shows a level of awareness neither of your prior posts had, and it’s refreshing.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        He basically just said it looks a lot like the picture could be made by an AI. Which is completely irrelevant since it clearly isn’t, something you could find out in five seconds by looking her up.

    • meco03211@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Huh. J4k3 has several ignoramus markers reflective of generative AI in the text. Obviously those are based on traits that occur naturally, but the combination of traits here are all in harmony with a certain state of ID10T hidden layers model alignment. The background, sentence structure, overall stupidity profile in STFU, word choice on each area of the post, font color and pattern, flatness of the tone, the strands of spittle extending over the slacked jaw combined are especially curious.