Get yourself one while you still can, HERE!
George Washington on freedom of speech…
Blog
Living computers forge a ‘hive mind’ and work together to outsmart AI
Presenting this new model at the first International Conference on Organoid Intelligence in the US this week, Australia’s Cortical Labs presented its new system called, quite fittingly, HIVE.
The system involves linking up 15 of the company’s breakthrough CL1 biological computers, with the idea that instead of one machine powered by a group of brain cells solving problems and learning tasks, perhaps teamwork would take it to another level.
While more brainpower doesn’t automatically lead to success – anyone who has done a group project will be acutely aware of this – HIVE’s CL1 machines appeared to divide different aspects of the task presented, sorting into the most efficient way to an end point. This isn’t anything the scientists could “teach” the lab-cultivated neurons; they just figured it out once they became part of a bigger network.
“Biological computing has enormous potential, but useful systems cannot depend on a single culture performing perfectly every time,” says Dr Brett Kagan, co-founder and CEO of Cortical Labs.
“Nature solves complex problems collectively,” he adds. “Brains distribute information across specialized regions, while hives rely on many workers each with their own functions contributing to a shared outcome. HIVE applies that same principle to biological computing, creating systems that can be more consistent, resilient and capable than any individual culture.
“Discrete neural information processing systems working together is not new to nature, except now we have a scale that can transcend physiological limits, made possible by the incredible control, scale, and hardware integration allowed by Cortical Labs’ CL1 platform.”
The HIVE setup isn’t just scalable but more stable, according to the team.
North Carolina Libertarian Senate Candidate Arrested After Live-Blogging Armed Standoff With Police
Jonathan D. Miller, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for a North Carolina state Senate seat covering much of Cary, was arrested at about 3 p.m. Monday after an hours-long standoff with police that ended in the woods behind his apartment, according to WRAL. No shots were fired, and no one was reported hurt.
Cary police say it began with calls from people worried about social media posts in which Miller threatened to harm himself. Officers could not reach him earlier in the morning, then an officer encountered him on another welfare check. WRAL puts the visit to his home on Glen Echo Lane at about 8:26 a.m. Police Chief Terry Sult told reporters: “At that point, he had a firearm. He was ordered not to touch it. He got it and then he took off running.”
Miller gave a different account in several calls to WRAL from the woods. He said he was outside smoking when an officer saw a holstered revolver on his hip and drew his own weapon. “I told him I was going to refuse that order, and I backed away slowly until I was far enough away from him to turn and run, and then I turned and ran into the woods,” he told the station.
He kept posting on X as the standoff went on, describing his efforts to evade police and his talks with a negotiator. “I’ve got six shots and the high ground. I hope they don’t find me, but if they do it’s going to be a hell of a show,” he wrote in one post, according to BNO. WRAL reports that his posts from Sunday night onward also described suicidal feelings. Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver was among those who urged him not to take his own life or fight police.
Sult said police monitored the posts while negotiators, the Wake Regional SWAT team and tactical medics worked the scene. Glen Echo Lane and Audubon Parc Drive were closed, and nearby Resurrection Lutheran School, a private school, was under a code yellow lockdown for part of the day. Miller told WRAL he was hiding because he did not want to be taken into custody and confined to a hospital, and that he hoped police would give up so he could leave Cary.
The chief thanked WRAL for taking the calls, saying police listened in with the station’s permission and gave guidance to the person talking with Miller. He described Miller as “in a dark place,” WRAL reports.
UN Plotting to Lock Up 30 Percent of the Planet for “Biodiversity”
Inside the conference centers of this ancient capital, officials from nearly 200 governments, United Nations bureaucrats, environmental NGOs, and selected “stakeholders” are meeting to lock up 30 percent of the world’s land and water — as a starting point. That, they say, is merely a downpayment on eventually putting half of the surface of the globe under international influence and control.
The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) official theme is “taking action for nature.” But the real agenda goes far beyond protecting nature. The true goal: furthering the expansion of international influence over land, water, and even genetic resources, with national governments and private owners expected to comply.
Nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface is the immediate target of the assembled forces here in the Armenian capital. But sweeping additional measures have already been sketched out for what comes next: UN-backed “biodiversity” schemes embedded across every policy area. The implications for private property, economic freedom, and national sovereignty are hard to overstate.
Target 3 and the 30×30 Framework
The gathering’s centerpiece is the first formal global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022. That agreement contains 23 targets for 2030, each of which is ostensibly aimed at protecting nature from the supposed perils of human activity, liberty, and self-government.
Target 3 is the most far-reaching: It calls for at least 30 percent of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, and marine areas to be “effectively conserved and managed” through the creation of government-controlled “protected areas” and other measures. Advocates label the goal 30×30. Critics, including American agricultural officials who have examined parallel domestic efforts under the Biden administration, have described it as a vehicle for locking up productive land and restricting the people who own and work it.
The biodiversity framework is embedded in the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which former UN officials have described as the “masterplan for humanity” and the “declaration of interdependence.” Biodiversity targets are designed to mesh with climate goals, land-use planning, subsidy reform, and financing rules.
What the UN calls “National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans” serve as the delivery mechanism for injecting the UN-backed policies into every jurisdiction. Governments — including authoritarian regimes and kleptocracies — are expected to revise them, report progress, and face a “stocktake” that identifies who is lagging.
Full Integration of Biodiversity
Even governments that never ratified the CBD, the United States among them, face soft pressure through subnational governments, financial institutions, corporate standards, lobbying by taxpayer-funded “Non-Governmental Organizations,” and the cumulative weight of coordinated international policymaking. Resisting gradually becomes more and more difficult.
Target 1 reinforces the approach by calling for “participatory spatial planning across all areas” to reduce biodiversity loss. In practice, that language has repeatedly been used to justify burdensome controls limiting what private landowners may do with their own property. Such schemes are being implemented worldwide.
Target 14 goes further. It directs governments to ensure the “full integration of biodiversity and its multiple values into policies, regulations, planning and development processes.” It also requires that public and private financial flows — mostly costs born by taxpayers and consumers — be aligned with the UN framework’s goals.
The agenda is not limited to parks or endangered species. It contemplates the insertion of UN-aligned environmental priorities into virtually every aspect of government policy, economic development, and financial decision-making — from farming and housing to infrastructure and investment. Direct UN enforcement is unnecessary when national regulators, banks, and corporations can carry out the program for the globalist organizations.
Hostility to Private Property
Earlier UN documents were more explicit. The Vancouver Declaration, adopted at the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), stated that “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that “Private land ownership is … a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.”
That view stands in contrast to traditional American legal understandings of property. As recently as 2000, the Washington Supreme Court, citing longstanding principles, defined property as follows:
Property in a thing consists not merely in its ownership and possession but in the unrestricted right of use, enjoyment and disposal. Anything which destroys any of these elements of property, to that extent destroys property itself. The substantial value of property lies in its use. If the right of use be denied, the value of the property is annihilated, and ownership is rendered a barren right.
Obviously, the UN (and Marxist) view of private land ownership is incompatible with genuine private property rights and a free society. Considering the fact that food, clothing, energy, materials, water, and more come from the land, there is extreme danger in handing over control of that land and its resources to governments and international organizations — especially those with demonstrated hostility to liberty and prosperity.
In any case, more government control over economies and resources is strongly correlated with more environmental damage. The inverse is also true: Societies with the freest economies and strongest protections for private property tend to have the cleanest environments.
Contemporary biodiversity language is more polished than the Vancouver Declaration. But the operational effect — expanded government control and international influence over land use — remains consistent to this day. The goals are still the same, even if they are not trumpeted quite as clearly.
American ranchers and farmers who opposed the Biden-era 30×30 executive order understood the stakes, as the resulting national outcry demonstrated. Formal rescission of that order has not eliminated the international template or the domestic constituencies still advancing related measures through state policies, corporate ESG commitments, and federal agency guidance.
Scientists Create the First Synthetic Cells That Grow, Reproduce, and Undergo Natural Selection
Scientists at the University of Minnesota have engineered the building blocks of artificial life from nonliving materials in a disturbing, first-of-its-kind experiment. They call them SpudCells.
For the first time, scientists have created artificial cells that can grow, reproduce, and pass advantageous genetic traits to future generations, allowing some cells to outcompete others.
They assembled these synthetic cells from fatty membranes, engineered DNA, ribosomes, and protein-producing enzymes. The cells contain a 90,000-base-pair DNA genome that helps them manufacture proteins, copy their genetic material, and grow by absorbing smaller, nutrient-filled bubbles.
These artificial cells can divide into daughter cells and pass their genetic material to their offspring. Researchers demonstrated five generations of DNA replication, feeding, growth, and mechanically assisted division.
The cells compete for limited resources. Those carrying an advantageous genetic variant grow faster and produce more offspring, allowing that variant to become increasingly common. In just five generations, the advantageous variant increased from 10% to 38% of the population.
Although these artificial cells still require specialized laboratory conditions to reproduce, this experiment represents a major step toward creating autonomous synthetic organisms.
Just because scientists can push the boundaries of life itself does not mean they should. Playing God comes with major consequences, and we are entering dangerous territory.
Oakland Weighs $108,000 Pay Increases For Councilmembers Despite Budget And Homelessness Crises
Despite struggling with homelessness, crime, illegal dumping and a persistent budget deficit, Oakland could soon hand its city councilmembers pay and benefits increases worth as much as $108,000 annually under a ballot measure supported by Mayor Barbara Lee, according to the NY Post.
Measure EE would eliminate existing limits on council raises and allow the city’s Public Ethics Commission to determine compensation based on salaries in other California jurisdictions, without a specified cap.
The Post writes that Oakland’s eight councilmembers currently receive approximately $148,500 annually in salary and benefits. According to an Oakland Report analysis, that figure could rise to roughly $256,500 per member. The city auditor estimates the changes could increase total annual council compensation costs by as much as $867,000.
Supporters argue the measure would improve accountability and make public office more accessible to residents without substantial personal wealth. However, Oakland Report found that campaign materials have largely avoided mentioning the potential pay increases.
The proposal arrives amid significant financial difficulties. After voters rejected a tax measure expected to generate $34 million annually, officials warned of possible hiring freezes and the elimination of approximately 190 homeless shelter beds.
UK Knew About Possible Fatal Blood Clot Risk, But Allowed COVID Vaccine Trial on Kids to Continue
Children as young as 6 continued receiving AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in a 2021 U.K. clinical trial, even though U.K. government advisers were aware of a potentially deadly blood clot risk, a newly released document reveals. GB News first reported the story Monday.
The revelations arise from the minutes of a May 21, 2021, meeting of the Commission on Human Medicines, which advises the U.K. government on medicine safety, efficacy and quality. The meeting addressed a “very small but potentially very serious risk” of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).
VITT is a life-threatening syndrome that causes blood clots (thrombosis) and low blood platelet counts (thrombocytopenia). It has been linked to both mRNA and non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, including the AstraZeneca shot.
The partially redacted document, marked “Official — Sensitive Commercial” and “Not for Publication,” shows that at least one member at the meeting argued that the trial “should be allowed to proceed” even though there is often “no successful intervention” available for VITT.
The minutes revealed that the U.K.’s Paediatric Medicines Expert Advisory Group agreed that the clinical trial — which enrolled 262 children ages 6-17, including 112 kids ages 6-11 — should continue, even though the clinical trial was temporarily paused in April 2021 to investigate reports of “extremely rare” blood clots.
The meeting’s participants — including several advisers with ties to AstraZeneca or Oxford University, the vaccine’s co-developer — reached this conclusion despite acknowledging that the vaccine’s “direct benefit” to kids was “quite remote” and that the benefit of vaccination “when balanced against risk is low.”
Hundreds of Maine Absentee Ballot Envelopes Mysteriously Shipped to Soros-Linked Nonprofit at Maryland Residence — Democrat AG’s Office Declines Subpoena, Investigation CLOSED Without Answers
A box of blank Maine absentee ballot return envelopes, part of a shipment of sensitive election materials that never arrived at the state’s Bureau of Corporations, Elections, and Commissions, was delivered to a residential house in Cambridge, Maryland.
That house is the listed headquarters address for the Center for Civic Design, a left-wing election-design nonprofit with documented funding ties to George Soros-backed grantmakers and the Arabella Advisors network, as well as direct connections to Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
State investigative records obtained by The Maine Wire and detailed in reporting by Steve Robinson show detectives recovered 498 of the 500 missing envelopes from the group. The investigation was closed without determining how or why the package was redirected. UPS told authorities a subpoena would be required for additional tracking and surveillance records.
The Attorney General’s office concluded there was not enough information to issue one. The case was marked closed pending further information, with officials concluding the reason for the redirection “remains speculative.” Bellows never publicly announced the end of the probe.
On September 10, 2025, Adam Graphic Corp. of North Attleboro, Massachusetts, shipped 62 boxes, each containing 500 blank absentee voter ballot return envelopes, to Maine election officials in Augusta.
By the next day, the elections office had received 61 of the boxes; one was missing. Around September 13, the box arrived at the Center for Civic Design’s Cambridge address, marked return-to-sender from a UPS facility in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Who Will Control the Machines?
Every great technology arrives with a promise and a question. The printing press, the railroad, and the internet all changed the world, but the real question was always who would control them.
Artificial intelligence raises the stakes. Will it empower the individual, or replace, subjugate, or even destroy us? The question of who holds the reins is urgent.
Two groups are lining up to take control: Washington and the handful of giant corporations that dominate the field. They are partners, not rivals. When the biggest companies ask Congress to regulate them, it is not because they love oversight. They want rules that keep competitors out.
That is not free enterprise, which is always worth defending. It is corporatism, the cozy partnership that gave us bank bailouts and a Federal Reserve that serves elites, not the people.
And when the biggest players win public land, power, and tax favors, it is dishonest to tell a working family that asking for a return on its taxes is socialism. Who pays for the grid capacity a data center needs? If an employer wants more H-1B workers while promising an AI productivity revolution, what is it doing to train and pay Americans? If public resources help build the machine, the public should not be left with only the bill.
We already know what government does with powerful tools. The Patriot Act was sold as a way to catch terrorists and delivered warrantless surveillance of millions of innocent Americans. Imagine those agencies with machines that can sort every email, purchase, and phone call in seconds.
So what is the answer?
First, machines have no conscience. Every physician learns that the frontal lobe lets a person see the bigger picture, weigh consequences, restrain impulses, feel empathy, and know right from wrong. AI has no frontal lobe. It generates answers from patterns but cannot bear the human consequences of those answers. Responsibility must always rest with an accountable, identifiable person standing between the machine and any decision that touches someone’s life, liberty, or property.
CBS News Invites Dem Who Kicked Trump Off The Ballot To Spread ‘Election Denier’ Garbage
Bari Weiss’s CBS News had Jena Griswold on to lecture Americans about threats to their elections in an interview on Sunday. The Colorado secretary of state tried to kick President Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot in the 2024 election, oversaw the leak of hundreds of election system passwords, and sent tens of thousands of postcards encouraging voter registration to noncitizens.
Griswold joined 60 Minutes seemingly just to denounce former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters. Peters was sentenced to a nine-year prison term after Griswold worked with state Attorney General Phil Weiser to prosecute Peters for effectively questioning the 2020 election results and preserving election data.
As Mike Davis reported in these pages, opponents of Peters “falsely alleged she illegally colluded with Lindell’s associate, Conan Hayes, to steal and misuse the ID badge of a Mesa County employee named Gerald Wood to access the county’s election system and to save a copy of the hard drive before a new system was installed.”
Notably, a jury acquitted Peters of identity theft and actually accepted her account that Wood consented to the use of his credentials, as Davis reported. An appeals court also found that the sentencing judge’s “comments about Peters’ beliefs were improper,” as described by Courthouse News, and vacated the sentence. (Before she could be resentenced, Gov. Jared Polis issued a commutation letter and shorted her sentence so that she would be released on parole. Jared cited the appeals court’s reasoning.)
In an interview with CBS News’ Bill Whitaker, Griswold said Peters “was elected by her county to uphold the elections. Instead — she attacked the elections from within.”
“Tina Peters ordered that her video surveillance cameras be turned off and then took images of the voting equipment and shared it with a network of election deniers,” Griswold said.
Peters has maintained that she sought to preserve election records before a state-mandated voting-system update. As Davis wrote in these pages, “Colorado law permitted Peters to access and archive the hard drive, but she went about things the wrong way.” As Davis also noted, Peters changed no ballots or results.
“What was harmed by her actions?” Whitaker followed up.
“Voting equipment, confidence in Colorado elections and American elections, and election workers,” Griswold argued.
But Whitaker failed to ask how any of those things were actually harmed. Further, Whitaker failed to ask whether there is a legal basis for a clerk saving data (there is, as Davis wrote in these pages, but Peters may not have done so properly). He also declined to question Griswold about her own election security failures.
Griswold’s own office posted passwords to statewide voting systems online. The secretary’s office put an Excel file online with a “hidden” page of 600 passwords to voting systems for nearly every single county in the state, as reported in these pages. The leak came while Colorado voting was already underway, seemingly posing a clear danger to the integrity of Colorado’s elections, though Griswold insisted there was no “immediate security threat.”
But Griswold is not in jail, nor has she been charged in relation to that security breach.
Griswold also sent out 31,000 postcards to foreign nationals on how to register to vote for the 2022 midterms. Her office used data from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC pulls data from agencies such as the department of motor vehicles, and in Colorado foreign nationals can obtain driver’s licenses. Griswold then refused to cooperate with county officials to see whether any of the ineligible residents illegally voted in the 2022 midterms.
Griswold’s record goes beyond administrative failures. The official CBS News invited to lecture Americans about election confidence also supported using lawfare to deny voters the chance to vote for Trump.
Left-wing activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) backed a challenge by Colorado voters to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was written to bar previous Confederate insurrectionists from holding office. Six Colorado voters asked the court to order Griswold to keep Trump’s name off the ballot. The left-leaning Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot. Griswold then filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing states can keep Trump off the ballot and said that Trump should not get a “get out of jail free” card.
The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision vetoing Griswold’s lawfare efforts, ruling states do not have the constitutional authority to kick Trump off the ballot.
Griswold said she was “disappointed” when the high court rebuked her attempt to kick a candidate off the ballot and said it was “concerning that federal candidates, at this point, can engage in insurrection and then face no accountability for ballot access.”
CBS could have asked Griswold how her own warnings about election confidence cohere with her support of an unconstitutional attempt to kick Trump off the ballot or how Griswold’s own failures to keep elections safe damage the trust she accused Peters of damaging. Instead, the 60 Minutes interview gave Griswold a free pass to smear Peters while evading scrutiny of her own failures.
You must be logged in to post a comment.