Despicable Me. . .

. . .nard.

From Bobby Menard's Facebook Page:

Quote:

The lack of increased deaths during this pandemic is a result of the successful effects of masks, social distancing and lockdowns and other governmental orders. Additionally the absence of roving gangs of rabid machete wielding orcs on unicorns is also attributable to the same orders and edicts. Government: telling you what to fear and then protecting you from it for over 500 years.

Putting aside Menard's idiotic attempt to fool his minions with the correlation/causation fallacy one has to point out that a few months ago Scam Boy tried to grift funds for the production of a covid respirator.

Now he's on the covid denial bandwagon!

One shouldn't be surprised. A while ago, after decades of phony freemanism, "Nazi Bob" openly campaigning for freedom robbing fascist legislation that denied Muslims the freedom to practice their religion.

So the question is whether there's anything Bobby really believes!

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Mathematically debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories

Can someone help me out mathematically, I sometimes argue with conspiracy theorists elsewhere and I could do with a bit more details.

Twin towers were 110 stories, but what did they exactly weigh ?
I've read an approximate mass of 500,000 tons, but is this correct ?

If it is, to divide the weight by it's floors produces an average floor weight of 4545.45 tons.

What is the correct weight of a floor ?

And what was the correct mass above the impact points ?

Taking a 767 200 series jet, and adding 31 tons of fuel to it's weight gives 111.1 tons, that multiplied by it's acceleration in metres per second, gives it's force.

But what was the acceleration of Flight 11 & Flight 175 ?

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New Zealand Politics, the Ardern years

She's handled the Covid pandemic more competently than any other world leader.

Anyone care to discuss her politics ?

It'd be more interesting than boring Brexit.

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What is Parler?

I'm seeing references to Parler but I don't know what it is. Seems like another new social media thing.

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Building a new rig

It's been a few years, and my desktop was getting a bit aged. I usually build a new one every 3-5 years depending on what technology has come out. I decided to theme this one a little and do an AMD rig.

So far I've got:

750W PSU
ASUS TUF x570 Mobo
2x 32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo PC4-28800 DDR4 3600MHz RAM
1TB Gen4 NVMe 4.0 SSD
Radeon RX 6800 XT vid card
and last but not least the AMD Ryzen 5 5600x

As I'm sure it's not a shock to many, my processor and video card are backordered until somewhere in 2035. I'm using fill-ins now.

This is the first AMD rig I've built in a LONG time, probably a decade. I'm stoked to see what the outcomes, benchmarks and all that are now that they've stepped up a bit (sans the ray-tracing on the GPUs but, meh).

Anyone else building anything fun?

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Trump's accomplishments

So now that both the year and the Orange Reign are (finally) almost over, I thought it'd be an idea to list his achievements. We know they are overshadowed by all the bad he's done, but for fairness' sake, let's make an honest effort to list the things he's done that we actually appreciate. I'll start.

Hmmm.
Will need some help with this one. Let's google "Trump's achievements". Don't know what I expected, but This Atlantic article has a couple small ones I can get behind.

-regulations on vaping. Good, I... guess? Don't have anything against flavoured vaping cartridges, but... I guess if it keeps teens from starting to vape, and then progress to cigarettes, it'll save lives, so... nah, I admit I don't really have a strong opinion on this. I'll file it under "undecided".

-kicking out China from 5G networks. Not a subject I know much about, and quite possibly done out of anti-Chinese bigotry as much as any rational incentive, but fair enough, I suppose.

-re-establishing due process on campuses.

-the First Step program.


Moving on, here are the things I can think of off the top of my head:

Something about parental leave. Don't remember the details.

I'd say something about the economy, but the damage he's done here in this regard has probably outdone the good. Actually, strike probably.

I don't know if this counts as I doubt it was genuine, but he catered to the downtrodden working class that felt "the elite" didn't care about them, might just have energized that portion of the population and forced future candidates to care more about income inequality and social mobility. As another poster said, Trump's election was a brick through the window, a cry of "can you hear us now?!" that should not be ignored.

Negotiated "peace treaties" between countries in the Middle East that weren't at war to begin with. Of course, like with the economy, I fully believe he's done more to hurt Middle Eastern and world peace than to further it, so don't know if this counts.

I'd list progress against ISIS, but I'm not feeling it. Again, whatever achievements he made on the counter-terrorism/diplomatic/no more wars front are outweighed by the damage done.

I refuse to list "started no new wars". It feels like talking about why you like your spouse and saying "he doesn't hit me". Nearly all world leaders don't start wars. That's not a big achievement unless, of course, a Cuban missile crisis-style scenario arises where avoiding a war is both desirable and difficult. Also, there's something hypocritical about Trump supporters cheering victories against ISIS and at the same time bragging that Trump was a pacifist who didn't get the US entangled in conflicts.

I suppose as an honourable mention I can add that he mobilized and united the forces of good in the USA to a degree I haven't seen in a long time. His presidency shone a spotlight on police violence, corruption, racism, and how much bigotry and authoritarianism there is in the US population. It rallied people against fake news and conspiracy theories and the postfact society in general.

And... I really can't think of anything else, to be honest :boggled: .

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Dancing machine

Courtesy of Boston Dynamics, naturally:

[yt]fn3KWM1kuAw[/yt]

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Vocational education

Does it get the respect it deserves these days ?

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Trump Autobiography

Trump Autobiography

I am just curious, ...

Since Trump never misses a chance to make some decent money for himself, and since Trump never misses a chance to shamelessly promote himself, then I expect that Trump will publish his autobiography which will focus on his time as President within the next few weeks.

So, I was just wondering, will anyone here on the Forum read such a text?

As for me, I expect that I would try to read such a book. However, I would buy a used copy of the the book at a place like a flea market, a yard sale, or some such other thing in order to prevent any of the proceedes from such a sale going to POS like Trump.

Thanks much.

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A Lbrarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin.

Dark Archives: Come for the floating goat balls, stay for the fascinating science
Explore the macabre history of "anthropodermic bibliopegy": books bound in human skin



https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...ating-science/

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Stimilus Check

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Swoop (Post 13340472) Trump Tweets Give the people $2000, not $600. They have suffered enough! Quote Tweet

Like just about everyone, I would love to get a check from the U.S. Government for $2,000. But can the U.S. Government afford that much? The original bill -- with the $600 payment -- was priced at $900 billion, that it would cost the U.S. Treasury that much money. I presume if they increase the payment by better than 300% the total cost will be more than $2.7 trillion dollars. Is that too much? :( I have a sneaking suspicion trump's real motive in wanting to give this much larger payment is to create a major financial problem down the road for the Biden Administration. Of course it's not a done deal until the Senate passes it. Maybe they won't. I can't see many Republicans voting for this.

I didn't see this discussed and rather than respond to the above quote in the thread where it was posted -- the trump presidency -- I decided to start this thread. I'd like to see other people's thoughts on this.

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Repeal Section 230! Uhhh...why?

Okay, so this seems to be a big thing political issue right now.

Essentially, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is, according to Wikipedia:

Quote:

Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity from civil liabilities for information service providers that remove or restrict content from their services they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected", as long as they act "in good faith" in this action.

My take is that content providers such as You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and regular blogs (and maybe even this forum - although it may fall outside of US jurisdiction) can operate as they do because if someone puts something libellous on those platforms, the providers cannot be sued for it.

The caveats are to do with "in good faith". Presumably if they encouraged illegal or slanderous content to be uploaded, they would be in breach, but for some people, it seems they believe Section 230 means those platforms have NO RIGHT to restrict any content that is being uploaded.

On the right, people like Donald Trump and Lindsay Graham seem to have a problem with Section 230 because they see it as allowing the platforms to restrict content how they like and that editorial decisisons such as banning crazy loons from posting, is against the spirit of the law. (I have heard right-wing acquaintances actually argue that banning Alex Jones is illegal!)

On the left, some people seem to argue that Section 230 gives platforms too much leeway to do nothing about hate speech etc...

There also seems to be some anti-trust issues that some argue allow the platforms to curate the limits of acceptable speech however they want it, and given some platforms dominance, that arguably puts too much power in the hands of a few businesses.

Personally, I am of the opinion that it should stay as it is. But let's have a heated debate...

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Notepad has been updated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Breaking news today. Notepad has been updated.


You can now ..
Open a new window without having to do anything to the old one.
Setup a page for printing.
Zoom in and out.
Search with Bing
Paste the time and date
Change the font
Goto a line number.
Wrap around search.


Goodness gracious me.

This has all probably been out for a long time and I am just so used to the thing that has not changed in 20 years that I never noticed.

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Are all these recent threads about alleged miracles a miracle?

With this slew of threads about alleged miracles recently, is God performing a miracle and trying to save us with His message? If so, what is His message? What is God trying to tell us?

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BritIn - how to start the ball rolling

Now that the brexiters have got everything* they wanted and were promised isn’t it time to kick off the campaign to join the EU?

How do we start the ball rolling? Think a lot has to be aimed at the under 35s, so that as they move into positions of influence they’ll start to build the framework.

Could we see a new referendum within the next 10 years?







*Some promises not fulfilled, we lied, you should have known we would, so what you gonna do about it?

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Nashville bombing

I haven't seen a thread about this yet, so I thought I'd start one! :)

It was outside an AT&T buidling, so I'm speculating that it's either 5G nutcakes responsible, or since AT&T owns Warner Bros who owns CNN it could be Trumpiots out to get the fake news.

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How to understand QM. My Christmas present to you

Hi. It's me again.

You may know me from my previous thread "I don't think space is expanding".

Well, here's another idea for you. Background: when I first came up with this, it was in the context of photons work on electrons, and gravitons must work on photons, so .... what we see is actually the output of a machine like that?

At first I thought this was some wild ground breaking idea, but as I talked to others about it, it turns out this is what Plato and Kant and Leibniz and whole bunch of other people were on about, so much so that it's called the "perennial philosophy".

Ok, enough woo. Let's get to the sauce.

Turns out, this is also what Hugh Everett was on about.

* Everett, Hugh, (1957) "Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics", Reviews of Modern Physics, 29: 454462.

For some reason (mainly a dude named Dewitt), everyone thinks Everett was on about many worlds. The "Everett" interpretation and MWI are now synonymous. This is a big mistake.

Here is page 9:

Quote:

Observation We have the task of making deductions about the appearance of phenomena to observers which are considered as purely physical systems and are treated within the theory. It will suffice for our purposes to consider the observers to possess memo- ries (i.e., parts of a relatively permanent nature whose states are in correspon- dence with past experience of the observers). In order to make deductions about the past experience of an observer it is sufficient to deduce the present contents of the memory as it appears within the mathematical model. As models for observers we can, if we wish, consider automatically func- tioning machines, possessing sensory apparatus and coupled to recording devices capable of registering past sensory data and machine configurations. We can further suppose that the machine is so constructed that its present actions shall be determined not only by its present sensory data, but by the contents of its memory as well. Such a machine will then be capable of performing a sequence of observations (measurements), and furthermore of deciding upon its future experiments on the basis of past results. If we consider that current sensory data, as well as machine configuration, is im- mediately recorded in the memory, then the actions of the machine at a given instant can be regarded as a function of the memory contents only, and all relavant [sic] experience of the machine is contained in the memory. For such machines we are justified in using such phrases as "the machine has perceived A" or "the machine is aware of A" if the occurrence of A is represented in the memory, since the future behavior of the machine will be based upon the occurrence of A. In fact, all of the customary language of subjective experience is quite applicable to such machines, and forms the most natural and useful mode of expression when dealing with their behavior, as is well known to individuals who work with complex automata. The symbols A, B, ..., C, which we assume to be ordered time-wise, there- fore stand for memory configurations which are in correspondence with the past experience of the observer. These configurations can be regarded as punches in a paper tape, impressions on a magnetic reel, configurations of a relay switching circuit, or even configurations of brain cells. We require only that they be capable of the interpretation "The observer has experienced the succession of events A, B,..., C." The mathematical model seeks to treat the interaction of such observer systems with other physical systems (observations), within the framework of Process 2 wave mechanics, and to deduce the resulting memory configura- tions, which are then to be interpreted as records of the past experiences of the observers.

Ok... this dude is literally .... in 1957... saying stuff about modeling a neural network inside a particle simulation.

We clearly are a ways away from doing that in 2020.

No wonder no one had any idea of what he was really talking about.

Over the next 50 years, I think you'll see this concept of a mathematical model making measurements of itself from the inside become self-evident.

For now, people will think this is woo, and go on thinking that parallel universes are real.

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Explosion in Nashville

https://abc7news.com/nashville-explo...aking/9057334/

Explosion in Nashville, probably a car bomb. No suspects as of yet. I suspect Trumpists, but again, too early to do more than speculate.

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Major explosion in downtown Nashville

Explosion in Nashville that damaged dozens of buildings is believed to be an intentional act.

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/25/us/na...ion/index.html

The explosion, reported having been from an RV, has destroyed a large portion of Nashville's 2nd Avenue area, and sent several people to the hospital.

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China

We don't seem to have a thread on China.

People in the USA, and the older generation seem pretty scared of China, in my experience.

Yet I know people who visit there regularly, or have visited there, or live there, and they've loved it.

Is this an East/West thing that is outdated?

I have a theory that the more people in high-income countries talk as if they're scared, the more China might want to impose tariffs (for example) on the USA or UK or Australia.

Kind of like the fear reaps fear, though there should be no reason for fear.

China might be afraid the US is so afraid they will harm them, and vice versa.

Can't we all get along?

Happy Christmas, BTW. :)

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A supernatural hand mark?

Hi again. I found this miracle story where a man claimed that God or a Lebanese saint left a hand print mark on his arm. According to some sources he was examined by many doctors and they couldn't explain this burn.

http://www.visionsofjesuschrist.com/weeping361.htm

Quote:

Raymond returned to our world at around 3:35am. He then, tried to comprehend what has happened. Was it a dream? Or hallucination? He remained in this state of mind until he discovered the mark on his arm: a trace of five fingers imprinted by a strange flame of fire. Raymond immediately notified the Father superior of Annaya monastery, Tomas Mehanna, and the Maronite bishop of Beirut Abi Nader, who knew him since his childhood. They both asked Raymond to consult credible physician specialists and obtain from each a medical report that explains the cause of the mark. All reports stated that the cause couldn’t be established, and that the mark looks like a third degree burn without any pain or inflammation. Besides, the color was not typical of any deep burn that is usually gray or black, but instead, was pinkish and red. It was a precisely drawn lesion that healed within 5 days without any treatment.

This isn't a new story but unfortunately I couldn't find many discussions about this in skeptical circles. I don't know how much is this credible. Although this is similar to stigmata and many stigmatas can be faked, I'm not sure about this one.

Any ideas on how such marks could be formed? You can search Testimony Of Raymond Nader for more sources.

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Fumes may poison airline passengers.

More good news: Your plane may be gassing you.

Quote:

The air you breathe on airplanes comes directly from the jet engines. Known as bleed air, it is safe, unless there is a mechanical issue — a faulty seal, for instance. When that happens, heated jet engine oil can leak into the air supply, potentially releasing toxic gases into the plane. For decades, the airline industry and its regulators have known about these incidents — called fume events — and have maintained that they are rare and that the toxic chemical levels are too low to pose serious health risks. But a Times investigation found that vapors from oil and other fluids seep into planes with alarming frequency across all airlines, at times creating chaos and confusion: Flight attendants vomit and pass out. Passengers struggle to breathe. Children get rushed to hospitals. Pilots reach for oxygen masks or gasp for air from opened cockpit windows.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/tox...9-travel-woes/

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Oldest ever cover star on British GQ magazine

I saw this whilst out shopping, and it brought a small tear to my eye. Captain Sir Tom Moore, who raised £32 million for the NHS, has been honoured with a Man of the Year award, for Inspiration, and appears on the cover of the British GQ magazine, at the age of 100.

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Fantasy and science-fiction art

An article from “Artnet” in my morning news feed:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ta...sy-art-1933523

Mostly plugging a book on the subject.... But also about the quality of this material.

I’ve been a fan of fantasy and sci-fi art for years; each year, I get the latest issue of “Spectrum”, the collection of the winners of the annual competition.
The images have always displayed all the elements of art we’d expect, from sheer draftsmanship and composition to story-telling.

Whenever I hear complaints about the quality of “modern” art I always point out that there are artists producing material that stands up to much of the “classic” art, but that it simply doesn’t make as much news as a “shark carcass in a tank” sort of avant-gard material.

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Does it all come down to pascal's wager for Christians?

It's been quite some time. I didn't know this forum was still around. I'm not an intellectual, as most of the people who remember me know, so please bear with me.

Anyway, something has really been bothering me. I had a friend who was a born again Christian at one time (yes, I capitalize the word Christian, but it's mostly so spell check doesn't correct me,) and he must have sent me youtube clips of Christian testimony stories, and them arguing with people on the street they see who disagree with them. They debate atheists in some of these videos and try to convert them. Their logic is flawed, and very simplistic. "Well, how do you think that plane or car exists. It was made by somebody, right? You wouldn't say it just appeared, or that you didn't know where it came from. The same can be said for us, the universe, everything."

Of course I could talk to somebody who built a plane or a car. I can see them. I can't see God. "Well, I talk to God all the time! Something can't come from nothing, now can it?" Is their counter argument. Of course if you asked Stephen Hawking he would give you a quantum equation that would show you something could come from nothing, but I'm over simplifying this theory to say the least. But even if the "something can't come from nothing" argument had validity, I can still say "How do you jump to the conclusion then that a Christian God is the creator? Why not a Muslim God, or the Flying Spaghetti monster?" Then the friendly Australian man would say "Look at all this creation around you. Now if you died tomorrow in this rebellious phase of your life and haven't accepted Christ you'll go to hell."

It really all comes down to this, doesn't it? They do know they could be wrong it seems, but they never say it, and are just hedging their bets. It can never be about an actual experience they had, or some groundbreaking historical evidence that what the bible said is "The Truth."
But Pascal's Wager is a powerful motivator. It even hooks me in sometimes, and my agnostic mind goes "oh, well..they have got a point there. there's a possibility they're right, even though it's a very slim one."

But I bring this up here, because many of you have a very strong self belief, and aren't swayed by these arguments. And also I may be missing something. Anyway, thanks for listening.

(apologies for grammatical errors. I should have capitalized Pascal in the title. D'oh!)

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Minnesota Town Grants Church A ‘Whites Only’ Permit

Quote:

The City Council of Murdock, Minnesota recently granted a conditional use permit allowing a religious group to declare its new church a strictly “Whites Only” place of worship. The decision by city leaders has divided the small farming town into heated debate. Outraged residents, defensive leaders of the religious group, city attorneys and the mayor himself have all weighed in.

Quote:

The public controversy surrounding the new church began when the AFA was forced to apply for a zoning permit to use the newly purchased building as a place of worship. This was because the church sat inside a residential zone. Despite opposition voiced by residents at the public hearing, the Murdock City Council voted to grant the church a permit to use the building as a worship place—and enforce its “Whites Only” restriction. Residents have been outraged by the council’s decision.

https://percolately.com/minnesota-ch...s-only-permit/

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Tell me about Flash

As announced long ago, Flash Player will not be supported after Dec. 31 (what it calls its "end of life date,") and will actually block Flash content starting Jan. 12. What does this mean for the user? What will web sites no longer be able to provide, and what will I no longer be able to see? Or is this already so obsolete that it's rarely used now?
https://www.adobe.com/products/flash...d-of-life.html

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There Really Was Some Voter Fraud!

Pennsylvania man charged with registering dead relatives to vote for Trump

Quote:

A Pennsylvania man is facing up to 19 years in prison after prosecutors say he admitted to illegally casting a ballot in the general election for President Donald Trump as his dead mother and also registering his dead mother-in-law to vote with the intent to do the same.

Not Pennsylvania!

One of the states that stole the election from President Trump..

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Physiotherapy. Scientifically Sound?

I have not had a good experience at the hands of physiotherapists and I wonder if the treatment is scientifically sound.

My experiences:

1. Was referred to a physiotherapist after doing something to my upper back and neck. After 3 treatments there was no improvement. The physio guy spent much of his time telling me that manipulation, as done by chiropractors and such, was BS. I went to a GP, recommended by a friend, who did manipulation. In 5 minutes the doc cured me.

2. I hurt my shoulder and arm in a skiing accident and was referred to a physiotherapist. Treatment gave me no relief that I noticed and I doubt it accelerated my recovery.

3. When my office chair collapsed two weeks ago, I suffered bruising around the spine. My doctor suggested I get physiotherapy, although I had been improving. I suffered more pain during this treatment, than I have for some time. I don't think I will go back.

There are many years between these experiences.

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Eather One: Friction Powered Aircraft

Quote:

Eather One: The Electric Plane That Uses Air Friction To Generate Power by Amit Malewar These days, many aircraft manufacturing companies are focusing on developing the next generation of electric and hybrid-powered aircraft. However, the Warsaw-based designer, Michal Bonikowski, came up with a potentially revolutionary aeronautical project, which could undermine the need for traditional engines, bulky fuel tanks, and large batteries for propulsion. The concept, called “Eather One,” uses friction between the air and the high speed of the machine as the main energy source that can be recycled as needed. ... The Eather One looks like any other airplane but would be equipped with triboelectric nanogenerators in the wings to help harness external mechanical energy – the friction generated from vibrations in the airframe and bend of the wings. These nanogenerators then convert mechanical energy directly into electrical energy.

Triboelectricity...

Is that like Piezoelectricity?

I can imagine that working.

The pilot and copilot looks at the weather report, on it they read sever
thunderstorm approaching with hail the size of basket balls falling out
of the sky.

They both agree the turbulence will produce enough electricity to keep
the plane in the air. The pilot tells passengers to buckle their seat belts
tightly as American Airlines Flight 666 taxies to the runway.

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Batch File assistance needed

Where I work we use simple batch files for user login scripts that simply have net use to map the network drives for them. It has been a long time since I have had to mess with batch files and don't remember as much as I would like. There are two things I would like to do, 1. Have the file continue on if it hits an error mapping a drive, and 2. Auto answer yes if it is asking to overwrite an existing drive.

Anyone know how to do this?

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Missouri couple arrested for murder in bizarre beatings case

There isn't a tremendous amount of information about this case that's been released yet, but I can't help but get the impression from what is available that there is possibly more going on here. Even if not, the description of the crimes is fairly sensational.

Ethan Mast (35) and Kourtney Aumen (21) have been arrested in Benton County, Missouri, and charged with 2nd degree murder, several accounts of assault, and sexual abuse in the beatings and abuse of a neighboring family which led to the death of the victimized family's four-year-old daughter. The adults of the victim-family have been identified as James and Mary Mast, both 28. Whether the victims are related to the perpetrator, though, has not yet been established.

According to the filed probable cause statement, two weeks ago Ethan and Kourtney began entering the victim-family's home daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and viciously beating the mother, her four-year-old daughter, and two-year-old son with wooden spoons, leather belts, and other objects while the father was forced to watch. It is alleged the daughter had also been sexually abused as well. The father does not seem to have been a consistent target of the abuse, although he alleges he was beaten a few times and threatened with a gun if he tried to intervene or even showed compassion for his wife and children whilst the beatings were occurring. A third child, a baby, does not appear to have been harmed. According to the father, Ethan and Kourtney declared that his wife "had a demon", and that his children might also be possessed by demons if the problem was not "taken care of" in the manner prescribed by the offending couple.

According to the affadavit,

Quote:

On Saturday, Mast and Aumen once again arrived at about 8:00 a.m. at which time Mast began beating the two-year-old boy with a wooden spoon. Then they left and returned around 5:00 p.m., and began beating the girl with a leather belt as she begged her family for help which was not forthcoming. She was then forced outside and made to get into a pond and stand in the water. Then the girl was held underwater by an unidentified adult, her father being forced to watch. Then Mast beat the little girl with his fist and a belt and continued beating the little boy with the spoon. The girl, wet and beaten, was left on the bank to freeze. Then they all went into the house, at which point Mast and Aumen left.

After the offenders left, the family went back out and collected their daughter, bringing her inside and, apparently, finally calling the police when it was clear she was dead. Police also found the mother and the two-year-old boy with extensive bruising and injuries all over their bodies. They were taken to the hospital, where they recovered and were eventually released.

...

I don't find much reason to doubt any of the facts as alleged yet. The family was clearly being terrorized, and under such conditions I'm not one to question, for instance, why the father didn't a Manly-Man Up and Manly-ly protect his family like a Real Man should; in my experience things are rarely that simple. But I'm still very curious as to why, whether the victims are blood-related to the perpetrators or not, they wouldn't have called the police after the first incident. It makes me think that these beatings might just be the climax of a longer-term campaign of increasing violence; like a frog-boil kind of situation.

I suppose we will learn more in coming days.

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Kilauea Volcano erupts

First real activity since 2018. So far confined to Halemaumau crater, replacing the water lake in the bottom with lava.
USGS sites are being hammered, but here's their twitter.

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Journalist Quits Job and Leaves Husband to be with "Life Partner" Martin Shkreli

https://www.elle.com/life-love/a3502...ro-journalist/

Quote:

When Shkreli found out about this article, though, he stopped communicating with her... Smythe [the crazy love bird] thinks it’s because he’s worried about fallout for her. While she waits to hear from him, she monitors Google Alerts for his name... because inmates must place outgoing calls and can’t accept incoming ones—hopes one day he will call or reply to one of her emails. “It’s completely out of her control,” Haak says; all she can do is “sit around and wait and hope.” Smythe has only one photo of the two of them, propped next to her bed. Shkreli, his arm around Smythe, has a wide-open smile. “Doesn’t he look human there?” Smythe says, laughing... I tell Smythe I’ll need to ask Shkreli for comment. “Maybe this will be a reason for him to reach out to me,” she says. Later, when I relay Shkreli’s statement—“Mr. Shkreli wishes Ms. Smythe the best of luck in her future endeavors”—to Smythe via video chat, she says, “That’s sweet,” quietly, not convincingly.

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Fiscal Stimulus Measures

What are they, and do they work to benefit nations and individuals?


The US appear to have agreed on a stimulus bill.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/20/mcco...ulus-deal.html

"The relief plan includes direct payments of $600 to most adults and $600 per child, Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement."

There is more at the link.


This is what Australia has done in their stimulus plan.

https://treasury.gov.au/coronavirus


Would anyone argue that a stimulus plan has a direct or indirect effect on coronavirus abatement measures?

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Covid-19 and Politics pt 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlennB (Post 13332280) He's clearly satirising CTists, and you fell for it.

The incompetent mod/pseudo-admin zooterkin moved my answer to AAH with a lot of other stuff he didn't like. See there. I complained about that in a PM that was harsh, but not abusive. Of course this post is "off-topic" as well, so zooterkin who was abusive towards me will be able to find an excuse for banning me. And frankly, it has long been overdue. Darat, you have my greatest respect, also some mods like Agatha, but this is going too far. Your fringe forum will have to live without me from now on.

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Mike Pence Aiming at 2024?

It looks to me as though he's trying to paint himself in different colours to his boss, with the publicised vaccination and statements thereafter.

I wonder if he's thinking "Biden was Veep, then President..."

It seems he's been very much in the background until the past couple of weeks and now taking centre stage a bit.

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Time for modifying apportionment

As it presently stands Americans who live in urban United States are grossly under represented in the United States Congress.

I propose a new method for apportionment. This would be non-starter if the Republicans hold on to the Senate.

Each State would be entitled to as many representatives divided by the population of the least populous state. Each district must be of relative size in population, they must be contiguous. Bodies of water are to be ignored.
I'd also like to add language that would put an end to gerrymandering. A new representative would be granted as soon as the population increased the size of the least populous state. Presently that is Wyoming, population 578,759.

This would result in Congress growing from 435 representatives to 545 House members.
These states would gain the following number of House members.
California 15 ,Texas 14, Florida 10, New York 6, North Carolina 5

Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania would each gain 4 seats.

Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, New Jersey, Washington, Arizona would each gain 3 House seats

Massachusetts, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Wisconsin, Colorado, Louisiana, Oregon would each gain 2 seats.


Minnesota, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa, Nevada, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kansas, Idaho would all gain 1 seat.

New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, North and South Dakota, Delaware, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming would see no change in representation, Rhode Island which would lose 1 Congressperson.


Thoughts on changing apportionment?

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Audio books from auto-generated voices

Interesting development, Google has launched a new "text to voice" technology for publishers. It's using "machine learning" to make the narration sound more natural than previous text to speech systems. (https://chromeunboxed.com/auto-gener...gle-play-books)

The examples are all PD works and are free to listen. I've listened to some of the Dracula audio book and whilst it is better than previous generations it still seems to struggle to get the right intonation and cadence especially with the run-on sentences:


Dracula, Bram Stoker.
https://play.google.com/store/audiob...AQAAAEDsdXE1jM

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[Continuation] Trans Women are not Women (Part 5)

Thread continued from http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=346735

Posted By:Darat

Quote:

Originally Posted by 8enotto (Post 13330425) So you disagree trans is a personal decision. Please LondonJohn tell us what part of gender dysphoria OBLIGATES a person to start hormone treatment and the transition to what they didn't start out as. Enlighten us. Help us understand this dysphoria.

Transitioning is not a necessary part of being trans. So that's a big fail

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Please Enjoy Your Flight with Toxic Airways

This is something I've never given much thought to - beyond the fact that aeroplane air is lousy to begin with. (I could easily have been a nose as a career and to me, aeroplane air has a unique smell that always reminds me of The Langoliers - dead and stale)

I presume someone actually checks to make sure the air is airworthy - it is fairly essential for the operation of the plane - and never give it a second thought.

In fact, it seems that testing air quality on planes isn't just not done, it's strenuously argued against by manufacturers!

https://www.latimes.com/projects/tox...9-travel-woes/

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Space Force are now called 'Guardians'

During the U.S. Space Force first anniversary celebration, VP Pence announced that "Henceforth they shall be known as Guardians."


Standing in front of a Star Trek logo, using the name of a Netflix TV show doesn't look stupid at all.

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It's All Your Fault You Evil Secularists

Why American Children Stopped Believing in God

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/...ieving-in-god/

Quote:

It turns out that religiosity is usually determined very early in life. All the data suggest that, by and large, kids brought up in religious households stay religious and kids who aren’t, don’t. Consequently, childhood religiosity has been, and remains, the most important indicator of America’s religious trajectory. The story of religious decline in America is not the story of adults consciously rejecting the faith of their forefathers: It’s the story of each generation receiving a more secular upbringing than the generation preceding it. What accounts for this secularization of childhood over time? Taxpayer dollars.

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A frivolous question for the astronomers on the board

I'm doing a bit of roleplay about being an asteroid miner in a solar system other than this one. So I did some research on extrasolar planets, and extrasolar asteroid belts, and the best fit I could find was Epsilon Eridani. It's (likely) got at least one extrasolar planet, two asteroid belts, and a debris disc. So a prime candidate for someone exploiting the environment for material.

Furthermore, there's the potential for a planet to be habitable and, most importantly, the name sounds lovely and science fiction-y.

That's probably why a bit of research has revealed that pretty much every science fiction property uses it (including ones that I'm very familiar with, but obviously didn't pay close enough attention to the settings of). That blunts its appeal somewhat.

So my question is this - to the people on this board who know a lot more about astronomy than I do and who will either know this kind of thing off the top of their heads or be able to point me towards better resources than the ones I've found so far - if you wanted to roleplay an asteroid miner in a different solar system, then which one would you choose? The name is probably the most important factor. Something that when people hear it, they go "ooh, that sounds all cool and futuristic", but also preferably something that isn't prominent in science fiction already. Wolf 359, for example, is very prominent in Star Trek. I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to pay homage to anything.

Things like whether or not it's actually habitable, or if it's even vaguely close to our solar system don't matter so much. There's always domes, space-stations, anti-gravity boots, FTL travel, etc. Although there being a planet of some kind to use as a base would be a plus, even if it's one that couldn't possibly actually be used as a base, like a gas giant. In fact, a lack of habitability might be a bit of an advantage, as I'm trying to evoke a hard, lonely existence, fending off pirates/raiders, etc. albeit in a sort of bubblegum way.

This is kind of a last-ditch effort on my part. I'm almost certainly going to end up sticking with Epsilon Eridani b, because the reason it's so widely used is that it ticks so many boxes. But there's no harm in asking people with knowledge of the subject whether they happen to know off the top of their heads of a good alternative, or resources I can use that aren't quite so easy to turn up just by using google.

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A Silent Night Except For The Jingling Of Bells.

When shopping at this time of year our ears are buffeted, by a mixed collection of Christmas song. It amuses me considerably when I hear Silent Night followed by Jingle Bells. The two carols celebrating completely different events.

My past religious brother was most annoyed, at what he saw as the highjacking of Christmas, by Santa Claus. My counter argument, that it was in fact Christians that did the highjacking, when deciding to make December 25, the time of the birth of The Son, instead of the birth of The Sun, was not received well.

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Machine translation

Machine translation used to be pretty awful, but new technologies such as deep learning have made significant improvements. To be sure, it still makes mistakes, but it's a lot better than it was just a couple of years ago.

Here is an online tool you can use to translate from one language to another.

https://www.deepl.com/en/translator

My second language is Japanese. Here is a sample machine translation of the following news article in Japanese:
https://mainichi.jp/articles/2020121...0m/030/138000c

I will highlight the errors that I can spot.

Quote:

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Announces Cause of Mauritius Heavy Oil Spill On July 18, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (Tokyo), the operator of the large cargo ship Wakasio (inconsistent romanisation, see below), which ran aground and spilled heavy oil off Mauritius in the western Indian Ocean, announced the results of its investigation into the cause of the accident. MOL (Tokyo), which was operating the ship, announced the results of its investigation into the cause of the accident on April 18. (redundant and the date is wrong) The company said that the crew members approached the island to use their cell phones from the ship and did not have detailed charts of the site, so they did not know the exact location and depth of the water, which led to the stranding. 　The Wakashio was on its way to Brazil from China via Singapore. Vessels passing through the waters off Mauritius generally keep their distance to the extent that they do not enter the territorial waters (within about 22 kilometers from the shore). However, two days before the Wakasio ran aground, the ship's crew slightly adjusted its course to get closer to the coast in order to communicate by cell phone. 　When it approached the island, it was closer to the coast than expected because it had not prepared detailed charts. The depth of the water at the site was misidentified as more than 200 meters when it was actually only 10 meters. Radar and visual confirmation of the situation was also insufficient. The Mauritius coast guard said that just before the accident, they noticed the Wakashio approaching the island abnormally and warned it several times by radio. However, according to MOL, there is no record of the Wakashio receiving such warnings. 　In addition, there are records of the Wakasio making abnormal approaches to the coast off Indonesia and Taiwan within two months prior to the accident, and it is possible that the Wakasio was using a cell phone on that occasion as well. 　The shipping authorities in Panama, Central America, where the ship is registered, have pointed out that there was a "lack of supervision and monitoring and carelessness" on the part of the crew, and that the accident could have been avoided if proper measures had been taken. The government of Mauritius is continuing to investigate the cause of the accident, and the Japanese government is also cooperating by sending an investigation team from the National Transportation Safety Board to the area. The Indian captain and two others have been arrested on suspicion of negligence of safe navigation. 　The Washio was owned and managed by a subsidiary of Nagashiki Kisen (Okayama Prefecture) and chartered by MOL. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) is planning to strengthen its involvement in crew training and its support and monitoring of the ship's operation at its head office as measures to prevent a recurrence. 　In the accident, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil leaked into the sea. The majority of the oil was recovered by contractors and volunteers, but there are concerns about the medium- to long-term effects of the accident, as the site is an area with valuable ecosystems such as coral and mangrove forests. (Mitsuyoshi Hirano, Johannesburg)

Overall, pretty darn good, wouldn't you say? Except for that one redundant sentence with the wrong date. Pretty readable, and you can see what the problem was.

Feel free to try out other languages and post your results.

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Machine translation

Machine translation used to be pretty awful, but new technologies such as deep learning have made significant improvements. To be sure, it still makes mistakes, but it's a lot better than it was just a couple of years ago.

Here is an online tool you can use to translate from one language to another.

https://www.deepl.com/en/translator

My second language is Japanese. Here is a sample machine translation of the following news article in Japanese:
https://mainichi.jp/articles/2020121...0m/030/138000c

I will highlight the errors that I can spot.

Quote:

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Announces Cause of Mauritius Heavy Oil Spill On July 18, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (Tokyo), the operator of the large cargo ship Wakasio (inconsistent romanisation, see below), which ran aground and spilled heavy oil off Mauritius in the western Indian Ocean, announced the results of its investigation into the cause of the accident. MOL (Tokyo), which was operating the ship, announced the results of its investigation into the cause of the accident on April 18. (redundant and the date is wrong) The company said that the crew members approached the island to use their cell phones from the ship and did not have detailed charts of the site, so they did not know the exact location and depth of the water, which led to the stranding. 　The Wakashio was on its way to Brazil from China via Singapore. Vessels passing through the waters off Mauritius generally keep their distance to the extent that they do not enter the territorial waters (within about 22 kilometers from the shore). However, two days before the Wakasio ran aground, the ship's crew slightly adjusted its course to get closer to the coast in order to communicate by cell phone. 　When it approached the island, it was closer to the coast than expected because it had not prepared detailed charts. The depth of the water at the site was misidentified as more than 200 meters when it was actually only 10 meters. Radar and visual confirmation of the situation was also insufficient. The Mauritius coast guard said that just before the accident, they noticed the Wakashio approaching the island abnormally and warned it several times by radio. However, according to MOL, there is no record of the Wakashio receiving such warnings. 　In addition, there are records of the Wakasio making abnormal approaches to the coast off Indonesia and Taiwan within two months prior to the accident, and it is possible that the Wakasio was using a cell phone on that occasion as well. 　The shipping authorities in Panama, Central America, where the ship is registered, have pointed out that there was a "lack of supervision and monitoring and carelessness" on the part of the crew, and that the accident could have been avoided if proper measures had been taken. The government of Mauritius is continuing to investigate the cause of the accident, and the Japanese government is also cooperating by sending an investigation team from the National Transportation Safety Board to the area. The Indian captain and two others have been arrested on suspicion of negligence of safe navigation. 　The Washio was owned and managed by a subsidiary of Nagashiki Kisen (Okayama Prefecture) and chartered by MOL. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) is planning to strengthen its involvement in crew training and its support and monitoring of the ship's operation at its head office as measures to prevent a recurrence. 　In the accident, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil leaked into the sea. The majority of the oil was recovered by contractors and volunteers, but there are concerns about the medium- to long-term effects of the accident, as the site is an area with valuable ecosystems such as coral and mangrove forests. (Mitsuyoshi Hirano, Johannesburg)

Overall, pretty darn good, wouldn't you say? Except for that one redundant sentence with the wrong date. Pretty readable, and you can see what the problem was.

Feel free to try out other languages and post your results.

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Malka Leifer back to Australia

It's taken a long time but it looks like it's happening at last.


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-...ition/12992346

Quote:

Israel's Justice Minister said he has signed an extradition order to send former Melbourne school principal Malka Leifer back to Australia to face 74 charges of sexual abuse. Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn said that after a years-long legal saga, it was Israel's "moral responsibility" to extradite Ms Leifer.

We don't hear much about sex abusing women.

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Mass Child Abuse in New Zealand Care Homes

Some quarter of a million people in New Zealand - many of them of Maori ethnicity - claim to have suffered traumatic abuse whilst children in care homes.

Quote:

A quarter of a million New Zealanders held in state care suffered some form of abuse, a landmark inquiry has found, with the true number believed to be higher. The royal commission into abuse in state care is investigating historic abuse of children, young adults and vulnerable adults by state-run institutions between 1950 and 1999, as well as in affiliated religious institutions, such as church-run orphanages. <snip> On Wednesday the commission released its interim report, which found that up to 250,000 people suffered abuse during the time period investigated. A total of 655,000 passed through the doors of orphanages, homes for people with disabilities and mental health institutions among others over the same time period. So far, 1,900 survivors of abuse have contacted the commission, and they expect thousands more to do so, describing the extent of abuse in state care as “significant”, and more than originally thought. <snip> Those most frequently abused by the state were society’s “most disadvantaged or marginalised segments of the community … particularly from Māori whanau [family], Pacific families, children from impoverished backgrounds, disabled people and women and girls”. Survivor Annasophia Calman told the commission: “The abuse I suffered in care has blackened my entire life.” Another, Mike Ledingham, said in a submission: “It’s not water under the bridge. “The pain is still there. The bishop spoke about closure, but how can you have closure when you wake up having a nightmare?” The report found that many children were removed from their homes due to issues related to poverty, but were returned from state care to their families severely traumatised. Māori were over-represented in the number of children entering state care and the number of those who suffered abuse, and the “discriminatory attitudes” of officials contributed to this, the report found. <snip> Physical and sexual abuse was the most common type of abuse reported to the commission, but abuse also included the use of medication and medical acts [electro-convulsive therapy] as punishment, unjustified solitary confinement and isolation, improper strip searches and vaginal examinations, verbal abuse, racial slurs and “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”, as well as widespread neglect. Those who complained were routinely silenced or abused again as punishment, and the commission also found attempts at active cover-ups. <snip> The report said it must be read and digested in the light of continuing cases of abuse in care today, including the fact that Māori children continue to be over-represented in the state care system, making up 69% of children in state care, and 81% of children abused in care, despite representing only 16% of New Zealand’s population of five million. Glenis Philip-Barbara, assistant Māori commissioner for children, said the “devastating” findings reinforced the call for the phased closure of large care and protection residences, and the eventual abolition of the four youth justice detention centres. “It’d be a mistake to think that what happened in the past is not still happening today,” Philip-Barbara said. <snip> The total cost of abuse to society and individuals between the years 1950-2019 was NZ$217bn, the commission found. Under previous governments, complaints from people in state care regarding abuse were handled by the Ministry of Social Development, an arrangement the Human Rights Commission criticised for lacking independence and being “ humiliating and drawn-out” for survivors.

GUARDIAN


Question: How is this possible in an advanced civilised society, such as New Zealand, often held up to be a model of dream citizenship, and how to put it right?

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Questions about juries in trials specific E&W

Split from here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=348266

Posted By:Darat

I've never actually been a part of, or directly seen, how the jury thing works, except in fiction. My understanding is these guys don't spell out their reasons. This case probably illustrates why that's a terrible idea!

You don't expect a random set of folks off the street to present detailed nuanced explanations for their judgments, which is what you expect (and often do get) from judges, but surely knowing why the jury decided what they decided -- and in fact what exactly they meant by it -- adds some entirely necessary context to the decision.

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Disappearing Santa Hat

I really need an answer from a skeptic. This just happened about 20 minutes ago. I had a Santa hat that I left on the couch. It was there for maybe 2 hours, at least I know for a fact it was, and walked in and out of the living room several times between 8-10. But at around 10, i started watching a movie with my sister. I was on the couch the whole time, didn't move once. I am 99.999% sure the Santa hat was beside me. I have a memory of looking at it, in the dark with the TV on. The room was only dark during the movie, when I didn't move, and I haven't had the hat since the first when I put it in the closet by mistake and just never felt like getting it. Ok, but the big part is that I walked into my bedroom at around 11 when the movie was over (it was a TV special but same thing) I saw it sitting on my bed. Now, between 8-10 I walked into my room at least 5-10 times. I don't have a memory of moving it, and my sister nor my mom saw me do so, but it is possible I moved it and forgot about it, which I've doing a lot recently. Yet that doesn't explain why I remember seeing it. It's really, really, scaring me. I'm kinda freaking out right now, and I know I can't get a definitive answer, I just could really use some speculation about this

Edit: Now that I think about it, between 8-10, the last time that I know for a fact that I saw it, I only got up once, and I did go in that area, but I don't remember walking over far enough to grab rhe hat, as I wouldve had to walk over at least another 5-10 feet

Edit 2: Just had the Hat in my room, right next to a shirt on my bed. I was laying down. I got up once but I can't remember if it was before or after I had placed it here. It's not there. Found it in the same place I thought saw it the other time. I'm scared out of my mind. No one's playing a prank on me, I was with the whole family the whole time, except for my dad but he was in my parents room and never got up once. We only have two hats and one has a much bigger pom pom, so it's very easy to tell the difference between the two. My mom and sister remember seeing the Hat before the movie started so I couldn't have hallucinated the whole thing, it's still possible I hallucinated or misremebered one part, but it was there at one point in time. And for the second one I know for a fact I had it there because I even took a picture, as i was so scared what happened the first time might happen again and i wanted to be skeptical and sure I had it. Now, I don't know when I went in the other room, I just know that i walked to around that area of the couch , talked to my mom, and said told her I was going to bed. I don't remember, at least 100% if I saw the Hat when I went into my room, as my memory there is a bit foggy since I cut the lights off and i tend to forget when i can't see well. But look, I'm really, really scared right now. I don't think this is real anymore, I think this may be a simulation. I know I've had lots of these issues over the last couple months as a result of my depression and anxiety, but those times I had possible explanations, this time I have people who saw it with me and I can't wrap my head around either one

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Texas ex-cop arrested over October "voter fraud" assault

Today, former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre was arrested by Houston police and charged with felony assault after an investigation into an incident where Aguirre and criminal associates forced an air conditioning repairman to the ground and stole his equipment truck, claiming the victim was the mastermind of a massive voter fraud scheme.

In the early morning hours of October 19th, the HVAC technician was driving his box truck in south Houston when he was struck and forced to the side of the road by a Aguirre's SUV, whereupon Aguirre pointed a weapon at him and ordered him to the ground at gunpoint while two other men, arriving in separate vehicles, drove off with his box truck. Immediately after this, a Houston patrol officer by luck happened to come upon the scene and ordered Aguirre away from the victim.

What Aguirre had to say to the Houston police by way of explanation was...quite the story.

According to one-time Police Captain Aguirre, he was presently a member of a group of citizens calling themselves the "Liberty Center", and they were investigating a massive election fraud scheme. The HVAC technician was the head of the operation, which was funded by Mark Zuckerberg to the tune of several million dollars, and was running it out of a shed behind his mobile home, where thousands of fraudulent ballots were being filled out and signed - specifically by Hispanic children, because their fingerprints wouldn't show up in any databases if authorities ever tried to fingerprint the ballots. Aguirre and the Liberty Center had both the mobile home and the shed behind it under 24-hour surveillance for four days, and had finally decided to take down the technician when he left the house on October 19th with what they were certain was a cargo of boxes containing 750,000 fake ballots in the back of his truck.

While being interrogated, Aguirre gave the detective at the scene a thinly-veiled warning:

Quote:

The defendant told Affiant that Affiant can be a hero or part of the problem. The defendant told Affiant, "I just hope you're a patriot."

A few minutes after the scene was broken up, officers located the technician's truck a few blocks away. There was nothing in the truck except air conditioning tools.

The technician also gave police permission to have a look around his home and property. There were no boxes of ballots, or crews of Mexican kids. The shed was full of "ordinary household items".

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45th - the PC Presidency

In this thread I would love for you to help me collect all the ways in which the US has become more PC during the 45th Presidency.
What progress has been made despite the best efforts of the Administration?



Examples:

- Washington 'Football Team'
- Mississippi Flag redesign
- Epstein and Maxwell arrested
- Weinstein in prison
- Military bases with Confederacy names being renamed
- statutes of Confederate Leaders and Slavers being removed
- progress on Gun Control ( https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/tr...n-gun-control/ ), including a ban on bump stocks

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Festivus Pole Added to Municipal Holiday Display

Just down the street from me, the city of Clawson, Michigan, has added a Festivus pole to their holiday display.

http://oaklandcounty115.com/2020/12/...iday-displays/


And they are actually planning a public Airing of Grievances as part of the fun.

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John Le Carre / Dies at 89

Very sad news.

Here is the BBC page.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55297558

Fans of movies taken from his novels will always think of Sir Alec Guiness as George Smiley and more recently Gary Oldman. However Smiley was also played in earlier films by Rupert Davies (The Spy who came from the cold) and Denholm Elliott ( A Murder of Quality.) Indeed, Christian Bale, was still a young actor in A Murder of Quality, and good on Patrick Stewart, for playing Karla, in a non speaking role in Smiley's People. .

It would seem from facts about his life, that his spy novel "A Perfect Spy" was a sort of autobiography.

Attached Images

	Karla and Smiley.jpg (24.5 KB)
	George Smiley.jpg (11.5 KB)

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Bluetooth broadcast to 10-20 sets of headphones

I wonder if there is a cost-effective solution to the following minor problem.

Our gym hosts Spin (indoor cycling) classes on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday when the spin instructor attends in person and plays a Spotify playlist via a big, loud, Bluetooth-enabled PA speaker. While the class is on, the other music is switched off in the gym - for 45 minutes.

On Sundays, he broadcasts a class on Facebook live and sends out a link to the playlist. A few of us have taken to going to the gym, running Facebook and Spotify on a PC, connecting to a big screen TV by HDMI and then either using the TV's speaker or connecting to the Bluetooth-enabled PA speaker. It would be pretty obnoxious to ask for all music to be silenced for an unofficial class so it can be difficult to hear.

It would be ideal if, instead of broadcasting to a single Bluetooth-enabled PA speaker, we could instead broadcast to everyone's Bluetooth headphones. Is there a cost-effective way of doing this ?

If I can find a way of doing this, we could also have unofficial Spin classes over the Christmas period when all classes are usually suspended. We could instead revisit some of the Sunday classes - or indeed one of the 40 or so classes delivered during the first lockdown.

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WSJ Op-Ed: Jill Biden should not use the "Dr." honorific.

//I hem-hawed under whether or not to put this here or in politics. If the topic shifts more politically I don't object to it being moved//

Long story short.

On Friday Joseph Epstein, a long-time political writer, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal admonishing Jill Biden for using the "Dr." honorific.

The piece has achieved a huge amount of backlash.

Earlier today the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Page Editor Paul Gigot published a response/follow up defending the article.

Original Opinion Piece: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-ther...-d-11607727380

Follow Up Editorial Statement on the Piece: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bid...nion_lead_pos5

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No, we will not have sentient robots any time soon

In a bizarre subject, some wonder if sexbots can consent.

This is not about simulating consent as part of some bizarre sex behavior, but concerns about immorality, given some roboticists thing robots will achieve "sentience within a few decades".

This is about the existance of a consciousness, an internal mind, and not an automaton, no matter how intelligent it may be.

And there is nothing remotely like that on the drawing table. Nobody even knows how the subjective conscious experience even arises from the matter and energies of our brains, much less how to duplicate it.

It is a real, physical phenomenon, and therefore arises somehow, and is not a function of mere interpretations of atoms and electrons moving around.

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A miracle in photo or what?

Hi everybody. Today I was searching "Miracle of holy fire" on the internet, after opening several websites I opened quora.com/Does-a-miracle-of-spontaneous-holy-fire-occur-in-a-Jerusalem-church-every-year. A woman in a comment claimed that she saw a fire which appeared to her in a form of a descending dove, although she didn't capture that exact part. However she captured something interesting and posted this picture as a proof. qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c5d3413aa63b3e23dc96c56a7f92470f

Should I be cynical and dismiss such claims? Her profile is quite interesting, she claims that she was a research scientist for NASA with IQ 185, and from the other side she is deeply religious. She claims that she experienced many miracles. You can dig in her profile and comments.

What do you think about this? :confused:

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How far is this going to go?

Fox News now has stories about state legislatures calling for secession. Mike Flynn is calling for martial law and to redo the election.

How far is this going to go? Might we actually have a state legislature vote on articles of secession? What if Trump does start talking about an election do over enforced by the Army?

I think Democrats and rational Republicans, and perhaps the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff need to start having discussions about how to deal with "what if?".

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Zodiac 340 cipher has been cracked

The Zodiac 340 cipher has been cracked by a private team who has been working on it for years using software algorithms. Not unexpectedly it doesn't say anything substantially different from the previous ciphers.

I haven't seen a report yet on how the cipher works, but a team member did mention that it involves something more than matching symbols to letters, which is what was expected.

It has long been questioned whether the cipher may be unreversible or simply random symbols, making it uncrackable. This could be an interesting breakthrough for cryptography.

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The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Resume (Post 13323114) [YT]39zlwlhd6ls[/YT] CNN Goes Inside Hospital Trump Called 'Fake' and 'A Scam' Yeah, they should name the vaccine after Trump all right. Trump tweets while first responders toil and record numbers die. We really do need a Trump vaccine; one that protects us from him.

Donald Trump should experience physical pain for pulling BS stunts like this.

Continued from here. You can quote or respond to posts from that or previous parts.

Posted By:zooterkin

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Roswell Relevations Coming!!!

NOT OF THIS WORLD Roswell investigator found ‘indestructible debris not made by human hands’ at ‘alien’ crash site, his journals reveal

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/134478...urnals-reveal/

I know it's The Sun but there other sites reporting this as well. I picked The Sun because of the amusing typo: "According to Marcel, some beans were etched with ‘alien writing’."

The reported alien writing was "“When my grandfather came home with the debris, our dad looked through it with a shining light and saw a purple light inside with a symbol of a seal balancing a ball on its nose.” which I think pretty much confirms the Official Real Story aka The Truth.

I'll have to wait to see the show on the History channel here in Canada because it works at a slower time than the US version. :(

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Trump's Executions Drive

What do people think of Trump's transitional executions drive? Whilst I have every sympathy with Brandon Bernard's victims, it seems unnecessarily vindictive of Trump.

Quote:

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday carried out its ninth federal execution of the year and the first during a presidential lame-duck period in 130 years, putting to death a Texas street-gang member for his role in the slayings of a religious couple from Iowa more than two decades ago. Four more federal executions, including one Friday, are planned in the weeks before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

AP

If executions are to be carried out, it should be promptly, as in mediaeval times, not on average, ten year's after.

Quote:

The case of Brandon Bernard, who received a lethal injection of phenobarbital inside a death chamber at a U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, was a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when his crime was committed.

ibid

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The mainstream media’s self-serving revisionism about the Iraq War.

Good article from the ever-provocative Matt Taibbi here.

Quote:

The first rule of modern commercial media is you’re allowed to screw up, in concert. There’s no risk in being wrong within a prevailing narrative. That’s why the chief offenders kept perches or failed up. The job isn’t about getting facts right, it’s about getting narratives right, and being willing to eat errors discovered in service of pushing the right subtext. Failure to self-audit after Iraq led the media business to mangle of a series of subsequent stories. From the still-misreported financial crisis of 2008 to the failure to take the rise of Donald Trump as an electoral phenomenon seriously to the increasingly sloppy coverage of our hyper-aggressive foreign policies, we’ve gotten very loose with facts and data, knowing there’s no downside to certain kinds of misses.

Quote:

The damage this story did to our collective reputations is still poorly understood in the business. In fact, “Why do they hate us?” stories are one of an increasing number of feature ideas we routinely botch. We’ll never get rid of the scarlet letter from those years until we face how bad it was, and it was so much worse than we’re admitting, even now.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...taibbi-812230/

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NOW i can prove that the Planets cycle the Sun

I can prove that the planets cycle the Sun.

Sunspots are caused by dark matter protruding inside the Sun, which expands into a substance perceptible inside the Sun and begins to protrude towards the surface of the Sun.

Jupiter plays a big role, but other gas planets also play a big role in the maximum periods of about 11 years and also the decent-free periods of decades.

Dark matter comes from a supermassive object in the center of our galaxy.

This can all be proven NOW scientifically.

According to modern physics, planets cannot cycle the Sun.

But yes, Gasplanets are reason for SunSpotcycle.

A thing that can now be proven scientifically.

The gas planets are currently conveniently grouped on the same side of the Sun. And even so that their effect on the magnetic material protruding towards the surface of the Sun occurs after the surface of the Sun has been in the region between the center of the Sun and the supermassive object of the center of the galaxy.

Ok, now just check which area the Solar Eruptions will mostly occur in the next 2-3 years.

That is, I argue that out of space-expanding planets protrudes a space-expanding pushing force that pushes inside the expanding Sun and that expanding pushing force interacts more with the magnetic substance protruding toward the Sun's surface, causing its expansion to accelerate, causing its pace to accelerate.

Pictured is the center of the galaxy on the right.

As the surface of the Sun rotates into that region, an expanding pushing force projecting from that region into the Sun, thus originating from a supermassive object in the center of the galaxy, accelerates the expansion of the magnetic matter projecting toward the surface of the Sun.

After that, an expanding pushing force from both Jupiter and Saturn.

I saw eruptions with a delay due to their effect about the area that is pictured on the other side of the Sun.

That is, in the area where the Sun has been observed to erupt at least four times in the last 2-3 weeks.

That is, if a Sunspot appears on the surface of the Sun before that area is in the area between the center of the Sun and the supermassive object, then it grows when the Sun's surface and the spot with it have moved to that area and a possible eruption in the area where Jupiter and Saturn now or fairly soon after .

That is, the Sun is divided into two halves.

As shown.

1. Opposite side

2. This side.

Prediction.

Solar eruptions will occur over the next 2-3 years, mostly on the opposite side.

That is, in the area where the Earth is when we have July - December.

In other words, the probability that the Sunburst will hit the Earth will be clearly greater between July and December than between January and June.

🤔

By the way, RockPlanets are reason for Sun short cycle which is about 330 days.

Later scientist found out that it is about 340,75 days

The orbits of the stone planets around the Sun total 1363 days.

1363 days divided by 4 is 340.75 days

Jukka Savorinen from Finland

😃

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