lundi 31 décembre 2018

How close are we to deep dive / full immersion VR?

Will it happen within our lifetime ( in 30-70 years)?

By using Elon Musk's Neuralink (Neural Lace 2039???) ,NerveGear, exo-skeletons, OpenWorld VR maybe?

And if we were to achieve this would anyone still want to live in the real world apart from people who are maintaining the system and certain religious groups?(or at least take breaks from full dive VR)

And is VR a replacement for reality? As in will people still want to travel and go outside?


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Where will Trump be two years from now?

Just thought it would be fun to do a little poll, and of course a transparent one so we can point and laugh when we have the answer. I'm in for "reelected".


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[Continuation] The Trump Presidency 12: The Dirty Dozen

Mod Info Continued from here
Posted By:Agatha


Twelve monkeys? It seems to sum up this Legislature.


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Sexual Abuse - Impact

I ponder about this issue. Why is it that children who have been abused apparently suffer so much trauma? Trauma and mental health issues that extend into their adult life? Never having experienced sexual abuse myself, although I had a couple of near misses, I wonder why the effect is so severe.

Children have been abused for centuries and it's been suggested, that paedophilia is not even abnormal or a disorder. A highly undesirable kind of sexual attraction but there it is. We know it's been around for a long time if we study history.

I wonder if the effect of being abused is exacerbated by societies and institutions attitudes. If a boy is abused by a Catholic priest for example, and given the Catholic Churches obsessive preoccupation with matters sexual, how much does this contribute to the trauma that follows?


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New Laws for 2019

A quick list of some of the Federal and State laws going into affect at midnight tonight, some of which might be interesting to talk about but not need their own threads.

1. 19 states are raising their minimum wage.
2. California makes it illegal for pet stores to sell cats, dogs, or rabbits that didn't come from animal shelters.
3. Public Corporations based in California will have to have at least one woman on their board of directors.
4. Hunters in Illinois will be allowed to wear bright pink, in addition to the traditional safety orange and high visibility yellow, to meet "visibility" requirements while hunting.
5. Massachusetts raises the smoking age from 18 to 21.
6. Actively nursing is now a viable "at request" exemption from Jury Duty in Illinois.
7. In New York State pharmaceutical companies are to be required to provide return methods to unused opioids to customers.
8. And in Illinois government employees fired for misconduct will no longer receive severance pay.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/30/us/ne...rnd/index.html


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Selling used games to Gamestop while Transgender

Haven't seen a thread for this one yet, so might as well.


Quote:

A transgender woman launched a furious four-letter tirade and threatened a shop worker after being called "sir" instead of "ma'am".

The customer flew into a rage when she was 'misgendered' at a GameStop store in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-new...clerk-13795054

Video below:

[yt]3x3xNqokM9Y[/yt]


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Deejaying while black

A black deejay was attacked and beaten by a group of skinheads, apparently for not playing their heavy metal request fast enough. It took place in Lynnwood, Washington State, in early December.

Every year in early December, a group of skinheads gather on nearby Whidbey Island to commemorate the death of Robert Jay Matthews in 1988, in a shootout with FBI agents.

Eight people were arrested, seven men and one woman. One was a local, known to police as a white supremacist, and the other seven had tattoos and clothing that identified them as such.

The FBI is investigating it as a federal hate crime.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...nnwood-tavern/


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Eating school lunch while black

Black teacher in NY school told she’s not allowed to eat ‘whites only’ food in faculty lounge

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/bla...ounge-lawsuit/


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dimanche 30 décembre 2018

Broadband: The epitomy of a stupid person

So this "friend" of mine.

He has had the same broadband plan for like 10 years.

This plan was like 30mbps, and never bothered to do anything to get better

This "friend" then had fiber broadband installed down his road about 3 years ago.

He "said" he finally rang today and found the plan was killed off years ago and found out not only can he get 200mbps for exactly the same price (up to 1000 but heaps more money), it is free instillation and he gets free Netflix and mobile plan.

If "I" was "him" I would be really embarrassed

:blush:


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Ukraine

I've seen some reports the Russian military is building up near the Ukraine border. The same reports suggest its a prelude to an invasion which has been encouraged by Trumps foreign policy.

How likely is this? Will Russia actually mount a full scale invasion of Ukraine?


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Name one or more favorite scientific facts!

I'll start. :)

The stars you see in the sky at night are snapshots of the distant past, and the stars themselves could be long dead.


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Does Islam Create Homosexual Pedophiles?

About me:
I have an English B.A. My stepdaughter is Muslim, yet stopped wearing the hijab at 16 and moved in with me and my Oregonian wife. (My wife's ex is Muslim, now married to his first cousin which I hear is common.) My daughter is Christian, thanks mostly to my ex's parents. I am agnostic, with a history of Christian upbringing. I frequent the 9/11 Conspiracy forum (not to flog truthers but to walk the gamut) and own the domain www.911conspiracy.tv (because in 2007 my wife's ex gave me a copy of Loose Change!). My latest video on YouTube is "9/11 Terrorist a Pedophile?" ... which summarizes the subject of this post in less than 10 minutes (although this post won't mention 9/11). This should help you decide I am not Islamophobic. I live in Oregon, so no regional conflicts give me a motive for hate. Also, my brother is gay, so scratch out homophobic too.


Does Islam Create Homosexual Pedophiles?


Pedophilia (which includes both the sexual urges and acting upon them) is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the clinician's diagnostic bible), detailed on this webpage. It therefore should not be accepted to any degree in any culture, as modern medicine and international law agree.

Quote:

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international treaty that legally obligates nations to protect children's rights. Articles 34 and 35 of the CRC require states to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. This includes outlawing the coercion of a child to perform sexual activity, the prostitution of children, and the exploitation of children in creating pornography. States are also required to prevent the abduction, sale, or trafficking of children. [www.unhchr.ch. Retrieved 18 April 2018.] As of December 2014, 195 countries have ratified the Convention, including every member of the United Nations except the United States and South Sudan. [United Nations Treaty Collection. Convention on the Rights of the Child Archived 2014-02-11 at the Wayback Machine.. Retrieved 21 May 2009.]["Weekly Press Conference on the Progress of the Government". Dayniile. 28 December 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2014.]
- Wikipedia, "Laws regarding child sexual abuse"

While the U.S. hasn't ratified the Convention, U.S. law is plain. Any fan of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" can tell you that child sex abuse not only creates mentally scarred victims but also starts a cycle of abuse where the abused becomes the abuser as he re-enacts his abuse to make sense of it. This certainly plays some small part in the Islamic phenomenon of homosexual pedophilia.

It is common knowledge that in northern Afghanistan, an Islamic nation, men often have sex with young boys and adolescents in a practice named Bacha Bazi, or boy play. The 2010 documentary "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan" aired on PBS in the U.S., getting one Afghani man arrested and setting another on the run.... Related documentaries include "This Is What Winning Looks Like" by Ben Anderson/VICE 2013 and "'They prefer boys in Afghanistan': Dancing bachas recruited for sex" (RT, 2016). Below find a few quotes from these priceless sources. I will argue that the "ancient tradition" of Bacha Bazi ("The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan") -- and an unnamed behind-the-scenes homosexual pedophilia (and hebephilia/early adolescent) in multiple Muslim countries -- is a direct result of Islamic law which segregates the sexes, removing women from men's reach.

Sodomy is punishable by death in seven countries -- Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria (in the 12 states practicing Shar’ia law), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. Sometimes vigilantes do the murder. Seems to me Islam can't kill them as fast as it creates them.

See "The Kingdom in the Closet" by Nadya Labi, The Atlantic, May 2007, which tells us that in "February a man in the Mecca region was executed for having sex with a boy, among other crimes."

Believe it or not, Saudi Arabia has a large gay culture. Actually, most men don't identify as gay. In fact, much of Islamic culture has no word for homosexuality (coined in the 1890s) because there is no such thing as heterosexual either. (Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies by Arno Schmitt, Jehoeda Sofer, John P. De Cecco, Haworth Press, 1992, p. 5.) The men only perform the sex acts because they have no access to women. Nadya Labi of The Atlantic wrote:

Quote:

'They’re not really homosexual,' she said. 'They’re like cell mates in prison.'

This analogy came up again and again during my conversations.

If asked who built the prison, you could rightly answer, "Islam."

From The Atlantic again: "'Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated'—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—'how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?'"

For this same reason men recruit boys for sex.

Quote:

In modern times, despite the formal disapproval of religious authority, the segregation of women in Muslim societies and the strong emphasis on male virility leads adolescent males and unmarried young men to seek sexual outlets with boys younger than themselves—in one study in Morocco, with boys in the age-range 7 to 13.
- Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies by Arno Schmitt, Jehoeda Sofer, John P. De Cecco, Haworth Press, 1992, p. 36 (quoted in the Wikipedia article LGBT in Islam).

See also an Amazon preview of the book, where we find on page 3 under the heading "Psychology":

Quote:

The first boy is of tantamount importance to his mother. His mere existence changes her value in the eyes of society, he gets most love and attention and there is nobody above him but his father. The situation of the younger boys can be quite different.

So it is not surprising that I never met a fist-born youth willing to take the submissive position of being penetrated, whereas many younger brothers viewed it as inevitable.

Again on page 6 under the heading "Sociology of Cultural Interaction": "I repeat: the most normal thing is f*cking boys. For the man, the buggerer, it is perfectly normal, if he is married and a father." (emphasis added) Islamic regions named in earlier pages under the heading "Pederasty" (sodomy with boys) are "North Africans and Southwest Asians."


- Islam world map from Wikipedia

To help us understand why this might happen, RT reports: "Tradition has made Afghan women almost invisible. It's as though they just don't exist. Perhaps it's that absence of women that explains why male sexuality is now often focused on boys." ["'They prefer boys in Afghanistan': Dancing bachas recruited for sex" (RT, 2016)]

"The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan" points out that Bacha Bazi exists in "a society where access to women is severely restricted, but where young boys are easily accessible." Because it is wrong for a woman to dance in public... boys are put in dresses -- sometimes with artificial breasts -- with bells on their wrists and taught to dance, often seductively. Some of the Afghan men interviewed readily admit they have had sex with the boys. Sometimes money changes hands between pedophile and pimp -- after a bidding war during/following the bacha dance to see who gets to take the boy home. See military contractor DynCorp being implicated in spending money for dancing boys:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...d-dancing-boys

Worst of all these boys have been murdered for trying to escape. (See Ben Anderson's "This Is What Winning Looks Like" here) The film took place at Sangin, Afghanistan. Boys were sex slaves, raped by the Afghan police commanders. One Afghan commander claimed "[the boys] like being there and giving their asses at night." This must be why one boy was shot in the leg at point blank range for trying to escape. No dancing was involved at the patrol base, of course. And there was nothing the U.S. could do apparently, except leave law enforcement up to the local... police.

The New York Times published an article in Sept. 2015, "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies." The article leads with a photo of "Dan Quinn [who] was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed." The article notes "pederasty is rife," linking to a Feb. 2002 article on the same subject.

The 2015 article sparked an investigation. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction 2017 report says the Leahy law (restricting funding of human rights violators) didn't prevent DOD from funding the implicated Afghan child rapists. (p. 2) The incidents under investigation were so few it was ridiculous. "Child Sexual Assault in Afghanistan: Implementation of the Leahy Laws and Reports of Assault by Afghan Security Forces" was the report title/subtitle, but the law did nothing and the assaults were not condemned. There seems to be a policy of silence on the issue, as well as inaction.

The SIGAR report provides a crucial, recurring quote (similar enough), from the Navy’s "Operational Cultural Awareness Training-Islamic Republic of Afghanistan":

Quote:

Under Islam, homosexuality is strictly forbidden and under tribal customs, being a homosexual is punishable by death. However, even though it is not openly acknowledged or accepted, homosexuality does exist in Afghanistan. Because even casual interaction with women is taboo, it is not uncommon for men to participate in sex acts with young men and boys. By Western standards, this is regarded as both homosexuality and pedophilia. This is not the case in Afghanistan. Individual or isolated sex acts or sexual behaviors do not necessarily define one’s sexual orientation. There are even cases of men having sexual relations with young men and boys in public.

If I'm to understand the source article at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/homosexuality-ii -- Iran also has a history of pedophilia/hebephilia.

Quote:

But the “homosexuality” expressed in classical Islamic texts, whether in poetry or in prose, in Arabic or Persian or other languages, was of a very particular kind, on the whole quite comparable to what is known from the eastern Mediterranean world in antiquity but quite different from modern Western conceptions. It was assumed that many, or indeed most, mature men would be sexually attracted to adolescent boys, in a way strictly parallel to—and compatible with—their attraction to women. Like women, such boys have hairless bodies and soft skin, and like them they are subordinate members of society, that is, subordinate to mature men. Inevitably, men’s tastes differ, some being interested only in women, some only in boys, but most in both. There is little difference in the love poetry about either, and as often as not—in Arabic and all the more in genderless Persian—it is impossible to determine the sex of the beloved being addressed or described. Often this is betrayed only by a sex-specific detail—a woman’s swelling breasts, or a boy’s downy first beard. The emergence of the beard was in fact a crucial aspect of male homoeroticism in these societies; seen as a mark of beauty at its first appearance (the ideal male beloved was about fourteen), as it became full it marked the end of the boy’s—now the man’s—sexual desirability. ... To the extent that men’s power-differentiated love affairs with boys (like those with women) were assumed to be expressed by sexual activity, it was considered obvious that the man took the active role in (anal) intercourse, the boy being submissively passive and (in most cases, although this was a very ambiguous area) not submitting for the sake of sexual pleasure. However, once a young male reached adulthood, he was expected to become sexually active (with women and/or boys). While it was recognized that there were mature men who sought out the passive role in homosexual intercourse, they were viewed as both sick and contemptible; and indeed to accuse a mature man of such proclivities was both one of the strongest and one of the most common forms of insult.
"At the same time, many miniatures, especially from Ottoman Turkey, contain explicit depictions of pederasty, suggesting that the practice enjoyed a certain degree of popularity. A number of pre-modern texts discuss the possibility of sexual exploitation faced by young boys in educational institutions and warn teachers to take precautions against it." [Leaman, Oliver (2009). "Homosexuality". In John L. Esposito. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam

Bacha Bazi has been seen in Pakistan also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2QBIQ-erYA -- More boys killed.

Abu-Nuwas al-Hasan ben Hani Al-Hakami (756–814), best known simply as Abū-Nuwās, was a classical Arabic poet who also composed in Persian on occasion. He was particularly noted for his celebrations in verse of wine – and boys. Link.) More of his homoerotic poems collected here.

Quote:

"A Boy Is Worth More Than a Girl"

For young boys, the girls I've left behind
And for old wine set clear water out of mind.
...
Quote:

"Credo"

Lay in supplies,
O tribe that loves boys,
Of a pleasure that will not be found
In Paradise,
For all its vaunted joys.
This tradition of mental illness is the result of wrongheaded customs enforced by religious law. The solution is to integrate the sexes. Since Islam won't change, it must be discarded.


Other Possible Causes for Pedophilia in Islamic Nations?

"Causes" of pedophilia in general (Wikipedia): low IQ, brain physiology, and a history of abuse. Not to say all Muslims have low IQs, I point to one study which concluded "Muslims have highest levels of schooling where they are a religious minority." (Pew Research Center)

Quote:

A 2016 Pew Research Center study about religion and education around the world found that Muslims have the lowest average levels of education after Hindus, with an average of 5.6 years of schooling.[133] About 36% of all Muslims have no formal schooling,[133] Muslims have also the lowest average levels of higher education of any major religious group, with only 8% having graduate and post-graduate degrees.[133]
I found this at Wikipedia under "Muslim world," which was quoting a PEW Research Center PDF "Religion and Education around the World."

One argument against Islamic law directly causing men to lust for boys blames the history of such on Greek influence from Alexander the Great (Kandahar Afghanistan is named after him) around 334 BC. Can Greek influence from 2,352 years ago be considered as influential on today's sexual practices? We look at the Wikipedia page for "Pederasty in ancient Greece" to learn of a less abusive love for boys... but still pedophilia by today's standards. This ancient history may have justified the beginnings of the "ancient tradition" of Bacha Bazi somehow, but this can only be a partial, secondary cause for the current behavior (and suppressed urges also defined as pedophilia) of a large number of Muslim men. Muhammad's death was in 632. He is no doubt more influential than ancient Greece. Partial responsibility of course means sharing guilt. Likewise, Schmitt and Sofer tell us under the heading "Anthropo-Geography" -- "It is no coincidence that the core area of Islam covers the empire of Alexander the Great (plus Northwest Africa) or the southern Imperium Romanum plus Iran." Then, "The so-called Arabs just kept much of the Hellenistic behavior and beliefs of their Aramaic-, Coptic-, or Greek-speaking parents." (p. 1)

Arabs can take refuge in there being an ancient influence predating Islam. Their culture isn't the only one involved in so much pederasty [this past 2,400 years]. Because it is a different culture.

Quote:

For North Africans and Southwest Asians it is self-evident that men like to penetrate all kinds of beings. It is understandable that some men prefer boys to women.
[...]
The Hanbalite jurisconsult Ibn al-Gauzi (died 597/1200) wrote: 'He who claims that he experiences no desire [when looking at beautiful boys or youth] is a liar, and if we could believe him, he would be an animal, not a human being.'

But desiring is not doing. And many a devout Muslim will have resisted and taken comfort in the Prophet's saying 'Who passionately loves and remains chaste, is a martyr'...
- Schmitt and Sofer, p. 5

Islam is not for everyone. One Afghan man in the RT documentary said, "This nation is an Islamic country. That is why it is very bad for girls." I have to ask now, "Is it good for boys?"


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The UK has a migrant crisis....!

This is apparently a migrant crisis for the UK, for which the Home Secretary has had to cut short his Christmas holidays to deal with;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46714553

"More than 220 people have attempted the crossing in small boats since November."

Yes, a whole 220 people in 7 weeks, or about 32 people a week. In once case, 6 Iranian men arrived at once! Apparently there is "'Grave concern'.

Apparently this massive uncontrollable fearful influx of immigrants is due to the unseasonably calm weather in the English Channel.

:covereyes


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Are nitrites / nitrates in cured meats dangerous?

Hi,

There is currently a bit of media attention on claims that nitrates / nitrites in cured meats (bacon, ham, salami etc) are dangerous and should be outlawed.

eg https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46710071

Quote:

Leading scientists and a cross-party group of politicians are calling for chemicals called nitrites to be removed from processed meats like bacon.

Cancer specialists and politicians are among those backing the campaign to take out nitrites.

They say nitrite-free alternatives are safer and should be more widely used.

I think this is misinformed. I think adding nitrates/nitrites appropriately increases the safety of these products :
  • nitrates/nitrites are the only effective way of preventing botulism - which otherwise would kill a lot of people

  • the amount of nitrates/nitrites put into cured meats is small compared to other sources

  • for example many vegetables contain vastly more than any cured meat

  • the curing process uses up the nitrates/nitrites. I had a lab test done on some dry cured sausage that showed there was zero detectable nitrate or nitrite in the finished product.

  • some people claim that nitrates in vegetables are not a problem because they contain vitamin C which reduces the risk of nitrosamine formation, however exactly the same effect is created in cured meat production by adding Vitamin C (or close equivalents like sodium ascorbate / erythorbate). Most cured meat producers use these, and in some countries they are required by regulation.

  • Nitrosamines (the cancer causing chemicals) are only produced when nitrates are cooked at very high temperatures - almost burned - if more modest temperatures are used then no nitrosamines are created.

  • If there is any risk from eating cooked cured meats, then surely there is a much greater risk from eating cooked vegetables - especially if they are cooked at high temperatures. e.g. stir fried veg in a wok must be super dangerous?

  • Most of the 'nitrate free' products are actually produced by adding celery salt or some other source of 'natural' nitrates - which is just dishonest - and less safe as its hard to know exactly how much nitrate is being added

  • There are lots of good reasons to only eat cured meats in moderation - e.g. salt intake, cholesterol, calories etc. Fear of nitrates/nitrites is not a good reason I think.

I suspect that the current criticism of nitrate/nitrite use in cured meats is not well founded and if they were removed people would die as a result, particularly due to increases in botulism fatalities which would seem inevitable.

My interest in this subject is that I make some cured meats myself on a small scale, and I do use nitrate / nitrites because I believe it is the safest way, and haven't found the argument against them convincing. However I'd happily switch methods if I was persuaded it was safer without them.

Please let me know what you think either way.

thanks - drelda


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samedi 29 décembre 2018

HMY Iolaire sinking

The tragedies of WWI did not end with the Armistice.

The centenary of one such occurs in two days' time, when it will have been one hundred years since a vessel carrying troops home to the Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland sank with the loss of more than 200 men, hitting rocks within yards of the shore and minutes of her destination of Stornoway harbour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Iolaire

Some of the bodies of those expected to arrive on the yacht were discovered washed up on the beach by members of their own family.

http://www.hebrideswriter.com/2018/1...laire-tragedy/

I saw a good documentary about the disaster a year or two back but can't remember the title. There was one made in 1989, which is due to be shown on BBC Alba (Gaelic TV channel) on Tuesday. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it has English subtitles.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gdwc9


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Shopping while a black toddler

Around 7:20 a.m. Sunday, officers responded to an assault call at the Dillons store in Wichita. The arresting officers reported, “Through the investigation, it was learned Trace walked into the Dillons store and kicked a 1-year-old victim in the back, causing the child to fall on the floor.”

Trace kicked a Black boy in the back while yelling racial obscenities and insults. When the police finally arrived on the scene, Trace was being held to the ground by citizens.

http://thesource.com/2018/12/28/man-...om-jail-today/


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Buying Vape Juice While White

Perhaps our resident team of commenters on doing X while X can explain what is going on here? It meets all the criteria of a doing X while X but perhaps not in the right order.

[yt]LIHaF9J9R-Y[/yt]


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vendredi 28 décembre 2018

In it till the Rapture!

I don't know whether this has been noted anywhere else, but Mr Pompeo let us know he's doing the Lord's work.....Holy expletive deleted....

[yt]3N2bOVd9_n8[/yt]


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Hermann Plauson's electricity from thin air

As most of you know I am often digging through old ideas for alternative energy as a way to help mitigate AGW. I posted about the Trompe a while back as one technology that would be feasible to revisit. In fact in India, there are vehicles being developed that run on compressed air. It's an old tech that could be made new again, and if paired with a trompe they would be extremely economical.

Well this new one I just discovered is an old invention made by Hermann Plauson back in the early 1920's, and never really taking off because coal power plants filled the role.

Now with all the issue surrounding coal, is this something that could be revisited?

When I started reading it all my woo detectors started going off. But it could be that I am just thrown off by archaic tech lingo. Is this complete woo? Or is it really possible to extract meaningful current from atmospheric static electricity? I mean short of the catastrophic lightning bolt!:covereyes

Hermann PLAUSON

Conversion of Atmospheric Electricity


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jeudi 27 décembre 2018

US: New law makes hospitals put price lists online

Quote:

Hospitals across the country have geared up to publish online price lists for all the medical services they provide, as a federal law takes effect on January 1.
https://www.newsweek.com/end-hidden-...ts-all-1272328

What will the effect of this be, if any? Higher prices? Lower prices? Something else?


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South Carolina restaurant sues woman over “libelous” online review

The Takeout: https://thetakeout.com/myrtle-beach-...iew-1831202249

Quote:

A woman and her friend reportedly visited a North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina restaurant called Buoys on the Boulevard in late October, and indicated they’d like to pay for their meal with a 2-dinners-for-$30 coupon. According to Myrtle Beach Online, employees told the women they couldn’t use the coupon because the restaurant had changed ownership a few months ago (and changed its name from Buoys Beach Bar & Grille) and wasn’t honoring older coupons. They offered to comp the table’s drinks instead.

One woman then threatened to “destroy” the restaurant on social media, subsequently posting a Facebook review that—according to Myrtle Beach Online—alleges she found a worm in her sushi, a fast-crawling bug on the wall, and that the “Junga [sic] game is a germ carrier.” The restaurant responded to her review, denying the allegations, explaining the coupon dispute, and noting that her table didn’t even order sushi. Buoys wrote, in part: “I find it really sad that you would stoop so low to post lies about a business because of your anger.”

Now, the business has filed a lawsuit against the woman alleging she libeled the restaurant in her knowingly false review; the restaurant seeks an unspecified amount of damages.
Now there's been cases of business trying to force a takedown of simple bad reviews in the past which have all been, in my opinion, pretty laughable.

But this case (assuming it went down as we are being told which is of course never certain) is different. This is a "Food sucks" or "This place is awful" review but actual accusations of legal wrongdoing.

Claiming your pasta was overcooked is one thing. Claiming actual sanitary violations is another.

Opinions?


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mercredi 26 décembre 2018

RIP Sister Wendy

I just heard that Sister Wendy Beckett died. A rather unusual celebrity, she was a passionate amateur, and occasionally astute, art critic who made a brief splash on public TV and published a few books. I enjoyed her take on things, including her appreciation of modern art that some people find pretty difficult.


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-Working- at a hotel while black

A former executive for Marriott Hotels has filed a lawsuit, claiming a racially hostile work environment that the company was informed about but never fixed.

Quote:

Plaintiff Daryl Robinson says he resigned from the company because he could no longer tolerate the working conditions. His Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges racial discrimination, failure to prevent racial discrimination and retaliation.

Although promised by Marriott that he would have his own cubicle after training, he was instead assigned to a cramped storage closet with no air conditioning, the suit states. Co-workers wondered aloud if he was put there because he is black, the suit states.

During sales meetings, Robinson was told by his director of sales to dance when music was being played, often to the tunes of Michael Jackson songs, the suit states.

Management began a team-building exercise by requiring employees to bring in photos of themselves as babies to see if their colleagues could guess who they were, the suit states. Robinson explained that his mother, who lived out of state, had the only photos of him at that age, the suit states.

Robinson also said that it would be pointless for him to participate in the exercise because he was the only black person in the office, the suit states.

When Robinson's sales manager heard his explanation, she balked and said she would pick a photo for him and showed him a depiction on her computer of the Buckwheat character from the "Our Gang" series, the suit states.

Robinson was "shocked and in disbelief" when he saw the Buckwheat photo given that it has long been used to portray blacks in a "stereotypical racist manner," the suit states.

But the sales manager used the photo during a subsequent morning meeting anyway, asking the employees, "Who do you guys think this is?," the suit states.

Robinson walked out of the meeting and later told his two supervisors that he had to leave because the display of the Buckwheat photo was "devastating," according to the suit.
I have personally witnessed numbers of white people profess to know full well that the Our Gang "Buckwheat" character depiction is as racist as it gets but don't care because they think it's hilarious anyway, so I'm sad to say that portion of the executive's claim is not shocking to me in the least.


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[Split Thread] Catholic church in Freefall: Yamashita's Gold

Mod InfoThis post has been moved for "Catholic Church In Freefall to this new thread. It was off-topic where originally posted.
Posted By:Loss Leader



Gday all,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chanakya (Post 11908111)
Total comic-book scenario, isn’t it? The arch-villain, all dressed up in a weird dress, lording it over in his toy country, offering refuge to all kinds of scum, and wheeling-dealing away all around the globe. While brainwashed zombies followers kneel and genuflect all around him.

Simply begging for septugenarian “expendable” mercenaries to go pay him a visit! (Strictly within the pages of the comic book!)

Here's something interesting that came up recently about the Vatican -

Readers may be aware of a huge stash of looted gold left behind by the Japanese in the Philippines after WWII, often called Yamashita's Gold because hero general Yamashita was in charge of hiding it.

This gold fell into the hands of the US under an infamous American Major Ed Lansdale and a mysterious character called Santa Romana, (and funded much skullduggery under Truman and Allen Dulles etc., often called the Black Eagle Trust.)

This is all told in a recent book by the Seagraves "Gold Warriors" :
https://www.amazon.com.au/Gold-Warri.../dp/B00413QFLK

There is many an eye-opener in this book, especially if it's new to you.

But the big reveal was this - Santa Romana was (alledgedly) a Vatican agent.
(Added: according to "Authoritative sources in Spain with strong ties to the Philippines".)

Also -
the world total amount of gold is hugely under-stated. It is currently given as about 0.185 megatonnes (some give an older 160 kT figure, or even less.) But that turns out to only cover gold production in the West for the past couple of centuries, but does not include Asia or historical gold at all.

Impossible to know for sure, but the real figure could be 2-5 MT, maybe even as much as 10 megatonnes.

There's an Aussie connection too -
Much gold did make it back to Japan before they lost the sea lanes, and some of it was sunk in Japanese harbours for 'ron. Apparently the Aussie boat Torres Tide was involved in such recovery in recent years - they provide a photo of it on their CD. I haven't seen it.

Kapyong


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mardi 25 décembre 2018

Japan whale hunting: Commercial whaling to restart in July

Quote:

Japan says it is to restart commercial whaling in July in a move that is likely to draw international criticism.

It said it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body tasked with whale conservation.

Commercial whaling was banned by the IWC in 1986 after some species were driven almost to extinction.

Officials in Japan, an IWC member since 1951, say eating whales is part of the country's culture.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46682976

They say hunting will be confined to territorial waters.
Expect some 'incidents' at sea.


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Staying at a Hotel while black

Oregon hotel calls cops on a black guest for talking to his mom on his phone in the lobby

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/ore...m-phone-lobby/


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lundi 24 décembre 2018

A few possibly stupid questions about planetary rings.

If the earth had rings like saturn, would the planet still be able to support life? I guess are the rings stable or are they a constant source of meteor /asteroid strikes?

Does the area under the rings have different climates? I guess from certain angles they are thin? But if they are orientated a certain way to the star, could this cast quite a large shadow over a chunk of the planet?

Would we still be able to put satellites up?
Would space travel be totally off the cards, or just launches from certain parts of the planet would be viable?

Thanks!!!


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A child's first nuclear reactor - Sheldon would have loved this!

I think others here will love this. I wish I could have had this for Christmas, I'd still like it. The link is to a BBC article with ads from the past. There are some 'interesting' ads that say something about how far gender roles have improved. But the BEST one is your own cloud chamber and experimental nuclear lab. Just scroll down.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42195763

Is anyone here old enough to remember this? Did anyone have one?


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dimanche 23 décembre 2018

Sacha Baron Cohen may have stumbled upon something really nasty?

Sacha Baron Cohen seems to have a knack for revealing some of the darkness in America through comedy, but... this story likely deserves some note and likely some further investigation.

The time Sacha Baron Cohen went to the FBI.

Quote:

BARON COHEN: We immediately turned over the footage to the FBI because we thought, perhaps there’s a pedophile ring in Las Vegas that’s operating for these very wealthy men. And this concierge had said that he’d worked for politicians and various billionaires. But in the end the FBI decided not to pursue it.


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Cashing a cheque while black

An African American man in Ohio tried to cash his paycheck and the bank called the cops because the check was was over $1000 and he didn’t “look” like he should be making that much money.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...nk-called-cops


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samedi 22 décembre 2018

Wrestling with Dreads While Black

So high school wrestler Andrew Johnson stepped up to the mat in a 120 lb bout, only to be told by the referee, Alan Maloney, that he had to cut off his dreads or forfeit the match. Johnson, who is black, allowed his hair to be cut and went on to win the bout.

Regulations require that hair below collar level be confined in an approved cap that can be worn under the headgear. This eliminates threats of hair pulling and having your hair ripped out. Apparently, Johnson's dreads were not sufficiently confined for the ref's interpretation. Maloney, the white ref, also has a past history of throwing racial slurs at black men during meets.

So: racist power play, or concern for rules and safety? Or both? How far can a ref go in affecting a student athlete's lifestyle? Should further provisions be made regarding hairstyles? This was not the freaking Olympics. Seems to me a warning could be issued or his coach should have provided appropriate headwear prior to the meet. OTOH, if Johnson had his hair pulled out during the bout, the ref would certainly have some responsibility.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...=.ee415d80db97


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RIP Paddy Ashdown

RIP Paddy Ashdown, he often spoke a sane word in an insane world.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...n-dies-aged-77


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How standard are wireless charging stands?

I like my wireless charging stand a lot and am thinking about buying a couple as Christmas gifts (don't want to rush into anything ;) ), but don't want to saddle my brothers with returns. My iPhone 8 uses a Samsung product - how universal are these stands?


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LeBron James talks like a racist

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Washington Post quoting LeBron James
"In the NFL they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality," LeBron James said. "And it's like, 'This is my team. You do what the f--- I tell y'all to do. Or we get rid of y'all.'"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...toward-players

To me this sounds like a racist statement. Does this represent acceptable everyday racism against white people? I don't know how society will react to what James just said, but I can imagine that if a white person said a comparable thing about black people there would be widespread outrage at the discovery of yet another white racist. I can also imagine serious consequences if something like that happened.

Racism should not be acceptable coming from anyone regardless of their race or who they are and that includes LeBron James. I post this here rather than the Sports Forum because this is a Social Issue.


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Congratulations to All Estonian ISF Members: You won!

Two new Danish articles based on a new PEW report (Dec. 5):

Danmark er det næstmindst religiøse land i Europa (Kristeligt Dagblad, Dec. 22, 2018)
Denmark is the second least religious country in Europe

Danskernes paradoksale tro: Vi er kristne, men ikke religiøse (Kristeligt Dagblad, Dec. 21, 2018)
The paradoxical faith of the Danes: We are Christians, but we’re not religious

The PEW report:
Quote:

Using the combined measure shows that, overall, Central and Eastern Europeans are more likely than Western Europeans to be highly religious. For example, in Armenia and Greece, roughly half of adults are highly religious. Meanwhile, only about one-in-ten people in Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom qualify as highly religious by these criteria.
How do European countries differ in religious commitment? Use our interactive map to find out. (PEW Research Center, Dec. 5, 2018)

By the way, Estonians, why do the Latvians and the Lithuanians lag so far behind you in this respect?


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Cameline spongiform encephalopathy

Scientists discovered a new type of TSE in dromedary camels in Algeria earlier this year.

Quote:

We detected a prion disease in dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) in Algeria. Symptoms suggesting prion disease occurred in 3.1% of dromedaries brought for slaughter to the Ouargla abattoir in 2015–2016. We confirmed diagnosis by detecting pathognomonic neurodegeneration and disease-specific prion protein (PrPSc) in brain tissues from 3 symptomatic animals. Prion detection in lymphoid tissues is suggestive of the infectious nature of the disease. PrPSc biochemical characterization showed differences with BSE and scrapie. Our identification of this prion disease in a geographically widespread livestock species requires urgent enforcement of surveillance and assessment of the potential risks to human and animal health.
Very intriguing and frightening report. In particular, the hypotheses about its origin are interesting. For a few years after Britain stopped feeding meat-and-bone (MBM) to cattle in 1988 during the BSE crisis, apparently thousands of tons of the stuff was continued to be exported to the third world. Who knows where all of that hazardous waste ended up!

Then again it could be sporadic as well and we've just only now discovered it.


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vendredi 21 décembre 2018

What a week!

Does anyone remember a week like this one in US Politics, ever?

* The President's former Lawyer is sentenced to 3 years in jail, and documents on his various misdeeds implicate the President in at least one Federal Crime.

* Media gains a copy of the Moscow Tower Deal Letter of Intent which was supposed to have been signed by The President's ex-Lawyer according to his current one. Turns out it was signed by The President himself.

* The President's current Lawyer suggests that the Moscow Tower Deal might still have been on the table as late as November 2016.

* The President's former NSA is pretty much told he'd likely to go to jail if he proceeds with sentencing for his crimes, and elects to keep in cooperating for a 3-month delay.

* The President's charity is force to dissolve with its assets being given to court approved charities and the prosecutors in the case looking to have the President and his family banned from running any non-profit for a period of 10 years!

* The President's ally and friend, Rodger Stone is coming under investigation

* The President's Inauguration Committee is announced to be under investigation for fraud and accepting foreign money in pay to play schemes.

* Acting AG announces that he will not recuse himself after the DoJ Ethics Committee recommends that he does so.

* It is revealed that the nominated AG sent a memo to the President stating that the Muller Investigation should not be investigating the President for Obstruction of Justice.

* The President declares that he would be proud to shut down the Government over his wall.

* The President backs down and says he'll sign a bill to keep the Government open.

* The President, under pressure from Fox news, Flips back to his original shut down the government stance.

* The President, against advice of his advisers, the Republican Senate members, and the Pentagon, decides unilaterally to pull out of Syria abandoning US Allies there just days after his own administration says it isn't going to happen.

* The Sec of Defense resigns releasing a letter of resignation outlining his views on national defense and the importance of allies, and then stating that since his own views and the Presidents were so different that he had to step aside.

* Hours after President Putin suggests that the US leave Afghanistan, The President announces that he is pulling many of the troops from Afghanistan.

* The Dow Jones had its worst week in 10 years, dropping nearly 1500 point, in 5 days!


Can you imagine if any one of these things had occurred under one of the last five Presidents, let alone all of them in the space of a week!


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jeudi 20 décembre 2018

The consequences of Fake News - Der Speigel

Der Speigel has just announced that one of their reporters Claas Relotius has admitted to faking many (possibly all) of the stories he has written for them. According to the NPR article below he has returned all the awards he received for his reporting.


https://www.npr.org/2018/12/19/67833...sume-fraudster


In the case of one Minnesota town (Fergus Falls), which he did a 'special report on', two of the more liberal (Democrat Voters) locals have written their own response to his article and the caricature he made of the town.


https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/...n-d92f3e0e01a7


And of course Fox News is pushing this for all it's worth.


https://www.foxnews.com/world/german...le-stories.amp


And of course he now has his own Wikipedia page.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius



As to the consequences, well they are the same as with any other case of journalistic fraud, the stories have been posted online and will 'inform the narritive' for years to come.


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Satanic Murders in Alabama

No, not really.

There have been two homicides in Covington County, Alabama in the last two days. The Opp, Alabama police department offered their opinion of the murders on Facebook.

Quote:

“THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS,” the since-deleted post read.

I guess Andy let Barney use the computer without supervision. No, that's not really fair. Barney Fife wasn't that stupid.


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Trump gives Putin Early Christmas Presents. Republicans stunned!

Just a week after his Special Envoy to Defeat ISIS stated that no one was claiming "Mission Accomplished" and that ISIS and other groups were starting to regroup and remained a continuing threat, Trump has tweeted and released a video declaring that ISIS has been defeated and he's bringing the Troops in Syria home and ending US involvement.

Many Republic Senators are upset and angry about the way this was done, and that Trump is even planning to do so calling it dangerous to the troops and an increase in the danger to the US.

The US had several thousand troops in Syria working with the Kurdish fighters to help them take and keep ground against ISIS. Removal of the troops and air support for these fighters will likely result in their being outgunned and out manned by ISIS fighters once more.

Russian diplomats tweeted that they were celebrating the announcement declaring that the US leaving will allow them to use diplomacy to stabilise the area and strengthen Arab Russia relationships.

Finally, it is reported that Turkey's President has been pushing for the US to withdraw and stop supporting the Kurds, which they see as a Terrorist organisations, and whom they consider to be the greatest threat to Turkish Sovereignty.

Oh, and the other presents, Trump has announced the lifting of sanctions against the business empire of Oleg V. Deripaska, one of Russia’s most influential oligarchs after a sophisticated multimillion-dollar lobbying for the lifting.

So Merry Christmas Presidents Putin and Erdoğan, enjoy yourselves as Trump works to make Russia and Turkey great again, all while joining his fellow traveler, General Flynn, in "Selling out [their] Country".

[yt]isk4sQNf-V4[/yt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/u...sia-trump.html


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Attack of the Drones

Thought I'd post a thread about this as it's currently on-going and apparently a growing problem for airports around the world. Anyway Gatwick Airport, London's second airport, is currently shut due to some tosser flying a drone in it's airspace for the past 12 or so hours. There's lots of complaints from passengers saying the authorities should be doing something about it but I'm at a loss as to what they can do.

Here's a link to the coverage (mainly chosen as the headline of "police still trying to catch drones after flights cancelled – live" brings to mind a load of cops chasing after the drone with butterfly nets):

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...n-live-updates


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mercredi 19 décembre 2018

Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise

I've just started reading the book Peak, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool about the science of learning and skill acquisition, and particularly discussing "deliberate practice" as the most effective known method for doing so.

I'd heard about these ideas peripherally, and incorporated them into my own training for some time. To some extent it is what I was already doing, but having a coherent framework for these ideas does seem to help, and the book is offering me new insights, or at least a clearer picture.

I'm curious if others have read the book, your impressions of it, or the ideas of "deliberate practice" in general.

I only just started the book yesterday, so it will probably be a day or two before I've finished it.


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Travis Vader and the Disappearance of the McCanns

Anyone been following this who might be able to tell what the evidence against Vader might be? Other than his involvement in some sorta related offenses.


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If she weighs the same as a duck...

Wasn't sure what topic this fit into best, but figured this would do. Interesting times in Canada with a woman being charged with "Pretending to practice witchcraft", a law that will be removed from the criminal code later this week.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...id=mailsignout

I often find old laws give interesting historical perspectives, as do the reasons they are maintained or eventually officially removed. In this case, they claim the law remained useful for persecuting certain specific criminal behaviours, though I would have thought laws pertaining to fraud would have covered this long ago.

Any other thoughts on this or example of other similarly strange laws? Anyone ever found themselves on the wrong side of some archaic law?


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Belgian government falls

It took us 4 years and its term was going to be up in just a couple of months anyway, but still...mission accomplished, down with the government!


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mardi 18 décembre 2018

Darwin Award in Education Winner... Alaska

We are pleased to announce our analysis of the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores by state in order to award this prestigious title.

Alaska placed 50th out of 50 states in reading. We placed next to last in math. That put our combined score as last place, edging out New Mexico.

There's a lot to be proud of. Both our math and reading scores fell by more than anyone else.

Massachusetts placed first in both. These are the 4th grade tests. 8th grade looks slightly better, but we want to keep our eye on the fresh crop, and that's the stupidest in the country.

I developed an algorithm to transform a state score into an international standing based on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) tests. Then you can propose the question: if my state were a country, then where would it score internationally?

Ours is tied with Mexico, 19th percentile, but spends 450% more per student. That makes Alaska, objectively, the worst place in the world, the least amount of educational performance per dollar, worldwide. It is going to be by an enormous margin too.

To transform your state scores here is an example to follow. Alaska is 1.5 standard deviations below the national (NAEP) mean in reading. The USA is 23rd on the PISA with a score of 497 in reading, which has a standard deviation of 49. So 1.5 standard deviations is 73.64. So the US Score adjusted downward 1.5 standard deviations is a PISA score of 423.35. Mexico's is 423, and they are 19th percentile on the PISA. This is a first order approximation, our staff is prepared, for any $150 an hour client, to make a closer estimate with either our nine or seven year old math students. Nine year old packages come with more decimal places.



https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/


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Trump Bans Bump Stocks

Donald Trump bans 'bump stocks' used in Las Vegas mass shooting

Quote:

The Trump administration has banned the high-power gun attachments of the type used in last year's Las Vegas shooting massacre of 58 people, giving the owners of "bump stocks" 90 days to turn in or destroy the devices and blocking owners from being able to register them.

United States President Donald Trump's Republican Party typically supports gun ownership, and its members have fiercely fought off perceived threats to the US constitution's second amendment guaranteeing Americans the right to bear arms.

His administration, though, is sidestepping any potential debate in Congress in issuing a final rule that adds bump stocks to a definition of machine guns written 80 years ago, during the heyday of gangsters' use of "tommy guns".
Good. About time. These devices have no purpose apart from making it easier to kill more people in less time.


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Sovreign Citizen has property siezed

WA man has his property seized because he refuses to pay $300,000 owing in rates

Quote:

A long-running dispute in Western Australia has ended with a 'sovereign citizen' having his property seized and sold from under him.

Wayne Kenneth Glew, from Geraldton, owed his council $300,000 in rates, which he refused to pay because he believed local governments were unconstitutional.

Mr Glew is one of an informal movement of 'freemen' or 'sovereign citizens', who believed Australian legislative laws only applied if you consented to them.

City of Greater Geraldton mayor Shane Van Styn said Mr Glew's actions were an injustice to those doing the right thing by paying their yearly rates.

"[He has] some crazy misconception that the laws do not apply to him, and regrettably we have been forced to take action to seize his property to cover costs that rightfully belong to the ratepayers of Greater Geraldton," Mr Van Styn said.


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Any natural history buffs / gentleman (or lady) naturalists out there

My retirement journey to figure out who I am and what I want to do with the rest of my life continues.

I've done microscopy, geology/minerology, astronomy, moon watching/study and lichen collecting.

I've realized its all coming under the umbrella of "Natural History". Ok maybe not astronomy depending on whose definition of natural history you use.

Lately I bought this massive book on natural history. It has made it all come together for me.

I'm enjoying studying and learning about all these things.
Whether its collecting and trying to identify conifer cones, dissecting flower parts and preserving their pollen on microscope slides, looking for new species of lichen, examining rocks from my tiny collection, photographing a plant or going out with telescope on a clear night to study the moon.
I feel content doing all this. Perhaps because in my former life (systems analyst) everything was so rigid and technical.
I was never a biology guy, even in school. Now I am loving it.
There is a whole new world out there and I am loving the learning process.

Anyone else?

BTW the awesome book I am working through:

Attached Images
File Type: jpg natural-history-book-open.jpg (33.7 KB)


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Religious? Are you mad!?

There has been some discussion in other threads regarding whether having religious belief can be described as a mental disorder. A number of prominent atheists have suggested it is and I tend to agree with them. I suggest that most here would agree too but possibly only in extreme cases:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-...eveal/10630648

Quote:

The parents of a baby whose body washed up on a Gold Coast beach believed the girl could be "the devil" and was "evil", according to court documents obtained by the ABC.
The details of some of the father's interview with police are outlined in the documents, along with information from the interview with the baby's mother.
The 46-year-old man is accused of murdering the baby.

Few would disagree with the suggestion this guy* was insane I would think, but would balk at the suggestion that all people of religious faith are thus afflicted. It's all a matter of degree I suppose and most will draw a line somewhere.

If you are one of the above where do you draw the line? I have a nephew who thinks homosexuality is the result of a demon possession. Is he a sufferer of mental disorder?

* One thing I forgot to add. The mother also thought the baby was evil.


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So apparently power plants are fake and electric dams

As the title implies but myself I don't believe it that all power plants including electric dams are fake and that they collect the power from the atmosphere.




https://youtu.be/gkp8iGz_ZgM


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Trump Foundation dissolving

While it doesn't compare to the attack on our democracy that the Trump administration conducts, the agreement to dissolve the Trump charity and the detailing of
Quote:

a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation -- including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests
(quoting NY AG Underwood) is just one more example of our president's contempt for the rule of law (along with violating the emolument clause, campaign finance laws, commenting on ongoing investigations and influencing the witnesses thereof, etc.).

Remember, the POTUS is the chief law enforcement official of the USA. It's horrible that the POTUS should display the contempt for the rule of law the the current POTUS does.


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Hawking says there are no gods: Part II, The Olympians

Essentially we're left we two scenarios.

- A universe without a God
- A universe with a God that operates exactly like a universe without a God would operate.

When we are left with those two scenarios the full burden of proof laying on the side saying there's a God seems 100% reasonable to me.

Silly philosophical hair splits about total disapproval hardly seem worth the effort for even the most navel gazing among us.

Mod InfoThis is Part II of the thread, "Hawking says there are no gods". You are, as usual,free to quote from Part I in this thread.
Posted By:kmortis


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Police Duty to Protect

Judge tosses Parkland shooting lawsuit. Cops and schools had no duty to protect students, she says.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/jud...uqc?ocid=ientp
Quote:

A federal judge says Broward schools and the Sheriff's Office had no legal duty to protect students during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom dismissed a suit filed by 15 students who claimed they were traumatized by the crisis in February. The suit named six defendants, including the Broward school district and the Broward Sheriff's Office, as well as school deputy Scot Peterson and campus monitor Andrew Medina.

Bloom ruled that the two agencies had no constitutional duty to protect students who were not in custody.
I've read in the past about how the police in the USA are required to protect society in general, not actual persons.

Does this attitude exist in countries other than the USA?

Ranb


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Neil Degrasse Tyson Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Amazingly, seems that no one in this forum is talking about this.

Four accusers so far. Out of all of them, the worst and most critical accusations is one of drugging and raping a woman.

This is a really disappointing one. Neil always struck me as a good person. If something as dark as this can be true, then who the hell can we trust?


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lundi 17 décembre 2018

Cruel and Unusual Punishment?

Deer poacher ordered to watch Bambi once a month in jail

Quote:

A poacher has been ordered to watch the Disney classic Bambi as part of his sentence for illegally killing hundreds of deer.

David Berry was ordered by a court in Missouri to watch the film at least once a month during his year-long jail sentence in what conservation agents have called one of the largest deer poaching cases in state history.

“The deer were trophy bucks taken illegally, mostly at night, for their heads, leaving the bodies of the deer to waste,” said Don Trotter, the prosecuting attorney in Lawrence county in the state’s south-west.
Words cannot express the contempt I have for trophy hunters.


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The beginning of the end of photography (video & still) as evidence.

The real title to this thread should read:

"Nvidia released details of a new face creating algorithm."

But I had to keep up forum appearances and be click-baity.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...-mess-with-us/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.04948.pdf

Several prominent companies and universities are working on similar human being creation technology.

Also, before anyone brings up the "these are stills, not video". Yes, video is much harder to create convincingly. (Though keep in mind they don't have to create the entire 3 model for each person. They just need to create a tweakable 3d model and then skin it & tweak it for each person.) (And companies also keep that tech much more closer to their chest... until it is outdated, of course.)


All of the below human beings do not exist.







Quote:

The faces above don’t seem particularly remarkable. They could easily be taken from, say, Facebook or LinkedIn. In reality, they were dreamt up by a new kind of AI algorithm. Nvidia researchers posted details of the method to produce completely imaginary fake faces with stunning, almost eerie, realism <snip>. The researchers, Tero Karras, Samuli Laine, and Timo Aila, came up with a new way of constructing a generative adversarial network, or GAN.

GANs employ two dueling neural networks to train a computer to learn the nature of a dataset well enough to generate convincing fakes. When applied to images, this provides a way to generate often highly realistic fakery.
In the most recent work, the researchers took inspiration from a technique known as style transfer to built their GAN in a fundamentally different way. This allowed their algorithm to identify different elements of a face, which the researchers could then control. A video produced by the researchers shows how the approach can also be used to play with, and remix, different elements, like age, race, and gender--or even freckles.

How does this relate to there being a time soon where video & still photography should no longer be used as evidence? I admit they are not exactly the same field, but they are sister fields, and they are more than tangentially related.

We are not that far away from someone being able to make a video of you doing whatever the **** they want. Cheaply.

Just like in photoshop, that will happen when you are able to show a group of people 2 examples and they cannot tell beyond a 50/50 chance which one is real.

Also, it is very likely that by 2025, or at the most 2030, there will be an extremely popular celebrity (most likely a youtube celebrity) outed. Outed as not an actual human being. (Though, somewhat non-intuitively, creating completely fake and unique audio (speech) can be harder than creating completely fake video.) They will be tailored to make $$$. And we all know if it makes money, it will happen eventually.


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Alice Walker Pimps David Icke in the NY Times

The interviewer asks her what books are currently on her nightstand. The second book mentioned is by Lizard Lad:

Quote:

“And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke. In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.
For a famous writer, she expresses herself poorly here, but obviously this is intended as a hook. "If you're curious, this book will be like a dream come true."

The interviewer does not challenge her on this bizarre recommendation, and there is not even a disclaimer at the bottom of the article. Tablet Magazine takes up the issue:

Quote:

In And The Truth Shall You Free, the word “Jewish” appears 241 times, and the name “Rothschild” is mentioned 374 times. These references are not compliments. Indeed, the book was so obviously anti-Semitic that Icke’s publisher refused to publish it, and he had to print it himself.
Tablet notes that this is hardly a one-off incident; Walker has been promoting Icke's trash for years, as the media assiduously looks the other way.

Quote:

Why has Walker escaped accountability for so long? Perhaps it is due to her Israel politics, which have been used to confuse the issue. Walker is a prominent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, famously forbidding The Color Purple from being translated into the language of Hebrew. Because Walker—like Icke—is a strident critic of Israel, her defenders—like Icke’s—have dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism by claiming they are merely an attempt to quash her criticism of the Jewish state.

But it should not surprise anyone that the world’s only Jewish state, home to half its Jews, would attract the attention of anti-Semites, who would use the legitimate debate over its conduct to smuggle in their anti-Jewish bile. Anti-Zionism may not be anti-Semitism, but plenty of self-described anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. A progressive left that is serious about anti-Semitism will call it out not only when it comes from a white supremacist and is presented as “race realism,” but when it comes from their own camp and is presented in the righteous guise of “anti-Zionism.”


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Saudi Arabia rejects US Senate’s ‘interference’ in kingdom

Saudi Arabia issued an unusually strong rebuke of the U.S. Senate on Monday, rejecting a bipartisan resolution that put the blame for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi squarely on the Saudi crown prince and describing it as interference in the kingdom’s affairs

“The kingdom categorically rejects any interference in its internal affairs, any and all accusations, in any manner, that disrespect its leadership ... and any attempts to undermine its sovereignty or diminish its stature,”

https://apnews.com/7b8f4250fdcc4af5a0e99e38ec3ebe2b


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dimanche 16 décembre 2018

John Of God Arrested

We've all heard of this guy, right? The guy who does magic tricks to deceive people into thinking he's healing them? Well... one of the guys anyway.

Turns out he has a nasty habit of sexually abusing people as well.

Miracle healer accused of sex abuse by 300+ women hands himself in

Quote:

Brazilian police in the central state of Goias say the healer accused of sexually abusing more than 300 women has turned himself in.

Joao Teixeira de Faria, who is known as Joao de Deus or John of God, became internationally famous when Oprah Winfrey broadcast a report on his psychic healing methods in 2013.

He had until 3pm local time on Saturday to comply with an arrest warrant.

He is accused of sexually abusing women, mainly during psychic treatments. His fame has been boosted by supposedly miraculous surgeries he claims to have performed with his hands and without anaesthesia. In videos from his practice in Abadiania, a small town that flourished along with his client list, he is seen performing surgery on several people during group meetings.


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A Christmas Carol for Truthers

Danish debunkers Claus Larsen and Steen Svanholm read Love Letters they received from Danish Truthers.

Steen sings a song for them - enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQXKfceXEMQ&t=19m23s

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steen Svanholm
On the first day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
a link to a YouTube video

On the second day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video

On the third day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video

On the fourth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video

On the fifth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video

On the sixth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video

On the seventh day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video.

On the eightth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
eight whistleblowers,
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video.

On the nineth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
nine Jews who did it,
eight whistleblowers,
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video.

On the tenth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
ten cherry-pickings,
nine Jews who did it,
eight whistleblowers,
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video.

On the eleventh day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
eleven missiles missing,
ten cherry-pickings,
nine Jews who did it,
eight whistleblowers,
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video.

On the twelfth day of Christmas the Truther sent to us
twelve tons of thermite,
eleven missiles missing,
ten cherry-pickings,
nine Jews who did it,
eight whistleblowers,
seven inside jobs,
six cover-ups,
five tinfoil hats,
four False Flags,
three death threads,
two vulgar words
and a link to a YouTube video,
yes, and a link to a YouTube video,
and another link to a YouTube video.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:


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