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Mock Turtle world

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

“They were, I don’t accept it,” he said. “No. I know they were cheering for Rune but that’s an excuse to also boo. Listen, I’ve been on the tour for more than 20 years, so trust me, I know all the tricks. I know how it works. It’s fine, it’s OK. I focus on the respectful people, who have respect, that paid the ticket to come and watch tonight, and love tennis and appreciate the effort that the players put in here. I’ve played in a much more hostile environment, trust me. You guys can’t touch me.”

Can't touch me? Well perhaps your comments and actions do it instead. o_O


Federal police investigators have claimed that a criminal group, allegedly involving Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, tried to illegally siphon off and sell luxury gifts from foreign leaders worth at least $1.2m. The new claims came on Monday, three days after police formally accused the far-right politician of embezzlement, money laundering and criminal association and suggested he face criminal charges. If Bolsonaro is charged and convicted, those alleged crimes could reportedly land him in jail for a total of 25 years. The Brazilian media has dubbed the scandal “O Caso das Joias”, which roughly translates as Jewellery-gate.


Cara Delevingne has revealed that she was only eight years old when she first got drunk. The model and actor, 32, who has previously been candid about her struggles with addiction, shared the revelation in a new interview with The Times. Recalling the experience of being a child and bridesmaid at her aunt’s wedding in 2001, Delevigne shared, “I got drunk that day. I was eight. What a crazy age to get drunk. “I woke up in my granny’s house in my bedroom with a hangover in a bridesmaid’s dress.” Delevingne explained that she’d “gone around nailing glasses of champagne” at the wedding. “I used to think drugs and alcohol helped me cope. But they didn’t. They kept me sad and super depressed,” she said.

Fortunately my parents would probably have been aware of anything like this occurring, and it was only in my late teens that I ever got drunk. :oops:



Male sexual dysfunction appears to be an increasingly common consequence of heavy porn use. This is true with straight, bi, and gay men alike. Both research and clinical experience show that using pornography can cause men of all ages and all sexual orientations to experience sexual dysfunction, be it erectile dysfunction (ED), delayed ejaculation (DE), or the inability to reach orgasm (anorgasmia). One large-scale study of porn users found that 23% of porn-using men under age 35 (i.e., men in their sexual prime) report some level of sexual dysfunction (most often erectile dysfunction) when having sex with a real-world partner. This study also tells us:

* The amount of porn a man watches is linked to ED. More porn equals more ED.
* Heavy porn users take significantly longer than other men to reach orgasm with a real-world partner. They may struggle to reach orgasm at all.
* Heavy porn use is linked to an overall dissatisfaction with real-world sex.

The most common signs of porn-induced male sexual dysfunction include:

* A man can achieve erections and orgasms with pornography, but he struggles with one or both when he’s with a real-world partner.
* A man can have sex and achieve orgasm with real-world partners, but reaching orgasm takes a long time and his partners complain that he seems disengaged.
* A man can maintain an erection with real-world partners, but he can only achieve orgasm by replaying porn clips in his mind.
* A man increasingly prefers pornography to real-world sex, finding it more intense and more engaging.

In combination, the neurochemical and psychological issues may manifest physically in males as sexual dysfunction with in-the-flesh partners. Basically, when a man's mind is not sufficiently sexually aroused, his genitalia cannot get there either—even with the aid of erection-enhancing drugs. So, thanks to pornography, growing numbers of physically healthy men are suffering from sexual dysfunction.

Not very surprising in my view. :eek:
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

However, child marriage, which activists describe as one or both parties entering a union while under age 18, remains legal in 37 US states. There are no federal laws against it, meaning minors can marry, with parental consent, before they can vote, drink, or buy lottery tickets in the majority of the country. Some states have a minimum marriage age on the books, which ranges from 15 to 18. Four states – California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi – do not specify any minimum age at all. Many survivors say they felt trapped in their marriages. Some, like Kosnik, must rely on their spouses for financial support. Others are up against complicit parents, who sign off on forced unions. In many states, statutory rape is not a crime within marriage, creating a legal loophole that entices predators and increases the likelihood of sexual abuse. “Child marriage can be seen as a workaround for child rape,” said Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last.

Not just the countries with engrained, backward, and patriarchal cultures then. o_O

Close to 300,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2018 in the US, according to a study conducted by Unchained at Last; a small number of them were as young as 10. Because 78% of minors who wed in that timespan were girls with adult husbands, advocates frame their cause around saving underage girls from older men.

And many of us no doubt thought it was Islam that tended to have this issue - being quite common.

By the 1930s, roughly 10% of 17-year-old girls were married, according to census data compiled by PBS. In 1937, the 22-year-old tobacco farmer Charlie Johns married his nine-year-old neighbor, Eunice Winstead, in Tennessee. The couple became a source of national fascination: Life magazine sent photographers to shoot the pair, and newspaper images showed Winstead posing with her husband and a baby doll – a wedding gift from Johns, the New York Times reported at the time. Embarrassed Tennessee lawmakers quickly put a minimum marriage age of 16 on the books. (Winstead and Johns stayed married until his death in 1997.)

Jerry Lee Lewis in comparison was a saint - married to a 13-year-old and which essentially wrecked his career in the UK when he arrived here.


If Williams could give advice to her 13-year-old self, she said she had no idea what it might be. “I wouldn’t go back and change it if I could,” she said. Then she stopped and thought for a second and began to laugh. “I might tweak it a little. I would tweak it a lot. I would tweak the hell out of it. I would be smarter.” “But how smart can you be when you’re 14 years old?” she asked. “You’re a stupid kid at that age. You’re just not ready for it. You’re not ready for prime time.”

That's the reality. o_O


Fortunately they didn't confiscate his trouser snake. :eek:


Count me in! But not this -->

US officials uncover alleged Russian ‘bot farm’

Just assume that anything that supports Russia is mostly pro-Russian propaganda - which it probably is, given Russia is so censored internally. :oops:


Even if the morality of those doing this might not be fully developed, our technology and lack of controlling such has made it easy for many to do this. Still sad for those who become victims though.

 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

I thought they were illegal to own in the UK. I was tempted to buy a pistol-type crossbow in Thailand once (being more of a toy) but decided not to because I thought then it might be illegal - some three decades back. Probably too early to comment on this horrific case but it seems a relationship turned sour and the guy vented his fury in the worst possible manner on several females and the poor father/husband. Just appalling, but such is the power of anger or rage when one's mind is fixated on something - that is, the only solution being violence.


Whether the penalty was a right decision or not, I'm probably not the only one thinking that Kane was rather too close to not scoring and perhaps tells us that the previous penalties solidity should not be relied upon. :eek:


An alleged cult leader accused of declaring himself a ‘living God’ in order to sexually abuse his followers says the ‘miracles’ he performed to prove his divinity were in fact just ‘magic tricks’ meant to entertain. Rajinder Kalia is being sued in the High Court over claims he ‘groomed’ members of his temple to believe he is ‘an incarnation of God,’ while subjecting women and children as young as four to horrific sexual abuse. Mr Kalia – head priest at his Hindu-based temple in Coventry – allegedly performed ‘miracles’, including setting fire to water and squeezing blood from a lemon, to convince devotees.

But of course none would have done this in the past. o_O


Can't wait. :(


Robert Sapolsky (2023) would like the criminal justice system to recognize that nobody is completely responsible for his or her behavior, so that there is no justification for punishing people for even the most destructive criminal behavior. Just as the public eventually came to understand that persons with epilepsy were not responsible for seizures (before the advent of modern medicine, people believed that persons with epilepsy were making free choices to consort with The Devil and were consequently burned at the stake) and people with certain brain tumors were not responsible for their impulsive behaviors, we should realize, says Sapolsky, that something has gone wrong with the brain of every single person who commits a crime, even if we cannot locate the problem in a specific brain structure. Instead of punishment for crimes, Sapolsky says that we should (1) focus on protecting the public from future crimes by the offender by isolating them, (2) where possible, find ways for the offender to make reparations, and (3) where possible, rehabilitate the offender.

And where shaming or incapacitating them (often allied) hardly works, apart from satisfying the nastiness of so many who are rather too eager to judge others.

Sapolsky argues that it is wrong to punish criminals for their misbehavior because they can't help but behave the way they do. He believes that the main reason that we punish criminals is that human beings enjoy watching wrongdoers suffer. We enjoy revenge and retribution. While understandable from an evolutionary perspective, the desire for revenge is a barbaric emotion that Sapolsky thinks we should not give in to. There is, however, a rationale for punishing criminals, which is that punishment can be a deterrent (Winegard, 2024). It can make offenders less likely to repeat a crime and also serves as an example to others of what can happen if they commit the same crime. Evidence for the deterring effect of punishment is mixed; sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. The same is true for punishing children who misbehave. The same is also true for blaming normal adults for their mistakes and scolding them. We should keep in mind that there are many kinds of punishment and different lessons learned with different kinds of punishments. A child who is physically beaten for breaking parental rules may learn to be sneakier about breaking rules. He or she may also learn that violence is an acceptable way to control other people. There are more civilized, compassionate alternatives to physical punishment that can reduce misbehavior while teaching offenders other, more socially acceptable options for living a fulfilling life (Clark, 2010). In your personal relationships, you might also find that compassion is more effective than blame, moral indignation, and retribution for cultivating psychological well-being.

Which is why so many countries (the enlightened ones) have rightfully banned smacking or any sort of corporal punishment in schools.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Summary: You look up into the clear blue sky and see something you can't quite identify. Is it a balloon? A plane? A UFO? You're curious, right? A research team has for the first time witnessed what is happening in the human brain when feelings of curiosity like this arise. The scientists revealed brain areas that appear to assess the degree of uncertainty in visually ambiguous situations, giving rise to subjective feelings of curiosity.


Summary: There is a pressing need for countries and international organizations to understand better how existing international law can help them address serious concerns about the militarization of outer space, a new study says.

I can imagine at least four countries which might not be that keen on extending such laws or even conforming to them. o_O


Children exposed to vaping indoors absorb less than one seventh the amount of nicotine as children who are exposed to indoor smoking, but more than those exposed to neither, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in JAMA Network Open looked at blood tests and survey data for 1,777 children aged three to 11 in the United States. The researchers said that second-hand exposure to harmful substances in e-cigarettes would likely be much lower still, as e-cigarettes deliver similar levels of nicotine to tobacco but contain only a fraction of the toxicants and carcinogens. The researchers looked at nicotine absorption in children, but they said the findings were likely to be similar for adults.


The question for Joe Biden's campaign is whether the floodgates will now open, or if the tide will hold. The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched. In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris "Vice-President Trump" – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience. That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "President Putin", prompting loud gasps in the audience.

It's not going to get any better, and the perception of the public will be why he will lose to Trump. :oops:


One of the most recognisable people in the world for almost two decades, on the tennis court Djokovic often carries the aura of an invincible demigod. But in the court of public opinion, he has often shown himself to be a mere mortal. So why the discrepancy between fame, success and popularity? In the case of Djokovic, it’s partially self-inflicted; this week’s goading of the Wimbledon crowd was just the latest in a career littered with almost as much petulance as it has been gilded with accolades. Djokovic has at times made himself hard to love – his disqualification from the US Open in 2020 for accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball that was not in play can’t have helped. Ditto his high-profile refusal to take the Covid vaccine – which saw him deported from Australia ahead of the grand slam tournament there in 2022. But it’s not entirely his own doing.


Well, along with Trump and Biden, this twat is another I wouldn't vote for. :eek:


By studying the genomes of organisms that are alive today, scientists have determined that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the first organism that spawned all the life that exists today on Earth, emerged as early as 4.2 billion years ago. Earth, for context, is around 4.5 billion years old. That means life first emerged when the planet was still practically a newborn. "We did not expect LUCA to be so old, within just hundreds of millions of years of Earth formation," says evolutionary biologist Sandra Álvarez-Carretero of the University of Bristol in the UK. "However, our results fit with modern views on the habitability of early Earth." Back when it was new, Earth was a very different place, with an atmosphere that we would find extremely toxic today. Oxygen, in the amount current life seems to need, didn't emerge until relatively late in the planet's evolutionary history, only as early as around 3 billion years ago. But life emerged prior to that; we have fossils of microbes from 3.48 billion years ago. And scientists think that conditions on Earth may have been stable enough to support life from around 4.3 billion years ago. But our planet is subject to erosional, geological, and organic processes that make evidence of that life, from that time, almost impossible to find.

So, led by phylogeneticist Edmund Moody of the University of Bristol, a team of scientists went looking somewhere else: in genomes from living organisms, and the fossil record. Their study is based on something called a molecular clock. Basically, we can estimate the rate at which mutations occur, and count the number to determine how much time has passed since the organisms in question diverged from common ancestors. All organisms, from the humblest microbe to the mightiest fungus, have some things in common. There's a universal genetic code. The way we make proteins is the same. There's an almost universal set of 20 amino acids that are all oriented the same way. And all living organisms use adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as a source of energy in their cells. Moody and his colleagues worked out, based on these similarities and differences, how long it has been since LUCA's successors started to diverge. And, using complex evolutionary modeling, they were able to learn more about LUCA itself – what it was, and how it survived on an Earth so very inhospitable to its descendants. LUCA, they found, was probably very similar to a prokaryote, a single-celled organism that doesn't have a nucleus. It was obviously not reliant on oxygen, since there would have been little oxygen available; that's not unexpected for a microbe. As such, its metabolic processes probably produced acetate.

"Our study showed that LUCA was a complex organism, not too different from modern prokaryotes," says phylogenomicist Davide Pisani of the University of Bristol. "But what is really interesting is that it's clear it possessed an early immune system, showing that even by 4.2 billion years ago, our ancestor was engaging in an arms race with viruses." Because its metabolic processes would have produced waste products that could be used by other lifeforms, they could have emerged not long after LUCA did. This implies that it takes relatively little time for a full ecosystem to emerge in the evolutionary history of a planet – a finding that has implications far beyond our own little pale blue dot. "Our work draws together data and methods from multiple disciplines, revealing insights into early Earth and life that could not be achieved by any one discipline alone," explains paleobiologist Philip Donoghue of the University of Bristol. "It also demonstrates just how quickly an ecosystem was established on early Earth. This suggests that life may be flourishing on Earth-like biospheres elsewhere in the Universe."

So stick that in yer YEC pipe! :D


Gee, they've gone and dune it! o_O


The worst aspect? That some will have the plastic surgery to enable them to be the AI image they want to be. :rolleyes:
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member


What a wonderful joyous occasion for all the poor in India, and all around the world. :oops:

1-Rich-Poor-Divide-Rex.jpg



Perhaps obvious, but regardless of all his personal problems, it seems there is little doubt that this wasn't just a sick fantasy given his previous behaviour and convictions regarding other females, and perhaps a warning to others who do have similar sick fantasies but who might never have any intentions of carrying such out.

Gavin Plumb, 37, carefully planned a “home invasion” at Willoughby’s property where he planned to tie her up and rape her in front of her family before murdering her and disposing of her body in an abandoned building on the outskirts of London. He had amassed more than 10,000 images of Willoughby on his phone, including deepfake pornography, and was caught after unwittingly communicating online with an undercover police officer based in the US. During his trial at Chelmsford crown court, the jury heard that Plumb had previous convictions for attempted kidnap and false imprisonment. Using a fake gun and threatening note, he tried to force two female airline workers off trains in separate incidents in 2006, and he attempted to tie up two teenage girls in a Woolworths stock room in 2008.


Sad bunch of delusional fools? :eek:


A new brain-imaging study of young adolescents has shown that sex and gender map onto different brain networks. The findings, published on Friday in Science Advances, demonstrate the importance of considering the social impact of gender in neuroscience research rather than conflating it with physiological sex. “Moving forward, we really need to consider both sex and gender separately if we want to better understand the brain,” said study co-author Elvisha Dhamala, a neuroscientist at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, in a recent press conference. Physiological sex is largely determined by chromosomes, genes, hormones and other biological systems. On top of that, cultural ideas about what it means to be, for example, a man, woman or nonbinary person - what we call gender - also play a critical role shaping people’s life and behavior. Scientists understand sex and gender to be related yet distinct concepts, but they are often conflated in neuroscience research. This means that differences between the brains of people who are assigned male or female at birth are often taken as reflections of biological differences when they could very well be the result of how each group is treated based on cultural expectations.

 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Firstly, it is pathetic that anyone would do such a thing - towards any in politics. But secondly, I'm sure many will have noticed, and perhaps just a natural reaction, but the first words Trump uttered immediately after the attack were "Fight!, Fight!, Fight!" Not exactly that which promotes peace and harmony but more as to provoking and promoting more violence. And for all those shouting about Democrats likely provoking this, perhaps they should recall the words of Trump which did seemingly provoke the Jan 6th insurrection attempt. There was no stolen election. And as to the accusations of demonizing Trump, well he has managed this all on his own by his behaviour.

A spray of bullets may have only grazed Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, but they killed one rally attendee and critically wounded two others. They have also torn through the 2024 presidential campaign, damaging the social and cultural fabric of the nation. The illusion of security and safety in American politics – built over decades - has been dramatically shattered. Trump received only minor injuries but it was close - a photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times appears to show the streak of a bullet cutting through the air near the former president’s head. Not since Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinkley Jr in 1981 has there been such a dramatic act of violence directed against a president - or presidential candidate. It harkens back to a darker time in US history, more than a half-century ago, when two Kennedy brothers – one a president and one a presidential candidate - were felled by assassin bullets. Civil rights leaders such as Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X all also lost their lives in political violence. Like today, the 1960s were marred by intense political polarisation and dysfunction, when a firearm and an individual willing to use it could change the course of history.



‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” wrote F Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. “They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” The delusions of entitlement – that the rich deserve their wealth, privilege and the right to transgress social mores as they choose – are ever-present. In their eyes, wealth can’t just be a by-product of luck, can it? It must, one way or another, be deserved.

Individual agency is part of the story but, as Warren Buffett acknowledges, so does the “ovarian lottery” – being born in the US where its system favours the skills he possesses. One of the richest men in the world believes in capital gains and inheritance taxes – and paying them. Riches are a privilege: taxing them to contribute a fair share to society’s wider health – from which the rich benefit too – is the obligation that comes with being privileged. But decades of being congratulated and indulged for the relentless pursuit of their own self-interest has turned the heads of too many of our successful rich. They really believe that they are different: that they owe little to the society from which they have sprung and in which they trade, that taxes are for little people. We are lucky to have them, and, if anything, owe them a favour. There is a long list of challenges confronting the new Labour government but one of the most overlooked is the need to start challenging this narrative.


Not so easy to have one particular way, given that I often didn't like what was offered by mum, usually as to cod liver oil supplements or sultanas in curry, but I loved my mother and respected her enough to know the former was for my health whilst the latter was just something I didn't like - and hence separated out. I tend to go for the - eat what is given and nothing else will be offered approach - unless there is really a problem. School meals (primary school), were mostly dictated by rationing and I didn't seem to have problems with most of such. Later, a large cream bun might suffice. o_O


Such will hardly help in reducing global warming, or the migrating issues that will likely ensue. :eek:


No excuse for any such abuse, just as there isn't when children are being trained in any way. :(


Among the public figures using the platform to push questionable accounts of yesterday’s events are Republican congressional representatives Mike Collins and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Senator Tim Scott. Collins has said ‘Joe Biden sent the orders’ and called for the incumbent president to face charges for ‘inciting an assassination’, with Taylor Greene adding that Democrats have ‘wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen.’ Scott, meanwhile, who has been touted as a potential Trump running mate, has said the shooting was ‘aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media’, with Nicole Shanahan, who serves as Trump opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s running mate, blaming the Democrats and ‘legacy media’ for inciting the violence – despite her previous criticisms of Trump as a candidate.

This would be worthy of comedy if it wasn't so ludicrous and yet believable by those taken in by Trump and his ilk. Most sane and rational people want Trump gone from the political stage - simply because he degrades all of politics and poses a severe danger as to the USA having another civil war.

 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

There’s still a lot we don’t know about what happened on Saturday. We know who the suspected shooter is – the FBI has identified him as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – but we don’t know why he did it. Crooks was a registered Republican but records show that when he was 17 he made a $15 donation to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for Democratic politicians. With the information we have right now, it’s hard to paint Crook as an extreme leftwinger. That won’t stop Republicans, though, who are already blaming Joe Biden and the Democrats for the shooting. Again, there’s still a lot we don’t know about what exactly happened, but the one thing we can definitively say is that Trump’s allies will wring every possible drop of political capital out of the shooting.

While the Democrats’ key talking points have been weakened, Trump’s characterization of himself as a brave martyr has been strengthened. From the very beginning of his political career, Trump has painted himself as an outsider, taking on the elites. He’s repeatedly characterized his many legal battles as a politically motivated “witch-hunt”. DC insiders and the deep state, he keeps saying, are out to get him. He’s claimed that his enemies have tried to lock him up and have tried to steal the election. Now he can claim they’ve tried to kill him. Trump already has a cult-like base. After his brush with death, they will be even more devoted to their hero.

Unless we have some other unforeseen events happening I suspect he will be voted into office - which would be disastrous for the USA and for the rest of us in my view. :eek:

“This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse,” Senator Tim Scott tweeted on Saturday, for example. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” the Ohio Senator JD Vance similarly tweeted. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

No, Trump's loose tongue, as to being vile to all those he seemingly doesn't like, has caused the enmity he brings upon himself and which needn't be so - but then abusive rhetoric seems to be how he operates in general and as to how he communicates with his fan-base (and what does this say about his fan-base?). A lone gunman with personal motives - like perhaps being seen as some kind of superhero - is one possible answer as to the motivation of the gunman - but tongues will wag. :(


Local media reported that Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and received a $500 “star award” that year from the National Math and Science Initiative. Jason Kohler, who said he attended the same high school but did not share any classes with Crooks, said Crooks was bullied at school and sat alone at lunch time. Other students mocked him for the way he dressed, such as hunting outfits, Kohler said. “He was bullied almost every day,” Kohler told reporters. “He was just a outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.” Crooks “never outwardly spoke about his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything,” Sarah D’Angelo, who attended Bethel Park High School alongside Crooks, told The Wall Street Journal. She said Crooks enjoyed playing video games, and was known to have “a few friends,” but lacked “a whole friend group. Another former classmate, Zach Bradford, told The New York Times that Crooks was “incredibly intelligent,” and that his politics were “slightly right leaning.” “I would have pegged him as a Republican,” a third classmate told the New York Post.


I suspect that people are friendlier the further away from any city, no matter where one might be, so mostly down to the size of the communities.


 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

“I’m a ‘never Trump’ guy. I never liked him.” “My god what an idiot.” “I find him reprehensible.” That was from JD Vance in interviews and on Twitter in 2016, when the publication of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy catapulted him to fame. In the same year, he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook: "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical ******* ... or that he's America's Hitler". A few short years later, Mr Vance transformed himself into one of Trump’s steadfast allies.

Nice to see he isn't some changeable or as the wind blows type of guy. :D And surely he must have noticed Trump's child-speak - being that which seems to appeal to his fan-following. :oops:

Hillbilly Elegy made him not only into a bestselling author, but a sought-after commentator who was frequently called upon to explain Donald Trump’s appeal to white, working-class voters. He rarely missed an opportunity to criticise the then-Republican nominee. “I think this election is really having a negative effect especially on the white working class," he told an interviewer in October 2016. "What it’s doing is giving people an excuse to point the finger at someone else, point the finger at Mexican immigrants, or Chinese trade or the Democratic elites or whatever else.”

Yeah, but that was yesteryear - and since then he has had a brain-fade. o_O

Mr Vance was also one of the first top Republicans to point the finger at Democrat campaign rhetoric in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs," he posted on X hours after the shooting. "That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."

What, like another Hitler type as you said previously about Trump? :eek:


Although so many would like Trump to just disappear, it is not appropriate to make jokes about an attempted murder - of anyone - apart from perhaps some extreme exceptions. :oops:


 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Key intuitive beliefs – for example that our mental processes are distinct from our physical bodies (mind-body dualism) and that our mental processes give rise to and control our decisions and actions (mental causation) – are supported by a lifetime of subjective experiences. These beliefs are found in all human cultures. They are important as they serve as foundational beliefs for most liberal democracies and criminal justice systems. They are resistant to counter evidence. That's because they are powerfully endorsed by social and cultural concepts such as free will, human rights, democracy, justice and moral responsibility. All these concepts assume that consciousness plays a central controlling influence. Intuition, however, is an automatic, cognitive process that evolved to provide fast trusted explanations and predictions. In fact, it does so without the need for us to know how or why we know it. The outcomes of intuition therefore shape how we perceive and explain our everyday world without the need for extensive reflection or formal analytic explanations.

While helpful and indeed crucial for many everyday activities, intuitive beliefs can be wrong. They can also interfere with scientific literacy. Intuitive accounts of consciousness ultimately put us in the driver's seat as "captain of our own ship". We think we know what consciousness is and what it does from simply experiencing it. Mental thoughts, intentions and desires are seen as determining and controlling our actions. The widespread acceptance of these tacit intuitive accounts helps explain, in part, why the formal study of consciousness was relegated to the margins of mainstream neuroscience until late 20th century. The problem for scientific models of consciousness remains accommodating these intuitive accounts within a materialist framework consistent with the findings of neuroscience. While there is no current scientific explanation for how brain tissue generates or maintains subjective experience, the consensus among (most) neuroscientists is that it is a product of brain processes.

Me too - as if this matters. :oops:

If that's the case, why did consciousness, defined as subjective awareness, evolve? Consciousness presumably evolved as part of the evolution of the nervous system. According to several theories the key adaptive function (providing an organism with survival and reproductive benefits) of consciousness is to make volitional movement possible. And volition is something we ultimately associate with will, agency and individuality. It is therefore easy to think that consciousness evolved to benefit us as individuals. But we have argued that consciousness may have evolved to facilitate key social adaptive functions. Rather than helping individuals survive, it evolved to help us broadcast our experienced ideas and feelings into the wider world. And this might benefit the survival and well-being of the wider species. The idea fits with new thinking on genetics. While evolutionary science traditionally focuses on individual genes, there is growing recognition that natural selection among humans operates at multiple levels. For example, culture and society influence traits passed on between generations – we value some more than others.

One can see why volition might have played an important role in the development of consciousness - the ability perhaps to 'play dead' rather than follow any natural instincts, and much like the marshmallow test supposedly indicating higher intelligence - as to delayed gratification.

Central to our account is the idea that sociality (the tendency of groups and individuals to develop social links and live in communities) is a key survival strategy that influences how the brain and cognition evolve. Adopting this social evolutionary framework, we propose that subjective awareness lacks any independent capacity to causally influence other psychological processes or actions. An example would be initiating a course of action. The idea that subjective awareness has a social purpose has been described previously by other researchers. The claim that subjective awareness is without causal influence, however, is not to deny the reality of subjective experience or claim that the experience is an illusion. While our model removes subjective awareness from the traditional driving seat of the mind, it does not imply that we don't value private internal experiences. Indeed, it is precisely because of the value we place on these experiences that intuitive accounts remain compelling and widespread in social and legal organisation systems and psychology.

While it is counter-intuitive to attribute agency and personal accountability to a biological assembly of nerve cells, it makes sense that highly valued social constructs such as free will, truth, honesty and fairness can be meaningfully attributed to individuals as accountable people in a social community. Think about it. While we are deeply rooted in our biological nature, our social nature is largely defined by our roles and interactions in society. As such, the mental architecture of the mind should be strongly adapted for the exchange and reception of information, ideas and feelings. Consequently, while brains as biological organs are incapable of responsibility and agency, legal and social traditions have long held individuals accountable for their behaviour. Key to achieving a more scientific explanation of subjective awareness requires accepting that biology and culture work collectively to shape how brains evolve. Subjective awareness comprises only one part of the brain's much larger mental architecture designed to facilitate species survival and well-being.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

It's difficult to trash the experiences of many female contestants on the show, and as to which seemingly so many did see their experiences as often being abusive, even if such was all down to the needs of a professional to get the best out of them - and to win when there was a chance of such.


The first of Sara Sori’s portraits depicting women at various stages of life shows a young, happy girl. “If you harm [a girl] at this stage she is ruined for ever. And this is the stage where I was violated,” says Sori, from Isiolo, in northern Kenya, who was forced to undergo female genital mutilation as a child. Another portrait shows a girl with her mouth sewn shut, “giving in to what life has dictated for her and to prevent her from expressing any anger”. Another shows “the age of regret, of missed opportunities” of an older woman. “This is where my grandmother is now. I loved her so much. She wanted me to get married to a good man and the only way to do that was by getting the cut. She, too, went through similar initiation rites and cannot undo the past.” Sori, 24, is using art to help process the trauma of undergoing FGM, a practice carried out among her pastoralist ethnic group, the Gabra, for generations. According to the UN more than 230 million women and girls globally have undergone FGM – the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia – which continues despite being banned by the UN general assembly in 2012.

We must respect the cultures of others no matter how we might see such as vile? No chance. This is is just the dumbest thing to pass on, and often occurring in majority Muslim countries it seems, where females are more likely to be seen as the property of males. It is just a disgusting and idiotic practice - and says more about how so many are still tied to the ignorant past.

FGM-001-Capture.JPG



Joe Biden plans to endorse term limits for supreme court justices and a new ethics code, the Washington Post reported, as an emboldened rightwing court continues to upend US legal precedent despite operating under the cloud of multiple ethics scandals. Biden is also mulling whether to call for a new constitutional amendment that would eliminate sweeping immunity for presidents and other officials, the Post reported, citing two unnamed people familiar with the president’s thinking. The court’s ruling on 1 July establishing sweeping immunity for US presidents has been widely criticized as an attack on the rule of law that gives presidents the power of a king. In recent weeks, Biden had a phone call with Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar, to discuss Tribe’s opinion piece in the Guardian proposing concrete steps to reform the supreme court, which included new term limits, an “enforceable ethics code” and an amendment limiting presidential immunity, the Post reported. Among additional reforms Americans should consider, Tribe wrote in that piece, was the idea of creating “several added seats [on the court] to offset the way Trump as president stacked the court to favor his Maga agenda”. But adding justices to the court, as some Democratic members of Congress have advocated for, is not among the reforms Biden is currently considering, according to the Post. Biden has long been seen as unwilling to expand the court.

Nothing useful will get passed but one can hear the outrage already from the Trump camp as to loading the dice, when Trump did exactly that. o_O


JD Vance once feared Donald Trump might be “America’s Hitler”. Last Saturday, the Ohio senator claimed Democrats calling Trump “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs” caused the assassination attempt the former president survived. But on Monday, after Trump made Vance his vice-presidential pick, worries about Vance’s own authoritarian leanings came straight to the fore. “Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme Maga agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign chair, told reporters. Vance has indeed said that if he had been vice-president on 6 January 2021, he would have done as Trump and his supporters demanded and blocked certification of results in key states won by Biden during the election weeks earlier.

So just as bad as Trump perhaps - as to possibly understanding democracy but preferring fraud and lies when it suits them. :eek:

Elsewhere on Monday, a profile of Vance was widely shared. Zack Beauchamp of Vox, author of new book The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World, outlined political views “fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy”. Beauchamp described how Vance has repeated Trump’s stolen election lie; has called for a criminal investigation of a journalist he did not like; advocates politicising the federal bureaucracy; and believes presidents can simply ignore the law. “JD Vance,” Beauchamp wrote, “is a man who believes that the current government is so corrupt that radical, even authoritarian steps are justified in response. He sees himself as the avatar of America’s virtuous people, whose political enemies are interlopers scarcely worthy of respect. He is a man of the law who believes the president is above it.”

Meanwhile, the more moral - dismissing all this right-wing garbage - will have to come up with ways to defeat this nastiness - if they want democracy to survive, that is. :oops:

Vance has continued to target universities he says should be brought under state control. In May, speaking to Margaret Brennan of CBS, he said: “If they’re not educating our children well and they’re layering the next generation down in mountains of student debt, then they’re not meeting their end of the bargain. I think it’s totally reasonable to say there needs to be a political solution to that problem.” Challenged about his admiration for how Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, took control of universities there, Vance said Orbán had “made some smart decisions … that we could learn from in the United States”.

And especially if such education is allied to religious beliefs perhaps. How lovely! :eek:

As noted by Reason, Vance in 2021 told Jack Murphy, a controversial “manosphere” figure: “A lot of conservatives have said we should … basically eliminate the administrative state. And I’m sympathetic to that project. But another option is that we should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire all of the people. I think Trump … [will] probably win again in 2024, and he’ll win by a margin such that he’ll be the president of the United States in January of 2025. I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: fire every single mid-level bureaucrat. Every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people, and when the courts – because you will get taken to court … stop you, stand before the country like [president] Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” As Beauchamp noted, the Jackson quote “is likely apocryphal, but the history is real”. An 1832 supreme court ruling said the government should respect Native American land rights. Jackson simply ignored it. The result was the forcible displacement of 60,000 people, an outrage known as the Trail of Tears.

And down the plug goes the USA - as leader of anything - apart from much that divides or is just backward. :oops:


Yeah, great man, but do you and Russia want to commit suicide? :(


Mr Medvedev - a former lawyer who was premier from 2008 to 2012 before stepping aside to let Putin return - claimed his new comments were in response to reports of Ukrainian forces shooting dead a surrendering Russian PoW on the frontline as he pleaded for help. He said: “My comrades are discussing what the Ukrainian monsters did to our prisoner, referring to the Geneva Conventions, known to the whole world. I was also taught well at my native university. You don't even need to write about it. There can be no mercy here. There is no place for good here. Just kill!” He cited famous Soviet poet Konstanin Simonov, whose 1942 poem Kill Him! depicted Nazis as a monstrous and dehumanised enemy, and was used as a propaganda weapon to inspire the Red Army to fight with relentless determination. “No need to feel sorry for them, no need - nobody,” said Medvedev about the current conflict. Have they pardoned anyone? Only total executions. No choice. There are no words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life. Execute, execute and execute. This is the right of war for the enemy!”

Much like how the Russians raped about two million females, of all ages, during WWII. Nice. :eek:
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Scientists had typically determined the approximate meteorite impact rate on Mars by comparing the frequency of craters on its surface to the expected rate of impacts calculated using counts of lunar craters that were left behind by meteorites. Models of the lunar cratering rate were then adjusted to fit Martian conditions. Looking to the Moon as a basis for comparison was not ideal, as Mars is especially prone to being hit by meteorites. The red planet is not only a more massive body that has greater gravitational pull, but it is located near the asteroid belt.

The frequency of such being sufficient to seriously consider a Meteorite Defence System for any proposing to live on this planet? :eek:


When I get the time I will think about doing this. :sleeping:


Not for some, like me, who will probably take as much interest in this as we would for most football events.


Donald Trump's shooter had scoped out a member of the Royal Family as he plotted another assassination, the FBI has revealed. 20-year-old Thomas Crooks was gunned down by the Secret Service just seconds after he opened fire at the former president during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The 78-year-old was just inches away from death after the gunman's rifle clipped Mr Trump's ear and killed a supporter of his in the audience. And now FBI investigators have revealed to Congress that Crooks had gone online to 'scope out' an unnamed member of the Royal Family. He also looked at other high-profile targets including Christopher Wray, the FBI's director, and Merrick Garland, the US attorney general.

Perhaps he was after all, as I suggested, just someone who wanted to make his mark, and who he targeted just didn't matter that much.



During those formative years, children are building their social networks through school, sports groups or other activities. Each time they have to adapt to something new it can be disruptive, so we potentially need to find new ways to help people overcome those challenges.

Never did move home during my childhood, hence had friends that stayed the course, and one can see why changes would affect children perhaps more than adults.


Summary: Researchers have established new criteria for a memory-loss syndrome in older adults that specifically impacts the brain's limbic system. It can often be mistaken for Alzheimer's disease.
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms. Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022. Hallam received a five year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years. The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences even given in the UK for non-violent protest, beating those given to Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland (three years) and Marcus Decker (two years and seven months) for scaling the Dartford Crossing.

Too harsh, and mostly just a deterrent sentence, where this might just be inherently unfair too? Given that deterrent sentences often don't seem to work and might simply be unfair - scales of justice and all that. o_O


Trump began his speech by recounting his experience of last Saturday's attack. "As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life," he told the assembled Republican delegates. He said he turned his head slightly to view a chart about immigration projected on a teleprompter screen. "In order to see the chart, I started to - like this - turn to my right, and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I’m very lucky I didn’t do, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really, really hard, on my right ear. "I said to myself, 'Wow, what was that - it can only be a bullet.'"

Never been hit by a wayward bee or wasp then? :bee:

"I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God," he said. "Many people say it was a providential moment. It probably was."

Yeah, and perhaps it's a step too far to say God was speaking to him in one ear while Satan was doing his worst to his other - given it might portray Trump as a bit of a mixture of good and evil, even if he is mostly of the latter. :oops:

In a lengthy section of one of the longest convention speeches in memory, he blamed immigrants for crime, and said: "We have become a dumping ground for the world, which is laughing at us, they think we're stupid."

An easy target and mostly not true - apart from the last, where much of the world no doubt does think that he, Trump, is stupid, along with so many of his fanatic fans. He doesn't get labelled by many academics as the worst president ever for nothing. :eek:


No doubt we will get to know later what provoked this piece of silliness.


As expected, and the usual garbage from His Great Orange Holiness - newly transformed into such due to a recent miracle. :praying: And is it only me getting so annoyed at his stilted way of speaking, much like Thatcher, and perhaps where he got this silly way of speaking from? I usually mute him and read what he says now. :grimacing:


To me, that would seem the best option - a young and reasonably sensible Democrat so as to see off Trump and his obnoxious ramblings as to MAGA nonsense.


Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has uncovered the cause of a major global IT outage that has plunged the world into chaos. The tech giant, which has been named in relation to an outage impacting Microsoft users around the world, says it has identified the issue as a defect in a single content update. CrowdStrike say they have isolated the bug and deployed a fix. They have confirmed the outage was not caused by a cyberattack.


Probably not had a BSOD since Win98, and not this time either. :smiley:


Clash of cultures?
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

The volume of sexually explicit images of children being generated by predators using artificial intelligence is overwhelming law enforcement’s capabilities to identify and rescue real-life victims, child safety experts warn. Prosecutors and child safety groups working to combat crimes against children say AI-generated images have become so lifelike that in some cases it is difficult to determine whether real children have been subjected to real harms for their production. A single AI model can generate tens of thousands of new images in a short amount of time, and this content has begun to flood both the dark web and seep into the mainstream internet. “We are starting to see reports of images that are of a real child but have been AI-generated, but that child was not sexually abused. But now their face is on a child that was abused,” said Kristina Korobov, senior attorney at the Zero Abuse Project, a Minnesota-based child safety non-profit. “Sometimes, we recognize the bedding or background in a video or image, the perpetrator, or the series it comes from, but now there is another child’s face put on to it.”

And perhaps a warning as to any images being used, so how would anyone keep their children safe from such - apart from the obvious? o_O


For centuries in Britain, the country’s noblemen have sat in parliament by virtue of their bloodline – but not for much longer. The last dukes, earls, viscounts and barons are to be removed from the UK’s unelected upper house, the House of Lords, by the newly elected Labour government – which has declared their presence “outdated and indefensible”. Seats in parliament should not be “reserved for individuals who were born into certain families” nor “effectively reserved for men”, the government said this week. Their removal would “take us a step closer to a House of Lords that is fit for the 21st century”, it added.

Pretty please! A step too far to get rid of the monarchy too? :oops:


Although Ukrainian is the sole state language of Ukraine, many of its people speak Russian as a first language, a legacy of Soviet rule, when Ukrainian was under official pressure.


The images are a bit grim, and just reinforces the fact that few creatures in the UK do such but where there is so much more dangerous wildlife elsewhere.


We found that children in families with low economic resources were getting less sleep at night and going to sleep later compared with children in families with higher economic resources. In turn, shorter sleep and going to sleep later were associated with reduced amygdala size and weaker connections between the amygdala and other emotion-processing brain regions. This link between socioeconomic disadvantage, sleep duration and timing, and amygdala size and connectivity was found in children as young as 5. Our results suggest that both amount and timing of sleep matter for the functioning of these brain regions involved in emotion processing.

Not getting enough sleep increases the risk of developing mental health problems and interferes with academic achievement. Reduced sleep may make it harder for children to cope with stress and manage their emotions. Children from families or neighborhoods with low socioeconomic resources may be at increased risk for stress-related mental health problems due in part to the negative effects of their environment on sleep health. During childhood, the brain develops at a fast pace. Because of this, childhood experiences can have effects on brain function that last a lifetime. Problems from childhood can continue throughout life.

Why do socioeconomically disadvantaged environments make it hard for children to sleep? Our research suggests that parents who were struggling to make ends meet had a harder time maintaining consistent family routines, possibly leading to less consistent bedtime routines, which may have contributed to children getting less sleep. However, there are likely multiple factors connecting socioeconomic disadvantage and poor sleep quality, such as not being able to afford a comfortable bed, overcrowding, neighborhood noise, excessive light and heat.


When these garbage accusations appear just look as to which countries are more tightly controlled, even censored, than so many others - Russia, China, etc., yawn. Perhaps believe anything coming out of such countries when they don't have such authoritarian regimes. :eek:


You have to break through so many religious beliefs to get this across - so not too optimistic about this. o_O

 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Great balls of fire - and laughter! Is this supposed to make up for what he did to democracy earlier - as to trashing it because the results of an election just didn't suit him? Hey, what about my stolen election, boo-hoo! Just sickening idiocy from the worst US president ever. Now that is the truth. o_O


Why would any self-respecting person go near Afghanistan until the Taliban begin to show respect for females in the country - allowing them an education and work of their choice and the right to wear what they want other than that dictated by such a despicable and mediaeval regime. :eek:


We know those Republicans backing someone like Trump are nuts but the Democrats would be equally nuts to carry on with Biden. :oops:


The water’s retreat, meanwhile, has exposed archaeological sites hidden since the 1950s. They included bronze age barrows, Scythian pots and Cossack fortifications, as well as other artefacts left behind by third-century Goths and medieval Tatars. The Soviets deliberately submerged many of them in order to eradicate Ukraine’s rich pre-Russian history, Mulenko claimed. Writing in the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus gave a vivid account of Scythian culture, geography and religion. The Black Sea region “is quite full, as it happens, of trees of all kinds,” he noted in his celebrated Histories. Denys Sikoza, the deputy head of heritage protection in the Kherson region, said: “We don’t know much about these sites. The digs that did take place in the early 20th century used old-fashioned methods.” Items recovered included ceramics, jewellery, bracelets, weapons and a 2,500-year-old clove of garlic found in an ancient stove. Over the past year, archeologists have made only a handful of trips to the newly exposed monuments. The area is dangerous and a military zone, Sikoza pointed out. Some potential expedition spots were disappearing again under a carpet of green foliage, he added. “We would like to investigate them. For now, it’s not possible. Maybe it never will be. And of course we have no access to occupied territories,” he said.


The Wall Street Journal, which cited law enforcement officials, said Crooks flew the drone on a programmed flight path earlier on the day of the shootings – 13 July – on a predetermined path over the event site. Later in the day, the would-be assassin fired at least six rounds from a semi-automatic rifle from the roof of the American Glass Research building roughly 150 yards from where Trump was speaking. Soon after, Crooks was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper with a single bullet to the head. But investigators have said that Crooks was identified as a suspicious person more than an hour before the shooting when police officers saw him loitering outside the rally with a range finder and a backpack but had lost track of him. Investigators now say they believe Crooks began planning the attack days after the Trump campaign announced the rally on 3 July and later scoped out the fairgrounds as many as six times in advance of the rally.

New information about Crooks’ intensive planning for the attack has also been gleaned from 14,000 browser history links in his phone. While he did not leave an ideological manifesto common to many mass-shooting perpetrators, FBI investigators have disclosed that online searches linked in his phone showed that he’d researched school shootings. He reportedly searched Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley and had a mugshot of him on his phone. Crooks also performed internet searches on next month’s Democratic convention and Joe Biden, depressive disorder and explosive materials and chemical compounds. Crooks brought a pair of homemade bombs to the rally designed to be set off with a remote fireworks igniter, as well as a bulletproof vest and three 30-round magazines later found in his Hyundai Sonata.

But little if any partisan ideological context or motive has been ascribed to the gunman. Mullin said Crooks “hated politicians as a whole”. Crooks’ former classmates at Bethel Park high school outside Pittsburgh recalled him being a quiet student with a small friend group, though accounts of his personality and school experience often vary. Crooks excelled at math and had earned an associate’s degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County in May and had talked about becoming a mechanical engineer. Since graduating, he’d worked at a Pittsburgh nursing home serving meals and washing dishes for $16 an hour, and liked to build computers, play video games and practice target shooting at a nearby gun-range, including on the day before the shooting. He told the nursing home he’d be back at work on Sunday.


Betsy Gatchell Goff, who came to Van Andel Arena from her hometown of Benton Harbor, Michigan, said she thought Trump was “a unifying figure for our country”.

But there was also a strain of bitter sentiment among the crowd. “Trump won” and “Unvaxxed and Proud” were two of the most common slogans on T-shirts, hats and flags.

The first comment - how delusional can one get? And both of the above comments perhaps indicating the intelligence of those voting for Trump.


In a horrifying cycle of abuse, children in the Philippines are being forced to put on a sexually explicit ‘show’ for foreigners by trusted loved ones – including their own mothers – who were also coerced into doing the same as child.

Very sad, and technology/commercial interests (little monitoring) perhaps enabling such. But AI might come to their rescue, as in, no need for any real children to be actually doing anything.


But perhaps just a warning to others, not to **** about with wildlife for entertainment/possible informational purposes, that is, show some respect for such. o_O


Ivan the Terrible was Russia's first Tsar and turned his country into an empire by expanding into Siberia and the Caspian. One of history's horrible tyrants, he is remembered for his infamous barbarity. It's said he had his subjects variously quartered, boiled alive, impaled, roasted, drowned under ice, and torn apart by horses. At one point, he may have even beaten his son to death.

No doubt still feeding the dreams and thoughts of that loveable old tyrant, Putin. :imp:
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Supplies of dissolved oxygen in bodies of water across the globe are dwindling rapidly, and scientists say it's one of the greatest risks to Earth's life support system. Just as atmospheric oxygen is vital for animals like ourselves, dissolved oxygen (DO) in water is essential for healthy aquatic ecosystems, whether freshwater or marine. With billions of people relying on marine and freshwater habitats for food and income, it's concerning these ecosystems' oxygen has been substantially and rapidly declining. A team of scientists is proposing that aquatic deoxygenation be added to the list of 'planetary boundaries', which in its latest form describes nine domains that impose thresholds "within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come."

Perhaps should read - humanity and all other life?


Well, even though my local supermarket had this issue, and where I always carry cash to cater for such, they did actually have a cashpoint and which was working.



Summary: A new camera could prevent companies from collecting embarrassing and identifiable photos and videos from devices like smart home cameras and robotic vacuums. It's called PrivacyLens.

PrivacyLens uses both a standard video camera and a heat-sensing camera to spot people in images from their body temperature. The person's likeness is then completely replaced by a generic stick figure, whose movements mirror those of the person it stands in for. The accurately animated stick figure allows a device relying on the camera to continue to function without revealing the identity of the person in view of the camera.


Summary: Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have frequently shown signs of an 'empathy gap' that puts young users at risk of distress or harm, raising the urgent need for 'child-safe AI', according to a new study. The research urges developers and policy actors to prioritize AI design that take greater account of children's needs. It provides evidence that children are particularly susceptible to treating chatbots as lifelike, quasi-human confidantes, and that their interactions with the technology can go awry when it fails to respond to their unique needs and vulnerabilities. The study links that gap in understanding to recent reports of cases in which interactions with AI led to potentially dangerous situations for young users.

The research, by a University of Cambridge academic, Dr Nomisha Kurian, urges developers and policy actors to prioritise approaches to AI design that take greater account of children's needs. It provides evidence that children are particularly susceptible to treating chatbots as lifelike, quasi-human confidantes, and that their interactions with the technology can go awry when it fails to respond to their unique needs and vulnerabilities. The study links that gap in understanding to recent cases in which interactions with AI led to potentially dangerous situations for young users. They include an incident in 2021, when Amazon's AI voice assistant, Alexa, instructed a 10-year-old to touch a live electrical plug with a coin. Last year, Snapchat's My AI gave adult researchers posing as a 13-year-old girl tips on how to lose her virginity to a 31-year-old.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Don't mind comments unless such needs a thread for this.
I think another underlying cause we must consider is that we're mostly living in an Oligarchy at this point. And oligarchs behave as though they believe the planet and society are infinitely ****-with-able. In addition, oligarchs are either creating or exacerbating most every societal ill you can think of. I'd certainly say we can easily connect the negative impact of oligarchs to all the subjects this thread is touching on.
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
I think another underlying cause we must consider is that we're mostly living in an Oligarchy at this point. And oligarchs behave as though they believe the planet and society are infinitely ****-with-able. In addition, oligarchs are either creating or exacerbating most every societal ill you can think of. I'd certainly say we can easily connect the negative impact of oligarchs on all the subjects this thread is touching on.
Well, people like Musk are doing a grand job of representing such perhaps, and even if it sounds like sour grapes I have been against vast differences in wealth all my life, and mainly for a few reasons. The wealth could probably be better used out of the hands of individuals, secondly, such wealth differences tends to promote crime and divisions, and lastly, because such wealth often tends to cause corruption and/or be used for political influence. And wealthy politicians really are the last things we need in my view. So I tend to agree with you.
 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

Well what a surprise - not! But perhaps too late to have a leader that could trounce Trump decisively. :(


What would one expect of King Ad-Hom himself? But then he was probably talking to the mirror. o_O


Same here, as to thinking he should have gone earlier, so as to give another candidate, possibly new, a much better chance of beating Trump.


I guess 'nice hot bath' doesn't apply here. :eek:


One hypothesis is that these orcas are bored "teenagers" looking for fun. But some scientists argue that interacting with boats is a freak behavior that emerged in response to a traumatic event. "We think that there are arguments that indicate that an incident caused by an entrapment, in which a sailboat is involved, is feasible as a cause of psychological trauma that provokes a response on the part of a wild animal with high cognitive abilities, such as the orca," researchers wrote in the recent report. The same team previously suggested that a female orca called White Gladis suffered a "critical moment of agony" and that she started ramming boats as a result. "If this hypothesis were true, the rest of the juvenile orcas would repeat the behavior by imitation," they wrote in the report.

It could be that the orcas associate the rudders with the sounds made by the nearby propeller or that the rudders are the easiest to attack, given that the keel is generally more robust and the rudders rather flimsy in comparison.



Perhaps his relationships with his servants, amongst others, was never seen as a guilty pleasure. :eek:


 
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Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member

The attempted assassination of Trump deserves wholesale condemnation. No one should hesitate to say that political violence is wrong, as are efforts to excuse it. We should be clear, though, about who more often foments, excuses and celebrates political violence, and violence more broadly. When, in October 2022, a hammer-wielding attacker broke in to the home of the former House majority leader Nancy Pelosi and nearly killed her husband, the Maga response was mockery. After the attack, Trump went before a live audience to jeer “crazy Nancy Pelosi”, then paused before sneering, “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?” Laughter from the audience ensued. His son Donald Trump Jr retweeted a Paul Pelosi Halloween costume: men’s underwear and a hammer. Two years prior, Trump made light of the FBI’s discovery of a domestic terror plot by extremists to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Such touching empathy deserves the same in return. :oops:


The belief that sex before marriage was unusual in the past or the rich have always outlived the poor are among a series of "stubborn myths busted" by researchers. University of Cambridge experts have drawn on 60 years of analysis of 250 million English records from the Elizabethan era to the early 20th Century. Other enduring myths include the assumption women working outside the home was a late 20th Century phenomenon or that few people lived beyond the age of 40. "Over the last 60 years, our researchers have gone through huge amounts of data to set the record straight," said Prof Alice Reid. "Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today," added the professor, a fellow of Churchill College. "So many people think that people had loads of children, they married really early and died young, so when we talk to people they are really surprised by the demographic patterns of the past." Prof Reid is the director of The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Campop), external. It was founded in 1964 by Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley to conduct data-driven research into family and demographic history, and it has made the history of England's population the best understood in the world, according to the university. More than 250 million records, including census data, parish and civil registers, probate records, street and trade directories, from the Elizabethan era to the early 20th Century, were analysed to reach its findings.

In some periods, more than half of all brides were already pregnant when they got married, according to the researchers. Prof Reid said: "Most people would start having sex when they made agreements to marry and if they became pregnant, that would speed up the marriage." Non-marital pregnancy rates were low, ranging from 2% to 5% of births between 1540 and 1750. They increased in the early 19th Century before dropping as the century progressed. That rate only started to rise again in the late 20th Century. People also got married later than believed, with women typically waiting until their mid-20s while men were a couple of years older - and families were often smaller than believed. Prof Reid said: "One of the most important ways of keeping fertility down was a late marriage and people would delay marriage during times when the economy was bad, as it was more difficult to build up a nest egg needed to set up a new household." The only time since 1550 that average age of first marriage for women fell below 24 was during the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

Given that the age of consent was 12 in the UK until the late 1860s, many might believe that early marriage was also likely, but as above, this was just not so for the majority - and as detailed by the records around 1600 cited in one book, I think by Peter Laslett.


Ah, that same old longing to be Back In The USSR, and neglecting what happened in 1956. :(



Some in the UK seem to leave them on the doorstep too, with only a token attempt at informing any resident, but not that many from my experience. :oops:


And with Biden’s often stumbling public appearances – and especially his disastrous debate – now a thing of the past, there is likely to be a fresh focus on Trump’s mental acuity and his frequently rambling, confused campaign speeches. Last month, for example, Trump got the name of his own doctor wrong. Previously he has made high-profile campaign trail gaffes, in which he seemed to think Barack Obama was still president and mistook his arch Republican rival Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi.

With few of his supporters mentioning any of this of course. o_O

Trump’s reaction to his recent assassination attempt – pumping his fist and mouthing “Fight, fight, fight!” – has been full of vigor and helped unify his Republican party behind him and after his brush with death, he vowed to run a “unity” campaign.

But then who would they be fighting if they sincerely wanted unity? They expect to smash their beliefs into other minds perhaps? :eek:


Child sexual abuse and exploitation increased by more than 400% between 2013 and 2022. Offences committed by children increased to 55.6% of the total. The average age of victims is 13, with suspects averaging 15 years old.

So as (not sufficient monitoring of) social media, plus (less than adequate control of or access to) internet porn, having nothing to do with this? And overall, the situation is hardly something to simply ignore.


Ah yes, the normal state of affairs after any Tory government has left office, given that they are mostly more interested in getting rid of this institution than making it work and hence tending to underfund it. :mask:


Firstly, he pointed out the rewards numerous companies offer enticing incentives to their credit card users, such as cashback, Avios points for flights, or exclusive benefits like early access to event tickets. Secondly, credit cards provide users with section 75 protection, ensuring that both the card issuer and the retailer are jointly responsible for purchases exceeding £100. Finally, Martin highlighted that credit cards often have lower interest rates compared to overdrafts on debit cards, with overdrafts typically charging about 40% whereas credit card interest hovers around the 20% mark.

Rubbish! Having a credit card is just one more thing to carry about (and perhaps be stolen) also, one might be tempted not to pay off the amount each month so as to getting into debt, and lastly, who uses overdrafts? Is Martin getting some cashback from a financial company? :oops:
 
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