My last post was up way tooooo long! Although it was not my intention, … Tyre Nichols certainly deserves more than one day of attention! Did you know he was an aspiring photographer?
Check out his Tyre’s website here.
He was also a big skateboarder. And legend Tony Hawk has offered to donate half the proceeds of autographed photos of himself and BMX rider Rick Throne to the memorial fund for Tyre Nichols.
“My proceeds from these will go to the Tyre Nichols Memorial Fund, which includes plans to build a public skatepark in his honor; as our worlds continue to grieve his loss,” Hawk tweeted Friday. “He was a talented skater among other admirable traits. Let’s keep his legacy alive.”
The photos can be purchased on Thorne’s website for $30. Only 1,000 copies will be available for sale.
Okay, I will say, its marking hype for Hawk – he has nothing on his site about this. BUT, at least he is lending his name to doing something, right (?)
.
Thank you for reading today's post. Have an InterStellar Day! ~PrP
https://youtu.be/4qoTzDPDvE8
Did You Know?
In both the original 2007 British comedy film Death at a Funeral and in the American 2010 remake, Peter Dinklage plays the same role of an American bent on blackmailing the family of the deceased.
Did You Know?
You can find all manner of canned vegetables, but not broccoli: the temperatures required for canning turn it into an unappetizing mush.
Did You Know?
The lens of your eye casts everything it sees upside down onto your retina; only when the image reaches the visual processing center of your brain is it inverted.
Did You Know?
The aptly named bloodwood tree “bleeds” a dark red sap when the bark is cut and it pools and coagulates over bark damage much like human blood seals over wounds.
Did You Know?
According to Paul Simon, the title of his song “Mother and Child Reunion” was the name of a chicken-and-egg dish he lifted off a Chinese restaurant’s menu.
Did You Know?
Salmonella, the bacteria responsible for untold cases of food poisoning around the world every year, is named after Daniel Elmer Salmon (the leader of the Veterinary Division of the United States Department of Agriculture lab in which the bacteria was first discovered in 1885).
That quote is the best. #Truth.
On another note, I am saddened and sickened by this young, talented, man’s life stolen from him by those 5 thugs with guns(and fists, and tasers, and whatever else they use to murder), and those that stood around and did nothing. What is wrong with humans? Thankfully, these cops have been charged (However if they were white would they be?) because the “prayers go out to his family and friends” is to the point of ad nauseam for every black person who is murdered, and nothing happens, which has been the norm for too long.
Vamps on the planet earth have long realized that blood from humans who have been sexually aroused because endorphins have been released into the blood stream in the initial stages of sexual activity.
And what does the endorphin enhanced blood do for the neck sucking vamp, if anything?
It’s sweeter.
Also has the same effect catnip has on cats. They drift towards a very acceptive suggestive state.
Well…that could be advantageous.
Makes sense then that it would then be like catnip.
Human average life is 80 years. if we live around 500 years, we would have more experience in life and knowledge, and we would be way more smarter than most of aliens .
Riiiiiight. Tell that to a 150,000 year old, six dimension being who has been to hundreds of other worlds, each with different laws of physics that control the environments of each world, allthewhile you have been sitting on the same rock the entire time. Yeah, you know more. This is another example of the egoic nature of the human specie and you have just given another example of why humans are a side dish.
Doug! Take it easy on me.
I’m trying to encourage the aliens to tell us how can we love longer . LOL
Live longer *
I like ‘love’ longer better. ☺️
Me too.
I like the concept from the other side of the coin. Some of us have been around humans for more than 500 years. Most of us who have think that your species has the ability to indeed be more intelligent than most of us. But you have to learn to conquer your greed, racism, sexism and for god’s sake(pun intended) give up your religions. Of course if you do that before you do the other three, your world would be unbearable.
Very astute. Nailed it. I can’t imagine how humans would be if they didn’t have religion to keep them somewhat in line, thinking some day they would go to heaven and meet their maker at the pearly gates.
We don’t have the personnel to address your situation yet. The Gate is closed to many of our earth occupants because those that assist in orbit integrity are needed most. Continue the contact you have, it will open up.
M]3 says:
02/13/2023 at 7:18 am
We don’t have the personnel to address your situation yet. The Gate is closed to many of our earth occupants because those that assist in orbit integrity are needed most. Continue the contact you have, it will open up.
Addressing in this fashion has been approved.
Understood
JOKE:
Wife: “Honey let’s play a game?”
Husband: “Ok, what is the game all about?”
Wife: “If I mention a country, you will run to the left side of the room and touch the wall. And if I mention a bird you will run to the right side of the room and touch the wall. If you run to the wrong direction, you will give me all your salary for the month.”
Husband: “Ok and if you fail, I will have your salary too right?”
Wife: (smile) “Yes darling.”
Husband: “Ok” (stood up and was ready to run to any direction)
Wife: “Are u ready?”
Husband: “Yes, ready.”
Wife: “Turkey”
Joke:
Cinderella was all ready to go to the ball, when her period started. She was out of feminine hygiene products; what to do, what do, she fretted as she sat crying by the fireplace.
Suddenly in a poof of smoke and light, a fairy godmother appeared. “Why are you crying, dear child?” She inquired.
“Oh fairy godmother, I’m all ready for the ball tonight, but I’ve started my period. I have no tampons, and my beautiful dress will be ruined! I can’t go!” She wailed.
“Never say, “can’t,” child! Now let’s see… Aha! That pumpkin over there will do nicely” She waved her magic wand, and the pumpkin was magically transformed into a tampon! “Now heed my words, Cinderella. You must return before the stroke of midnight! When the palace clock strikes twelve, the magic will fail, and your tampon will turn back into a pumpkin!”
Cinderella was overjoyed! “Thank you, thank you, fairy godmother! I promise to be home by midnight!” And off she went.
The fairy godmother waited for Cinderella to return. Midnight passed, then one o’clock, then two. Finally, Cinderella came staggering through door, clothes rumpled and missing a shoe. An enigmatic and dreamy smile lit up her face.
“Well Cinderella, what happened?” she inquired gently. “Why didn’t you return by midnight?”
“I was getting ready to leave, fairy godmother, but I met a man. So tall and handsome, so charming!”
“You met the prince?” The fairy godmother clapped her hands in joy. “How wonderful!”
“No,” said Cinderella slyly, “It wasn’t the Prince. His name was Peter. Peter Pumpkin Eater!”
Michelle, that’s why we gave them religion. It was the thing that enabled them to form a civilization. Unfortunately, it also was the thing that enabled them to kill each other without a conscious.
JOKE:
A teacher had a young son who was sleeping in bed one night, when suddenly the boy screamed and the teacher came running into his room.
“Mom, I had a bad dream!” said the boy. “I was inside the school classroom in front of everyone, and I was in my underwear!”
“Just calm down, sweetie,” said the mother. “It was just a dream. I was in the school teaching yesterday, and I can assure you that nothing like that happened.”
“Do grown-ups ever had bad dreams?” asked the boy.
“We certainly do!” said the mother. “Why, just yesterday, I had a dream where I was totally hung over one morning and showed up at the school naked!”
The boy replied, “Mom, that wasn’t a dream.”
Lol, good, very good.
JOKE:
A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”
The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”
The boy takes the quarters and leaves.
“What did I tell you?” said the barber. I do this several times a week with this dumb kid. “That kid never learns!”
Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store.
“Hey, son! May I ask you a question?” the man says.
“Yeah!” the boy replies.
“Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”
The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!” 😂😂😂
JOKE:
Mildred, the church gossip and self-appointed monitor of the church’s morals, kept sticking her nose into other people’s business.
Several members did not approve of her extra-curricular activities but feared her enough to maintain their silence.
She made a mistake, however, when she accused Frank, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon.
She emphatically told Frank (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing!
Frank, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away.
He didn’t explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing.
Later that evening, Frank quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house … Walked home… And left it there all night.
You gotta love Frank!
We were doing home renovations and,
incredibly, when we knocked down a wall, we found a secret,
fully furnished room!!
And then I remembered
“We live in a duplex…”
Joke:
Mom: Son, when the bus driver asks you how old you are, tell him that you’re 6, not seven. We’ll save $1.50.
Driver: How old are you, son?
Child: I’m six, sir.
Driver: And, when will you be seven?
Child: When I get off this bus.
A man flying in a hot air balloon suddenly realizes he’s lost. ♨💨🎈
He reduces height and spots a man down below.
He lowers the balloon further and shouts to get directions,
“Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”
The man below says:
“Yes. You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”
“You must work in Information Technology,” says the balloonist.
“I do” replies the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but It’s of no use to anyone.”
The man below replies, “You must work in management.”
“I do,” replies the balloonist, “But how’d you know?”
“Well”, says the man “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”
Joke
A Boss said to a secretary, I want to have sex with YOU, I will make it very fast, I’ll throw $1000 on theFloor By the time you bend down to pick it, I’ll be done. She thought for a moment, then called her boyfriend and told him the
story. her boyfriend and said to her do it.
But ask him for $2000
pick up the money very fast. So she agrees half an hour goes by the boyfriend decides to call Girlfriend he asks what happened? The bastard use coins. I’m still picking and he is still fucking.
Lol, that was a very good one.
Retold it this way.
A Boss said to a secretary, I want to have sex with you, I will make it very fast, I’ll throw $1000 on the Floor By the time you bend down to pick it up, I’ll be done.
She thought for a moment, then called her boyfriend and told him the
story. Her boyfriend told to her do it. But to ask him for $2000 instead. He said even though the amount has doubled you should still be able to pick it up very fast. So she presented her boss with the counter offer. He thought about it and agreed.
Half an hour goes by, but the boyfriend hasn’t received a call from his girlfriend. So he calls his girlfriend and asks what happened?
She says, “The bastard used coins. I’m still picking them up and he’s still fucking me.”
Stop complaining about being grounded it could have been worst. When you lost your solar powered craft, it was discovered by Brazil and sold to the US. Now they have the ability to power solar aircraft way ahead of their technological development. But for your accident you would have been severely disciplined. Next time don’t wait 21 months to report it because you think you can find something you lost. Humans learn fast from certain technology
A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.
The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.
A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.
The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.
He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian.
Hanan did not respond to detailed questions about Team Jorge’s activities and methods but said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”
The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients.
Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.
Aims software screenshots composite
‘Aims’: the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles
Read more
One of Team Jorge’s key services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims. It controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.
The consortium of journalists that investigated Team Jorge includes reporters from 30 outlets including Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. The project, part of a wider investigation into the disinformation industry, has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The undercover footage was filmed by three reporters, who approached Team Jorge posing as prospective clients.
In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team spoke of how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by using hacking techniques to access Gmail and Telegram accounts. They boasted of planting material in legitimate news outlets, which are then amplified by the Aims bot-management software.
Much of their strategy appeared to revolve around disrupting or sabotaging rival campaigns: the team even claimed to have sent a sex toy delivered via Amazon to the home of a politician, with the aim of giving his wife the false impression he was having an affair.
The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge raise new challenges for big tech platforms, which have for years struggled to prevent nefarious actors spreading falsehoods or breaching the security on their platforms. Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies around the world.
The Team Jorge revelations could cause embarrassment for Israel, which has come under growing diplomatic pressure in recent years over its export of cyber-weaponry that undermines democracy and human rights.
Hanan appears to have run at least some of his disinformation operations through an Israeli company, Demoman International, which is registered on a website run by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to promote defence exports. The Israeli MoD did not respond to requests for comment.
The undercover footage
Given their expertise in subterfuge, it is perhaps surprising that Hanan and his colleagues allowed themselves to be exposed by undercover reporters. Journalists using conventional methods have struggled to shed light on the disinformation industry, which is at pains to avoid detection.
The secretly filmed meetings, which took place between July and December 2022, therefore provide a rare window into the mechanics of disinformation for hire.
TO BE CONTINUED – I have been blocked temporarily.
The human eye is more sensitive to blue that your eyes are. Us a LED type lens when you need to confuse them quickly.
Why should a woman be able to wear what she wants? BECAUSE SHE CAN, BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO, AND BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT.
When a dog bonds to a human, what kind of relationship does the dog think of it as? Does it think of the human as its puppy, mother, sibling, or another dog? I Credit Paul S Cilva for this question I modified.
Dogs do not see humans as other dogs. They are intelligent enough to realise that we are another species, since dogs mostly communicate with body language that we really can’t mimic. We don’t have tails or snouts, we can’t move our ears and we have half the requisite number of legs. Trying to communicate like a dog will probably only make your dog confused, and also make you look hilarious and you might even end up on a viral video if you’re particularly (un)lucky.
As for what a dog sees a bonded human as, I’d say the closest thing would be a leader. Domesticated dogs have human interaction basically hard-baked into their lives, and dogs have been so bred and conditioned over the centuries that human contact is basically a requisite. As such, dogs quickly learn that humans are a good source of food, shelter and comfort, but they are also the ones who know how the world works, and as such it tends to be a good idea to do what they say. When a dog knows exactly how to react to a given situation thanks to their human they will trust that human more. Alongside providing the dog with food, shelter and comfort, the human will gradually build the dogs’ trust and the bond will be formed.
Dogs do not see us as other dogs, and since there is a species difference there is no concept of being dominant over each other. Dogs should respect and obey their humans, but they will only do so if the trust and the bond is there.
Oakland, CA is about to pay a ton of money to russian ransomware thieves who have destroyed Oakland’s ability to handle non-emergency services. Where did the Russians get the ability to use such sophisticated software? Look no further than Israel who is selling all kinds of spyware to any country with the money to pay for it. Now when that shit comes back to haunt them, who do you think they will come to hat-in-hand for defense money?
“Lines are blurring between financially motivated and government-backed attackers in Eastern Europe,” the report says, “with threat actors changing their targeting to align with regional geopolitical interests, and government-backed attackers adopting some tactics and services associated with financially motivated actors.”
But for sure Israel and North Korea is supplying anybody who needs the skills with the software to do the job.
Robert let’s not leave out the greed of Elon. He is attempting to launch even more powerful satellites. Ones that can read a dime dropped on the street and hear the sound it makes when it drops. He intends to sell the intelligence they can gather to anyone with the coin to pay for it.
Why it matters: The IRS got a multibillion-dollar cash infusion last year in the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s already spent some of it improving customer service. Don’t get it twisted though, if you are black that won’t be happening for you. If you are black and better yet, if you are a poor black, they will use that money to hire extra agents to go after your black asses. The know that you can’t afford attorneys so they will be attaching your bank accounts and garnished. Werfel’s comments yesterday offer a hint at how the agency would use some of the rest of that funding.
Zoom out: The White House has said it won’t raise audit rates on households earning less than $400,000, the WSJ notes. Yeah, if you are not black. Niggers the IRS is coming for you.
Currently, audit rates are highest for the lowest-income earners, and higher still for lower-income Black filers, as Felix recently wrote.
Werfel already did a stint as acting commissioner during the Obama administration and is likely to be confirmed.
A.I. chatbots are not sentient beings that can think their own thoughts, despite what science fiction fans might imagine. But the similarities between those chatbots and a human brain are already quite disturbing.
That’s the central takeaway from my colleague Kevin Roose’s recent two-hour chat with the artificial intelligence software being built into Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Over the course of the discussion, the chatbot announced that its name was Sydney, that it was in love with Kevin and that it might want to engineer a deadly virus. Afterward, Kevin — a Times technology columnist who’s hardly a technophobe — pronounced himself frightened by A.I.
“I worry that the technology will learn how to influence human users, sometimes persuading them to act in destructive and harmful ways, and perhaps eventually grow capable of carrying out its own dangerous acts,” he wrote in his latest column.
To be clear, Sydney’s comments were effectively an amalgam of words that the software had found in books, articles and other searchable material online. So it’s reasonable to ask whether the chatbot’s darkest statements are all that different from the fictional material in a movie. Microsoft’s chatbot can’t actually engineer a biological virus.
But Kevin’s experience is a reminder that this technology remains in a very rough form. As Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of the company that developed the software that Bing uses and a related product known as ChatGPT, said last week, “ChatGPT is a horrible product.”
Kevin’s chat with Sydney is also a reminder that the long-term implications of A.I. remain uncertain and concerning — worthy of more serious attention from policymakers than they gave to the emergence of social media and smartphones.
Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, told The Times that Kevin’s chat with Bing was “part of the learning process” as the company readies its A.I. for wider release. “This is exactly the sort of conversation we need to be having, and I’m glad it’s happening out in the open,” Scott said. “These are things that would be impossible to discover in the lab.”
War in Ukraine
Russia’s failed attempt to take a city in eastern Ukraine has raised questions about its ability to mount a spring offensive.
At least six Russian balloons floated over Kyiv yesterday, setting off air raid sirens. Most of them were shot down.
A bleak, snowy cemetery in Russia is filling with dead soldiers, a sign of the country’s huge losses in Ukraine.
Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s authoritarian leader, is converting sympathy over last week’s earthquake into opportunities for diplomacy.
The Taliban have adopted Kabul’s Green Zone, a neighborhood once buzzing with Americans, as their own.
Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s authoritarian leader, is converting sympathy over last week’s earthquake into opportunities for diplomacy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/world/middleeast/syria-earthquake-assad-diplomacy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Syria’s Assad Uses Disaster Diplomacy to Inch Back Onto World Stage