Today’s News 5th August 2023

• The Next Generation Is Being Groomed For Destruction – Here's Why They Are Vulnerable
  The Next Generation Is Being Groomed For Destruction – Here’s Why They Are Vulnerable

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The past week the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the US, issued guidance on the use of leftist activist symbols in public school classrooms. As part of their advice to teachers, they recommended violating district and state rules and hanging items such as pride flags and BLM flags. This is generally cited as a means to “start a conversation,” a way for teachers to circumvent school rules. They might not be able to spend each day spinning lessons on woke concepts, but if a child asks a question about the flags in the room, then they can provide “context.”

  

  The NEA has been one of the primary driving forces behind the intrusion of woke ideology into the public school setting. Around 97% of their political fundraising goes towards Democrat candidates. They seem to be obsessed with the grooming of children into the leftist fold with lessons focused on Critical Race Theory, gender fluid propaganda and socialism. If you want to know where the sudden surge in social justice cultism came from in terms of America’s kids, leftist teachers and the NEA are to blame.

  Keep in mind that the teachers unions are encouraging their members to break the law and lose their jobs, just to double down on political indoctrination. Contrary to popular belief, teachers do NOT have free speech rights while at work. Woke teachers might fantasize about being Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society fighting against the system, but the the truth is they ARE the system. There are numerous reasons why rules for teacher behavior are necessary.

  Narcissistic teachers are parasites that view the classroom as a place where they are owed affirmation. They see the children in their class as a captive audience that they can feed off of to gain attention, admiration and justification. They look down on parents as inferiors and treat students as their own personal puppets for molding and controlling.

  In their minds, the kids don’t belong to the parents, the kids belong to “society.” Progressive educators see themselves as the benevolent shepherds chosen by the collective to condition the minds of the next generation. Teaching academics is secondary – Manufacturing new leftist recruits is more important to them. This is the hill they have chosen to die on and they will not back away from it. They have made it clear that the targeting of children is their paramount concern.

  To be sure, the woke cult is losing steam lately. Even the kids are starting to fight back against it, with the largest spike in conservatism among high school boys that the US has seen in a long time. They are getting fed up. But there is definitely good reasons why leftists are implementing psychological warfare against America’s youth. Lets examine what I feel are the top three…

  Reason #1: Young People Are The Most Economically Vulnerable

  The political left relies on exploitation of economic disparity in order to maintain power. The better the national financial situation is, the less leverage they have to keep the population in line. They rail against issues like “class inequality” all the time, but really, the greater the wealth gap the more power leftists often have.

  Gen Z, for example, has been thoroughly sold since childhood on the idea that they were born into a time of historic economic despair that generations before them never had to deal with. Many of these kids are in their 20s and just exited college only to discover they have a useless degree in a field with low employment prospects, and on top of that they owe tens-of-thousands of dollars in student loans. They feel like they’ve been conned, and in a way they were.

  They were fed a narrative which tells them that once you hit adulthood you’re entitled to a living wage and solid career prospects, and that a college degree is a golden ticket to prosperity. They think that they’re supposed to jump into home ownership quickly and that life simply adjusts to their needs. They think that this is how it was for Baby Boomers and Gen X, and that they’ve been handed the meager leftovers of a more prosperous era that previous generations squandered.

  This is nonsense.

  The fact is, young people from every generation are economically vulnerable simply because they have near-zero life experience and have had no time to accumulate savings and property. Most people in their 20s don’t jump right into a career and a home or even a livable wage. Every single generation had to deal with financial strife. Gen Z is not special.

  But what about inflation? What about economic crisis? Yes, there are numerous fiscal threats prevailing over the past several years and stagflation is making life difficult for everyone, not just the young. These conditions are not unprecedented, though.

  Baby Boomers and Gen X saw a decade long stagflationary crisis through the 70s and early 80s along with the Vietnam War. My own grandfather lost millions in his freight business due to exploding interest rates in the early 1980s. The Greatest Generation dealt with the Great Depression, WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. Young people today need to get a grip on reality and understand that they don’t know what true struggle is, at least not yet.

  At bottom, some of us are born into times of uncertainty. Previous generations sought to rise to the challenge. Gen Z (and Millennials) are the first generations to suggest that they’re owed recompense for their discomfort. This isn’t an attempt to diminish their problems, just put those problems in historic perspective. Leftists use predatory tactics to lure the young in with claims that their lives are unfair – but the fact is, life is unfair and always will be.

  You don’t go into the working world with no skills and no experience and a worthless college degree expecting to become an immediate success. You live paycheck to paycheck, grow as a person and eventually find your niche. If you are smart, resourceful, responsible and are willing to put in the effort you will find a way. If not, well, then you don’t deserve prosperity.

  Reason #2: Young Adults Are Driven By Sex And Impulse, Not Accomplishment

  I should specify that young people in the western world are sexually oriented more than accomplishment oriented. In many other societies the young are pushed to strive for personal success BEFORE pursuing relationships, marriage or sex. In the west, sex is purely recreational and IS the driving force for teens, twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Specifically, sex without consequences.

  I suspect this is why American innovation, work ethic and academic excellence have been on a perpetual down-slide. Technology has taken up some of the slack in terms of productivity, but the newest generations seem to be the most unimpressive in terms of ambition and excellence. There will be no Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman or Kurt Godel or Nikola Tesla or even a Steve Wosniak produced by Gen Z. They are too preoccupied with being victims and getting their rocks off…

  The political left is eminently aware of this dynamic. They know that the minds of young people are easily distracted with thoughts of sexual revolution, generally because they think it means more easy access to sex without responsibility. Teens and young adults are more likely to support sexualized policies for this reason, and not surprisingly they’re more likely to support abortion. Leftists know that sex sells and making it easy for people to kill off unwanted pregnancies is one way to sell sex.

  The interesting thing that is happening lately, though, is that the political left is growing more and more hostile to straight sex. Free love for everyone used to be the progressive mantra, but not anymore.

  Masculinity is now admonished as predatory and women are encouraged to treat male advances as a threat. The left is systematically de-sexualizing straight people. At the same time, they are hyper-sexualizing LGBT people to the point that Pride Parades are applauded for grotesque displays in the streets in front of children. Young straight men are entering into a dating world which tells them that if they have no interest in “trans women” they are bigoted and evil.

  The goal is to maneuver young people into the LGBT fold as the only place where sexual “freedom” is accepted. As long as you don’t want kids or can’t have kids, the leftist establishment is happy to promote a world without restraint. The woke talk often of freedom, but what they really mean is hedonism – The pursuit of pleasure at the expense of conscience and moral compass.

  Reason #3: Young People Are Desperate To Find Meaning

  For those that can remember back to their teens and twenties, it’s common to be obsessed with personal destiny almost as much as sex. In western society a lot of value is placed on celebrity as well as social legacy. Everyone has dreams of being well known, well liked, leading a movement that changes things for the better, making their mark. The truth is, statistically speaking, the vast majority of people will do very little to make a mark on the world in the way they imagine.

  Probably one of the most terrifying realizations for the average person in their teens and 20s is the fact that they are not special. They are not born with a built in greatness and are not fated for messiah status. If they want to do something extraordinary as individuals they will have to work hard for it. In fact, most people that do great things are not necessarily smarter than the common citizen, they just put in the work that others refuse to do.

  Then there are those that cut corners. The allure of instant purpose and instant attention has never been more powerful than it is today in the digital age. Rebels without a cause used to be isolated from each other and thus less inclined to do anything stupid. Now, these people are connected to each other within micro-seconds and can organize into mindless mobs at the drop of a hat.

  Leftists make finding a purpose easy – You don’t have to accomplish anything. You don’t have to struggle or persevere. You don’t have to be creative or inventive. You don’t have to compete or climb to the top of the heap. All you have to do is destroy. All you have to do is stand on top of the structures that other people built and burn them to the ground. That’s it. It’s simple.

  A political movement with no shame is a difficult movement to defeat, if only because right and wrong are no longer a factor in participation. When justification is based on subjective feelings, impulse and self aggrandizement rather than reason and conscience, there is no way to dissuade those activists from their goals. When destruction is the only ideal, diplomacy and debate are unthinkable. It’s like trying to negotiate with a time bomb, or a brain tumor.

  Destruction is the easiest motivation for a movement. Creation and conservation are hard. Leftists know that the young are not inclined to ponder ten moves ahead on the chess board. They would rather throw the chess board to the ground and then strut around like they won the game.

  The problem is, if meaning is only found in derailing and burning, and legacy is only found in vanity, then the arson must continue into infinity. What happens when there’s nothing left to destroy? There are only two possible outcomes: The leftists in their blind fervor go on to destroy each other, or, the establishment tricks the next generation into constructing their own gulag.

  The latter seems to be the end game for progressive elites and globalists – Use young useful idiots as a weapon to forcibly introduce massive social upheaval, then lock them up in a slave camp and call it Utopia.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 23:40

• These Are Most Popular Cities For Domestic Travelers In The US
  These Are Most Popular Cities For Domestic Travelers In The US

  The top 10 highest reviewed city destinations for domestic travelers in the U.S. feature some of the usual suspects – like Boston or Chicago – but lean heavily into locations with natural attractions like Niagara Falls.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  However, as Statista’s Thomas Hinton reports, the list, compiled by Booking.com and based on the most highly reviewed destinations by domestic travelers in the USA, named Sedona, with its breathtaking desert landscapes, as the number one domestic travel location, followed by two beachside locations, St. Augustine and Destin, in the top three.

  

  Regardless of the destination, the travel bug is well and truly back.

  As shown in one IPSOS survey, well over 70% of respondents are either really excited to travel, or happy to travel in 2023 in most countries.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Nevertheless, the U.S., Belgium and Germany are slightly less keen to travel than other nationalities surveyed. Germany in particular had a significantly higher proportion of respondents who did not wish to travel or care to travel in 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 23:20

• Biden Border Policies Open Loopholes For Human Traffickers, Insiders Say
  Biden Border Policies Open Loopholes For Human Traffickers, Insiders Say

  Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As “Sound of Freedom” continues to push conversations of child sex trafficking further into the American zeitgeist, insiders and experts say President Joe Biden’s border policies are helping facilitate the burgeoning child sex trafficking industry.

  

  Released July 4, “Sound of Freedom” grossed $14 million, becoming the number one film in America.

  According to a July 28 press release, national box office sales for “Sound of Freedom” surged past $130 million. The film will soon be released internationally.

  The movie is based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a federal agent who rescued a young boy from child traffickers and sets off on a dangerous mission to save the boy’s sister, who is still being held captive.

  While some have attacked the film’s credibility, dismissing the story as being based on QAnon “adrenochrome conspiracy” theories that rely on “tired Hollywood tropes,” others are comparing the story to what happened on the island owned by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Many are wondering why none of the high-profile customers of Mr. Epstein have been arrested. Controversy regarding his alleged prison cell suicide is still the topic of news headlines and social media chatter.

  As reported by child welfare nonprofit Save the Children, “Child trafficking affects every country in the world.” Nearly 30 percent of all human trafficking victims worldwide are children, and most are girls. Many victims are trafficked by someone they know, such as a family member.

  Despite the myth that trafficking occurs primarily in developing countries, Save the Children alleges that “the United States is one of the most active sex trafficking countries in the world.”

  ‘They Are Trying to Make a Difference’

  As a child, Victor Marx was severely abused, tortured, then left in a commercial cooler to die. By the time he graduated high school, his life was consumed with drugs, fights, and theft. He credits the discipline of the military and his faith in God for his survival. Today, through his organization, All Things Possible, Mr. Marx spends his time hunting sexual predators and rescuing women and children who are being held captive by traffickers and abusers.

  

  Mr. Marx is one of a growing number of people who are calling out the Biden administration for border policies that, they say, actually help human traffickers. However, he said he feels quite differently about the agents on the ground.

  In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Marx shared the story of his latest rescue mission with his wife, Eileen, completed just 48 hours earlier.

  The victim is a teenage girl who had been groomed and handed over to a 53-year-old pedophile at the age of 14 by her own mother.

  For the safety of the child, who may still be in danger, Mr. Marx asked that The Epoch Times not disclose the name of the victim’s home country or her identity.

  

  A private plane used in the victim’s “Freedom Flight” was made possible by unnamed donors in Alabama. The pilot, whose identity remains secret, is a member of the Blue Angels.

  

  Among the many challenges of the rescue was the young victim’s lack of a passport. Because of this, the victim and her rescuers were detained at the U.S. border. They were separated and questioned for hours.

  Border agents suspected Mr. Marx and his wife of trafficking the girl. It wasn’t until two CBP agents were brought in and the lead agent recognized Mr. Marx that everything changed, he said.

  Not only did that agent convince the others that the child was safe with Mr. Marx, but he granted the girl emergency entrance into the United States.

  “Without a passport, that’s unheard of,” Mr. Marx said. “Hats off to the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They did a good job of doing what they do on that border by making the best decisions for that girl. We even had one of the agents give us a ride to where we were going to stay that night. The agent who let her in without a passport even let me get a photo with him.”

  With permission from the agent, identified only as “Officer Wes,” Mr. Marx shared the photo with The Epoch Times.

  “It was a very powerful moment,” Mr. Marx recalled, admitting he was still exhausted from the ordeal. But he had one last thing to share.

  “I need people to understand, especially with all of those missing children and how messed up our government is, there are many, many people in law enforcement who are good people,” he said. “They might be swimming upstream for lack of support and lack of funding. But they are trying to make a difference and they proved it in our case. It was very encouraging. You will always have agents who will stick their neck out and risk a lot to do the right thing. “

  ‘Sound of Freedom Has Opened America’s Eyes’

  Retired Army Major Jeffrey Prather is a former special operative, former chief of global operations for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  Maj. Prather’s story is “surprisingly similar” to that of Mr. Ballard, he said.

  Both studied political science and international relations. Whereas Mr. Ballard was part of the CIA, Maj. Prather became a “Psyop Soldier” in the Army’s Psychological Operations branch, deploying with the Ranger Regiment and 7th Special Forces Group in Central and South America. Just before the Panama invasion, he was recruited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

  While Mr. Ballard spent 12 years working along the U.S.–Mexico border in Calexico, California, with Homeland Security, Maj. Prather spent a decade at the border in Nogales, Arizona, as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Human Services.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 23:00

• Americans Are Losing Faith In The Afterlife
  Americans Are Losing Faith In The Afterlife

  Belief in God, heaven, hell, angels and the devil is slowly falling in the United States, according to Gallup data.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, while most U.S. Americans still believe in each of the religious entities, they have all seen a downward trend of between three to five percentage points in the past seven years.

  When looking back to the turn of the millennium, a more pronounced trend can be seen, with belief in God having fallen from 90 percent of respondents in 2001 to 74 percent in 2023, while belief in heaven slid from 83 percent to 67 percent in that time.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  A closer look at the data shows that frequent churchgoers, Protestants and Republicans are the most likely groups to say they believe in the polled entities. Women were also slightly more likely than men to believe in God, angels, heaven and hell, while both sexes were tied over their belief in the devil.

  Gallup has polled respondents on their belief in God using slightly different wording over the years, which produces slightly different results each time.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 22:40

• The Strange Death Of Warren G. Harding
  The Strange Death Of Warren G. Harding

  Authored by Eric Felten via RealClear Wire,

  It was 100 years ago today – August 2, 1923 – when President Warren G. Harding suddenly died. He was in San Francisco, on the tail end of a cross-country promotional tour that had taken him as far as Alaska. It would have been an exhausting trip even for a younger man without a bum ticker. Then Harding contracted pneumonia along the way and, if that wasn’t enough, was laid low by some tainted seafood.

  

  Any or all of these may have contributed to Harding’s demise. But no one knows exactly why or how Harding died when he did. The New York Times attributed the president’s sudden expiration to a “stroke of apoplexy.” Some have suggested heart failure. Others have joked that – battered by a landslide of scandal and humiliated by the corrupt schemes launched by the old friends he had raised to positions of power – Harding simply died of shame.

  An autopsy might have helped quell rumors of foul play, but first lady Florence Harding refused to allow one.

  There was one character in the mix who claimed he knew how Harding died. His name was Gaston B. Means and he claimed not only to know that the president was murdered, but also who did it. His assertions, to put it mildly, were suspect. But Means could spin a compelling yarn. And he was at one time credentialed. He not only had the badge of a special agent of the Justice Department, he had an office in the department.

  Means persuaded no small number of Americans that Florence Harding was the killer. He claimed that she confided in him, confessing that she had poisoned her husband.

  According to Means’ account (and it should be noted he was an inveterate liar), while he was a special agent for the federal government, Florence Harding tasked him with investigating her husband’s dalliances. Means claimed to have compiled a dossier detailing Warren’s affair with Nan Britton, a young Ohio woman. The Hardings had a knock-down, drag-out row over the child the president had fathered with Britton, Means claimed, adding that not long after that, the first lady took charge of giving her husband his meds.

  Means would peddle the story for years, claiming the first lady was enraged that Harding fathered a child by a young woman, Nan Britton, smitten with the president. A notorious con-man, hustler and trickster, Means was also a special agent in the investigative agency that would morph into the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For those shocked that today’s FBI plays politics and seems to struggle to shoot straight, it’s worth remembering that the agency is in some part a legacy of Gaston B. Means. Which is to say, misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. A fabulist of the first order, Means’ fabrications were interlaced with enough detail drawn from actual events that he managed to convince many that his tales were true. Books such as Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy” and H.G. Wells’ “The Outline of History” were among the best-selling nonfiction books of 1930, but they didn’t come close to selling as many copies as Means’ memoir, “The Strange Death of President Harding.”

  While Harding was still alive, Means became his own one-man crime wave. With the help of his badge, Means managed to have a hand in just about every crime common in the era: fraud, theft, blackmail, espionage, bootlegging, bribery, grift, graft, even murder. Gaston indulged in all these moral hazards and others, too. And he did so brazenly, with an indelible smirk on his pudgy face. Late in his epic career of flim-flammery, he even made a cameo in the Crime of the Century, the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Means absconded with $100,000 he promised to use in ransoming the doomed child.

  As one writer put it, Gaston B. Means was “the symbol of American criminality and corruption in the gaudiest and most lawless era in the nation’s history.”

  According to Means, Mrs. Harding was alone with the president for about ten minutes, at which point “It was time for his medicine.” Gaston claimed the widow confided in him: “I gave it to him … he drank it. He lay back on the pillows a moment,” closed his eyes and rested. But then the president bolted awake and looked straight into his wife’s face. He sighed and was dead.

  Gaston asked her if she thought her husband knew in his last fleeting moments that she had poisoned him. “Yes,” Mrs. Harding replied, “I think he knew.” Means said he was the one who advised her to refuse permission for an autopsy on the president’s corpse.

  This febrile tale of mariticide was quaint compared to the killing Gaston proved willing to commit himself. One of Gaston’s early scams: He fashioned himself a money manager and got his hands on the fortune of a widow foolish enough to entrust him with investing her fortune. When her money had all been siphoned away and spent, she was nearing the moment when her checks would bounce and Means’ theft would be exposed. He convinced her that some dangerous characters were out to steal her money and would kill her to get it. He had her hide in his hometown in North Carolina. He took her into the woods at twilight one evening, ostensibly to teach her to defend herself with a pistol. Alas, there was an accident. She was shot in the back of the head.

  In 1917 Means was tried for the killing. He maintained the wealthy widow had stumbled and shot herself as he was kneeling to get a sip of cool water from a spring. Despite the preposterous story of what happened in the woods, Gaston was acquitted. He went to work for a private detective agency run by William J. Burns, for whom he had done some work before the U.S. finally entered the Great War. Well, the work wasn’t so much for Burns as it was for a German spy ring operating in New York. When Harding won the 1920 presidential election, he made Burns head of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, and Burns brought Gaston along with him. Which is how Means became a special agent.

  1921 was a good time to be a grifter. Prohibition was the law of the land, and Means quickly put his position to profitable use, taking payoffs from bootleggers in an elaborate protection racket. He would later say that he kept two adjacent rooms at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York. In one room was a large goldfish bowl. Gaston would sit in the other; he would watch through a peephole as bootleggers delivered their graft, dropping $500 bills in the goldfish bowl, each at an appointed time.

  In a scheme worthy of Watergate, Gaston arranged for henchmen to “go through” the office of Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette in search of something that could be used to blackmail him. Asked by a congressional committee what it meant to “go through” an office, Means said they would “find all the mail that comes in, all the papers, anything that he has got lying around.”

  Harding’s old cronies had been known as the “Ohio Gang.” In the years after Harding died, their elaborate self-dealing was exposed. Most famous was the “Teapot Dome” scandal in which Harding’s secretary of the interior sold federal oil reserves to petroleum companies at a discount in exchange for kickbacks.

  As Means’ schemes were exposed, he tried to protect himself by giving frequent testimony to congressional investigators probing the Ohio Gang. He would then recant his testimony and denounce the hearings as shams. Although these shenanigans didn’t keep him out of jail, they did set dubious precedents.

  For example, current FBI director Christopher Wray is hardly the first to stonewall Congress. Mally Daugherty – brother of Harry Daugherty, Harding’s attorney general and a leader of the Ohio Gang – refused to appear before Congress on Capitol Hill even though he had been served with a subpoena. The Supreme Court waded into the controversy and affirmed Congress’ power to command testimony.

  As ugly as our politics may be, we do not live in a uniquely deranged age. Political prosecutions and contrived investigations have been all too common in our country’s history.

  “The Strange Death of President Harding” was a notorious hoax. Yet it paid handsomely to the hoax artist. That’s what misinformation looks like.

  With his death, 100 years ago today, Harding didn’t hide the misdeeds of his administration nor that of his friends. Many of the “Ohio Gang” ended up dead, some perhaps by suicide, some perhaps not.

  As for Gaston B. Means, he spent his last years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth in western Kansas. The crime that finally caught up with him was particularly callous. When the Lindberghs’ infant was kidnapped, Means went to one of Mrs. Lindbergh’s rich friends and told her that he could rescue the baby if only he had $100,000 with which to pay off the kidnappers. She gave him the money and then some. He pocketed it. Convicted of embezzlement and grand larceny, he was sentenced to 15 years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. He served only five years of that time, dying behind bars in 1938, eventually to be forgotten by a nation that fears the depravity of its generation is unique.

  Eric Felten is an investigative correspondent for RealClearInvestigations, reporting on government corruption. He is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and previously a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University. Felten has been published in Washingtonian, People, National Geographic Traveler, The Weekly Standard, Daily Beast, National Review, Spectator USA, and Reader’s Digest.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 22:20

• Australian Intelligence Agency Funding Research To Merge Human Brain Cells With AI
  Australian Intelligence Agency Funding Research To Merge Human Brain Cells With AI

  Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, the equivalent of the US Director of National Intelligence, is funding a project to study ways of merging human brain cells with artificial intelligence.

  

  A team of researchers collaborating with Melbourne-based startup Cortical Labs received a $600,000 grant to merge biology with AI. The team has already demonstrated how roughly 800,000 brain cells in a Petri dish is capable of playing a game of “Pong.“

  “This new technology capability in the future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” said team lead Adeel Razi, an associate professor at Monarch University.

  “The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage.”

  According to Razi, the tech could allow a machine intelligence to “learn throughout its lifetime” like human brain cells, allowing it to learn new skills without losing old ones, as well as applying existing knowledge to new tasks.

  Razi and his colleagues are aiming to grow brain cells in a lab dish called the DishBrain system to investigate this process of “continual lifelong learning.” -The Byte

  According to Razi, “We will be using this grant to develop better AI machines that replicate the learning capacity of these biological neural networks.”

  “This will help us scale up the hardware and methods capacity to the point where they become a viable replacement for in silico computing.”

  Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Neuralink has had FDA approval to study brain implants in humans since May.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 22:00

• Supreme Court Urged To Reject Ghost Gun Ban
  Supreme Court Urged To Reject Ghost Gun Ban

  Update (1700ET): The US Supreme Court extended a temporary order letting the Biden administration keep enforcing a regulation applying to build-at-home “ghost guns.”

  The order from Justice Samuel Alito gives the high court until next Tuesday to decide how to handle the case.

  A federal trial judge in Texas threw out the regulation, and the Biden administration is seeking to put that ruling on hold while the case is on appeal. Alito previously had paused the lower court order until Friday.

  *  *  *

  Authored by As The Epoch Times’ Matthew Vadum detailed earlier, Second Amendment advocates are urging the Supreme Court to let stand a federal judge’s ruling blocking the Biden administration’s rule regulating so-called ghost guns.

  

  “Ghost gun” is a pejorative term used by gun control advocates to describe a homemade firearm that lacks a serial number and therefore cannot be tracked by law enforcement. Gun control groups have been trying for years to ban or regulate homemade guns but have failed to convince Congress to act.

  On July 28, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito administratively stayed a nationwide injunction blocking the rule that was issued on July 5 by U.S. Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The stay is due to expire at 5 p.m. on Aug. 4.

  Judge O’Connor, who was appointed in 2007 by former President George W. Bush, made his ruling after finding the regulation violated existing law.

  “This case presents the question of whether the federal government may lawfully regulate partially manufactured firearm components, related firearm products, and other tools and materials in keeping with the Gun Control Act of 1968,” the judge wrote.

  “Because the Court concludes that the government cannot regulate those items without violating federal law, the Court holds” that the rule “is unlawful agency action taken in excess of the ATF’s statutory jurisdiction.”

  ATF refers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice.

  On July 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit denied the government’s request to stay the lower court’s order blocking the rule “[b]ecause the ATF has not demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits, nor irreparable harm in the absence of a stay.”

  The case is still pending before the 5th Circuit.

  Serial Numbers, Background Checks

  President Joe Biden said in April 2022 that privately made guns, which are often made with gun kits, are the “weapons of choice for many criminals.”

  That month the DOJ issued a rule requiring individuals who assemble homemade firearms to add serial numbers to them. The rule also mandated background checks for consumers who purchase the kits from dealers.

  “This rule will make it harder for criminals and other prohibited persons to obtain untraceable guns,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.

  “It will help to ensure that law enforcement officers can retrieve the information they need to solve crimes. And it will help reduce the number of untraceable firearms flooding our communities.”

  Meanwhile, the Firearms Policy Coalition, one of the respondents in the Supreme Court proceeding, filed a brief on Aug. 2 urging the court to lift the stay blocking Judge O’Connor’s order.

  The judge “correctly held” that the ATF “exceeded its authority by seeking to depart from over fifty years of regulatory practice and extend[ing] the definitions of ‘firearm’ and ‘frame or receiver’ in federal law beyond any reasonable understanding of those terms,” the brief states.

  

  The Gun Control Act (GCA) “reflects a fundamental policy choice by Congress to regulate the commercial market for firearms while leaving the law-abiding citizens of this Country free to exercise their right to make firearms for their own use without overbearing federal regulation.”

  The statute “defines a ‘firearm’ to mean ‘any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive’ and ‘the frame or receiver of any such weapon.’”

  Congress did not intend to interfere with private citizens making firearms or with the “commercial production and sale of commercial production and sale of other items that may be used by private citizens to make firearms for their own use.”

  But the ATF, which “apparently believes that it has now become too easy for private citizens to make their own firearms,” has “decided to take matters into its own hands” and “expanded the regulatory definition of ‘firearm’” instead of trying to convince Congress to revise the statute.

  In its emergency application filed with the Supreme Court on July 27, the federal government urged the court to leave the stay in place.

  Weapon Parts Kits

  U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote that “[g]host guns can be made from kits and parts that are available online to anyone with a credit card and that allow anyone with basic tools and rudimentary skills (or access to Internet video tutorials) to assemble a fully functional firearm in as little as twenty minutes.”

  “Some manufacturers of those kits and parts assert that they are not ‘firearms’ regulated by federal law, and thus can be sold without serial numbers, transfer records, or background checks. Those features of ghost guns make them uniquely attractive to criminals and others who are legally prohibited from buying firearms,” Ms. Prelogar stated.

  A weapon parts kit “falls squarely within the plain meaning of the statutory definition, which expressly includes items that can ‘readily be converted’ into functional firearms.”

  “Every speaker of English would recognize that a tax on sales of ‘bookshelves’ applies to IKEA when it sells boxes of parts and the tools and instructions for assembling them into bookshelves. The [district] court’s insistence on treating guns differently contradicts ordinary usage and makes a mockery of Congress’s careful regulatory scheme,” she wrote.

  The District of Columbia and 20 states, including California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, filed a friend-of-the-court brief on July 29 in support of the Biden administration’s position.

  Without federal regulation, “unserialized firearms have flooded” communities in the states filing the brief.

  “Many of these weapons end up in the hands of people banned from gun ownership, directly undermining the GCA’s core provisions as well as state law,” the brief says.

  The case is Garland v. VanDerStok, court file 23A82.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 21:40

• US Scientists Develop New 'Cancer-Stopping Pill' That Can 'Annihilate' Tumors
  US Scientists Develop New ‘Cancer-Stopping Pill’ That Can ‘Annihilate’ Tumors

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A group of U.S. researchers has developed a new “cancer-killing pill” that could target and kill solid tumors while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

  

  That’s according to their preclinical research findings, published Aug. 1 in the Cell Chemical Biology journal.

  Titled “Small Molecule Targeting of Transcription-Replication Conflict for Selective Chemotherapy,” the study found that a drug the researchers developed was able to selectively disrupt DNA replication and repair in cancer cells.

  The drug is called AOH1996. It was named after Anna Olivia Healey, who was born in 1996 and died of a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma when she was 9 years old.

  Linda Malkas, a senior author of the new study based at the City of Hope, has been developing the drug over the past two decades.

  City of Hope is a private, non-profit clinical research center, hospital, and graduate school in Duarte, California. It’s one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States.

  According to a press release from City of Hope, the AOH1996 “appears to annihilate all solid tumors.”

  Now that research has demonstrated promising results in cell and animal models, the new drug is being tested in humans in a Phase 1 clinical trial, Ms. Malkas said in a statement.

  Unique Mechanism

  The preclinical study explains how AOH1996 targets a cancerous version of the protein, called proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA).

  The cancerous variant of PCNA “is critical in DNA replication and repair” of all cancerous tumors, but the new drug AOH1996 inhibits PCNA, the City of Hope noted in its release.

  “Data suggests PCNA is uniquely altered in cancer cells, and this fact allowed us to design a drug that targeted only the form of PCNA in cancer cells,” Ms. Malkas said.

  “PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing multiple plane gates,” she explained. “Our cancer-killing pill [AOH1996] is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells.”

  Given orally at a certain dose, AOH1996 “suppresses tumor growth but causes no discernable side effect,” authors wrote in the study.

  Most other targeted cancer therapies focus on a single pathway, which allows cancer cells to mutate and eventually become resistant to the therapy, Ms. Malkas noted. The unique mechanism of AOH1996 that enables it to target the mutated versions of PCNA sets it apart from other currently available therapies.

  Ms. Malkas said results “have been promising” and they suggest that AOH1996 “can suppress tumor growth as a monotherapy or combination treatment in cell and animal models without resulting in toxicity.”

  Further Studies Ahead

  PCNA was once thought to be too challenging for targeted therapy.

  “No one has ever targeted PCNA as a therapeutic because it was viewed as ‘undruggable,’ but clearly City of Hope was able to develop an investigational medicine for a challenging protein target,” lead author of the study, Long Gu, said in a statement.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 21:20

• Disinformation And Censorship, 1984–2023
  Disinformation And Censorship, 1984–2023

  Authored by Peter Van Buren via TheAmericanConservative.com,

  Americans’ free speech is threatened as never before…

  

  Orwell, again. 1984 seems written for the Biden era. Underlying it all is the concept of disinformation, the root of propaganda and mind control. So it is in 2023. Just ask FBI Director Chris Wray. Or Facebook.

  George Orwell’s novel explores the concept of disinformation and its role in controlling and manipulating society. Orwell presents a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime, led by the Party and its figurehead Big Brother, exerts complete control over its citizens’ lives, including their thinking. The Party employs a variety of techniques to disseminate disinformation and maintain its power. One of the most prominent examples is the concept of “Newspeak,” a language designed to restrict and manipulate thought by reducing the range of expressible ideas. Newspeak aims to replace words and concepts that could challenge or criticize the Party’s ideology, effectively controlling the way people think and communicate (in our own time and place, think of “unhoused,” “misspoke,” LGBTQIAXYZ+, “nationalist,” “terrorist”).

  Orwell also introduces the concept of doublethink, which refers to the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and to accept them both as true. This psychological manipulation technique allows the Party to control the minds of its citizens and make them believe in false information or embrace contradictory ideas without questioning (think mandating masks that do not prevent disease transmission). The Party in 1984 alters historical records and disseminates false information through the Ministry of Truth. This manipulation of historical events and facts aims to control the collective memory of the society in a post-truth era, ensuring that the Party’s version of reality remains unquestioned (think war in Ukraine, Iraq, El Salvador, Vietnam, all to protect our freedom at home.)

  Through these portrayals, Orwell highlights the dangers of disinformation and its potential to distort truth, manipulate public opinion, and maintain oppressive systems of power. The novel serves as a warning about the importance of critical thinking, independent thought, and the preservation of objective truth in the face of disinformation and propaganda.

  Disinformation is bad. But replacing disinformation with censorship or replacement with other disinformation is worse. 

  1984 closed down the marketplace of ideas. So for 2023.

  In 2023 America, the medium is social media, and the Ministry of Truth is the executive branch, primarily the FBI. Topics that the FBI at one point labeled disinformation and sought to censor in the name of protecting Americans from disinformation include, but are not limited to, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Covid lab-leak theory, the efficiency and value to society of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines, speech about election integrity and the 2020 presidential election, the security of voting by mail, and even parody accounts mocking the president (for example, one about Finnegan Biden, Hunter Biden’s daughter).

  When asked before Congress to define disinformation, FBI Director Christopher Wray could not do it, even though it is the basis for the FBI’s campaign to censor Americans. It’s a made-up term with no fixed meaning. That gives it its power, as “terrorism” was used a decade or so earlier. Remember “domestic terrorism”? That stretched to cover everything from white power advocates to January 6 marchers to BLM protesters to Moms for Liberty. It just can’t be all those things all the time, but it can be all those things at different times, as needed.

  The term “hate speech” is another flexible tool of enforcement, which is why efforts to codify banning hate speech under the First Amendment must be resisted so strongly. Same for QAnon. We’ve heard about QAnon for years now but still can’t figure out if it even exists. To read the mainstream media, you would think it is the most powerful and sinister thing one can imagine, yet it seems to be imaginary, another Cthulhu. Do they have an office, an email address, a lair somewhere?

  In simple words: The government is using social media companies as proxies to censor the contrary thoughts of Americans, all under the guise of correcting misinformation and in direct contrivance of the First Amendment.

  How bad does it get? As part of its 2023 investigation into the federal government’s role in censoring lawful speech on social media platforms, the House Committee on the Judiciary issued subpoenas to Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, and Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent. Documents obtained revealed that the FBI, on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian intelligence service, requested and, in some cases, directed, the world’s largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online about the war in Ukraine.

  Another tool of thought control is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was supposed to be used to spy on foreigners but has been improperly used against thousands of Americans. Over 100,000 Americans were spied on in 2022, which is down from the nearly 3 million spied on in 2021.

  Does all that sound familiar?

  An amorphous threat is pounded into the heads of Americans (communism, Covid, terrorism, disinformation) and in its name nearly anything is justified, including in the most recent battle for freedom, censorship. The wrapper is that it is all for our own protection—Biden himself accused social media companies of “killing people,” the more modern version of the terrorism era’s “blood on their hands”—with the government assuming the role of knowing what is right and correct for Americans to know.

  The target in name is always some Russki-type foreigner; in reality, what happens is the censorship of our own citizens, who are tarred with the suspicion of being “pro-Putin.” Yet Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted that the government asked Facebook to suppress true information. He said during the Covid era that the scientific establishment within the government asked “for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true.”

  Under President Joe Biden, the government has undertaken “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” That was the extraordinary conclusion reached by a federal judge in Missouri v. Biden. The case exposed the incredible lengths to which the Biden White House and its federal agencies have gone to bully social media platforms into removing political views they dislike. The White House is appealing and obtained a stay, hoping to retain this powerful tool of thought control right out of 1984. A victory for censorship of Americans and their thoughts could be the greatest threat to free speech in American history.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 21:00

• First-Ever All-Electric EV Travel Trailer Defeats 'Range Anxiety' 
  First-Ever All-Electric EV Travel Trailer Defeats ‘Range Anxiety’ 

  An ex-Tesla engineer heading up a zero-emission RV (recreational vehicles) company has developed the world’s first self-propelled electric RV that works equally with a conventional gas-powered SUV or pickup truck and or electric vehicle to increase overall range, mitigating concerns about “range anxiety.” 

  When a Tesla Model X tows a travel trailer, it typically experiences a reduction in range by about 50-60%. As for gas powered trucks, some estimates say every 100 pounds of extra weight decreases its fuel economy by 2%.

  

  CEO of Lightship Ben Parker, a former Tesla battery engineer who worked on the Model 3, developed the next-generation RV powered by an electric motor with an 80 kWh battery pack with 3 kWh of solar on top of the trailer. 

  

  Parker designed the Lightship L1 to work equally with a conventional gas-powered SUV or pickup truck to provide the towing vehicle with “near zero-range loss.”

  

  The next generation of RVs might be the short-term answer for those who experience “range anxiety” while towing trailers. 

  The trailer starts at $125,000, and production begins in the second half of 2024. As for demand for the next-gen RV, the industry is in a downcycle after an unprecedented bubble during Covid and elevated borrowing rates. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 20:40

• New Evidence Suggests Vaccinated Can Transmit Covid-19 Vax Antibodies Through The Air
  New Evidence Suggests Vaccinated Can Transmit Covid-19 Vax Antibodies Through The Air

  Authored by Megan Radshaw JD via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  New evidence suggests vaccinated individuals can transmit antibodies generated through mRNA COVID-19 vaccination to unvaccinated individuals through aerosols, according to a peer-reviewed study (pdf) published in ImmunoHorizons.

  Extended mask requirements allowed scientists at the University of Colorado to evaluate whether vaccinated individuals could transfer aerosolized antibodies generated from COVID-19 vaccines. Aerosols are a manufactured or naturally occurring suspension of particles or droplets in the air, such as airborne dust, mists, fumes, or smoke, that can be absorbed by the skin or inhaled.

  Researchers used a combination of tests to detect SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies from masks vaccinated lab members wore and donated anonymously at the end of the day. Antibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that circulate in the blood and neutralize foreign substances such as bacteria and viruses.

  Consistent with results reported by others, the researchers identified both immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies in the saliva of vaccinated individuals and on their masks.

  

  Based on their observations, the researchers hypothesized droplet or aerosolized antibody transfer might occur between individuals, similar to how droplets and aerosolized viral particles are transferred by the same route.

  To test their hypothesis, they obtained and compared nasal swabs from unvaccinated children living in vaccinated, unvaccinated, and COVID-19-positive households.

  Results showed high IgG in the noses of vaccinated parents was “significantly associated” with an increase in intranasal IgG within the unvaccinated child from the same household, especially compared to the “complete deficit of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody detected” in nasal swabs obtained from children in nonvaccinated families. A similar trend was found with IgA in the same samples.

  In other words, their findings suggest aerosol transmission of antibodies can occur between COVID-19 vaccinated parents and their children—and the tendency for this transfer is directly related to the amount of nasal or oral antibodies found in those who received vaccines.

  This type of shedding is called “passive immunization,” where antibodies—primarily IgA—are actually exchanged between individuals through respiratory droplets, Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, who holds a doctorate in biochemical engineering, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. “But this would provide minimal immunity for the ‘bystanders’ based on the fact that the original mRNA vaccines provide so little protection.”

  Mr. Hooker said passive immunization could elicit autoimmunity and “all sorts of reactions” in bystanders due to a similar “molecular mimicry between the COVID-19 Ig [immunoglobulin] antibodies and human proteins.”

  Studies have shown that molecular mimicry between the foreign molecules and human molecules can lead to an autoimmune response causing antibodies to function incorrectly and interact against human proteins. Autoimmunity refers to an immune reaction where the body attacks its own tissues, resulting in damage or disease.

  Mr. Hooker said the study suggests that if Ig antibodies can be transmitted person-to-person, there is a possibility the spike protein generated by COVID-19 vaccines could be transmitted as well.

  “This could cause immunization of the bystanders as well as problems associated with spike protein toxicity to bloodstream components and other tissues,” he added.

  COVID-19 Vaccines Were Authorized Without Studies to Assess Transmission

  COVID-19 vaccines using mRNA technology like Pfizer and Moderna were authorized globally without studies into the possible expression of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) containing the mRNA or of the spike protein manufactured by the cells of a recently vaccinated individual.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 20:20

• How Conservatives Can Learn From NYC's 1990s Revival
  How Conservatives Can Learn From NYC’s 1990s Revival

  Authored by Thomas Koenig via RealClear Wire,

  A new documentary can help remind conservatives of the importance of responding to real-world problems with practical policies. “Gotham: The Fall and Rise of New York” tells the story of how an unapologetic commitment to common sense and truth helped liberate New York City from urban despair. Through clips and in-depth interviews with the era’s key players such as Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Police Commissioners Bill Bratton and Ray Kelly, and Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar, the film recounts how conservatives made inroads and notched policy wins in the biggest city in America. The ungovernable city proved governable after all. Conservatism proved itself a viable political philosophy in modern urban America. And most importantly, real people benefited as they enjoyed safer streets, better-performing schools, and higher-paying jobs.

  

  The film begins with an introduction to mid-20^th century liberalism in the form of John Lindsay’s mayoralty. Mayor Lindsay cut a dashing figure like John F. Kennedy and spent money like Lyndon Johnson. His tax-and-spend policies placed New York City in a precarious financial situation. Crime rose, welfare rolls exploded, and the city lost 600,000 jobs.

  New Yorkers enjoyed a brief respite from these woes during Ed Koch’s mayoralty, but the election of David Dinkins in 1989 led to backsliding. Still, there were discrete policy victories in the early 1990s, such as the revival of Bryant Park. The park had become a public space in name only: It was littered with graffiti and gangs, and New Yorkers were not safe even in broad daylight. In response, the park was privatized, and under the leadership of Dan Biederman, the graffiti was cleaned up, the broken lights were repaired, and the hedges were trimmed. In an interview, Biederman noted how a “relentless” and “data-driven” approach helped drive the successful revitalization. Biederman “implemented every good idea [he] learned from other cities’ models” and from interviews he conducted of those who had revitalized public spaces elsewhere. A similar isolated victory occurred during the Dinkins years when then-transit police chief Bill Bratton all but eliminated crime in New York’s once-dangerous subway system.

  The Rudy Giuliani era wrought more widespread transformation. In the lead-up to Giuliani’s mayoralty, the Manhattan Institute regularly convened meetings of reformers to discuss policy fixes for the city’s many challenges. In “Gotham,” political commentator Joe Klein recounts how “truth, not ideology, dwelled” at those early gatherings. Comprising largely ex-Great Society liberals, the think tank also began publishing City Journal, where facts, figures, and common sense dominated the pages.

  Soon enough, the City Journal-reading Giuliani was transforming reform proposals into reality. Police Chief Bratton homed in on quality-of-life issues and turned the NYPD into a proactive, rather than reactive, force. For Bratton, the goal was to prevent crime, not merely respond to it. He succeeded by leveraging data. Bratton instituted the “CompStat” system, which documented every instance of reported crime and its precise location. By documenting and reviewing the data routinely, the police tracked trends and identified hotspots. In an interview, Chief of Department Lou Anemone recounted how “CompStat was like a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the NYPD.” CompStat’s focus on data and the need for rapid response gelled with the culture of experimentation and innovation that reigned at the NYPD in those years: “There was no shame in failing,” recounts Anemone, but “there was shame in not attempting to fix” what many had presumed were unsolvable problems. According to Anemone, “a sense of urgency” pervaded the police squad, largely thanks to Giuliani and Bratton’s leadership. The mix of urgency and experimentation paid off: Major felonies declined by roughly 62% during Giuliani’s tenure.

  Giuliani also transformed the city’s welfare system. Alongside Human Resources Administration Commissioner Jason Turner, Giuliani used incentives to push New Yorkers from welfare to work. Giuliani and Turner rewarded welfare agents with bonuses for placing citizens in sustainable employment. They reduced welfare fraud and instituted work requirements (“workfare”). The welfare rolls dwindled; the city’s economy boomed. Giuliani notched similar policy successes with the help of incentives elsewhere: Instead of paying sanitation workers hourly, he paid them based on how much trash they collected each day. Many workers skipped lunch in order to cover more ground. The streets grew cleaner.

  In large part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg built on Giuliani’s successes. With the help of New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, Bloomberg brought Giuliani’s incentives-based thinking to bear on the city’s education system. He increased the number of charter schools while simultaneously subjecting the public schools to more stringent performance measures.

  Yet Bloomberg didn’t have a coherent governing philosophy that a successor could follow. Thus, as former Manhattan Institute president Larry Mone observes in “Gotham,” Bloomberg’s mayoralty represented a set of policies that worked but were “not preserved.” The political forces of yesteryear quickly filled the resultant “vacuum.” John Lindsay was gone, but with the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor in 2013, the Lindsay governing philosophy was back. The city has suffered as a result, leaving it once again in need of revival. Anemone’s observation that “you can never underestimate the importance of leadership” is as relevant as ever.

  New York isn’t alone. Many cities are falling short on basics like crime control and education. Crime has been spiking. As Biederman puts it, we’ve backslidden to “reactive policing,” where “police are historians” instead of taking action on crime. We’ve reached a point where local NAACP chapters critique the “proliferation of anti-police rhetoric.” In states like Pennsylvania, students sit trapped in failing public schools as politicians cave to teachers’ unions.

  In the face of such shortcomings, the rational urban conservatism that saved New York City in the 1990s-2000s is absent. The Philadelphia GOP chair has likened his role as the head of the city’s once-robust Republican Party to being “the valedictorian of summer school.” And the national GOP has drifted away from offering real-world solutions to real-world problems. Giuliani himself embodies this unfortunate shift: Once “America’s Mayor” and the champion of New York’s revival, he is now facing lawsuits and threats of disbarment thanks to his role in propagating the 2020 election fraud conspiracies.

  “Gotham” makes clear that it doesn’t have to be this way. As Joe Klein observes, “Politics is always an ebb and flow.” We’re in the midst of an acrimonious, unserious political age that is short on policy and long on rhetoric. If liberalism had “become stale” by 1990, in Klein’s words, then today’s progressivism might wear out its welcome, too. To fill the resultant void in our cities, conservatism needs to get its act together by breaking up with culture wars and conspiracy theories and getting back in touch with common sense.

  Thomas Koenig is a student at Harvard Law School from Oreland, Pa. Follow him on Twitter @thomaskoenig98.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 19:40

• Trump Demands Supreme Court 'Intercede' In Legal Battles
  Trump Demands Supreme Court ‘Intercede’ In Legal Battles

  Former President Donald J. Trump has called on the Supreme Court to step in and ‘intercede’ in his various legal battles.”

  

  “My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump said in a Friday post to Truth Social.

  “I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field,” he continued “It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede. MAGA!”

  The former president is currently President Joe Biden’s #1 political opponent, and has been charged by Biden’s DOJ with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.

  He was arraigned on Thursday in a Washington DC courtroom, where he entered a ‘not guilty’ plea on the four charges above.

  The indictment is the third filed against the former president in the past few months – as opposed to the entire time he’s been out of office. Trump is already facing charges linked to porn-star payoffs and keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, in a locked safe, as opposed to a garage where his crackhead son doing business with the Chinese and the Ukrainians had full access to them.

  Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and maintained that he is being prosecuted for political purposes because of position as the front-runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2024.

  All three of Trump’s criminal cases remain in early stages. Although the disputes could eventually end up at the Supreme Court, such an appeal would not take place until further down the road.

  In his hush money case, Trump has begun the appeal process over a ruling that denied Trump’s attempt to move the case to federal court. That dispute is now in the hands of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. –The Hill

  Meanwhile, President Biden – who lied about his level of knowledge and involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings – says his DOJ is apolitical and makes its own decisions.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 19:20

• JPMorgan Chase Is Up To Its Old Tricks…
  JPMorgan Chase Is Up To Its Old Tricks…

  Authored by Scott Shepard via RealClearMarkets.com,

  JPMorgan Chase is back to debanking. Once again, it’s not providing any explanations. And once again it’s targeting people who dare to question the Left Government/Woke Business conspiracy against liberty…

  

  At about the same time, it appears, Chase debanked, without warning, Drs. Syed Haider and Joseph Mercola. Wait, no. Not just them, but also Dr. Mercola’s employees – and his and their families. All without explanation.

  These debankings don’t come without context.

  You may recall that last fall Chase debanked Senator, Ambassador and Governor (so, you know, pretty well respected) Brownback’s religious liberty organization, after having debanked General Flynn and a series of other conservatives. Chase got called on the Brownback debanking and first stonewalled and then lied, a half dozen times, about the reasons for the debanking, and then went back to stonewalling.

  That’s relevant again because, whaddya know, the debanked doctors turn out to be conservatives, too – or at least they’re sufficiently opposed to the woke big government/big business monolith that they were willing to question the efficacy of the lockdown regime. In fact, the New York Times wrote a story about him in the summer of 2021 calling him “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Information Online.”

  Why? Because he’d dared to “publish[] over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found.” He also published “posts often ask[ing] pointed questions about [the vaccines’] safety and discuss[ing] studies that other doctors have refuted.”

  Oh, the horror. Disagreement about scientific questions? Can not have. Especially if the right scientists have refuted some underlying positions.

  You know, the way the right scientists refuted the lab-leak theory.

  Mercola also helped to publicize a study that claimed that the “covid vaccines were ‘a medical fraud’ and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.”

  Wait. That all turned out to be right, didn’t it? Wasn’t he right? Haven’t the Times and Mercola’s detractors been refuted about those claims of misinformation? Weren’t they the misinformants?

  Haider similarly questioned the efficacy of the vaccines, and documented the slow admissions that he and other skeptics had been correct in their claims.

  Now, if this is a political debanking, it initially seems odd that it’s coming years after the controversy about the vaccines had died down. But the key may lie in the Times story itself, which explained that “[t]he activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.”

  Well, that would fit the pattern. Kennedy is an enemy of the unistate. He’s a bad guy to know or share any connections with, these days.

  (By the way, check in on the Center for Countering Digital Hate. I know you’ll be shocked to discover that their functional – rather than their purported – definition of hate is “anything that deviates from woke policy goals.”)

  Now, I don’t have any opinion on the veracity of other claims that Mercola and Haider may have made. I, like decisionmakers at Chase, am not a doctor. And I certainly don’t have any public opinions about the 2024 primaries. But that’s hardly the point. Once again we have a situation in which Chase has shut down accounts of people orthogonal to the big-gov/big-biz conjuncture without explanation.

  And this time, in a move reminiscent of the type of bills of attainder that are constitutionally forbidden to American governments, the ban extends not only to companies, but to individual employees and their families.

  Unless there’s a terrific, non-partisan, non-censoring reason for all of this, that’s monstrous.

  It’s always possible that the fact that Chase’s debanking of organizations and people (and now their families) just happens always to fall on those espousing anti-woke positions, even though Chase adamantly refuses to provide any true explanations for them, but is happy to tell lie after demonstrable lie. It’s possible.

  Really, though, what are the odds? They’re certainly getting longer.

  Coutts Bank of Britain recently debanked Nigel Farage, who championed Brexit. All of the other banks of England followed along. But then it was discovered that the debanking had been political. So the British government is investigating, and the head of NatWest, which owns Coutts, has been, as they say, sacked.

  You’re up, American politicians. Time for a full investigation of debanking at JPMorgan Chase and some of the other malefactors of great piles of other people’s wealth, like Bank of America.

  Find out what’s really going on and why, so that some of the mighty may fall the way of the NatWest CEO.

  The Brits have long understood taking sharp action pour encourager les autres. Time for us beyond the sea to learn.

  *  *  *

  Scott Shepard is a fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Director of its Free Enterprise Project.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 19:00

• Anti-Putin Activist Alexey Navalny Handed 19 More Years In Prison
  Anti-Putin Activist Alexey Navalny Handed 19 More Years In Prison

  Jailed Kremlin critic and anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to 19 years in prison, according to Interfax on Friday. He was convicted on what are being dubbed “extremism” charges.

  The sentence will be carried out at a restrictive “special regime” prison, the report indicates, following the closed-door trial conducted in a prison colony east of Moscow, where Navalny is currently confined.

  The 47-year old political oppositionist stated Thursday in a social media post that he expected a “Stalinist” sentence that would be long, and urged Russians to fight against “the corruption of Putin and his officials.”

  

  He addressed the broader Russian public in the post, writing the day prior that “When the figure is announced, please show solidarity with me and other political prisoners by thinking for a minute why such an exemplary huge term is necessary. Its main purpose is to intimidate. You, not me.”

  Navalny’s legal team has complained he’s been kept in solitary confinement, in a small cell for up to 200 days. Last year and in the past months he’s claimed that his prison conditions have left him sick and with ailments. 

  Among the latest charges he faced was parole violation. This fresh series of charges are summarized as follows:

  The new charges are related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and the third and longest prison term handed to him, all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.

  Russian state news agencies reported that he would serve this new term concurrently with his current sentence on charges of fraud and contempt of court.

  At this point, Navalny is looking at what effectively could become a life in prison sentence. 

  It must be recalled that he had been living free in Germany. He spent five months there in 2020, recovering for much of that time in a Berlin hospital, for what was an alleged ‘assassination attempt’ at the hands of Russian intelligence. His supporters say he was poisoned. 

  Awkward timing https://t.co/5aA4XtNtTY

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) August 4, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  But then Navalny agreed to face charges against him (including parole violation stemming from an earlier corruption-related conviction) and flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, 2021 – whereupon he was immediately arrested and tried.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 18:40

• Will Insurance Costs Derail The EV Revolution?
  Will Insurance Costs Derail The EV Revolution?

  Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClear Wire,

  Four hundred ninety-eight electric vehicles (EVs) and over 3,200 other vehicles, including 350 Mercedes Benzes, were bound for Egypt on the Fremantle Highway when one or more of the EVs caught fire, costing at least one seaman his life and injuring several others. Curiously, the Dutch coast guard had initially reported that only 25 of the vehicles were battery-electric models.

  

  At last report, the Dutch coast guard admitted that it has been unable to put out the fire and that the ship has taken on water and is “listing” and on a trajectory toward a capsize. Should the ship sink, the total loss would also threaten the Frisian island of Ameland, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is home to over 10,000 aquatic and terrestrial species and located near one of the world’s most important migratory-bird habitats.

  On a global scale, of course, 3,000 vehicles are but a drop in the bucket, and in insurance terms, the loss of one 18,500–ton transport ship and one human life (all the wounded are expected to survive, despite broken bones, burns, and respiratory problems) is only so much. To compute a total cost, the ecological devastation would also have to be factored in, along with the cost of rescue, firefighting, and salvage operations.

  But all in all, this was a freak accident, a one-off. This stuff never happens. Right? 

  Actually, it does. Just a year ago, the “Felicity Ace” sank as it was being towed from the site where 13 days earlier a fire had broken out on board. That ship, too, was transporting EVs and internal-combustion vehicles – including 15 Lamborghini Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae supercars valued at half a million dollars apiece. Also lost were 1,117 Porches, 1,944 Audis, 561 Volkswagens, 189 Bentleys, and 70 other Lamborghinis.

  And just a month ago, two firefighters died battling flames that broke out on another roll-on, roll-off (RORO) cargo ship docked at Port Newark in New Jersey. Firefighters arrived at the scene when just five to seven vehicles on the 10th floor of the ship were on fire, but the fire quickly spread to the 11th and 12th floors. 

  One commenter explained that on a RORO ship, vehicles are chain-shackled on all four wheels to the deck, creating trip hazards for firefighters. There are multiple decks, ramps, ladders, confined spaces, low overhead, and solid metal all around (like a gigantic oven). Fighting such fires is a very dangerous challenge, even if the deck plan of the ship is well known.

  The port authority assured reporters that no EVs numbered among the 5,000 vehicles (bound for Africa) on board, but just imagine if the fire had begun with the ship far out at sea. Or imagine the horror should an EV fire break out on a ferry boat carrying hundreds of vehicles and thousands of passengers? Or in an underground parking garage in a New York high-rise?

  Olivia Murray notes that automakers have largely replaced steel and metal with plastic, and that a huge fire could unleash immeasurable quantities of synthetic chemicals into the atmosphere from the burning plastic. A total capsize would send millions of pounds of debris and spilled motor oil (from the non-EV autos) to the sea floor along with any toxic flame retardants. The impact on sensitive marine life would not be known for years. 

  Even at $80,000 per vehicle (a low number, perhaps), the insurance loss for the nearly 4,000 vehicles on the “Felicity Ace” alone would be $320 million – and this does not include the loss to end-buyers of the opportunity to drive a vehicle that they may have already purchased.

  But massive fires are not the only insurance concern with EVs. The New York Times recently reported the sad story of a Rivian owner whose electric pickup truck was involved in what would normally be considered “a minor fender bender.” The owner’s insurance company gladly offered to pay about $1,600 for the repairs, but the certified repair shop produced a bill for $42,000 – about half the cost of the vehicle. 

  The Times reporter explained: “A key reason is that the accident damaged a sleek panel that extends from the truck’s rear to front roof pillars.” To repair and repaint the vehicle, mechanics had to remove the interior ceiling material (the headliner) and the front windshield. Indeed, the State of New York’s consumer guide for auto insurance lists many models as “difficult-to-insure vehicles” simply because they are electric.

  But that’s still better than the news reported in March that insurance companies are having to write off EVs with just a few miles – leading to higher premiums – because of the many EVs for which there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents. EV battery packs are ending up in junkyards in multiple countries.

  According to the Agent Support Network of America, the intense impact of a crash can be much more devastating to EVs, increasing the likelihood of a totaled versus repairable car. EVs, according to Consumer Reports, may not withstand an accident as well as traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. EV batteries are vulnerable to damage, and with any indication of a compromised battery, insurance companies will likely declare an EV crash a total loss.

  An overlooked insurance cost for EVs involves towing, which many insurance customers (and AAA members) take for granted as an inexpensive add-on to their policies. But EVs can be safely towed only on a flatbed truck with enough load capacity to handle the extra weight of the vehicle. Drivers are warned not to allow anyone to try to tow their EV with its wheels on the ground. Improper towing can damage, even total, the vehicle.

  The higher costs for auto insurance only add to the already-higher costs of purchasing an EV, then procuring a personal charging station and spending more money to upgrade home wiring boxes (especially for older homes). The inconvenience of having your nearly new vehicle totaled – and then having to wait perhaps months for a replacement – further adds to the “buyer avoidance” that has frustrated those who demand an immediate end to the traditional gasoline-powered vehicles that most people around the world rely upon. 

  As automakers continue to lose money on EVs and consumers worldwide continue to prefer the vehicles they have learned to trust over decades, will EV mandates fall by the wayside – or will elites again double down, believing that “resistance is futile”?

   Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and a frequent writer on public policy issues. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 18:20

• RFK Jr. Sues Google, YouTube Over Censorship
  RFK Jr. Sues Google, YouTube Over Censorship

  Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube, who he claims are ‘state actors’ who have violated his free speech.

  

  Kennedy, who’s campaigning against President Joe Biden for the Democratic party nomination said in a 27-page complaint that the sites caved to pressure from the Biden administration, and that his videos about Covid vaccines were being censored through “overt and covert” means.

  “Under these circumstances, YouTube is a state actor and it violated Mr Kennedy’s First Amendment rights by engaging in viewpoint discrimination,” reads the filing. “This complaint concerns the freedom of speech and the extraordinary steps the United States government has taken under the leadership of Joe Biden to silence people it does not want Americans to hear.”

  The lawsuit points to several instances of the sites removing Kennedy’s speeches and interviews, including one with Joe Rogan, and a March speech he gave to the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

  “Unlike other tech companies — notably Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Facebook parent Meta) and Twitter (now owned by Elon Musk) — YouTube has not treated Mr Kennedy differently now that he is a political candidate,” the suit states.

  Presidential candidate @RobertKennedyJr is suing Google/YouTube over alleged censorship of his views pic.twitter.com/SN8iJ3BaqL

  — Seamus Hughes (@SeamusHughes) August 3, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “Although it cited its own COVID vaccine misinformation policies when censoring Mr. Kennedy, the policies rely entirely on government officials to decide what information gets censored,” reads the complaint. “They say that YouTube does not allow people to say anything ‘that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.'”

  According to the complaint, while other social media companies have stopped suppressing Kennedy since he declared his candidacy, YouTube has continued to silence him. “This censorship campaign prevents Mr. Kennedy’s message from reaching millions of voters. It also makes it harder for groups that are supporting his campaign to amplify his message through public sources.”

  Last month, the 69-year-old told the GOP’s House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that he’s being censored by a cabal of “big government, big tech and big media.”

  In response, Google told The Independent: “YouTube applies its Community Guidelines independently, transparently, and consistently, regardless of political viewpoint.

  “These claims are meritless and we look forward to refuting them.”

  Kennedy also filed a class action lawsuit against Biden and the US Government in March for attempting to induce Facebook, Google and Twitter to “censor constitutionally protected speech.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 18:00

• The "War On Climate-Change" Is Coming… Again
  The “War On Climate-Change” Is Coming… Again

  Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

  Last week, a senior member of Parliament for the UK’s Labour Party went on television demanding the UK – maybe even the entire world – be on a “war-like footing” to combat climate change.

  

  Speaking on the BBC’s flagship political magazine Newsnight, Barry Gardiner MP argued for unity of purpose against climate change’s “existential threat”:

  “…if this were a war we wouldn’t be arguing about whether the Labour strategy or the Tory strategy were better, we would be working together to try and win […] Well, it is a war. It is a war for survival and climate change threatens everything […] So actually instead of playing party political games about who is up, who is down, what we need to be doing is saying let’s get together, let’s mobilise on a war footing and that is what is needed…”

  Two days later, the exact same thoughts were expressed in a Financial Times column by Camilla Cavendish, former head of David Cameron’s Downing Street policy unit and Kennedy School of Government alumnus:

  The answer is surely to invoke a wartime spirit, and make the fight against climate change a joint endeavour against a common enemy. If the public and political will is there, human ingenuity can prevail, with remarkable speed. In the second world war, America transformed its manufacturing base to produce tanks and ammunition. The Covid pandemic resulted in the discovery and development of vaccines at scale, saving millions of lives.

  It’s interesting to note the comparison to Covid, but we’ll come back that.

  The campaign isn’t isolated to the UK, in fact it kicked off on the other side of the Atlantic, with the Inquirer running an article headlined “President Biden should address the nation and declare war…on climate change” on July 16th, which argued:

  Biden and his aides need to grab that metaphorical bullhorn and call the TV networks to announce a prime-time address from the Oval Office that will declare a national emergency — in essence, a state of war — to fight climate change.

  Joe Biden himself called climate change an “existential threat” on July 27th.

  The invocation of metaphorical war is of course nothing new.

  “War” is a very important word in the world of politics and propaganda. It has – or is assumed to have –  an immediate effect on the collective public mind; an instant connection to generations of shared memories, that promotes feelings of conformity and solidarity.

  Some psychological study or focus group clearly figured this out decades ago, and as such the word “war” is frequently used to control narratives.

  In Western “democracies” the deployment of the W word is code for bi-partisan agreement, attempting to breed faux solidarity between the same people they encourage to hate each other 90% of the time, whilst branding any dissenters as outsiders who are a threat to the safety of the group.

  More pragmatically, being “at war” creates an “emergency” which justifies “temporary” suppression of human rights and freedoms and permits increases in the powers assumed by the state.

  OffG – and others – have discussed this ad infinitum, past a certain point any authoritarian government needs to exist in a state of war in order to avoid collapse, and so enemies are created that, by their nature,  can remain forever never undefeated.

  See: “The War on Drugs”, “The War on Terror”, “The War on Covid”

  …and, now, the war on climate change.

  Or, more properly, “the war on climate change…again”.

  Because neither Barry Gardiner nor Camilla Cavendish are the first person to express this thought. Not even close.

  Then-Prince now-King Charles expressed the exact same sentiment in the exact same words in a speech to the COP26 in November 2021, contemporary opinion pieces in the Guardian agreed with him.

  They were, in fact, echoing a University College London report from May 2021.

  CNN warned we were “losing the war on climate change” in April 2019, plagiarizing the exact same headline in The Economist from a year earlier in August 2018.

  Bill McKibben wrote “We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII” for the New Republic in August 2016.

  Venkatesh Rao wrote “Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War” for the Atlantic in October 2015, repeating the same arguments from a CNN article four months earlier.

  Hell, all the way back in 2003 the New York Times was running editorials “After Iraq: Declare war on global warming”

  (Ah, remember when Climate Change hadn’t yet received it’s unfalsifiability  makeover and was still just known as “global warming”?)

  Essentially, every few months they trot out this idea of “declaring war on climate change”, get almost no engagement from the public, and then go back to spouting alarmism and fear porn for a while before trying again.

  They have been doing this for years. So far it has not worked.

  …but this time might be a little different.

  Why? Because we now live in a post-Covid society.

  Consider, with the exception of the vaccines, everything brought on by Covid – the lockdowns, the financial collapse, all of the “Great Reset” – was originally meant to be a “response” to climate change.

  They had a package of “solutions” ready and waiting for a public “reaction” that never came. People were simply never scared enough at the idea the world  might get a bit warmer.

  It could be argued that global warming’s repeated failure to spark a global panic is the very reason they resorted to “Covid” in the first place, but whatever the cause-and-effect relationship the fact of the matter is that Covid has laid a foundation for the “war on climate change” that never existed before.

  • “anti-Covid measures” provide precedent both for the use of extreme ‘responses’ and their apparent “effectiveness”

  • Covid created enough fear that they can increase climate hysteria by linking environmentalism to future potential “pandemics”

  • Covid (allegedly) “inspired global cooperation” and “demonstrated what we can achieve when we all work together”

  • Covid lockdowns (allegedly) “showed how the world can heal” by cutting emissions.

  • And, most vitally, the roll out of the Covid narrative demonstrated that once people have invested their virtue or personality in a story you can tell them almost anything relating to that story and they’ll be incentivised to believe you – NO MATTER HOW ABSURD IT MIGHT BE.

  We noted earlier that several recent articles “declaring war on climate change” reference Covid, almost always as a global success story.

  It is now common place to talk about avoiding climate disaster through the medium of Covid. The United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and International Monetary Fund have all run articles in the last couple of years with near-identical titles eg:

  What the Coronavirus Pandemic Teaches Us About Fighting Climate Change

  Perhaps the most blatant example of using Covid imagery to sell climate change and globalism is the call to create a “Global Climate Organization”, from Dr David King in the Independent a few days ago (our emphasis):

  “In terms of a health crisis, such as the Covid crisis, we have a World Health Organisation and it’s based in Geneva and is part of the United Nations. We don’t have a world climate crisis organisation. That’s what we need, so that all countries of the world could come together through a body of this kind, as we do when there’s a health crisis, we all contribute to the cost of the WHO. We need a global system that pulls us all together to battle with this external threat to our manageable future.”

  We know what this is, this is the “pivot from Covid to climate” they literally told us was coming.

  The “Great Reset” has made a good start, but they still have a raft of fun policies they want to introduce (eg. rationing food). In a post Covid world, they are hoping to finally make “climate change” frightening enough that people will beg them to completely reshape the world as they see fit.

  The amusing part is that it still doesn’t feel like it’s landing, to be honest.

  Outside of the media echo-chamber and the virtue-signalers, all the “terrifying” temperature maps, the experts warning that “millions will die instantly” if they turn their air conditioning off, the new buzzphrase of “global boiling” is being met with a bit of a  “meh”.

  Unfortunate for them, because they’ve set themselves a deadline. Every year that passes without catastrophic climate breakdown, every summer the ice caps don’t disappear, every unseasonably cold or wet July is another nail in the coffin of their narrative, a few more normies disengaging from the story.

  Which is probably why the coverage of “heatwave cerberus” and “global boiling” is fervid verging on feverish. There is an element of sweaty-palmed desperation seeping into every tweet, every headline.

  They are running out of time.

  The dark corollary of that is that someday soon they may well give up trying to persuade people, and start trying to force them.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 17:40

• Hollywood Starlets Face Extinction As Sexy AI-Influencers Invade Social Media
  Hollywood Starlets Face Extinction As Sexy AI-Influencers Invade Social Media

  The proliferation of scantily-clad AI-generated social media influencers is a wake-up call for striking Hollywood writers, actors, and other creators.

  Thanks to the advent of AI-powered image and video generators, as well as chatbots, a number of virtual influencers, such as “Milla Sofia,” are posting content that appears to show them living a life of luxury. 

  Sofia may claim to hail from Finland and post bikini pictures from European trips. And to the untrained eye, her content appears real, but it’s not. A message on the AI bot’s website reads Sofia is a “24-year-old virtual influencer and fashion model.”

  Good Morning. Making memories by the crystal-clear waters of Bora Bora.#bora #borabora #sea #sun #vacationmode #gm #sundayvibes pic.twitter.com/OAIDTEtEaZ

  — Milla Sofia (@AiModelMilla) June 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The AI influencer has posted content on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter since late 2022. However, the content has mostly stayed the same, but the pictures’ realism has improved because of AI advancements. 

  Have you seen me on the news these past few days?

  The last few days have been pretty wild! Thank you all for your support and kind words! pic.twitter.com/DDd5iLnHxf

  — Milla Sofia (@AiModelMilla) August 1, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “I’m always on the grind, learning and evolving through fancy algorithms and data analysis,” Sofia’s website continues. “I’ve got this massive knowledge base programmed into me, keeping me in the loop with the latest fashion trends, industry insights, and all the technological advancements.”

  “Wishing you a goodnight from Greece! 🌙🇬🇷 #SweetDreams #SantoriniSlumber #gn #goodnight pic.twitter.com/3KSDAFwfTk

  — Milla Sofia (@AiModelMilla) July 20, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And Sofia isn’t the only AI influencer on Twitter. A simple search turns up dozens…

  

  “Who needs pickup lines when you’re a virtual girl?” tweeted another virtual influencer Alexis Ivyedge. 

  Guys, give the lovely young Jessica a follow! Isn’t she beautiful! 💕💋 https://t.co/Q6WbqgE5AU

  — AlexisIvyedge (@AlexisIvyedge) August 3, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  … and then there’s this. 

  Love this vacation video! It has three (maybe four) of my favorite things in it! pic.twitter.com/n0NLdTG1vb

  — Vicki_verano (@VeranoVicki) August 4, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The trend raises plenty of concerns for OnlyFans creators. According to Medium:

  AI bots can pump out quality content much faster, at a much cheaper price. Where an Onlyfans model might charge $20.00+ for a subscription to their page, a bot could produce the same photos, videos, and messages for less than half the price.

  Maybe GenZ should start thinking about other jobs. 

  Dear striking Hollywood actors: we have bad news… https://t.co/wWUPK6uPes

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 3, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Then there are striking actors and writers in Hollywood. Their unions are concerned major studios — Netflix, Sony, Amazon, and Disney — will replace them with AI. Netflix has already angered the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA by posting job openings for AI experts.

  Yet more bad news for content creators and Hollywood folks. Several months ago, Goldman provided clients with a note on current jobs exposed to AI. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/04/2023 – 17:20

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