Is mainstream news actually somewhat fake?

I recently got a subscription to the Washington Post after getting sick of free news. All of it is about Trump with a few articles that seem to suggest that President Biden is getting senile and not too much else other that polling data. My feeling on it after having read all these articles is that I feel that there is nothing wrong with President Biden's competency. In fact I think that he is singularly able to run this country. I do not have any problem with vice president Kama's ability to run the country if she would need to either. One type of article I am getting really sick of is extremely rich people trying to tell ordinary people what they are doing wrong.


Got a subscription to the New Yorker too as well as the LA times too. Problem with them is LA Times is too local and for the New Yorker, I just don't have the attention span to read it. Neither of them I would describe as fake news.

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Question on political assassinations using drones

A question on another forum makes me want to ask the smart folks here this:

With the demonstration of the usefulness of kamikaze/attack drones in Ukraine how come they aren't being used to attack people in the West, i.e. used as a tool in assassination?

What technology exists to protect President Biden from such an attack?

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New 9/11 Nut Job.

I will let this insanity speak for itself.
https://youtu.be/CQCBJ_JV4Y0?si=6xpab3W0qgLb2BYp

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Finnish Presidential Election/s

Voting has started today. Current Finnish President, Sauli Niinistö's second presidential term is coming to an end.

Favourite by a small margin is Alexander Stubb of the National Coalition Party (roughly equivalent to the Conservative/Liberal party), closely followed by hugely popular Pekka Haavisto, Green Party but standing as an independent. Close on his heels in third place - according to the polls - is Jussi Halla-Aho, Basic Finns. Olli Rehn of the Centre Party is next with about 13% followed by Li Andersson of the Left (not to be confused with SDP) slightly behind him.

You can see the full list of candidates here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_F...ntial_election

If the person coming first in today's election polling has more than half the votes, he or she will automatically be elected as President of Finland (not to be confused with the Prime Minister who currently is Petteri Orpo, National Coalition) and acts as Head of State in a Statesman type role rather than actually governing.

I have performed my civic duty and voted for Haavisto as I think he has been a great foreign ambassador for Finland (for example, in getting women with children returned home from the Syrian refugee camps). Stubb was Prime Minister once for a short period of about a year. In true conservative-style, like Orpo, he immediately implemented all kinds of cuts. Stubb spent a lot of time in the USA in higher education so perhaps he sees himself as the natural defender of NATO and says he only came back into politics because of the Russian border situation and the Ukraine war issue. He is very ambitious and the press seem to be pushing him forward as their choice. I would have voted for Li Andersson, of the Left, very popular in these parts, where she comes from, but as she doesn't have a realistic chance of winning the election, I decided to vote tactically for my second choice. Not that I don't like Stubb but I think Haavisto has a more statesmanlike presence and diplomatic calming personna. The last thing we need is a warmonger and US puppet.

Voting ends at 20:00 tonight and then the advance voting result will be revealed. Rehn of the Centre Party is likely to show as a strong candidate as the centre party voters tend to vote heavily in advance, plus he has spent a LOT of money on electioneering. Educated at Oxford. I usually vote Centre Party due to my rural roots; it is traditionally, as in Norway and Sweden, the party that represents farmers and is quite left wing except their constitution is strongly anti-communist. Given mass urbanisation these days with people moving to metropolitan areas, it is not such a big party as it once was. The last Centre Party president was Urho Kekkonen, who was incumbent from 1956 - 1982, an astonishing long period of time. As for Halla-Aho he is considered very learned but comes across as a bit crazy, so it is doubtful he will sneak through, but you never know, as the Basic Finns, a relatively new populist right wing party, has made tremendous gains politically, and is currently in coalition with the National Coalition Party in government, having been pipped at the post by a very small margin. (Think UKIP.)

If, as is expected, the leading candidate gets less than half of the electoral votes, then there will be a second round of elections 11 February. Haavisto came second last time around to Niinistö.

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If you die of hunger in Uganda, you are an idiot!

So says Uganda's Foreign Minister, Henry Oryem Okello:

Henry Okello Oryem: Uganda minister says people dying of hunger are 'idiots'

Quote:

A Ugandan government minister is facing criticism after calling those who have died of hunger in his country "idiots". Many have deemed Henry Okello Oryem's comments tone-deaf. In 2022, more than 2,200 people died of starvation and related illnesses in north-east Uganda, a report by an official human rights body said. But Mr Oryem argued that given Uganda's favourable climate and fertile land, people should be able to grow food for themselves. "It's only an idiot, a real idiot, that can die of hunger in Uganda," the state minister for foreign affairs told the NTV Uganda television channel. "If you work hard, there is land in Uganda. The climate is right in spite [of] climate change. If you make a double effort to make sure that you go out in the morning, you till your land, you plant the seeds, you maintain your plantation, surely, how do you fail then to get food?"

He sure doesn't look like he's going hungry.

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vince mcmahon pooped on a woman

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...uit-rcna135695

https://deadline.com/2024/01/vince-m...it-1235804877/

https://twitter.com/WrestleOps/statu...81338384593255

it was the woman he briefly resigned his place in the company over during the hush money scandal. of course, he died his hair jet black and grew a weird moustache and he muscled his way back in via wme/endeavor, who you may recognize as a giant hollywood talent agency and the company that purchased the ufc and wwe after vince stepped down and merged them into tko, and was involved in a lot of celebrity crypto scams.

anyway, this was all under nda, which he violated by not paying her hush money. now it's all public, including the suprisingly creepy and teenage texts. and it's pretty disgusting.

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Queston what would be the effect if...

Trump drops dead or becomes incapacitated and he is the nominee?

Biden drops dead or becomes incapacitated and he is the nominee?

If either is assassinated?

What happens if the man selected as the nominee cannot be President? What is the methodology at this point?

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January 6th files deleted.

The Republicans in Congress want Bennie Thompson to turn over the passwords for the deleted January 6th Files.
I don't think he will ever do that, because the January 6th committee promised the Information would be kelpt completely Confidential and not turned over to Insurrectionists in Congress.
They are just playing it into a Conspiracy theory which will fail.

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How's Your Spam Recently?

I keep reasonably tight control of my Internet activities and really only get a little volume of spam (who knows what is filtered out upstream?).

I always read my email first as text and go to the HTML version when I think I know the sender. For the curious ones I'll read the message source for added edification and amusement.

The mist recent read:

Quote:

Good afternoon! I've enclosed the invoice for my journey costs during the business trip. Kindly take care of this for compensation following our travel guidelines. Januar-tt-MUNGE524727MUNGE8219-24 Thanks.

It was sent from Stephen Buckley <jessie>@an apparently valid innocent domain. I note that poor Stephen has to use jessie's email.

There was no attachment but there was a link in the HTML to doubleclick.net with another domain embedded in the query parameters. That domain seems to be that of another innocent party. I guess if I had clicked through I would have gotten to a page asking me to submit a payment somehow.

The whole sad sorry state of things is documented here (worth a full read): Spam Statistics (2024): New Data on Junk Email, AI Scams & Phishing

Quote:

162 billion spam emails are sent every day, with 49% of the 333 billion daily emails sent, considered spam (numbers recorded for 2022).

Is the Internet broken? Will spam ever be stopped/prevented?

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[Split Thread] Presidential election 2024

Pretty clear now that Trump will beat Biden, the only way to stop Trump is to ban him from the ballot.

Split from:https://www.internationalskeptics.co...d.php?t=367763

Posted By:Darat

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Welcome Back - Diphtheria Edition (and measles)

We nearly managed to eradicate this awful disease, but a few pockets in developing countries kept it alive and now it's making a comeback, with thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths. Even first world countries like UK are experiencing outbreaks not seen in 70 years. 1 2

The problem is the rise of vaccine hesitancy, spurred on by vaccine deniers, which is resulting in an explosion of measles cases in many countries as herd immunity is negated by the growing percentage of children who aren't fully vaccinated.

I've been saying for years that the antidote will be kids in iron lungs when polio strikes again, as it surely must.

I also think vaccine fatigue is a real thing and with covid vaccines every six months, people are giving up and we're going to see nasty outbreaks of all sorts of diseases that have been largely since the 1970s.

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[Continuation] Electric Vehicles II

Continued from here.

Posted By:Agatha

Quote:

Originally Posted by novaphile (Post 14244046) I don't think you'll be happy with the maths. My car typically takes 10 kWh to charge. I have 8 188W solar panels, which generate, on average, about 5 kWh per day. Hence, it would take at least two full days to charge my car. Note that a 10kWh battery is tiny compared to modern all electric vehicles. Two full days of solar panel output gives me 45 km of range. The current Nissan Leaf has a 40 kWh battery, hence eight days to charge from my current eight panels. I think you can currently buy 300 W solar panels but you'd still need a lot more than one to charge an EV. Ideally, you'd put something up like a hay shed (or carport) with a sloping roof to maximise your solar collection. I was lucky, my roof slope is within a degree of ideal for this latitude.

I recently purchased for a friend 24ea 430w panels at $175ea at SanTan Solar. They have great deals there all the time. They sell new and used panels. Right now you can buy a pallet of 25 435w Sun Power panels for $3,000.

Having a shed can be convenient, but you can also build a rack. that's what my friend did. Actually he built three all out of lumber from trees he cut down from his property. We even build a tilting mechanism so he could change the tilt angle a few times a year.

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Clues of God - his works

God wants to remain hidden with no absolute proof. This allows for a certain amount of free will.

But he does subtly intervene in small ways and sometimes world-impacting ways.

I will start this off with my own miracle in answer to my prayers.

Since December 2010 I have had a systemic disseminated bat fungus (histoplasmosis). It caused cancer in my late wife and by June 2011 she was dead. In August 2011 I was ready to intensive care but through a series of serendipitous events found out what I had. Started Itraconazole and it was amazing at first.

But in November 2023 the fungus became resistant. I was ready for hospital except I knew there was no cure. No conventional medicine cure that is.

In desperation I drank colloidal silver (CS) solution. 150 ml morning, noon and night. The next day I was fine. But I felt I needed to kill the fungus once and for all so I did not need so much CS. I had previously tried with CS but only got a small improvement.

Since fungus likes sugar I went to a Hydro for a fast. Did six full days on water alone. Suffered the whole time although it is not supposed to be like that. Blood sugar stayed at about 4.2 to 4.4. On day 5 and 6 I drank a lot of CS. One days 7-10 I broke my fast with all the right foods.

Day 9 and 10 I felt great. I had forgotten to bring enough Itraconazole. A few days at home and I was in great shape. Not hunched over from pain. Not on 5 pain tablets a day. Only 6-8 hours of sleep instead of 12-14hrs. No brain fog.

A few days later I decided to take the Itraconazole with a meal. I suffered the next 24 hours and nothing could relieve it. I concluded the Itraconazole was causing it.

So now I am fine with 150ml a day of CS. Energy and feeling good. No tablets. Avoiding vitamin supplements like the plague. Had no idea they were so bad.

God put events in my life for me to learn about CS. And at the Hydro I met a lady who gave me information on making my own. R400 (about $20) for 2 liters is a bit much when the ingredients are distilled water and pure silver.

I learned of 2 other "miracles" while there.

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WW2 fighter, part of, found on beach

During december 2023, several storms hit the Danish West Coast. This always digs up stuff from the bottom and sends it onto the beaches of Jutland and the Islands along the coast. For instance, between Xmas and New Year, those people that braved the cold, wind, and rain on the beach of the island where I live, found a good deal of amber. Among them were many of the German tourists that literally flock to the island most of the year.

One such German tourist also spotted something else: A large piece of what seemed to be an aircraft. By help of the internet, he tentatively identified it as part of an FW190 fighter from WW2.

He contacted the local WW2 history association, of which I am currently chairman. Our normal work area is the 400+ bunkers left strewn over most of the 50 odd Km² island, but of course this was also interesting.

Unfortunately, before I could locate it, our local beach-cleaning team had picked it up and dumped it in the scrap metal container at the recycling station. :(

However, I found it there and recovered it, so it is currently in my backyard.

So, after studying photos and drawings, I can in fact confirm the identification: Focke Wulff 190. It is on surprisingly good condition after 80+ years in the sea. Presumably it have been buried in the sand bottom for most of the time, this also explains why it is largely free of anything growing on it.

It is the bottom and port side of the rear fuselage, between the cockpit area and the tail assembly, all flattened out. I enclose a picture of it as it was found on the beach (the finder's photo). It is about 2 meters long, and in the foreground in the picture you see the bottom with the ventral hatch (for some equipment access), and above the square side hatch, also for various service access. The oval shape of the ventral hatch hints at it being an FW190A-6, as that hatch was round on most other models.

The goal now is to stabilize and conserve it. We will then endeavour to prop it in some scaffolding so we can bend it back in roughly original shape. It will then be put on display in our museum bunker. As the association has it's 25 year anniversary this year, it is a nice present from the sea.

Hans

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What is an annointing and can science test it.

I grew up as a Christian when I was a kid, but now I see Christianity as organized crime for conmen and sex predators. A fake personal development industry with a collection plate that puts ideas in people's heads to make them vulnerable to predators and exploitation.

The main leverage the pastors seem to have is the anointing that can be felt in church during the singing, and their claims to be leaders and experts in the field of anointings. In churches where the anointing is stronger, singing in the chord of C seems to influence the strength and changing the songs to an Ab seems to turn the tap off again.

I understand there will be sceptics that scoff at the idea of some kind of spiritual atmosphere being real in a church, but it will be science and scrutiny that proves it exists or does not. That doesn't mean the jokes about it shouldn't exist.

The pastors use anointing, to recruit people to joining their religion and submitting to their leadership and collection plate. It's effective and it sucks a lot of people into believing that God is real, and He is with them. Even if people are smart enough to see the pastors are frauds, they still go to church just to feel the anointing every Sunday. It's because of the chicken soup for the soul.

The scam includes the church being the only place people can feel the anointing. If they come to church every Sunday, you can put ideas in their heads and the only way to make money out of the anointing is the collection plate. Unless science and scrutiny can look into the anointing and see if it is just a natural part of personal development and social bonding the fraud will continue for as long as the pastors protect their power, control, and leverage.

The million-dollar challenge has been withdrawn now and it's a pity because it would have been a great way of putting an anointing to scrutiny and making a million dollars. Does anyone know of anything similar that will be willing to risk the wrath and intimidation of the church to put an anointing to scrutiny and test it. I don't see the pastors as having a legitimate claim to anointings being their spiritual property, I see what the pastors are doing as prohibition and exploitation.

So, if I wanted to get an anointing tested and understood, where would I start? Academia will probably cave in under pressure from the church and a peer reviewed study is unlikely. You will not get burned at the stake anymore but there would be consequences.

Do the pastors pass their expertise and leadership in the field that includes anointings as part of academia? They make a lot of claims associated with intelligence, education and academia but there are no peer reviewed studies on anointings. It's like they are above peer reviews, or they are hiding something. Or they refuse to acknowledge their accountability to their peers.

For the record, I am not an educated academic, I am a comedian.

So, other than a million-dollar challenge, how do you provoke academia into doing a study on anointings?

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Why not hanging for carrying out the death penalty?

This thread was sparked by this article:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2...-death-penalty

The article is about an upcoming execution in which they are going to use nitrogen suffocation to kill the prisoner. It's a method never used before, and it does seem - like the article says - entirely experimental.

If you read the article, you'll see that there are a variety of methods proposed or being used yet I see nowhere is using hanging. It's been used for centuries, carried out properly it is instantaneous, we know how it works, there are even hangmen in some countries that could give hands-on advice.

So, my question is why all these weird and experimental execution methods when there is a perfectly good method they could adopt? What is the reluctance to use hanging?

(Thread isn't meant to be about the punishment of the death penalty itself, not interested in a debate about whether it is right or wrong in this thread.)

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The greater Middle Eastern conflict

Iran seems to be intent on enraging all it's neighbours.

this time it's Pakistan.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67999465

Any ideas how this can help Iran with it's anti Western/Sunni/Jewish conflict?

Starting this thread in politics to allow wider discussion than that allowed in the specific Isreal/Gaza threads.

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Help with a scene from Russian history

This is a video of the current Russian national anthem, with various scenes of Russian geography, culture, and history. The visuals and the music are outstanding; for those so inclined, I would recommend watching it in hi-def with a decent sound system.

[yt]VJcnuZB4Xt4[/yt]
My question is, what's going on in the scene that starts about the 1:00 mark (right before the scene of Napoleon retreating from Moscow), and who are the two guys whose names are written in Russian cursive? Also, anyone who wants to identify any of the other scenes or locations, feel free. (I'll post about a few I've identified later.)

As a side note, I was tempted to write in the comments that "It's sad that a country with such a rich culture and history has been, and continues to be, responsible for so much evil in the world," but I figured it would just get deleted, and possibly draw attention from Russian trolls. :rolleyes:

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Second rape defamation trial starts

Today, they seated the jury that will decide how much more money Trump will have to pay E Jean Carroll. Trump has already been determined to be liable.

Trump was ordered to pay E Jean Carroll five million dollars in the previous defamation and sexual abuse trial. But odds are he will be ordered to pay her much more this time.

It seems as if he has ripped a page from Rudy Giuliani's trial strategy book since like Rudy, he doesn't have a clue when to stop. Trump continued to defame her even as this trial began. He posted 22 more defamatory statements on his social media site today.

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The need to demonize and Sanctify

A thread doomed to failure but...

Maybe this was always the case but I've noticed it lately. We seem to not be able to except that groups nominally on our side are not always great and groups nominally in the opposition aren't just wrong but evil.

Nominally on the right, Ukraine.

The anti-Ukraine side can't just say, it may not be in our best interest to spend a money on ukraine, its necessary for Ukraine to also be somehow in the wrong. Zelensky must also be a conman or what not.

Nominally on the left.

Its not sufficient for Israel to be executing the war in an excessively extreme manner they must also be committing genocide and Hammas must also be innocent of rape, murder ect.

Both version have folks buying into conspiracy theories.

Why? I don't get it. I can accept that while the West is guilty of unnecessary provocation by expanding NATO and flirting with admitting Ukraine, Putin is totally responsible for invading Ukraine and Zelensky is only guilty of being the president of Ukraine when that happened.

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Space Railway Visited my LinkedIn Page

When checking my Linked In notifications I saw a visit from Space Railway. Not sure how they outed me. :scared:

https://spacerailway.com/

Not a Space Elevator but something better!

Quote:

Space Railway Corporation redefines space travel using a patented, specially designed rocket-less transport system that propels hybrid transport vehicles into orbit along uniquely constructed tethered carbon nanotube cables anchored in geostationary orbit. The company will provide a safer, cheaper, greener, and more cost-effective approach for all levels of space access, from low Earth orbit to deep space travel.

Just a matter of engineering folks. ;)

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Nuclear battery

A Chinese company claims to have developed a
coin-sized battery that works through nuclear decay, and could generate power for up to 50 years.

Quote:

The battery has a layered design, which will prevent it from catching fire or exploding due to sudden force. Betavolt also claimed that the battery is capable of working in temperatures ranging from -60 degrees Celsius to 120 degrees Celsius. Atomic energy batteries are environmentally friendly. After the decay period, the 63 isotopes turn into a stable isotope of copper, which is non-radioactive and does not pose any threat or pollution to the environment.

I believe the “63 isotopes” is a garbled version of “Nickel 63 isotopes”, which decays to the stable Copper 63 isotope, and has a half-life of 101.2 years.

Apparently, the level of radiation is safe to humans, and can be used in everything from pace-makers to satellites.

It all seems legit to me. Do anybody see a flaw, apart from the difficulty in obtaining approval?

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Pod Save America - Includes a fantastic array of podcasts

Here's a recent podcast of the many that are on the program:

[yt]94kmsDEHFGg[/yt]

That particular podcast is not all about the Israeli-Hamas misinformation problem. If you forward to ~ min 45:30 they end with Alexa telling listener the 2020 election was stolen.

"After the WA Po contacted Amazon the Alexa answer was changed." :sdl:

Pod Save America

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TB Joshua exposé: How the disgraced pastor faked his miracles

The BBC unmasks, for the first time, how the late Nigerian televangelist TB Joshua faked the miracles that drew millions of people to his church.

Quote:

The preacher, who is accused of widespread abuse and torture spanning almost 20 years, founded his Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) in Lagos more than three decades ago. His meteoric rise to fame was closely tied to his self-professed divine powers and his supposed ability to heal the sick. The theatrical healings - showing the physically disabled walking and on one occasion purporting to resurrect a dead person - were filmed. Along with testimonies of those he claimed to have cured, they were then sent on VHS tapes to churches across the world. In 2004, Nigeria's broadcast regulator banned stations from airing the supposed miracles of pastors on live terrestrial TV, prompting Joshua to launch Emmanuel TV on satellite and then online. His global television and social media empire became one of the most successful Christian networks in the world. His purported miracles were broadcast to millions across Europe, the Americas, South-East Asia and Africa. His YouTube channel had hundreds of millions of views. But Joshua, who died in 2021 aged 57, was a fraud. The BBC's investigation, involving more than 25 church insiders from the UK, Nigeria, Ghana, the US, South Africa and Germany, unpicks six ways in which he tricked worshippers.

None of the tricks are new, but it's an interesting insight into the world of a fraud and how he fooled people, sometimes with fatal results.

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Three migrants drowned near Eagle Pass park after Border Patrol was denied access

Three migrants drowned near Eagle Pass park after Border Patrol was denied access

Quote:

A woman and two children drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande, near the Eagle Pass park that Texas troopers have taken control over, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed on Saturday. State officers and National Guard members have been denying federal Border Patrol agents entry to the 47-acre Shelby Park since early this week. When Border Patrol agents received a call Friday evening from the Mexican government about the migrants in distress, Texas officials barred the federal agents from entering the area and providing aid, according to a DHS spokesperson. The Border Patrol officers made unsuccessful attempts to contact the Texas Military Department, National Guard and Department of Public Safety via telephone about the distress call. When the officers went to the park entrance to verbally notify the state, Texas Military Department personnel denied them entry, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said in a written statement. “Texas Military Department soldiers stated they would not grant (Border Patrol) access to the migrants – even in the event of an emergency – and that they would send a soldier to investigate the situation,” Cuellar said in the statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. The bodies of the three migrants were recovered by Mexican authorities on Saturday morning, Cuellar said. Officials have not yet released the names or any other information on the deceased.

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Robin Garbutt says Horizon system was used to frame him for wife’s murder

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...r-wifes-murder

Was going to start a thread about this - it's already been raised in the PO miscarriage of Justice thread but I think it warrants its own thread.

This could be yet another example of an issue in the E&W justice system since 1999 when the rule on digital evidence was changed so it was to be considered reliable unless show not to be.

One really must hope that the PO did disclose to the prosecution and defence in this case the issues with Horizon evidence surely, they can't have not done so? Yet the report indicates the evidence was used and wasn't challenged, whether he killed his wife or not I think there has to now be grounds for his case to reconsidered and checked to see how the jury was directed.

Quote:

...snip.... With no DNA evidence to link him to the murder or the metal bar used to kill Diana, Garbutt was convicted in part after the jury heard evidence from a Post Office investigator using data from the Horizon system. This purportedly showed he was stealing money from the Post Office and then killed his wife to cover up his theft. The prosecution claimed Garbutt concealed his theft via a series of false declarations about the amount of money in the Post Office safe. The investigator told the jury the pattern of high overnight cash declarations was one “I have seen replicated across many Post Office Limited fraud cases in the past”. The jury was told he may have staged the armed robbery to cover up the losses, killing Diana either to make it look “real” or because she had found out what he was doing and he needed to silence her. ...snip...

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The Babylon Bee is relentlessing mocking aviation industry's DEI campain

They have been at it ever since a door plug blew out of that Alaska Airlines 737-Max.

Boeing CEO Assures Nervous Flyers That All 737 Aircraft Are Built to the Highest Diversity Standards
https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/...sity-standards

New Boeing Features Larger Lavatories So All-Female Crews Can Go to Bathroom Together
https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/...hroom-together

In Major Win For Diversity, Airline Hires Blind Pilot
https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/...es-blind-pilot

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Huge ancient cities discovered in Amazon

Huge network of ancient cities uncovered in the Amazon rainforest.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/12/ameri...-intl-scli-scn

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Miscellaneous Trump Family Scandals

The Big 5 Trump trials are getting a lot of discussion, but I thought that we should have a thread for other legal issues that the Trumps are encountering.

Such as:

- Trump is being sued by several people who participated in a multi-level marketing program for video phones that was run by a firm named ACN after he promoted the company on Celebrity Apprentice and elsewhere. Without mentioning that he was being paid millions of dollars to promote ACN. The trial begins on January 29.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-face...072346584.html

- Democrats released information showing that while president Trump's companies did nearly $8 million in business with foreign governments, which would appear to violate the emoluments clause.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...por-rcna132276

- Donald Trump, Jr. is on the list of potential defendants in the bankruptcy trial of a Chinese financier named Guo Wengui (who has bankrolled Steve Bannon). Peter Navarro is also on the list.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/court-...t%20dissidents.

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Has Wiki changed its format?

I used to type in a famous name (say) and get the Wiki article. Down the left was a pane with quick links to stuff like 'Early life', 'Early career', 'Personal life' etc etc.

That's all gone and I have to scroll down to a particular thing I might be interested in.

I can't find a setting that controls this, or maybe I accidentally hit a key combination that changed the format?

Any help appreciated.

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Looks Like Indigenous People Own the Moon

An enterprising company decided to hop on the idea started by Eugene Shoemaker and send ashes of bereaved to the moon.

Pretty harmless fun, you'd think. What's a little more dust on the moon?

But no, someone had to cry about it, and in this case, it's the Navajo people.

The flight will go ahead anyway, but Navajo are determined to stop further flights. Of course, Maori have their back:

Quote:

‘Ignorant and arrogant’: Maramataka expert Heeni Hoterene wants Māori to oppose moon burials

Personally, I'd have thought ignorant and arrogant would describe a neolithic people telling a technologically-advanced nation what they can and can't do 300,000 km above the earth. These people had no notion of what the moon is, and it decidedly does not have any life force or mauri. It's a big rock.

Still, it's all good for humour value as the Maori chick says:

Quote:

“As indigenous people and as Māori, we must support Navajo ... and we need to look at actually withdrawing our support to Nasa,” Hoterene told Te Ao News.

By all means withdraw your support, sweetie - I'm sure NASA will be suitably chastised.

Looks like Monsieur Musk might have to schedule some moon visits.

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OLD CRYPTOZOOLOGY ARTICLE SCANS

I will be posting some scans of my Bigfoot/Cryptozoology articles i've collected over the last few years. These are for educational purposes only.


Here is a scan I did of an Ivan Sanderson article. Tell me if it works, i am trying a new PDF hosting site.

New Evidence of Abominable Snowman- Ivan Sanderson
November 1961- True Man's Magazine

https://pdf.ac/2TGgOz

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Summernats 36 Send It

Calling all bogans, here is the ultimate in bogan heaven. Modified cars, superchargers, burnouts, biffo, beer, too much sun. What more could you want.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsETFDpYJi4

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[Continuation] The Russian Invasion of Ukraine part 9

Continued from here.

Posted By:Agatha

Quote:

Originally Posted by 8enotto (Post 14235424) Appearances of winners or losers is going to ebb and flow a while longer. Let's just hope nato is committed to seeing Ukraine through this.

This.

But some here have objected to this as being too pessimistic. It's not pessimism, it's a call to action. At the very least, if you do nothing else, vote for politicians in your country who support NATO, arming Ukraine, etc.

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A new class of antibiotics?

Maybe. Clinical trials are being undertaken, but it looks like we might finally have another tool in the armoury, and one that fights antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024...tant-bacteria/

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Win 10 "Can't connect to network" error - anyone?

Got this out of nowhere when trying to connect my laptop w/my cell phone hotspot, which is my normal internet connection. Looked it up and tried all the suggestions I could find, including:

- Reboot (of course)
- Rebooting my cell phone
- Turning on then back off off airplane mode
- "Forgetting" the network and re-acquiring it
- Reset network adapters
- ipconfig resets (dsnflush, etc)

I even tried the lame MS network troubleshooter, which has never fixed anything for me ever. Still batting 1000 there.

The only thing I can think of now is that maybe the modem itself has for some reason gone bad...in a PC that's only about 3 yrs old. ugh.

I can connect with my work laptop, so it's not my service.

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Computer pioneer Niklaus Wirth has died

Quote:

Computer pioneer Niklaus Wirth died on 1 January 2024, just weeks before his 90th birthday. The long-​serving ETH Professor of Computer Science achieved world fame by developing the Pascal programming language in the 1970s. In 1984, he became the only German-​speaking computer scientist yet to have received the Turing Award, which is regarded as the Nobel Prize for computer science.

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/e...-has-died.html


Those of us who are rather older will have been influenced one way or the other by Wirth's work. Algol W was one of my first programming languages.

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100 years of galaxies

In 2024, the knowledge of there being galaxies beyond the Milky Way turns 100:

https://www.wired.com/2009/12/1230hu...ide-milky-way/

In this year, 2024, we've already discovered that the Small Magellanic Cloud is actually two galaxies, per Anton Petrov:

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

[yt]BxBJLR_mRxE[/yt]

(This seems like it might be of a more general interest outside the thread where I posted it.)

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More conservative parents, better mental health for kids

An article was recently published making that claim. I ran into it as a result of a YouTube video reacting to it & interviewing the author about it. The show's two hosts included one "liberal" who clearly didn't want it to be true. Her questions were all looking for some other way to explain things, along the lines of "correlation isn't causation", which is one of the weakest ways to try to oppose new research that you don't like but don't have any better way to poke holes in. (And the comments were full of right-wingers piling on about how lame her opposition to it was, which was accurate; she did a bad job and made her side look helpless in the face of the "facts & logic".)

And the claim went against what I expected before as well, given that previous studies have consistently found conservatism more associated with worse results in nearly every practical measure of mental/sociological health in the decision-making of adults. So how is mental health among the young distributed in the opposite way? I was all set to find out something new & unexpected.

It turned out to be this article, published not in a journal of psychology or such but by the "Institute For Family Studies", whose "About Us" page is actually named "Our Mission" right in the URL. You can read their self-description at the link if you want, but I can tell you ahead of time, it'll sound exactly like the name and "our mission" phrasing tell you it'll sound like. The author is an economist, not a psychologist, which reminds me of Creationism's dependence on engineers instead of biologists. Curiously, he's at the Brookings Institution, which doesn't scream "We're right-wingers pushing a right-wing agenda" like the IFS does, but the IFS wouldn't be publishing what he wrote if he hadn't given them what they wanted.

The reason I had to call it an "article" instead of a "study" or "research paper" is because it's not a study or research paper. There's no "Methods" section or "Results" section. It describes a survey but doesn't quote what most of the questions were, and describes their interpretations of the results at best instead of giving the data in tables or such. It doesn't even define its terms or what the alternatives of those terms would be even though the whole point of the article is supposed to be a comparison between those undefined terms' real-world correlations and the real-world correlations of their unnamed alternatives; it treats conservative parenting as more "disciplined" and "warm" but doesn't describe what that means "liberal" parenting would be like other than "undisciplined" and "cold", nevermind how they came to such decisions (or the fact that "disciplined" and "warm" could be interpreted as running counter to each other anyway). And what they offered to support that distinction was the only part of the article quoting any specific questions and associating any numbers with them, and even there, the questions are mostly not about actual "warmth" or "discpline" but about performativity trying to look like warmth/discipline. And to top it all off, the unwritten part we're apparently supposed to believe is correlated with that is simply about self-reported mental health, which, like a "happiness" survey, has been known for ages to only really pick up on who feels the most incentive to claim to fit such a description. (And although I haven't seen any real study trying to look into that, it certainly looks in my anecdotal experience like right-wingers & the religious are more subject to that by a pretty wide margin.)

I'll stick with what I already thought before on this one.

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Fire up the Tardis

https://www.sciencealert.com/physici...cally-possible

Quote:

"The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our Universe without any paradox."

The paper is here: Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice

Quote:

Abstract The theory of general relativity predicts the existence of closed time-like curves (CTCs), which theoretically would allow an observer to travel back in time and interact with their past self. This raises the question of whether this could create a grandfather paradox, in which the observer interacts in such a way to prevent their own time travel. Previous research has proposed a framework for deterministic, reversible, dynamics compatible with non-trivial time travel, where observers in distinct regions of spacetime can perform arbitrary local operations with no contradiction arising. However, only scenarios with up to three regions have been fully characterised, revealing only one type of process where the observers can verify to both be in the past and future of each other. Here we extend this characterisation to an arbitrary number of regions and find that there exist several inequivalent processes that can only arise due to non-trivial time travel. This supports the view that complex dynamics is possible in the presence of CTCs, compatible with free choice of local operations and free of inconsistencies.

Um. Suuuure. :confused:

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Insects at Play

Recreational Acumen of Bumble Bees: A Study Unveils Their Cognitive Abilities

Quote:

From the vibrant, ever-buzzing world of insects emerges an intriguing revelation about bumble bees. It turns out these small, industrious creatures engage in something that appears very much like play. A study conducted last year showed that lab-kept bumble bees show a proclivity towards rolling small wooden balls around, seemingly for the sake of fun. This unexpected behavior, serving no apparent practical purpose, sheds light on the surprising recreational activities of these insects.

But will they get their own cable channel?

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why the release of names associated with Epstein mean little to absolutely nothing.

No doubt Jeffrey Epstein was a sleazebag of major proportions. And so were some of his associates. But just because some of these powerful people were his associates does not mean they took advantage of young women/girls. It doesn't mean they didn't either.

But there is something terribly wrong with assuming the worst of Trump, Clinton, Giuliani or Dershowitz because they may have flown on his plane or did business with Epstein.

This is the political equivalent of a Rorschach test. People will see what they want to see.

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Florida surgeon general calls for halt on mRNA covid vaccines, citing debunked claim

Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo thinks that mRNA vaccines messes our DNA, and should be stopped. “Grateful to live in a state where Big Pharma does not dictate health policy recommendations,” Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis campaign official has X’ed.

There seems to be no end to the idiocy coming from MAGA and MAGA-ish places:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...wpisrc=nl_most

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Claudine Gay resigns as Harvard President

Quote:

Harvard University's president has resigned after facing allegations of plagiarism and criticism over her comments about antisemitism on campus. Claudine Gay had faced mounting pressure to step down in recent weeks. In a letter announcing her resignation, she said it was in the "best interests" of the university for her to step down. "It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour," she said. "This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words," Dr Gay wrote, adding that her resignation would allow Harvard to "focus on the institution rather than any individual". She said she had been subjected to personal threats and "racial animus".

Link

I expect two things are true in this case.

Was she targeted for racial abuse? Yes, almost certainly.

Was she guilty of plagiarism? Yes. If you look at some of the passages that appear in her work, she blatantly used the exact same wording as papers that she cited but without using quotations. She clearly gave the impression that the words were hers and thus used other people's work without proper attribution.

It has been pointed out that students have been kicked out of Harvard for doing exactly what she has done, so it makes no sense to allow her to remain as president of the university.

As a person who grades student work, albeit students writing in a second language, I have had seen plenty of examples like this, usually in a first draft because my job is to teach students who to write gooder, and then I would tell them to change it. If they still decided to submit work which was blatantly using other people's words as their own, then they would receive a zero for the assignment.

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Police investigate virtual rape

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...-b1129844.html

"Police investigate virtual rape of girl in metaverse
The girl is said to have been left distraught after her avatar - or digital character - was attacked online by several adult men in a virtual 'room'"

One thing is for sure, this is not a rape under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. Indeed, I think the police and CPS will struggle to find a crime that they can prosecute under. Existing laws regarding harassment and abuse online, such as S127 of the Communications Act, which is about messaging, clearly do not cover the virtual commission of an actual criminal act, which causes upset or trauma.

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World Science Festival: Reimagining Time in a Cyclic Universe

I really like what Brian's doing with WSF. Tons of great content.

Here's a recent one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO3w2D3uDTw

Participants:
Peter Galison
Anna Ijjas
Paul Steinhardt

Moderator:
Brian Greene

At 28:30 Anna makes some really interesting statements.

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Cleaning my laptop

Trivial question for the experts.

I have an old laptop, a Dell Latitude E7440, that I keep in my chalet. It’s running Ubuntu 20.04 like a champ. But bits of the case are starting to feel like slightly sticky rubber. Any suggestions for the right product to clean this effectively?

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Desktop in browser?

This is pretty cool. Run it in a full screen browser with JavaScript enabled.

https://dustinbrett.com/

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