New Zealand: Kirsten Murfitt – Open Letter To Members Of Parliament
August 10th, 2022Full text of Kirsten Murfitt’s letter.
Via: Liz Gunn:
Research Credit: B
FBI Raided Trumps Florida Home, Mar-a-Lago, Cracked Safe
August 9th, 2022Via: NY Post:
The FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and broke into a safe in his palatial home, the former president confirmed Monday.
Trump said in a message on his social media forum Truth Social that his home had been “raided, and occupied” and was “currently under siege.”
FBI agents were reportedly searching for classified documents that Trump allegedly brought with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended — which, if true, could be a violation of federal law.
The National Archives and Records Administration said it had found classified material in 15 boxes at the residence earlier this year and alerted the FBI. The agents executed a search warrant Monday to look for additional presidential records Trump may have relocated to his Florida estate.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The U.S. Made a Breakthrough Battery Discovery – Then Gave the Technology to China
August 8th, 2022Via: NPR:
When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.
They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.
“It was beyond promise,” said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. “We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected.”
But that’s not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.
The Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances.
Why the Chair of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission Thinks The US Government Is Preventing a Real Investigation Into the Pandemic
August 8th, 2022Via: Current Affairs:
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has also served as the chair of the COVID-19 commission for leading medical journal the Lancet. Through his investigations as the head of the COVID-19 commission, Prof. Sachs has come to the conclusion that there is extremely dangerous biotechnology research being kept from public view, that the United States was supporting much of this research, and that it is very possible that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, originated through dangerous virus research gone awry.
Prof. Sachs recently co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins. He believes that there is clear proof that the National Institutes of Health and many members of the scientific community have been impeding a serious investigation of the origins of COVID-19 and deflecting attention away from the hypothesis that risky U.S.-supported research may have led to millions of deaths. If that hypothesis is true, the implications would be earth-shaking, because it might mean that esteemed members of the scientific community bore responsibility for a global calamity. In this interview, Prof. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent.
Off Topic: Inside the 40 Year-Long Dungeons & Dragons Game
August 8th, 2022The video below reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to ask…
I never DMed, ever, and I don’t want to start now. I’ve looked for tabletop RPG systems for my own children to use DMless and came across Four Against Darkness, which they played until the books fell apart.
I bought the Legend of Drizzt board game for one of my sons, who has read all of the Drizzt books through twice. It’s quite clever how it manages to run the campaign without a DM.
What I’m wondering is if there is something like Four Against Darkness, all paper based, but much bigger? More crunchy than 4AD would be fine.
In the 80s, we used to play D&D with graph paper, dice, our character sheets and the monster manuals. No figurines, no dungeon boards/tiles. Remember the 1983 Red Box? Is there something like that, but with an automated/RNG/scripted dungeon master?
Apologies for this off topic distraction, the regularly scheduled doom will now continue.
Via: Wired:
New Preparedness PSA for “The Big One”: Is This a Bad Joke?
August 8th, 2022Via: Truthstream Media:
UN Warns Of ‘Worrying And Dangerous’ Conspiracy Theories
August 7th, 2022Via: ZeroHedge:
The United Nations would like everyone to be on the lookout for ‘worrying and dangerous’ conspiracy theories – especially those that might lead people to the conclusion that COVID-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China… you know, the thing the WHO just admitted could very well be the case, and which Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has launched recent investigations into.
Lost Nuclear Bombs
August 6th, 2022Via: BBC:
The US has lost at least three nuclear bombs that have never been located – they’re still out there to this day.
…
“We mostly know about the American cases,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-proliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies, California. He explains that the full list only emerged when a summary prepared by the US Department of Defense was declassified in the 1980s.
Many occurred during the Cold War, when the nation teetered on the precipice of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with the Soviet Union – and consequently kept airplanes armed with nuclear weapons in the sky at all times from 1960 to 1968, in an operation known as Chrome Dome.
“We don’t know as much about other countries. We don’t really know anything about the United Kingdom or France, or Russia or China,” says Lewis. “So I don’t think we have anything like a full accounting.”
Synthetic Embryos
August 6th, 2022Via: Phys.org:
Stem cell scientists say they have created “synthetic embryos” without using sperm, eggs or fertilization for the first time, but the prospect of using such a technique to grow human organs for transplantation remains distant.
The breakthrough was hailed as a major step forward, though some experts said the result could not fully be considered to be embryos and warned of future ethical considerations.
In research published in the journal Cell this week, scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel said found a way to have mouse stem cells self-assemble into embryo-like structures in the lab.
Amazon Bought iRobot to See Inside Your Home
August 5th, 2022Via: The Verge:
When I spoke to iRobot’s Colin Angle earlier this summer, he said iRobot OS — the latest software operating system for its robot vacuums and mops — would provide its household bots with a deeper understanding of your home and your habits. This takes on a whole new meaning with the news today that Amazon has bought iRobot for $1.7 billion.
From a smart home perspective, it seems clear Amazon wants iRobot for the maps it generates to give it that deep understanding of our homes. The vacuum company has detailed knowledge of our floor plans and, crucially, how they change. It knows where your kitchen is, which your kids’ rooms are, where your sofa is (and how new it is), and if you recently turned the guest room into a nursery.
“Knowing your floor plan provides context, and in the smart home, context is king”
This type of data is digital gold to a company whose primary purpose is to sell you more stuff.
