Another media legend has passed today, Lou Dobbs, passed away, he was 78 years old.

We understand that discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the actions of Hamas and Israel can evoke strong emotions and diverse opinions. It's important to maintain respectful dialogue while discussing these complex issues.

However, I want to make it unequivocally clear: antisemitism has no place in our forums. Regardless of your stance on the political situation, targeting individuals or groups based on their Jewish identity is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Any posts or comments that promote anti-Semitic views, stereotypes, or hate speech may result in account termination. Our community values inclusivity, respect, and constructive debate. Let's ensure that our discussions reflect these principles.

Thank you all for understanding and for helping to maintain a positive and respectful environment for everyone.

We understand that discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the actions of Hamas and Israel can evoke strong emotions and diverse opinions. It's important to maintain respectful dialogue while discussing these complex issues.

However, I want to make it unequivocally clear: antisemitism has no place in our forums. Regardless of your stance on the political situation, targeting individuals or groups based on their Jewish identity is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Any posts or comments that promote anti-Semitic views, stereotypes, or hate speech may result in account termination. Our community values inclusivity, respect, and constructive debate. Let's ensure that our discussions reflect these principles.

Thank you all for understanding and for helping to maintain a positive and respectful environment for everyone.

We understand that discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the actions of Hamas and Israel can evoke strong emotions and diverse opinions. It's important to maintain respectful dialogue while discussing these complex issues.

However, I want to make it unequivocally clear: antisemitism has no place in our forums. Regardless of your stance on the political situation, targeting individuals or groups based on their Jewish identity is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Any posts or comments that promote anti-Semitic views, stereotypes, or hate speech may result in account termination. Our community values inclusivity, respect, and constructive debate. Let's ensure that our discussions reflect these principles.

Thank you all for understanding and for helping to maintain a positive and respectful environment for everyone.

It's sad to hear... I think that one of the funniest ubiquitously sharable stars of my youth has passed at the age of 94.

From ArsTechnica: Trump allies want to “Make America First in AI” with sweeping executive order
Subtitled: After repealing Biden's AI order, draft would create "Manhattan Projects" for military AI.

This article was reportedly a re-treatment of the following source:

From Washington Post: Trump allies draft AI order to launch ‘Manhattan Projects’ for defense
Subtitled: The plan to “Make America First in AI” and roll back “burdensome regulations” would favor Silicon Valley investors, who are now flocking to support the former president.


These articles describes a notional tug of war between the policies and intentions of the US government and Big Tech's treatment of the "AI" developments.

I would like to expand on some of the content here... only because I so vehemently disagree with the PR and marketing efforts, and the reality of so-called "AI."

The first point I would like to make is that, despite the media treatment, this is about who gets to control the AI market, who will be positioned to control the research, compartmentalize it's progress, and ultimately move closer to a defacto monopoly (the brass ring in big business.)  This is not about AI "safety" nor is it really about global "competition."

The "AI" fantasy has been bought hook line and sinker by the occupants of our national administration.  They instituted some measures of safeguarding in their own "executive order" prop; focusing on standardization of testing, "open" reporting of "safety" efforts, and firmly entrenching oversight and control in (of course) a body of politically-appointed offices and constructs.  It was maddeningly vague and somewhat 'virtue signaling' fodder.

The "AI" industry has been ever-obsessed with eliminating any aspect of "Open Source" tendencies in AI, looking to ensure that fear and loathing are associated with the AI topic and all euphemisms which can be applied to the field.  They want to be "the industry leaders" who "decide" the framework of the dialog... (my personal theory is that they want to control the industry for now and ever... sort of how the bank monopolizes monetary policy.)

But the political stage-directors are now folding the "AI" trope into the political discourse.  The big focus is on "industry leaders" not having restraints or reporting obligations (call them 'responsibilities') which constrain their freedom to dictate exactly how AI gets deployed commercially. 

And the media reporting seems to tell a tale of the support of Big Tech industry money movers - 'for sale'... as in if Trump removes the shackles of restraint from their plans they will offer him their financial support (read 'money' - meaning 'free speech.')

The fact that the Heritage Foundation and her members and leadership are featuring the topic within their "Project 2025" manifesto clearly shows where their predilections are.  Further, the fact that the "Project 2025" document is NOT the same as the 2024 Republican Party Platform is currently being obfuscated by media reporting for the purposes of the political game... not reality.

Ultimately the AI question is not a central topic in the competition for the White House and executive leadership of the US.  But as far as Big Tech is concerned... it would appear it is the ONLY topic.

Now the supposition that the authors of the 2025 Project call for sweeping Executive Order sidestepping of the previous administrations' cautionary approach seems to be a "point" which the AI industry leaders want highlighted - no, rather... "spotlighted."

I thought I would share this, just in case it proves a useful starting point for future considerations of the 'cost of support' and how disingenuously it can be portrayed.

For the record: AI does not now exist.  It hasn't existed.  It is not yet a reality.  Unless it can be actually demonstrated otherwise, it is a boogey man, a specter... and we are far away from a self-aware self-motivated independently-intelligent mechanism...  and that's not what the "industry" is trying to create... they are trying to create a slave mind.

I had a few hours to burn off this afternoon, so I saw Twisters at the movies. Twisters is an average film in places but is mainly dull to view. There is no chemistry among the cast members who do their best with the cardboard cutout characters and plot. The special effects aren't noteworthy and don't contribute to building up the tension or fear in the viewer.

However, the film's excellent soundtrack is the highlight. That soundtrack livens up uninspiring scenes.

I have avoided posting spoilers, so I am keeping my thoughts on Twisters brief and light on detail.

So I noticed this a couple months ago and meant to mention something. If you’re using DI on a phone, you cannot reply to a post without it incorporating into the post you’re replying to. I can always tell when someone is on mobile due to this. The problem is, you cannot get the cursor to the white box to reply. It wants to go into the post to that you’re replying to.

Here’s a pic of what I’m talking about:

Some weird occurrences that are troubling me - Part 2


Part 1 from 2018 can be found here:

ATS Link

I would like to thank everyone who gave advice in part 1 with a special shout out to Kurokage, RudeCherub and RAY1990.


Part 1 TL;DR

I have a chronic debilitating illness which started when I was 50 years old. It left me housebound and unable to do a lot of the things we take for granted. My mother returned to the UK in 2016 to look after me as I was really struggling. We both moved into an apartment in late 2016.

Unexplained events/issues started happening in 2018 such as:

• fleeting images of something black (approximately 12 x 12 inches in size)
  
• small items disappearing and showing up several days later
  
• feeling like something was watching me
  
• odd knocks and noises at night
  
• odd smells
  
• waking up at around 3am with an oppressive heavy atmosphere in the room problems with the security alarm going off in the early hours (different sensors on  consecutive nights with no plausible reason). It has not happened since.
  
• halogen bulbs constantly blowing
  
• seeing very dark shapes during the night (no lights turned on) prior to falling asleep
  
• abnormal repugnant thoughts
  
• major arguments over minor issues
  
• hearing heavy breathing (metallic and electronic in nature) just prior to falling asleep
  
• my bedroom light being turned on and off frequently during the night despite my loud snoring as reported by my mother
  
• waking up to scratches on my body
  
• pressure on my bed like someone sitting down - it happened frequently both day and night
  
• rapid pummelling on my mattress at the foot of my bed then racing up to the top of the bed, stopping dead where I was sat with my legs hunched up
  
• being slapped while asleep
  
• having my left big toe pinched like a clamp which was very painful and woke me up
  
• visited one night by a very dark shape and printed on this shape was a body, arms and face but no legs
  

I found this story about J.D. to be inspirational is many different ways.

If Trump wins and survives for 4 years that would then be 2028 ... J.D. runs and then gets elected twice that would give America 12 years to try to fix all problems the current administration has enacted; not sure 12 years is enough time ??

I was looking for my old go to sleuth site LiveLeak.com which for some reason was shut down. So now we have ItemFix.com of Australia

Take a look at the 12 second mark of this video at the tractor. WTF is it spraying towards the crowd and why? Why was it even positioned near the Podium? 

https://www.itemfix.com/v?t=9048fs

Take a look at the other videos at that site.

Hi guys!

I finally decided to join over here and don't worry I am going to read this post over twice to make sure I do not miss any capitalizations or apostrophes but I am not good at grammar so you get what you get as far as that goes.

Obviously I found the other site first through my interest in UFOs and unexplained phenomenon tried to fit in and don't so here I am.

I have a cat, he is alternately my special treasure, my cheeseburger buddy or Marlon Brando depending on his mood. Hehe. I try and make friends with everybody because I am just a lonely middle aged woman going through a divorce trying to find things to occupy my mind.

I like chatting about any topic at all but I don't like people making fun of other people because we really don't know what is going on behind the smile if you know what I mean. My creative writing teacher in high school used to always say to me "I wish I knew what was going on behind that smile"

So anyways I just like chatting, having conversations online with nice friendly people.

I posted this on ATS.  Thought I'd post here for observations ....

A different Donald Trump was at the RNC last night.  A different Donald Trump walked in.  No ... it's still him and not a body double.  But he was totally different in my observation.

There is footage of him in the hallway and in the RNC, but I don't know how to post that here.  If anyone can post it ... go ahead.

His walk was different.  His attitude was different.  He looked older.  He looked tired.   When he stepped out into the crowd that was cheering, he didn't have his usual 'eating it up' look ...  he looked nervous and like that he didn't want to be there.

I think something has dramatically changed.  

Tired. Nervous. Older. I think he knows that "THEY" have tried cancelling him and tried lawfare on him, and now 'THEY" have tried assassination which was the logical next step for 'THEM".

He looks like an older man who suddenly realizes just how serious 'THEY" are about getting rid of him and he suddenly realizes just how deep the evil goes. He's been talking about it and he knows about it ... but know he KNOWS about it. It bit him.

Anyways, that's my observation.  I don't know if I'm just reading into things (I don't think so), or if others saw the same thing as I did.

This morning I was reading an article about a former SNL cast member, Adam Sandberg, who was talking about how “hard” life was on SNL.  I didn’t feel particularly sorry for him, and this was the bulk of the article.  However, after reading, I scrolled down to the comments section (something I often do, when available).

The comments section was replete with comments I expected to see…”SNL hasn’t been funny for decades!”…”People still watch that program????”…”Haven’t watched it for 30 years”…”SNL stopped being funny and became political propaganda long before Sandberg ever even joined the cast!”…I hadn’t really expected to see much different, and I’d pretty much felt the same way when I tuned out almost 30 years ago myself (even though it used to be my absolute favorite program).

Then I came upon a comment which caught my eye.  The commenter opined that they had gone back to the comedy of the day (recently), back in the late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and it wasn’t funny anymore.  In other words, they had gone back to the comedy ‘greats’ like George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi and so many others, and it just didn’t seem funny today.  This got me to thinking.  Maybe they were right…in a way.

Oh sure, it was funny back in the day.  Heck, I can remember rolling on the floor laughing at SNL, SCTV, In Living Color, and so many others.  So, I decided to go back and see for myself.  The commentor was kind of right…it wasn’t particularly funny now.  I wondered why?  I realized comedy is a very strange thing.  Obviously dated news type comedy won’t be funny, I expected that much, but there was so much other comedy which wasn’t dated, and it wasn’t particularly funny either (now).  What changed?  I wondered.

After some contemplation, I realized several things changed.  First, and most obvious, I’d gotten older and my comedic tastes have changed and matured.  So, the target audience for comedy is very specific.  Second, and probably more importantly, we were seeing things we’d never seen before.  The comedy was new, some of it physical, some of it mental, but all of it new.  It was a changing genre and we were seeing the emergence of it.  Then, after even more thought, I realized comedy is always changing; true comedy exists in a constant state of change. 

It wasn’t what we saw which was funny, it was often what we did NOT see which was funny.  It was what WASN’T said which was funny, it wasn’t necessarily what was said which made us laugh.  It was all about timing.

Remember back to John Belushi’s mid-70’s era “Samurai” routine on SNL.  It was hilarious!  It wasn’t what he said or did which was so funny, it was the way he would stop, frozen, and his eyes would dart back and forth; that was funny.  To hear Dan Aykroyd today tell Jane Curtain…”Jane, you ignorant SLUHT!”…wouldn’t be nearly as funny.  But these things sure were funny then.  Why?  Because no one had ever done that before.

Though, I have to admit; seeing Eddie Murphy play the skit “Mr Robinson's Neighborhood” on SNL in 1984 is still pretty damn funny!  So is Jim Carrey's "Fire Marshall Bill" from ILC in the '90's.

A type of beaked whale species has washed ashore in Otago - and it is so scarcely seen, scientists say it could take weeks to confirm its DNA.
The Department of Conservation (Doc) said its staff were told a whale about five metres long had washed ashore near Taieri Mouth on July 4.
After inspection and consultation with marine mammal experts from Doc and Te Papa, it was believed the creature was a male spade-toothed whale.

https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-nat...hmShh5BStA

Barring the DNA throwing up an unexpected result, then this is a chance for researchers to study the little-known Spade-toothed whale. I am interested in those scientists' findings and how they further their understanding of that whale species.

For the international reader: How the rarely Spade-toothed landed on New Zealand's shore is remarkable. Otherwise, whales beaching themselves on Kiwi shores isn't unusual.

Shannen Doherty, star of Beverly Hills 90210 and Heathers, has died at the age of 53.

The actor had been first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and underwent a mastectomy. In 2020, she said that her diagnosis was then terminal, calling it “a bitter pill to swallow” in a Good Morning America interview.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...0-heathers

I am from the later Dawson's Creek generation, So I didn't watch Beverly Hills 90210. But I did enjoy Doherty's role in Charmed. Understandably, news of her passing was lost in the cloud of events surrounding the attempted assassination of Trump.

I genuinely don't know if this is just absolute irony or just gushing religious cultism but thought some good points were made towards the end lol.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/e...index.html
 What we're covering

• JUST IN: A shooter at President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday night has been “neutralized,” according to multiple law enforcement sources.
  
• Trump was rushed off stage after loud bangs were heard at the start of the rally. The Secret Service says Trump is safe and under protective measures.
  
• A spokesperson said Trump is “fine” and referred to the shooting as a “heinous act,” but details on what exactly happened remain sparse.
  
• Trump was swarmed by agents on stage after the bangs were heard. Blood could be seen on his face, and he raised a fist to the crowd as he was rushed away.
  
• The shooting came after a busy day of campaigning for both Trump and President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race.
  

I feel vindicated... at least a little.

For many months, here and in my last incarnation at ATS, I have been strongly opinionated when speaking about all the "AI" news and hoopla...  And not just "for" or "against."

It was (and is) my contention that most (in fact, nearly all) of the media offerings about AI, and the social media echoes, were FAR from the mark.  People have a 'thought form' in their head about what AI is... and few ever account for the fact that it still doesn't exist.  They fret, and contort, to accommodate scenarios of doom, or they glow and sing about the positive 'possibilities' of such a development.  All seeming to presume that we are there.  Imagining that a self-aware, reasoning, independently motivated entity has been 'created' within a 'virtual' machine environment.

It never happened.  (Although I'm willing to admit the effort seems to be underway... but we haven't seen even a hint of this possibility in reality.)

All the hype, all the churning, even the billions spent "fighting for safeguards" and purposefully flooding the info-sphere with alarm has been... "A marketing effort."  (Yeah, I'm saying we are being "played.")

From ArsTechnica: OpenAI reportedly nears breakthrough with “reasoning” AI, reveals progress framework
Subtitled: Five-level AI classification system probably best seen as a marketing exercise.

Based upon original reporting by
Bloomberg: OpenAI Scale Ranks Progress Toward ‘Human-Level’ Problem Solving
Subtitled: The company believes its technology is approaching the second level of five on the path to artificial general intelligence

You won't need me to breakdown the information in the above sources... but it's important to note the way the former 're-titled' the work of the latter.

Here's a little quote to give you an reason for my locking on to this story...
 

So oldsters anyone remember the USA economy and who was buying up America back in the day? Say the 1990's. The Japanese even owned a golf course in California. Pebble Beach in 1990. 

Then all came crashing down almost like a Humpty Dumpty. Is that whats now being played out in the Global economy with respect to to China? Just one difference is they are part of a continent and have over 1 billion people and yes they have nuke missiles. 

Institutions snapping up Chinese treasury bonds are shorting the economy, state media says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companie...ngNewsSerp

Trump as President started it and low and behold Biden has also amped it up. Er, I mean Team OSP [Obama, Schumer, Pelosi] is running the country and no way they want Trump back in. Just look at the USA DOW 30 Stock Market. YTD its up 25% as it just went over 40,000. Just look at Nancys ownership in Palo Alto Networks Call Option's JAN 2025. Forget about Joe Mumbles and Miss Giggles. 

I rode out the 1990's and I am now sensing and feeling the same in 2024 with respect to China. EV batteries. A China strength have been changed. Cobalt has been eliminated through engineering to eliminate that threat to the national security of the United States ~ aka China. 

Keep an eye on Ford Motor and Volkswagon AG. EV organizations on the rise. Thats why USA hates Musk. They also simply hate Trump for another reason. 

Can you figure that out?

So eat your plate of bugs, pay the rent for something you dont own and drink your own urine.

In an interesting "not win" for the hundreds of victims and their thousands of family members, Boeing has conceded to "plead guilty " to charges ...

From ArsTechnica: Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group
 

In 2022, after languishing for many (many) years, materials recovered from the Roswell crash were sent by the DoD's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for extensive analysis....

Guess what?  "Probably" not alien.

From Gizmodo: Pentagon Publishes Report on Material From an Alleged Alien Aircraft

(picture provided in article)


 

Following on from FlyingClayDisk’s question “"Quote" button question / function??” in his thread: https://denyignorance.com/Thread-Quote-b...n-function,

I started playing around, pushing all the buttons and watching all the blinking lights. I think I discovered what the ‘Quote’ button is for and how it works.

So, instead of just replying to FCD, I thought this may be more helpful as a new thread, urbi et orbi...

Let's begin at the beginning. At the bottom of each post there are those four button…

'+Rate’, ‘"Reply’ ‘+Quote’, ‘Report’
 

• I can first press the ‘+Quote’, activating the function (note that it changes to ‘- Quote’.
  
• Then press the generic ‘New Reply’. In this case, the post will contain the quote.
  

• Then I go to each one and activate the ‘+Quote’ button.
  

• Then I hit the generic 'New Reply' and voila, I’ve included them both in one fell swoop.
  

• As in example 3, activate the post/s you wish to transpose in your reply on another thread.
  

• Then, go to that thread and hit generic ‘New Reply’.
  

• Before doing anything else, NOTE some new options under the editing window…
  

• So, when you simply want to post in a thread, with no particular reference to anyone, then use the generic ‘New Reply’ at the top/bottom of the thread. This is the option I often use without having to resort to removing the unwanted quote afterwards.
  

• BEWARE!! once you activate the ‘+Quote’ function, it will remain in that state for future interactions in that thread and beyond. So, remember to deactivate them if they are in the ‘-Quote’ state... This stuff can really mess with your head.
  

• Ok, that’s all for now… I’ll report back if I notice any other hidden goodies.
  

Ciao for now