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Google Likes To Say Fact-Checkers It Uses Are “Independent.” But It Also Funds Them.

In a world where censorship dons the cloak of fact-checking, the recent allocation of grants by the Global Fact Check Fund raises brows. The fund, which is a joint effort of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) housed at the Poynter Institute and the technology behemoth Google, along with its subsidiary YouTube, has been touted as a guardian of truth. With $875,000 in grants divided among 35 organizations across 45 countries, it aims to arm them with modern websites, manpower, and training to identify misinformation. However, the initiative comes with its own set of problematic undertones.

The broad strokes painted by the fund’s mission statement include terms such as “increasing quality, volume, frequency, scale, and impact of fact-checking abilities” – a seemingly lofty aim. The IFCN’s director, Angie Drobnic Holan, frames it as a crusade against misinformation, stating, “Misinformation is on the march in many parts of the world. This important funding will enable fact-checking organizations to become better at their work, stronger in their capabilities and wider in their reach.”

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Tony Blair and The Iraq War: Digging Deeper into the Death of David Kelly

In little more than two weeks, we mark the 20th anniversary of the Welsh scientist and authority on biowarfare, Dr David Kelly. [1]

Listeners to this station will remember a discussion about the man in March 2023, the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Our past guest, Dr David Halpin outlined some of the reasons he, Dr Stephen Frost, and a list of determined skeptics doubted the official story of his passage due to suicide and were mobilizing in support of not just public hearings, but a public inquest to get to the bottom of his death, which they suspected was a murder which benefited the government of the UK, and Prime Minister Tony Blair in particular. [2]

The oft repeated assertion among many such skeptics, including Liberal-Democrat MP Norman Baker, was the claim that weapons of mass destruction was a key to a motive behind his elimination. Iraq supposedly still had WMDs. They could be launched at the insistence of Big Bad Saddam to cause tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people in some innocent country – maybe even America! But David Kelly, acclaimed and high profile weapons instructor that he was, publicly challenged this claim. Hence, ripping away the fundamental reason for going to war with Iraq.

However, there may be another motive that could potentially lead to an even darker agenda. Dr. Kelly was the head of biological defence at the Government’s secretive military research establishment  in Wiltshire, England. He was the brain behind much of the West’s germ warfare programmes. . [3]

If Dr. Kelly was knowledgeable of anything untoward, and was willing to blab to the public, might that also be a reason for doing him in? After all, soon after the suspicious releases of anthrax letters post 9/11, followed an astonishing level of deaths of top scientists in the field of microbiology. Was Kelly a target? Or unfinished business? [4]

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QAnon ‘momfluencer’ sentenced to jail for accusing Latino couple of abducting her children

A social media influencer with ties to the QAnon movement has been sentenced to jail for falsely accusing a Latino couple of trying to kidnap her children, Law & Crimereported on Friday.

“Kathleen ‘Katie’ Sorensen, a white mother of two, made an Instagram video in which she made up a story about Sadie Vega-Martinez and Eddie Martinez — a Hispanic couple she did not know — trying to kidnap her then 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter,” reported Jason Kandel.

She was sent to prison for 90 days Thursday on a count of knowingly making a false report of a crime, the website reported.

Sorensen, who lives in California, originally went viral in 2020 as she claimed in a video from her car that a couple, later revealed to be Eddie and Sadie Vega-Martinez, tried to abduct her children at a Michael’s craft store.

But her story fell apart almost immediately as police found “inconsistencies,” and it turned out the whole thing was fabricated. She was arrested in May 2021.

Prosecutors believe she fabricated the story to boost and monetize her following, prosecutors noted — but there may have been a political and conspiracy theory basis for it, too.

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MDMA: Australia begins world-first psychedelic therapy

Earlier this year, researchers raised eyebrows when Australia’s traditionally conservative medicines regulator approved the use of psychedelics to assist therapy sessions.

The decision will see psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, used for treatment-resistant depression. It will also allow MDMA, known as ecstasy in tablet form, for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The changes come into effect on Saturday, making Australia the first country to classify psychedelics as medicines at a national level.

While initial access to the drugs will be limited and costly, many experts and patients are hailing it as a landmark moment.

But major health organisations have also urged caution.

Marjane Beaugeois was diagnosed with severe depression in 2017. “Within two months, I lost my mother, grandmother, beloved pet dog and my romantic relationship,” she recalls.

She couldn’t eat, shower, or leave her house in Melbourne – but says prescription antidepressants left her “zombie-like, unable to cry, self-soothe or feel better”.

“I’d still go to bed praying not to wake up,” the 49-year-old says.

When her research for alternative therapies led her to a psilocybin clinic in Amsterdam, she was hesitant.

“I have no history of drug or alcohol use. As an addiction counsellor, I was always very against it,” she says.

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Is TikTok Really To Blame for Titanic Conspiracy Theories?

The Titanic never actually sank. Or maybe it did, but not because of an accidental run-in with an iceberg. It was really a dastardly plot by Irish Catholics, or perhaps banker J.P. Morgan or an Egyptian mummy’s curse is to blame.

Those—and plenty more—wild conspiracy theories about the disaster that unfolded in the North Atlantic during the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, have been circulating for years, with some starting almost immediately after the Titanic reached the ocean floor.

But now they’re also spreading on TikTok, and The New York Times seems convinced that the social media app is a uniquely dangerous place for kids to encounter ideas that they might otherwise have to find in books, in movies, or elsewhere on the internet.

On TikTok, “musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content—a demonstration of TikTok’s potent ability to seed historical revisionism about even the most deeply studied cases,” the Times‘ Tiffany Hsu and Sapna Maheshwari declare in a piece about the video site’s “Titanic Truthers.”

But the story’s dramatic framing and its specific targeting of TikTok seem at odds with reality—a problem for any article, but especially one that’s supposed to be combating misinformation. Indeed, near the bottom of the piece, Hsu and Maheshwari admit that these TikToks are “just the latest recycling bin for false narratives about the Titanic.”

Is there something uniquely dangerous about the way these ideas spread via TikTok? I asked Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who has written extensively about conspiracy theories (including in the pages of Reason), whether this is a worrying development.

“No, we should not be worried,” says Uscinski. “The ability of social media to turn people into conspiracy theorists is vastly overrated, largely because people don’t believe everything they hear and see, and oftentimes, the things they hear and see are things that they sought out purposely because those things match their preexisting beliefs.”

If TikTok—or social media in general, or even the internet as a whole—was causing people to believe in more conspiracy theories, researchers would be able to see that trend. Instead, surveys by Uscinski and others have found that, at the mass level, conspiracy theory beliefs tend to be stable over time.

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‘Time for a Divorce’: California Reparations Task Force Meeting Gets Heated

A California Reparations Task Force meeting got heated this week when several people began publicly denouncing the United States for its role in slavery, with one even calling for a “divorce.”

The final meeting of the Reparations Task Force in Sacramento occurred a little over a month after the nine-member panel recommended that California state legislators pay black residents of the state up to $1.2 million in reparations for slavery and past discrimination. During the public speaking segment, people did not hold back their opinions. One man, named Reggie Romanie, believed the recommended $1.2 million would never be enough.

“This reparations task force, I appreciate y’all, but you all opened up a whole can of worms. I’m going to tell you this: reparations is about ‘repair.’ To me, I qualify. I’m going to tell you how you repair this,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “First of all, America, from the evidence that they gave us, you’re guilty.”

Referencing the debunked 1619 Project, which made the false claim that America had been founded specifically to protect slavery, Romaine accused the United States of essentially marrying black Americans and now owe them a divorce settlement.

“You kidnapped us! Put a hate crime on us! That’s the first one. Now you came here with all the other atrocities. When you brought us here, you raped our men, women, and kids. So, therefore, you married us!” he said. “Don’t treat us like no cheap piece of meat! So, therefore, our last name’s ‘American!’ So now’s the time for a divorce! What do you get in divorce? You get half the money, half the land, alimony, child support, attorney fees, and everything else! So that’s what we want!”

Don Tamaki, a Japanese-American attorney and member of the task force, said that he sees parallels between the black American fight for reparations and the Japanese-American fight for reparations.

“If it wasn’t for the Black Civil Rights Movement, where would we be?” Tamaki told NBC News. “That whole movement changed the culture a lot. And it changed us. And so it began this movement toward redress and reparations.”

“I don’t think we knew who we were. The term ‘Asian American’ was not coined yet. And we called ourselves ‘Orientals,’ and we just assumed we were second-class citizens,” Tamaki contnued. “What woke us up was Martin Luther King on national television, leading peaceful demonstrators and being sicced on by dogs and being beaten by police with clubs … just to be able to go to a school, just to be able to sit in a restaurant or be in an integrated bus. And that was followed by a more militant call for Black power.”

California state Sen. Steven Bradford, a task force member, said on Thursday that reparations “likely won’t happen with one legislative cycle or two legislative cycles, or one bill,” according to USA Today.

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Seattle-area police go all hands on deck to find car that left skid marks on Pride crosswalk

A driver in a white Toyota Sequoia was caught on camera doing “burnouts” on the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag located at the entrance of Marina Park at Kirkland Avenue and Lakeshore Plaza in Kirkland, Washington, on June 20.

Police released a video of the incident and are looking for the people responsible for crimes of reckless driving and malicious mischief. According to the Kirkland Police Department, the incident took place around 11:40 pm, and there were at least two people inside the vehicle at the time. 

The flag crosswalk was unveiled earlier this month in a ceremony on June 2 in the first of several events the city planned to celebrate Pride month. 

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Dumbing Down The SAT Perfectly Sums Up The State Of American Education

In a recent announcement, College Board expressed plans to make significant changes to the SAT that will go into effect in 2024. The test will be fully digital and shortened from roughly three hours to two. The reading passages will be made shorter and the math section will allow the use of a calculator throughout. In short, the test will be easier for both the testers and the person being tested.

According to College Board, the changes are meant to address concerns with access because of Covid and the lack of equity in the SAT, which some allege favors certain racial and socioeconomic groups. The complaint about equity has led a large number of colleges to stop using SAT scores as part of their admissions. Evidently, College Board is hoping that making the test easier and shorter will narrow these performance gaps and restore the usefulness of the SAT as an assessment for college readiness.

However, by working off false premises, College Board is coming to the wrong conclusion. All these proposed changes will simply lower the standard for everyone, hardly address problems with equity, and make the SAT all the more useless.

Any teacher or “data coach” who analyzes test results can attest to seeing this kind of logic play out in most state standardized tests. In the beginning, these tests were more challenging and designed to assess higher-level thinking skills. Over time, however, wave after wave of low scores and obvious performance gaps cause the test creators to lower standards dramatically. Finally, the test becomes a pointless hurdle for teachers and students to jump through, inviting calls for a new standardized test that actually says something.

Dumbing down a test is often subtle, but there are a few ways to spot it: make passages shorter with lower reading levels, simplify the math problems, allow a calculator, dictionary, and even provide some basic strategies for working through the test. Along with these changes, the scoring is often needlessly complicated with a series of formulas and algorithms replete with multipliers and random variables to supposedly indicate whether a student “meets” or “masters” expectations. Hence, standardized tests usually fill a whole sheet with a multitude of categories, bar graphs, tables, and color-coded labels to communicate a tester’s final score.

This was the evolution of Texas’s standardized test, the STAAR, which started in 2013. In its earlier days, it was highly regarded in terms of quality, and many students did poorly on it. These were the days of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), so mass failure on a campus often meant the threat of a school or district receiving a failing grade and being reconstituted. Naturally, this led to wailing and gnashing of teeth among administrators and educators, who were now having to shape up their instruction and pay attention to data.

To make matters worse, the data from STAAR indicated serious gaps between students of different races. Thus, even the more affluent campuses that had relatively high pass rates were still given low marks because the few students who failed were largely students of color. Thus, for the sake of equity, there was an effort among all campuses to teach to the bottom and get these few students to pass while stronger students were largely neglected.

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Massive ‘Gravity Anomaly’ Caused by Ancient Sea Remnants Deep Inside Earth, Study Says

The Indian Ocean features a massive gravity anomaly that has puzzled scientists for years. Now, a new study proposes that the ancient remains of another ocean that sank deep into the Earth itself gave rise to the Indian Ocean geoid low (IOGL), as the anomaly is called. 

The IOGL is a region covering nearly two million square miles south of the Indian peninsula where the ocean surface plunges over 300 feet. The anomaly was first discovered in 1948, Scientific American noted in its coverage of the new study. But while scientists agree it must be due to gravity and the physical properties of Earth itself—which in reality looks more like a lumpy ball of dough than a smooth sphere—the exact mechanisms of the IOGL’s formation have long eluded a definitive explanation. 

A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters and authored by researchers Depanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh from the Indian Institute of Science used mantle convection models covering the Mesozoic era, which ended 60 million years ago, to the present in order to narrow down the solution. The result was that the IOGL is mainly caused by a geological formation known as a large low-shear-velocity province (LSVP) under Africa, also called a “blob.” According to the study, this region was “perturbed” by sinking slabs of the sea floor belonging to the ancient Tethys Ocean. 

The Tethys Ocean does not exist anymore, but in prehistoric times it was situated between the ancient landmasses of Gondwana and Laurasia. When these continents broke up and shifted, Tethys disappeared, and the modern Indian and Atlantic oceans were formed. The slabs that made up the ancient Tethyian sea floor sank into the Earth’s mantle, producing plumes that reach the upper mantle. 

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Pilgrims Are Flocking to This Psychedelic Temple

UPSTATE NEW YORK has been the birthplace of many Great Awakenings. In the 1820s, religious fervor so swept the region it became known as “the burned-over district.” In the 1960s, Timothy Leary’s commune in Millbrook became ground control for the East Coast psychedelic movement. “By the time we got to Woodstock,” sang Joni Mitchell, “we were half a million strong.”

More than five decades after Woodstock, in Wappinger Falls, Alex Grey and his wife, Allyson Grey, are trying to use art to get back to the garden. Under the full June moon earlier this month, the Greys opened the bronze, 700-pound doors of Entheon, a temple-museum hybrid dedicated to advancing visionary art, and a message of ecological unity. 

“Humanity’s materialistic worldview must transition to a sacred view of oneness with the environment and cosmos,” Alex tells me after the celebration where soap heir David Bronner, who funded part of the museum, billowed about in his purple robes like a psychedelic Medici. It is a message Americans heard before — in the indigenous language of animacy, and in the prose of Alan Watts, who wrote that the individual is not, contrary to our common perception, a separate “ego inside a bag of skin,” but more like a wave coming out of the ocean. 

As psychedelics return from the outlaw regions of the culture, arriving alongside the climate crisis, the gospel of interconnectedness is spreading again, this time through the mycelial tendrils of the internet. Alex Grey, demure and snowy-haired at age 69, is not entirely sure why he has become such a popular progenitor, but he nevertheless has: On Instagram, he is one of the most famous living visual artists in the country, with 1.4 million followers — more than Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama combined. 

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