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J.K. Rowling Goes ‘Orwellian’ After Scottish Police Decision to Log Male Rapists as Women

The move by Police Scotland to record criminals who are biologically male as females if they identify as such has sparked a massive public outcry. Among those especially upset are women’s rights activists – and now they have yet another supporter.Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has reignited the debate about the rights of trans people, this time by condemning the Scottish police decision to abide by rapists’ self-identification and potentially log them as women, thereby providing access to women-only spaces in custody.

Rowling used literature references to express her opinion on the decision and its possible outcomes.

“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength”, she quoted the famous words from George Orwell’s novel “1984”. “The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman”.

Police saw massive backlash after it was announced that criminals (including rapists) will be registered as females if they identify as such, even without a medical diagnosis or gender transitioning.Rowling, in her turn, is no stranger to backlash, although she has been fending off accusations of transphobia since mocking the usage of the term “people who menstruate” instead of “women”. This was a take that did not sit well with a lot of people, who lashed out at the author and even called to boycott her and her globally renowned Harry Potter saga.

Rowling’s new statement has predictably prompted a fresh wave of criticism.

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Scientists Will Release 3 Terabytes of New UFO Data in 2022

In a blog published on Medium, self-proclaimed UFO researcher Ryan Sprague announced that UAPx, an organization responsible for researching UFOs, or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena — as the government refers to them), would soon be publicly releasing new data on said UFOs.

“When legally allowed, UAPx will provide, to the world, our reviewed and analyzed data as well as all raw data once we identify and secure storage and servers adequate to the task. It is the opinion of UAPx that the data our team collected, processed, and analyzed, is the most significant collection of scientific data regarding the UFO/UAP phenomena. UAPx adhered to strict scientific methodology in collecting the data, enabling expert analysis, and fostering peer review for potential publication in one or more scientific journals,” said a press release for UAPx according to Sprague.

This data includes over 600 hours of infrared video from numerous FLIR® cameras; a combined total of three terabytes of visual imagery through multiple camera platforms. Sprague added the analysis of this data reveals a significant number of anomalous objects and phenomena still undergoing examination before public release. He further claimed that the nature and type of information captured may imply definitive proof of UFO/UAP presence.

Government agencies have been getting serious about UFOs/ UAPs for a while now. In June of 2021, members of the House Intelligence Committee received a classified briefing with FBI and U.S. Navy officials to discuss UFOs/ UAPs which some lawmakers have dubbed a threat to national security. Also, in the same month, the U.S. government released its first UFO/UAP report ever. 

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Florida’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Reforms Haven’t Stopped the Shakedowns

On a May day in 2015, a task force of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and Miami-Dade Police Department officers raided Miladis Salgado’s suburban Miami home and seized $15,000 in cash that they found in her closet.

The DEA agents were acting on a tip from a confidential informant that Salgado’s estranged husband was laundering drug money.

The cash in Salgado’s closet was not drug proceeds, however. It was money that Salgado, who worked at a duty-free store in the Miami airport, had been saving up for her daughter’s quinceañera, an important coming-of-age 15th birthday party. Salgado had been planning to book a banquet hall, D.J., and -photographer. Suddenly bereft of her savings, she had to cancel the party.

It took two years for Salgado to get her money back, even after a DEA agent admitted in a deposition that there was no connection between her cash and the alleged criminal activity. In the meantime, Florida passed a law reforming the state’s civil asset forfeiture process, which allows law enforcement to seize property—cash, cars, houses—even when the owner isn’t convicted of a crime. The 2016 law raised the burden of proof for forfeiting property and now requires at least an arrest before most property can be forfeited.

But despite tightening the rules for when police can keep seized property, Florida remains one of the most prolific practitioners of civil forfeiture. The Sunshine State took in more revenue through forfeitures than any other state in 2018, according to a survey by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm. Local and state police can evade the new restrictions by working with the federal government, just like the Miami-Dade police did in Salgado’s case. In return for calling in the feds, they get a cut of the proceeds.

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‘Follow the Science’ a Potent Source of Authority for Politicians

To hear the way some politicians talk, when it comes to COVID-19, they’re all “Following the Science,” not to mention “the Data.”

“Look at the data. Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Be smart,” now-former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote on Twitter in May 2020, after “Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve” had fully transitioned to “The New Normal.”

“We’ve been operating on facts and data and science from the very beginning,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in a campaign ad titled simply “Follow The Science.”

President Joe Biden has frequently appealed to “the Science.” In an executive order announcing a vaccine mandate for federal workers, for instance, he said his administration used “the best available data and science-based public health measures.” In an article criticizing Biden’s move to push vaccine boosters in September of this year, StatNews’s Lev Facher described “Follow the Science” as “a mantra” for the administration.

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Google is the search engine that censors the most “conspiracy theories”

The idea that Google was actively and manually censoring its search engine results was something that was itself once classed as conspiracy.

But new research has shown that Google does in fact manually manipulate its search results for content, more than rivals such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, and even Russia’s Yandex.

In fact, Russia’s Yandex is the search engine that has censored some “conspiracy theories” the least, according to new research.

On Wednesday, researchers from the University of Zurich published a study claiming that Yandex promotes “conspiracy theories” more than any other search engine. The research involved the top five search engines; Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex.

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Is Criticizing Joe Biden a Danger to Democracy?

This week, President Joe Biden hopped onto Zoom in an effort to shepherd the world along the path to stronger global democracy, during a two-day summit with other world leaders. He’ll be making his case, however, amid growing concerns about democracy here at home. On Monday, The Atlantic’s dedicated doomscroll provider, Barton Gellman, unleashed his latest flurry of frets, warning that “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.” His masthead-mate, George Packer, followed up with a piece that urged readers to imagine democracy’s unthinkable demise in order to stave it off.

Whether we like it or not, there is reason to be gravely concerned. But against this backdrop, an interesting debate has broken out about the press’s role in protecting our too-fragile institutions and raveled civic fabric from a Trumpian assault—and whether the media, in an effort to support democracy, must unflinchingly support Biden, as well.

Over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank made considerable waves with a column that rather lustily accused the media of offering President Biden worse coverage than President Trump. At first blush, this might seem impossible, if only because Trump’s actions—through corruption, incompetence, and the need to constantly battle the media—made it almost impossible to cover him favorably. Milbank, however, marshaled some statistics from data analytics experts, who combed through hundreds of thousands of articles to provide a detailed “sentiment analysis” supporting his thesis that “Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as—and for a time worse than—the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.”

But Milbank’s most provocative idea posited that the media needed to be “partisan” in the service of democracy. “The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”

Not everyone took this message well. Politico’s Ryan Lizza responded to Milbank on Twitter: “No respectable model of salvaging democratic norms would include badgering journalists to write only positive stories about the most powerful person in the world.”

Lizza is correct. Blind fealty to heads of state is the hallmark of dictatorships, not democracies. 

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MSNBC’s Heilemann Claims ’30 Million People Right Now’ Ready to Take Up Arms for Trump

MSNBC network national affairs analyst John Heilemann said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there were “30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms” for former President Donald Trump.

Anchor Chuck Todd said, “I want to read what Bart Gellman wrote in the cover story for The Atlantic. Some might say it is hyperbolic, but John Heilemann, I’m curious if you think it is? The headline is Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun. ‘Trump and his party convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans, that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that the made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at their polls, that tyranny usurped their government and that violence is a legitimate response.’ Hyperbolic or fact?”

Heilemann said, “Fact, I think. The strength of that Gellman piece is it lays out this extraordinary reality that there is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe as many as 12% that say Joe Biden was illegitimate and violence is an appropriate tool to removing him and restoring Donald Trump. That’s between 20 and 30 million people. That’s a mass movement in America in favor of political violence, which is a new thing. We’ve been political violence before, lynching many things over the course of time that African-Americans have suffered, but this is 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms.”

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Facebook, Google, and Snapchat Are Bypassing Apple’s APP Tracking Transparency and Still Collecting Data on Users

Downloading “free” apps onto devices more often than not allows app providers to collect personal data on users.  Of course, companies that manufacture and sell devices tend to collect personal data on users too (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  Having access to this data allows companies and providers to analyze users’ habits and preferences so they can market additional products and services to them.  They can also sell users’ data to 3rd parties.  This practice is sometimes referred to as “Surveillance Capitalism.”  As more customers are becoming aware of this, more want to be able to “opt out” of privacy invasive data collection.  Companies aren’t necessarily making this easy though.  Recently Verizon was exposed for automatically enrolling its customers into a new program that scans users’ browser histories.  Facebook, Google, and Snapchat are now also being exposed for continuing to collect data on without users’ knowledge or consent.

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Biden Megadonor Scores $500 Million Federal Loan for Solar Company

A solar energy company owned by a Biden megadonor received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India, the Biden administration announced this week, raising questions about whether the company’s political clout played any role in the financing decision.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance records.

The loan to First Solar is the “largest single debt financing transaction” issued by the DFC, the agency announced this week. The DFC said the investment in the India project will “promote DFC’s commitment to diversifying supply chains,” following demands from lawmakers that the agency avoid funding any solar projects connected to forced labor in China.

Ethics watchdogs said the loan raises questions about whether First Solar’s political connections played a role in the DFC’s decision. The federal financing agency, which was formerly known as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, has faced criticism in the past for funding projects linked to political donors. The loan also comes nine years after the Obama administration came under fire for approving $3 billion in loan guarantees to the same company—funding that Republican lawmakers alleged the company wasn’t qualified to receive.

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What Caused The Patomskiy Crater in Siberia?

In the Summer of 1949, a geologist named Vadim Kolpakov discovered a strange feature on the surface of the earth in the Bodaibo, Irkutsk, region of South-Eastern Siberia. Encircled by a largely treed area, this anomaly is oval with a conical crater that contains a small ball-like mound in its middle. The entire structure consists of broken grey limestone. Its width is between 130-160 meters, while the cone is up to 80 meters high. Oddly, few trees grow on the formation, however, the surrounding conifers have experienced rapid growth. Named the Patomskiy Crater, the Kolpakov Cone, and the Fire Eagle Nest, the geologic mystery has baffled scientists who are uncertain of what caused this weird formation.

Far Out Theories on the Patomskiy Crater

I don’t know if it is a meteorite or a spaceship, but there is definitely something under the crater.ALEXANDER DMITRIEV

Named for the river that runs near the anomaly, the Patomskiy crater has spawned many interesting theories. Wild ideas speculated that it was a secret Stalin-era uranium mine that used Gulag labor forces. Ancient astronaut theorists chimed that it was the landing site of an alien UFO. Other popular theories include: an underground uranium or natural-gas explosion, a dust-sized meteorite that burrowed through the planet and left the crater as an exit wound, a cylindrical metallic object of unknown origin, and the Tunguska Event.

The uranium theory may sound unlikely. However, this area is known to be rich in naturally occurring radioactive elements. A precise series of events would need to take place in order to create the circumstances for an explosion, but it lies within the realm of possibility. However, the trees do not indicate large explosions from uranium or the Tunguska event which would have leveled the conifers.

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