They Made a Movie About This

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.

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.”

The statement that the scientists specifically chose Syrian hamsters, which are known for their aggression, because they “provide a powerful model for the studies of social behavior because their social organization is far more similar to humans than that observed in mice.”The GSU team was surprised to find that their attempts to turn down the aggression in the gene-hacked hamsters made them both more aggressive and more social — a nightmarish-sounding scenario that evokes Gremlin-esque playground bullies.

These “counterintuitive” findings have suggested “a startling conclusion,” Albers said in the statement — that neural receptors and the behaviors with which they’re associated may not be able to be turned on and off individually, and that attempts to do so may be fraught.

“Developing gene-edited hamsters was not easy,” Albers concluded in yet another understatement. Hopefully they’ll do a bit more thinking before trying to do this sort of experiment on humans.

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 Database, climate 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.”

Joseph Biden, U.S. Senator, Delaware (D) and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which issued the Waco Investigation Report

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.

In Chernihiv oblast, 🇷🇺 invaders broke into the building of local hunting society & demanded the list of members (hunters conduct guerrilla fight). Chairman Anatoliy Kulgeiko blew up a grenade – killing himself & the enemy. Glory to heroes!#StandWithUkraine️ #FreeIvanFedorov

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) March 14, 2022

Yup, the invaders in Red Dawn do the exact same thing. pic.twitter.com/EAtS2UGQny

— William Magoffin (@MagoffinWilliam) March 15, 2022

Spicy Time™

A little background

Japan has declared today that the southern Kurils is their sovereign territory.
The Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida announced it during his speech in the parliament on March 7,–JIJI reports https://t.co/GUy5ZksJnc

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 7, 2022

“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.

Onlookers believed the boxes were full of cats. Fallon had no idea they contained 100 lab monkeys until she met one face to face. The ruffled monkey hissed at her.

“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.

Fallon has since developed a harsh cough and symptoms of pink eye. She decided to go to the hospital where she was given a rabies vaccine and two weeks’ worth of anti-viral meds.

“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.

NY and Boston face coldest temperatures since 2019 and up to two feet of snow Tuesday: More than 15 MILLION are under wind chill alerts as East Coast temperatures dip 45 below zero.

A strong cold front is coming through the eastern US and is expected to bring -45 degree weather this week, the coldest in three years
About 15 million people were already under wind chill advisories in the Midwest on Sunday, where wind chills are expected to plummet to -25 to -45 degrees on Monday
By Tuesday, the National Weather Service predicts parts of the Northeast and New England could face under zero temperatures
Warnings to residents that wind chills as low as 40 below zero could cause ‘frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes’
Parts of New York, including Buffalo, are also expecting snow showers
The cold front is expected to move out of the area by Wednesday
Meanwhile, a cold front tearing into mild, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico led to several tornadoes in the southern United States over the weekend
Five tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in southeast Texas on Saturday
Another tornado was confirmed to have hit northern Alabama and a possible tornado hit rural Louisiana

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Oh well. It's just fertility. Women’s Periods May Be Late After Coronavirus Vaccination, Study Suggests https://t.co/ndQC9QgwMH

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 8, 2022

“Skynet smiles”
Now, what other dangerous things are hidden within this program, and Amazon ‘isn’t aware of’?

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”.

“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” the smart speaker said.

Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it.

The girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter.

She said: “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”

That’s when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had “found on the web”.

The dangerous activity, known as “the penny challenge”, began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.

“I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms,” Michael Clusker, station manager at Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire in 2020.

“The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt.”

Fire officials in the US have also spoken out against the so-called challenge.

Ms Livdahl tweeted that she intervened, yelling: “No, Alexa, no!”

However, she said her daughter was “too smart to do something like that”.

Amazon told the BBC in a statement that it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant recommending such activity in the future.

“Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers,” said Amazon in a statement.

“As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”

The math behind this is complex, but from my limited understanding, and the explanations of the geeks who actually do understand the math, this is possible.

Scientists Claim to – Accidentally – Create a Warp Bubble

Warp drive pioneer and former NASA warp drive specialist Dr. Harold G “Sonny” White has reported the successful manifestation of an actual, real-world “Warp Bubble.” And, according to White, this first of its kind breakthrough by his Limitless Space Institute (LSI) team sets a new starting point for those trying to manufacture a full-sized, warp-capable spacecraft.

“To be clear, our finding is not a warp bubble analog, it is a real, albeit humble and tiny, warp bubble,” White told The Debrief, quickly dispensing with the notion that this is anything other than the creation of an actual, real-world warp bubble. “Hence the significance.”

Warp Bubble Theoretical — Theoretical Warp Bubble Structure: Image Credit LSI

THEORETICAL WARP DRIVES AND SCIENCE VISIONARIES

In 1994, Mexican Mathematician Miguel Alcubierre proposed the first mathematically valid solution to the warp drive. More specifically, he outlined a spacecraft propulsion system previously only envisioned in science fiction that can traverse the cosmos above the speed of light without violating currently accepted laws of physics.

That solution was lauded for its elegant mathematics, yet simultaneously derided for its use of theoretical materials and massive amounts of energy that appeared virtually impossible to engineer in any practical way.

Over a decade later, this theory underwent a major shift, when Dr. White, a then NASA-employed warp drive specialist and the founder of the highly respected Eagleworks laboratory, reworked Alcubierre’s original metric and put it into canonical form. This change in design dramatically reduced the exotic materials and energy requirements of the original concept, seemingly providing researchers and science fiction fans alike at least a glimmer of hope that a real-world warp drive may one day become a reality. It also resulted in the informal renaming of the original theoretical design, a concept now more commonly referred to as the “Alcubierre/White Warp Drive.”

Since then, The Debrief has covered a number of physicists and engineers taking their own stabs at designing a viable warp drive, including an entire group of international researchers working on a warp drive that requires no exotic matter. However, like Alcubierre and White before them, the warp concepts of these would-be visionaries all still remain theoretical in nature.

Now, it appears the situation has changed.

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Comment O’ The Day
I’m not actually sure that a nation of people who own nothing will be as easy to control as the powers that be seem to believe.

Own Nothing and Love It
An unholy alliance of planners, financiers, and leftists wants everyone to live in mass social housing developments.

From the ancient world to modern times, the class of small property owners have constituted the sine qua non of democratic self-government. But today this class is under attack by what Aristotle described as an oligarchia, an unelected power elite that controls the political economy for its own purposes. In contrast, the rise of small holders were critical to the re-emergence and growth of democracy first in the Netherlands, followed by North America, Australia, and much of Europe.

Today the current class of small holders face a threat from two powerful hegemonies, tech and financial interests, and increasingly intrusive bureaucracies. Both favor policies that would force higher population densities, which would likely raise housing costs and lead to lifetime renting for middle income households who would otherwise own their own homes. These forces—one long associated with the right, and the other the left—share a common agenda, though for different reasons.

Financial interests would reap a steady profit stream by creating a “rentership society,” where potential owners are transformed into tenants, guaranteeing the benefits of increasing land values. Today pension funds and Wall Street firms are buying up single family homes, often at prices too high for the average buyer. For their part, the planning clerisy believes that dense urbanism is socially, economically, and environmentally superior; some even favor a return to public housing, which not long ago lost was rejected as a massively failed experiment.

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