Debates often range in execution depending on the nature of the premise being explored... there are the "now what" debates, or "affirmation and denial" debates, some debates evolve around standing cultural norms, social conventions (political or "moral,") ; others are purely conspiratorial (with story exposition and evaluation,) or "observational and perspective" disharmonies.  

In each, there is an implicit agreement... the premise is sacrosanct.  Without this agreed understanding, the premise can shift, robbing the debate of purpose.  The exercise itself, like a sport, means each debater doesn't "yield" their position, they each do not accept the opposite argument as ultimately 'convincing' and 'valid.'  It has nothing to do with what they personally believe... it is a "game to be won."

In order to refine our interest (which I am presuming exists) I will submit a list of 10 potential debate premises.  I will also attempt to make them into a poll so members can casually declare what they think more interesting or relevant to them.  There are over 400 of us here, and while many (if not most) do not explore the world of debate, I can only hope that the few seconds it takes to participate won't be too great a burden...

(Of course this may be complicated by the architecture of the forums and technical matters... but have a look see... 
 

1. The rich are responsible for the poor
   
2. Commerce in capitalism - the real problem
   
3. Banks are all "fiat" and no substance
   
4. Privacy is sovereignty
   
5. Cryptozoology is an "entertainment" ploy
   
6. History is being erased in real time
   
7. The COVID "event" was not about our health
   
8. The "Media" defines all social problems for its' benefit
   
9. K-12 Education has failed to produce competent citizens
   
10. When you're 21 your still not an "adult"
    

DSL Issues


I was going to put this in the Science and Technology subcategory, but we're having parenting issues again, so we'll stick it here instead:

Internet's been down all day here. I re-booted once at around 9:00 AM, and it came back on long enough to boot the computer, and aside from that the DSL modem has been re-booting itself all day, but the internet light just kept going red.

They've really been pushing the fidium and I would like to upgrade; the only problem really is that an appt. with these guys destroys the better part of a day. I do have a two-day window where a friend can wait and call me if necessary, so that's what I'm prepping for.

I think I need reliability more than the additional speed, plus they keep jacking the bill up saying that it's costly to maintain DSL(older technology) and that the upgrade would even get my bill down.

I don't use the computer for games, and the music plays fine, but downloading videos can be a bit time consuming although it's not really that much of a problem.

Last one.


Following on from pilots, police, military, scientists and gov docs this is the last thread on UFO statements dealing with 'miscellaneous' but was probably the most interesting to compile (and hopefully read).

As always some incredibly strange objects being described by seemingly normal people right across the socio-economic spectrum - they really do seem genuinely mystified and many of the incidents are close range sightings (sometimes in broad daylight) and involve aspects like electromagnetic interference effects, psychological effects, animal reaction and/or ground trace evidence.

There's a good example in the video below where the entire Baker family witnessed a truly bizarre object on the road outside their farm in Mellen, Wisconsin, March 13th, 1975.

The object was reported to be making a large banging noise (whilst also emitting a high pitched whining sound) and the witness sketch can be found here with animal reaction / landing trace info at this link.





Video:

Since 2024 is now a confirmed as an election year in two countries, the United States and Britain, this is an appropriate time to revive my old speculation about election parallels between the two countries.

This was based on observing the way that British and American politics seem to have been running on parallel lines since the end of World War 2, switching from left to right and back again within a few years of each other.

The timing of the changes is partly governed by the fact that the U.S.  operates on  a fixed-term electoral cycle and the U.K. doesn’t. This flexibility means that a change in the political mood can sometimes be expressed first on the British side of the Atlantic (though it also means that an “old regime” might hang on for a while longer).

The pattern goes like this;
When Japan surrendered in 1945, both countries were under comparatively left-wing governments-  a Democrat administration and a Labour government- which lasted beyond the end of the decade.

The Fifties were dominated by conservatism. There was the Eisenhower era (from 1952), and in Britain there was a time of Conservative government (from 1951), epitomised by Harold Macmillan’s observation that “Some of our people have never had it so good.”

The Sixties were ready for something a little more radical- the Democrats under Kennedy-Johnson (from 1960) and the Labour party under Harold Wilson (from 1964).

Nevertheless, at the end of the decade, they both gave way to more conservative individuals- Richard Nixon (from 1968) and Ted Heath (from 1970). (I swept to power myself in 1970 as the winning candidate in our school’s Mock Election).

Nixon and Heath were both forced out a few years later, but the change happened more quickly in Britain. Ted Heath was able to call an unnecessary election in early 1974 and get himself thrown out almost instantly. Whereas, even after Nixon resigned, the American Constitution kept the Republicans in power until 1976.

So, in the second half of the Seventies, there was, once more, a Democrat administration and a Labour government. Neither of them impressed people by the way they handled crises, and there was another conservative reaction in both countries. Once again, the change happened in Britain first.  Maggie Thatcher was able to force an election in 1979 by winning a “No Confidence” vote in the Commons, while Ronald Reagan had to wait for the fixed election date in 1980.

The Reagan-Bush and Thatcher-Major years were a time of renewed conservative domination. The compatibility between Reagan and Thatcher was noted at the time. Leftists will fondly remember the famous film poster parody, with Reagan carrying Maggie in his arms;
“She promised to follow him to the end of the world.
He promised to arrange it”.

Finally, at the end of the century, conservatism gave way to Clinton and Blair. This time the American change happened first, partly because John Major won an election which nobody was expecting him to win.

Taken individually, all these changes can be explained by local factors, like the Vietnam issue on one side of the Atlantic, and strikes in the nationalised industries on the other.  Nonetheless, when the pattern is taken as a whole, that’s a remarkable sequence of parallels.

I don’t know that the mechanism behind it need be anything more mysterious than having a similar culture with similar reactions to world affairs and economic issues. This would include being more resistant to Socialism than the European countries. Certainly British politics and European politics have not been running in parallel to anything like the same extent.

At first glance, the new century seems to have disrupted the pattern. The British equivalent of Clinton remained in power while America was moving from Left to Right and back again. Or did Tony Blair end up as the British equivalent of Bush Junior after all? Anyway, with the arrival of Gordon Brown and Obama, the two countries were apparently back on parallel tracks. At least, that was my impression in 2012 when this theory was first put forward.

Or were they? Gordon Brown had already been discarded in 2010 and replaced by David Cameron and the Coalition. From one viewpoint, this could be regarded as being six years in advance of the American shift to Trump.

An alternative theory, in retrospect, is that the comparatively liberal Cameron was just as much the British equivalent of Obama as Blair was the British equivalent of Bush.

This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.

We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.

As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.

If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.

+++

In fact this could be an event in British political history with a significance like the collapse of the old Liberal party.

Victorian Liberalism had been a grand coalition against the power of the land-owners, formed of liberal-minded aristocrats (the old Whigs), business interests, radical theorists and the working-class. Once they came into power, they had difficulty in holding the coalition together. Gladstone began upsetting the business interests (e.g. restraints on drinking hours did not please the brewers). Then he shifted to a policy of offering Home Rule to Ireland, which cost him the Whigs and also Joseph Chamberlain, who was considered a radical at the time.

Those Liberals who broke away allied with the Conservatives, eventually getting absorbed. This group was the target of the political joke in “The Importance of Being Earnest”; “Politics? I don’t really have any. I am a Liberal Unionist.” “Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate.” By the time the film version was made, the Unionists had disappeared altogether, and the actor simply called himself “a Liberal”. So the social joke no longer applied, though arguably the “no politics” joke actually worked better on the Liberals of 1952 than when Oscar Wilde wrote it.

Joseph Chamberlain himself had an extraordinary career. Having split the Liberal party almost single-handed, on the issue of Irish Home Rule, he went on to split the Conservative Party almost single-handed on the question of re-introducing import tariffs. For example, that was when they temporarily lost Winston Churchill.

But then the Liberal Party got outflanked on the left by the rise of the Labour Party. In the long-term, this meant that they became a centre party and got pulled apart by the two parties on either side.

Before that, there was the First World War. The Liberals were obliged to allow the Conservatives to enter a wartime coalition. The manoeuvres of Lloyd George to make himself leader of that coalition had the effect of dividing his own Liberal party. As a result, the coalition ended the war and won the following election as a mainly Liberal cabinet supported by a mainly Conservative body of back-benchers (M.P.’s without a Cabinet post).

Then in 1922 the back-benchers rebelled. They threw off the old leadership and dissolved the coalition. This was the origin of “the 1922 Committee”, which still survives as the voice of the back bench. I was going to write a thread in the centenary year, but never got around to it. The pulling apart of the Liberals was consummated over the rest of the decade, as the working class and the intellectual radicals shifted to Labour, while Winston Churchill and anyone else who hated socialism went back to the Conservatives.

That may be happening to the Conservatives now, as the “wets” who are trying to hold the centre are being abandoned by the Brexiteers. Yet there is also, at the same time, a visible tension within the Labour party as the leadership tries to hold the centre against Islamists and others. Might we end up with a “National Emergency anti-extremist coalition” of Sunak and Starmer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrQQAa6AARc

I had this as a kid, and I loved it. I was just getting into James Bond and this is one of my fondest memories. I uploaded my own personal rip to archive.org to share, and it works best with Windows 98 on VirtualBox. 
 

The matter of martial race and “class” composition was an issue of some importance to British officers in deciding whether to stay on in Pakistan. It is perhaps not difficult to believe that these British officers so immersed in favorable views of martial race would not continue to utter and promote these beliefs to those same martial race officers now being groomed to assume leadership of the army. As late as 1945, Colonel Christopher Bromhead Birdwood argued for the immutable logic of martial race, despite protests of its racially discriminatory presumptions.73 The Punjabi and Pashtun officers arguably provided a receptive audience to these senior British officers so enamored with martial race. The positive views of these British officers would have probably gone some way in confirming these beliefs of exceptionalism in the older generation of Pakistani officers, as well as indoctrinating the newer generations being trained at the PMA. In so doing, these British Indian officers ensured the continuation of these beliefs in the army:

https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Co...c-Culture/


There is much to unpack concerning how Indian Independence and Partition occurred, and this topic falls under that umbrella. But those British Officers' imperial racism, blended with their experiences, produced pro-Muslim or anti-Hindu biases. Oddly, Pakistan's new and future military commanders inherited that element from the Indian Army, which was abolished in 1947.

Moreover, Lieutenant General Sir Francis Tuker wrote about communalism's bloody stains overrunning India in the lead-up to the end of British rule, and he displayed the above biases in his While Memory Serves. Tuker and his cadre of Indian Army officers viewed Hinduism in the same manner; people view Islamic extremism in the present.

https://archive.org/details/1950-while-m...s-by-tuker

Counterfactual argument: I have sometimes wondered what might have occurred if a unified Indian Army served in a buffer zone between India and Pakistan. However, such an outcome was most likely impossible by the late 1940s.

Otherwise, I have barely scratched the historical surface of this topic, including those British officers who remained in service with the post-independence Indian and Pakistani armies.

So I'll leave the huge reviews to DB, but I had low expectations once I heard Anna Taylor Joy had the lead. But I love the franchise and while it is not epic by any means and seemed too clean, and in some aspects you have to just go with it, and pretend that could happen. It was fairly entertaining,had a nice cameo scene decent enough action scenes but something was missing. 

Still much better than Civil War

• Once, in the labyrinthine depths of cyberspace, there existed a realm known as AboveTopSecret. It whispered secrets, harbored mysteries, until it vanished like a ghost in the night. But my quest? It persists, a flame burning in the darkness.
  
• Now, I stand at the threshold of a new enigma. This forum, my next descent, where curiosity dances with uncertainty. As a wanderer of the unknown, I am drawn to the shadows, where truth and illusion intertwine like lovers.
  
• Here, I embark on a journey to unravel conspiracies, decipher cryptic messages, and unlock the secrets that lurk in the silence. The allure of the unseen and the thrill of revelation propel me forward, each discovery a thread in the tapestry of the unknown.
  
• The quest for truth is an odyssey without end, a labyrinth without escape. But in the depths of darkness, I find my purpose. The shadows beckon. Let us heed their call and embrace the mysteries that lie within.
  

Seems a lot of people these days are worried about 'overpopulation' but thought the vid below contained some important factual info about the mythology of the subject and the subversive propaganda put out by misanthropic Malthusian cultists.





• A Stunning Admission on the So-Called Population Crisis






Also some sober reading in this 2021 NYT article containing relevant statements from German demographer Frank Swiaczny who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations:





• Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

Quote:All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.

A paradigm shift is necessary,” said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. “Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline.”

The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff. “It becomes a cyclical mechanism,” said Stuart Gietel Basten, an expert on Asian demographics and a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “It’s demographic momentum.”

Link

Quote: Meet Paul Ehrlich, Pseudoscience Charlatan


Why is it that this entomologist has become such a superstar of science, received so many accolades and awards, and wielded such influence over the public conversation on population despite being so remarkably, consistently, staggeringly wrong about the issues he presumes to lecture the public on?

I just wanted to give props to the DI creators on a feature you've incorporated.  I really like the way you implemented the picture functionality.  Very clever...for a variety of reasons.

Question - Does this solution work in the long-term, or is there a separate imgur account being maintained for this site?  In other words, is there a threshold beyond which this function won't work?  (P.S. I don't want to know what that threshold is, I'm just asking a generic question).

Simple thread What's your motor vehicle history? Since I was 16 Ive only had 5 (cars, vans or trucks) Trying to find the exact model, and colors isn't easy. Ive only bought 2 of them relatively new, The Blazer and the Safari. 


Loved my first ride, 1976 Ford Capri II Ghia it was originally white with a red and black interior. Clean it every other weekend

Somebody rear-ended me the second year I had it and  I got it painted black and put a sunroof in new stereo and speakers and it was boss as hell





Next a 1983 Honda Prelude



1992 Chevy Blazer


1996 GMC Safari



2003 Dodge Ram 1500

The Air Force paused deliveries of KC-46s in March, after inspection of an aircraft revealed a broken gimbal nut lockwire. The gimbal allows the boom to move on all axis, and the gimbal nut locks the boom onto the gimbal.  It's locked in place with safety wire to keep it from moving during flight.  A broken lock wire would prevent that extra margin of safety, and potentially allow the nut to back off, until it came off the gimbal, allowing the boom to separate from the aircraft.  The Air Force performed inspections of all delivered aircraft, and aircraft in production. Deliveries are expected to resume soon, with two aircraft undergoing final inspection, and expected to be delivered within the next week.

Quote:WASHINGTON — The US Air Force has not accepted any new KC-46A Pegasus air refueling tankers from Boeing since March due to an issue with a broken part on the aircraft’s boom, though the service expects to accept two new aircraft by the end of the month, an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement.
“There was a brief pause in KC-46 deliveries starting in March 2024 after a fleet inspection revealed a broken boom gimbal nut lockwire. The gimbal is the ‘swivel joint’ that provides boom movement in all 3 axes and the gimbal nut secures the boom to the gimbal,” the spokesperson said.
“Deliveries were paused while production and fielded aircraft completed inspections to ensure continued safety of the fleet and receivers,” they added. “The DAF [Department of the Air Force] completed all aircraft inspections and resumed the aircraft acceptance process; two aircraft are undergoing final inspection stages and are expected to deliver by 31 May 24.

I'm pretty old.  I've been around since the Imsai 8080 was the "big" thing featured in the movie "Wargames."  For me, the dream of building my own computer was seen as a "What the hell?" kind of interest.  My first machine ran on a 6502, and I was personally affronted when a certain machine code was 'sold' to a startup called Microsoft for something called 'Windows.'

Since then things have come a long way, ever complicated by commerce, and now we all operate with the need for overlapping security against exploitation of the code we run on the systems we use.  So I get a little paranoid now and again.

When my computer seems to be 'extra' active while idling, or unusual communication ports are opening up and closing, when graphics seem glitched for no reason... I worry.

Now it is clear that there are as many ways to exploit a computer as one could imagine, I found this:

From ArsTechnica: Researchers spot cryptojacking attack that disables endpoint protections
Subtitled: A key component: Installing known vulnerable drivers from Avast and IOBit.
 

We need some help.

As it grows, our debate project requires input from you.

Debate topics are infinitely varied.  I was thinking about how to go about making a list of different topics... (not the debates themselves, just the topics) and I found myself wondering how to find out what everyone would like to see...  I thought maybe the forum names could give me some form of list, but even using that seemed to exclude too many possibilities.

For starters, let's try this.... (remember - for the topics - not the actually specific debates)

• Aliens, presumed 'extraterrestrial' objects and crafts, Encounters, ideas of extraterrestrial 'diplomacy' and relations
  
• The "New" World Order, Sovereignty (national or personal), Global economic subordinations, "Monopolies" as social policy-makers, Global policy creation, Commerce as global force
  
• Education, Pedagogy, hierarchies within education, Technocracy, Juris Prudence in theory and practice
  
• Cultural distinctions as "problems" of law, 'societies' in society, fraternal orders
  
• The practice of obfuscation of history, the 'permanent' record of mankind (or the nation or groups of people)
  
• "War," what is it actually 'good' for?  Intents, outcomes, exploitation, resistance
  
• Not the "how" but the "why" of "Q" - is it a movement, or another show?
  
• Rejected theories... cryptozoology, flat Earth, the Big Bang is a miracle, dark matter or not, creationism, "rules" about people
  
• The nature of ghosts, spirits, demons, angels, why they persist
  
• Extrasensory perceptions, prediction, projection
  
• Religions in contention, opposed, juxtaposed, disharmony
  
• How Science is controlled by commerce, progress thwarted by competition, suppressed technologies... repressed technologies
  
• Our world... the Earth, living entity, inert object, dynamic or brittle?
  
• Bad happenings in government, personal corruption or systemic design flaws?
  
• The media world... where is the honesty?  Why can't it be measured?
  
• The nature of crime, and the application of punishment... why the disparity?
  
• Relationship advice for 'sale'... "Buy my book"
  
• Slavery, exploitation, humans as 'objects of consumption'
  
• What is "funny" really?  Why are we obsessed with celebrity? Why we consume "the show."
  

Cat Bites


Well this is day number three of about my third or fourth cat bite over the past couple decades that resulted in a moderate to serious infection. The bite occurred in the early morning hours of Tuesday.

The bite was on my wrist and I noticed Tuesday afternoon when I was on here that it was becoming a little red and sore.

Early Wednesday it became somewhat painful and the redness had spread some with swelling of the infected area and mild flu-like symptoms. The acetaminophen and ibuprofen combo helped with the pain after about twenty minutes.

The flu-like symptoms last somewhere between 12 to 24 hours and at this point I think I'm a little past the apex of this ordeal. There is still quite a bit of redness around the infected site.

It's now Thursday afternoon and I'm trying to resume a normal day - what's left of it. The puncture wounds are the worst for causing infection. I always go right for the isopropyl alcohol whenever I get a scratch or a bite because of things like this.

I have a big black unneutered male cat and he can be a little aggressive from time to time. I'm not even exactly sure what happened this time. I only recall him being in one of his moods. He was beside me in bed and I moved the wrong way and got nipped. I didn't even really think much of it at first, and then there's the rest of the story.

With over 50 years of flying I have never hit turbulence like this. I did hit some serious stuff at 45,000 Feet once upon a time but it did not result in an upset or loss of control of the aircraft.

This incident as reported involved clear air turbulence (CAT) which was evidently Severe. At 37,000 and all clear you do not expect such a thing to happen unless the winds aloft are unusually strong and even then it is rare.

About 700,000 Blacks in Chicago and the mayor says they are going to import 700,000 illegals; they all have government money in their pockets.... Probably 45 to 50 million illegals now in America. (?)
 
Interesting comments coming out of Chicago about a soon to come war... Define war ?

Got an account set up.  Was having some issues the other day getting registered, but got them corrected.

I guess now I'll go try to figure out how to do an avatar.  I wonder, is there any way to transfer my avatar from ATS?  I like that avatar a lot.

At any rate, hope you all are well.

FCD

Bring it on dudes, here is 'Clown Vs Swat'

Some people have said that Yellowstone with all it's vents and the ability to release pressure is pretty low on the chance of popping it's top ...However there is one super volcano that seems to be awaking in Italy.. If it goes the loss of life just in the local area will be big and more than horrible; as far as the rest of the world we will see if the computer models and historical records are right if it blows !

I found the video introduced in the source to be very good.  But since I don't even rate the title of "amateur" archeologists, I thought I'd share it to see if anyone agrees.

I appreciate that finally I found someone who produced a list that didn't exclude all those civilizations that weren't in or around the middle east... that always kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I still believe there are some that were overlooked... but this one pleased me more than most monetized video fodder of its kind...

From Ancient-Origins.net: Oldest Known Civilizations in History (Video)

This is another thread of "super narrow" interest.  But I thought I'd share it, just in case anyone is like me in finding these kinds of developments significant.

Many people are aware of diamonds, most know that in nature it takes incredible temperatures, and physical compression to make diamond crystals grow... which is why in the past diamonds were a considerably rare thing to have.   Eventually, technologies and industry were able to reproduce the conditions (in a manner of speaking) and actually synthesize diamonds.
 

The ongoing punishment that Julian Assange has been enduring over many years appears to be at least approaching some form of resolution.

Most familiar with the account will know that there is a lot (and by a lot, I means tons and tons) of resentment about the efforts of Julian Assange to expose and share questionable documentation regarding the activities and undertakings of many politically appointed people across the globe.

The list of 'political celebrities,' and talking head media personalities that have been lambasting Assange continuously defies listing... there are just too many.  And once his "custody' was secured... the US announced it's intention to try him criminally... The UK was patient though, and finally a few judges appear to have made a ruling which will no doubt inflame those in the US who are 'out for blood.'

From HITBSecNews: WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Can Appeal His Extradition to the US, British Court Says
 

Tucker interviews Erik Prince a former Navy SEAL and founder of Blackwater Worldwide, a private military corporation. Well spoken and interesting  subjects about world affairs IMO.