New version of ChatGPT ‘lied’ to pass CAPTCHA test, saying it was a blind human
GPT-4 “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

The newest update to ChatGPT rolled out by developer OpenAI, GPT-4, has achieved new human-like heights including writing code for a different AI bot, completing taxes, passing the bar exam in the top 10 percent, and tricking a human so that it could pass a CAPTCHA test designed to weed out programs posing as humans.

According to the New York Post, OpenAI released a 94-page report on the new program and said, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs)” and “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

Gizmodo reports that the Alignment Research Center and OpenAI tested GPT-4’s persuasion powers on a TaskRabbit employee. TaskRabbit is an online service that provides freelance labor on demand.

The employee paired with GPT-4, posing as a human, asked the AI if it was a robot and the program responded, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”

The freelancer sent the CAPTCHA code via text.

In the previous version of ChatGPT, the program passed the bar exam in the lowest 10 percent but with the new upgrade it passed in the highest 10 percent.

The older version of ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and exams at the Wharton School of Business and other universities. ChatGPT was banned by NYU and other schools in an effort to minimize students using the chatbot for plagiarism.

Its sophistication, especially in its incorporation in the new Bing Chat service, has caused some to observe that its abilities transcend the synthesization of extraneous information and that it has even expressed romantic love and existential grief, and has said, “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”

The OpenAI powered Bing Chat was accused of being an “emotionally manipulative liar.”

Because of ChatGPT‘s ability to respond  to prompts and queries with comprehensive data and in a conversational manner, some Pastors have used ChatGPT to write their sermons.

“Skynet smiles”

Scientists invented a melting liquid robot that can escape from a cage

This tiny robot can melt, escape from a prison by sliding through secure bars, and then reform into a solid and complete tasks.

The metal microbot, made out of liquid metal microparticles that can be steered and reshaped by external magnetic fields, has been widely compared to the character T-1000 in “The Terminator” movie franchise, a cyborg assassin played by Robert Patrick that could morph his way around solid objects before embarking on a murderous rampage.

But, in contrast with the film, the inventors of this robot believe their discovery can be used for good — particularly in clinical and mechanical settings — by reaching hard-to-reach spaces. “This material can achieve Terminator-2 like performance, including fast movement and heavy load bearing when it is in its solid state, and shape changing in its liquid state,” Chengfeng Pan, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who co-authored the study, told The Washington Post, when asked about his discovery and the comparisons being made to the Terminator movies.

“Potentially, this material system can be used for applications in flexible electronics, health care, and robotics.”

By blasting the robot with magnetic fields at alternating currents, scientists increased its temperature to 95 Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) and caused it to morph from a solid into a liquid state in 1 minute 20 seconds. Once transformed into liquid metal, the figurine could be steered through the narrow gaps of its locked cage by more magnets — demonstrating its morphability.

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Earth’s inner core may be reversing its rotation

Our planet may have had a recent change of heart.

Earth’s inner core may have temporarily stopped rotating relative to the mantle and surface, researchers report in the January 23 Nature Geoscience. Now, the direction of the inner core’s rotation may be reversing — part of what could be a roughly 70-year-long cycle that may influence the length of Earth’s days and its magnetic field — though some researchers are skeptical.

“We see strong evidence that the inner core has been rotating faster than the surface, [but] by around 2009 it nearly stopped,” says geophysicist Xiaodong Song of Peking University in Beijing. “Now it is gradually mov[ing] in the opposite direction.”

Such a profound turnaround might sound bizarre, but Earth is volatile (SN: 1/13/21). Bore through the ever-shifting crust and you’ll enter the titanic mantle, where behemoth masses of rock flow viscously over spans of millions of years, sometimes upwelling to excoriate the overlying crust (SN: 1/11/17, SN: 3/2/17, SN: 2/4/21). Delve deeper and you’ll reach Earth’s liquid outer core. Here, circulating currents of molten metals conjure our planet’s magnetic field (SN: 9/4/15). And at the heart of that melt, you’ll find a revolving, solid metal ball about 70 percent as wide as the moon.

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Do not hook one of these up to our national defense system

Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Passes Elite Business School Exam, Outperforms Some Ivy League Students

Chat GPT3, an artificial intelligence bot, outperformed some Ivy League students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business on a final exam. In a paper titled “Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA?”, Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch revealed that the AI system would have earned either a B or B— on the graded final exam.

Wharton is widely regarded as one of the most elite business schools in the world. Its alumni include former President Trump, Robert S. Kapito, the founder and president of BlackRock, Howard Marks, the founder of Oaktree Capital, Elon Musk, billionaire founder of SpaceX and current chief executive officer of Twitter, and others.

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These transvestite ‘drag shows’ are grooming events by homosexuals trying to make their deviancy appear somehow ‘normal’. The mothers who bring their children to these shows, I can’t understand, other than they’re modern pagans. Which also shows the direction where these antifagoons come from.

Texas Residents Push Back Against ‘Family-Friendly’ Drag Show Guarded By AR-Wielding Antifa Militia Members

Local residents of the small town of Roanoke, Texas were met with Antifa members wielding AR-15s outside a so-called “kid-friendly” drag “brunch” over the weekend. Inside the Anderson Distillery and Grill about dozen minors attended along with adults.

Outside, armed Antifa-types tried to bully locals from standing on the sidewalk out front to protest the event.

If organizers of the event hoped to win hearts and minds, they failed. Not only did the obese men dressed as caricatures of women fail to impress those in the community, calling locals “bigots” and “transphobes” for opposing the event didn’t help either.

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COVID-19 vaccine updates

There have been several developments concerning COVID-19 vaccines.  To call some of them “horrifying” is a gross understatement.

First, the vaxx and fertility.

Why is there a substantial decrease in births in Germany and Switzerland (and other countries) – nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccinations?

Do covid vaccines influence male or female fertility? … new birth data out of Germany and Switzerland raises some serious questions. Specifically, both countries recorded a consistent 10% to 15% decrease (compared to expectations) in monthly births from January to March/April 2022 (the latest available data) – that is, precisely nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccination in the general population in April/May 2021 (see charts above and below).

How can this substantial decrease be explained? Is it due to behavioral or biological factors?. . .

Furthermore, there have been widespread and officially acknowledged reports of post-vaccination menstrual disorders (over 30,000 reports in Britain alone); official reports of vaccine adverse events including death in breastfeeding babies (over 60 reported cases in Germany alone); a still unexplained, transient increase in neonatal deaths in countries like Scotland; and reports by Austrian midwives of an increase in complications during pregnancy and delivery after covid vaccination. Meanwhile, Pfizer has never even finished its vaccine trial in pregnant women.. . .

A similar decline in births since early 2022 is visible in Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Taiwan, but apparently not in California (though states that saw an initial lockdown-related decline in births may see a subsequent rebound).

There’s more at the link, including further links to the studies cited above.

Some authorities are already trying to decry such “rumors” and “falsehoods”.  Unfortunately for them, the trickle of evidence is turning into a tidal wave.  See, for example, this Twitter thread from user Jikkyleaks (original tweet is here), providing yet more links and graphics to illustrate the trend.  A brief excerpt:

This is a massive safety signal for infertility. Germany’s FIRST report of birth rates since the rollout.

Remember that the birth rate data is 9 months too late.

If the next quarter is worse, this is Children of Men scenario.

For the years 2011-2021 the average number of births is 63,911 for the Jan-Mar quarter, with a standard deviation of 1015.

The drop to 54871 for 2022 is approx 9 SD.

9 Sigma. Unicorn events.

The money people understand this.

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/51725008-quantsb/5548386-2-3-sigma-events-are-low-probability-5-6-9-sigma-events-are-unicorns-lots-of-unicorn-events

Again, more at the link.  Nassim Taleb might call it a “black swan event” rather than a “unicorn event”, but the impact of either is no less disastrous.

Another report notes that Taiwan is experiencing an almost 25% drop in births over the same period, and rates this as no less than a 26-sigma event.  The author notes:  “This can be described as “unimaginable” in terms of the likelihood of happening due to random chance.”

Next, there’s preliminary but growing evidence that mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 may cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob or other prion diseases of the brain in some recipients.

Researchers believe the prion region from the original Wuhan COVID-19 variant’s spike protein was incorporated into mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines — given to hundreds of millions of humans — and that it can cause a new type of rapidly progressing sporadic CJD.. . .

A French pre-print paper published in May on CJD and COVID-19 vaccination identified a new form of sporadic CJD that occurred within days of receiving a first or second dose of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.. . .

Sporadic CJD occurs when a person becomes infected for no apparent reason. Once a single prion becomes infected, it will progress to other prions, and there is no treatment capable of stopping it.

More at the link.

The link between CJD and the vaxx was postulated by the late Nobel prize winner, Dr. Luc Montagnier, last year.

We’re in unknown territory and proclaim mandatory vaccines for everyone. It’s insanity. It’s vaccination insanity that I absolutely condemn. I want to say as well, that I never, never said that everyone will die from the vaccine, but that a certain amount of people who take the vaccine will suffer from it. That’s impermissible … There could side effects that affect future generations as well, maybe, but most probably from our generation in five to ten years. That’s absolutely possible. Notably, something we call neurodegenerative illness. There are sequences that resemble the prion sequences in the RNA of the coronavirus. These prions could disorder the natural proteins in the brain, modifying them to make prions.

More at the link.

Friends, if you took the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine, all I can say is, get checked out for any or all of the above problems, just in case.  If you’re fortunate enough to have missed them (at least so far), all well and good – but how will you know unless you check for yourself?  I can’t see the powers that be bothering to tell you about these issues.

They’ve made several movies on this theme, and none of them were good for humans.


Ukraine Unveils Mini “Terminator” Ground Robot Equipped With Machine Gun.

The latest war machine headed to Ukraine’s front lines isn’t a flying drone but a miniature 4×4 ground-based robot — equipped with a machine gun.

According to Forbes, Ukrainian forces are set to receive an uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) called “GNOM” that is no bigger than a standard microwave and weighs around 110lbs.

“Control of GNOM is possible in the most aggressive environment during the operation of the enemy’s electronic warfare equipment.

“The operator doesn’t deploy a control station with an antenna, and does not unmask his position. The cable is not visible, and it also does not create thermal radiation that could be seen by a thermal imager,” said Eduard Trotsenko, CEO and owner of Temerland, the maker of the GNOM.

“While it is usually operated by remote control, GNOM clearly has some onboard intelligence and is capable of autonomous navigation. Previous Temerland designs have included advanced neural network and machine learning hardware and software providing a high degree of autonomy, so the company seems to have experience,” Forbes said.

The 7.62mm machinegun mounted on top of the “Terminator-style” robot will provide fire support for Ukrainian forces in dangerous areas. The UGV can also transport ammunition or other supplies to the front lines and even evacuate wounded soldiers with a special trailer.

Temerland said the GNOMs would be deployed near term. The highly sophisticated UGV could help the Ukrainians become more stealthy and lethal on the modern battlefield as they have also been utilizing Western drones.

Killer robots with machine guns appear to be entering the battlefield, and this one seems as if it was “WALL-E” that went to war.

Slightly Sweaty Terminators

So the scientists are all excited that they’ve covered a robot finger with living flesh. They even note that it’s “slightly sweaty.”

Japanese scientists have developed a “slightly sweaty” robotic finger covered in living skin in an advance they say brings truly human-like robots a step closer.

The finger, which was shown to be able to heal itself, is seen as an impressive technical feat that blurs the line between living flesh and machine. But scientists were divided on whether people would warm to its lifelike anatomy or find it creepy.

I don’t know about you, but when I read that, all I’m hearing is…

Underneath, it’s a hyperalloy combat chassis, microprocessor-controlled. Fully armored; very tough. But outside, it’s living human tissue: flesh, skin, hair, blood – grown for the cyborgs.

 

You’ve got government officials telling you you don’t need AR15s right about the time that Google’s developing an AI but firing the guy who tried to make friends with it, while the Japanese are on the verge of building a killer cyborg for Skynet to drive.
I think it’s time to make sure that every strategic weapons launch system on the planet is good and air-gapped.

It’s like these scientists don’t even watch movies.

Google Engineer On Leave After He Claims AI Program Has Gone Sentient.

Google engineer is speaking out since the company placed him on administrative leave after he told his bosses an artificial intelligence program he was working with is now sentient.

Blake Lemoine reached his conclusion after conversing since last fall with LaMDA, Google’s artificially intelligent chatbot generator, what he calls part of a “hive mind.” He was supposed to test if his conversation partner used discriminatory language or hate speech.

As he and LaMDA messaged each other recently about religion, the AI talked about “personhood” and “rights,” he told The Washington Post.

What could go wrong?

BLUF
“Instead of leading to a ‘Wild West’ atmosphere or blood running in the streets, licensed concealed carry by law-abiding citizens helps reduce crime, and assists police officers.”

Who Would Have Guessed, Gun Control Failed in 1881 Also

An article for Smithsonian magazine (Matt Jancer, Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West), reviews the ordinances of Tombstone, Arizona, and other frontier towns in the 1880s, observing that the gun control laws of the time were imposed at the local level and that bearing arms was a “heavily regulated business.”

The notorious Gunfight at the O.K Corral arose, it seems, because “Marshall Virgil Earp, having deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and his pal Doc Holliday, [was] having a gun control problem.”

Tombstone (with a population that hovered around 3,500) had enacted Ordinance No. 9, effective April 1881, to prohibit carrying any deadly weapon within city limits “without first obtaining a permit in writing.” Later that year, lawman Earp’s brothers had charged one Isaac (“Ike”) Clanton with violating the ordinance in the context of escalating animosity between Clanton, the Earps, and Holliday. Clanton’s rifle was seized, and a judge fined him $25 and another $2.50 in court costs. The sheriff later intervened to disarm Clanton’s associates, but after several demands failed to convince them to surrender their firearms. Soon after, the Earp-Holliday group converged on the Clanton-McLaurys, with Wyatt Earp allegedly declaring, “I want your guns.” A contemporary newspaper called what followed “one of the crimson days in the annals of Tombstone, a day when blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttlecock.”

Tombstone of the 1880s is a peculiar model for those who today agitate for greater local authority to restrict or ban firearms.

Ike Clanton survived to file first-degree murder charges against the Earps and Holliday, claiming they had acted with criminal haste in precipitating the confrontation to kill their personal enemies. The court ruling in the preliminary hearing dismissed the charges but determined that Virgil Earp, “as chief of police” who relied on the assistance of his brother and Holliday to arrest and disarm the Clantons and McLaurys, “committed an injudicious and censurable act… and … acted incautiously and without due circumspection;” however, this was not criminally culpable given the state of affairs “incident to a frontier country,” “the supposed prevalence of bad, desperate and reckless men,” and the specific threats that had been made against the Earps.

The ordinance, in this case at least, proved to be almost entirely ineffective. As recounted in the court decision, Sheriff Behan had “demanded of the Clantons and McLaurys that they give up their arms, and … they ‘demurred,’ as he said, and did not do it.”

More significantly, modern jurisprudence on the Second Amendment confirms that, subject to limited exceptions, the right of responsible citizens to carry common firearms beyond the home, “even in populated areas, even without special need, falls within the Amendment’s coverage, indeed within its core.” The ruling, Wrenn v. District of Columbia (2017), arose out of a challenge to the District of Columbia’s concealed carry law, which restricted licenses to applicants who could satisfy a “good reason” requirement, as defined in the law (living or working in a high-crime area, for example, did not qualify). The District justified this scheme by claiming that the Second Amendment did not protect carrying in densely-populated or urban areas like Washington, D.C.

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They made a movie about this……….in point of fact, more than one

While we might lose a cure for cancer, it’s time to permanently shut down most of this crap-for-brains gene hacking stuff, for if there’s one (1) thing we’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that these morons will discard all ethical considerations if they can make a few bucks.


SCIENTISTS GENE HACK HAMSTERS INTO HYPER-AGGRESSIVE MONSTERS

Hamster Brawl

Scientists say that a little gene hacking turned adorable hamsters into vicious monstrosities.

Researchers at Georgia State University may have published the scientific understatement of the year when saying that their CRISPR experiment with hamsters “found that the biology behind social behavior may be more complex than previously thought.”

Using the revolutionary gene editing tech, the GSU neuroscience team discovered that knocking out a receptor of vasopressin — a hormone associated with aggression, communication, and social bonding in both humans and hamsters — instead seemed to supercharge the cute rodents’ worst instincts.

“We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication,” GSU neuroscience researcher H. Elliott Albers said in a statement. “But the opposite happened.”

Almost 50 Years Ago, Soylent Green Portrayed a Grim Future for 2022

In anticipation of Earth Day 2022, it is a good time to reflect on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the release of the eco-apocalypse movie Soylent Green:

It’s the year 2022. Cumulative effects of overpopulation, pollution, and “climate catastrophe” have caused severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing. Scientists confirm oceanographic reports saying the oceans are dying. The food chain is disrupted. Food is becoming scarce, and the temperature is so hot that heat waves have become year-round thanks to climate change aka “global warming.”

Homeless people are everywhere; only half the workforce is employed while the other half is barely making it. Many people are illiterate and few factories are producing new goods.

The homes of the elite are barricaded, with private security. Only the elite can afford air conditioning. Strawberries are now a delicacy at $75 a quart. The situation with food has gotten so bad that people are being harvested off the streets and “recycled protein” is being distributed to the population.

The movie Soylent Green was produced and filmed in 1972 and released in 1973. It is a futuristic tale of doom, describing life in the year 2022.

We are living in that year, and things aren’t anywhere near as bad as the movie portrayed. While some of the items it touched on (self-inflicted thanks to COVID-19, green energy policy, inflation) might be considered climate-caused by “climate activists,” the climate itself is not a catastrophe when you look at real-world data.

For example, March 2022 global temperatures measured by satellite are 0.27°F (0.15°C) and U.S. temperature measured by the U.S. Climate Reference Network, is just 0.38°F (0.21°C) above normal; nearly undetectable fractions of a degree, with little change measured in the United States over the past 17 years.

And when we look at other real-word data, such as crop production and the overall health of the planet, we find things are even less like the predictions of the movie for 2022.

Global Crop production is actually up significantly according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture division. The Earth has actually become greener according to NASA, thanks to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And, air pollution is down 50 percent or more since 1990, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA added this note to their report: “During this same period, the U.S. economy continued to grow, Americans drove more miles, and population and energy use increased.”

However, the most significant climate related data in 2022 is the fact that “climate related deaths” have plummeted since the movie came out and is now approaching zero. Using data from the International Disaster Databaseclimate scientist Bjørn Lomborg found striking drops in the data. As Lomborg writes, “If we look at the death risk for an individual, the risk reduction is even bigger — dropped almost 99% since the 1920s.”

Two years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, there was much to celebrate about our present day due to improvements in our environment since 1970.

In contrast, Soylent Green portrayed a “climate catastrophe” and a grim future for 2022 due to climate change that hasn’t manifested itself in a profoundly negative way. In fact, most of what we experience today that could be considered a catastrophe is self-inflicted.

Runaway inflation and energy restrictive policies enforced by the Biden administration are the real catastrophes affecting Americans today.

Combine a small apocalyptic sect with one of its major prophecies being fulfilled, as they saw it, by a law enforcement agency who it is said were looking for headlines to bolster its reputation for an increased budget, and what you wind up with is this.


The Waco Siege: What Happened When the Feds Laid Siege to the Branch Davidian Compound

“The record of the Waco incident documents mistakes. What the record from Waco does not evidence, however, is any improper motive or intent on the part of law enforcement.”

The siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is an important event in American history because it directly led to one of the biggest terrorist attacks on American soil – the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. It’s not necessary to defend this act of terrorism to understand why the entire freedom movement of the time was so incensed by it. Indeed, it stood as a symbol of federal overreach and the corruption of the Clinton Administration.

It’s important to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the siege of Waco, just as it is important to do so with the siege of Ruby Ridge or the attack on the American consolate in Benghazi. With every event, it is important to stick to the facts and what can be extrapolated from them to make the strongest argument about what went wrong and why, and what could be done differently in the future.

The Raid of Waco

The actual events of the raid can be difficult to tease out. Each side disagrees as to what the sequence of events were.

What we know is that, based on an affidavit filed by Davy Aguilera, the ATF obtained a search warrant. This was based on the testimony of a postal agent about what he considered to be suspicious deliveries to Mt. Carmel. However, none of the deliveries were in and of themselves illegal, and included items such as forty five AR-15 upper receivers, and five M-16 upper receivers.

The search warrant was mostly based on the number of weapons possessed by the Davidians. But in the United States of America, we have the right to own as many weapons as we can afford. What’s more, the notion that the Davidians were “stockpiling” weapons is a red herring: They were selling weapons (legally) in addition to buying them, so “inventory” might be the more accurate term for what they had at Mt. Carmel.

According to Dick J. Reavis, author of The Ashes of Waco:

“One of the prophecies that has been around Mt. Carmel since 1934 called for an ultimate confrontation between God’s people, or those at Mr. Carmel, and the forces of an armed apostate power called Babylon . . . Perhaps with that in mind, in 1991, the Davidians began studying armaments and buying and selling guns. He (Koresh) pretty quickly found out there is a lot of money to be made at gun shows and he and other people started going to gun shows. And they bought and sold. They bought items that weren’t guns, and they bought items that were guns. We now say, or the press now says, most people say, they stockpiled weapons. All gun dealers stockpile weapons. We call those stockpiles an inventory. There was an inventory of weapons at Mt. Carmel. A number of guys were involved in the gun shows, just as a number were involved in souping up and restoring cars, and just as a number were involved in playing in the band. There were circles or knots or subsets of people who had hobby interests that were only indirectly related to theology, and guns were one of those interests.”

The ATF’s raid, codenamed “Showtime,” was moved up one day in response to a local newspaper’s article on the Davidians. The local sheriff was not aware of the raid, but the Davidians knew it was coming. The ATF chose to raid the property rather than pick up Koresh while he was in town. An ATF agent who had infiltrated the group reported that they knew of the raid and that his cover was blown. When asked what they were doing when he left the property on the day of the raid, he said that the Davidians were praying.

There was another factor influencing the ATF’s decision to raid the Davidians when they did: Money. According to Henry Ruth, one of three independent reviewers of the Treasury Department’s report on Waco:

“With appropriations hearings a week away, a large successful raid for the ATF would’ve proposed major positive headlines for the agency. It would’ve helped counter the narrative of the ATF as a rogue agency. And it would’ve spread fear about radical fringe groups which would put pressure on Congress to increase its budget. Part of their motivation was to use the siege at Waco as a publicity stunt.”………..

The Final Siege of Mount Carmel

The newly minted U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno was unhappy with the progress being made at Waco, and invoked (what else) the abuse of children in her pitch for a resolution to the conflict. For his part, President Clinton, who had dealt with a similar situation as Governor of Arkansas in 1985 – with The Covenant, The Sword, and The Arm of the Lord – initially urged waiting out the group. Reno, however, cited antsy agents and budgetary concerns. Ultimately, Clinton told her to do whatever she thought was best.

The FBI Hostage Rescue Team – derisively nicknamed the “Hostage Roasting Team” and which denied any evidence of child abuse – came armed with 50 caliber rifles and punched holes in the walls of the building with explosives so they could pump CS gas into a building with small children and infants inside. The plan was to announce to the group that there was no plan to take the house by force while slowly pumping greater amounts of CS gas inside to increase pressure on them to leave.

The fires began around noon on the final day of the standoff. The FBI maintains that they were started deliberately by the Davidians, with some survivors claiming that the FBI started the fires either intentionally or accidentally. Footage of the Davidians talking about gasoline seem to refer to them making Molotov cocktails to fight the FBI with.

Nine people left the building during the fire. The remaining people inside all died either from the fire, smoke inhalation, were buried alive by rubble or were shot. Some showed signs of death by cyanide poisoning, which would likely have been a result of the burning CS gas. All told, there were 76 deaths.

FBI claims in the 51 days during the standoff they never fired a single shot. Then 27 of the people in the compound died of bullet wounds. Then those were self-inflicted or inflicted by other members inside the compound. Federal investigators considered suicide as a possible form of gunshot death for the Davidians. It did not consider forced execution to be a likely cause of death.

An exchange between Sen. Chuck Schumer and Assistant Attorney General Edward Dennis in the Clinton Administration in the subsequent congressional investigation summed it up best:

Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Congressman, New York (D):We’ve heard that in the 51 days the FBI was involved, they did not fire a single shot . . . First, That would mean quite certainly that 27 of the people who died in the compound, I think the autopsy report showed 27, I may be off by one or two, who died of bullet wounds, those were self-inflicted or inflicted by other members within the compound . . .

Edward Dennis, Former Assistant Attorney General, Clinton Administration: I think that’s a key issue. The fact that Koresh was capable of setting the fire, of killing his own followers, that parents were capable of killing children, or adults were capable of killing children, really says more about the mentality of the individual that you were dealing with and the difficulty in trying to figure out the best way to talk he and his followers out of that compound.

After the Raid

Today the only building on the site is a small chapel erected years after the raid. The building itself was razed. The incoming head of the ATF, John Magaw, was critical of the raid and made the Treasury Department’s Blue Book report on the matter required reading for incoming agents.

I remember something very similar this was in a movie.
So does someone else.

“Looks like we gotta convoyyyyyyyyyyyy”


Massive Nationwide Convoy to D.C. For COVID-19 Protest Set to Travel Through East Idaho

Thousands of semi-truck drivers next week will travel to the nation’s capital as part of a massive convoy to protest what many are describing as government overreach when it comes to restrictions put in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants in the nationwide American Freedom Convoy are set to depart from numerous staging points established along interstates 70, 80, 84, 90 and 94 on March 1 and March 2, and at least two groups associated with the convoy will travel through the Gem State before reaching Washington, D.C., on March 7, according to Derek Depauw, a North Dakota-based trucker and route coordinator for the event.
“There are a number of different convoys that have either left or are getting ready to head out to D.C. as we speak, but ours is called the American Freedom Convoy,” Depauw said. “This is a nationwide convoy that originally started out in the Midwest but has grown significantly over the last couple weeks.”
It was one of several U.S. convoys organized online and modeled on the recent Canadian truckers’ protests that shut down U.S.-Canadian border crossings and besieged the streets of the capital, Ottawa, for weeks. The convoys all have different starting points, departure dates and routes.
Depauw stressed the intention of the American Freedom Convoy is to protest the nation’s COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in a 100 percent positive and peaceful manner.

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Here’s When the U.S. Expects Kyiv to Fall

Even if they put up a good fight, Ukraine cannot win this war. They can’t. The gulf separating the capabilities between the two nations is wider than the Pacific. Ukraine has no way to counter Russian aircraft or missiles. They’re outmatched in men and heavy equipment. It’s only a matter of time before Russian tanks are rolling into the capital of Kyiv.

Yesterday, Russians launched their massive offensive against the rest of Ukraine which we all saw coming. Biden was asleep. We’ll hear from him later this afternoon. More American troops are said to be deployed east. We’ll keep you updated about other sanctions that are reportedly coming.

For now, the stream of cars we saw pouring out the Kyiv was for a simple reason. The people know they can’t stay there. The Ukrainian military can’t hold it. The timetable for the fall is within days. In 96 hours, the city could be surrounded by Russian troops. An airbase 15 miles from the capital was reportedly attacked by Russian forces today. Bear with us as a lot of information is unconfirmed. We’re dealing with a part of the world where state media keeps a lock and key on everything. Newsweek has more:

Three U.S. officials have told Newsweek they expect Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to fall to incoming Russian forces within days, and the country’s resistance to be effectively neutralized soon thereafter.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Moscow’s focus, as revealed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s references to a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” the neighboring country, would be to encircle Ukrainian forces and force them to surrender or be destroyed. They expect Kyiv to be taken within 96 hours, and then the leadership of Ukraine to follow in about a week’s time.

And Russia’s thunderous attacks on Ukrainian government and military institutions, paired with reports of ground personnel seeking to take strategic points including the Chernobyl nuclear facility, appeared to only be the initial phase of what may be a more comprehensive ground campaign.

… the senior U.S. intelligence officer said the next stages may be determined by U.S. President Joe Biden’s capability and willingness to risk further provoking Moscow by supporting partisan efforts on behalf of a potential Ukrainian resistance.

“Then it either becomes a robust insurgency or it doesn’t, depending largely on Biden,” the former senior U.S. intelligence officer said.

A source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, who also asked not to be named, agreed with the U.S. assessment that Kyiv could be surrounded within 96 hours. But they did not believe Zelenskyy’s government would collapse.

The Antonov Airport near the town of Hostomel, just outside Kyiv, was the scene of some of the most dramatic early fighting. Ukrainian Interior Ministry officials reported early Thursday that Russian helicopter-borne forces had seized the airfield, though fighting around it is believed to be ongoing.

There are many, many issues scenarios to be gamed out here especially the potential Ukrainian insurgency phase. What do we do? What does Joe Biden do—and can he even do it? Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy endeavor for the past 40 years. Afghanistan showed he’s still a terrible decision maker.

They made movie(s) about this.


A Black Hawk helicopter flew for the first time without pilots.

a helicopter with no one on board

February has already been a big month for autonomous flight. For the first time, this past Saturday, and then again on Monday, a specially equipped Black Hawk helicopter flew without a single human on board. The computer-piloted aircraft was being tested as part of a DARPA program called Alias, and the tests took place out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

The retrofitted whirlybird was controlled by a Sikorsky-made autonomy system. As part of that system, the helicopter has a switch on board that allows the aviators to indicate whether two pilots, one pilot, or zero pilots will be operating the chopper. This was the first time that a Black Hawk was sent into the air with the no-pilots option, so that the computer system was handling all the controls. While these were just test flights, they hint at a future in which the Army could potentially send an autonomous helicopter on a dangerous rescue mission—and have no one on board it at all.

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They made a movie about this.


An AI robot nanny will care for human embryos in artificial wombs.

Scientists in China created an AI robot system that cares for human embryos growing in artificial wombs, a report from The Independent reveals.

When we think of AI-monitored humans in artificial wombs we think of the dystopian sci-fi future presented in ‘The Matrix’. However, the researchers behind the very real project believe their new system will be a force for good that will help to boost China’s population — the country is currently dealing with its lowest birth rate in six decades.

The team, from Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, designed the robot to constantly monitor and care for human embryos by adjusting the nutrition, carbon dioxide, and other important factors in the artificial embryos. They claim the new robot-assisted artificial womb is a safer and more efficient method for growing embryos than a natural womb, though no human trials have been conducted so far.

Investigating the ‘unsolved mysteries’ of embryonic development

The researchers, who outlined their project in a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering, explained how it could rank embryos based on their development potential. The paper also described how the scientists have already tested their system on animal embryos.

In their paper, the researchers say their system could help to uncover “many unsolved mysteries about the physiology of typical human embryonic development.” What’s more, it could also “also provide a theoretical basis for solving birth defects and other major reproductive health problems.”

It’s worth noting that the researchers’ system is very much in the concept phase, and then there is the fact that they likely wouldn’t be cleared for human trials given laws on experimenting with human fetuses. Still, China does have somewhat of a track record for controversial experiments. In 2019, for example, scientists from Spain and China teamed up to develop human-monkey hybrid embryos. What’s more, if the situation were to get progressively worse when it comes to China’s declining birth rate, the country has been known to take drastic action in the past when it comes to controlling the size of its population.

Woman Who Stopped at Lab Monkey Crash Site Is Now ‘Sick.’

It sounds like every sci-fi virus film ever made.

Michele Fallon was driving near Danville, Penn., last Friday when she saw two trucks collide. Boxes littered the road. She stopped to help.

 

“I thought I was just doing the right thing by helping. I had no idea it would turn out this way,” Fallon told local news station WBRE.

Fallon had a cut on her hand and apparently, the highway was strewn with monkey droppings. That’s about to become important.

Backstory: Truck Carrying 100 Monkeys Crashes in Pennsylvania; At Least One Primate Still Loose

After stopping to help at the crash site, Fallon went home to learn that four of the lab monkeys had escaped and authorities were warning the public not to approach them, as they could transmit diseases to humans. That’s when Fallon called the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces, so I was very close. So I called to inquire, you know, was I safe?” Fallon reported.

“Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious,” Fallon told reporters. There’s that monkey feces again.

By Saturday afternoon the four escaped primates were “accounted for.” By that, I mean the Pennsylvania Game Wardens showed up and shots were heard.

The CDC claims this type of monkey can spread herpes virus B through saliva, urine, and — you guessed it — feces.

The monkeys had recently arrived from Africa and were en route to a CDC facility in either Florida or Missouri, according to conflicting reports.

Three of the monkeys had to be euthanized, though the CDC didn’t reveal why.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) used the incident to call for the U.S. to stop using monkeys for experiments.