GNIS Search

Since the Media Manipulation Thread is closed I will leave the results of a search I did here.

I went to the GNIS, (Geographic Names Information System), (Here https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/g...c/search/names), to search for geographic features in Alaska named Lethbridge. I didn't find any in my search and in fact I didn't find any in the USA at all.

Of course I may have missed something. So I will let other people have at it.

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AI Helping Mathematicians

Maths researchers hail breakthrough in applications of artificial intelligence

https://phys.org/news/2021-12-maths-...rtificial.html

Quote:

For the first time, computer scientists and mathematicians have used artificial intelligence to help prove or suggest new mathematical theorems in the complex fields of knot theory and representation theory. The astonishing results have been published today in the pre-eminent scientific journal, Nature.

(Emphasis mine.)

Quote:

While computers have long been used to generate data for experimental mathematics, the task of identifying interesting patterns has relied mainly on the intuition of the mathematicians themselves. That has now changed.

Quote:

"We have demonstrated that, when guided by mathematical intuition, machine learning provides a powerful framework that can uncover interesting and provable conjectures in areas where a large amount of data is available, or where the objects are too large to study with classical methods."

Slowly. Slowly. The computers are taking over. ;)

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Quack TV “Doctor” Mehmet Oz Announces Pennsylvania Senate GOP Primary Run

Multiple Daytime Emmy Award Winner, perennial Oprah guest, TV alt-med huckster and Chloroquine Cure Anti-vaxxer Mehmet Oz announced today his candidacy for Republican Party nomination for U.S. Senate. He enters a crowded primary field, filled with relative unknowns vying for recognition as the Trumpiest candidate hoping to replace retiring Senator Patrick Toomey, and becomes an immediate front-runner as the only one of the field with name recognition. He has yet to state his clear position on The Big Lie but has seemingly bought into voter fraud conspiracy theories.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/u...nsylvania.html

If he wins the primary he will likely be pitted against either Lt. Gov John Fetterman or Representative Conor Lamb on the Democratic ticket, both media savvy candidates with statewide recognition.

Looks like an absurdly interesting race to watch. :eye-poppi

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Oxford High School, Michigan, school shooting.

This is a thread for discussing the school shooting yesterday at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan. Oxford is a far suburb of Detroit. i.e. it is just at the fringe of suburbia, on the edge of rural.

Four dead. Seven wounded. One shooter.

We have been talking about it in the "Today's Mass Shooting" thread, so I won't rehash everything right away, but it was suggested to start its own thread, so I did.

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Crossing the Threshold of Dream, Cainkane1 versus H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecrafts dream creatures are horrible, They dwell beyond the stars of on mountains in obscure places on earth. The very sight of them will drive a person insane. These creepy crawly aliens do things so horrible to humans that it boggles the mind.

I feel sorry for him because heres my "Crossing the Threshold of Dream Creatures.

H. P. Lovecraft got his ideas from Opium. I got mine from Roxicet.

My aliens in my dream threshold of dream crossings are stranded aliens afraid of their fate when human authorities find them. I try to tell them everything will be alright and try to stop worrying. They look like snow white Gumbys. I actually try to hug the aliens child.

Another of my dream aliens is a squirmy egg shaped creature on a space station and I wonder how it moves around only to see that it can sprout legs and walk away.

My aliens in my B movie sub conscience are not scary. They need help or they are independent and work.

H. P> Lovecraft ended his days in a mental hospital and I will be ending my soon soonish in my nice house living with relatives.

OUr differences are the result of very different philosophys of life. I want the aliens to be ok. I don't want to fight them. Live and let live I say.

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SOKAL III? (Yawn...another hoax?)

So apparently some (likely) sock puppet account is the (Deep fake?) face of a new hoax.

Who knows if those hilarious jesters, Lindsay and Boghossian are behind it, but someone seems to have got a paper published in a journal called Higher Education Quarterly.

This is the Twitter account.

The paper is paywalled. I suppose the "tells" are supposed to be that it has a lot of grammar mistakes judging by this thread by Jeffrey Sachs who seems to take it more or less at face value, or the figures don't add up or the conclusion too obviously biases left-wing people so that they can say, "Aha! Looks like the right-wing not the left-wing fund academia!" or something like that.

Looks like some group became suspicious of this paper and tried to contact the university where the authors were supposedly teaching, as well as the journal and the authors themselves, but they received in response some excuses about not being able to talk on the phone and some hilarious remarks about neo-liberalism.

Anyway, I am not really sure what the aim is. They seem to be making a hoax paper to claim right-wing money is influencing universities and then sending a link to their paper to people who are critical of, say, Koch money influencing climate change discussion etc...

I don't really get how it is some sick burn, though no doubt the usual doofuses - Andrew Doyle, Gad Saad etc... - will say it is.

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Your son or daughter acting in pornography?

A poll on who is and who is not comfortable with their son or daughter (or if you aren't a parent then whether you would be or not) acting in porn (I am talking about son's and daughter's of any legal age). Options specify whether you do watch porn or not and your gender (male, female, non-binary).

Just to be clear, each option has been simplified - so "I WATCH, am MALE and COMFORTABLE" should be read as:
"I WATCH porn, am MALE and COMFORTABLE with my son or daughter acting in porn"

If you don't know what is normal for porn actors and actresses these days, Gail Dines (Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women's Studies, Wheelock College, Boston) gives details in her TED talk: "Growing Up in a Pornified Culture" (go to 7m31s). (Please note that this video uses explicit sexual terms). It's available on YouTube (I can't post a link as I do not have enough privilege).

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