That $15 an hour minimum wage?
Category: They Made a Movie About This
There’s a difference between ‘can do’ and ‘should do’, and some people, supposedly very smart people, apparently don’t know how to determine that.
Scientists grow human-monkey chimeric embryos in lab.
April 15 (UPI) — After injecting human stem cells into primate embryos, scientists were able to grow and maintain human-monkey chimeric embryos for up to 20 days.
The international research team, including geneticists in China and the United States, detailed their breakthrough in a new paper, published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists suggest human-monkey chimeric embryos can be used to build models for studying human biology and disease.
“As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,” senior study author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, an expert in pluripotent stem cells who operates a lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, said in a news release. “An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions.”
The research builds on previous successes achieved by Izpisua Belmonte and his research partners in China. The team first successfully created human-monkey chimeric embryos a few years ago, keeping them alive for only a few days.
Nuro’s self-driving robot will deliver Domino’s pizza orders to customers in Houston.
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Domino’s Pizza will start delivering pizzas via Nuro driverless cars in Houston this week as part of a pilot program, the company announced Monday. The company says “select customers” in Houston who make a prepaid delivery order from its store in the Woodland Heights neighborhood during certain dates and times can have their pizza brought to them by a Nuro R2 robot.
Here’s how the pizza deliveries will work: a customer places and pays for an order online from the Woodland Heights store and opts in to have the order brought by the R2. The customer receives a unique PIN via text alert along with updates on the vehicle’s location. When the robot car arrives, the customer enters the PIN on its touch screen, which opens the R2’s doors. Pizza ensues.
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Earthquakes in divers places………
‘Huge’ explosion rocks St. Vincent as volcano keeps erupting.
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent (AP) — La Soufriere volcano fired an enormous amount of ash and hot gas early Monday in the biggest explosive eruption yet since volcanic activity began on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent late last week, with officials worried about the lives of those who have refused to evacuate.
Experts called it a “huge explosion” that generated pyroclastic flows down the volcano’s south and southwest flanks.
“It’s destroying everything in its path,” Erouscilla Joseph, director of the University of the West Indies’ Seismic Research Center, told The Associated Press. “Anybody who would have not heeded the evacuation, they need to get out immediately.”………
So, Daleks are taking over?
Crime-fighting robot patrols Las Vegas apartment complex
How would you like a robot warning you that you are violating a curfew regulation?
A security robot is helping to transform a noisy northeast Las Vegas Valley apartment complex into a quieter, more peaceful place to live, says a manager.
“Westy” has been patrolling the grounds at the 1,129-unit Liberty Village apartment complex, just outside the southwest corner of Nellis Air Force Base, since October. It is believed to be the first such use of a security robot at a Las Vegas apartment complex.
Officially known as a Knightscope MIN31KS, the human-sized autonomous robot offers a wide variety of security measures including four-camera video recording, facial recognition, license plate reading, verbal warnings, a telephone-like connection with human security officers and a presence that helps deter improper activity.
Something of interest for the folks down south.
How Colombia’s drug cartels almost bought a Soviet submarine.
In 2019, footage of a U.S. Coast Guard interdiction of a homemade drug smuggling submarine took the world by storm, and for good reason. As we watched one of the baddest dudes we’re ever apt to see anywhere outside of a movie pounding on the hatch of the mostly submerged sub, many of us were shocked to learn that drug cartels actually have their own submarines.
What may surprise you more is that these amateur submarines were really a consolation prize for drug smugglers out of Colombia. Their first choice? An actual Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine. What’s even crazier, however, is that the Russians seemed to be more than happy to sell them one.
They Made A Movie About This
BLUF:
As a species, we are not anywhere close to fully understanding the Earth’s incredibly complex climate system — or the extent of the role we humans play in it. And we certainly are not at a place where we need to scrap the efficient fossil-fuel energies that we know work in favor of “green energy” technologies that are not currently up to the task.
Unfortunately, Texas is currently finding that out the hard way
Severe Winter Weather Across Southern United States Blamed on Global Warming
In their frenzy to blame every bit of unusual weather on climate change (which used to be called global warming), climate alarmists have more than once claimed that the warming Earth can also cause hideous cold weather. Now, the horrendous wintry weather that’s been downing power lines and freezing windmills in Texas is being blamed on — you guessed it — global warming.
Today’s example of counterintuitive weather phenomenon comes from MIT climatologist Judah Cohen, who has been quick to attach the wintry weather in the southern United States to global warming. “The current conditions in Texas are historical, certainly generational,” said Cohen, who is also the director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. “But this can’t be hand-waved away as if it’s entirely natural. This is happening not in spite of climate change, it’s in part due to climate change.”
Cohen was one of a slew of authors of a 2019 article linking a phenomenon known as Polar Amplification to extreme winter weather events. Polar Amplification — known in the northern hemisphere as Arctic Amplification — suggests that the polar areas of Earth are warming far quicker than mid-latitude and equatorial regions due to several reasons, a key one being the reported loss of sea ice, as open water reflects sunlight less than sea ice.
In a nutshell, the “out-of-control” warming of the polar regions supposedly causes big swings in the jet stream and also may weaken the so-called polar vortex, which allows extremely cold weather to escape further southward than usual. “The energy escaping from the jet stream bangs into the polar vortex so it starts to wobble and move all over the place,” Cohen said. “Where the polar vortex goes, so goes the cold air.”
China Is Creating a New Master Race
- “U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,” wrote then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “China Is National Security Threat No. 1.”
- All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
- The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”
- Shenzhen’s He [Jenkui], after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed for “illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing,” but in the Communist Party’s near-total surveillance state he obviously had state backing for his experiments…. Beijing’s prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from further inquiry into China’s activities.
- “What is most disturbing about these endeavors is that China has gleaned access to CRISPR and advanced genetic and biotech research, thanks to their relationship with the United States and other advanced Western nations. American research labs, biotech investors, and scientists have all striven to do research and business in China’s budding biotech arena… because the ethical standards for research… are so low.” — Brandon Weichert, author of The Weichert Report and Winning Space, interview with Gatestone Institute, February 2021.
China’s regime does not have ethics or decency, is not bound by law, and does not have a sense of restraint. However, with its rapid weaponization of biotechnology, it does have the technology to start a whole new species of genetically enhanced, goose-stepping humans. Pictured: Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) |
Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments
CARSON CITY, Nev. —
Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.
Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.
The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.
The measure to further economic development with the “alternative form of local government” has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.
Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address delivered Jan. 19. The plan would bring in new businesses at the forefront of “groundbreaking technologies” without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that previously helped Nevada attract companies like Tesla Inc.
Sisolak named Blockchains, LLC as a company that had committed to developing a “smart city” in an area east of Reno after the legislation has passed.
The draft proposal said the traditional local government model is “inadequate alone” to provide the resources to make Nevada a leader in attracting and retaining businesses and fostering economic development in emerging technologies and industries.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development would oversee applications for the zones, which would be limited to companies working in specific business areas including blockchain, autonomous technology, the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence, wireless, biometrics and renewable resource technology.
Zone requirements would include applicants owning at least 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) of undeveloped, uninhabited land within a single county but separate from any city, town or tax increment area. Companies would have at least $250 million and plans to invest an additional $1 billion in their zones over 10 years.
The zones would initially operate with the oversight of their location counties, but would eventually take over county duties and become independent governmental bodies.
The zones would have three-member supervisor boards with the same powers as county commissioners. The businesses would maintain significant control over board membership.
The governor’s economic development office did not respond to questions about the zones Wednesday.
Skynet smiles
Army is working on Frankenbots with living tissue to better robot capabilities
The thought of living tissue and machinery meshed together brings up images of grotesque cyborgs and far-future sci-fi films, but at the Army Research Laboratory a robot with living, organic muscles may not be that far off.
ARL’s Combat Capabilities Development Command is teaming up with universities in North Carolina to develop studies in bio-hybrid robotics.
The idea is just as fantastical as you may be imagining. ARL wants to fuse living tissue with cold metal to build robots that may be able to gain the agility and versatility of living creatures.
They made a movie about this.
It’s called Schindler’s List.
You’d think the Germans, of all people, would be appalled at this, but I think it was Reagan who said something like freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction, and it’s been 2+ for them.
Germany to hold quarantine breakers in refugee camps and “detention centers.”
Germans who repeatedly refuse to quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 will be held in detention centers — and even under police guard, according to reports.
Officials in the state of Saxony — which is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in the European nation — have already approved plans to hold quarantine-breakers in a fenced-off section of a refugee camp, the Telegraph said.
Another state, Brandenburg, also plans to use a section of a refugee camp.
In Schleswig-Holstein, repeat offenders will be kept in a special area in a juvenile detention center, the report said, citing Germany’s Welt newspaper.
From last May, but as on point now, as then.
RTWT (Read The Whole Thing)
The Great UnReason of 2020: The ‘Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think’
Upon the Nazis’ rise to power, Hannah Arendt, a Jewish woman who would go on to become a considerable 20th century philosopher, had to flee with her family from her native Germany.
Once the war was over and some prominent Nazis were brought to justice, Arendt attended the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.
The experience left an indelible impression upon her, one that would shape the trajectory of her philosophical thinking. What she observed was that, much to her surprise, Eichmann wasn’t the incarnation of evil that she expected to encounter. His actions were monstrous, yes; but he was remarkably ordinary or “banal,” to use Arendt’s term of choice.
What struck Arendt was Eichmann’s “curious, but authentic, inability to think.”
“However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.”
Eichmann didn’t subscribe to any “theory or doctrine,” exhibited no “particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction;” his “only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”
Note, Arendt did not intend her characterization to be interpreted as commentary upon Eichmann’s IQ. Nor, for that matter, did she mean to suggest that he was literally incapable of thinking critically. Rather, her point was that Eichmann showed no will to think beyond the clichés—the memes, bumper sticker slogans, and hashtags—of his day.
Skynet smiles
How does that line go about just because you can, doesn’t mean you should?
Researchers At Large Hadron Collider Are Confident To Make Contact With Parallel Universe In Days.
If successful a very new universe is going to be exposed – modifying completely not only the physics books but the philosophy books too.
It is even probable that gravity from our own universe may “transfer” into this parallel universe, researchers at the LHC say. The experiment is assured to accentuate alarmist critics of the LHC, many of whom initially warned the high energy particle collider would start the top of our universe with the making a part of its own. But up to now Geneva stays intact and securely outside the event horizon.
No doubt the LHC has been outstandingly successful. First researchers proved the existence of the mysterious Higgs boson “God particle” – a key building block of the cosmos – and it’s seemingly well on the thanks to revealing ‘dark matter’ – a previously untraceable theoretical prospect that’s now believed to form up the foremost of matter within the universe. But next week’s experimentation is reflected to be a game-changer. Mir Faizal, one in every of the three-strong group of physicists behind this experiment, said: “Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two-dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist during a dimension [height], parallel universes can even exist in higher dimensions.” Continue reading “”
We’re living in BLADERUNNER, but without space colonies and Darryl Hannah replicants.
10 a.m. Fran SanCisco, 09/09/2020, reality
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t even believe.
Gender reveals on fire off the shoulder of Nob Hill.
I watched stunguns glitter in the dark near the Golden Gate.
All those tech bros will be lost in time, like equity in a failed startup. Time to die.
BLUF:
“I don’t expect that this new string of asinine directives will motivate anyone to vote against Governor Cuomo. Democrats in New York seem to hate Democrat policies yet continue to vote them into office, no matter what they do.”
‘Footloose’ Comes To Life In New York: Governor Cuomo Bans Dancing
Governor Cuomo has become Reverend Shaw Moore from the movie Footloose after issuing a new set of commands for New Yorkers that includes a ban on dancing
There is no dancing allowed in New York’s bars and restaurants, even at a wedding reception, according to the New York State Liquor Authority.
To control the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s liquor authority has also specifically banned darts, pool, cornhole, karaoke and exotic dancing.
Bar owners are already struggling to stay open after being shut down for months. The new rules are causing a lot of anxiety as business owners are being threatened with their licensing if they don’t comply.
Nice of him to do that, but that’s not what caught my eye.
It’s the bronze on the right of the picture.
That’s a tribute to the WW2 Navajo ‘Code Talkers’ of the U.S. Marine Corps
The Japanese never broke that code.
Christian Evangelist Franklin Graham visits Navajo Nation, offers support during COVID-19
6 May
1937
Roman Authorities Investigating Jesus For Violating Stay-In-Tomb Order
JERUSALEM—Roman authorities are investigating controversial religious leader Jesus of Nazareth for violating the Empire’s clear “stay in tomb” order. After crucifying him and laying him in the tomb, Roman guards put Him under strict orders to stay there and not come back, rising victorious over sin and death.
But Jesus, answering to a higher authority, refused to stay dead and busted out of the tomb, establishing a kingdom that would never end — again, in clear violation of the government’s orders.
“Jesus is a dangerous rebel, refusing to bend the knee to Caesar and not abiding by the law of sin and death,” said one Roman official. “He clearly broke the law by leaving the tomb, and we’re going to be issuing a citation and placing him under mandatory quarantine for these crimes.”
After coming into contact with many large groups over the course of approximately 40 days, Jesus ascended into heaven and is currently thought to be reigning on high.
Authorities are also investigating Him for planning to gather with a large multitude of every tribe, tongue, and nation. He says he currently has no plans to obey any earthly king on the matter, pressing ahead with the gathering of those who believe He died and rose again and trust Him alone for their salvation.
Today, April 11:
1783, General George Washington for the Americans, and General Guy Carleton for the British issue orders for ‘all acts of hostility’ to cease between their forces, effectively ending the American Revolutionary War
1970, Apollo 13 blasts off from Cape Kennedy.