Story of Why David Icke Met an ‘Anti-Terrorism Officer’ and a Council ‘Anti-Extremist Co-Ordinator’
March 18th, 2018Via: David Icke:
50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach
March 17th, 2018Via: Guardian:
The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.
A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.
Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”
Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.
At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
March 17th, 2018Via: Foto:
Ron Haeberle was a combat photographer in Vietnam when he and the Army unit he was riding with — Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment — landed near the hamlet of My Lai on the morning of March 16, 1968. Villagers weren’t alarmed; American GIs had visited the region near the central Vietnamese coast before, without incident. But within minutes, the troops opened fire. Over the course of the next few hours, they killed old men, women, and children. They raped and tortured. They razed the village.
China to Bar People with Bad ‘Social Credit’ from Planes, Trains
March 16th, 2018Via: Reuters:
China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.
People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday.
Those found to have committed financial wrongdoings, such as employers who failed to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines, would also face these restrictions, said the statements which were dated March 2.
It added that the rules would come into effect on May 1.
An Expert on Presidential Pardons Emailed Reporter His Life’s Work, Then Killed Himself and His Two Sons [???]
March 15th, 2018Why was the detective concerned with debunking “conspiracy theories” related to this?
Via: Columbia Journalism Review:
I started getting a flood of emails from P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor who taught at Northern Illinois University and Rock Valley College. In 10 emails containing 65 spreadsheets, he was sending his entire data set of more than 30,000 presidential pardons and commutations.
The first email said simply, “Would want you to have this and use freely.”
I had already gotten nine of the emails before I noticed them, but I immediately recognized that this was the data set—the one that made him such an essential expert on any story about presidential pardons. It was data I had often asked him to share, unsuccessfully, and now here it was, unsolicited, and out of the blue.
…
By Monday afternoon — now five days after the emails — I still hadn’t heard back, which was somewhat unusual. I went to his Twitter feed and his blog and saw no recent posts. I did a Google news search and found a headline in the Rockford Register Star from Saturday: “Sheriff’s department investigates double murder-suicide at home of RVC professor P.S. Ruckman Jr.”
His sons, found shot to death in their bedrooms in Ruckman’s house outside Rockford, Ill., had not been to school since Wednesday — the day of the emails.
…
On the way home, I called the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office, in case the emails helped to pin down a timeline or establish his intent. (On the advice of our lawyers, I did not provide the emails or the data set itself.) The detective said the emails were potentially significant — he seemed particularly interested in the value the data had to Ruckman. For him to suddenly give it away — something he had previously been unwilling to do — might demonstrate that he was wrapping up his affairs.
And if nothing else, it should help to debunk the conspiracy theories that would inevitably pop up, he said.
Cost of Healthcare in the U.S. vs. Outcomes
March 15th, 2018Your what hurts?
Via: JAMA:
In 2016, the US spent 17.8% of its gross domestic product on health care, and spending in the other countries ranged from 9.6% (Australia) to 12.4% (Switzerland).
…
Life expectancy in the US was the lowest of the 11 countries at 78.8 years (range for other countries, 80.7-83.9 years; mean of all 11 countries, 81.7 years), and infant mortality was the highest (5.8 deaths per 1000 live births in the US; 3.6 per 1000 for all 11 countries).
Related: Comparing Deaths from Medical Treatment, Vitamins, All U.S. Wars
World’s Highest Capacity Grid Battery Might Be Built in Colorado
March 14th, 2018300 MWh.
😯
Via: Electrek:
After breaking a few energy storage records with its battery system projects in Australia, Tesla looks to come back to the US to build a new world’s largest Powerpack battery system in Colorado.
…
In South Australia, Tesla’s 100MW/ 129MWh Powerpack project is known as “the most powerful battery system in the world” and while this proposal in Colorado would not be as powerful with a power capacity of 75 MW, it would be able to run for 4 hours, which would require a much bigger energy capacity of 300 MWh.
‘Oxytocin-Enforced Norm Compliance Reduces Xenophobic Outgroup Rejection’
March 14th, 2018Via: Jon Rappoport:
I really hope you understand this.
It is not a fantasy. It isn’t science fiction. It isn’t satire.
It is Brave New World, but not the Huxley novel. It’s happening now.
It’s a published study that appears on the website of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The title of the study is, “Oxytocin-enforced norm compliance reduces xenophobic outgroup rejection.” (Reference: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Aug 29;114(35):9314-9319.)
Xenophobia is defined as: “fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers.” (Dictionary.com)
Oxytocin, the chemical used in this study, is described by Medical News Today: “Widely referred to as the love hormone, oxytocin has also been dubbed the hug hormone, cuddle chemical, moral molecule, and the bliss hormone due to its effects on behavior, including its role in love and in female reproductive biological functions in reproduction.”
“Oxytocin is a hormone that is made in the brain, in the hypothalamus. It is transported to, and secreted by, the pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain.”
The published study details a successful attempt at chemical mind control. The goal is making people more “happy and friendly” about mass migration, by changing their hormonal response toward migrants.
Nothing in the study cites inherent migration problems, such as increased violent crime, back-breaking financial pressure on government budgets, and the eroding of local cultures. It’s all about shifting feeling and reaction toward waves of immigrants.
Research Credit: Pookie
Scott Kelly Spent a Year in Space, and Now He Has Different DNA Than His Identical Twin Brother
March 14th, 2018
Update: This Story Is Bullshit
Via: LiveScience:
So what really happened to Mark and Scott Kelly? It turns out that big changes in the expression of Scott Kelly’s genes occurred while he was in space, and 7 percent of those changes persisted after he returned to Earth, lead author Susan Bailey, a researcher at Colorado State University, who led the research on Kelly, told Nat Geo’s Nadia Drake. What that means is that his body quieted some of his genes while amplifying others, so that his body produced more or less of certain key proteins in an attempt to adjust to the weird conditions of space and microgravity — not, as our original story claimed, that his DNA actually changed.
—
Via: LiveScience:
Scott and Mark Kelly are identical twin brothers — at least, they were until Scott spent a year living in space.
When Scott Kelly returned to Earth after a 340-day voyage aboard the International Space Station (ISS) two years ago, he was 2 inches taller than he’d been when he left. His body mass had decreased, his gut bacteria were completely different, and — according to preliminary findings from NASA researchers — his genetic code had changed significantly. (Interestingly, Scott Kelly has since shrunk back down to his initial prespaceflight height.)
A new NASA statement suggests the physical and mental stresses of Scott Kelly’s year in orbit may have activated hundreds of “space genes” that altered the astronaut’s immune system, bone formation, eyesight and other bodily processes. While most of these genetic changes reverted to normal following Scott Kelly’s return to Earth, about 7 percent of the astronaut’s genetic code remained altered — and it may stay that way permanently.
YouTube Will Add Information from Wikipedia to Videos About Conspiracies
March 14th, 2018Via: The Verge:
YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects, its CEO said today. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that these text boxes, which the company is calling “information cues,” would begin appearing on conspiracy-related videos within the next couple of weeks.
Wojcicki, who spoke Tuesday evening at a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, showed examples of information cues for videos about the moon landing and chemtrails. “When there are videos that are focused around something that’s a conspiracy — and we’re using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia — then we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event,” Wojcicki said.
