“Fussy Eater” Goes Blind and Deaf After Years of Eating Only Junk Food
September 4th, 2019Via: Ars Technica:
A British teenager has permanent vision loss, hearing loss, and weak bones after years of eating only select types of junk food. The teen’s doctors eventually diagnosed him with a relatively newly defined eating disorder called avoidant-restrictive food in-take disorder (ARFID).
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The crack in the case came when he finally confessed that he had only eaten foods with certain textures since elementary school. His diet consisted of a daily order of fries from a local fish and chip shop, Pringles chips, white bread, processed ham slices, and sausages. The vitamin B12 shots he was prescribed at 14 had lapsed.
Metabolic testing showed he had low copper and selenium levels, a high zinc level, remarkably low vitamin D level, and low bone mineral density, the doctors reported.
His doctors finally diagnosed him with nutritional optic neuropathy, which is dysfunction of the optic nerve when nutrients essential for nerve fiber function are in short supply. It is an uncommon condition, particularly in developed countries, but sometimes found in people with alcohol dependence. The doctors also diagnosed the teen with ARFID.
Biden’s Left Eye Fills with Blood During CNN Town Hall
September 4th, 2019See: Subconjunctival Hemorrhage
Via: CNN Mirrored by Washington Free Beacon:
Grand Bahama and Abaco Islands After Hurricane Dorian: ‘Total Devastation. Apocalyptic.’
September 4th, 2019Via: USA Today:
The death toll from Hurricane Dorian reached seven and was expected to climb in the Bahamas on Wednesday as rescue teams raced the clock to provide food, water, medicine and shelter to thousands left homeless by the devastating storm.
The sun shone brightly over the beleaguered archipelago, revealing the overwhelming destruction across Grand Bahama and Abaco islands after the storm rolled in Sunday as a Category 5 hurricane and lingered for days.
Entire communities were flattened and roads washed out. Hospitals and airports were swamped by several feet of water. The government urged residents stuck in their homes to cut holes in the ceilings in case water rushed in and trapped families awaiting rescue.
Clarence Ingram, the Salvation Army’s division commander in the Bahamas, said relief efforts are hamstrung by flooded airports and swamped roads on the two most severely ravaged islands, home to about 70,000 Bahamians. About 60,000 of them need help immediately, he said.
“This is dire,” Ingram told USA TODAY. “And relief efforts providing for basic human needs such as food and water will probably go on for several months.”
Amazon Tests Whole Foods Payment System that Uses Hands as ID
September 4th, 2019Via: New York Post:
Forget the titanium Apple Card — Amazon’s latest payment method uses flesh and blood.
The e-tailing giant’s engineers are quietly testing scanners that can identify an individual human hand as a way to ring up a store purchase, with the goal of rolling them out at its Whole Foods supermarket chain in the coming months, The Post has learned.
America Needs a “Dead Hand”
September 4th, 2019Related: “There’s no way a human can keep up, so you’ve got to delegate to machines.”
Via: War on the Rocks:
America’s nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system comprises many component systems that were designed and fielded during the Cold War — a period when nuclear missiles were set to launch from deep within Soviet territory, giving the United States sufficient time to react. That era is over. Today, Russian and Chinese nuclear modernization is rapidly compressing the time U.S. leaders will have to detect a nuclear launch, decide on a course of action, and direct a response.
Technologies such as hypersonic weapons, stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and weaponized artificial intelligence mean America’s legacy NC3 system may be too slow for the president to make a considered decision and transmit orders. The challenges of attack-time compression present a destabilizing risk to America’s deterrence strategy. Any potential for failure in the detection or assessment of an attack, or any reduction of decision and response time, is inherently dangerous and destabilizing.
If the ultimate purpose of the NC3 system is to ensure America’s senior leadership has the information and time needed to command and control nuclear forces, then the penultimate purpose of a reliable NC3 system is to reinforce the desired deterrent effect. To maintain the deterrent value of America’s strategic forces, the United States may need to develop something that might seem unfathomable — an automated strategic response system based on artificial intelligence.
Admittedly, such a suggestion will generate comparisons to Dr. Strangelove’s doomsday machine, War Games’ War Operation Plan Response, and the Terminator’s Skynet, but the prophetic imagery of these science fiction films is quickly becoming reality. A rational look at the NC3 modernization problem finds that it is compounded by technical threats that are likely to impact strategic forces. Time compression has placed America’s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough. Thus, it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.
Fire Did Not Cause 3rd Tower’s Collapse on 9/11, New Study Finds
September 3rd, 2019Via: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
On September 11, 2001, at 5:20 PM, the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed into its footprint, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second destruction.
Despite calls for the evidence to be preserved, New York City officials had the building’s debris removed and destroyed in the ensuing weeks and months, preventing a proper forensic investigation from ever taking place. Seven years later, federal investigators concluded that WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of normal office fires.
Today, we at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth are pleased to partner with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in releasing the draft report of a four-year computer modeling study of WTC 7’s collapse conducted by researchers in the university’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The UAF WTC 7 report concludes that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was caused not by fire but rather by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.
DARPA to Fight Fake News
September 3rd, 2019From my ancient post on the American Culture Bomb:
In summary, the U.S. military is aware that “American Culture” is a strategic weapon that is capable of defeating an enemy, or entire populations, without necessarily having to kill them. The U.S. military, however, must and will kill in order to allow “American Culture” into a society in order to repurpose it. Military failures will result from failing to thrust, “that bayonet into an enemy’s heart.”
And now…
Via: Bloomberg:
Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.
Welcome to a New Era of Machine-Driven Warfare
September 3rd, 2019Via: The Atlantic:
“There’s no way a human can keep up, so you’ve got to delegate to machines.”
Scammer Successfully Deepfaked CEO’s Voice To Fool Underling Into Transferring $243,000
September 3rd, 2019I don’t entirely believe this one, but it’s interesting if true. When I’ve been in a position to spend tens of thousands of dollars of a company’s money, it never happened based on just a phone call with the CEO.
But, hey, these kids today…
Via: Gizmodo:
The CEO of an energy firm based in the UK thought he was following his boss’s urgent orders in March when he transferred funds to a third-party. But the request actually came from the AI-assisted voice of a fraudster.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the mark believed he was speaking to the CEO of his businesses’ parent company based in Germany. The German-accented caller told him to send €220,000 ($243,000 USD) to a Hungarian supplier within the hour. The firm’s insurance company, Euler Hermes Group SA, shared information about the crime with WSJ but would not reveal the name of the targeted businesses.
Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can’t Block
September 3rd, 2019Via: Fortune:
How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.
That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.
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The app can connect people via standard Bluetooth across an entire city, thanks to a mesh network. Chatting is speediest with people who are close, of course, within a hundred meters (330 feet), but you can also chat with people who are farther away. Your messages will simply “hop” via other Bridgefy users’ phones until they find your intended target.
While you can chat privately with contacts, you can also broadcast to anyone within range, even if they are not a contact.
That’s clearly an ideal scenario for protesters who are trying to reach people but cannot use traditional SMS texting, email, or the undisputed uber-app of China: WeChat. All of them are monitored by the state.
