The Death of Deadspin

This somewhat related to a previous thread about Gawker being sued successfully by a Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogan: http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=304944

Since then Gawker was closed and the other Gawker sites have been passed from one owner to another. Recently they were bought by a private equity firm and the new boss did not like the old editorial direction.

Deadspin was a weird site under the Gawker umbrella. It was nominally a sports site, but if you really wanted sports news you could get that better elsewhere. It was more like a sports bar than a sports news source. The community was more important than the sports. This is in contrast with Jalopnik which is one of the better car news sites. Well, the new owner wanted it to stick to sports. So, now it seems that most of the staff is gone and they have taken down the ability to comment.

All of this played out in the comments on various Gawker sites and in the twitter feed of their union GMG Union.

Is anyone else going to miss Deadspin?

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Eric Ciaramella - whistleblower

https://www.realclearinvestigations....er_120996.html


RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official's status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate"

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Clark County GOP Elects Convicted Sexual Predator

The Republican Party once again showing their true colours.

Election of party official rocks Clark County GOP

Man elected to post was convicted of residential burglary, violation of a civil anti-harassment order and furnishing alcohol to minors

Excerpt:

Quote:

Over a two-month period in 2010, and despite a previously filed restraining order preventing him from contacting her, Clark repeatedly snuck into a 15-year-old girl’s bedroom in the Sherwood neighborhood, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in Clark County Superior Court. After tapping on the window to grab the girl’s attention and using a folding metal chair to enter the room, Clark — 43 at the time — and the girl would hug and kiss on her bed, the affidavit said.

A 43 year old sneaking into a 15 year old's bedroom late at night. Nothing at all creepy or disturbing about that.

Quote:

Clark was arrested on suspicion of 10 counts of residential burglary with sexual motivation, according to court records. He was later convicted of residential burglary, violation of a civil anti-harassment order and furnishing alcohol to minors, and he was sentenced to roughly nine months in jail.

And this is the sort of the person that the GOP -- the same GOP who slanders homosexuals and transpeople as child-molesting perverts, and attempts to legislate them out of existence -- considers this emotionally stunted sexual predator to be the best leader they could find for their county.

Quote:

On Tuesday, he was elected chair of the party’s Bylaws and Resolutions Committee with 70 percent of the vote in a secret ballot, according to an email from Clark County Republican Chair Earl Bowerman obtained by The Columbian. The 10 voters had previous knowledge of Clark’s criminal past, the email said.

The party of "family values" and "personal responsibility" in a nutshell, folks.

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Do you believe that Trump committed a "high crime or misdemeanor"?

I posted this earlier and intended to include a poll. Given what you know about President Trump's presidency, do you believe he committed what the founders labeled a "high crime and ir misdemeanor"?

Whether his use of his properties constitutes a violation of the "phony Emoluments clause".
Or the facts laid out in the Mueller case regarding Russia. Or if stonewalling Congress and the courts is a clear case of Obstruction. Or extorting Ukraine with authorized military aid to damage political opponents to aid gis own campaign.

Please answer what you believe and why.

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In search of 20,000,000 trees.

Those that are on YouTube might have seen this already, but if you haven't, let me tell you about #TeamTrees.

So MrBeast, a YouTube creator hit 20 million subs a short while back, and as a way to celebrate he and Mark Rober have partnered with a huge number of other creators to form TeamTrees with the goal of planting 20 million trees before the end of the year. They are doing this by working with Arbor Day Foundation who are going to plant one tree for every $1 raised.

This is pretty much blowing up, and within a few days of being announced they have hit over $8.6 million with Elon Musk dropping a million dollars in the pot, Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, donating $150,000, and YouTube pledging to match the next $1 Million raised on its platform (it's at just over $2.1 million currently.)

There are plenty of videos about the push and some are quite interesting if you don't know a lot about trees.

[yt]HPJKxAhLw5I[/yt]
[yt]-cPdImejxEQ[/yt]
[yt]U7nJBFjKqAY[/yt]
[yt]7bsuXsxX950[/yt]

If you're interested in looking into it more their site is https://www.teamtrees.org/ or you can look up #teamtress on Youtube

What do you think? Seems to be a pretty goof idea, and I expect that they're going to surpass the 20 million, and while it won't stop Climate Change, this does have the potential of being able to take 10,000 tons of Carbon from the atmosphere each year, so hey, just 39,999,990,000 tons to go. :D

So yeah, I know this is a little bit of a advert for them, but I think it's also an important current topic, and one that can be talked about as well as actioned if people think it's worth helping out.

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Did the Trump administration committed a high crime or misdemeanor

I'm curious. Do you believe that President Trump commit a high crime?

If so, why or why not?

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UK - December 2019 General Election

Thought we should have a thread about this.

Seems that the Conservative Manifesto is being written by:

Quote:

a lobbyist for Facebook, Amazon and fracking company Caudrilla

According to the Grauniad.

If there was any doubt about what is likely to happen in the (IMO almost certain) event of a Conservative majority.

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why is Islam taught in AMerican public schools when prayer is not allowed?

Muslim prayers and traditions are taught in public schools but Christianity and other religions are not. Does this not violate the laws against the church and state? I don't believe religion of any description should be taught in public schools.

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[Split Thread] Reader View and hidden text in news outlet websites

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trebuchet Quote: Originally Posted by Mumbles (Post 12870088) Well, as long as they aren't white. On the plus side, we treat 11 year old girls in a gentler manner. "Stop resisting!" Do they actually train cops to shout that while beating people, or do the police unions do it unofficially?

I started reading the article (in Firefox Reader Mode) but stopped the instant I read the line We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. If they're going include inane zero-content stuff like that like that on their page I simply will not trust the source. That's getting into Fox News / Daily Mail levels of fail.

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My Favorite Democrat

Is one that I voted against last year, but am now open to voting for in 2024: Kyrsten Sinema:

Quote:

Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t really fit in with her fellow Senate Democrats. Don’t even ask her whether she watches the Democratic presidential debates. “I’m not missing anything. I prefer happiness,” Sinema declares in a 25-minute interview, a rare extended conversation with an outlet not based in Arizona. “Look how happy I am.”

And she drops a nuclear bomb on the Democrats pushing to get rid of the filibuster:

Quote:

“They will not get my vote on [nuking the filibuster],” Sinema said in her office, outfitted with shiny leather and translucent chairs and boasting a vivid shade of purple that pops from the walls. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority. … It is the right thing for the country.”

Looks like we have another maverick senator from Arizona.
:D

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ID's needed to watch porn? Australians may need to facial scans!

Quote:

The Australian government has proposed using a facial recognition system it is developing to verify that people who seek to watch pornography online are of legal age. Current law in Australia does not prohibit minors from viewing pornography. But the federal government is considering proposals that would require people to prove their age before watching the material. Under the proposal from the Department of Home Affairs, a computer user’s face would be matched to images from official identity documents. It does not say how the user would submit a facial image at the beginning of each online session. The proposal drew immediate objections as a potential infringement of Australians’ privacy. “I think people should be very concerned about any government department that’s seeking to store this kind of information,” said Senator Rex Patrick, a centrist lawmaker from the state of South Australia. The Department of Home Affairs did not respond to questions about the proposal, and the attorney general’s office, when asked to comment on the legal ramifications of the system, directed all questions to Home Affairs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/w...cognition.html

After Britain abandoned its pathetic attempt to require people to authenticate their identity in order to access pornographic websites, the Australian's are now taking the moral panic of minors watching porn to an entire level of ridiculousness altogether.

Presumably in order to prevent horny teenagers from swiping their parents ID's in order to circumvent any required identification checks, they would be required to take images of their face to ascertain that they really are the person they claim they are. In seeking to become world leading in "protecting children" from the latest imagined threats to their children there seems to be no limits to Anglo stupidity.

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Arizona county official arrested for child trafficking

Accused of smuggling pregnant women to the US to give birth and offering them money to give up their children

Quote:

Leaders in Arizona’s most populous county suspended Assessor Paul Petersen without pay for 120 days. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors doesn’t have the power to permanently remove him from his office, which determines the value of properties for tax purposes in Phoenix and its suburbs. Petersen, who is in federal custody, has so far refused to resign since his arrest on Oct. 8. His lawyer, Kurt Altman, said Petersen will fight to keep the $77,000-a-year job he was last elected to in 2016. Petersen, a Republican, has been indicted in federal court in Arkansas and also charged in Arizona and Utah with crimes that include human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The criminal case spans three years and involves some 75 adoptions, authorities said, with about 30 adoptions pending in three states. Petersen is accused of illegally paying women from the Marshall Islands to have their babies in the United States and give them up for adoption. The women were crammed into homes owned or rented by Petersen, sometimes with little to no prenatal care, court documents say. Petersen charged families $25,000 to $40,000 per adoption, prosecutors said.

Hey look, it's one of those "child traffickers" that we're told justifies border concentration camps, except apparently the call was coming from inside the house...

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How the Universe Works: How low can you go?

In the past, I have seen criticism of the Science Channel show, "How the Universe Works" for including Lawrence Krauss. Krauss comes with issues, but it's at least debatable.

But I just turned it on and there was Geoffrey Marcy. This is the guy who resigned his professor position at Berkeley for sexual harassment. What the hell, Science Channel?

This is a season 7 episode, so a new show. Marcy was busted in 2015, so they know about it.

Really bad form. Krauss was close enough to bad, but Marcy is way over the line.

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Finders

Heading down the rabbit hole ...

According to someone on another forum, the 1980s Satanic Panic was actually a coverup for real Satanic abuse and child sex slavery, involving multiple federal agencies.

Quote:

so the Finders thing, basically the FBI declassified a report on what they describe as a 'White slavery child sex abduction cult' that implicates US intelligence in their activities and covering up of their crimes. There's multiple cases in which Satanic elements are described, pentagrams being left at sites, and tunnels beneath elementary schools where abused kids were made to sacrifice animals. ****'s absolutely insane, and all of it took place at the same time the media was making concerned Americans into a laughing stock with the 'Satanic Panic' libel. Interestingly, it also details how the cult had classified documents on underground tunnel networks in DC they were presumably operating in, which regardless of the veracity of the whole thing, was something central to the whole Pizzagate "conspiracy theory".

They linked to a Youtube video, but it's almost four hours long, and I couldn't bring myself to watch it. It looks like an archive of a live stream, so it's probably insane rambling.

[yt]t1_C04ZpyLo[/yt]

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Another woman accused of causing her boyfriend's suicide

Woman charged with urging boyfriend to kill himself in "suicide by text" case in Boston

Quote:

Prosecutors say a former Boston College student who had "complete and total control" over her boyfriend has been indicted on an involuntary manslaughter charge for allegedly encouraging him to take his own life. Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins announced the indictment against 21-year-old Inyoung You during a news conference Monday. Rollins said You and Alexander Urtula exchanged thousands of text messages, including "hundreds" in which she urged Urtula to kill himself. Urtula leapt to his death from a parking garage in Boston on May 20, the day of his Boston College graduation, as his family, in town from New Jersey, waited for him to arrive at the ceremony. Rollins said You had been tracking Urtula's location on her cell phone and was "present" when he killed himself, but did not detail their interactions leading up to his death.

On the day of his college graduation??? I understand that people commit suicide, but isn't the day you graduate from college supposed to be a happy one?

This one's a little hard to evaluate because they don't give any specific quotes from the texts, but they claim this woman had "complete and total control" over her boyfriend?? She would use threats of self-harm to manipulate him supposedly.

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So...practical fusion is solved, now?

Really?

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Rep. Katie Hill announces resignation

Rep. Katie Hill announces resignation amid allegations of improper relationships with staffers

Seems like her estranged husband is out to get her and he has the goods to smear her too. Nowadays they call that "revenge porn" and supposedly it's illegal. Somehow compromising pictures of her are showing up in British tabloids and conservative websites.

Quote:

Washington (CNN)Democratic Rep. Katie Hill of California on Sunday announced her resignation from Congress days after she admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a campaign staffer before coming into office. "It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress," Hill said in a statement Sunday. "This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country." News of Hill's resignation comes after the House Committee on Ethics announced Wednesday it was opening an investigation into allegations Hill engaged in an improper relationship with a congressional staffer in possible violation of House rules which were changed last year to ban relationships between members and their staff. In a statement last week, Hill denied that the relationship — allegedly involving Graham Kelly, who currently works as her legislative director — took place. CNN has reached out to Kelly for comment, but has not heard back. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Sunday night that Hill "has acknowledged errors in judgment that made her continued service as a Member untenable." While Pelosi praised Hill for making "a great contribution as a leader of the Freshman Class" of House Democrats, she added that "we must ensure a climate of integrity and dignity in the Congress, and in all workplaces."

Yes. "Integrity and dignity", of course.
Fwiw, she ran as an openly bisexual candidate.
It kinda seems like she's being forced out for being the victim of revenge porn from a vindictive ex.

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Dragon Con 2020 with SkepTrack

This is a thread for all things Dragon Con 2020 related, especially if they apply to the SkepTrack, which is the Skeptic's content track at Dragon Con, organized by Derek and April Colanduno.

You can think of SkepTrack as a "mini-TAM" or "mini-CSICON" or "mini-NECSS" or "mini-QED" or mini-whatever-your-local-skeptical-convention-is-these-days.

It takes place Thursday, September 3rd to Monday, September 7.

If you haven't heard of Dragon Con before: It's like "Mardi Gras for Geeks". It's MORE than a mere sci-fi/fantasy convention! It is a celebration of all things nerdy and geeky, and it's got more live entertainment than any other such con (I think), and it' got 24-hour programming in case you wanted that.

Oh yes, it also has STEM-related tracks, for science, space, robotics and other DIY projects, and of course... SkepTrack for skepticism.


Anyway, for this parent post, it's too early to declare who or what is going to be there, for certain. But, I will keep you updated as I know more.

If you haven't gotten your hotel room, yet, it might not be too late; although I could be wrong about that. Hotel rooms go fast in that area. I managed to book a hotel near the center of the con, but NOT one of its host hotels, this time. It's cheaper (even with the discount), and getting into your room is probably easier.

Last time I went to Dragon Con (2018), I booked too late, and had to get a room at a hotel a few miles away.



Anyone else going?

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Woman killed after explosion during gender reveal announcement in Iowa

Woman killed after explosion during gender reveal announcement in Iowa

Quote:

Deputies called to a home say a gender reveal announcement resulted in the explosion, which caused a flying piece of debris to strike the 56-year-old woman.

But they didn't tell us the gender!

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Android MP3 Player Recommendation?

There are some things that drive me bonkers, and reviews in online app stores are one of those things. I'm looking for an MP3 player for my Android phone. I go to the Google Play Store, and put in MP3 Player. Needless to say, there are lots of them. How to choose? Let's look at ratings. Inevitably:

Five stars: This app is the mostest awesomest!!! It does everything!

Followed by

One star: This *%&^% app broke my phone and never works!


Sigh.

So I turn here and hope someone has some suggestions. My needs are fairly simple. Every Halloween night, I play classical music through my yard. (Toccatta and Fugue, Danse Macabre, that sort of thing.) For twenty years, that meant pulling out my computer to play the MP3 files (all legally purchased, I might add) and running the extension cord to power the speakers and keep the PC alive.

Well, I decided this year, to enter the 21st century. Those little battery powered Bluetooth speakers are plenty good for my small yard, so all I need is to find an app that I can take a dozen MP3 files off of my PC, and tell the app to play them in a loop. I pair the device with my little, but powerful, Bluetooth speaker, and its time to hand out candy.

But....what MP3 player. Reading about the apps, some of them scan my phone to find MP3s. I don't want that. Lots of them go out to the internet and look for other songs I might like. I don't want that. I want them to play my songs that I select and that I've already paid for, that I can load onto my phone, and that's that. Simple. 20 years ago, I bought devices that did that just fine, but without the Bluetooth part, but I don't have those devices anymore. When it comes right down to it, I don't even need the Bluetooth part. I could just plug in the headphone jack. However, the phone and the speaker already have buetooth, so I'm ok with it.

I'm cheap, so the best app would be free, but I'm willing to pay a few bucks to avoid an advertisement suddenly coming on instead of my music.

Putting it slightly differently, I want a very simple, bare bones, MP3 player that won't interfere with its core function of playing the selected MP3 files by deciding that I probably want it to do a bunch of other stuff for me. No need for album art, organizing my music library, or finding other songs I might like either already on my phone or out in the cloud somewhere.

Any recommendations?

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Going off anti-depressant cold turky.

After taking Paxil for over 20 years, a mix up with the pharmacy left me without any for a few days. After 5 days, and doing OK, I decided to ride it out. It has now been about 3 weeks since I have taken any.

Knowing the horror stories about stopping it suddenly, I have been waiting, yet nothing has happened. I feel fine. Am I being optimistic, or have I managed to stop and be OK. It was the max, 60ml, for many years, to zero.

Is anyone familiar with this? Thanks.

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Why are we ignoring the epidemic of white male suicides?

Healthy Men: Why are we ignoring the epidemic of white male suicides?

Quote:

In 2000, the suicide rate among all females was 4 per 100,000. In 2016, that rate was 6 per 100,000—a 50% increase. Over the same period, the rate for males grew from 17.7 per 100,000 to 21.4 per 100,000, an increase of 21%. So yes, the female suicide rate grew more quickly than the male rate, and there needs to be some serious investigation into what's driving that increase. However—and this is a really big however—while the rate of females taking their own lives increased by 2 per 100,000, the rate of males increased by nearly 4 per 100,000. In actual numbers, there are, again, at least 3.5 male suicides for every female one.

Quote:

So why aren't we getting the full story behind the epidemic of suicides? There are a number of factors, chief among them is the fact that reporting the truth about who's committing suicide would require acknowledging that the contemporary narrative—in which men in general and white men in particular are a universally privileged class and have no legitimate problems—is false. Ignoring the very real issues facing men in this country and continuing to tell men that they should be stoic, that their problems aren't as big as everyone else's, and to never ask for help is killing people. Tens of thousands every year.

I had no idea.

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Police interviewing/interrogation methods in Scotland and England

I gather that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) doesn't apply in Scotland. Does anyone (maybe Nessie or Rolfe) know the equivalent legislation that applies in Scotland (if there is any), i.e. what regulations or guidelines restrict what police can do when interviewing? I noticed that Rolfe stated in another thread that Luke Mitchell was subjected to the Reid technique. That was after the introduction of PACE in England and Wales so I assume police in Scotland were more at liberty to use these methods, but is this still the case? I need to correct a lecture that states that in the UK PACE prevents practices such as lying to suspects, but when this is made specific to England and Wales somebody may ask what is permitted in Scotland. I have found various sources regarding police practices and rights in Scotland but nothing explicitly stating what police may or may not do in relation to interviewing methods.

In relation to this, I noticed that although a lot of sources say specifically that PACE prohibits lying to suspects, when looking through Annex C I can’t see that it is specific about what police are or are not allowed to do in relation to questioning. Point 11.5 states ‘No interviewer may try to obtain answers or elicit a statement by the use of oppression’. I can’t see anything more specific about what constitutes ‘use of oppression’. I assume that the general purpose and ethos of both PACE and the PEACE model imply that deception is unacceptable, but was wondering if there is something more specific about what methods are not permitted?

This is outside my area but relevant to support arguments about the effects of police techniques of false confessions and guilt-presumptive bias.

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The Book of Dust

I was wondering if anyone else has read volumes one and two of Philip Pullman's 'The Book of Dust'?

Starting last summer I reread 'La Belle Sauvage', then I reread the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy in anticipation of 'The Secret Commonwealth', which I finished a couple of weeks ago.

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Heroic author “discovers” that the CIA brainwashed Charles Manson and Jack Ruby

According to the book linked below, Manson was (or may have been, JAQ!) a CIA CHAOS MKULTRA agent and he and his Family were brainwashed by the CIA as part of a systematic campaign to discredit the 60s counterculture and the American Left.

Also according to the book, Jack Ruby’s memory was wiped clean by the CIA and he was driven insane right before he was scheduled to testify to the Warren Commission.

- Finally, Vincent Bugliosi is rotting in hell because Helter Skelter was a CIA/FBI lie, or something.

Quote:

O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Charles.../dp/0316477559

This changes everything, right?!

JAQ ;) :rolleyes:

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Driven to drive

I’m getting to be an old lady, so I’m beginning to start sentences with the words, “When I was young….”

So, when I was young, driving was a rite of passage. At about fourteen, kids began to talk about when they would get their license and what they would do. Most of my peers did not expect to get a car from their parents, but they had hopes of driving their parents’ cars or saving up to buy their own. In my household, although the official age for driving was sixteen, my father’s rule was seventeen for the boys. Girls did not drive. I remember the younger of my two brothers getting his license and the excitement. I would only have been four for the oldest, so I don’t remember when he didn’t drive. All my classmates prepared well in advance and took drivers’ education. As I say, it was a milestone.

The next generation down, my nieces and nephews got their licenses with similar excitement and most got their own cars, though not the fanciest going. In the suburbs they really needed cars, while their parents worked, just to get to their own jobs and social events.

Now we have the children of the above nieces and nephews and driving no longer seems to be all that exciting. The oldest, now seventeen and a half, hasn’t logged anywhere near the hours needed to qualify and seems unconcerned. The next one is indeed grimly determined to drive and has all his hours. He has about eight weeks until he’s the correct age and will be able to drive himself to climbing events, which is his passion. His younger brother seems very vague about it—he’s pushing fifteen.

Is driving no longer the beginning of adulthood we so looked forward to? What are other families’ experiences?

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Company Sued in Racial Discrimination Case Says They Don't Know if Claimant is Black

So Tracey Evans, a clearly black man, sues his employer, Founders Brewing, for a racially hostile workplace and using slurs at work. In court proceedings, the defendants claim to be unaware of Evans' heritage and won't answer to whether he is black or not:

Quote:

‘I don't know Tracy's lineage, so I can't speculate on whether he's — if he's from Africa or not,’ Dominic Ryan, who is white, said to Evans’ attorney, Jack Schulz, when asked about the claimant’s race.

Pics of Evans in the article. He is not exactly a margin call for being readily identified as a black man.

I know that litigators can split hairs about definitions ad infinitum, but does this really make any level of sense as a defense?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...n-lawsuit.html

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"Julian Assange is being tortured to death before our eyes"

Says Craig Murray:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig Murray I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court. Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended to be listening. Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian’s condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight. But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought. Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian’s treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness. I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process. I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought. Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern. [...]

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What would Mitch do?

Scenario:
It's mid-November 2020. Donald Trump has been defeated by a Democrat. The landslide extends to the Senate which will have a strong Democrat majority in early 2021.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies. Trump immediately nominates a replacement Supreme Court Justice. What will McConnell, still the Majority Leader of the lame-duck Senate, do?

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Nice paper on jets in an LMXB

LMXB: low mass x-ray binary; i.e. as low mass star and a stellar-mass black hole in orbit around each other. Emits copious amounts of x-ray radiation.

Based in Paice+ (2019), "A black hole X-ray binary at ∼100 Hz: multiwavelength timing of MAXI J1820+070 with HiPERCAM and NICER" (link to MNRAS-not-paywalled paper).

I am NOT a fan of PhysOrg, but in this case their reprinting of the University of Southampton's PR is well worth it, "Violent flaring revealed at the heart of a black hole system" (link).

The black hole is surrounded by an accretion disk, with mass streaming in from the doomed low mass star in the binary. By a combination of processes still not fully understood, a pair of back-to-back jets emerges in the pole directions of the accretion disk. Matter in these jets travels at highly relativitic speeds (at least initially). The same (or very similar) processes operate in AGNs (active galactic nuclei), with super-massive black hole (SMBH) accretion disks fed by gas and dust (and the occasional unlucky star); in some elliptical galaxies, the jets can extend millions of light years. You may recall that recently the "silhouette" of the SMBH in M87's nucleus was imaged.

Being a whole lot closer than M87 (or even our own galaxy's SgrA*), MAXI J1820+070 should permit better resolution of the various components and tease apart the main physical processes that produce the light, x-rays, etc that we see.

Hat-tip to Sol88 (who posted a link, ostensibly in support of something very different!). :jaw-dropp

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Harvard Crimson: Yes, we should ask for comment from ICE

I found this editorial from the Harvard Crimson quite interesting, the crux of the issue seems to be this:

Quote:

Last month, The Crimson covered a rally organized by campus group Act on a Dream that called for the abolition of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During the course of our reporting, Crimson reporters requested comment from ICE — a decision that has proved controversial with many of our readers. We stand behind that decision, and we wanted to share with you our thinking. ... After the protest had concluded, but before the story was published, The Crimson contacted an ICE spokesperson to ask if they wished to provide a statement in response to the protest. ... A few days after the event, Act on a Dream and others expressed disagreement with The Crimson’s request for comment to ICE. It is our practice to meet with student groups whenever they have questions or concerns about our coverage, and — as a result — we contacted Act on a Dream shortly after seeing their criticisms on social media. We met with them to listen to their concerns and share our perspective by explaining our policies and the fundamental journalistic principles behind them. A week later, Act on a Dream published a petition calling on The Crimson to change its policies so that it never contacts ICE for comment again and apologize for the “harm [it] inflicted on the undocumented community.” In this, the organization has called on other student groups to boycott speaking to The Crimson until the paper complies with their demands.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...s-ice-comment/


As with the authors of the editorial, I thought it was standard practice to contact the subjects of an article (or the focus of a protest covered in an article.) for comment and they have the right the refuse such comment.


The idea that the subject of an article (or the focus of a protest covered in an article.) should not be contacted because reading or hearing their words will 'cause harm' seems wrongheaded.

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Excellent discussion of unusual alternative to Dark Matter

On Sabine Hossenfelder's BackReAction blog, it's titled "Dark matter nightmare: What if we are just using the wrong equations?" (link).

At its heart it's about averaging non-linear equations, those in General Relativity (GR) in particular.

An extract:

Quote:

... but the thing that really keeps me up at night is this: Maybe all these thousands of physicists are simply using the wrong equations. I don’t mean that general relativity needs to be modified. I mean that we incorrectly use the equations of general relativity to begin with. The issue is this. General relativity relates the curvature of space and time to the sources of matter and energy. Put in a distribution of matter and energy at any one moment of time, and the equations tell you what space and time do in response, and how the matter must move according to this response. But general relativity is a non-linear theory. This means, loosely speaking, that ...

As with, it seems, almost all her blogpost comments, there are lots of OT ones, promotion of "pet theories", and fairly elementary misunderstandings. And as long as she isn't being strict about what she lets through (all comments are moderated), I think there is a lot of opportunity to help people genuinely confused or ignorant, but obviously willing to learn. Take a gander to see what I mean.

Unfortunately, for some reasons or other, she has chosen to use Blogger as her platform, terrible choice! If you seriously want to help.

In later posts here, I'll introduce one genuine misunderstanding, and discuss it (and, in time, invite weristdas to join this thread): why is refraction ruled out as a viable explanation for "gravitational lensing"? Especially as refraction (or similar) MUST be happening.

Yes, at some high level it suffices to say that refraction is chromatic, gravitational lensing is achromatic, and what we observe is achromatic; case closed (with evidence, of course).

But ... stay tuned!

I wholeheartedly recommend BackReAction if you're looking for some serious foundations-of-physics discussions (including cosmology and parts of astropysics and astronomy), with the sometimes active participation of some heavy hitters. Having said that, some wax too philosophical for my taste, especially when it comes to QM.

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What is the scariest thing?

A video from Vsauce that answers the question. It's a humorous serious look into the question.

https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo

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Trump Regime proves why we NEED a "Deep State"

The absolute impotence of the FBI under Barr and the fact that the most damning testimony against Trump on Ukraine has come from career bureaucrats inside the government just goes to show why having a buraucracy utterly divorced from elections and politics is vital to the functioning of a free society.

Discuss.

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Halloween: Children told where sex offenders live

Some sex offenders are suing Butts County [sic] in Georgia because it put up signs on their lawn last Halloween 2018 warning children not to 'trick or treat here'.

The claim is, it is a violation of their rights.

Quote:

According to the court filing, in late October 2018, the sheriff’s office put up warning signs in the front yards of more than 200 registered sex offenders. After November 2, deputies went back to the offenders’ properties to collect the signs. Yurachek argues that in doing so, the sheriff and his deputies violated the residents' rights by trespassing on their property to place and collect the signs without their consent. He also maintains that Georgia's sex offender registry statue does not call for warning signs to be placed at the homes of offenders.

It seems quite extraordinary to me that officials can point out where sex offenders live in this way. It encourages vigilantism.

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Joe Rogan Talks to Edward Snowden

Okay, this is a very long conversation - over two hours - and I haven't listened to the whole thing.

It is a bit weird for a Joe Rogan podcast in that Rogan himself almost doesn't talk at all, let alone go into anecdotes about how he and Joey Diaz were getting high while bow-hunting elk in Alaska.

Instead, it is mostly Snowden talking in a way which really needs an executive summary, about his time in various projects in national security.

I suppose his main message is that the national security works to protect state apparatus, not the population, and are in fact quite cavalier about the rights of the population.

[yt]efs3QRr8LWw[/yt]

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[Split From] Trump wins bigly in 2020. What then?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cabbage (Post 12867242) Do you understand that nothing you have said so far implies that he isn't? To me, that's a far more interesting question.

Answering such questions has never been Zig's style.

You might as well ask who funds the Federalist Society.

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So quantum computers are a thing now. What can we do with them?

[yt]-ZNEzzDcllU[/yt]

https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/qu...grammable.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1666-5

They've completed a benchmark test, which shows that it can solve certain problems much faster than the fastest supercomputer. The benchmark test itself is not really practical for anything beyond proving that it works.

I wonder what practical uses this technology will have? I'm sure nobody could really think of much practical applications for early computers either, beyond calculating the trajectories of artillery shells, and stuff like that.

Can it make AI better, I wonder? Could it even lead to sentient AI? Is the AI singularity about to happen?

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Chinese hitmen in Dutch Auction

This is an interesting crime to unpack including what seem to be lenient sentences

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/new...ctid=12279548C

Five Chinese hitmen have been jailed for the same attempted murder, after each one of them avoided carrying out the crime themselves and hired another one so they could make a profit.

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39 dead in a lorry - driver arrested

In some gruesome news a couple of days ago it was reported that thirty-nine people, including one teenager, were found dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry (it is not known at this stage if the fridge was on) at an industrial park in Grays, Essex, UK and the driver arrested, after pulling in from having picked up the trailer/container from Purfleet a port near Tilbury, a major docking point from Europe (France/Belgium/Denmark/Sweden/Russia).

The driver, 25-year old 'Mo' Robinson from Portadown, Tyrone, Northern Ireland had driven from his home with his driver's cabin, picked up the container, believed to have arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium and originating from Bulgaria - an estimated three-day journey overland, circa 1:05 am. Now what is interesting, is that within 35 minutes it is claimed Mr Robinson himself discovered the bodies and called the emergency services.

Yet, the press have labelled this poor fellow 'one of Britain's worse mass murderers'. Now, he may or may not be involved in organised people trafficking crime but to labelled this young father-to-be a 'mass murderer' and plaster his face all over the media is beyond appalling and also inhumane and another Chris Jeffries waiting to happen.

Even the BBC are reporting it was the 'ambulance services' who discovered the body.

Quote:

Ambulance staff discovered the bodies in the container at Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays just after 01:30 BST on Wednesday. The lorry and trailer left the port at Purfleet shortly after 01:05. Eric Van Duyse, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office, said an investigation into the incident was under way.

He added: "We have no idea at the moment how long the lorry spent in Belgium, it could be hours or days, we just don't know."

The irony is, Mo Robinson is reported by his friends and family and 'the people of Northern Ireland (catholic and protestant') to have been released without charge.

Then there is the spectacle of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel crying fake tears when the UK has one of the worst records for accepting asylum seekers and detention centres have no cap on how long you can be detained for whilst awaiting a deportation decision. Who remembers the Tories' 'hostile environment' policy and the Windrush scandal? These tragedies are waiting to happen.

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A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags.

A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside

Link to full article.

Quote:

Rape, torture and human experiments. Sayragul Sauytbay offers firsthand testimony from a Xinjiang 'reeducation' camp

Quote:

Twenty prisoners live in one small room. They are handcuffed, their heads shaved, every move is monitored by ceiling cameras. A bucket in the corner of the room is their toilet. The daily routine begins at 6 A.M. They are learning Chinese, memorizing propaganda songs and confessing to invented sins. They range in age from teenagers to elderly. Their meals are meager: cloudy soup and a slice of bread. Torture – metal nails, fingernails pulled out, electric shocks – takes place in the “black room.” Punishment is a constant. The prisoners are forced to take pills and get injections. It’s for disease prevention, the staff tell them, but in reality they are the human subjects of medical experiments. Many of the inmates suffer from cognitive decline. Some of the men become sterile. Women are routinely raped. Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps. I met with Sauytbay three times, once in a meeting arranged by a Swedish Uyghur association and twice, after she agreed to tell her story to Haaretz, in personal interviews that took place in Stockholm and lasted several hours, all together. Sauytbay spoke only Kazakh, and so we communicated via a translator, but it was apparent that she spoke in a credible way. During most of the time we spoke, she was composed, but at the height of her recounting of the horror, tears welled up in her eyes. Much of what she said corroborated previous testimony by prisoners who had fled to the West. Sweden granted her asylum, because in the wake of her testimony, extradition to China would have placed her in mortal danger. She is 43, a Muslim of Kazakh descent, who grew up in Mongolküre county, near the China-Kazakh border. Like hundreds of thousands of others, most of them Uyghurs, a minority ethnic Turkic group, she too fell victim to China’s suppression of every sign of an isolationist thrust in the northwest province of Xinjiang. A large number of camps have been established in that region over the past two years, as part of the regime’s struggle against what it terms the “Three Evils”: terrorism, separatism and extremism. According to Western estimates, between one and two million of the province’s residents have been incarcerated in camps during Beijing’s campaign of oppression.

Long article, you may have to sign up to read it.

My thoughts:

Between this and Tibet we are witnessing a real genocide. 10% of the population in camps where people are given pills and shots that destroy their health and fertility. I think it will take China 10-20 years to cycle the entire ethnic group through these camps.
At the same time, surveillance and control are total with police posts combined with extreme electronic surveillance. Resistance seems absolutely futile here.

The world -and notably the Islamic- world is mostly silent. This includes Turkey ( the ethnic group being repressed is Turkic).

Further reading:

Inside China's Massive Surveillance Operation
In northwest China, the government is cracking down on the minority Muslim Uyghur population, keeping them under constant surveillance and throwing more than a million people into concentration camps. But in Istanbul, 3,000 miles away, a community of women who have escaped a life of repression are fighting a digital resistance.

This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like

Far from the booming metropolis of Beijing, China is building a sprawling system that combines dystopian technology and human policing. “It’s a kind of frontline laboratory for surveillance.”

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Australian honey is better than New Zealand honey

It's science, people!

Stakes raised in Australia-New Zealand rivalry over manuka honey as study finds ours is the best

Quote:

The stakes have been raised in the fight by Australian beekeepers to continue to use the name 'manuka', after a five-year study proved our medicinal honeys are equal to, or better than, New Zealand's. Manuka honey, favoured for its medicinal qualities, is produced from the nectar of different species of leptospermum plants, which are native to both Australia and New Zealand. The Agrifutures-Australia-funded joint project between the University of Technology in Sydney, the Sydney University and the University of the Sunshine Coast, tested more than 5,000 honey and 2,000 nectar samples from across the nation. It found that seven of more-than-80 Australian leptospermum species produce honey with exceptionally high levels of antibacterial activity, and many others produce honey with therapeutically-beneficial activity. "Our medicinal honey is as good as, or more active than, New Zealand medicinal honey — so New Zealand's got one species [leptospermum scoparium], we've got multiple [leptospermum] species, and some of our species are three or four times more active than New Zealand," USC Honey lab senior chemistry lecturer, Dr Peter Brooks, said.

Come at me bru.

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Republicans Storm Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility.

Quote:

On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers committed a major breach of security guidelines when they carried cell phones as they tried to force their way into a secure room where a closed-door impeachment hearing with a Defense Department official was taking place. At least one House member, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, got inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the House of Representatives. Despite strict rules barring all electronics inside such closed-off areas, Gaetz openly tweeted: "BREAKING: I led over 30 of my colleagues into the SCIF where Adam Schiff is holding secret impeachment depositions. Still inside—more details to come."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...hones-blazing/

As someone who thought Hillary deserved some time on the rack for her handling of classified materials, I am absolutely outraged at the behavior of these congresspeople. The thought of even accidentally taking a phone in a SCIF puts a knot in my stomache because of the consequences attached. Tweeting in a SCIF is simply beyond the pale. These draconian laws only apply to the little people I guess.

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GOP Party of Fascism.

Blind devotation to a leader :check.
Ignoring of all constitution restraints to give such leader absolute power.Check.
Deliberate use of Bigotry as a political weapon:Check.
Advocacy of violence against poltical opponents;Not quite there yet but moving fast in that direction.
With a few exceptions, I would say the GOP is going fast down the fascist path.

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Tennessee official: A 'queer' running for president is as 'ugly' as it gets

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...-gets-n1070236

I've only posted this as a WTFH moment, it seems unbelievable that he'd say what he did when on the record, and I thought I'd bring this car crash to everyone's attention.

I doubt he is going to resign or lose at the next election.

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"Lunch Shaming"

This has been in the news a few times recently, most recently with California becoming the most recent State to outran ban the practice on one end and a New Jersey School District banning any child who holds a lunch debt of more than 75 dollars from going to the Prom or purchasing a Yearbook even after a 3rd party agreed to pay the debts off.

So... thoughts? Opinions?

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Murder investigation in UK after 39 people found dead in lorry container

Geezes I hate people smugglers

Up there in disgusting

https://www.thejournal.ie/essex-lorry-4863572-Oct2019/

Quote:

Murder investigation in UK after 39 people found dead in lorry container A LORRY CONTAINER carrying 39 dead bodies has been discovered in Essex in the United Kingdom. A 25-year-old-man from Northern Ireland has been arrested on suspicion of murder following the discovery. Essex Police say they were called to the scene at Waterglade Industrial Park, Eastern Avenue, Grays by the ambulance service at 1.40 am this morning. Emergency services were also present but the 39 people were pronounced dead at the scene. Police say early indications suggest that 38 of the dead are adults and one is aged in their teens. “This is a tragic incident where a large number of people have lost their lives. Our enquiries are ongoing to establish what has happened,” Chief Superintendent Andrew Mariner said this morning. “We have arrested the lorry driver in connection with the incident who remains in police custody as our enquiries continue,” Mariner added. A cordon remains closed in the area and the business park remains closed. Holyhead is regularly used as a port accepting vessels that have travelled from Ireland but police have not yet said if this is the case in this instance. Essex Police are due to provide a further update on the investigation at about 11.30 am this morning. Seamus Leheny, Northern Ireland policy manager for the Freight Transport Association told BBC News that if the lorry had come from Bulgaria, getting into Britain via Holyhead was an “unorthodox route”. He said: “People have been saying that security and checks have been increased at places like Dover and Calais, so it might be seen as an easier way to get in by going from Cherbourg or Roscoff, over to Rosslare, then up the road to Dublin. “It’s a long way around and it’ll add an extra day to the journey.” Paige Wade, who was driving past the industrial park at 4.15am, told the PA news agency that there was a lot of police activity at the scene this morning. “I had just finished work while driving up Motherwell Way and all you could see was blue flashing lights, as I was driving past there was police tape to cordon off the start of Eastern Avenue.

I think an educated guess can figure it out.

Not enough drilled air holes and ventilation, would probably be up there

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What was the first haunted house you discovered?

I'm willing to bet that many of us, growing up, knew of a "real" haunted house in the neighborhood. For me, it was a place we walked past on the way to elementary school. It was up high, and we could never see any entry to get in - not that we would ever want to.

As I recall, it was boarded up, but had been a tall cathedral, sitting up on a hill, with a steeple and a small, singular window. Some of the kids claimed they had seen a face at the window.

It was terrifying, creepy, unnatural, nightmarish, fear gripping, and I loved it! To impress others we would boast about how we had to stay after school, or arrive late in the morning and walked past it by ourselves! (These were often when the story-teller claimed to have "actually seen" the creepy face.)

What was yours?

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UConn students ARRESTED for 'ridiculing' speech

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=13898


The two students both were charged under CGS 53-37, ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race," Reitz said

In a 2018 column for Reason, University of California at Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh called the statute under which the men were charged "obviously unconstitutional, because it suppresses speech based on its content (and viewpoint), and because there's no First Amendment exception for speech that insults based on race or religion."

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OK my theory of haunted houses revisited

I've already posted something about this large house in Conyers Ga. It's large at three stories if you count the large basement. I searched every room of the building twice.

In my former post about large enclosed places I said I believe the ghosts stem from the fact that such places were rare during our development as human beings and that when these places were discovered they were inevitably inhabited either by other humans or very dangerous animals. During the stone age, you didn't casually walk into a cave alone.

OK exploring in the dark would be worse as that's when many of man's predators hunted us down and ate us. I didn't explore at night because the electricity is off and you would be unable to see the upper stories.

OK looking around I got an eerie feeling akin to fear although I was able to complete the exploration. The feeling was strongest when I was approaching a room or opening a door.

It's genetic. I knew darn well no ghosts were there because they don't exist but something used to be in caves and other large openings.

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Why we shouldn't be talking to reactionaries

First off, I've got most of our resident reactionaries on ignore. The reason for this I will outline below.

Postmodern conservatives - which is the most prolific current of conservatism - are an unusual bunch in that they aren't really followers of an ideology, but rather a set of affects. It's about reacting to something or creating a situation in a way as to effect a negative emotion on a perceived other. They will assume political positions, but only in service of the previously mentioned. This is the reason that they will almost inevitably appear to hold a position one day that is diametrically opposed to one they held the day before. The objective is the "debate" and the negative emotions this create in the opponents. With few exceptions, this is the type of "conservative" we encounter here, or in most online spaces.

"Not all conservatives" and so on, but this is the most visible and audible group.

The nature of this philosophy is to gravitate towards ever more extreme positions, and as it isn't about outright lying about your position but rather about sincerely believing every argument until it's no longer advantageous, the philosophy also tends to lead to expressions of violence when there's no where more extreme to go.

As there is no tangible position to argue against that isn't simply "whatever makes the --insert group I hate here-- mad", there is no point in discussing anything with adherents of this philosophy. In fact, doing so only validates the postmodern conservatives. Their vapid opinions being treated seriously is taken as validation that they are correct. Their vapid opinions being mocked is taken as validation that they are correct because their 'enemy' thinks differently.

My advice for a better forum experience: Do not engage. Ignore the poster and instead, discuss the pathology behind the behaviour with other forumites. This isn't about silencing opinions. It's about discarding dishonest opinions held out of pure spite. We are dealing with something that cannot be argued away. De-radicalization is needed, and that's a long process that we aren't equipped to handle here. In fact, we are likely to make things much worse.

For those few conservative posters here and elsewhere on the internet who feel annoyed and unfairy targeted by this post: if you have sincerely held beliefs that are subject to change as facts are presented, and don't simply consist of "gotta own the libs", you aren't the ones being discussed here.

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Antigravity, engine and experiments with a flying saucer.

This article is a set of scientific facts, the results of my own research and their theoretical justification.

Since antiquity, it was believed that all world space is filled with ether - a subatomic substance from which all types of matter are formed and the whole surrounding world consists. Theories of scientists, including the theory of gravity, were based on this statement. And even Newton initially agreed that the transfer of energy from one body to another, such as the attraction of planets, can occur only through the medium. But later he changed his mind, and it became generally accepted thanks to his authority in scientific circles.

The first theory explaining gravity, the so-called screen theory, advanced in 1748 by Lomonosov. He suggested that the two bodies next to them were bombarded from all sides with particles of ether, and because of the fact that these bodies close each other, the pressure of the ether between them becomes less and they approach. Further, in 1856, physicist Bjerknes advanced a pulsating theory, citing a simple experiment in which two balls vibrating freely on the water approached each other or repelled by the waves created by them depending on how they oscillated — in phase or semi-phase. The Englishman Cook conducted a similar experience with cylinders modeling electrical, magnetic and diamagnetic phenomena. The experimenter, Guthrie (1870) showed experiments on the attraction and repulsion of oscillating tuning forks. In 1958, Stanyukovich conducted an experiment on the theory of runoff from Schott. Air was blown into two hollow balls with many small holes. The outflow of air from the holes in the balls was the cause of the attraction of the balls. All these experiments beautifully illustrated the mechanism of gravity, provided that the ether is the medium through which interactions between bodies are transmitted.

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Where was 9/11 plotted? Germany? Afghanistan? Pakistan?

What about Saudi Arabia and the UAE - were there individuals in those countries who “steered” people (hijackers) and funds toward the plot? What about Yemen and the “switchboard?” Or the Southeast Asia meetings?

What about individuals in the United States itself?

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Two Japanese Carriers Sunk at Midway Found...

"Kaga' and "Akagi" to be exact:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50124313

That sound you hear is Roland Emmerich rushing to try to get publicity for his upcoming film on Midway which opens in November....
Probably be as accurate as "The Patriot" and "Anoynymous":jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp

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AA729 Chemical Spill

Flight turns back to Dublin after chemical spill: https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world...3tz?li=BBqdg4K

I'm going to lay odds this is yet another outbreak of mass hysteria.

I don't believe any plane is carrying cleaning chemicals capable of rendering people unconscious, and having seen an amazing increase in outbreaks of mass hysteria in the past 2-3 years, that's where I'm going.

Further details to follow, apparently.

No doubt the CT rumour mill can put it down to the fluid of the chemtrails escaping into the air supply system.

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[Actioned] Ex-Navy engineer built a car battery with a 1,500 mile range

It seems to be a fuel cell not battery, that aside any chance it can live up to the hype?

https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/21/ex-na...ange-10956749/

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14 year old murdered outside school by bullies

This is a bit old but very saddening
https://www.cp24.com/news/community-...igil-1.4631616

The boy with that shy smile is 14-year-old Devan Selvey.



This is Devan holding his first nephew.



His sister is expecting again.

Just that this time, Devan won’t be able to hold his nephew.

On one Monday afternoon, Devan was attacked in front of his mother outside Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in Hamilton's east end, a city in Ontario, Canada. The teen boy later died in hospital.

He had just started school as a 9th grader at the same school.

In less than one month, the kid had already been bullied enough, to the extent that on monday he called his mother to come pick him up as some kids were bothering him.

And there he was attacked, stabbed, in front of his mother by the same bullies, who had been reported to the school multiple times in that one month.

Reported and as with all cases of bullying, not held accountable for.

Despite a zero-tolerance, zero bullying policy in place, this kid lost his life.

Police arrested a few teens, some of them are charged with first-degree murder, others released.

Is that enough?

Would that bring Devan back?

His mother, Shari-Ann Selvey, while speaking to the media, said "He lost all opportunities. He's never going to grow up. He's never going to get married. He's never going to know what it's like to be a father."

“Everyone failed him”

"Why was I the only person that had his back?"


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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My bookmarks are tribbles

Can anyone explain to me why my bookmarks in Chrome keep multiplying? They seem to be born pregnant. I delete swaths of them, and the next day they and their progeny are back! I looked at the help page but it was very confusing to someone who isn't as tech savvy as some. Shall I just delete them all and start fresh? Should I switch to Edge?

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Qantas trial - World's longest commercial flight

Sorry. Wasn't sure where to put this, so feel free to move if you like

Qantas have done their trial of the 19 1/2 flight from NY to Sydney.

Personally think I could handle it if business class, as the missus is English, so used to 12 hour ones. Another 7 wouldn't kill me.

The fact there is a stretch area idea to stop DVT is a pretty good idea

https://www.theguardian.com/business...dreamliner-787

Quote:

Qantas Dreamliner completes longest ever commercial flight Airline hails achievement after 19-hour New York-to-Sydney flight carrying 50 passengers and crew. They did the Macarena 10,972 metres above Las Vegas, dined on chilli- and lime-poached prawns and spicy “Jiangxi-style” cod and watched a fair few movies, including the Elton John biopic, Rocketman. Well, they had enough time: 19 hours and 16 minutes to be precise. Aviation history was made at 7.43am on Sunday when Qantas flight QF7879 touched down at Sydney airport, completing the world’s longest ever commercial flight. It had taken off from New York’s JFK airport at 9.27pm on Friday night. Along the way, it produced the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of burning more than 700 barrels of oil. Just 49 people – including six pilots, six members of cabin crew including a chef, a handful of reporters, six frequent flyers and the airline’s chief executive, Alan Joyce – were on board the Boeing Dreamliner flight, designed to test whether passengers can endure the physical and mental effects of extremely long aeroplane journeys. The flight was restricted to such a small number of passengers in order to ensure that it was light enough to make it all the way to Australia on one tank of fuel. In order to reduce the weight, strict restrictions were put in place, including limiting passengers’ luggage and destocking most of the bar. All the passengers were in business class. The plane was loaded with 101 tonnes of jet fuel, which made up almost half the total weight of the plane on takeoff. A Qantas spokesman was unable to explain how much carbon dioxide the flight created, but said all carbon emissions from the flight would be offset. The spokesman suggested that the carbon footprint of the direct flight would be less than that created by a two-leg journey because most energy used in flying is on takeoff. The International Civil Aviation Organization, which is part of the United Nations, estimates that 3.15 grams of carbon dioxide are produced for every gram of jet fuel burned. This would suggest that the flight created about 310 tonnes of carbon dioxide – the equivalent to the CO2 emitted by the use of four full tankers of petrol or that of about 718 barrels of oil, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Britain’s Committee on Climate Change said any new flights that expanded the market for long-haul travel would hinder the legally binding commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. The flight covered 16,200 kms (10,200 miles) – about 900km further than the current longest commercial flight between Singapore and New York. In an onboard interview in his Qantas-branded grey pyjamas, Joyce said: “This is the last frontier in aviation, being able to fly from the east coast of the United States to the east coast of Australia.” The flight, on a brand new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner named Kookaburra (a type of Australian kingfisher), was the first of three test flights exploring the practicalities of ultra-long -distance commercial aviation as part of Qantas’s Project Sunrise. Next month, Qantas will test a direct flight from Heathrow to Sydney, which will set a new distance record of 17,000km and take about 19.5 hours. Joyce said upon landing in Sydney: “This is a really significant first for aviation. Hopefully, it’s a preview of a regular service that will speed up how people travel from one side of the globe to the other. “We know ultra-long-haul flights pose some extra challenges, but that’s been true every time technology has allowed us to fly further. The research we’re doing should give us better strategies for improving comfort and wellbeing along the way.” The passengers boarding the flight at 9pm in New York were told to reset their watches to Sydney time as soon as they boarded, and were kept awake with the lights on for six hours and served a spicy soup and fish lunch designed to keep them up for longer to reduce jetlag. The chef said he had been preparing the meals on the flight for three days. As the flight flew over Las Vegas, passengers were led from their business class seats to the empty economy cabin in a rendition of La Macarena designed to get the blood pumping around their bodies. Pilots, passengers and crew were also subjected to a battery of health and wellbeing checks designed to test the effects of ultra-long-haul flying. All crew members wore activity monitors and completed sleep diaries and alertness logs during the flight, and in the two weeks leading up to it. Cameras were mounted in the cockpit to “record alertness cues and operational activities” and the pilots wore EEG (electroencephalogram) brain monitoring equipment to monitor them for alertness and sleep. With demand for air travel rapidly growing and aircraft performance improving, carriers are increasingly looking into ultra-long-haul travel. The International Air Transport Association expects the worldwide number of annual passengers to increase from 4.6 billion this year to 8.2 billion by 2037. Qantas captain Sean Golding said flying the plane was the highlight of his career. “The flight was very successful from two components,” he said. “The first one was research. And also the feat of distance – that flight last night was 16,200 kilometres. We were airborne for 19 hours and 16 minutes, and we landed here in Sydney with a comfortable 70 minutes of fuel.” The QF7879 flight landed in Sydney a few minutes before the airline’s regular New York to Sydney service QF12, which stops in Los Angeles. QF12 had taken off from New York three hours before QF7879.

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Is reality really real?

It’s turtles all the way down.

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Rationalty and reason. For a lay-man and philosophers.

Anyone care to talk about rationalty, reason; and then philosophers' rational truths, truths of reason, to a lay-man ?

I recently was forced to listen to an seemingly intelligent (blond, blue-eyed American :rolleyes: who dressed like a president) person who in a very limited time went from Bible promoting to Bible's (and his) God being in a Korean man's body at the moment.

I was fixing his commercial freezer's electronics in his church while he was trying to engage with me in this stupid topic. [I was on a ladder and he was on the floor..]

Which made me think about what's "rational".

PS. His wife is Korean too.. If it matters in my context.

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My reading by a "psychic".

A couple of evenings ago, I went with 2 friends to visit some really interesting little shops downtown. At one point, while looking around a costume store, we were approached by a woman who told us she was a psychic and would like to "read" us. The first reading was free, with the hope of us wanting more then 12 minutes, it would cost $25 for the next 12 minutes. No thank you. But she did a reading of us individually.

It was difficult to not laugh. Her appearance was out of central casting. She was decked out in loose, India-style garb, a shawl with moons and stars draped her arms. She spoke in woo.

It started out bad and continued to get worse. She told me that my partner killed himself because he couldn't deal with his intense jealousy. John was the least jealous person I know.

Yes, she told me, he visited me every morning, early, because "that was his favorite time of day." He hated early mornings.

OH!!! And, I will be coming into money!!! When I receive it, I promise everyone here that I will buy your drinks!

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How much of this is really going to happen?

https://youtu.be/-uSxBfHS3w8

This may all happen. Do we have the technology to stop the giant asteroid?

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Using the N word while Hispanic (LatinX)

Spotted on the Huffington Post...

Quote:

Actor Gina Rodriguez is no stranger to being taken to task for her anti-Black remarks. In an Instagram Story video on Tuesday, the “Jane the Virgin” star was seen getting her hair done while singing along to the Fugees song “Ready or Not.” “I can do what you do ... believe me,” Rodriguez rhymes along with Lauryn Hill’s lyrics. But instead of pausing while Hill says “N-Word,” which is expected of non-Black hip-hop fans, Rodriguez goes for it.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/en...b0b5c9be4a7043

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What is the biggest barrier to a human civilization on Mars?

Is it the weak gravity? Oxalate in the soil. Not enough water available? Space X says they plan on creating a human colony on Mars. What's the worst they can expect?

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Boycott dooms first UK Chick-fil-A

BBC News: Reading Chick-fil-A outlet to close in LGBT rights row

"A US fast-food chain will cease trading at its first UK outlet amid a row over donations to anti-LGBT groups.

Gay rights campaigners called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A, which opened its first branch at The Oracle shopping centre [mall] in Reading on 10 October.

A spokeswoman for the centre said "the right thing to do" was to not extend the restaurant's lease beyond the "six-month pilot period".

Chick-fil-A said its donations were purely focused on youth and education.

The family-owned company, founded in Atlanta in 1967, is one of the biggest fast-food chains in the USA and boasts about 2,400 outlets across North America.

According to US news website Think Progress, in 2017 the Chick-fil-A Foundation donated millions of dollars to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Paul Anderson Youth Home and the Salvation Army.

Campaigners from LGBT organisation, Reading Pride, said all three organisations have a reputation of being hostile to LGBT rights.

In 2012, the company's chairman sparked a US boycott when he said he opposed gay marriage."

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Flash Poll - Brexit 'Deal'

Predict how Boris Johnson's 'Brexit Deal' will go today in Parliament.

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Best Trump Family Statements

Wile Trump spews his vile garbage, his family also Tweets a bit, but theirs tend towards the hilariously funny.

For instance, Junior calling Biden's son for nepotism is the best self-own you could come up with:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donal...b002e33e77181f

There have been plenty, and will be lots more - post your favourites!

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Alcohol Detectors in Cars

Bill would require new vehicles to have alcohol detectors to fight drunken driving
https://www.washingtonpost.com/trans...unken-driving/

Quote:

A new push is underway for federal legislation that would require new U.S. vehicles to have alcohol-detecting devices that stop drunk drivers before they get on the road. The measure, backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), would require automakers to build cars and trucks with passive detection systems that prevent the vehicle from operating if the driver is impaired. Such devices, known as ignition interlocks, are in widespread use for those charged or convicted of drunken driving; they require the driver to exhale into a Breathaylzer-like device and prevent the car from starting if a person’s blood alcohol level is above the legal limit.” But researchers and engineers have been working to develop newer technology that would obtain instantaneous and precise readings of every driver’s blood alcohol level when the driver attempts to start the vehicle. Safety advocates hope the technology will become as standard as air bags. Limited road testing has been underway in Maryland and Virginia.

Another way to reduce accidents and injuries would be to put speed limiters on all vehicles. Limit SUV's/trucks and anything towing a trailer to 65 kph and cars to 90 kph. This will also greatly reduce fuel consumption.

Ranb

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