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.

What If the Earth Was Flat?

To shape a cosmic body into a disk (rather than a sphere), you’ve got to spin it very fast, says David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. This would, unfortunately, destroy the planet by tearing it into tiny particles. In the 1850s, astronomer James Clerk Maxwell showed mathematically that a solid, disk-like shape isn’t a stable configuration in the cosmos, in work he conducted regarding Saturn’s rings. Maxwell’s research predicted that Saturn’s rings would be made of lots of small, unconnected particles; he turned out to be right. His math also explains why there are no planet-size disks floating around the galaxy.

To flatten Earth without spinning it very rapidly, you’d need magic, or perhaps a galactic panini press. At any rate, a stamped-flat Earth wouldn’t last for long. Within a few hours, the force of gravity would press the planet back into a spheroid. Gravity pulls equally from all sides, which explains why planets are spheres (or nearly so – depending on the speed of a planet’s rotation, those forces may work against gravity to create a bit of a bulge at the equator). A stable, solid disk-like Earth just isn’t possible under the actual conditions of gravity, as Maxwell’s math showed. 

And once you get rid of gravity, everything about our planet rapidly stops making sense. 

The atmosphere? Gone, because it’s held to the planet by gravity. Tides? Gone. They’re caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, which tugs on the oceans and causes them to subtly bulge out as it swings by. 

The moon itself? Also gone, since every explanation of the moon’s existence involves gravity. In the most widely accepted scenario, the moon was created when a giant, planet-size body crashed into the early Earth; debris from the crash was captured by Earth’s gravity. Another scenario suggests that the moon formed at the same time as Earth did (again, thanks to gravity). Or, Earth’s formidable gravity attracted and snagged the traveling hunk of space rock as it went hurtling by. 

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REPORT: Ashli Babbitt’s Killer Was Secret Service Agent Assigned To Mike Pence

As Americans fight to identify the man who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, whose identity has remained hidden from the public, a report from the Spectator suggests that her murderer was a Secret Service agent assigned to the disgraced former Vice President Mike Pence.

Many Americans have been led to believe that Capitol Police were responsible for the horrific execution of the unarmed veteran patriot, Ashli Babbitt, during the chaotic event at the US Capitol building on January 6. However, a new report from the Spectator suggests that her killer was a member of the United States Secret Service on security detail for former Vice President Mike Pence.

The report, titled Who killed Ashli Babbitt? says “sources close to and within the intelligence community tell Cockburn that Babbitt was actually shot by a member of then-vice president Mike Pence’s protective detail. The VP’s detail, of course, is provided by US Secret Service, not the Capitol Police. One person asserted to Cockburn over drinks in DC that this is ‘basically an open secret’ in the intelligence community.”

According to the Spectator report, “law enforcement sources suggested that the Capitol Police Department and Department of Justice have publicly identified the shooter as a Capitol Police officer in order to protect the reputation of the Secret Service.”

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‘It’s unavoidable’: Marc Lamont Hill says all white people are inherently racist

Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill gave an unequivocal answer when asked if he believed that all white people were inherently racist.

“I don’t know if you’re backing me into a corner with that question but yes, I do,” Hill responded.

The former CNN contributor was discussing the controversy over critical race theory when he made the comments to political commentator Liz Wheeler on the “Black News Tonight” show.

“I do believe that all White people are at some level, at the unconscious level, connected to racism, it’s unavoidable,” he explained. “I think all men are sexist at some level. I think that’s absolutely the case.”

Hill went on to quibble with historical accuracy of one of Wheeler’s examples, but he quickly ended the debate after answering her challenge.

Their debate centered on whether critical race theory was Marxist, with Hill challenging Wheeler to identify specific supporters of CRT who were also Marxist.

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Suspects in assassination told police the plan was to arrest, not kill, Haiti’s president

The operation that led to Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s middle-of-the-night assassination was in the planning for at least a month, and came together during meals around Port-au-Prince and at a home where most of the men accused of the slaying were staying, several people who interviewed some of the suspects told the Miami Herald.

“They probably were watching and waiting for the opportunity for them to do it,” said Investigative Judge Clément Noël, who was among the first to question the two Haitian Americans among the 19 suspects detained so far.

James A. Solages, 35, and Joseph G. Vincent, 56, both from South Florida, did not tell Noël why they chose the date that they did — July 7 — to launch the armed attack on Moïse’s private residence, but insisted that the plan was not to assassinate him.

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Cristina Greeven Cuomo, who is married to Chris Cuomo, is in Jeffrey Epstein’s 1997 address book

Jeffrey Epstein’s newly discovered 1997 address book, published by Insider on Tuesday, connects dozens of new names to Epstein and traces previously known relationships back to the 1990s. One of the new names belongs to Cristina Greeven Cuomo, a New York editor and entrepreneur. She married Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor and brother of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, in 2001.

The book lists Greeven Cuomo under a minor misspelling of her birth name, Cristina Greeven. Her entry refers to Manhattan File, a New York society magazine she published after her father purchased it in 1994. The same entry includes an office address in the New York City neighborhood of SoHo, an office phone number, and a home phone number. In the ’90s, Greeven Cuomo was known for hanging out with socialites like Alex von Furstenberg and the former CNN producer Pamela Gross. The latter appears in both “little black books” and is now a close friend of Melania Trump.

It’s unclear why Greeven Cuomo is listed in the 1997 address book. She serves as the editor in chief of The Purist, a wellness website she founded in 2017. A message left with The Purist seeking comment from Greeven Cuomo was returned almost immediately by Chris Cuomo, who declined to comment for the record or make his spouse available.

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Friend of ‘mastermind’ behind assassination of Haiti president says America BACKED the killing – as it’s revealed DEA informant and FBI informants are among suspected hitmen

One of the Americans arrested over the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a DEA informant who handed over the warlord responsible for leading the last coup in the Caribbean nation, it has been revealed.    

The DEA has admitted one of their ‘confidential sources’ was involved in the assassination, denied it orchestrated the plot and disclosed that he called them after the killing and they advised him to hand himself in.

Joseph Vincent, 55, has been named by sources to the Miami Herald as the DEA informant. 

Vincent helped the DEA in 2017 to arrest Guy Philippe, who led a 2004 coup against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide, on drugs trafficking charges, the sources said. Vincent was with Haitian Police when Philippe was handed over to the DEA at an airport. Philippe is now serving nine years in a US federal prison.   

Vincent was one of three US citizens arrested last week on suspicion of being behind Wednesday’s early morning deadly raid on the president’s home. The two others are James Solages, 35, a maintenance worker, and Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old doctor and pastor, who is accused of being the mastermind. 23 Colombians are also under arrest. 

A number of the arrested suspects are FBI informants, CNN reported. 

Footage from the early Wednesday assassination shows an attacker with an American accent shouting in English ‘this is a DEA operation’ as the hit squad arrived at the president’s mansion. 

Haitian police also said they uncovered a hat with DEA emblazoned across it in the home of Sanon – along with a stash of weapons.  

An associate of Sanon has suggested Washington backed the president’s assassination, saying their friend had claimed the mission was supposed to ‘save Haiti from hell, with support from the US government’.  

Both US and Haitian authorities insisted in the hours after the assassination that the DEA was not involved. 

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‘Potentially a death sentence’: White House goes off on vaccine fearmongers

Beyond Fauci, press secretary Jen Psaki has pushed back on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a lawmaker she once said she’d not mention from the podium — who compared the administration’s vaccine campaign to Nazis. Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid response director, rebuked Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who contended falsely in a tweet that government “agents” were going door-to-door to “compel vaccination.”

Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.

“We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country’s public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”

The pushback is a change of tone and approach from earlier this year, when the White House often chose to ignore its most vocal conservative critics out of a desire not to elevate them. It is a tacit acknowledgment that the July 4 goal of 70 percent vaccination nationwide was overly optimistic, if not naive. And it underscores that two realities are setting in: It’s becoming more difficult to convince vaccine-skeptics to get their shots (of the 10 least vaccinated states, all were won by Donald Trump in 2020) and the anti-vaccine voices, already vocal in the country, are becoming more mainstreamed by Republicans eager to oppose Biden-led initiatives.

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World-first CRISPR-edited sugarcane helps reduce environmental impact

Sugarcane is an important food crop, but it’s large environmental impact means there’s plenty of room for improvement. Unfortunately it’s tricky and time-consuming to breed new varieties, but now researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing to do so quickly and more easily.

Sugarcane is a key source of sugar, obviously, but that’s not its only product – the oil in the leaves and stems is often used to make bioethanol for greener fuels and plastics. But these don’t come cheap – sugarcane takes up a large percentage of farmland in many countries, which fuels deforestation. It also takes a huge amount of water to grow, and creates plenty of waste and pollution during processing.

Some of these problems can be addressed with new varieties of the plant, but sugarcane is frustratingly difficult to crossbreed due to its complex genome. It requires a lot of back-and-forth to filter out desirable traits from unwanted ones, so new versions can take years to develop.

That’s where CRISPR comes in. This powerful gene-editing tool allows scientists to switch off genes or cut them out and replace them with more useful ones. It could be useful in treating a range of diseases, but also for improving crops – and now researchers have used CRISPR to develop a couple of new varieties of sugarcane.

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There Were More COVID-19 Vaccine Deaths Last Week in US than COVID-19 Deaths

There are now 9,125 reported deaths from the COVID-19 vaccinations across the United States this year.

The number of deaths linked to vaccines this year has absolutely skyrocketed. According to the CDC’s own data, in 2021 n the first 3 months, the VAERS website recorded over 1,750 deaths due to vaccines in the US.

Last week they were reporting 6,985 deaths, and this week that number jumped up 2,043 to 9,048.

That number is now at 9,195

“The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database contains information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines. Reports are accepted from anyone and can be submitted electronically at www.vaers.hhs.gov.”

There have been 411,931 adverse reactions reported to the vaccine.

Also, last week there were 1,505 COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

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