jeudi 31 août 2017

They claim hurrican augmentation

WeatherWar101 posts new analysis video of Hurricane Harvey

Mike Adams says he isnt buying it but would like to find out if possible.

http://ift.tt/2wmoIBZ


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Sam Harris (an atheist) says that God is possible/inevitable

I wanted to quickly share how an atheist such as Sam Harris, could validly express that a form of God is possible, and likely inevitable, all while still being an atheist.

Consider the following; especially item (3):

(1) I am an atheist.

(2) Beyond atheism, I lack belief in all things, and so I had come to invent a paradigm called 'non-beliefism'; so not surprisingly, I lack belief in all things, including God or Gods, as Sam Harris demonstrates.

(3) God is observable in a scientific context, see source. As such, "God" as observable in the scientific context presented, is compatible with atheism.



For Sam's expressions of the inevitable 'God', see the following:

See minute 14:11 in the following video:
[yt]8nt3edWLgIg[/yt]

See minute 1:13 in the following video:
[yt]w86lf799MDY[/yt]













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"Thought curvature", a possible path to Artificial General Intelligence?




Intriguingly, both the Google Deepmind paper, "Early Visual Concept Learning" (September 2016) and the paper of mine, entitled "Thought curvature" (May 2016):

(1) Consider combining somethings in machine learning called translation invariant, and translation variant paradigms (i.e. disentangling factors of variation)

(2) Do (1) particularly in the regime of reinforcement learning, causal laws of physics, and manifolds.


FOOTNOTE:
Notably, beyond the Deepmind paper, thought curvature describes the (machine learning related) algebra of Supermanifolds, instead of mere manifolds.


QUESTION:
Given particular streams of evidence..., is a degree of the super-manifold structure a viable path in the direction of mankind's likely last invention, Artificial General Intelligence?













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Gasoline Shortage in Dallas/Fort Worth

I felt this issue deserved a separate thread. Obviously not the most serious issue relating to Hurricane Harvey, so I did not want to distract from there.

From what I understand it is estimated about 20% of the US's refinery capacity is offline from the damage related to Hurricane Harvey. Most of the supply to DFW comes from Oklahoma rather than further south. Prior to the storms hitting gas prices have been hovering around the $2 mark in DFW this summer. IIRC as low as $1.75 and as high as $2.40 depending on the specific store or city in the metroplex. Yesterday the combination of rising prices, worries about a shortage, and tightening supply led to a run on the pumps. I saw prices as high as $2.40. My wife actually had to gas up regardless and we found gas for $2.09. Today I am seeing pictures at $5. There are still many places at about $2.50. I have heard of but not seen photos of $8.

A couple of local news links below. It is unfortunate how the panic cause most of the issue. However, how do we stop a large group from panicking? If you didn't gas up early and try to keep your supply high there is a big chance you'll need to gas up during the price surge. If you gas up early expecting there to be an issue, you contribute to the issue. DFW does have some good public transportation systems, but they are not very expansive. At my previous residence a 25 minute car ride took between 3 and 4 hours by bus and light right and also couldn't get me to work in time to start my shift. While there have been recent improvements, a lot of the area is not bike or pedestrian friendly.

http://ift.tt/2iLCKbw

http://ift.tt/2eImy6K

http://ift.tt/2iJcwGR

Attached Images
File Type: jpg Is this price gouging.jpg (74.1 KB)


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Banana peel triggers university



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mercredi 30 août 2017

Price gouging during a disaster

There is an article at Quartz, The Economic Case for Price Gouging

Under normal conditions, price fixing can have really bad outcomes (price fixing is one piece of the puzzle of what has gone horribly wrong in Venezuela) but in times of emergency, it seems like it would be cruel to price gouge.
The argument made in this article is that price gouging would actually be a greater good because:
1. Less things would run out, for example, people would only buy the water or gas they need instead of filling the tank
2. Store owners would more likely stock up on things needed in an emergency and so would consumers
3. People would have more incentive to get things to disaster areas

To counter balance this, I would say that outlandish or cruel price gouging could also backfire on the owners. We've had two huge stories concerning price gouging in recent news: the epipen price gouging story and the Martin Shkreli (Pharma bro) story. Price gouging of pharmaceuticals where there is a monopoly or a near monopoly I would say is a time that some sort of price controls need to be in place.

Are our existing anti gouging laws during a disaster a good idea? Maybe there is a middle ground, allowing prices to increase but limiting to 100% increase or some other limit.
Quote:

Price controls “lead to misallocation of resources, long lines, and black markets,” said Jonathan Meer, an associate professor of economics at Texas A&M University. “These policies can cause serious distortions but governments use them quite a bit anyway. People don’t like high prices of course, and unfortunately price controls seem like easy solutions to difficult problems.”
There are quite a few other articles floating about making similar arguments

http://ift.tt/2wpCBxK
http://ift.tt/2wpN3FI
http://ift.tt/2wpjh3Q


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Georgia GOP legislator makes death threat against black, female Democrat

Absolutely disgusting. This is what "free speech" for Nazis and other scum has led to.

http://ift.tt/2xNGlc1

Quote:

A Georgia Republican lawmaker warned a Democratic former colleague who criticized his support for Civil War monuments on Facebook that she won’t be “met with torches but something a lot more definitive” if she continues to call for the removal of statues in south Georgia.

State Rep. Jason Spencer, a Woodbine Republican, also wrote former state Rep. LaDawn Jones that “people in South Georgia are people of action, not drama” and suggested some who don’t understand that “will go missing in the Okefenokee.”
The swine later tried to claim he was misunderstood.

This is the sort of crap that makes it necessary for the left to be ready to defend itself by any means necessary.


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My computer is on airplane mode. I'm having problems with my wifi

My wifi either won't connect or Norton sends me a dire warning that other people can see what I'm doing on my computer. I always thought that wifi was a desirable thing to use with the internet. Airplane mode seems to be doing just as well as wifi so whats the problem or is there even a problem?


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Louise Hay

Louise Hay, author of the pernicious little tome You Can Heal Your Life, passed away today.

My friends from back in the day when I was into "Energy Healing" (It's neither energy nor healing) are memorializing her memory.

They all had/have her You Can Heal Your Life, a book that lists ailments, diseases, and syndromes with their metaphysical/emotional/traumatic causes. The cure in each case is that you get your psychic crap in order, deal with your emotional issues, and practice positive thinking, then your body will heal itself.

Even in the height of my Reikisms, I told them that book was BS. Positive thinking is nice. Touch is nice. But people need to see a real doctor. And most of the reasons given for various conditions are laughably shallow.

The danger continues to be that people forgo necessary medical treatments and surgery, cause they think they can psych the problems away.

A dear friend of mine loved that book till she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Then she saw that what it said was cheap and worthless to her own life. She began chemo, but her friends kept slapping her with the book and the whole load of Affirmations kyarn.

The cancer was too advanced. Even after her passing they sullied her memory with accusations of how she'd brought it all on herself by negative thinking and not following the Law of Attraction.

This woman, Louise Hay, left unnecessary deaths in her wake. And since her wretched book will be published for generations, there will be more.

:wackymad:


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I had to delete my youtube account because I was hacked.

Youtube began complaining about less than decent videos and comments I posted and made. The trouble is I didn't make the comments and not once have I ever posted a video. I tried to tell them that but it didn't work. I was banned from logging in. I then deleted the account and made a new one.

I had a good pass word but somehow someone got into my account and caused trouble.


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Port Arthur "Underwater" - Harvey Strikes Again!

Port Arthur has woken up this morning to a staggering "40 inches of rainfall over Tuesday". It is completely cut off, with many residents taking to social media to beg for help.

Quote:

PORT ARTHUR -- The situation in this city 91 miles east of Houston was dire early Wednesday, with homes expected to fill with rising floodwaters and residents unsure of how to get out of the city, reports CBS Beaumont, Texas affiliate KFDM-TV.

Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Harvey was falling in the city. It was inundated with some 40 inches of rain Tuesday, the station says. The National Weather Service issued flash flood emergencies for parts of Southeast Texas, including Beaumont and Port Arthur.
The local refinery is slowing winding down its process, because of the flood danger.

With the evacuation centre being flooded out, and boats being requisitioned into the area together with coast guards; and another two days of heavy rain, what could have been done to prevent this disaster, of people being trapped in their homes, and even on the roofs?

Is it climate change, or is it just a fluke of nature?


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What's with the CTer's victim thing?

Why do so many conspiracy theorists paint themselves as victims?

We have been reading a lot of editorials here in the States admonishing those of us who protest the alt.right/neo-nazis/KKK/white supremacists to do so in completely no-violent ways. These editorials point out that the neo-nazis have borrowed a page form Hitler's playbook by playing up any violence, no matter how minor, as the victimization of their movement, which they claim is non-violent and patriotic. Specifically, Americans are being asked not to use or mimic anti-fa's methods.

Those us who have studied the rise of Nazism in 1920' and 1930's Germany know that the Nazis loved to provoke violence, particularly from German communists, during Nazi rallies and then claim they were peaceful and patriotic Germans who had been victimized by the bad old commies.

Subsequent oppressions of Jews, minorities, Jehovah Witnesses. . .the list goes on. . .were justified by violent or destructive acts, often staged by the Nazis, against the German state.

I point this out because it seems the Canadian freeman movement has hooked up with the Canadian alt.right. We are all familiar with, and been amused by, the freeman propagandist's practice of making freemen into victims whose lives have been ruined over a mere parking ticket or municipal tax bill.

We are all familiar with the nazi apologist, holocaust denying efforts of the World Freeman Society.

But recently freeman/sovcit forums and Facebook pages have shared hyperbolic alt. right whines like this one making the rounds: http://ift.tt/2vFkHWO

One has to wonder if the freeman subculture has joined with the neo-nazi/alt.right in a culture of victimhood. After nearly two decades of failure is it possible that the freeman subculture has tacked right in an attempt to remain relevant? This wouldn't be the first time freemanary has tried to latch on to a movement. We all recall freemanary's attempt to steal the thunder of the Occupy Movement if for no other reason than to recount Bobby Menard being upstaged by a balloon at an Occupy gathering.


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Terry Pratchett's unpublished works crushed by steamroller

My favourite headline of the year so far; in accordance with the writer's wishes, a hard disc containing the works Terry Pratchett left unfinished was crushed by a steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

Quote:

Richard Henry, curator of Salisbury Museum, said: "The steamroller totally annihilated the stone blocks underneath but the hard drive survived better than expected so we put it in a stone crusher afterwards which I think probably finally did it in".
Good to see that his wishes were followed so faithfully.

Dave


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Can the ISM in a galaxy refract radio waves from 'behind'?

Specifically, ~2 GHz radio emission from a galaxy at redshift 0.446 (SDSS J233645.19+054428.4) passing through and around a galaxy at ~0.18 (so its frequency 'there' was ~1.65 GHz; SDSS J233645.69+054500.6) and detected here on Earth at 1.4 GHz.

I vaguely remember that the key parameter is the electron density, which would be an average here, over many kpc, and the frequency; however, I do not remember the details (and haven't tried to look them up).

Source: the Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk thread, "ARG0003f4o: lobe appears split by foreground galaxy?"; check it out for images.


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mardi 29 août 2017

When does the "Fusion Era" officially begin?

I was reading about the successful British fusion reactors and wondering if we were therefore officially beyond the fission era.


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Antifa's Honeymoon Coming to an end

After the tragedy in Charlottesville that the groups commonly referred to as Antifa and their Black Bloc comrades enjoyed a brief period of respect. That respect is clearly quickly evaporating as the result of the brutal attacks in Berkeley this past weekend and closer scrutiny into Antifa/Black Block's history of violence and sneering contempt for free speech.

For some recent comments see:

OPINION | The hypocrisy of antifa

The case against antifa
The anti-fascist movement often deploys violence in its protests — and that could seriously backfire.


The weekend saw numerous attacks on photographers who were taking pictures of the violence by the Black Block.

That being said, they do have their champions on the left, despite their violent tactics, with the Mayor of Berkeley California ironically wanting U of C to cancel their free speech week: Report: Berkeley mayor wants Cal to cancel right-wing Free Speech Week because of threatened Antifa/Black Block violence.

Rich Lowry: Stop making excuses for antifa thuggery


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Smartphone recommendation

About a year ago I eventually upgraded my old basic mobile phone to a smartphone. The cheapest one in the shop. A €50 Vodafone branded model.

Turns out it's a piece of ****, but I'm not surprised. I wanted just to test out the idea of owning one and I love the idea. Mobile Internet access, all sorts of cool and useful apps, etc.

But it's slow and sluggish as hell. Apps take an age to open. Some apps are painfully slow to use. Takes an age just to wake up when I hit the on button. So I want to upgrade to something a bit zippier.

My local Vodafone store has pay as you go smartphones ranging from pieces of **** like the one I bought at €50 right up to the latest models from Samsung and Apple going for €1000+.

What I'm looking for is a pay as you go Android phone that costs no more than €200. Any brands or models I should be looking at, and brands I should be avoiding, etc?


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Opera crashing every time I try to open it

This morning, my Mac said "**** you, I am NOT opening Opera no matter what you try to do"

Every time I try to open it, it never even manages to open a tab, and it's already giving me the spinning marble of hell, and it stays there. I tried rebooting my computer in Safe Mode and it still won't open.

The worst thing is that I can't even Force Quit the application when this happens. If I hit Command+Alt+Escape, it doesn't give me the Force Quit window. So it leaves me with no other option than to shut down the computer manually.

Is there anything I can do to fix the problem or will I have to delete and reinstall Opera altogether?


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Better than hasbara: shut em down

Is this the end of free speech on the web ?

However Many Days Later, Media Finally Decides to Report on Stormfront Shutdown

"The deal now is that any random group of Jews can just demand your domain be stolen and tech companies will now do it. Then the media will organize to not discuss it.

This is an entirely new form of censorship, just as so many new forms of censorship have popped up over the last couple of weeks."


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Call for abolition of sections Education and Economics

I call for the abolition of forum sections Education and Economics, Business and Finance. By merging them with the nearest other topic.

Gardener's reasoning: Better cut the withering leaves off, so the rest of the bush will grow more beautiful and strong.


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Sea Shepherds to suspend interference with Japanese whaling at sea

This according to the group itself, which alleges that the Japanese government has been using military satellite surveillance to keep constant track of the positions of Sea Shepherds vessels and is sharing that information with whaling operators. This, they allege, allows the whaling ships to actively avoid ever encountering the Sea Shepherds during their whaling expeditions, a tactic the group says makes intercepts impossible and essentially has made their voyages a waste of time and resources.

It's unclear from the article whether the group's statement about Japanese military involvement comes from positive knowledge, or whether it is a hypothesis based on lack of success on recent voyages.


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Trump is a plant to start a civil war

I have had two separate people express to me their belief that Trump is a plant designed to start a civil war in the country. I didn't get to ask who this secret group actually is, in fact I think my exact response was "uh... OK."

However, it is surprising to me that two separate people expressed this conspiracy theory view to me. One was a Democrat, and one was a Republican, but they both shared the view that it was "suspicious" how incredibly terrible he is at his job. With all of the cascading mistakes he has made, they were dubious that he could have purposefully be causing so much damage to the country at home and abroad unless he was trying to purposefully fail at the job, or someone put him in his position knowing how catastrophic he would be for the US.

First of all, I don't think that Trump is even close to smart enough to pull off such an intricate ruse. Trump has never shown a level of serious mental competency his entire life, and he would have to have hid a savant level of intelligence from everyone he has ever known, including his family, while playing the role of clueless buffoon for many, many decades. Therefore, Trump would have to be unaware of his role as a incompetent saboteur in chief for this plan to work. However, I also don't see what benefit any group in the US would get from a civil war.

Which really just leaves Putin. Sabotaging the US in order to gain increased worldwide economic and geopolitical leverage would definitely be in line with the goals of the former KGB agent. But I don't think Putin thought that far ahead when he sabotaged the US election in order to get Trump elected. Trump owes an immeasurable debt to Putin, and it is clear from his intense deference to the goals and will of Putin that he is at least partially under Putin's control.

However even though I think Putin's main goal was a more resigned and non confrontational US, Trump is not an easily controlled puppet, and I doubt even Putin realized how out of touch his is with reality. He is so devoid of basic logic and reasoning that Putin could never really fully rely on Trump to do anything except to do damage to America. It is a risky move since it also comes with the risk of Trump nuking the world.

Has anyone else heard the "Trump plant" conspiracy and/or the "Trump put in place to start a civil war" conspiracy? Also relevant to the discussion is whether Putin helped put Trump in power because of his positive overtures to Russia, or if he really knew how bad the worst President in history would be.


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lundi 28 août 2017

Revenge?

I hope this is the correct forum. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the desire for revenge.

Of course there are people with very definite positions on the subject, those who believe it is never appropriate, those who believe it's "bad karma", or it poisons the soul of the revenge seeker.

But I must say, after recently experiencing an emotional shock related to betrayal, my fantasies are delightfully full and ripe with ideas of causing and inflicting pain.

I'm curious as to what happens that causes an otherwise rational person, a usually calm, intelligent, emotionally balanced person, to find herself having such hard, cold, thoughts of retribution.


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Telepathy

Recent events and displays of well researched data has indicated to me, that 'telepathy' or the ability to extend one's consciousness beyond one's cranium is a real measurable phenomena, that has its basis in natural selection...

Ever feel like someone or something is watching you? Prey animals who can sense being watched, OFTEN look in direction of their stalker. If you look at the back of someone's head, more often than not they will turn and look right at you. Animals and humans who could identify the direction of an incoming predator were and are more likely to escape.

Fish and birds 'might' be using a single conscious rather than local physical inputs to alter direction.

When we see...light bounces off an object, is received by our retinas, flip-turned-right side up, and a picture is formed. But is that picture in our heads, or is it projected outward, outside of us, and by simply observing it, can we alter or change it, without touching it...?

After a few youtube searches I found some rather astounding test results.

Anyone here want to run a test, employing skeptics as the subjects??


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dimanche 27 août 2017

Judge Obvious

Court Concedes DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schulz Rigged Primaries Against Sanders
http://ift.tt/2vBfo9M

Nothing unexpected here, just judicial confirmation of what everyone knew was happening more than a year ago.


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Caps Lock is Possessed

Hello all,

My laptop has begun to do an incredibly concerning thing. The caps lock key comes on and off very rapidly and randomly, making legible typing on it utterly impossible. When it activates itself, hitting the key does nothing to deactivate it. There may be a correlation with some mouse freezing too, not sure.

I ran Malwarebytes free version, and found nothing. It isn't sticky keys. A google search returned a lot of people complaining about the problem, but no solutions really. It stopped doing it for a day and a half, but now has started again. I am typing this on a phone so it will come out readable.

The laptop is an HP running windows 7. I refuse to upgrade past windows 7 because I am accustomed to it and fear change.

Has anyone experienced or heard of this problem?


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All that's left...........

[yt]U_tyinuf93E[/yt]

It really is....................


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Houston is Flooding....

Catastrophic Flooding in Houston. America's 4th largest city is a disaster area. It is Katrina/New Orleans all over again.
I am not providing links because a simple search will give you plenty.
New thread because the Hurrican Harvey seems to be dead.
Once again, it is a case that the rain is the killer, not the Intial high winds.


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Claims Warrantless Searches of Homes legal in DC area

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority can now conduct Warrantless Searches of Homes


Quote:

By Rachel Blevins of The Free Thought Project

A bill that will allow homes to be searched without a warrant was passed with overwhelming support by the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Trump—and it happened with no media coverage and very little fanfare.

The text gives the Commission the authority to enter property near the Metro Rail System “without limitation” and without a warrant, for the purpose of “making inspections, investigations, examinations, and testing.”

...not the first time Congress has quietly passed a bill that will take away...basic rights from law-abiding citizens...it was ignored by the media, and while it may only affect the Washington D.C. metro area now, it could be laying the blueprint for future legislation across the country.

http://ift.tt/2wIecXt


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U.S. Science envoy resigns over Trump. Resignation letter has a hidden message!!!!

I shall just let you go to the report here: http://ift.tt/2ggrmnc :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:


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Why do Russian scientists make up such outlandish lies?

https://youtu.be/ZYTaAQnALbI This video describes a group of scientists who bored through the ice of a lake that had been ice covered for many millions of years. Once there they were forced to battle an octopus like creature with 17 tentacles and when severed the tentacles created a new creature.

Why would educated, sophisticated professional men of science make this nonsense up? Is it part of their culture? A story to garner interest in their adventure and discoveries?

I'll tell you what was really there. Waving masses of plant like snow white animals that were completely harmless and in fact in danger themselves because their environment was compromised by the invading humans.


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Irish ghosts in Canadian embassy

The Canadian ambassador in Ireland, Kevin Vickers, claims that there are ghosts in his embassy, according to this story in BBC:
Quote:

The evening before writing the post he was watching TV "when all of sudden I heard a heavy chain fall on the floor in the dining room. I immediately went there and there was nothing on the floor".
Mr Vickers says a couple of weeks prior he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and laboured breathing but that no-one was in the hallway when he checked.
While not exactly claiming to be a skeptic, he does present the usual argument that
Quote:

he did not believe in ghosts until moving into the official residence, Glanmire House.
Skeptics are invited to stay a night or two in his house. Any takers?


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The Proud Boys As Conspiracy Theory Group

I first heard about the Proud Boys from a friend in Canada who told me about what is apparently a well-known protest by some of their members.

I Googled the group and one hit took me to this page written on their official website by the vice-president of the LA Chapter of the Proud Boys, Adam Reis.

It is a page from the Proud Boys official webpage that describes something like a gang rape involving Muslims. There are no names mentioned, and it was hard to verify anything. So I contacted the man himself, Adam Reis, who wrote the article. I was able to find him on Facebook. Through Facebook posts and comments, I asked him for more information. The source of the information for the post comes, it seems, completely from the author, Adam Reis. Adam stated that he knows the family of the victim and they are his source. He stated that there have been arrests in the case, "three in custody and two still sought,” and when I asked about the position of the victim’s family on this, he stated, "You asked if crime victims wanted it aired. I responded that they did," stating this again later in the thread, ““ You asked if crime victims wanted it aired. I responded that they did. It is gang related -- a Muslim rape gang. That is why it is news.”

Despite his claim that the victim and her family wanted this known and that there had been arrests, Adam was unable to provide any more information about the incident. One reader who called himself [name deleted to preserve his identity] stated, “Adam I passed on this info to my wife who helps run a local news station. They are contacting Bell [City Police Department] now & looking into it. If accurate it's huge news that needs to be heard.” But this went nowhere. So while Adam claims he knows of a horrendous crime in which numerous arrests were made, no one, not even news agencies, have been able to find even the slightest mention of it anywhere. What do you make of it all? I think Adam made this up. It never happened. But that’s just what I think.

The Proud Boys have all sorts of chapters all over the place and a lot of these chapter have lists of their members on Facebook. A lot of these members have a lot of information about themselves on their Facebook profiles. In addition, you can find out who their members are by looking through chats they have had on Facebook. All of this is publically available. And to be honest, if I was running a group like the Proud Boys, I’d want what I stand for to be available to anyone. But what is it that you find when you look at what the Proud Boys stand for? I read through a lot of the Facebook profiles of members to find out.

One of the strangest things you find is a lot of conspiracy theory. Now, those of you who know me know that I have spent a lot of time with members of conspiracy theory groups. I was as surprised as anyone else to find this link. Of course you find the usual mix of Christian, gun groupie, Tea Party, Oath Keeper stuff. But lots of members of the Proud Boys, and their supporters, including Adam Reis the LA Chapter VP, have used their Facebook profile to ‘like’ Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson (one of Alex Jones’ producers), Infowars and/or Prison Planet. One of the members of a prominent chapter of the Proud Boys is busy investigating Gang Stalking.

I have actually had Proud Boys supporters tell me that Pizzagate is real. Proud Boys circulate stories on their official websites about dead voters who voted for Hillary and how there are millions upon millions of fraudulent votes in the USA. They circulate stories about how Muslims are cannibals. That there needs to be special investigations into Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In group photos, they flash what appear to be white power hand signs, although I’m sure they’ll tell you it has some other meaning. I’m pretty sure that if I looked hard enough, I’d be able to find Obama Birther conspiracy support.


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samedi 26 août 2017

Who's worse, Bush or Trump?

Based on their actions as president who would you say was the worst between our 2 most recent republican presidents?


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Did cheese lead to smaller skulls?

University of Californai scientists believe eating dairy products has given us smaller skulls and hands. This is because before, in the Paleolithic Age, we were Hunter-Gatherers having to forage for food and needed strong jaws to chomp it. Our jaws are also supposedly weaker.

Bearing in mind vegetables then were wild and much smaller than the one we know of. There were small carrots and onions are very ancient. No doubt tearing off the flesh of uncooked red deer (the remains of their bones are often found in caves).

Then came the Neolithic Age some 10K years ago, and the Hunter-Gatherers were pushed up North as the Agricultural Farmers migrated into Europe and brought food processing and cooking technologies. Hence less need for strong jaws and strong muscles generally.

Our closest relative in the Primate Tree - no pun intended - the chimpanzee has extraordinarily strong arms, compared to us. Of course they do use them for ambulation.

Quote:

Humanity's appetite for cheese and dairy gave us smaller hands and weakened our jaws, according to researchers.
A study by The University of California claims farming - especially dairy the kind centred on dairy - significantly changed the shape of human skulls.
This is because humans who hunting and forage wild foods instead of farming have to put more effort into chewing than those that rely on softer diets of cheese and cereal.


Read more: http://ift.tt/2wHWCm8
How plausible do people think this is? Have societies all over the world taken up dairy farming?

I always understood it was only North Europeans who remained lactose tolerant beyond childhood.

This is because due to the extremely cold winter months and scarcity of food, milk products and smoked food became very important.

Cultured milk is far more popular in the far north countries than elsewhere in Europe - although I understand kefir, a similar cultured drink, is popular in the Indian sub continent. Leading on from cultured milks, we get butter and the various cheeses.

Also important was hard breads, which don't go stale, salted herring, and smoked meat and fish.

Would this really lead to less chomping?

I am not convinced.

Are there any cultures which do not use dairy products (for example, vegan societies) which we can compare notes with?


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Donald Harington

Any Donald Harington fans here?

If you like a good novel (sometimes you might think you're reading Marquez, other times Steinbeck, other times just going "wtf???") then you can get a wealth of great reading for about £1 by downloading one of his anthologies onto your e-reader.


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Google decides what people find online

Wikilieaks etc. claim that in the recent months, Google has significantly dropped the search rankings of many Left-wing websites, including Wikileaks itself. In the name of the fight against fake news, possibly. But the websites listed by Wikileaks publish more facts than CNN.

Has Google started to abuse its monopoly position, and control too intrusively what information humans find on the Internet?

Even if it doesn't, I feel a bit antish searching for information with a tool whose search algorithm is a business secret. Nobody knows how they adjust it to distribute information to you. Cool. Fine? OK?


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Did Snowden change anything in CT perception?

Conspiracy Theory, as used at this website, refers to ridiculous distrust in the honesty of scientists or the goverment, among other things.

It makes me curious, have the recent revelations of Snowden, Wikileaks, etc. had any impact on the concept of Conspiracy Theory at this website? One would assume that many things which they have proven true, and in future will prove true, would have qualified as Conspiracy Theories until proven true. Which would mean that some ideas which right now are Conspiracy Theories will in future be proven true by Wikileaks etc.


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4th Amendment usurped in new law

http://ift.tt/2wIecXt


"The text gives the Commission the authority to enter property near the Metro Rail System “without limitation” and without a warrant, for the purpose of “making inspections, investigations, examinations, and testing.”

This clearly goes against the Fourth Amendment, which states that Americans’ rights “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.

”Amash called out the hypocrisy surrounding the fact that even though this legislation is in clear violation of the Constitution, it was passed by Congress with overwhelming support. “Only 5 of us voted against bill allowing govt to enter/search private property in parts of VA, MD & DC w/o warrant,” He wrote on Twitter."


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Wadda ya think of _these_ specs?

Quote:

... powered by a quad-core 1.39 GHz MediaTek processor. It will also be available in two different variants featuring 4GBs storage/512MBs of RAM and an 8 GB storage/1 GB RAM configurations. ... has some other interesting features, too, like a 2 MP camera with 720p video recording support. And, while it doesn’t have 4G LTE support, you get a Nano SIM slot with most of the 3G bands you can find on your phone.
...

...

...

... for a watch. :eek:

In spite of having seen the tech improvements over the decades I still get flashes of remembering when my hot rod XT clone 1983 Leading Edge Model M) ran at a screaming 7.16 MHz with a whole 640kB of RAM (128kB factory installed with space for 128 kB on the motherboard. The rest stuffed onto a full sized extension card. That's 72 64kb DIP-16 chips in all) and 20 (Count 'em, 20!) MB of hard drive storage!!! Which was roughly the size of all three LOTR paperbacks in a stack. I spent a lot of time sticking those (goddamned :)) chips (and bending over those little bitty legs when I screwed up :o) onto that memory card and half a dozen others for the machines my BIL got for his sadly-ahead-of-its-time typing business. Finally got really good at it, too. :p

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's all gotten to be old hat, and anybody here around my age or older has probably seen all this and more, (Core memory, anyone?) but every once in a while I still get a little frisson of wonder at having been able to live to see changes like these.

A watch, for cripes sake! And not even a singularly exceptional one, at that. Just incremental improvements on what is now a ho-hum platform. It's most distinctive feature is that it is going to be running an OS that is an open source alternative to Android Wear.

Well, that, and maybe that it doesn't need a smartphone to pair with to work.

Take that, Dick Tracy.


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Why don't they put wind turbines on pylons?

No, I'm not asking the question, I know why. But I see this question come up so often in social media that it has become both a frustration and a point of interest to me as a social phenomenon.

The point that surprises me is how often the questioner thinks that they are the first to come up with the idea: it is often phrased as 'Has no-one ever thought of putting turbines on a pylon before?'

Anyway, supercilious rant over.



(Answer to rhetorical question: because of voltages. The power lines are at a phase-to phase voltage of upwards of 100kV; the size of wind turbine typically imagined by the questioner operates at a few hundred volts. Even the very largest turbines are no more than one or two kV. So why not put a transformer between them? Because the no-load losses in the transformer would exceed the power generated by the turbine(s), and power transformers for the very highest transmission voltages weigh at least 200 tonnes.)


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Babylonian mathematics rediscovered

A team of mathematicians have studied a 3,700 years old Babylonian clay tablet and concluded that it is a trigonometric table of right angle triangles.
Quote:

“The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet. Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.
The article also claims that the clay tablet is more accurate than modern tables, but it is unclear if it is because of the base-60 calculations, or because of the - for us - novel trigonometry.


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vendredi 25 août 2017

Oldish Large Monitor + New Laptop=

I hope this is going to be a fruitful exercise.

I've got a relatively new HP laptop, and an oldish unused 38" monitor. My eyes are getting bad, so I'm hoping I can hook the laptop and monitor together without too much fuss and be able to see again -- without pressing my face against the monitor.

I'll be back.


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LIDO/VIRGO detects candidate signal with possible optical counterpart

The Nature synopsis probably sums it up best. On August 18, an astronomer from the University of Texas began the rumor of a significant LIGO detection with an optical counterpart. Another astronomer, this time from the University of Washington tweeted that the initial speculation for the detection was a signal from a pair of merging neutron stars in NGC 4993 - a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Hydra at a distance around 130 MLY.

Public record have since confirmed that many of the world's great public observatories -- HST, Chandra, Fermi, ELT and ALMA have all spent recent time observing this region.

The optical counterpart would be a huge leap forward for gravitational wave astronomy as it would provide a very concrete independent verification of their methodology, help diagnose or constrain future capabilities and even provide an early warning system for observatories operating in the EM wavebands -- not to mention the physical modeling that can be constrained by the observations themselves.


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World War 2 without the US.....

in another thread there was a link to this twitter feed and I noted the comment..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mats Åberg‏
Tasteless of Stern. A friendly reminder to all Germans. Without the US there wouldn't be a Germany. The Soviets would wiped it off the map.

I'm not so sure this is true. I think that while the US didn't single handedly win WW2 as sometime movies would like us to believe, that without their entrance, the war would have favoured the Axis.

Without the US Carriers and manufacturing base that kept planes in the air, the Pacific would have been lost to Japan, and without the backup of US troops then it is unlikely that the Allies would have had the forces to have staged a successful D-Day assault. This would have left the West of Europe almost undisputed and in Germany's hands. Without the bomber assistance from the US then the RAFs raids would not have crippled the German production, and all of that might could have been focused on defeating the Russians.

I'd suggest that without the US, Germany would not only exist, but would have taken over Europe.

Thoughts?


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Trump Winks At the Bigots - Pardons Arpaio

America's Convicted Sheriff has been pardoned by his majesty, Donnie Johnny I.

http://ift.tt/2w5RE11


The hard core 25% (strongly support, according to Rasmussen) will love it. The rest of the world? Not so much.

ETA: I know it's being discussed in other threads. This is important enough to need its own thread.


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Trump Pardons Arpaio

It's official.

Trump pardons former Sheriff Joe Arpaio


Will wonders never cease?


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North Korea Launches a Missile

BREAKING: North Korea's missile went down in the Sea of Japan after flying about 250 kilometers (155 miles).

How serious is this incident?


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The Trump Presidency Part III

Mod InfoThis is a continuation of this thread. As with all continuations, the spot at which the threads were broken was arbitrary and members may feel free to quote posts from the older thread. Thank you.
Posted By:Loss Leader





The Washington Post catalogs all the things Trump has undone:
http://ift.tt/2ixCg8P


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Germany bans left-wing website(s)

Germany banned and took down indymedia in a purported "fight against extremism". At the same time the German authorities declared that there will be no ban of extreme-right groups/websites.

ETA: oops, this should've gone in Non-USA politics. To the mods: please feel free to move it.

ETA2: English source


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UK - NIMBY Crisis !

Shock news during the "silly season" from the part of the world I grew up in.

A cricket club is embroiled in a planning dispute with neighbours because cricketers are too noisy.

Quote:

Darlington Borough Council's planning committee heard complaints from residents living close to the ground.

They included "the noise of the bat striking the ball" and "the effort of batting and bowling" and the lack of privacy caused by the nets.
http://ift.tt/2w9izHM

Clearly there are other issues at play here, people don't get that ****** off about the sound of leather on willow. It likely relates to parking or something else.

It does highlight one of the things that annoys me and makes the headlines during the silly season - people moving into an area and then complaining about things that have gone on there for decades - centuries even.

An example. The pub we go to after band practice, The Lion Inn Trellech, has been there for 400 or 500 years. It's a popular pub which really supports music and local musicians and has a couple of music festivals a year. The pub is in the middle of, and is the hub of, the village. A group of "executive homes" were built next to the pub 2 years ago and the residents are lobbying to have the music festivals banned and music banned altogether from the pub. :mad:


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jeudi 24 août 2017

Hurricane Harvey Aiming For Texas

Strengthening Harvey forecast to slam Texas coast as first major hurricane in U.S. since 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Washington Post
Harvey rapidly intensified Thursday morning in the central Gulf of Mexico, and it officially became a hurricane early in the afternoon. The extremely dangerous storm is predicted to strengthen and plow into southeast Texas on Friday as the first major hurricane, rated Category 3 or higher (on the 1-5 Saffir-Simpson intensity scale), to strike U.S. soil in 12 years.

An incredible amount of rain, 15 to 25 inches with isolated amounts of up to 35 inches, is predicted along the middle and upper Texas coast, because the storm is expected to stall and unload torrents for four to six straight days. The National Hurricane Center said it expects "devastating and life-threatening" flash flooding.

Marshall Shepherd, a past-president of the American Meteorological Society, tweeted that he feared an "epic flood catastrophe."...

http://ift.tt/2wCY4WS


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Louise Linton gaffe

Louise Linton is a British actress, married to treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Over the past few days she has made his life a little harder than it should.

First she hash-tagged the designers she was wearing as she got off a US Airforce executive jet. At best it was a bit insensitive towards those ordinary Americans who were paying for the trip but who cannot afford those kinds of designer clothes, at worst it cold have breached regulations regarding endorsements.

Then she got into a spat with people who complained and said:

Quote:

Did you think this was a personal trip?! Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband?
One response was:

Quote:

I had my first daughter in Germany, alone, while my husband,was off fighting in the Gulf war. Tell me again how you do more?
Now it turns out that the trip may have been timed and routed to make the best of the eclipse:

Quote:

A watchdog group suspects an official trip by the US treasury secretary may have been planned around the solar eclipse.
No doubt time will tell.

http://ift.tt/2g7QLj1


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Where the Trolls Live.

A map of trolling activity from Wired Magazine:
http://ift.tt/2wAxKvE

Interesting in terms of differences between states and between cities. And how there are hot spots. Related to numbers of bridges?


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"unsolved" stories invovling the supernatural that really bug you

Do you guys have any sort of pet peeve stories about the supernatural that really annoy you? Especially ones that weren't properly debunked but absurdly outrageous?

Mine would be Johanna Michaelsen and her psychic surgeon friend which I had already mentioned a few times on this forum. Its the story of one womans trip of one form of fundamentalism to another


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mercredi 23 août 2017

My ebay is festooned with porn pics any other ebay clones out there?

My eBay web page is about half porn pics. A google search says that somehow I signed up for a service called carousel and no, I cannot get rid of it. With coworkers at work, and kids at home, I am afraid to go on the site. Other than Amazon which gets 90% of my business anyway, are there other sites that do not offer the unsolicited porn delivery that can get the cops called on me and/or fired for cause?


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Looking for stories of the effects on the family of conspiracists.

Hello, IS community! I'm a reporter working with the journalist Jon Ronson on a series about how devout conspiracy theorists impact their spouses/friends/parents/children/etc. If you or anyone you know has a story to share, mind getting in touch? I'd love to tell you more about what I'm working on and ask a few questions.

Thanks!


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Data mining finds a TAXONOMY OF TROLLS

Anything discussing data mining, characteristics of the alt-right on social media, social media trolls and bots are acceptable in this discussion. Just try to stick to the data mined characteristics rather than the politics of the alt-right which we already have plenty of threads on. Thanks.

This post in the Trump thread really needed its own discussion:
Quote:

Originally Posted by halleyscomet (Post 11969322)

This is the original article: Linguistic data analysis of 3 billion Reddit comments shows the alt-right is getting stronger
Quote:

The alt-right isn’t one group. They don’t have one coherent identity. Rather, they’re a loose collection of people from disparate backgrounds who would never normally interact: bored teenagers, gamers, men’s rights activists, conspiracy theorists and, yes, white nationalists and neo-Nazis. But thanks to the internet, they’re beginning to form a cohesive group identity. And I have the data to prove it.
Welcome to the Brave New World of data mining.

The other interesting thing in that analysis besides establishing a taxonomy of trolls is the expanding use of data mining.

I also wonder which of those groups or percentage of each might be bots, especially given the data mining looked at frequently used words and phrases.


Here are some additional articles on bots involved in the social media surrounding the alt-right.
How to Spot a Social Bot on Twitter
Quote:

Back in 2011, a team from Texas A&M University carried out a cyber sting to trap nonhuman Twitter users that were polluting the Twittersphere with spam. Their approach was to set up “honeypot” accounts which posted nonsensical content that no human user would ever be interested in. Any account that retweeted this content, or friended the owner, must surely be a nonhuman user known as a social bot.

The team set up 60 honeypots and harvested some 36,000 potential social bot accounts. The result surprised many observers because of the sheer number of nonhuman accounts that were active. These bots were generally unsophisticated and simply retweeted more or less any content they came across.

Since then, social bots have become significantly more advanced. They search social networks for popular and influential people, follow them and capture their attention by sending them messages. These bots can identify keywords and find content accordingly and some can even answer inquiries using natural language algorithms.

That makes identifying social bots much more difficult. But today, Emilio Ferrara and pals at Indiana University in Bloomington, say they have developed a way to spot sophisticated social bots and distinguish them from ordinary human users.
Research links pro-Trump, anti-Macron Twitter bots
Quote:

Through an analysis of nearly 17 million Twitter posts made between April 27 and May 7, Ferrara and his team turned up roughly 100,000 Twitter users engaged in conversation about the leaked emails from Macron’s campaign, about 18,000 of which they determined to be bots — social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that masquerade as human users.

A large majority of the users engaged in the conversation, he said, had a history of showing support for Trump, Republican or far-right narratives. Many of them were also English speakers, he said.

The scale of the bot operation in the French election, Ferrara observed, was much smaller than that related to the 2016 presidential election. He detected between 400,000 and half a million Twitter bots engaged in the U.S. political discussion, most of them pushing pro-Trump or far-right narratives. A minority of the suspected bots supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Sometimes crowdsourcing can efficiently mine data:
Donald Trump’s Twitter Following Might Include More Than 4 Million Bots
Quote:

Ever since assuming office, Trump had added almost 7 million new followers, but over 4 million of those new accounts didn’t feature a profile picture, but rather an egg avatar, which is a usual sign of a fake account. According to Twitter Audit, only 55 percent of Trump’s Twitter followers are real accounts, meaning 15 million of his #MAGA followers are phony.
You can bet if lack of an image identifies a bot, that bot creators will quickly remedy that tell.... but I digress.


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Media vs perception

Daniel James Simons is a prominent experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois

Mike Adams calls himself the Health Ranger.

Here he claims media "hypnotizes" viewers, and links his claim to Dan Simons' findings.

No need to view before dismissing. It is after all a Natural News Production.

“Negative Hallucination” hypnosis experiment demonstration video

http://ift.tt/2vZ8GOw


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threat of shutdown over the wall

Okay, so we have threats that there will be a government shutdown if The Wall® is not built. The last few times there was a government shutdown it did not turn out well for Republicans.

If they do go down this road what will the implications be? Will the base stand by? Will it finally be too much for moderate Republicans?


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Conspiracism goes mainstream

Conspiracism has been with us for sometime. For those of us that were here back in the heyday of the 9/11 nonsense can remember how so much of that was built on old, old conspiracy theories reworked into a new narrative.

But that was always fringe. I honestly can't remember anyone in real power that believed in the stuff (aside from Chavez whose power was debatable). But that is now gone. The right has gone off the rails and conspiracy belief is now rampant among both lawmakers and their staff. We saw that the NSC had loons in it that were circulating a memo that alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood secretly controls Black Lives Matter. In fact it didn't even attempt to establish it as a truth instead it treated the notion as established knowledge despite there being zero evidence for it.

And then we have the old bogeyman of Soros. George Soros has supposedly been bankrolling pretty much every liberal cause conservatives hate from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, anti-Trump rallies, the Sandy Hook "hoax", gun laws and nutritious school lunches. With there being a common allegation that protestors are all being paid $25 an hour to be at these events I guess Soros has access to that $90 trillion that Rothschild supposedly has as a result from bankrolling every war ever.

And another reminder of how this is all now mainstream comes when a Republican lawmaker from Idaho, Bryan Zollinger, posts an article on his facebook feed that alleges it makes sense that the Nazis at Charlottesville were actually there because of a plot paid for by Soros and executed by Barack Obama. An article with quotes like this: “We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.” Which is a thing that certainly isn't known.

Helping this along of course is the sentient eldritch abomination fart known as Trump who continues to advance the absurd idea that the media are "the enemies of America" who continue to advance "fake news" while never, ever substantiating just what makes any of it in any way fake.

With the onset of mainstream conspiracism have we truly entered the post fact era?

More importantly how do we get away from this? How does one convince a Trump supporter that machines took their jobs not a Soros funded pan-global conspiracy?


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Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, etc....

After Charlottesvill, there is a lot of talk about neo-Nazis, alt-right, racists, etc. I wrote a post about it, but decided it was off topic for the thread it was in, and, really, in any of the threads. So I decided to start a thread on the overall topic of the extreme versions of racism in the US today.

I'll begin by saying that I don't really take these people seriously. Maybe I should, but I don't. I think their ideology has been thoroughly discredited, and they are losing. They may appear to be more prominent than they used to be because they stick out more than they used to. Racisim, in general, is less acceptable than it used to be, and some people who used to just be casual racists have been feeling social pressure against them, which they never used to feel, and have reacted by going full Nazi. I don't see it as a rising trend, but rather the death throes of a former and not-lamented way of life.

That is not to say there is no racism in the US or the world today, just that this sort of blatant, outright, racism represented by the KKK, white supremacists, white nationalists, or whatever they call themselves, is no longer acceptable. Within my lifetime, a segregationist ran for president, as a segregationist, and got millions of votes. That wouldn't happen today, and even that segregationist repudiated his former beliefs before he died. The ideology is mostly dead, and good riddance. What we see today are the remnants struggling for significance in an atmosphere where most people see them as a nuissance.


To end, here is the post I originally made in another thread, in response to a post in that thread.


Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptainHowdy (Post 11968282)
No, the discussion is the Charlottesville Car Crash Video. But since you asked, Ill try to explain it again from the beginning: people here (and in every media outlet around the world) use White Nationalist, White Supremacist, neo-Nazi, and Nazi interchangeably to describe the protesters at Charlottesville. That's wrong. They're not the same. White Nationalism isn't White supremacism. It's not Nazism. White Nationalism isn't inherently racist

Uhhh..yeah it is. Really. It is.

And there isn't a hill of beans worth of difference between the various categories you say are different.



Quote:

. White Nationalism is the moral equivalent of Zionism.
Now, that's a complicated topic. Is Zionism inherently racist? Is Zionism not inherently racist, but in practice it is racist? Is Zionism racist at all? Those questions don't have easy answers.

However, what is clearly true is that Zionism was born of the fact that a people were persecuted for their relitigious and/or ethnic differences for some 2000 years, and finally murdered by the millions, wiping out a significant part of their worldwide population and nearly all of the population from certain areas where they had been numerous. If you can show me anything remotely similar that has happened to white people, then there could be a coherent and intelligent comparison between white nationalism and zionism. However, you cannot. There is nothing similar, and nothing worth comparing.


One of the huge differences between white nationalism and zionism is that there is no such thing as "white culture". It doesn't exist. So what is it that white nationalists want? Skin color isn't culture. White nationalists don't want some separate autonomous area where they are free to do their white things without fear. They don't even want a separate area where everyone living there does the same things as everyone else. The black people they would expel from the white "homeland" would be people who do the same things they do, but they do it with dark skin.

It's just nonsense.

ETA: And, note to mods. If you feel this thread is insufficiently different from one of the Charlottesville-inspired threads, and doesn't warrant a new thread, I won't be offended if you move the post, or even remvoe the thread. My opinion was that it was a derail from where I originally posted it, so I put it in a new thread.


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mardi 22 août 2017

ESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Based on Name

Quote:

ESPN pulls announcer Robert Lee from covering a Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee: report

I had to read this story from several sources to make sure it wasn't some kind of satire. In fact, it's so incredibly stupid, I'm still not completely convinced.

http://ift.tt/2v4ePde

http://ift.tt/2vnhpX2

http://ift.tt/2vnjW3H


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The Greatest No-show on Earth

Karl Sagan would have asked this question:

Where were they?

Talk about wonders of the Alpha Quadrant, The Planet Earth is not only remarkable as a lush, life supporting planet and home to intelligent species, but it has a magnificent natural satellite, it's moon being so large as almost amounting to a double planet pairing.

If you are an alien visitor to Earth, one of the many extraterrestrials who are said to be observing the Earth, even to the extent of abducting Humans for study and experiment, certainly you are going to want to take home some lovely photos of the Moon from the earth's surface.

And then comes the Solar Eclipse: a very, very rare and amazing sight! How many natural satellites are just the right size and distance to neatly shadow their planet's star. This is a must see! This is a tourist event! This is space documentary gold! One would expect bus loads of Space Aliens, or at least expeditionary crews setting down to not only capture the wonder, but the reactions of the curious natives of Earth. If NHK can send a news crew halfway around the planet, some Space Channel crew from Tau Ceti or the like, would have the same motivations.

But where were they? For all the extraterrestrials the government is supposed to be keeping secret, there was not a single curious alien who had to see the big event.

For all the cameras, smartphones, colanders, and eyes gazing at the sky, there were no UFO sightings to speak of. When the day became night, and the stars came out, no one got a photo of an alien craft positioning itself to record the stunning event.

Where were they?


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Pure God/Nature Vs. Polluted Society?

Hello all,
Greetings!

Just trying to better understand followings:

1. Whether Pure Nature and its mediator God give us a healthful and un-painful life and death with normal longevity WHEREAS Polluted society just opposite to it inspite of increased longevity?

2. Whether Pure nature suggest "man born in chain(with mother) but always(esp after childhood) free" WHEREAS society " man born free(in hospital) but always in chain"?

Best wishes.


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Mediaeval font for carving

Does anyone know a decent "Olde Englyshe"-type font for carving names and dates etc? I must be able to import it into Draftsight or Open Office, too, and scale it up.


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Bacteria "altered" to produce acetic acid (vinegar) really efficiently.

Anyone care to speculate on how important this might be?

Quote:

Scientists have created bacteria covered in tiny semiconductors that generate a potential fuel source from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.
The so-called "cyborg" bugs produce acetic acid, a chemical that can then be turned into fuel and plastic.
In lab experiments, the bacteria proved much more efficient at harvesting sunlight than plants.
The work was presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington


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The guy said it was astrology.

The guy said it was astrology.

I met a guy and invited him to my dinner party the next day. He arrived, sat down and after a while, he did his thing. His 'thing' was correctly naming most or all guests' birth signs. About a dozen people were there.

He probably asked permission, nice guy that he was, but no matter.

He credited his feat to observing facial features only. He said it was a type of astrology.

Yes there are ways to do it, and this is mostly not about that.

In addition to acknowledging techniques known to magicians etc, I wonder what experiment/study might emerge if someone qualified wished to investigate the claim according to principles of logic, if not the scientific method.

Since he said it was about facial features I thought for starters, how about....

Photograph facial features of say 100 people per birth sign. Pics to be taken from maybe 10 (?) different angles. Angles which capture face features deemed most productive by designers of the study.

Thats a rough idea, of course open to improvement.

So this post is meant to be about how to investigate (?), discussing design of such a study. *

If no similarities were found it could be a stake in the heart of that guys claim about astrology, not that everyone needs that.

If some consistent similarities were found according to birth sign, it would absolutely conclusively prove beyond any shadow of doubt that some consistent similarities were found according to birth sign.

Either way it might make be good for conversation at some dinner party.

Any suggestions for such a study? I doubt I would take it on. Call it a thought experiment if you wish.

If nothing else, based on experience, the range of responses could make writing this OP worthwhile.

Dont hold back your views, I'm counting on you ;-)

Thanks in advance!

* In case you missed it or forgot, this is meant to be about how to investigate (?), and or discussing design of such a study.

and enjoying the range of responses


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lundi 21 août 2017

Did You Hear What Trump Did?

He read The Little Prince because he thought it was the children's edition of The Prince. Top men from the League of Extraordinary Psychologists have concluded that this alone is sufficient to remove him from office on their say-so. Top. Men.















This is not humor. This is political satire.

This signature is intended to satirize other signatures.


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O2 & CO2 Availabilty?

Hello all,
Greetings!

Just trying to change the mood. Normal O2(Oxygen) and CO2(Carbon Dioxide) availably to us is very important for us and for all beings. There can be many factors which can affect it Eg, altitude, fuel burnings,pollution etc. However, I am just checking following factors in this topic:

1. Over or under greenery in surroundings(in view of O2 & Co2 release and intake by them(by photosynthesis and respiration).

2. Sea and other big water body nearby. Due to photosynthesis and dissolution of O2 & CO2.

3. High humidity: Due to dissolution of O2 & CO2 in water.

4. Temperature: due to its impact on dissolution rate of O2 & CO2.

5. High and concentrated inhabitants of beings: Due to over consumption of O2 & CO2.

I am not talking about overall earth's environment levels but talking about local levels.

Just look at it:
Quote:

Table 2: Annual gain and loss of atmospheric oxygen (Units of 1010 kg O2 per year)

Photosynthesis (land)16,500
Photosynthesis (ocean)13,500


Photolysis of N2O 1.3
Photolysis of H2O 0.03

Total gains ~ 30,000

Losses - respiration and decay

Aerobic respiration 23,000

Microbial oxidation 5100

Combustion of fossil fuel (anthropogenic)600
Photochemical oxidation12 10
Fixation of N2 by lightning
5
Fixation of N2 by industry (anthropogenic)
Oxidation of volcanic gases





Losses - weathering
Chemical weathering
Surface reaction of O3 50
12
Total losses ~ 30,000

Talk more on above bold figures.

For better picture look at following link:
http://ift.tt/2v7wg7S
Whether we compromise gases by change in respiration rate or air volume abnormally, should not be made a base for normal physiology. Any abnormality should matter.

Thanks and best wishes.


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My co-workers, good Catholics, love Joel Osteen. How do I break it to them...

...that the Prosperity Gospel he (literally) sells is heresy?

ETA: I know--I shouldn't bother. But sometimes I want to scream. As a mildly spiritual atheist I make a lousy Lutheran (long story) but 'twas a time when I was a damned good Catholic.


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Is "European civilization" overrated?

White nationalists and their ilk seem to have this romanticized view of Europe as this great inventor of everything from vacuum. Richard Spencer states that "To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer and a conqueror. We build, we produce, we go upward …"

And yet, them you look at history. You’ll find that many of the things that made Europe/the West great come from elsewhere. Gunpowder, paper and printing come from China. Algebra has roots in Babylon. Our number symbols come from India. Even our writing is Near-Eastern in origin. White nationalists note that "black" Africans didn’t invent their own writing, but Europeans didn’t either.

And not all Europeans in ancient times were like the Greeks and Romans, many were more tribal like the Celts, Germanics and Gauls.


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case of the decapitated croc head

back in 2013 the daily mail and other sites were promoting this story that a decapitated nile crocodile head was not because of poachers but of a Great White shark. Was it ever solved what happened? I honestly don't think a GWS did it as it seemed too clean and precise of a cut for an animal to do it


http://ift.tt/1AilrKV


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Paranoid EPA Chief always has 24-hour armed protection, holds meetings off-record

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Pollution Agency (formerly the Environmental Protection Agency) is so determined to carry out the agenda of Big Industry that he routinely forbids staff from taking notes at meetings, forces them to surrender cell phones, locks the executive offices off from the rest of the building, and has full-time armed guards, even in the office.

http://ift.tt/2wxuxx6

This is what happens when autorcrats steal elections.


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Usurper Trump bankrupts Secret Service

The Secret Service cannot make payroll for Trump's protective detail because of his incessant trips outside of secure zones and demands that they protect his many properties at government expense.

http://ift.tt/2vSWuyz


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How to weigh up the defendant's evidence

Some years ago, I was empanelled as a juror in a theft trial under English law. The defendant chose to give evidence in his defence (and was the only witness for the defence). By any reasonable measure, the story he gave in explanation for his fingerprints being at the scene of the crime was far-fetched and not remotely believable.

During jury deliberation, some jurors argued that since the defendant didn't need to establish his innocence, it was irrelevant that his testimony was highly incredible. I argued otherwise: that he had given evidence and like that of any other witness, his evidence needed to be weighed objectively.

Can someone knowledgeable in this field jump in here?


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Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

An interesting opinion article that I found on the website of The Atlantic, I actually think the change the author is mentioning started a bit earlier, just look at the over-the-top adulation of Obama during his election campaign (Which to his credit he recognized as being damaging, and for the record I think he did the best job he could under the circumstances.)

Quote:

I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.


Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.
http://ift.tt/2xiMexu

I am not fully agreeing with the authors thesis, but something has happened, and as a member of Generation X, I am starting to worry about what is going to happen when the IGeneration reaches the age I am now.


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The Trump Lies Thread

I wanted start a thread just to document odd lies Trump has been caught in. Not necessarily related to his presidency. I realize there's a gazillion examples already, but feel free to add any particularly notable ones.


I'll start with this.
This one is not new, but I just learned about it today and I thought it seemed a bit breathtaking in its audacity. There's a handy Wikipedia article about it:

River of Blood (monument)

Quote:

The River of Blood monument is a monument located on a golf course on Lowes Island, Virginia, owned by US President Donald Trump. A plaque signed with Trump's name states that the monument marks the site of numerous deaths in the American Civil War, but no battle or other event with mass casualties took place there.
Quote:

On one of the courses, between the 14th and the 15th hole, Trump had a stone pedestal built with a flagpole on it, and had a plaque placed on the pedestal,[1] with the inscription:

Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as "The River of Blood".[1]

The plaque bears Trump's name and the Trump Organization's crest.[2] The accompanying text reads, "It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!"[1]
Quote:

Historians say no such event ever took place at this site. One local historian, Craig Swain, cited the killing of two soldiers by citizens in 1861 as the only Civil War event that occurred on the island.[3] The site lies near Rowser's Ford, over which on June 27, 1863, General Stuart led 5,000 Confederate soldiers with no record of fatalities, and according to the president of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, the only Civil War battle in the area was the Battle of Ball's Bluff, 11 miles away.[1] Other historians consulted by The New York Times for a story in 2015 agree; one of them had written to the Trump Organization about the falsehood. Trump himself disputed the historians' statements:
"That was a prime site for river crossings. So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them."

"How would they know that?" Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. "Were they there?"[1]
Trump said that "numerous historians" had told him the story of the River of Blood, though he later changed that to say they had spoken to "his people".[1]
Pause for a moment and consider his response: "How would they know that? Were they there?"

If that is a legitimate critique of these local historians, then obviously the same thing applies to Trump and to the alleged "numerous historians" who told "his people" about this event.

Then I wonder, who are these "numerous historians"? Did he ever produce a single one? All the actual historians other than the ones Trump claims to have heard from seem to be in agreement that no such event occurred.

His "reasoning" that there was a civil war going on at the time, and people crossed the river here and therefore a lot of people must have been shot here is also not at all how historians go about establishing facts.

So, Occam's razor seems to be that he just made it all up himself. Does it matter? Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but it's another example of how he approaches things. It's a little bit like the fake Time magazine cover he had made and put up at his country clubs. He is willing to simply make up convenient "facts" out of thin air. Almost always these "facts" flatter him (or his properties in this case) in some way.

Is it possible that somebody else told him this story and he believed it? Maybe, but why? He has not been able to produce the alleged "historians" who told him or "his people" about it. So all we have is an unverifiable claim. Much more likely I think is that he made this one up by himself, out of whole cloth. To add a bit of a historical touch to his golf course.


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dimanche 20 août 2017

I finally understand about Trump's hands

I printed out an outline of Trump's hand. You can get the pdf file here.

My hands are larger than Trump's even though he is considerably taller than me.

Attached Images
File Type: jpg trump hand.jpg (67.7 KB)


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Fake President gets caught faking crowds for rally (again)

Usurper Trump strikes again with fake crowds:

https://twitter.com/Marcus4America/s...97623437225984

Not the first time he's gotten caught at it either, as you should remember:

http://ift.tt/2ii5M2f


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