FL to build roads with radioactive waste

Just when you thought Trumping the crazy couldn't happen. I considered putting this in the DeSantis thread but that one is attenuated as crazy DeSantis has gotten boring. This news is anything but boring. However if the mods prefer it to go in the DeSantis thread I won't object.

HuffPo: Ron DeSantis Signs 'Radioactive Roads' Bill Allowing Mining Waste In New Highways

Quote:

Phosphogypsum, a waste byproduct of phosphate fertilizer mining, “emits radon, a radioactive gas,” and contains uranium, thorium and radium, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Radon is “potentially cancer-causing,” an EPA spokesperson told CBS News.

He signed the bill but I'm not sure how far DeSantis' role goes. I do suspect there's a whole heaping of cronyism involved. But that cronyism might be coming from the state legislators rather than the guv.

Quote:

DeSantis, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, hasn’t commented. Tampa-based fertilizer giant Mosaic, which pushed the legislation, is seeking federal approval to test phosphogypsum, which the Tampa Bay Times noted “could pave the way — literally — for phosphogypsum use in American roads.” ... DeSantis is “paving the way to a toxic legacy,” declared Elise Bennett, a Center for Biological Diversity leader, in a statement deploring the bill as a “reckless handout to the fertilizer industry.” “This opens the door for dangerous radioactive waste to be dumped in roadways across the state, under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won’t address serious health and safety concerns,” Bennett said.

It calls for an assessment to decide the viability of the idea in April 1, 2024. (On April Fool's Day no less.)

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Trump supporters who should go to prison.

At least a hundred Trump supporters have gone to prison for their actions supporting Donald Trump. Most for their actions on January 6th. But others as well including Trump’s long time attorney Michael Cohen and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.

I can think of at least a dozen people I believe committed serious crimes supporting Trump. Some that are members of Congress. I'll list mine later.

Who else should go to prison for crimes they committed supporting Trump? Not necessarily who you think will. But individuals you are convinced committed serious crimes and should do time.

.

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Student loans blocked

I am going to try to get on the 25 year plan. Failing that I will try default. I really don’t have the money to restart payments. Am stepping up my donations to democrats. I am thinking that there should be an association for people like us who have fallen behind on loans

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Twitter has started blocking unregistered users

Twitter has started blocking unregistered users

Quote:

If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you may find you’re unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll likely be met with the Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user. Several members of The Verge team have been able to replicate the issue, and it appears to be affecting web access on both desktop and mobile devices. Prior to this change, Twitter allowed people limited access to the platform without an account — you could view public tweets and user profiles, for example, but couldn’t like or leave comments. A window that prevented readers from viewing additional posts until they signed in also previously appeared after the viewer had scrolled past an undisclosed number of tweets, though that at least allowed some access to the platform. Now, regardless of how you try to access the website — be that the homepage or a direct link to a tweet or profile — you’re immediately met with a sign-in prompt that completely obscures your view. It doesn’t even tease the content with a swift redirect. You simply can’t see anything.

Well, I'm not going to sign up. So I won't be posting any more links to Twitter. I wouldn't give Elmo the time of day. Hell, if I saw him drowning in a river, I'd throw him a cement block.

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DNS based and blocking

I noticed the MSVP hosts site seemed to be missing updates. Luckily I found a post on Mastodon linking to a GitHub package combining curated lists. Including how to tell them about bad adservers.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
You may now rehash the debate about piHole, how people need to make a living etc.

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Mediocrity is insidiously pernicious.

Mediocrity is as antagonistic to excellence and progress as conservatism and tribalism are to progressiveness... and is as pernicious to liberty and rationality as theism (e.g. Christianity).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ayan Rand Mediocrity does not mean an average intelligence; it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

The mediocre are not only pathetically envious, they are also an insidious impediment to the progress of society.

Consider this video promoting striving for excellence... and contrast it to this video meant to ridicule and deride striving for self-improvement.

If aspiring for excellence is thwarted by the mediocre as we can see has already occurred in many societies nowadays, the result is indeed the pervasive and pernicious regression and retardation we see permeating those societies today.

If conformity to the tribal norms is dictated and imposed and enforced, then the results are impediments to rationality and progress of humanity such as Jehovah Witnesses and Mormonism and Catholicism and Islam and Hasidism.

[YT]OBJR03BORRQ[/YT]

[YT]lStcwT_RGrQ[/YT]

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"Distant ancestor" of pizza discovered on Pompeii fresco

Possible 'distant ancestor' of pizza found painted on wall of house in Roman city of Pompeii

Quote:

A fresco depicting what might be a "distant ancestor" of the Italian pizza has been found on the wall of a house in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy's Culture Ministry says. Archaeologists presumed the flatbread depicted in the painting may have been eaten with fruits such as pomegranates or dates, or dressed with spices and a type of pesto sauce, the ministry said. While the food in the image — likely painted in the first century AD — cannot technically be considered a pizza since it lacks classic ingredients such as tomato and mozzarella, what was found in Pompeii "may be a distant relative of the modern dish", according to a statement.

Yep, that looks like a pizza to me.

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We're Shrinking (Sort Of)

An alternate view on the Expanding Universe.

Could the expanding Universe truly be a mirage?

It seems to be reasoning by analogy:

Quote:

In the science of optics, for example, you can either describe light as a wave (as Huygens did) or as a ray (as Newton did), and under most experimental circumstances, the two descriptions make identical predictions. In the science of quantum physics, where quantum operators act on quantum wavefunctions, you can either describe particles with a wavefunction that evolves and with unchanging quantum operators, or you can keep the particles unchanging and simply have the quantum operators evolve. Or, as is often the case in Einstein’s relativity, you can imagine that two observers have clocks: one on the ground and one on a moving train. You can describe this equally well by two difference scenarios: having the ground be “at rest” and watching the train experience the effects of time dilation and length contraction as it’s in motion, or having the train be “at rest” and watching the observer on the ground experience time dilation and length contraction.

But I can't see anything intrinsically wrong. :eye-poppi

Link to the original paper here (I only read the abstract):
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...61-6382/acdb41

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Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/u...elections.html

I believe the Supreme Court literally saved our Democracy today.

They struck down the "Supreme Legistature Theory", which would have let state legislatures pass pretty much ANY election rules they like and no state or Federal court could review the policy, even they blatently violated those Constitutions. They could have literally banned Muslims or Gays from voting, and there would be no judicial review allowed.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set all sorts of rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering.

They voted 6 to 3. Thank goodness even 3 Conservatives saw the truth on this one, including Kavanaugh and Barrett.

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Florida: Dunedin man fired 30 AR-15 rounds at pool cleaner he thought was intruder

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law is applicable to the situation and the man who fired won’t face charges.
Pool cleaner Karl Polek runs away after homeowner Bradley Hocevar fired an AR-15 at him through a glass door of his Dunedin home on June 15

https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/...-sheriff-says/

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Drake's Equation the Fermi Paradox and all that...are we alone or not

It's a curious thing with no answers obviously but still IMO interesting to consider. The vastness of the cosmos and insane number of planets would seem to indicate surely there has to be SOME intelligent life at some point besides us. And yet....when you factor in all these things that appear to need to be just right and fall into place just so (including a civilization not destroying itself)...the odds are similarly impressive in the other direction.

So do you think there's intelligent life out there? Or at least has been at some point that maybe went extinct before we came along, or are developing now but not even as far as we are?

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John Goodenough has died

One of the most important people that hardly anyone has heard of, John Goodenough, has died.

John Goodenough, world's oldest Nobel Prize winner who helped pioneer lithium batteries which power our devices, dies aged 100

Quote:

John Goodenough, who became the oldest Nobel Prize winner in 2019 for his work developing the lithium-ion battery which allows for rechargeable power in devices ranging from mobile phones to electric cars, has died aged 100. The American "was a leader at the cutting edge of scientific research throughout the many decades of his career", said Jay Hartzell, president of the University of Texas at Austin where Mr Goodenough was a faculty member for 37 years. The scientist died on Sunday at an assisted living facility in Austin, the university announced. No cause of death was given.

It's pretty safe to say that without Goodenough's work we wouldn't have mobile phones, electric vehicles, laptops, or a whole host of other rechargable devices that we take for granted today.

Last I heard he was still working on the aluminium-ion battery, which has the potential to spur another technological revolution. I wonder how that's going?

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Russian civil war?

Curious situation. The Wagner mercenary group, i.e. murderous scum, have seized control of much of Rostov-on-Don and are now apparently advancing on Moscow, facing air attacks but surprisingly little opposition. Though it is about 1,100km and fuel stores have been bombed.

There are tanks and other AFVs on the streets of the city and defensive emplacements have been constructed.

What next? Can Putin raise sufficient forces to stop the mercenaries? Is a coup being prepared in Moscow?
Will it to nuclear?

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US and the Holocaust

I’ve just watched the Ken Burns documentary of this name, and it was harrowing. I wonder how well know is the systemic anti-semitism of certain US leaders and bureaucrats before and during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_U...._the_Holocaust

Quote:

As isolationism kept the U.S. out of the war for years, many Jews who sought to escape from Europe were excluded because of immigration quotas enshrined by the infamous Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, enforced by officials such as Breckenridge Long, and supported by public figures such as Father Charles Coughlin, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.[6][3] The documentary dispels the myth that many Americans didn’t know the extent of Hitler’s murderous vision.[10] A radio dispatch by Edward R. Murrow, from December 1942, describes it in plain language: “Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered.

I think Ken Burns is a credible historian. Based on the documentary (which has a massive amount of eyewitness testimony and other evidence) the unwillingness of FDR to address this issue casts a pall on his presidency. Yeah, probably a minor one in the scheme of things, but still.

Yes, the belated entry of the US in WWII was decisive, but a bit more humanity and less anti-semitism would have made it a finer victory.

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Two year old kills mom and future sibling.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, there's this:

Guns don't kill people

(two year old boy uses dad's gun to kill his mom and her unborn child)

If this doesn't convince you the gun culture in the U.S. is beyond sick, I don't know what will...

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Are these people still living in the 1950s?

Riverside police arrest pair of suspects for at least 28 burglaries across four SoCal counties

Quote:

Riverside police on Thursday announced the arrest of two suspects whom they believe to be responsible for more than two dozen burglaries across four Southern California counties over recent months. In a statement, Riverside Police Department says that detectives with the Property Crimes Unit "began noticing a trend of commercial burglaries where jukeboxes were broken into while the business was closed" in January. Investigators began looking into the incidents over the next few months and were able to identify two of the possible suspects involved in the incidents, which occurred at restaurants, bars a golf course lounge and even at veterinary hospitals.

Jukeboxes? At veterinary hospitals? Let's all go down the vet's office and have a sock hop!

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The Great Reddit power struggle of 2023

Something unusual is going on over at Reddit.

Quote:

Thousands of Reddit communities go dark to boycott third-party app charges Thousands of Reddit discussion forums have gone dark this week to protest a new policy that will charge some third-party apps to access data on the site, leading to worries about content moderation and accessibility. More than 8,000 subreddits were dark as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a tracker and live Twitch stream of the boycott. Participants ranged from small forums to large communities with tens of millions of subscribers — including the r/funny, r/music and r/todayilearned pages seen on the online discussion site. “Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself),” other subreddits wrote in posts seen on the platform’s homepage. The new fees are part of broader changes to Reddit’s API, or application programming interface, that the company announced recently. Organizers of the blackout, which began Monday, say Reddit’s changes threaten to end key ways of historically customizing the platform — which relies heavily on the work of volunteer moderators. Subreddit “mods” often use tools outside of the official app to keep their forums free of spam and hateful content, for example, as well as improve accessibility.

Reddit announced they were basically going to kill popular third party browsing apps by making the fees astronomical, and there has been widespread resistance in the form of many major subreddits setting themselves to private and not allowing new posts. This makes the content not viewable to the public (unless you were already a subscriber to that subreddit).

Seems management is escalating, by removing mods who are engaged in the protest and replacing them with scabs willing to open up the pages again:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/21/...-subs-to-nsfw/

Reddit famously relies on tons of free labor from volunteer users who do the lion's share moderation work for the social media site, in exchange for having control over their little section of the website. Paid admin employees generally only step in when mods aren't maintaining the site-wide rules or otherwise aren't holding up the bargain.

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Musk and Zuckerberg agree to a cage fight

Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.

Mr Musk posted a message on Twitter that he was "up for a cage fight" with Mr Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, posted a screenshot of Musk's tweet with the caption "send me location".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65981876

You can't make it up!

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"He gave it to me!"

Has anyone encountered a case of theft where the defendant offered a defense that the victim had voluntary given the allegedly stolen article to him?

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The Predicted Great Die-off is on Track

I have written about being told that the over-population (and hence other linked ills) will be solved by God using a pandemic.

I said that there will be a societal collapse as well in order to fix some of societies corruption and lack of spiritual awareness. War, famine, and technical collapse would play a part.

I surmised that the pandemic would evolve and/or become silent so that the elite do not escape as they have in the past.

The pandemic came as expected and the upset to society was certainly there.

Then Omicron came and was mild. I asked the Tarot cards if the vaccine would be the killer. They said yes and said it would be a bit more than 4 years. So we have a couple of years to go, and I think the indications are there.

It seems that the plan is first to cause societal collapse - and then have the die-off. Not have the die-off cause the collapse. This would be more effective in changing society as they would see how the elite using "science" have manipulated society to its detriment.

In my opinion, the plan is on track.

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Iceland suspends whale hunt

Iceland suspends annual whale hunt in move that likely spells end to controversial practice

Quote:

Decision comes after a government report found the hunt does not comply with Iceland’s Animal Welfare Act Iceland’s government has said it is suspending this year’s whale hunt until the end of August due to animal welfare concerns, a move that is likely to bring the controversial practice to an end. Animal rights groups and environmentalists hailed the decision, with the Humane Society International calling it “a major milestone in compassionate whale conservation”.

Norway and Japan are now the only countries still hunting whales for commercial purposes.

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Do you think we will ever colonize anywhere in the solar system?

A simple enough question. The reasons for yes or no of course vary...

And if so, where? The moon? Mars? One of the other moons?

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Huck Finn

How old should a child be before they are introduced to huck fin.

I basically feel like it should be when they can read it on their one but a parent should still read it too them?

More a question for folks from the US as its I think basically required reading for us. Probably the best introduction so racist ********** in a US context.

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[Split Thread] Recreational drug use and demographics

Split from http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=366542

Posted By:jimbob

Quote:

Originally Posted by Norman Alexander (Post 14099350) Also this tidbit:That is contempt, right there.

Trump has complete, total, and utter contempt for everyone who is not him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tero (Post 14099358) I was on a jury pool where drugs were involved. The prosecutor and defense attorney took turns. They did not ask us if we used drugs. They asked us if we had known someone who took drugs. The entire jury (not me in it) was people over 60.

I'm not quite understanding your point. Do you think people over 60 don't know anyone who used drugs? Because I'm in my mid-seventies; and don't recall anyone from my twenties who didn't. Including me.
And of course, alcohol, though legal, is still a drug. My drug of choice now that I'm old.

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Authorities hunting global monkey torture ring

Several years ago - I want to say around five or six, but I can't say for certain - while frequenting various "mystery" forums and subreddits I saw a topic started by someone who was drawing attention to a particular YouTube channel. The channel was full of videos of small monkeys - baby macaques - and content-wise the videos were completely innocuous, just showing these baby monkeys eating or sleeping or playing or vocalizing or just looking around and being generally adorable.

What the poster was specifically pointing out were the comments on the videos. YouTube comments are known for being cesspits generally but the comment sections of all the videos on this channel were stand-out, full of people expressing extreme hatred of the monkeys, gleefully describing in graphic detail how they would like to hurt or torture them, and seemingly asking someone (the video uploader presumably) to do certain things to the monkeys, horrific things obviously.

Even though the comments seemed just oddly specific and focused to me for typical YouTube edgelordery, that's ultimately what I put it down to, since the videos themselves never showed anybody doing anything bad to the monkeys and never had suggestive titles or anything like that that indicated the uploader was encouraging that kind of material; it was an oddity that I took note of at the time, and then moved on and haven't thought about it more than once or twice over the years.

Which is why this article that was just published caught me completely by surprise:

Global network of sadistic monkey torture exposed by BBC

Quote:

BBC journalists went undercover in one of the main Telegram torture groups, where hundreds of people gathered to come up with extreme torture ideas and commission people in Indonesia and other Asian countries to carry them out. The sadists' goal was to create bespoke films in which baby long-tailed macaque monkeys were abused, tortured and sometimes then killed on film. The BBC tracked down both the torturers in Indonesia, and distributors and buyers in the US, and gained access to an international law enforcement effort to bring them to justice. At least 20 people are now under investigation globally, including three women living in the UK who were arrested by police last year and released under investigation, and one man in the US state of Oregon who was indicted last week. .. The BBC also identified two other key suspects who are now being investigated by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - Stacey Storey, a grandmother in her 40s from Alabama who was known in the community as "Sadistic", and a ringleader known as "Mr Ape" - whose real name we cannot reveal for safety reasons. "Mr Ape" confessed in an interview with the BBC that he had been responsible for the deaths of at least four monkeys and the torture of many more. He had commissioned "extremely brutal" videos, he said. Storey's phone was seized by Department of Homeland Security agents, who found nearly 100 torture videos, as well as evidence that she had paid for the creation of some of the most extreme videos produced.

This is revolting of course but even more than that it's just so damn bizarre and inexplicable.

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In this day of........

..... amazing instruments such as Hubble and JWST; in this era of detecting exoplanets by various means; in this era of landing on comets and asteroids; in this era of detecting gravitational waves and imaging black hole event horizons; let us remember that this happened > 50 years ago. And was immense. The most powerful rocket until the recent Artemis launch. Much respect to the people who got this behemoth of the ground;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygBxN5UiOaM

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Titanic tourist sub missing

Quote:

A submersible used to take people to view the wreck of the Titanic has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean, sparking a search and rescue mission. The Boston Coastguard told the BBC on Monday that an operation to find it was under way. It is not clear how many people, if any, were on board at the time it went missing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65953872

Not liking their chances unless it turns out to be a rare best case scenario where they are just having communication issues but are otherwise ok.

Odds seem good it's a crushed tin can on the bottom of the ocean.

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Martin Amis and the Adventure of the Temporally Squiffy Knighthood.

NB: This might not be the right home for this...brainfart. feel free to relocate it as appropriate.


In his ' birthday' (official, not actual) honours list, Chuckie³ has knighted a dead man.

This is very silly. Ignoring, for the time being, 'official' birthdays, and honours in general, this remains very, very silly.

A knighthood is a 'living honour', that ends with the recipients' death. This was discussed at length when Jimmy Savile died, and there were calls to have him stripped of his knighthood, which couldn't be done:

Following the multitude of sexual abuse allegations in 2012, then Prime Minister David Cameron raised the idea of Savile's knighthood being removed. However, in October 2012, the Cabinet Office confirmed this could not occur - as "there isn't an honour to revoke"

The 2023 Birthday honours list was published on June 16th. Amis died on May 19th. His knighthood was, supposedly, backdated to the day before he died. So (if this is even a thing - I've not been able to find another example) he was a knight for one day, but was unaware of his newly exalted status, and died believing himself to be a mere pleb.

According to Gov.uk:

"The only honours which can be awarded after someone’s death are gallantry awards."

Now, as much as I hold The Rachel Papers in high regard, I don't think being a novelist counts as gallantry.

It's all very silly.

I guess Chuckie³ was a fan.

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MDMA a cure for white supremacism - but no miracle

A white supremacist took MDMA for a study, and it snapped him out of his beliefs: 'Why am I doing this?'' (Insider, June 16, 2023)

Quote:

It suddenly seemed so obvious: connections with other people were all that mattered. "This is stuff you can't really put into words, but it was so profound," Brendan said. "I conceived of my relationships with other people not as distinct boundaries with distinct entities, but more as we-are-all-one. I realised I'd been fixated on stuff that doesn't really matter, and is just so messed up, and that I'd been totally missing the point. I hadn't been soaking up the joy that life has to offer." (...) Brendan is still struggling, though, to make the connections with others that he craves. When I visited him, he'd just spent Thanksgiving alone. He also has not completely abandoned his bigoted ideology, and is not sure that will ever be possible. "There are moments when I have racist or antisemitic thoughts, definitely," he said. "But now I can recognise that those kinds of thought patterns are harming me more than anyone else." (...) Rare as they might be, stories such as these are worth examining for the implications they give about MDMA's potential ability to "influence a person's values and priorities", as de Wit and several co-authors wrote in a case study they published about Brendan in 2021 in the journal Biological Psychiatry. If "extremist views [are] fueled by fear, anger and cognitive biases", the researchers posed, "might these be targets of pharmacological intervention"? (...) According to research published this week in Nature by Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Gül Dölen, MDMA and other psychedelics – including psilocybin, LSD, ketamine and ibogaine – work therapeutically by reopening a critical period in the brain. Critical periods are finite windows of impressionability that typically occur in childhood, when our brains are more malleable and primed to learn new things. But Dölen and her colleagues' findings likewise indicate that, without the proper set and setting, MDMA and other psychedelics probably do not reopen critical periods, which means they will not have a spontaneous, revelatory effect for ridding someone of bigoted beliefs. How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist (BBC, June 15, 2023)

Quote:

A white supremecist took the psychoactive drug MDMA as part of a scientific study and reported a massive change of heart in his beliefs. Cenk Uygur, Mark Thompson and Jayar Jackson discusses on The Young Turks. Drug Has Shocking Effect On White Supremacist (The Young Turks on YouTube, June 17, 2023 - 7:43 min.)

[yt]hcwIZeuFvzo[/yt]

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Sharing a spreadsheet

Sharing a spreadsheet in a thread is a bit more challenging than I imagined. (It's a Google sheet but I could switch to Excel.) There are several dozen rows, and I intend to update it frequently and re-post it.

(1) Simple copy/paste doesn't work because it doesn't paste as a table. Adding the code to make it a table is too cumbersome. I could automate the process, but I can't justify the effort just to play nice with vbulletin.

(2) A screen shot doesn't work, because one of the columns is a link that wouldn't work.

(3) Google has a plug-in that will generate the code, but all formatting is lost. I don't need fancy formatting but I do need numbers right aligned, dates left aligned, and other basics.

(4) I can simply make the file public, but I imagine that readers would be disinclined to view it that way.

The least lousy option I can think of is a combo of #2 and #4. I post the screenshot with a link to the live file for readers who want to follow the links contained within. Ugh.

Any other approaches I should consider?

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Foucault

There is a problem for the left that we used to empathize with.
The left are changing and editing the discourse, but how do
We/ they deal with Foulcault and the pedophilia allegations?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-from-scandal/

It has become important to understand what date the reset for perfect human beings to agree on everything should be.
This is not a trivial question.

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Hundreds presumed dead in migrant shipwreck near Greece

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-for-survivors

Quote:

Rescuers are continuing a grim search off the Greek coast as hopes fade of finding survivors from an overcrowded fishing boat that capsized and sank on Wednesday, killing at least 78 people, amid fears that the number of victims could reach 500.

The image of the ridiculously packed boat is rather sobering, as are the reports of children having been in the hold, where there was likely little chance of escape once the boat started sinking. Greek authorities had allegedly offered assistance to them before the tragedy struck, but the boat refused as they were heading for Italy (whether that was on behest of the smugglers, or whether the passengers felt the same I don't know).

I'd blame the EU's migration policy, but I don't really see what more could have been done in this case other than literally setting up migration flights from Libya to Europe. The villains here are obviously the human traffickers (who seem to be overrepresented among the survivors, of course).

The Mediterranean is pretty much the most dangerous crossing point for migrants by sheer body count, and there don't seem to be any easy solutions.

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Defending yourself against an aggressive subway rider while black

Quote:

he straphanger stabbed to death on a Brooklyn train was an ex-con who’d been harassing a couple on board – and punched the woman before her boyfriend knifed him in the chest, police sources said Wednesday. Devictor Ouedraogo, 36, was hassling other commuters on board a northbound J train approaching Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg Tuesday evening when he started arguing with Jordan Williams, 20, and his gal pal, the sources said. During the clash, Ouedraogo, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, socked the woman in the face, the sources said. Ouedraogo and Williams tussled on the train and had each other in headlocks at one point before the younger man allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed the other twice, sources said. The wounded man stumbled out of the train and onto the platform, the sources said.

No quibbling from the police about whether an arrest was warranted for some reason.

Quote:

Williams’ attorney Jason Goldman compared his client’s case to Daniel Penny’s, the former Marine was indicted on manslaughter charges Wednesday in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard an F train last month. “It’s upsetting to see that Mr. Williams is even being charged without a thorough investigation. We already know that the victim punched his girlfriend and menaced passengers,” said Goldman. “Is Mr. Williams not getting the same treatment that Mr. Penny received — released, voluntary surrender, and low bail — because his skin color is different and he comes from a particular neighborhood?”

https://nypost.com/2023/06/14/man-ki...bbing-sources/

On its face seems that a self-defense claim is stronger here than in the Neely killing, yet this guy isn't being valorized as a vigilante hero and given the silk glove treatment by the NYPD.

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Natural experiment in Induced Demand: I-95 closure in Philadelphia

Quote:

On Sunday June 11, a tanker truck caught fire on I-95 and the intense heat caused a section of the freeway to collapse. I-95 is one of the nation’s principal north-south connections, and carries 160,000 vehicles per day. It’s expected that repairs to the roadway could take months. What would commuters and travelers do without this vital chunk of roadway? Surely, we’re headed for gridlock and carmageddon! But on Monday morning, despite some localized delays, pretty much nothing out of the ordinary happened. Local TV station NBC10’s chyron shouted “COMMUTER CHAOS,” but their reporter actually found that traffic was mostly, moving steadily:

The article is short so I won't just quote the entire thing, but here's the conclusion:

Quote:

The repeated failure of these predicted “carmageddons” to ever occur is powerful evidence that the key tenet of highway planning is fundamentally flawed. Highway departments claim that if we don’t build more roadways, traffic and congestion will increase without limit and we’ll face hours and hours of delay. In reality, that never happens because people adapt their travel behavior to the available transportation system. Widening roads in an effort to reduce congestion isn’t simply futile, its counterproductive. More capacity generates more travel, more sprawl, more pollution, and ultimately more congestion. It’s time to get off this treadmill.

https://cityobservatory.org/carmagge...lphia-edition/


So where do all these people go if they're not sitting in traffic honking their horns?

Quote:

The three SEPTA Regional Rail Lines most closely paralleling Interstate 95 saw a 12% increase in ridership on Monday, the first day the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority offered increased service and capacity following Sunday’s collapse of a bridge on I-95. WHYY Radio reports ridership on the Trenton, West Trenton, and Fox Chase lines was 5,182, compared to 4,635 the previous Monday, June 5. Most of the increase came on the Trenton line (up 277, or 13%) and West Trenton line (up 231, or 14%).

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...idge-collapse/

Seems we're witnessing a natural experiment in city planning and the effects of induced demand on whether people decide to travel via car or public transit.

US style sprawl and soul-killing car congestion is not destiny, it's a choice made by city planners who keep increasing car infrastructure and inducing more demand rather than prioritizing more efficient solutions.

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Doomsday Cults

There's news recently about a particularly nasty one in Kenya:

19 new bodies recovered in Kenya doomsday cult, pushing death toll past 300 (CBS News)

Quote:

Police believe that most of the bodies exhumed were those of Good News International Church followers, an evangelical sect founded in 2003 by the self-proclaimed "pastor" Mackenzie, who advocated fasting until death in order to "meet Jesus". The 50-year-old founder of the Good News International Church turned himself in on April 14, after police acting on a tip-off first entered Shakahola forest. While starvation appears to be the main cause of death, some of the victims -- including children -- were strangled, beaten or suffocated, according to chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor.

Interesting that this "pastor" did not apparently practice what he preached.

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Trump's second term agenda

Assuming for the moment that Trump get's the R nomination, wins the election, and isn't in jail, what will he be doing in his second term?
I'd say it'll be almost entirely revenge on those he thinks have wronged him.
Democrats. News media. FBI. States that didn't vote for him. State election officials. Health officials, especially Fauci. RINO's who didn't support him sufficiently.
I expect there to be actual arrests on Trumped up charges. Certainly he won't be appointing anyone as AG who doesn't promise to go after his enemies.
Much, of course, will depend on the makeup of Congress.

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Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News - New history podcast series

Quote:

Rachel Maddow, host of the #1 hits “Bag Man” and “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra,” is back at the mic with a new original series, “Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News.” In each episode, Rachel and co-host Isaac-Davy Aronson seek a deeper understanding of a story in today's headlines by asking: Has anything like this ever happened before? Would knowing that help us grapple with what’s happening now… and what might happen next? Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News (MSNBC)

I have just listened to the first episode. It was great. I never heard of the attempted (and successful) coup in France in 1934, before:

Quote:

A violent right-wing mob interrupts lawmakers formalizing the transfer of power to a new leader. But this isn’t Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but rather Paris on February 6, 1934. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson explore that earlier event, the way it reverberates to this day and how it could help us understand what January 6 will mean for the U.S. Episode 1: Riot at the gates (again) - A violent right-wing mob interrupts lawmakers formalizing the transfer of power to a new leader. (MSNBC, June 12, 2023 - 33 min.)

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Inflation!!!!

With all the talk about inflation right now (including those claims that it was at a "historic high" (yeah, some morons actually claimed that)), I thought it might be interesting to compare the US inflation rate to the rest of the world. Because, you know, Biden caused it all.

So here's inflation rates in Europe in May 2023
Liechtenstein 2.2 2.6 May/23 %
Switzerland 2.2 2.6 May/23 %
Russia 2.5 2.3 May/23 %
Greece 2.8 3 May/23 %
Denmark 2.9 5.3 May/23 %
Cyprus 3 3.7 May/23 %
Spain 3.2 4.1 May/23 %
Luxembourg 3.6 3.7 May/23 %
Belarus 3.7 4.7 May/23 %
Portugal 4 5.7 May/23 %
Albania 4.7 4.6 May/23 %
France 5.1 5.9 May/23 %
Belgium 5.2 5.6 May/23 %
Kosovo 5.5 6.3 May/23 %
Euro Area 6.1 7 May/23 %
Germany 6.1 7.2 May/23 %
Netherlands 6.1 5.2 May/23 %
Malta 6.4 7.1 Apr/23 %
Ireland 6.6 7.2 May/23 %
Norway 6.7 6.4 May/23 %
Italy 7.6 8.2 May/23 %
Bosnia and Herzegovina 7.9 10.3 Apr/23 %
Croatia 7.9 8.9 May/23 %
Finland 7.9 7.9 Apr/23 %
European Union 8.1 8.3 Apr/23 %
Faroe Islands 8.3 10.1 Mar/23 %
Slovenia 8.4 9.4 May/23 %
Montenegro 8.6 10.5 Apr/23 %
United Kingdom 8.7 10.1 Apr/23 %
Austria 8.8 9.7 May/23 %
Iceland 9.5 9.9 May/23 %
Sweden 10.5 10.6 Apr/23 %
Romania 10.64 11.23 May/23 %
Czech Republic 11.1 12.7 May/23 %
Estonia 11.3 13.5 May/23 %
Macedonia 11.3 13 May/23 %
Bulgaria 11.6 14 Apr/23 %
Lithuania 11.7 14.5 May/23 %
Latvia 12.1 15.1 May/23 %
Poland 13 14.7 May/23 %
Slovakia 13.8 14.8 Apr/23 %
Serbia 14.8 15.1 May/23 %
Ukraine 15.3 17.9 May/23 %

(sorry, I'm not going to format a table)

I left the Ukraine in, but took out some of the crazy ones (what the heck is going on in Turkey? 36% inflation?)

So the most recently announced US inflation is 4.0 for May. That's basically tied with Portugal as the 10th best in Europe.

I suppose it's Biden's fault that the US inflation rate is better than 75% of European countries?

Here's the G20
China 0.2 0.1 May/23 %
Switzerland 2.2 2.6 May/23 %
Russia 2.5 2.3 May/23 %
Saudi Arabia 2.7 2.7 Apr/23 %
Spain 3.2 4.1 May/23 %
South Korea 3.3 4.2 May/23 %
Japan 3.5 3.2 Apr/23 %
Brazil 3.94 4.18 May/23 %
Indonesia 4 4.33 May/23 %
United States 4 4.9 May/23 %
India 4.25 4.7 May/23 %
Canada 4.4 4.3 Apr/23 %
France 5.1 5.9 May/23 %
Singapore 5.7 5.5 Apr/23 %
Mexico 5.84 6.25 May/23 %
Euro Area 6.1 7 May/23 %
Germany 6.1 7.2 May/23 %
Netherlands 6.1 5.2 May/23 %
South Africa 6.8 7.1 Apr/23 %
Australia 7 7.8 Mar/23 %
Italy 7.6 8.2 May/23 %
United Kingdom 8.7 10.1 Apr/23 %

(I took out Turkey and Argentina)

So better than half of the G20 countries. I don't know a lot about international politics, but the President of Spain is, like, a socialist, right (the PSOE?)? And the UK is led by the right wingers, right? And Italy is right-wing led, right? Although I don't know if there is a correlation.

But It doesn't look like the US is doing worse than other places. Thanks, Brandon.

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[Split Thread] Trump Document indictment (as opposed to other indictments)

Quote:

Originally Posted by acbytesla (Post 14092003) You very well may be right. But just because there isn't evidence of it doesn't mean Trump didn't do it. There are hundreds of documents missing including documents Trump bragged about having.

Well, note the parenthetical I used. I don't think it's likely that Trump intended to give away or sell information to foreign governments, but that shouldn't minimalize the danger because Mar-a-Lago had to have been hosting agents from multiple foreign countries from the moment Trump's personal ambitions became apparent, because Trump is a notorious braggart and could be reliably depended upon to have loose lips. All it takes to get close to him even today is flashing a large enough wad of cash, and he is critically susceptible to flattery.

Quote:

Originally Posted by acbytesla (Post 14092003) Obviously Trump constantly feels a deep seeded need to show off. But boxes and boxes just sat in various places throughout Mar a Lago and Trump didn’t appear to be looking at them. Which makes whatever reasoning he had to deliberately keep them when they were subpoenaed truly bizarre.

I think by that point the fact that there was an investigation all by itself made Trump panic.

I think the fact that the documents were initially being stored in bathrooms and hallways and storage closets and wherever else they could fit, meant that early on Trump didn't particularly care what exactly he had or what was in them all that much. Once the word "subpoena" started floating around however, he became intensely interested in them, just because now they were a liability and he needed to know exactly which regions of his ass needed covering.

split from http://www.internationalskeptics.com...9#post14091339

Posted By:jimbob

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Silvio Berlusconi Dead

A right wing authoritarian dies at an advanced age.

Quote:

Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian PM who bounced back from sex scandals and corruption allegations, has died aged 86.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65877241

I'd say he was a template for the likes of Trump and Johnson, but he seems to have been far more successful politically and financially than either of those two.

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Not the Jupiter Effect, but . . . ?

he moon's pull is so strong it may trigger earthquakes on Earth. Scientists are still baffled by its power.

As the Moon's gravity does actually flex the Earth's crust by over 35 cm, I find this easier to accept than the The Jupiter Effect^WP that was popularized in the 1970s. ISTR remember an article or two in Analog.

(I wonder when the "bafflement" will be resolved?)

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[Continuation] Musk buys Twitter II

Continued from here.

Posted By:Agatha

Twitter's ad sales dropped 59% year on year in April according to leaked internal documents.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...weeks-May.html

Apologies for the Daily Fail link but it was the first non paywalled link on a Google search. Forbes and the NYT are also carrying the story.

Also, the Head of Trust and Safety resigned after Elon Musk publicly reversed her decision on censoring Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" film. And the head of Brand Safety.

The Daily Wail claims the ad revenue in April was $88 million. If that continues at that level for twelve months it will just about cover the interest payments on Twitter's debt.

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'Unabomber' Dies in Prison

The Unabomber was found dead in his cell this morning at a federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina. Ted Kaczynski, 81, had been imprisoned for over twenty years at the federal 'Super-Max' prison in Colorado -- the same prison where disgraced former FBI agent Robert Hanssen had been held until his recent death -- before his apparently recent transfer to a prison medical facility. Kaczynski mailed letter bombs to people -- they detonated when opened -- killing three people and injuring 23 from 1978 until his arrest in 1995. Kaczynski carried out his bombing campaign while living in an isolated shack in rural Montana. In prison psychiatrists diagnosed Kaczynski as "paranoid schizophrenic."

From the NPR report:

Quote:

He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future," which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation. But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski's brother David and David's wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise's tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the "Unabomber" for years in the nation's longest, costliest manhunt. NPR news link

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Boris Johnson resigns as MP

The liar is going

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...rtygate-report

He still refuses to accept he is a liar.

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Trump documents indictment

The indictment is unsealed and it's utterly mind boggling.

Indictment

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Curiouser and curiouser

So, I mentioned in another thread that my NAS was playing up and one of the drives died.

So, I've replaced the drives, installed the latest software on the NAS, and moved the old drives into a couple of external drive housings.

And... recovered all the data from them.

Weird eh?

Those two drives seem quite happy in their new homes but were definitely throwing S.M.A.R.T errors while in the NAS.

This makes me wonder if the NAS (QNAP TS-212) is particularly fussy about errors, and conservative, or...

... if moving the drives from one device to another has rectified a problem?

(I'm imagining a contact on the data connection that was building up resistance.)

I don't think the drive could have had 'stiction' because of their duty cycle, but it is possible I guess.

Oh well, will just have to see what happens next.

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Florida Republicans to Migrant workers "please don't go"

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/07/vid...ntis-anti-law/

Begging farmworkers not to take the law they passed seriously and stay in the state and make the farms run.

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Welcome to the Pyrocene

:eek: https://twitter.com/DanAmarante/stat...14695346331652

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Smoke

Thanks to Canadian wildfires, much of the East Coast is experiencing haze caused by smoke. In my own neighborhood there is smoky haze at treetop level, and the sun appears at most as a dull red. The whole area smells like a wood fire.

You can see that NYC has it even worse:

[yt]22ujNKND3uI[/yt]

Fun!

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Helen Joyce: sick, toxic bigot?

I am informed by a poster on this forum that Helen Joyce^WP is either a "sick bigot" or a "toxic bigot", I'm not sure which is supposed to be more accurate. She's also been compared to the Yorkshire Ripper for some reason.

I'm really not very familiar with her or her work, but I have to wonder why she's not locked up somewhere secure, as she must be a terrible danger to women everywhere.

Here's a thread where we can discuss how evil she is, or isn't.

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Shout Out to Trained Seals

Quote:

Chris Licht, the controversial and embattled chairman and chief executive officer of the cable news giant CNN is stepping aside after a very short, turbulent time at the top, according to numerous reports on Wednesday morning, including from inside the company.

CNN CEO Chris Licht reportedly to leave cable news giant within 48 hours

Quote:

Bill Grueskin, a Columbia Journalism School professor, wrote brutally: “It wouldn’t be fair to say a trained seal could do a better job running CNN than Chris Licht. It’s just that, after reading this piece, it feels like we should give the trained seal a shot.”

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Democratic Party nomination 2024

First, just to state the obvious: I really hope that Democrats are smart enough to nominate someone younger than 75 this time.

If you are thinking of voting for Biden, consider that you aren't voting for 80-year-old Biden, you'll have him until he's 86. He'll turn 81 later this year and would be 82 on day one of his second term, if he were re-elected.

My father is 85. There's a big difference between 80 and 85. Five years ago he could walk around on his own and his mental acuity was still not so bad. A few years later he had a stroke, which could happen to Biden, as well as many other health problems that affect old people. If you think he's frail and a bit dotty already, just wait for his next term in office.

So, we need someone else to step up. Any ideas?

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[Continuation] Transwomen are not women part XII (also merged)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew Best (Post 14089612) I will. It's only a minority, so we can pretty much say they don't really exist, right?

Critical thinking: How do you know trans women are harassing lesbians?

continued from http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=364622

Posted By:jimbob

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Another conspiracy theory

I'd submit that Jesus mythicism belongs in a Conspiracy Theory forum. No?

Stone

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Bigotry for lesbians to reject transwomen?

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...c-view-n958456

Its come to my attention a fascinating phenomenon: conflict between the Lesbian and Transgender communities. Some Lesbians feel the recent focus on transgender issues and rights has diminished their own struggles and push for justice and equality. Another issue is whether or not is indeed an act of BIGOTRY for a Lesbian to reject the sexual advances of a transwoman or not want to date transwomen, out of the view that they are in fact NOT women.

Is it bigoted for a lesbian or straight man to reject the sexual advances of transwomen, and reject the idea of dating transwomen, due to the belief that they are in fact not really women?

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Mother fatally shot by neighbor after dispute over playing children, sheriff says

Mother fatally shot by neighbor after dispute over playing children, sheriff says

Quote:

OCALA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida mother was fatally shot through the front door of her neighbor’s home while her 9-year-old son stood next to her, a violent culmination of what police said was a 2½-year feud. Ajike Owens, 35, was fatally shot after going to the Ocala apartment of her neighbor, who earlier had yelled at Owens’ children as they played nearby and threw a pair of skates that hit one of them, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said at a news conference Monday. Deputies responding to a trespassing call at the apartment Friday night found Owens suffering from gunshot wounds. The mother of four was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died. Ocala is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Orlando.

And, of course, the shooter is NOT in custody, because, of course, it's Florida.

Quote:

Since January 2021, Woods said, deputies responded at least a half-dozen times in connection with the feuding between Owens and the woman who shot her. The sheriff’s office hasn’t arrested or identified the shooter. Woods said detectives are working with the State Attorney’s Office and must investigate possible self-defense claims before they can move forward with any possible criminal charges. The sheriff pointed out that because of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, he can’t legally make an arrest unless he can prove the shooter did not act in self-defense.

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The Virgin Weeps?

Or maybe not says Pope Francis.

Virgin Mary apparitions ‘not always real’, says Pope after statue row

Quote:

Apparitions of the Virgin Mary are “not always real”, Pope Francis has said, in what appears to be an indirect reference to a woman who drew thousands of pilgrims to a town near Rome to pray before a statue that she claimed shed tears of blood. “Don’t look there,” the pontiff said during an interview with Rai 1 on Sunday when asked about apparitions of the Virgin Mary. “There are images of the Madonna that are real, but the Madonna has never drawn [attention] to herself,” he said. “I like to see her with her finger pointing up to Jesus. When Marian devotion is too self-centred, it’s not good. Both in the devotion and in the people who carry it forward.”

Creeping up on reality one small step at a time. :hit:

(Pigs' blood, apparently.)

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Oklahoma school board approves religious school

An OK school board has approved using public funds for a Catholic public school. The church will run the school and intends to teach church doctrine.

https://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-boar...ycsrp_catchall

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24 hours of D-Day historical coverage.

https://www.youtube.com/@D-Day24Hours-sm5pe

And it begins.

The people running the World War 2 in real time channel are doing 24 hour coverage of the D-Day invasion.

They release a new segment at the top of each hour. I don't know anybody that has time to watch all of it at once.

The main channel they run does a weekly update on Saturdays as if the war is happening now. This D-Day coverage is a lot.

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Robert Hanssen, FBI agent convicted of spying for Russia, dead at 79

Robert Hanssen, FBI agent convicted of spying for Russia, dead at 79

Quote:

Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was one of the most damaging spies in American history, was found dead in his prison cell Monday morning, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Hanssen, 79, was arrested in 2001 and pleaded guilty to selling highly classified material to the Soviet Union and later Russia. He was serving a life sentence at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

Quote:

Three years after he was hired by the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviets and began spying in 1979 for the KGB and its successor, the SVR. He stopped a few years later after his wife confronted him. He resumed spying in 1985, selling thousands of classified documents that compromised human sources and counterintelligence techniques and investigations in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and foreign bank deposits. Using the alias "Ramon Garcia," he passed information to the spy agencies using encrypted communications and dead drops, without ever meeting in-person with a Russian handler. His job in the FBI gave him unfettered access to classified information on the bureau's counterintelligence operations. His disclosures included details on U.S. nuclear war preparations and a secret eavesdropping tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. He also betrayed double agents, including Soviet Gen. Dmitri Polyakov, who were later executed. Hanssen was arrested after making a dead drop in a Virginia park in 2001 after the FBI had been secretly monitoring him for months. His identity was discovered after a Russian intelligence officer handed over a file containing a trash bag with Hanssen's fingerprints and a tape recording of his voice.

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F16s Attempt Intercept of Private Plane Over Washington DC

People in the Washington DC area were startled by a sonic boom yesterday afternoon. The cause was two US Air Force F16 fighter jets operating at supersonic speed. They were scrambled after FAA controllers lost contact with the pilot of a private plane, a Cessna Citation, and the plane began to enter the 'No Fly Zone' over the nation's Capitol. The plane's flight plan was for a trip from Elizabethton, Tennessee to MacArthur Airport on Long Island. Upon reaching the New York area the plane reportedly turned and headed south.

At first, officials were unsure as to what they were dealing with and the Capitol went on "elevated alert" for a brief time. It has been widely reported:

Quote:

The pilot of the civilian aircraft was unresponsive as the F-16 fighter jets attempted to make contact, according to a news release from the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense Command Region. The F-16 jets were “authorized to travel at supersonic speeds,” which resulted in the sonic boom heard in the Washington, DC, area. The F-16s used flares “in an attempt to draw attention from the pilot,” the release added. CNN news link

The incident ended in tragedy. The private plane continued southwest of Washington with officials suspecting the pilot had become incapacitated in some way, possibly a result of the depressurization of the passenger cabin. NORAD continued to try and make contact until just before 4pm Eastern time, when the plane crashed in a wooded area in Virginia's George Washington National Forest, about 110 miles southwest of Washington.

It turned out the plane was registered to a Florida business, Encore Motors, owned or controlled by a man named John Rumpel. Rumpel released a statement that the plane was returning his daughter, his two-year-old granddaughter and her nanny to New York after visiting Rumpel in North Carolina. All three were reported killed along with the plane's pilot.

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Beware The Minerals!

Coincidence? Acausal Synchronicity? Bad karma? Gremlins? Or was it actually the electrolytes?

One of the cooling fans in my Asus ROC gaming desktop began squealing. I've had this comp for three years, so I wasn't much surprised.
Meanwhile F, the householder's, laptop's fan began screeching as well.

But there was a bigger household issue. The aircon was getting weaker and weaker. There was very little cool air output.

The aircon repair guy almost immediately asked if there were a humidifier in the house. Yes. F has one that he, recently, was running all the time.
Now F knows the humidifier requires distilled water, but somehow (I'd say geriatric related.) he'd gotten some jugs of "purified" drinking water with added electrolytes ("for taste")

The mineral particulates gummed up the aircon filter. Once it was changed, we had full function again.

I suspect it also gunked up the fans, but it's more likely AZ's dusty air.
Just be aware of the possibility.

We went to best Best Buy. He got a new Laptop and I got an Asus ROC Zephyrus laptop.

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Trump Prosecution Memo

Legal experts create 186-page roadmap for Jack Smith 'to obtain and sustain a conviction' in Trump docs case

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-indic...th-2660859716/

Quote:

Writing for Above the Law, Andrew Weissmann, Ryan Goodman, Joyce Vance, Norman L. Eisen, Fred Wertheimer, Siven Watt, E. Danya Perry, Joshua Stanton and Joshua Kolb, stated that, based on what is already publicly known about the sensitive government documents that the former president took with him to Mar-a-Lago after his election loss — and his refusal to hand them over — there is already a solid enough case for a conviction.

Here is the pdf file; https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-cont...-june-2023.pdf

It's a heavy read. But I'm certain that the MAGA's will just hand wave it all away. Unless the powers that be never get around to indicting Trump for stealing classified documents.

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Click bait has taken a new turn

We've all seen misleading headlines or article titles that end mid-sentence and if you saw the full sentence you'd see it wasn't interesting. And there have been BS articles forever: alien abduction, UFO sightings, someone gave birth to a batboy and so on.

Recently I've been seeing a new version of clickbait come-ons. One I saw recently had a fake 'growth' on a finger that I'm pretty sure was a piece of coral or fossilized coral. I looked at the article and it was even stupider, claiming the person sought care for it and the clinic locked them in the exam room. At that point I was annoyed. I did skip to the end and I think the claim was it was some virus that came from a tree and they destroyed the tree or something. At that point I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

I didn't save the link.

Then there was a picture where someone glued a bunch of beans on their skin and claimed it was a tick infestation. Apparently this kind of fakery is spreading on TikTok. It looked like engorged ticks except they never bunch up like that. It was quite disgusting.

I didn't save that link either but I'm guessing people can find it.

So tonight I was looking through youtube videos for detective stories and up pops a supposed story about Angelina Jolie showing her in a wheelchair with a leg amputated above the knee. I suspected it almost certainly was fake given I think it would have been in the news. So I searched the news for stories of Jolie and sure enough there was nothing.

If one of you knows that particular story was real, my apologies. But just from looking at the description of the video it was pretty obvious.

Quote:

Hollywood fans burst into tears after hearing the sad news about Angelina Jolie, she is in great pain

And there was something else about her accepting her fate, whatever. I didn't click on it so I also didn't have the link to copy.

It's not that this is new, particularly. Maybe I'm just annoyed because they are popping up in the list of things I'm looking for where they shouldn't be.

Clickbait is annoying enough, now it's worse.

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India's worst train crash in decades, 288 reported killed

A horrendous derailment and collision took place Friday on Indian Railways, near Balasore in Odisha state, with the death toll near 300. Involved was the Coromandel Superfast Express, one of Indian Railways' top passenger trains. The train runs daily along India's east coast between Shalimar in West Bengal, and Chennai in Tamil Nadu. The Coromandel, with more than 20 passenger cars and better than 1,200 passengers on board, was running at full speed when it rammed a stopped freight train in Bahanaga Bazar. Derailed passenger cars landed on an adjacent track and were struck moments later by another high-speed express train, the Howrah–SMVT Bengaluru Superfast Express.

As to the cause, what sent a high-speed passenger train rocketing into a freight train stopped on a siding, it is being reported a problem with the signal system may have been to blame.

Quote:

Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, the chief public relations officer for Southern Eastern Railways, confirmed reports that a “preliminary inquiry” had indicated that the crash was likely caused by a problem in the signaling system. But Mr. Chaudhary said that theory needed to be checked in a thorough investigation. New York Times news link

Wreckage is strewn across countryside.

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How Much Damage Will Lunar Landings Do to Lunar Orbiters?

I saw this article on Universe Today. It is about an aspect of lunar exploration that I had not thought about. The lunar regolith will be blown about by lunar landers at fairly high speeds, which could erode nearby installations because it is so abrasive, and it could cause damage to orbiters and landers because the regolith is so light weight that it takes a long time to settle back on the Moon.

https://www.universetoday.com/161539...unar-orbiters/

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Live from Mars

Watch live views of Mars from a European probe

[yt]4qyVNqeJ6wQ[/yt]

Watch for possible Little Green Men.

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Good news stories! For a change...

How about we post some good news stories instead of a running stream of crap stories about the world going to hell in a handbasket. Something positive, uplifting.

Here, I'll start...

Quote:

Baltimore couple team up to save life of fellow passenger on Southwest flight Nurse Emily Raines and her boyfriend Daniel Shifflett earn plaudits after resuscitating man whose heart had stopped Ramon Antonio Vargas Fri 2 Jun 2023 15.00 AEST Baltimore nurse Emily Raines unplugged from work when she recently went on a Caribbean cruise with her boyfriend, Daniel Shifflett. But Raines’s break ended dramatically on the flight home, when she and Shifflett teamed up to save the life of a man whose heart stopped beating in his airplane seat.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...uthwest-flight


Keep 'em coming, please.

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Congratulations to the half-young families!

*Mods feel free to move this if you don't find it pressing enough to be considered a social issue or current events*

Remember when all we had to worry about was teenage pregnancies? What do you mean no? Just say yes for the purpose of my rhetorical flourish.

Well, how about instead of 17 or 18, what if the parents were in their 70s or 80s, like Bobby Deniro or Al Pacino. They were both in Heat, but some have joked that they have both been ON Heat (not sure if that joke works), as they have now sired new offspring.

Quote:

Robert De Niro says being a dad to a newborn daughter at 79 “feels great” but he’s also “very happy” for fellow actor Al Pacino, who’s becoming a dad again. The About My Father star spoke about becoming a dad for the seventh time this year while appearing Thursday on the Today show. When asked about how he’s feeling following the arrival of his eight-week year-old daughter Gia Virginia Chen De Niro with girlfriend Tiffany Chen “at this stage and age,” the Oscar-winning actor said “it feels great” before pivoting to the news of his Heat and The Irishman co-star’s baby news.

Link

I really hope they do some kind of Reality TV series where De Niro and Pacino are hobbling to the daycare to drop off the kids. There is so much potential for comedy here.

That said, when I pointed out that Al Pacino was 83 and his girlfriend was 29, my wife declared it was "disgusting!".

In fact, news is out that Leornardo De Caprio has also branded the relationship disgusting, saying that Al Pacino's girlfriend is far too old.

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Republikan Klown Kar, 2024

It's only the first of June, 2023; and there are already a multiplicity of candidates? Can we match the craziness of 2015/16?

Probably not, except for the craziness of the likely nominee.

Anyhow, best I (or USA Today) can tell, we've already got these candidates:
Donald Trump
Ron DeSantis
Larry Elder (who?)
Nikki Haley
Asa Hutchinson
Vivek Ramaswamy
Tim Scott
Chris Christie (probably)
Mike Pence (probably)

Trump is the probable nominee. If not, he'll continue running against the actual nominee, ensuring a Biden victory, which Trump will blame on the Republican nominee.
Otherwise:
DeSantis is the only realistic option for today's Christo-fascist Republican party. Since he'd be both more evil and more competent than Trump, very scary to me.
Larry Elder is unknown and black. No chance.
Nikki Haley is female and non-white. Though she does her best to look white. Possible Veep selection.
Asa Hutchinson is an unknown nonentity. That works for Dems (think Carter and Clinton) but not R's.
Vivek Ramaswamy: Unknown, funny name, probably a terrorist.
Tim Scott: Black. Competent. Not ever going to be nominated by the R's.
Fat Chris Christie: Did every thing he could to secure Trump's VP nomination four years ago, including carrying Trump's luggage. Running for Veep again.
Mike Pence: Small change. No Democrat and 95% of Republicans would never vote for him.

Your thoughts?

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Using wrong pronouns= violence??

According to the website of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Center for Inclusion and Social Change's website, the intentional use of the "wrong" gender pronoun to identify someone can be seen not only as an act of oppression, but an act of violence.

https://www.colorado.edu/cisc/pride-...urces/pronouns

I'm not sure how anyone came to the conclusion that words can be an act of violence, but this is very dangerous, as acts of violence are often grounds to be expelled from college and indeed arrested and charged with the crime. Worse, one is legally allowed to use physical force to defend themselves against acts of violence. Is that what we are getting at here? Call somebody a he instead of a she, and the target of the wrong pronoun can hit the person in self-defense??

This really is an attack on speech in a way that is totally out of control. Speech that makes people offended or uncomfortable may not be right, but it is certainly not an act of violence.

This needs to stop.

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Decorated Australian vet loses big defamation case

When I say decorated, I’m talking the Victoria Cross, the highest honour in British Commonwealth nations.

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...latest-updates

Ben Roberts-Smith was in Australia’s elite Special Air Service Regiment and served in Afghanistan. During the 2010s stories were circulating about Australian troops there engaging in war crimes. Roberts-Smith and the patrols he commanded featured in these stories. In short he murdered three non-combatants amongst other war crimes.

His case and those of other Afghanistan veterans were referred to Australian war crimes investigators. If the wheels of justice in general move slowly, when it comes to war crimes, it is positively glacial, and he has not yet been charged, but other soldiers have been.

Anyway, here’s where courageous newspapers (I’m not sure I’ve ever used that term before) came to the fore. The Age published the story, together with supporting evidence from soldiers in the SAS and even videos of one shooting. Roberts-Smith sued for defamation, and the case went on for nearly 2 years.

Today the judgement came, the papers were found to have reported truthfully. He is, in fact, a war criminal and murderer. Let’s hope the war crimes charges are laid very soon.

A couple of interesting side issues. He may be stripped of his Victoria Cross, and however brave he was at that time (and he was exceptionally brave) he has forfeited the right to it in my opinion. The other is one of costs, which look like being around $40m. Roberts-Smith does not have that sort of money, but he has been backed throughout by one of Australia’s wealthiest men, and owner of the Seven West media giant, Kerry Stokes. It remains to be seen if he covers the cost or if Roberts-Smith is bankrupted.

But this story is far from over. Stay tuned.

I, and I believe, the vast majority of Australians are very proud of the bravery and accomplishments of our military. My grandfather and his brothers served in WWI. I can’t even imagine the horrors they faced. Other relatives served in WW2 and friends served in Vietnam. This **** has sullied our military and I hope he rots in jail.

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