Powerful ‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data

From Quanta Magazine.org (May 10, 2022):

In 2017, Roger Guimerà and Marta Sales-Pardo discovered a cause of cell division, the process driving the growth of living beings. But they couldn’t immediately reveal how they learned the answer. The researchers hadn’t spotted the crucial pattern in their data themselves. Rather, an unpublished invention of theirs — a digital assistant they called the “machine scientist” — had handed it to them. When writing up the result, Guimerà recalls thinking, “We can’t just say we fed it to an algorithm and this is the answer. No reviewer is going to accept that.”

The duo, who are partners in life as well as research, had teamed up with the biophysicist Xavier Trepat of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, a former classmate, to identify which factors might trigger cell division. Many biologists believed that division ensues when a cell simply exceeds a certain size, but Trepat suspected there was more to the story. His group specialized in deciphering the nanoscale imprints that herds of cells leave on a soft surface as they jostle for position. Trepat’s team had amassed an exhaustive data set chronicling shapes, forces, and a dozen other cellular characteristics. But testing all the ways these attributes might influence cell division would have taken a lifetime.

Instead, they collaborated with Guimerà and Sales-Pardo to feed the data to the machine scientist. Within minutes it returned a concise equation that predicted when a cell would divide 10 times more accurately than an equation that used only a cell’s size or any other single characteristic. What matters, according to the machine scientist, is the size multiplied by how hard a cell is getting squeezed by its neighbors — a quantity that has units of energy.

“It was able to pick up something that we were not,” said Trepat, who, along with Guimerà, is a member of ICREA, the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies.

Because the researchers hadn’t yet published anything about the machine scientist, they did a second analysis to cover its tracks. They manually tested hundreds of pairs of variables, “irrespective of … their physical or biological meaning,” as they would later write. By design, this recovered the machine scientist’s answer, which they reported in 2018 in Nature Cell Biology.

Four years later, this awkward situation is quickly becoming an accepted method of scientific discovery. Sales-Pardo and Guimerà are among a handful of researchers developing the latest generation of tools capable of a process known as symbolic regression.

Symbolic regression algorithms are distinct from deep neural networks, the famous artificial intelligence algorithms that may take in thousands of pixels, let them percolate through a labyrinth of millions of nodes, and output the word “dog” through opaque mechanisms. Symbolic regression similarly identifies relationships in complicated data sets, but it reports the findings in a format human researchers can understand: a short equation. These algorithms resemble supercharged versions of Excel’s curve-fitting function, except they look not just for lines or parabolas to fit a set of data points, but billions of formulas of all sorts. In this way, the machine scientist could give the humans insight into why cells divide, whereas a neural network could only predict when they do.

Researchers have tinkered with such machine scientists for decades, carefully coaxing them into rediscovering textbook laws of nature from crisp data sets arranged to make the patterns pop out. But in recent years the algorithms have grown mature enough to ferret out undiscovered relationships in real data — from how turbulence affects the atmosphere to how dark matter clusters. “No doubt about it,” said Hod Lipson, a roboticist at Columbia University who jump-started the study of symbolic regression 13 years ago. “The whole field is moving forward.” [read more]

A Trilogy of Meditations on AI and Art (Part One)

From AM Greatness.com (June 17):

Originating in late 18th century England, Luddism was a populist movement by middle-class, skilled workers in response to the burgeoning Industrial Revolution’s supplanting of their labor by machines. Throughout the centuries, the movement has been mischaracterized.

According to Historic U.K.’s Jessica Brain:

The Luddites were not, as has often been portrayed, against the concept of progress and industrialization as such, but instead the idea that mechanization would threaten their livelihood and the skills they had spent years acquiring. The group went about destroying weaving machines and other tools as a form of protest . . . 

Some inclined to look through the prism of history have reviled or romanticized the Luddites’ struggle. In both instances, such views can elide how the movement did not wholly rely on self-defeating destruction to redress their grievances. As Brain notes: “In an attempt to halt or at least make the transition smoother, the Luddites initially sought to renegotiate terms of working conditions based on the changing circumstances in the workplace . . . These attempts at bargaining proved futile.”

The result was a tragic vindication of the Luddites’ belief that mechanization would “prove disastrous for the artisans of their craft, who had spent years perfecting and honing their skills only to be replaced by less skilled, underpaid workers operating machinery.”

Today, even those less inclined to look through the prism of history can see the parallels between the Luddite movement’s response to the Industrial Revolution and today’s workers at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). While current workers have not organically coalesced into a movement with an eponymous name based upon a mythic figure and engaged in civil disorder to press their claims against AI, earlier manifestations of the inchoate, palpable public angst against globalization manifested itself in riots and acts of mayhem by nominally “populist” leftist organizations, both foreign and domestic.

In the specific instance of AI, some of those whose vocations are most at risk have chosen to negotiate first. The outcome may lay a cornerstone of how other occupations—blue collar or white collar—endeavor to come to terms with AI. More importantly, it also raises the question of how everyone must grapple with what it means to be human.

Recently, Variety cited director Joe Russo, who estimated that within “two years,” AI could be “engineering and changing storytelling,” and making movies. With a tinge of resignation evoking the Luddites, Russo realistically mulled the peril to the creative process by impending onslaught of AI:

I’m gonna speak from my experience of being on the board of those companies, [so] there are AI companies that are developing AI to protect you from AI. And unfortunately, we’re in that world, and you will need an AI in your life because whether we want to see it developed or not, people who are not friendly to us may develop it anyways. So, we’re going to be in that future. The question is, then, how we protect ourselves in that future?

That question is one of the critical issues the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is grappling with in its negotiations with studios and streaming companies. The WGA is trying to protect both its members’ financial interests and, more importantly for everyone, the future of artistic creation, per a Vanity Fair report: “There’s also an effort to get ahead of burgeoning technologies like artificial intelligence that threaten writers’ jobs.”

But while discussing the entire situation, one gleans the goal is not the knee-jerk eradication of AI, but rather a more realistic goal: “‘To safeguard ourselves from it getting worse,’ as one writer-producer explains.” Getting worse would be the termination of human authors and the ubiquitous utilization of low-cost AI programs to generate content for production companies and streaming outlets.

Granted, while a Philistine view, it is true that written works are commodities, like a shoe. Yet, as in a master shoe maker’s product, the sum of an author’s written work is greater than the sum of its inputs.

When the Luddites ultimately lost, the guilds were decimated and their skilled workers impoverished; and the human element in producing shoes—experience, knowledge, artistry, etc.—was lost, except for pockets of artisans serving as repositories of their craft’s traditions, customs, techniques, and talents. With mechanization, shoes became less expensive, and the world little noticed the plight of the skilled shoemakers. Why? Because, in many ways, the purpose of a shoe is a practical one capable of mass production—the protection of one’s feet. All things being equal, in a pinch any shoe will do.

Not so with art. What AI will decimate with authors and all artistic creators is the very essence of art: a human being crafting a work for the purposes of escapist and/or thought-provoking entertainment; and to express and affirm the essence of his own humanity and the universality of the human experience to another person.

Can AI craft a story? Perhaps. Can AI bring to bear the unique individual essence of a writer? No—and not even if the characteristics of said author are programmed into AI. For AI’s product is a derivative replication, not a unique creation; an act of mimicry, not artistry; a work of machine, not man.

It is the difference between a symphony and a jam session. A symphony is structured; a jam session is spontaneous. Incapable of being replicated again, a jam session relies upon the unique, inimitable experiences, abilities, and instincts of its players—all of whom, like the collective experience, are themselves individually unique. No matter how seemingly structured the work, inside every artist’s mind is a jam session of soul and synapses connecting disparate ideas, inspirations, and emotions and synthesizing them into a work that has never been seen throughout history. And no matter its programming, it is a work of art the AI can only simulate, emulate, imitate, and replicate, but can never create. 

CT Insider once reported how Paul McCartney “believes in a magical, mysterious nature to songwriting and can often feel like a conduit. ‘I have to [believe in magic]. Because some of the things that have happened to me in songwriting are pretty amazing.’” This is a traditional view of the artist as a conduit for God or an otherwise defined mystical inspiration. In fact, the postmodern view is that the true work of art is not the piece, but the artist himself—his life the ultimate canvas for creation.

Thus, in the current battle of artificial intelligence against artists’ imagination, like the Luddites before them, the WGA is not only bargaining for its members’ livelihoods. It is fighting for their artistic lives.

Godspeed in the good fight, WGA. [source]

Top 10 Hunter Biden bombshells from IRS whistleblower testimonies

From Just the News.com (June 22):

Two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the Hunter Biden tax investigation testified to the House Committee on Ways and Means in recent weeks attesting to the Department of Justice's hamstringing of U.S. Attorney David Weiss and his ability to pursue the case.

Biden reached a deal with the DOJ earlier this week to plead guilty to two tax charges and a gun violation that could potentially be dismissed. The DOJ is recommending he receive no prison time.

Gary Shapley, who led the IRS agents working on the case, initially came forward alleging that political officials had intervened to prevent the bringing of charges against the first son and that Weiss lacked sufficient authority to do so on his own. After Shapley came forward, the DOJ removed his entire team from the case.

One of his subordinate agents, who remains unidentified, has since come forward to corroborate most of Shapley's claims. The pair testified to the committee in separate interviews, revealing the extent to which the DOJ hampered the case.

File

Whistleblower 1 Transcript_Redacted.pdf

File

Whistleblower 2 Transcript_Redacted.pdf

Here are the top 10 takeaways from their testimonies:

Prosecutors resisted IRS efforts to ramp up the investigation before the election

The unnamed whistleblower recounted disagreements between the IRS whistleblowers on the case and the prosecutors about taking aggressive steps to pursue the investigation.

"So one of the first disagreements I recall between the IRS investigators and the prosecutors was the idea of going overt," he said. "When we work criminal tax investigations, there's an IRS policy in place that we need to interview the subject within 30 days of elevating the investigation."

The agent insisted that he lobbied heavily for the case to "go overt" as a means of putting Hunter on notice and to preserve relevant materials, but was overruled, allegedly due to concerns that it would compromise evidence on the FBI side of the case.

"I was overruled during multiple meetings almost to the point that I couldn't bring it up anymore to the attorneys, and they would get visually upset with me. And I was continually being told that we had to stay covert to preserve potential evidence from the FBI side of the investigation," he continued. "So we did not end up going overt and conducting interviews until after the 2020 election on December 8th, 2020, after I continually pushed the issue at various meetings."

Shapley indicated that the team had prepared documentation to support more aggressive investigative efforts in April 2020, including interviews and searches, but that career DOJ officials "dragged their feet" on the IRS pursuing them.

"By June 2020, those same career officials were already delaying overt investigative actions. This was well before the typical 60- to 90-day period when DOJ would historically stand down before an election. It was apparent that DOJ was purposely slow-walking investigative actions in this matter," he said. [read more]

Yea, more and more it looks like an FBI coverup.

The other bombshells:

1. DOJ repeatedly squashed search warrants
2. Shapley and his team never managed to interview Hunter, nor other Bidens
3. Prosecutors limited questions about Joe Biden
4. IRS agents couldn't get access to the Hunter Biden laptop
5. A key Biden appointee blocked the pursuit of some of the most serious charges
6. DOJ rejected Weiss's request to be named special counsel
7. WhatsApp Messages connected Joe Biden to Hunter's business deals
8. Biden met CEFC, Chinese business client of Hunter’s
9. Agents never saw the Biden FD-1023 Form

Another article on the subject:

16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

Biden Secretly Orders U.S. Troops to Somalia, Reverses Trump Pull-Out

From The Gateway Pundit.com (May 16, 2022):

Joe Biden secretly ordered several hundred U.S. ground forces back to Somalia earlier this month, the New York Times reported Monday. Biden’s order reverses the pull-out of U.S. forces ordered by President Trump in December 2020 and completed before he left office the next month.

U.S. forces have been involved in war-torn Somalia for four decades now, starting in the early 1990s with a humanitarian mission under President George H. W. Bush which led to the infamous ‘Black Hawk Down’ battle in Mogadishu under President Bill Clinton in 1993 that killed 18 GIs and wounded dozens more.

Excerpt from the New York Times report:

President Biden has signed an order authorizing the military to once again deploy hundreds of Special Operations forces inside Somalia — largely reversing the decision by President Donald J. Trump to withdraw nearly all 700 ground troops who had been stationed there, according to four officials familiar with the matter.

In addition, Mr. Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda, three of the officials said. Since Mr. Biden took office, airstrikes have largely been limited to those meant to defend partner forces facing an immediate threat.

…Mr. Biden signed off on the proposal by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III in early May, officials said. In a statement, Adrienne Watson, the National Security Council spokeswoman, acknowledged the move, saying it would enable “a more effective fight against Al Shabab.”

“The decision to reintroduce a persistent presence was made to maximize the safety and effectiveness of our forces and enable them to provide more efficient support to our partners,” she said.

After abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban last summer in a deadly, humiliating retreat after a two decades long war, Biden has gotten the U.S. involved in an undeclared proxy war on Russia via Ukraine and is now getting the U.S. involved in Somalia’s ongoing civil war. [source]

China’s Cyberespionage Program

There are three factors, often overlooked, that play to China’s [cyberespionage] advantage. The first is China’s phenomenally successful cyberespionage efforts, which have enabled it to dramatically shrink America’s lead in military technology over the past fifteen years. The PLA no longer needs to reverse-engineer stolen helicopters and drones, it simply downloads the design and technical specifications from whatever U.S. defense contractor’s computer network it has managed to penetrate and builds the ship or missile, weapon or radar system following the specifications of these stolen plans.

…………

It is no surprise that, as a number of commentators have pointed out, China’s latest generation of weapons, from stealth drones all the way up to strike fighters, bears an uncanny resemblance to our own. The United States spends a trillion dollars developing the F-35 Lightning II and then, before it is even fully operational, China steals the plans and makes a cheap and probably reasonably effective knock-off called the Shenyang J-31, which was unveiled in late 2014. In sum, China’s ongoing cyberespionage against the United States is providing China with exploitable intelligence on U.S. capabilities and weaknesses as well as state-of-the-art weaponry. If China were to attack us with cloned weapons nearly as potent as our own, things could go very badly for U.S. forces.

The second factor in China’s favor is its growing economy, which many predict is on the cusp of surpassing that of the United States. I am somewhat skeptical, since much of China’s enormous GDP growth has been funded by soft government credit, and Japanese-style stagflation may already be setting in as a result.

………….

China’s final advantage, when it comes to building up a military second to none, lies in the difference between the political systems of the two countries. America’s two political parties have radically different views of their country’s role in the world. Republicans generally embrace the U.S. military and, prizing it as a force for peace and stability in the world, seek to strengthen it when they are in office. Democrats, on the other hand, are generally suspicious of the American armed forces, favoring instead a lower international profile and peacekeeping efforts led by the UN.

Source: Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream Is the New Threat to World Order (2017) by Steven W. Mosher.

Let’s thank the Pilgrims for defeating Socialism this Thanksgiving

From Glenn Beck.com (Nov. 24, 2021):

This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the first Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag allies in 1621. Tragically, nearly half of the Pilgrims had died by famine and disease during their first year. However, they had been met by native Americans such as Samoset and Squanto who miraculously spoke English and taught the Pilgrims how to survive in the New World. That fall the Pilgrims, despite all the hardships, found much to praise God for and they were joined by Chief Massasoit and his ninety braves came who feasted and celebrated for three days with the fifty or so surviving Pilgrims.

It is often forgotten, however, that after the first Thanksgiving everything was not smooth sailing for the Pilgrims. Indeed, shortly thereafter they endured a time of crop failure and extreme difficulties including starvation and general lack. But why did this happen? Well, at that time the Pilgrims operated under what is called the "common storehouse" system. In its essence it was basically socialism. People were assigned jobs and the fruits of their labor would be redistributed throughout the people not based on how much work you did but how much you supposedly needed.

The problem with this mode of economics is that it only fails every time. Even the Pilgrims, who were a small group with relatively homogeneous beliefs were unable to successfully operate under a socialistic system without starvation and death being only moments away. Governor William Bradford explained that under the common storehouse the people began to "allege weakness and inability" because no matter how much or how little work someone did they still were given the same amount of food. Unsurprisingly this, "was found to breed much confusion and discontent."

The Pilgrims, however, were not the type of people to keep doing what does not work. And so, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery." And, "after much debate of things" the Pilgrims under the direction of William Bradford, decided that each family ought to "trust to themselves" and keep what they produced instead of putting it into a common storehouse. In essence, the Pilgrims decided to abandon the socialism which had led them to starvation and instead adopt the tenants of the free market.

And what was the result of this change? Well, according to Bradford, this change of course, "had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Eventually, the Pilgrims became a fiscally successful colony, paid off their enormous debt, and founded some of the earliest trading posts with the surrounding Indian tribes including the Aptucxet, Metteneque, and Cushnoc locations. In short, it represented one of the most significant economic revolutions which determined the early characteristics of the American nation.

The Pilgrims, of course, did not simply invent these ideas out of thin air but they instead grew out of the intimate familiarity the Pilgrims had with the Bible. The Scriptures provide clear principles for establishing a successful economic system which the Pilgrims looked to. For example, Proverbs 12:11 says, "He that tills his land shall be satisfied with bread." So the Pilgrims purchased land from the Indians and designated lots for every family to individually grow food for themselves. After all, 1 Timothy 5:8 declares, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

We often think that the battle against Socialism is a new fight sprouting out of the writings of Karl Marx which are so blindly and foolishly followed today by those deceived by leftist irrationality. However, America's fight against the evil of socialism goes back even to our very founding during the colonial period. Thankfully, our forefathers decided to reject the tenants of socialism and instead build their new colony upon the ideology of freedom, liberty, hard work, and individual responsibility.

So, this Thanksgiving, let's thank the Pilgrims for defeating socialism and let us look to their example today in our ongoing struggle for freedom. [source]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Another article on Thanksgiving: Why Commies Hate Your Thanksgiving Dinner

Scientists ‘reverse death’ in astonishing feat by bringing dead eyes back to life

From NY Post.com (May 12, 2022):

Scientists have “reversed death” by bringing eyes back to life.

Eyes taken from organ donors five hours after death responded to light, while electric activity only seen in the living was recorded.

The authors said it “raises the question of whether brain death, as it is currently defined, is truly irreversible.”

Brain death is when someone is no longer able to survive without life support, unable to breathe on their own.

It is considered irreversible and therefore a person is declared as dead.

The science demonstrated by the team could be used to study other tissues in the central nervous system, like the brain or spine.

Lead author Dr. Fatima Abbas, of the Moran Eye Centre at the University of Utah, said: “We were able to wake up photoreceptor cells in the human macula, which is the part of the retina responsible for our central vision and our ability to see fine detail and color.

“In eyes obtained up to five hours after an organ donor’s death, these cells responded to bright light, colored lights and even very dim flashes of light.”

Part of death is the loss of neuron activity.

A body of controversial science has been looking at how to reverse this neuron activity and breathe life into the organs of those who have died.

This study, published in the journal Nature, follows Yale University sparking life into the brains of dead pigs in 2019.

Scientists were able to switch on the blood circulation of the huge organs four hours after the pigs had been slaughtered.

But what they were not able to do, as those from the University of Utah have, is create communication between neurons.

Eye opening

Initially, the research team was able to revive light-sensing neurons (photoreceptors) in the eye.

But the cells were not in communication with other cells in the retina  – the tissue behind the eyes that collects light and sends imaging to the brain.

They discovered that lack of oxygen was to blame.

And so, Dr. Frans Vinberg, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, found a way to restore oxygenation back into the organ donor eyes, with exciting findings.

The team saw electrical signals that are only in living eyes, called the “b wave.”

It is the first b wave recording made in the eyes of those deceased.

Dr. Frans Vinberg, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, said: “We were able to make the retinal cells talk to each other, the way they do in the living eye.

“Past studies have restored very limited electrical activity in organ donor eyes, but this has never been achieved in the macula, and never to the extent we have now demonstrated.”

Dr. Vinberg said: “The scientific community can now study human vision in ways that just aren’t possible with laboratory animals.”

Professor Anne Hanneken, Scripps Research Associate, said: “Until now, it hasn’t been possible to get the cells in all of the different layers of the central retina to communicate with each other the way they normally do in a living retina.

“Going forward, we’ll be able to use this approach to develop treatments to improve vision and light signaling in eyes with macular diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration.” [source]

Almost like what the fictional Dr. Frankenstein did. Weird and creepy.

A.I. could ‘remove all human touchpoints’ in supply chains. Here’s what that means

From CNBC.com (June 19):

Artificial intelligence is likely to shake up the transportation industry — transforming how supply chains are managed and reducing the number of jobs carried out by people, according to analysts and industry insiders.

Sidewalk robots, self-driving trucks and customer service bots are on their way, along with generative AI that can predict disruptions or explain why sales forecasts may have been missed, according to industry executives.

“AI may be able to totally (or nearly) remove all human touchpoints in the supply chain including ‘back office’ tasks,” Morgan Stanley’s analysts led by Ravi Shanker stated in a research note last month.

“The Freight Transportation space is on the cusp of a generational shift driven by disruptive technologies incl. Autonomous, EV, blockchain and drones. AI is the latest one of these potentially transformative technologies to emerge – and perhaps the most powerful to-date,” the analysts added.

For example, the bank said it expects several hundred autonomous trucks to begin operations in the U.S. in 2024, reducing the cost-per-mile by 25% to 30%, and eventually eliminating the need for drivers entirely (its timescale for this is “beyond three years”).

No more empty shelves?

Supply chains are often long and multifaceted: A company might source from manufacturers in different parts of the world, with components shipped to a central assembly plant before goods are distributed to customers globally.

Producing and transporting goods, already a complex process, was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war — which led to a shortage of components such as computer chips and the rerouting of shipments. That complexity means companies are often unaware of what happens to their products from one end of the process to the other.

“This is where AI (and machine learning) come in. By predicting what could go wrong with a fluid Transportation network … before it does, AI/ML systems could … potentially even avoid the disruption scenario entirely,” Morgan Stanley’s analysts added.

This is a theme picked up by analysts at investment firm Jefferies, who made multiple predictions about the effect that generative AI will have on transportation and logistics. That includes forecasting demand, predicting when trucks need maintenance, working out optimal shipping routes and tracking shipments in real time.

“A shortage of truck drivers, polar vortexes halting interstate commerce, and a dearth of baby formula on grocery store shelves will be a distant memory with the adoption of generative AI in the Trucking & Logistics space,” its analysts, led by Stephanie Moore, wrote in a research note published on June 6.

Going mainstream

Generative AI will be a big part of shipping giant Maersk’s operations, said its chief technology and information officer, Navneet Kapoor.

“AI and machine learning, they’ve existed for a very long time … Over the years, it has progressed from being interesting research projects to more ‘real’ projects within companies … And now, with the advent of generative AI … we have a real pivoting opportunity to take AI mainstream,” Kapoor told CNBC by phone.

Maersk has used AI for several years and is now “pursuing aggressively” ways to integrate it into its business processes and functions on a larger scale, Kapoor said. One way it is already being used is to help customers plan better.

“We are using AI to build what we call a predictive cargo arrival model to improve scheduled reliability for our customers … Reliability is a big deal, even post pandemic, so that they can plan their supply chain, their inventories better, and bring their costs down,” Kapoor said.

Maersk also wants to use AI to recommend solutions when shipping routes are congested, advising on whether goods should be flown or stored, for example. And, Kapoor said, the company wants to use a type of generative AI known as a large language model — which learns how to recognize, summarize and generate text and other types of content from vast amounts of data — to understand the sales process better.

“You can get a full view of all the transactions the customer has done with you in the last year, you can figure out the root causes of why [for example] you might lose deals in a certain business area,” Kapoor said. [read more]

Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’

From Wired.com (June 19):

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS arguably the most rapidly advancing technology humans have ever developed. A year ago you wouldn’t often hear AI come up in a regular conversation, but today it seems there’s constant talk about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E will affect the future of work, the spread of information, and more. A major question that has thus far been almost entirely unexamined is how this AI-dominated future will affect people’s minds.

There’s been some research into how using AI in their jobs will affect people mentally, but there isn’t yet an understanding of how simply living amongst so much AI-generated content and systems will affect people’s sense of the world. How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future?

AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation—from fake images to deepfakes to fake news. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable. That may also affect how they think about identity.

Your own identity can be threatened by deepfakes, too, if people are creating images or videos of you doing things you never actually did. In the US, people often identify with their jobs, and those could soon be threatened. Will AI make people more reliant on and distracted by technology at a time when that’s already a major issue? There are countless ways AI could reshape how people operate in the world. But researchers are only just beginning to grapple with the implications of an AI-saturated existence.

Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, says he worries that AI will make people more reliant on technology. Humans like things to be as simple and easy as possible, to avoid stress, he says, so people might start automating every aspect of their life that they can.

In the same way you might use Google Maps to get everywhere and not know how to get there otherwise, AI might cause people to stop learning things they would have otherwise had to learn. Ironically, though, Rosen thinks this could cause more stress as people are inundated with AI and constantly shifting gears and not seeing anything quite clearly. [read more]

Okay... Doesn't sound good. We live in interesting and unnerving times.

HOW THE CHINESE PARTY-STATE TEACHES CHILDREN TO HATE AMERICA

For the past twenty-five years, largely unnoticed by the outside world, anti-American propaganda of the most vicious kind has been taught to Chinese children in an effort to inoculate them against American democratic ideals. The most telling example is the recent reprinting of a 1951 “history textbook” called A History of the U.S. Aggression in China. Written by a Party hack by the name of Wang Chun, the book was commissioned by Chairman Mao himself. In his 1949 speech, “‘Friendship’ or Aggression,” Mao directed that “The history of the aggression against China by U.S. imperialism, from 1840 when it helped the British in the Opium War to the time it was thrown out of China by the Chinese people, should be written into a concise textbook for the education of Chinese youth.”

……………..

The first villain to be trotted onto the stage of this modern Beijing opera is the hapless John Tyler, the accidental American president whom Mao claims imposed upon China “the first unequal treaty signed as a result of U.S. aggression against China.” America had not been a belligerent in the First Opium War (1839–1842), but that didn’t relieve Tyler from responsibility for what followed. In the Chinese view, the devious American president had cleverly adopted the Warring States stratagem of “waiting at leisure while the enemy labors.” Then, when British seapower had brought the Qing dynasty low, he struck. He demanded that the Emperor sign the Wangxia Treaty, granting to the United States all the concessions that Great Britain had wrung from China. This allowed the United States to join Great Britain in engaging in what one textbook calls “illegal actions to exploit China.”

From Mao’s perspective, which now animates the history that Chinese students are force-fed, all early American activity in China, from the trade that flowed innocently through the treaty ports to the hospitals, universities and churches started by missionaries was “spiritual aggression.” The United States “worked so hard and deliberately at running these undertakings” as part of a secret, long-term plan to manipulate, control, and ultimately assert complete hegemony over China.

The next American leader to earn the wrath of Chinese hawks was that evil genius, Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe may be fondly remembered in America for preserving the Union and freeing the slaves, but in China he is regarded as just another grasping American imperialist. The “unequal treaty” that he forced upon China after the Second Opium War was a further step in the enslavement of the Chinese people.

Source: Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream Is the New Threat to World Order (2017) by Steven W. Mosher.

If you want to know how a country’s leaders views America (or any other country for that matter) read what’s in the grade schoolers textbooks about the country. That propaganda will give you insights to the leader’s views probably more than anything else.

3 Highly Censored Words That Can Get You Arrested in Communist China—Here's Why

From The Epoch Times.com (May 11, 2022):

Truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance (or in Chinese, zhen 真 shan 善 ren 忍), sound like the ideal principles for the world to follow, but in communist China, uttering those three words together stands to have you arrested.

The ancient meditation and self-improvement system of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a meditation practice based on the traditional values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, which every conscientious person can easily relate to. The peaceful practice, rooted in the Buddhist tradition, was relatively unknown to the rest of the world until 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong was instigated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Currently, it is practiced freely in over 80 countries.

According to Falun Gong's official website, people who practice this "deeply rewarding spiritual path" often experience "dramatic health benefits as well as newfound energy, mental clarity, and stress relief." "Its teachings encourage learners to let go of unhealthy attachments as they strive to attune their lives to the underlying qualities of the universe: Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance," the website states.

However, in the past two decades, due to the persecution and the Chinese police's relentless hunt for arresting more Falun Gong practitioners, the practice's main tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance have become highly sensitive and censored words. Saying the three words together over the phone can trigger the CCP's tracking system, alerting the police, who can then access the speaker's GPS coordinates and come rushing out to arrest them.

If people were to utter these words in public in China, they not only stand to be arrested but also tortured and detained for long periods, or even end up having their organs forcibly harvested.

Introduced to the public in 1992, Falun Gong became widely popular in China by the late 1990s, with 70 million to 100 million people practicing it, according to state-run media reports at the time. The number of people practicing Falun Gong had far surpassed the membership of the communist party. Perceiving the influence of the meditation system as an ideological threat to its authoritarian rule, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin initiated a violent persecution campaign in July 1999 to eliminate Falun Gong.

The CCP set up a special division just for the purpose of coordinating and implementing the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. It is called the 610 office, named after the date it was set up: June 10, 1999. It is still in operation.

The CCP's mouthpieces worked overtime to broadcast slanderous fabrications about Falun Gong in an attempt to turn public opinion against the practice. These media reports were even spread to other nations and were reproduced by overseas Chinese- and English-language media, who didn't realize they were spreading disinformation.

According to The Epoch Times exclusive editorial series "How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World," the CCP has been promoting atheism and launching attacks against spiritual beliefs one after the other since seizing power in 1949, as the end goal of communism is to destroy faith by "corrupting human beings through deception, deviance, and infiltration."

The persecution of Falun Gong launched by Jiang is "the largest since the Cultural Revolution."

"[The nationwide persecution] boosted Jiang’s political authority and allowed him to place his allies in positions of power and profit. Jiang’s brutal policies against Falun Gong, and the corruption he encouraged, laid the foundations for the CCP’s modern resurrection of totalitarianism and threw China into an unprecedented moral freefall," the book explains. [read more]

What’s wrong with truthfulness, compassion and tolerance? Nothing really. So, why would China outlaw those words? Because China is a socialistic/communistic or a collectivistic system and those three ideas are about individuality and human dignity which goes conflicts with collectivistic systems which stresses the importance of the group over the individual.

Also, I like the “return to tradition” banners in the pictures even though the banners are probably referring to the Chinese tradition. Still, not bad. Old traditions are usually banned by collectivistic systems system especially if they go against the current collectivistic system.

Horror: Tyrannical Government of Canada Will Pay to Euthanize Those Who Are “Too Poor to Continue Living With Dignity” (Video)

From The Gateway Pundit.com (May 12, 2022):

Crippling inflation, homelessness, skyrocketing crime, supply shortages, and depression – all of which come hand in hand with radical liberal policies that promise to take care of the supposedly oppressed and the financially downtrodden.

However, in Canada, the public health ‘experts’ are trying out a more ghastly approach to solving people’s issues – and if people accept the evil proposal, their problems will be taken care of once and for all… quite literally.

As of last year, the Canadian government is now offering to pay to euthanize people who are “too poor to continue living with dignity.” Anyone who feels as such – the tyrannical state would like to foot the bill for their suicide.

Yes, really. Like things weren’t dystopian enough with the lockdowns and oppressive public health measures… Killing the poor because they lack enough “dignity” to live? That’s a far cry from the typical social programs that are championed by the radical left.

On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson discussed Canada’s grim euthanasia program with Author Charles Camosy, who has written a book on the subject and is one of the most vocal critics of self-assisted suicide in Canada.

According to Camosy, Canada’s policies speak for themselves and “are seen for what they are” – pure evil.

In 2021, the Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, which greatly expanded the valid reasons for medically assisted suicide. Coined as a “sweeping euthanasia law,” the bill removed most restrictions and made it possible for Canadians to legally be euthanized based on their living situation. Now, thanks to the morally unjust new law, just about anyone is eligible for medically assisted suicide if they wish.

Canadian outlet, The Spectator, said the issue has been a slippery slope since the beginning, adding that ever since the Supreme Court of Canada initially repealed some restrictions on the practice in 2015, this was always the “natural conclusion” we would find ourselves at.

From The Spectator:

“There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ What France certainly did not foresee is that an entire country – and an ostentatiously progressive one at that – has decided to take his sarcasm at face value and to its natural conclusion…

As with most slippery slopes, it all began with a strongly worded denial that it exists. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed 22 years of its own jurisprudence by striking down the country’s ban on assisted suicide as unconstitutional, blithely dismissing fears that the ruling would ‘initiate a descent down a slippery slope into homicide’ against the vulnerable as founded on ‘anecdotal examples’.”

5 years ago, it would have been difficult to believe that a modern, civilized, western nation would allow people to commit medically assisted suicide because they think they lack “dignity.” We were all created in the image of God, and therefore all have dignity and worth. Suicide should never be an option, especially if it’s happily being paid for by the government – that goes double for one that’s run by a Klaus Schwab/WEF-aligned globalist dictator like Justin Trudeau.

Programs like this have no business in free countries. Suicide is the opposite of freedom.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, there is always someone to talk to, and help is always available. The US National Suicide Prevention Hotline is available 24/7 and can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. Canada’s Suicide Prevention Hotline is also available 24/7 and can be reached at 1-833-456-4566. [source]

Disgusting! And possibly evil. These people don’t need to be killed but need help like counseling.

Along the same lines…: In Canada, Euthanasia for “Mature” Minors?

Follow $40,000 From Communist China Directly To Joe Biden’s Bank Account

From The Federalist.com (Nov. 1):

Joe Biden received $40,000 from Chinese communists, funneled through his son and brother and their businesses, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed Wednesday morning.

“Where’s the money?,” President Joe Biden quipped over the summer when asked by a reporter to comment on the House’s investigation into the bribery scandal swirling around his family. Comer continues to answer that question for the country, with a press release and video detailing the House Oversight Committee’s latest discovery from subpoenaed bank records that establish Joe Biden directly profited from his family’s influence-peddling.

A 12-page memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s staff to the majority members of the committee, which The Federalist has reviewed, details the latest development Comer summarized in his video and press release. The bottom line is a $40,000 check from Sara and James Biden’s personal checking account written to Joe Biden on Sept. 3, 2017, claiming to represent a “loan repayment.” But following that money upstream reveals it originated from the Chinese “business” partners Hunter Biden had threatened a little over a month earlier in a WhatsApp message.

Hunter Biden had sent that WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017, to Raymond Zhao, an associate of CEFC, the Chinese energy giant Hunter and James Biden began courting in 2016, while Joe Biden was vice president. After Joe Biden left office at the end of the Obama administration, according to one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, the Chinese communist-connected CEFC sent them a $3 million wire in March of 2017 as a “thank you” for the Bidens’ assistance in furthering their business interests.

But CEFC had committed to investing another $10 million, which an email recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicated would be used to form a joint venture. CEFC’s founder and chairman, Ye Jianming, was to hold 50 percent interest in the company, and Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, and some of their business associates would hold the other 50 percent. That email noted Hunter Biden would own a 10 percent interest in the holding company for “the big guy,” a moniker used for Joe Biden. [read more]

Money laundering anyone? More corruption from the Briben crime family.

ACLU Is Upset That a Child Rapist and Double Murderer Was Executed as a Man

From Rick Moran on PJ Media.com (June 18):

The transgender issue makes everyone crazy. That’s the only explanation I can give for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) berating the state of Florida for executing Duane Owen, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old babysitter and a 38-year-old mother of two.

Indeed, the ACLU is strongly opposed to capital punishment. But the organization only made passing reference to their opposition to the death penalty. Instead, they were livid with Florida for executing Duane Owen because the state refused to allow Owen to “transition” to female.

Palm Beach Post:

Owen was found guilty in the brutal killings of a 14-year old babysitter, Karen Slattery of Boynton Beach, and a 38-year-old executive secretary and single mother of two, Georgianna Worden, of Boca Raton.

Slattery, babysitting a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old at a house in Delray Beach, was stabbed 18 times and raped on March 24, 1984. About two months later, on May 29, Owen raped and bludgeoned Worden to death with a hammer.

Owen, convicted and sentenced to death in both murders, was granted a new trial in the Slattery killing when he claimed he was looking for hormones so he could become a woman. A second jury again convicted him and sentenced him to death.

“No one should be killed by the state. The time to end the racist, unfair, and cruel death penalty is now,” the ACLU tweeted. A fine sentiment — except the late Mr. Owen was white.

So Owen was “looking for hormones” from a 14-year-old girl?  I don’t know who’s crazier — Owen or the judge who granted him a new trial.

Perhaps the ACLU should have read the psychiatrist report after Owen was examined.

Prosecutors had argued that while Owen had mental health issues, nothing would preclude his being executed because he was aware it was punishment for his crimes. Psychiatrists for the state testified that Owen’s schizophrenia was an act that he discussed when being evaluated, but he otherwise showed no signs of the illness.

And while the defense had argued Owen had dementia and gender dysphoria, psychiatrists for the state said Owen had a good memory, didn’t appear to present himself as female and that gender dysphoria doesn’t make people more aggressive or cause delusional thinking. They said instead that Owen was sexually sadistic, according to court records.

Just your garden-variety sexual sadist and not some poor, oppressed woman trapped in a man’s body and driven mad by the existential conflict in her mind to be someone else.

As I said, transgender issues drive everyone crazy. [source]

This is stupid woke crap. The murderer is dead. He doesn't have civil rights anymore. He didn't care about his victims' civil rights that’s for sure. He probably doesn't even care anymore if he was executed as a man or not. Doesn't the ACLU have anything better to do?

Another article about the ACLU: The ACLU is broken beyond repair

Chinese Elementary Education and Psychology

While PRC history textbooks have always stoked nationalist fervor and xenophobia, these same attitudes were now to be inserted into everything from beginning readers to junior high school social science textbooks to high school political education classes. The resulting kindergarten-through-college curriculum has been custom-designed to breed young national narcissists.

A second-grade reader includes the story of a young cowherd who “led the Japanese devils into an ambush” by the Communist Eighth Route Army during the Second World War, sacrificing her own life in the process. Another primer, “Ten Must-Knows for Elementary School Students,” issued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, cites “one hundred years of Chinese people opposing foreign aggression” as the raison d’être for the country’s founding. An eighth-grade social science textbook begins, “Our motherland in history was once an advanced and great nation . . . but after the invasions of the European and American capitalist Great Powers, a profound national crisis occurred.”

…………..

What this patriotic education comprises, in broad strokes, is a kind of Chinese Mein Kampf. Like Hitler’s work, it lays out a grand strategy for world domination. Winston Churchill’s summation of Mein Kampf has to be altered very little to describe the story the Chinese people are hearing from their government today:

The Chinese are a great race that for millennia has rightly dominated its known world. But the foreign imperialists humbled us, brutally tearing off and devouring living parts of the Chinese race and nation, even threatening the whole with disunity. But China has now stood up and is fighting back, determined to recover her lost grandeur no less than her lost territories. We must be wary of things foreign, absorbing only those that make us stronger and rejecting those, like Christianity and Western ideas of democracy and human rights, which make us weaker. The first duty of the Chinese state is therefore to nationalize the masses and resist these foreign ideas.

Only the Chinese Communist Party has the will and determination to lead the struggle. The new China must gather within its fold all the scattered Chinese elements in Asia. A people that has suffered a century and a half of Western humiliation can be rescued by reviving its self-confidence. To restore the Chinese nation, the PLA must become modernized and invincible. The world is now moving toward a new millennium, and the Chinese state must see to it that the Chinese race is ready to assume its proper place in the world as the hegemon.

And it is all too easy to imagine Xi Jinping saying, as Hitler did in the conclusion to Mein Kampf, “A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth. Just substitute the word hegemon for “lord of the earth”—which, come to think of it, is a pretty good synonym—and you have the gist of Beijing’s program.

Source: Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream Is the New Threat to World Order (2017) by Steven W. Mosher.

The Triumphant Trifecta: Tucker, Trump, DeSantis

From American Thinker.com (May 12, 2022):

Tucker, President Trump, and Governor Ron DeSantis are the three — the troika of leadership for the MAGA and America First movement.

You can tell that this is true by the way the enemies of MAGA and America First — the Progressives, the globalists, the Deep State — have already begun to fire on these three warriors.  The Patriot movement loves Tucker, Trump, and DeSantis because of the enemies they have made.

Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney — these people will be in no way the future leaders of the Republican Party.  The base and grassroots of the party will not accept their leadership or adhere to their motivations.  They are done.  Over.

MAGA and America First need warriors and leaders who are not afraid and who do not get cowed by the BLM and Antifa mobs.  In this battle for the soul of America's future, in these foxholes of our culture wars, most Republicans want to be fighting with a real fighter, a true believer of the cause, who does not flinch.  And that is Tucker, Trump, and DeSantis.  That is why Tucker, Trump, and DeSantis are the leaders in 2022 and 2024.

Tucker.  Tucker Carlson's monologue is must-watch TV for conservative voters.  Many conservatives stopped watching FOX News after election night because it appeared that the network was in on the steal.  Many conservatives today look at FOX news as the "controlled opposition."  But not Tucker!

Tucker says what Patriots are thinking and feeling.  Tucker wonders about what conservatives are wondering about.  Tucker appears to embody some of the best characteristics of Reagan, Jefferson, and C.S. Lewis.  In some ways, Tucker is the linguist for Trump's tweets.

Of all the media, Tucker and Tucker alone appears to be willing to take on all the sacred cows of the Deep State, the media left, and Big Tech.  From the Russia-Ukraine war to COVID to transgenderism and CRT in public schools to the 2020 election...Tucker takes on all of them and more.

Many wonder how Tucker is still alive.  How has he not committed suicide with three bullets to the back of the head?  How has pornography not mysteriously shown up on his laptop?  Without question, Tucker is in the sights of the surveillance Deep State communities, yet he does not flinch.

Tucker's  fight is the conservative fight.  Tucker's battles are MAGA battles.  And MAGA nation and America First movement will follow him.  We know we can trust Tucker to be uncompromising in the fight for America's future.  He will not be canceled.

Trump.  President Trump won the election in 2016.  And most Republicans truly believe he won the election of 2020.  A great deal of Democrats believe that also.  More and more evidence appears to be coming out to support this fact.  That is why Progressives  are trying to make it illegal for Trump to run again in 2024.

Much like when Andrew Jackson was cheated out of the presidency in the 1800s, Trump, like Jackson, is coming back with a vengeance.  And his supporters, like Jackson's, marvel at it.  MAGA nation and the America First movement want Trump back as the presidential nominee in 2024 and will fight to get him back in the White House.

Just recently, Trump's endorsements won in all of the 22 Republican primaries he endorsed.  Obviously, President Trump is the leader of the Republican party, and his nomination is assured if he wants it.

As more and more evidence is coming out about the Election of 2020, Trump becomes more and more popular among Republican voters.  From Mollie Hemingway's Rigged to True the Vote to Dinesh D'Souza's recently released 2000 Mules, Americans are beginning to feel that election fraud in 2020 was not just a theory, but a fact.  And they're mad as hell about their votes not counting.  Trump is the tip of the spear of this anger.

Trump hits all the right notes in leading MAGA and America First in the 2022 midterms as well as the 2024 presidential election.  Trump is the author and originator of MAGA and America First.  And it appears that Trump's Supreme Court nominations will overturn Roe v. Wade.  He gets all the credit for this remarkable achievement.

Trump and his fellow believers know that you can't focus on 2022 or 2024 until you fix what happened in 2020.  Once 2020 is fixed, 2022 and 2024 become much more likely.

DeSantis.  Should Donald Trump decide not to run for the GOP nomination in 2024, Governor Ron DeSantis would be next up.  DeSantis is the heir apparent for the Patriots — the nation's leading governor in America, who represents all things MAGA and all things America First.

Conservatives love DeSantis because he is a warrior.  He not only fights, but wins.  DeSantis is almost always victorious in the State of Florida's issues as well as fighting  against Biden's regime.

No other governor in America has fought so well and won so often as DeSantis against the Deep State's CDC.  DeSantis does not allow himself to be intimated or canceled against the BLM and Antifa woke mobs.  Conservatives love his bravery.  He put on a civics lesson in his battle against what was at one time thought to be the untouchable Disney.  And he just recently signed into law a 1.2-billion-dollar tax cut for all Floridians.

DeSantis has turned the "purple" state of Florida into a bright red state, and his re-election is all but in the bag.  DeSantis is hitting on all the right notes in fighting for Florida, fighting for MAGA and America First, and making sure in the 2024 election that Florida stays red.  Patriots trust DeSantis; their fight is his fight.

With the midterm elections of 2022 in just a few months, Tucker, Trump, and DeSantis will be crucial for the Patriots and GOP winning back the House and the Senate.  As long as the midterms are not stolen, as long as there is election integrity in the key "purple" congressional districts and "purple" states, it could be a landslide for MAGA and America First.

One must remember, Progressives go by Stalin's old adage,  "I don't care who votes; I care only who counts the votes."  Look for the enemies of MAGA and America First to do everything they can to destroy this troika of leadership.  You know that Tucker, Trump, and DeSantis are "over the target" the way their enemies ruthlessly attack them.

Come to think of it, a Trump-DeSantis GOP ticket sure sounds strong and victorious.  Add Tucker in the position of chief of staff or press secretary, and it sounds even better.  Then put Ted Cruz in as attorney general, or put him on the Supreme Court.  Next, add Rand Paul as either CDC director or secretary of defense, and then those Deep State elitists will lose their minds.  Yeah...let's do that. [source]

Pilot becomes incapacitated mid-flight — so a passenger with no flight experience pulls a 'Mission: Impossible'

From The Blaze.com (May 11, 2022):

A private plane passenger with zero flying experience was able to take control during a tense situation after a pilot became incapacitated mid-flight, CNN has reported.

What are the details?

The incident unfolded on Tuesday afternoon outside the Palm Beach International Airport in Florida.

The outlet reported that audio from LiveATC.net detailed the moments a male passenger radios air traffic control and says that the pilot has become "incoherent."

"I've got a serious situation here," the unnamed passenger told air traffic controllers. "My pilot has gone incoherent, and I have no idea how to fly the airplane."

A quick-thinking air traffic controller by the name of Robert Morgan responded and then guided the passenger in safely landing the plane at Palm Beach International.

Morgan could be heard telling the passenger, "Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate. Try to follow the coast either north or southbound. We're trying to locate you."

With Morgan's help, the passenger was able to maintain a controlled descent and land the plane.

The outlet reported that other chatter heard a second air traffic controller telling pilots on the ground what happened in the air just moments before.

"You just witnessed a couple of passengers land that plane," a tower operator can be heard telling a pilot waiting on the tarmac.

The pilot, whose plane was bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, could be heard responding, "Did you say the passengers landed the airplane? Oh, my God. Great job."

What else?

Morgan later told WPBF-TV that he is glad he was able to help the man.

Morgan, who has worked for two decades in tower control, is also a seasoned flight instructor.

"I knew the plane was flying like any other plane, I just knew I had to keep him calm, point him to the runway and tell him how to reduce the power so he could descend to land," Morgan told the station.

He said that he'd never flown the model in question, so he pulled up a photo of the aircraft's cockpit in order to guide the passenger through the procedure.

"Before I knew it, he said, 'I’m on the ground, how do I turn this thing off?'" Morgan recalled.

Morgan said he met the passenger on the tarmac and the two embraced.

"It felt really good to help somebody, and he told me that he couldn’t wait to get home and hug his pregnant wife," Morgan said.

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said that the pilot suffered a "possible medical issue" while flying the plane. The pilot's condition is not known at the time of this report.

The agency is investigating the Tuesday incident. [source]

Nice! Quick thinking on his part.

NASA to Voyage to 'Golden Asteroid' Worth Quadrillions

From Newsmax.com (June 19):

The long-awaited NASA mission to explore the 140 mile wide gold-rich asteroid named after the Greek goddess of the soul, Psyche, has been greenlit for a new launch date.

Originally planned for August 2022, the journey of 280 million miles to asteroid 16 Psyche, by a spacecraft of the same name, has been given a launch window of Oct. 5 to Oct. 25.

Spacecraft 16 Psyche will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the space rock, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter. The initial trip was delayed due to institutional issues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which have since been resolved.

"The independent review board is extraordinarily impressed by the accomplishments of the total JPL organization and Caltech," report from JPL read. "Engagement in and leadership of the overall response process by the JPL director and senior leadership is deemed 'world class.'"

Psyche, an asteroid first discovered in 1852, is composed mostly of iron, nickel, gold, and other rare metals. Experts believe it could be worth $10,000 quadrillion, and could be the metallic core of a planetesimal or a newly forming planet.

The spacecraft is set to arrive at 16 Psyche in August 2029 to begin studies on the astral goldmine so as to gain a better understanding of Earth's interior and the history of the solar system, according to the Houston Chronicle. [source]

Intere$ting. The trick is in the landing.

6 Reasons DOJ’s ‘Get Trump’ Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed

From Will Scharf on The Federalist.com (June 16):

I am a former assistant U.S. attorney, worked on two Supreme Court confirmations, and clerked for two federal appellate judges. I have reviewed the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the documents case against former President Donald Trump, and have serious concerns with the way this case is being framed in the public and with some aspects of the way the prosecution itself is being conducted.

Here are six major issues I see that need to be addressed by the special counsel’s team.

1. Interplay Between the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act

Others have already spoken insightfully about the scope of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Mike Davis of the Article III Project has published and spoken on the subject, and Michael Bekesha of Judicial Watch had a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal detailing his experience litigating the Clinton Sock Drawer Case.

I want to make a different point relating to the intent element of the Espionage Act, the statute Trump is being charged under.

Section 793(e) requires the government to prove that the defendant knew he had National Defense Information (NDI) in his possession, knew there was a government official entitled to receive the information, and then willfully failed to deliver it to that official.

This is a very high set of mens rea bars to jump in any circumstance. Proving a defendant’s intent and knowledge can often be tough. But it’s even tougher here because of the Presidential Records Act.

The Presidential Records Act sets up a system where the president designates all records that he creates either as presidential or personal records (44 U.S.C. § 2203(b)). A former president is supposed to turn over his presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and he has the right to keep his personal records.

Based on the documents I’ve read and his actions I’ve read about, I believe Trump viewed his “boxes” as his personal records under the PRA. There are statements he made, quoted in the indictment, that support that view. If Trump considered the contents of these boxes to be of purely personal interest, hence his designation of them as personal records, did he knowingly retain NDI?

Did he really think these documents, like years-old briefing notes and random maps, jumbled together with his letters, news clippings, scribbled notes, and random miscellaneous items, “could be used to the injury of the United States”? Or did he just think of them as mementos of his time in office, his personal records of the four years, akin to a journal or diary?

If he thought these boxes were his personal records, he may have believed NARA simply had no right to receive them at all — meaning he did not willfully withhold anything from an official he knew had the right to receive them because he didn’t believe that anyone had the right to receive them.

By breathlessly bandying around classification levels and markings, the special counsel is trying to make this case seem much, much simpler than it is. Classification levels do not automatically make something NDI, and having classified documents in your possession is not enough to convict here. It is simply not the case that the fact that previously classified documents were found in boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom means Trump is guilty.

That’s what they want you to think, and that has the media’s inch-deep view for the most part, but it’s dead wrong.

More than anything, this case hinges on the ability of the special counsel to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” aspects of Trump’s state of mind that will be extremely difficult to prove in this case because of his obligations and rights under the Presidential Records Act — in addition to all of the usual issues. [read more]

The other reasons are:

1. Classification and National Defense Information
2. Walt Nauta and DOJ Misconduct
3. Attorney-Client Privilege
4. Timing: Why Now?
5. Jack Smith: Why Him?

Other articles on the matter:

• Biden White House facilitated DOJ's criminal probe against Trump, scuttled privilege claims: memos
• How It’s Done: JD Vance Decides to Play Hardball With Merrick Garland in Midst of Trump Indictment

 

Excerpts from the book “Bully of Asia” Part 4

Social Darwinism is generally discredited in the West, in part because of the racist atrocities of the Third Reich, in part because Western societies are increasingly multicultural and multiracial. But the expression of such views is not only still acceptable in China, it constitutes a surprisingly large part—perhaps the largest part—of the ongoing public discourse about China’s place in the world. “All Chinese intellectuals, including myself, are social Darwinists,” says Mao Haojian. “We are all sensitive to Western superiority, and boast about the Chinese race because in our hearts we feel inferior. We realize this is irrational, dangerous, even wrong, but still we feel it.”

…………..

The ironclad belief of China’s leaders that their nation and their people are superior to all other nations and peoples is central to the self-image of the hegemon. But keeping faith in the race has not always been easy, especially during the last two centuries of decline and decay. The collective shame associated with China’s technological and material inferiority led to extreme self-abasement before Westerners, especially on the part of the Chinese elite. But what may have appeared to foreigners as a supine acceptance of the new world order was actually something very different. It may seem strange that China’s leaders react to humiliation by almost reveling in it. But there is a sound political reason why China celebrates its defeats like other countries celebrate their victories. Each new generation of Chinese must be forced to experience anew how it feels to be humiliated at the hands of hostile barbarians. Chinese history is written as a morality play designed to make the hearts of impressionable young Chinese burn with resentment against the outside world. Today, foreigners are still portrayed in state-approved textbooks as a purely negative force: invaders, capitalists, imperialists, barbarians, and devils who are “pirates” when at sea, and “bandits” when on land.

Source: Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream Is the New Threat to World Order (2017) by Steven W. Mosher.

Immigration activists accuse Biden DHS of being ‘anti-immigrant’ to Black migrants

From Washington Times.com (May 11, 2022):

Immigrant rights groups demanded Wednesday that President Biden launch an investigation into his administration’s decision-making on granting deportation amnesties, saying predominantly Black and Latino countries are being treated worse than White countries.

More than 150 groups signed a letter to Mr. Biden saying they see “racial bias” in how the government has granted Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that offers deportation amnesties to immigrants already in the U.S. when their home nations face catastrophes.

They contrasted the quick action to grant TPS to Ukraine with countries such as Ethiopia, which they say merits TPS but still hasn’t been granted.

“Notably, we are concerned that the State Department and White House senior advisor are in effect promoting anti-immigrant policies,” the groups said, adding that the administration has “a de facto policy of refusing or delaying designation of TPS for Black- and Brown-majority countries that clearly meet the statutory requirements.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TPS, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The groups’ letter is the second time in two weeks that the Biden team has drawn criticism for being “anti-immigrant.” The publishers of Immigration Law Weekly suggested Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas be impeached and the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services be fired after an unsatisfactory rollout of a new legal immigration program for foreign investors.

DOCUMENT: May 11, 2022 letter to President Biden requesting investigation of racial disparities in TPS decisions

TPS is supposed to be used when a natural disaster, disease, war or political instability has devastated a country so much so that officials believe it is wrong to require people to go back — both for their safety and to give the country a chance to recover without having to care for returnees.

In addition to a stay of deportation, TPS also provides permission to work legally in the U.S., and access to some taxpayer benefits.

The groups that sent the letter this week said the Biden administration is doing more on TPS than the Trump administration, which tried to clamp down on new designations and to bring to an end some designations that have been on the books for decades.

Those efforts were largely halted by courts.

As of February, more than 350,000 people from 12 countries were living in the U.S. under TPS. In March and April the Biden administration added three new countries — Ukraine, Afghanistan and Cameroon — to the list, adding up to 145,000 more people to the rolls.

El Salvador and Honduras are already covered by TPS designations from the turn of the century, with more than 250,000 people living here under protections since then.

But the activists want new designations for those countries and Guatemala, which would add potentially millions more people to the rolls.

In their letter, activists also listed other nations they said should get new designations: Burkina Faso, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sierra Leone. [source]

Well, Briben is a racist. Also, could it be all those immigrants from those excluded countries are Christian or conservative? In other words, does the regime think those immigrants won’t vote for democrats? Just wondering.

Fox News Is Headed For Disaster

From Emerald.TV (May 10, 2022):

Fox News has been on a collision course with its own audience since the stolen 2020 election — and you can almost feel the impact coming. The network has made so many dumb bets lately that it’s like watching a busload of trailer park residents get offloaded to play the nickel slots in Reno. All you can do is shake your head as you think: I know they’re all going bankrupt, and they’re already bankrupt. It’s been perfectly obvious for years now that Rupert Murdoch and his feckless sons turned against President Trump and actually helped Joe Biden — which is not just unforgivable. It’s unsustainable.

Why? Because it requires the silence of other prominent conservatives, and the short term memories of GOP voters, to allow Fox News to continue pretending that it’s a conservative news network. Guess what: GOP voters have not forgotten about Fox News calling Arizona early — and prominent conservatives are no longer interested in ignoring Fox’s treachery.

Case in point: Dinesh D’Souza dropped several bombshells on Twitter recently that illustrate that Fox News has nowhere left to hide.

This sort of thing would be unthinkable just a few years ago. D’Souza’s tweet virtually guarantees that he will never appear on any Fox News program again. He will be black-listed — a common practice at Fox (just ask Rudy Giuliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Peter Navarro). Dinesh knew all of this and did it anyway — and that should tell you something. (He even tagged a Fox producer on Tucker’s team to name and shame him.) Fox has lost its monopoly power on the Right, and it’s no longer immune from criticism by the conservative community.

That hasn’t stopped Fox News from trying to cut D’Souza out of his own documentary in order to present the work as its own. Just watch this explosive video.

Fox News might as well be Helen Keller right now: it can’t see or hear anything about the stolen election. So it cannot allow Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary “2000 Mules” to be mentioned on their shows because Fox News told its audience for the last 18 months that election fraud was a myth pushed by conspiracy theorists.

You do remember that, don’t you? [read more]