Epstein’s Private Calendar Emerges: Among Prominent Names Listed Are Biden’s CIA Chief, Goldman Top Lawyer
April 30th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
In 2014, current CIA director William Burns had three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein when Burns was Obama’s deputy secretary of state, and after Epstein had been convicted of child sex exploitation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Ukrainian Kamikaze Drones Blow Up Crimean Fuel Depot
April 29th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
The day after Russia mounted large-scale airstrikes and cruise missile attacks on cities across Ukraine, drones penetrated Crimea air defenses on Saturday and blew up a fuel depot in the peninsula’s main port of Sevastopol.
Home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the port city has throughout the war come under sporadic long-distance drone attacks from Ukraine, also as President Zelensky has continued to promised its “liberation”.
Masks Had No Effect On COVID Cases Among Children
April 29th, 2023Wow, here’s a shocker. *sigh*
Via: ZeroHedge:
The imposition of mask mandates among school children during the pandemic did not affect the incidence of COVID-19 infection, according to research conducted in Finland.
The study, published in the journal BMC Public Health on April 21, was conducted in three Finnish cities—Helsinki, Turku, and Tampere. These cities had similar baseline incidences of COVID-19 between August and September 2021. At the time, the federal government had recommended using masks in schools for children aged 12 years and above. In Helsinki and Tampere, the national recommendation was imposed as mandates at schools while in Turku, the mandate was levied on kids aged 10 and above.
The research team looked at the effects of masks on two groups of children—those between seven and nine years and those between 10 and 12. While the seven to 10-year-olds were not subject to mask mandates, 10-12 years olds had to wear masks.
“According to our analysis, no additional effect was gained from mandating masks, based on comparisons between the cities and between the age groups of the unvaccinated children (10–12 years versus 7–9 years),” the study said.
“Face mask recommendations in schools did not reduce COVID-19 incidence among 10–12-year-olds in Finland. This may indicate that COVID-19 cases in schools merely reflect community infections than school outbreaks.”
Internet in a Box
April 29th, 2023Physical books are best in a collapse situation, but with a bit of planning, one would be able to search and access millions of pages of information without the Internet.
Customize an “Offline Internet” for your school, for your community — or for your very own family!
Check it out: Internet in a Box
FDIC Prepares to Place First Republic Under Receivership
April 28th, 2023Via: Reuters:
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is preparing to place First Republic Bank (FRC.N) under receivership imminently, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, sending shares of the lender down nearly 50% in extended trading.
The U.S. banking regulator decided the troubled regional lender’s position has deteriorated and there is no more time to pursue a rescue through the private sector, the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity because the matter is confidential.
DNA Contamination of mRNA “Vaccines” Poses Risk to Everyone on the Planet
April 28th, 2023Via: World Council for Health:
In a recent publication by a group of experienced geneticists, more contamination in mRNA “vaccines” (Pfizer and Moderna), excluding metal residues, which had been identified in the past, was found. Multiple methods highlighted high levels of DNA contamination.
Of special concern was that they found replicable DNA, so-called plasmids, in both the monovalent and bivalent vaccines, which should not be there at all. This time the researchers found DNA contamination that far exceeded the European Medicines Agency (EMA) requirement and the U.S. FDA’s dose requirements.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Sold 85% of $4 Billion Position in Taiwan’s TSMC
April 28th, 2023If China was to invade Taiwan, there might be a plan to prevent any of TSMC’s fabs from falling into Chinese hands:
The US would sooner see TSMC fabs destroyed than fall into Chinese hands should Xi Jinping invade Taiwan, according to a former national security advisor to the Trump administration.
“The United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands,” Robert O’Brien said at the Global Security Forum in Qatar this week.
In O’Brien’s mind, a successful invasion of Taiwan would reposition China as the leading semiconductor manufacturing power almost overnight. Or as he put it, China would become “the new OPEC of silicon chips.” O’Brien contends the US will destroy Taiwanese fabs to prevent China from gaining the technological advantage.
Of course, doing so would have severe consequences for the world economy. Last year the US National Security Agency estimated the loss of TSMC at more than $1 trillion dollars.
The former advisor’s comments breathe new life into rumors that the US would enact a scorched-earth policy to prevent sensitive semiconductor tech from falling into Chinese hands.
The effect of such an invasion would be like a slow moving EMP attack hitting the developed world. Instead of everything going down in seconds, it might take weeks or months.
What Country Produces the Most Semiconductors?
Taiwan
The tiny East Asian country of Taiwan, whose diplomatic status is disputed by China, is the world’s undisputed leader in terms of raw semiconductor manufacturing. This is largely due to the work of a single company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) which singlehandedly manufactures roughly 50% of the world’s semiconductors. Unlike semiconductor manufacturers such as Samsung or Intel, which produce semiconductors for use in their own products, TSMC manufactures semiconductors for many other companies, including Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and more. This is known as the foundry model of business.
And now, I wonder what Warren Buffett knows?
Via: Nikkei:
Buffett also commented on the sale of the bulk of Berkshire’s stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. After buying more than $4 billion in shares in the world’s biggest chipmaker between July and September 2022, it slashed its holdings by 85% to $617 million by the end of 2022.
Buffett said geopolitical tensions were “a consideration” in the divestment. He described TSMC as a well-managed company but added that Berkshire had better places to deploy its capital.
New Nanoparticles Can Perform Gene Editing in the Lungs
April 28th, 2023What could possibly go wrong?
Via: MIT News:
Engineers at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have designed a new type of nanoparticle that can be administered to the lungs, where it can deliver messenger RNA encoding useful proteins.
With further development, these particles could offer an inhalable treatment for cystic fibrosis and other diseases of the lung, the researchers say.
“This is the first demonstration of highly efficient delivery of RNA to the lungs in mice. We are hopeful that it can be used to treat or repair a range of genetic diseases, including cystic fibrosis,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).
Inside the Chaotic World of Kids Trying to Play Video Games on School Laptops
April 27th, 2023Assuming you think it’s ok for children to have access to these devices during school (I don’t), the IT departments could easily implement domain whitelists. This means that only sites explicitly whitelisted by the administrators would be accessible by the students.
All of that said, I salute the entrepreneurial genius of the boy who makes the fake educational/gaming sites for profit.
Via: Vice:
Kids have been trying to play video games on school computers for as long as computers have cropped up in schools, but decades ago, they jumped through those hoops in a dedicated computer lab, or secretly downloaded homemade games to their TI-83 calculators while pretending to crunch equations. But these days, computers are deeply intertwined into education, and many school age children have regular access to a computer, usually a Chromebook or iPad, as early as 1st grade, when kids are only six or seven years old.
What exists now is an escalating game of whack-a-mole between students, teachers, and IT departments, as kids hopeful to do anything but school work try to find a way to play games.
…
Geometry Spot is run by 16-year-old Jerry Klamm, who attends high school in New York. This is one of many smokescreen websites that Jerry runs, a practice that dates back to middle school. At the time, Jerry had been trying to build up a personal YouTube channel.
“I was at school,” said Jerry during a recent interview with Waypoint, “and someone said, ‘That’s a cool website, but why don’t you add games to it that we can play in school?’”
He did, and suddenly, a lot of people at Jerry’s school were visiting his site—to play games. A typical cycle would then play out, with Jerry making a website with embedded games for fellow students to play during and between class, before the school caught on and banned it.
Now in high school, Geometry Spot is the latest in that chain, a website that’s done well enough that it now includes ads, and generates what Jerry’s father, Chris Klamm, calls “real money.”
AI-Generated Pizza Commercial
April 26th, 2023AI generated video is mostly nightmare fuel at this point.
But this…
I laughed so hard, I nearly injured myself.
Via: tom’s HARDWARE:
In the last few months, we’ve seen how large language models such as ChatGPT can generate text copy, how image generators like Stable Diffusion can create pictures on demand and even how some can do text-to-speech. One enterprising developer who goes by the handle Pizza Later, combined five different AI models to create a live action commercial for a fictional pizza restaurant called “Pepperoni Hug Spot.”
