Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Militaries Plunder Science Fiction for Technology Ideas, But Turn a Blind Eye to the Genre’s Social Commentary

Military planning is a complicated endeavour, calling upon experts in logistics and infrastructure to predict resource availability and technological advancements. Long-range military planning, deciding what to invest in now to prepare armed forces for the world in thirty years’ time, is even more difficult.

One of the most interesting tools for thinking about future defence technology isn’t big data forecasting and the use of synthetic training environments, but narrative and imagination. And we get this from science fiction.

That might sound fanciful, but many militaries are already engaging with the genre. The US military and the French army use science fiction writers to generate future threat scenarios. The Australian Defence College advocates for the reading of science fiction and, in Germany, Project Cassandra uses novels to predict the world’s next conflict. The Sigma Forum, a science fiction think tank, has been offering forecasting services to US officials for years.

But while science fiction provides military planners with a tantalising glimpse of future weaponry, from exoskeletons to mind-machine interfaces, the genre is always about more than flashy new gadgets. It’s about anticipating the unforeseen ways in which these technologies could affect humans and society – and this extra context is often overlooked by the officials deciding which technologies to invest in for future conflicts.

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CNN’s Don Lemon Says Don’t Get The Vaccine? No Supermarket, Work, Ball Game, Or Freedom For You

CNN’s Don Lemon ridiculed Americans who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 on his program Monday evening, saying they should not be permitted to participate in society due to their “freedom” logic.

“I’m sure a lot of people are not going to agree with this, but don’t get the vaccine, you can’t go to the supermarket,” Lemon said. “Don’t have the vaccine, can’t go to the ball game. Don’t have a vaccine, can’t go to work. You don’t have a vaccine, can’t come here. No shirt, no shoes, no service.”

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‘Alarmed And Suspicious’: Senators Tell Biden To Explain Crackdown On ‘Misinformation’

Members of the Senate warned President Biden that his policy of coordinating with social media companies to flag “misinformation” violates Americans’ First Amendment rights.

As The Daily Wire previously reported, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently said that users “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others” if they post “misinformation online.” She also revealed that the Biden administration is “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Last week, President Biden alleged that Facebook is “killing people” by allowing a particular subset of users to spread their views about COVID-19.

“These twelve people are out there giving misinformation. Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It’s killing people. It’s bad information,” Biden said. “My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine.”

In response, a letter sent to the Commander-in-Chief on Monday by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) — joined by Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Braun (R-IN), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Rick Scott (R-FL), James Lankford (R-OK), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) — cited Psaki’s statements and expressed concern that the Biden administration’s policy toward “misinformation” is unavoidably partisan.

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ESPN Writer Disturbed By U.S. Flag At Olympics: ‘I Keep Thinking Back On The Capitol Riots’

An ESPN sportswriter on Monday said he didn’t like the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics because the American flag carried by the U.S. athletes reminded him of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the “rise of White nationalism.”

“I love the opening ceremonies, march of countries,” William Rhoden said on “CBS This Morning,” noting that he has long enjoyed covering the opening ceremonies for the games. “Then I realized, you know, man, particularly after these last four years, I had it wrong. Nationalism is not good. We’ve seen the rise of White nationalism. Nationalism is not good.”

“And also, this whole idea — I keep thinking back on the Capitol riots, and I saw a lot of, you know, U.S. flags,” Rhoden said.

“So now when I see the flag and the flag raised, what — what America am I living in? You know, are the ones that don’t think, you know, we should be here?”

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Disillusioned journalists form alliance against censorship of alternative coronavirus viewpoints

A group of 26 journalists has come together to object to the COVID-19 “fearmongering” and the censorship of alternative views by mainstream media and Big Tech platforms since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to the group, the result of the fearmongering and censorship has been the public receiving a “distorted view of the truth.”

The group calls itself “Holding the Line: Journalists Against COVID Censorship.”

It comprises mostly UK-based journalists working at newspapers, broadcasters, and PR companies as staffers or freelancers.
The members were interviewed by Press Gazette, with most preferring to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from their employers.

However, some were more than happy to be named, including Sonia Elijah and Karen Harradine, investigative journalists for The Conservative Woman, former BBC journalist Tony Gosling, and Laura Berril, a PR and tech journalist.

The group’s mission is to promote a “prejudice-free” environment where journalists can air their concerns and raise awareness on lesser-covered issues.

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Physicists Have Developed a New Way to Levitate Objects Using Sound Only

A newly developed method of levitating and manipulating tiny objects using sound waves could represent a major step forward for the technology.

Engineers in Japan have figured out how to pick up objects from reflective surfaces using acoustic levitation. Although they can’t yet do so reliably, the advance could help unlock the full potential of the manipulation of physical objects using nothing but sound.

Biomedical engineering, nanotechnology and the development of pharmaceuticals are some of the fields in which manipulating objects without touching them is potentially really useful. We can already do this with a technology called optical tweezers, which use lasers to generate sufficient radiation pressure to levitate and move extremely small particles.

Acoustic tweezers – where pressure generated with sound waves can be used to move particles – have the potential to be an even more powerful tool. They could be used to manipulate a wider range of materials, and at larger sizes – up to the millimeter scale.

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Police Cross Paths With Innocent Mentally Ill Man, Kill His Dog, Put Him in ICU

 A disturbing video illustrating the problem with police in America and their inability to deal with the mentally ill, surfaced over the weekend. What it shows is that when your only tool is a hammer, people in a mental health crisis and even their dog will be pounded like nails. George Barlow, 32, and his dog, learned this the hard way over the weekend when their paths crossed with Inyo County Sheriff’s deputies.

According to police, “on July 24 shortly after 2:00am Inyo County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a domestic violence restraining order violation at 969 Tu Su Lane. Upon arrival of the deputies, neither the reporting party nor the suspect could be located. While looking in the area, the deputies noticed a male subject across the street at the Chevron station, which was closed; the subject was agitated and yelling.”

The man yelling was Barlow. He was alone, was not the person police were looking for, breaking no laws, and had harmed no one. Despite these facts, police decided to initiate a confrontation with him which proved to be deadly for his dog and put Barlow in ICU.

Police claim that when they approached Barlow, he “charged the deputy with his pit bull closely behind him.” This is not seen on the video posted to social media. The video shows a shirtless Barlow with his hands up, clearly frightened of what is going on and just trying to get away. According to the police statement:

The deputy continually ordered Barlow to stop charging. When Barlow came within 10 feet, the deputy deployed his Taser. Due to the heavy clothing Barlow was wearing, the Taser had no effect on Barlow. Barlow removed his heavy sweater.

The second deputy responded to the Chevron at this point and after Barlow refused to follow commands, he deployed his Taser striking Barlow in the upper abdomen. This caused Barlow to fall to the ground. Before the deputies were able to handcuff him, Barlow sat up and removed the Taser darts.

After tasering the man who was doing nothing but standing in an empty parking lot, police then pulled out their batons and started wailing on him. Naturally, this caused Barlow to attempt to protect himself from the officers, and his dog as well. As Barlow grabbed the police baton to stop it from smashing in his skull, one of the officers can be heard on the video saying, “shoot the dog.”

Moments later, an officer shot Barlow’s dog causing Barlow to jump up and run away. When police caught up with Barlow in the parking lot next door, they released their dog this time, which was not nearly as nice as Barlow’s pit bull.

In the second video, Barlow is seen on the ground as the dog can be heard snarling and tearing into his flesh. The attack was so over the top that the people filming began yelling at the officers to get their dog off of him. The deputies didn’t listen.

Barlow’s injuries were so severe that according to his family, he is currently on life support. They have since launched a GoFundMe for Barlow, who they say is a victim of racial bias in policing as he was a Native American..

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Biden’s Adviser To Pick Federal Judges Was Accused of Physically Assaulting Children, Nudity

Joe Cotchett, the Joe Biden fundraiser and longtime friend who is largely responsible for the Biden administration’s upcoming federal judge picks, was accused by his ex-wife in his divorce case of physically abusing his children and making his daughters uncomfortable for walking around naked in front of them.

Politico Playbook reported: “The Biden administration’s transition team has tapped powerhouse Bay Area attorney Joe Cotchett to chair a key committee to recommend federal judges to Biden. “You saw what Trump did, in appointing 200-plus federal judges,’’ he told POLITICO in an interview. Cotchett’s friendship with Biden goes back 45 years — so, he said, he has agreed to help the new administration work quickly to identify qualified federal judges who will apply for senior status, so those seats can be filled quickly and efficiently.”

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