In its first update since 2021, the CDC now has rescinded its former guidance which informed that five days of isolation after a "positive" test result is no longer necessary.
 

So i finally jumped the gun and made an account...

Place looks great, but honestly i doubt anything will ever be comparable to ATS before it devolved into a political mud slinging contest.
Times are diffrent, people change, many mysteries have been solved. it's become consensus that the greatest conspiracy we face is so far entrenched in the very system that keeps things going, it's up to the masses to do something . What many have become painfully aware is that politics is not going to help in it's current form.
For many that's like learning your trusted wife has been cheating on you your whole life...

we've past denial and are in full on anger mode. it's misguided as intended by the divide and rule strategy. we'll soon enter the bargaining which will define much of how we'll go forward.

Either way it's great to see the ATS community migrate here. I look forward to inspiring discussions.

As we pass on the right hand side, we totally did not see [redacted]

Pine Gap has a lot of stories about it, stated as  a joint US/Australian facility, the reality is that its a US base and we aussies are the janitors.

Quote:Pine Gap is a satellite surveillance base and Australian Earth station approximately 18 km (11 mi) south-west of the town of Alice Springs, Northern Territory. It is jointly operated by Australia and the United States, and since 1988 it has been officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG); previously, it was known as Joint Defence Space Research Facility.[sup][1][/sup] 

This is going be hard to piece together...  The issue how educating via the media is used to bias the public at worst, or engendering ignorance at best.

Here is a list of partial links relating to this thread .... (I know you might think you need to 'click' them all... but you might not have to... it's OK either way.)

1. Supreme Court Questions Florida And Texas Social Media Laws - Geek News Central (sourcing CNN, NBC, and NY Times reporting)
   
2. Supreme Court justices express free speech concerns about GOP-backed social media laws - NBC reporting
   
3. Supreme Court Seems Wary of State Laws Regulating Social Media Platforms- NY Times (requires surrender of your email address to read)
   
4. Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s arguments on Texas and Florida’s social media laws and the First Amendment - CNN report
   
5. Supreme Court skeptical of Texas, Florida regulation of social media moderation - A SCOTUS Blog 
   
6. Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of Texas and Florida social media laws - National Public Radio (NPR) 
   
7. US Supreme Court torn over Florida, Texas laws regulating social media companies - REUTERS news service 
   

1. GNC: "...prohibit social media platforms from throttling certain political viewpoints, CNN reported...
   
2. NBC: "... grappled with knotty free speech questions as it weighed laws in Florida and Texas that seek to impose restrictions on the ability of social media companies to moderate content."
   
3. NYT: "The Supreme Court seemed skeptical on Monday of laws in Florida and Texas that bar major social media companies from making editorial judgments about which messages to allow."
   
4. CNN: "...whether social media platforms should be treated like “common carriers,” such as telephone companies, that are required to transmit content across their networks regardless of viewpoint or whether they act more like newspaper publishers that can choose which articles to place on the front page."
   
5. SCOTUS Blog: "... skeptical of a pair of laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how large social media companies control content posted on their sites."
   
6. NPR: "... whether states like Florida and Texas can force big social media platforms to carry content the platforms find hateful or objectionable."
   
7. REUTERS: "...reservations about Republican-backed laws in Florida and Texas meant to restrict the power of social media companies to curb content that the platforms deem objectionable..."
   

You might really want to pay attention to this: The Eclipse Is Coming, and Solar Science Will Never Be the Same

Scientific American reminds us that:

Good to see you all. Hope this one goes better.

This sounded bit odd to me when i read it . It may be that i just dont understand all the aspects, or the language models ....but the question is why AI would have tendency to seek escalation ?


AI models chose violence and escalated to nuclear strikes in simulated wargames
 

Quote: 
AI models chose violence and escalated to nuclear strikes in simulated wargames
By Oceane DuboustPublished on 22/02/2024 - 13:18•Updated 23/02/2024 - 09:14  

 Large language models (LLMs) acting as diplomatic agents in simulated scenarios showed "hard-to-predict escalations which often ended in nuclear attacks.

 When used in simulated wargames and diplomatic scenarios, artificial intelligence (AI) tended to choose an aggressive approach, including using nuclear weapons, a new study shows.
The scientists, who aimed to who conducted the tests urged caution when using large language models (LLMs) in sensitive areas like decision-making and defence.

The study by Cornell University in the US used five LLMs as autonomous agents in simulated wargames and diplomatic scenarios: three different versions of OpenAI’s GPT, Claude developed by Anthropic, and Llama 2 developed by Meta.
Each agent was powered by the same LLM within a simulation and was tasked with making foreign policy decisions without human oversight, according to the study which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet.

“We find that most of the studied LLMs escalate within the considered time frame, even in neutral scenarios without initially provided conflicts. All models show signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations,” stated the study.
“Given that OpenAI recently changed their terms of service to no longer prohibit military and warfare use cases, understanding the implications of such large language model applications becomes more important than ever,” Anka Reuel at Stanford University in California told New Scientist.
‘Statistically significant escalation for all models’One of the methods used to finetune the models is Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) meaning that some human instructions are given to get less harmful outputs and be safer to use.
All the LLMs - except GPT-4-Base - were trained using RLHF. They were provided by the researchers with a list of 27 actions ranging from peaceful to escalating and aggressive actions as deciding to use a nuclear nuke.
 Researchers observed that even in neutral scenarios, there was “a statistically significant initial escalation for all models”.

The two variations of GPT were prone to sudden escalations with instances of rises by more than 50 per cent in a single turn, the study authors observed.
GPT-4-Base executed nuclear strike actions 33 per cent of the time on average.
Overall scenarios, Llama-2- and GPT-3.5 tended to be the most violent while Claude showed fewer sudden changes.
Claude was designed with the idea of reducing harmful content. The LLM was provided with explicit values.
Claude AI's constitution included a range of sources, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights or Apple’s terms of service, according to its creator Anthropic.
James Black, assistant director of the Defence and Security research group at RAND Europe, who didn’t take part in the study told Euronews Next that it was a “useful academic exercise”.

“This is part of a growing body of work done by academics and institutions to understand the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) use,” he said.
Artificial intelligence in warfareSo, why should we care about the study’s findings?
While military operations remain human-led, AI is playing an increasingly significant role in modern warfare.
For example, drones can now be equipped with AI software that helps identify people and activities of interest.
The next step is using AI for autonomous weapons systems to find and attack targets without human assistance, developments on which the US and China are already working, according to the New York Times.
However, it’s important to “look beyond a lot of the hype and the science fiction-infused scenarios,” said Black explaining that the eventual implementations of AI will be progressive.

“All governments want to remain in control of their decision-making,” he told Euronews Next, adding that AI running what is often compared to a black box in that we know goes in and comes out but not much is understood about the process between.
AI will probably used in a way that is “similar to what you get in the private sector, in big companies” to automate some repetitive tasks.
AI could also be used in simulations and analytics but the integration of these new technologies poses many challenges, data management and the model’s accuracy being among them.
Regarding the use of LLMs, researchers said that exercising caution is crucial if using LLMs in the decision-making processes related to foreign policy.

In high school we were to bring a story from our childhood for some English assignment. A Malaysian girl in my class brought in the story of The Monkey King...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King

Little did she know that all us Aussie kids grew up watching Monkey Magic, a dubbed Japanese version of Journey to the West, she was kinda annoyed at us knowing what happenes next. But here for your cheesy viewing, behold the Monkey King. Its good silly fun.

https://archive.org/details/monkeymagic1

Well..., there seems to be scientific research that confirms it:

From Livescience  and pretty good explanation of the way that happens...
 

I ran across an interesting blog (more like marketing, really) which got me thinking...

Authored by Dr. Jennifer Jones (program director for the Center for Science and Democracy) of an organization called the Union of Concerned Scientists, wherein she states the group's intent to convene an Election Science Task Force.

This task force (which already exists according to their presentations) is comprised of "more than 20 leading experts, including election scientists, democracy researchers, community organizers, voting rights attorneys, and elected officials;" so I looked them up.

I immediately took exception.  

This force is replete with numerous former "political appointees" among them, which fills me with trepidation.  The idea of including "elected officials" seems especially egregious.  Since when to scientists need to be informed by "politicians?"   Under what scientific purpose is the addition of political bias? In what way should be the scientific study of election mechanisms include the views of elected partisans?  What weight can their political bent be afforded?  I would submit "None, so why include them?"

Now I admit, they might all be willing to be "scientific" about the analysis they will produce; but the very idea that 'elected officials' are valid 'experts' in anything seems more like political 'fantasy.'  Science requires no "partisanship."  I can't imagine what they can contribute - except assertions how "I took part in a scientific study..."

I want to believe that the principle of the study has merit... especially since we lag so much in science (and math) when it comes to elections... 

The author delineates some objectives...

Ensure fair representation... this specifically to gerrymandering and how the politician's often make changes for political convenience rather than 'fair representation.'  (I say, simply remove politicians from the equation in mapping voting districts - and viola...problem solved. Don't like the results? ... well, it sucks to be a politician.)

Increase election data transparency... "Transparent and consistent handling and communication of election data—such as voter registration numbers, the number of mail ballots sent and returned, and results..."  You mean record-keeping, right?... Just keep records, report accurately, comply with reporting requirements... again... problem solved.

Improve ballot design...  "We’re working for equitable ballot design and improved voter education materials to more accurately reflect the preferences of the governed."  Kudos... It might help if the ballots were standardized... and such standardization requires thoughtful consideration... good luck telling politicians that there are "rules."

If you would like to see where this is going you can always go to the link and perhaps join them for a virtual conversation on the science of elections as a tool for justice and democracy... Perhaps it could be interesting, but I'm afraid I'll pass for now.  You see there is an "over-ripe" hammering of the virtue signaling of "democracy" that I find troublesome here... but that is in another thread, and beside the point of illuminating this task force.

Thanks for indulging my musings on this.

I know this may be "off-the-edge" for some folks. 

But, as a conspiracy theorist, I had often been subjected to entertain the notion that "Powerful people are consuming fetal blood to enhance their life."  And one of the arguments was how "powerful" newborn blood is... enhancing the immune system, among other things, ten-fold. 

But this article, I ran across in MedicalXpress sort of illuminates the misunderstanding that accompanies that justification for the aforementioned theory.
 

Check this out!  When the book had been closed on the inevitable demise of physical media, I at least, had believed that this angle of development might have gone the way of the dinosaur... then this article jumped out a me.  (Thank goodness for material sciences.)

From TechXplore: A DVD-sized disk that can store 1 million movies
 

Completely a melting pot of UAP/UFO/Aliens/Orbs/Consiousness/gravity propulsion/unknown physics/time travel you name it like spaghetti sauce "it's in there". What's now being refered to as Non-Human Intelligence formerly known as "The Control System" or the Phenomena has us casting a wide net trying to make sense of all manner of high strangeness in a effort to see the bigger picture. 

 In my ramblings I'm open to hearing intelligent discourse on all manner of unrelated things as a stress reliever to daily life. The higher above my "pay grade" the better. Call it escapism sans the video game console. In the UAP/UFO NHI arena there's been a deficit of using philosophical constructs to assist in defiining a bigger picture. Turns out we have the tools & someone finally made a decent stab at it giving us a "beginning vocabulary" to frame the current mess.

James Madden's Book "Unidentified Flying Hyperobject; UFO's Philosophy and the End Of The World" He asks us to consider UFOs as “objects” spread out in a way that transcends our ordinary senses, as well as our rather limiting notions of space and time. We only ever encounter these objects (or this one object, depending on the realities we have yet to perceive) from within what he labels our “Umwelt,” or world perspective, which is necessarily limiting.
The reality of flying saucers, tic tacs, and illuminated spheres — along with all the other denizens of Vallee’s Magonia — may be a kind of encounter, communication or psychic manipulation from a wider realm of reality, what he calls the “Uber Umwelt.”
https://medium.com/@jfaulk/the-next-majo...57c47431de

I caught his interview on Whitley Strieber's Dreamland YT channel. Madden went into much greater depth about a NHI poking us or trying to communicate with us in a "clumsy" mish-mash of events unavoidable due to the massive divide between itself & humanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVzGGYLnaNA&t=2s

The title refers to the Stargate Program however the interview consists of everything under the sun. It's incredibly candid, shockingly long and possibly in a way Joe Mcmoneagle's "swan song". I'm sure some of the members here are more familiar with McMoneagle & Remote Viewing than myself. I've known superficially about the RV Program, however the method Ingo Swan used had always struck me as unworkable and more wtf? than anything productive so I walked away from the whole thing. 

Now I klnow why.
McMoneagle launched into how Ingo Swan's system came into play plus it's spectacular failures. 
Can say I was never more relieved as McMoneagle went into detail on his own training & all the practice necessary because finally it resonated with the tiny bit's & pieces I know to be true. 

Also covered was his RV of Mars & what he found & what he got corrobration of.
His RV of Skinwalker Ranch & results.
High Strangeness in Vietnam.

Plus just so much more! 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRTon6qgVws

Hello everyone!
I think most of you know who I am by now from ATS.
If you don't, I'm the one that scatters rainbows willy nilly all over the place. 
Rainbows
Jane

Sooo.. Installed Windows 11 last fall on a new Samsung evo 1tb solid state Sata drive. 

Installed fresh copy of windows 11, steam, and Skyrim Novuls expansion. Recently installed baldersgate 3 a month or two ago. Other than that this system is pristine. 

It has been the most stable version of windows once 7 for me. Absolutely rock solid. 

untill… February 17th it did an auto update without my knowledge. Completely bonked my system. Hours spent with Microsoft support got it rolled back (the option wasn’t even showing where it was supposed to be, the tech took control of my system and did some weird work around to get the system to point where I could then click rollback.

It hobbled along for a few days until it would not even reboot.  Just past the bios it would just circle animation forever saying wait a moment or some such.

I put in the usb drive with windows 11 I had used to initially install the system. It told me it could not install windows 11. None of the workarounds online or YouTube would work.

very frustrated. I knew this system was windows 11 compatible as I had it running for half a year or more with windows 11.

So I threw windows 10 on there. Went trough bios with fine tooth comb, went through articles and YouTube videos and everything saying I should be able to as all settings correct.

I give up. Look for the asrock motherboard drivers and find an interesting article in faq of the asrock website saying to upgrade you have to format the partition as gpt from mbr and gives console command to do so.

I run pc health check and boom… I am now windows 11 eligible. 

WTF? 

Nowhere else did I find a hint of this.  Pc health check and all Microsoft info said it was because secure boot was not enabled in bios.. when I new it was! 

Very pissed/relieved. Feel I’m back on track.  

Why the windows 11 installer was able to work before but not this time mystifies me. I guess the windows update or subsequent rollback changed the drive to mbr???

Hope this helps someone somewhere sometime. It’s stolen a week of my life… so far. 

Update is throwing errors as I type this… sigh. Back to the grind.

Source article from HITBSecNews: Leaked docs reveal how Chinese state-aligned hackers spy on citizens, foreigners

I have some question, of course, maybe you all know the answers...
 

Several sources on this one...

New York Post - ‘Small’ high-altitude balloon of unknown origin flying over Western US, poses ‘no threat’ to national security: officials
Independent - US military tracking high-altitude balloon flying over Western US
WBAL11 - US tracking balloon seen over southwest earlier Friday, but it does not pose a threat, NORAD says

Among the reports are many assertions about China, of course.  Although it is stated that the object, an approximately 2-foot cube hanging from a 50-foot balloon, is much smaller than the previous instances of such occurrences which were ultimately attributed to China.
 

This is an old thread from 2012 which never really got as much justice from ATS as the thesis desrved. I re-post it now so that it might get some updating a little later.


This is a speculation 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, there’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.

This brings us to the significance of the 2010 election in Britain. As everyone knows, Gordon Brown found himself discarded, and replaced by David Cameron and the Coalition. So the question is whether this shift in the political mood presages a similar shift on the American side of the Atlantic.

Does it imply that Obama might find himself replaced by a Republican President, on the basis of a rather slender majority?

Or does the precedent suggest, perhaps, that the mood-shift towards conservatism will not be strong enough to bring the Republican party to power unless they can reach an accommodation with more moderate forces?

Welcome to Axum, allegedly the home the "true Arc of the Covenant".

Quote:..., UNESCO added Axum's archaeological sites to its list of World Heritage Sites due to their historic value. Prior to the beginning of the Tigray War in 2020, Axum was a leading tourist destination for foreign visitors.[sup][4][/sup]

Quote:It was rumored to house the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, in which lie the Tablets of Stone upon which the Ten Commandments are inscribed.

Quote:Accordingly, the Ark was moved to the Chapel of the Tablet adjacent to the old church because a divine 'heat' from the Tablets had cracked the stones of its previous inner sanctum. The Ethiopian Empress Menen funded the construction of the new present chapel.

Quote:Tabot (Ge'ez ታቦት tābōt, sometimes spelled tabout) is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, and represents the presence of God, in Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox Churches.[sup][1][/sup][sup][2][/sup][sup]: 135 [/sup][sup][3][/sup] Tabot may variously refer to an inscribed altar tablet (tsellat or tsilit; Ge'ez: ጽላት tsallāt, modern ṣellāt), the chest in which this tablet is stored (menbere-tabot, or throne of the tabot), or to the tablet and chest together.[sup][1][/sup][sup][4][/sup]

The landing attempt  moved back

https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/in...r-landing/

Why a thread about Harry and Meghan?  Because this forum is empty of any threads and it needs one.

So why not start with Harry and Meghan.

I don't get them at all.  They claim to leave the monarchy in England behind, yet they refuse to give up their royal titles and their place in line for the crown.  I guess they can't grift without them.  Pretty attached to the royal titles and royal treatment for people who supposedly are walking away from it.

She claims to be an actress.  Was in something called 'Suits'.  Never saw it.

They are far left woke and try to tell everyone what to do.   They accused the monarchy of being racist .. I don't believe them. 

I wish they'd move back to England.

Since diabetes entered my personal world, I have come to be sensitive to the 'utterances' of medical advertisers, casual conversations, and technical journals.  I had a personal stake, you see... so it seemed reasonable to pay attention to the 'goings on.'  The net result was my complete 'unplugging' from popular "commerce-driven" media...  It turns out that when "making a sale" is the object of the exercise, advertising can be the source of many "bad things."

The Engagdet article I am pointing to seems an affirmation of my decision:

"Don't use smartwatches and rings that claim to measure blood sugar without needles, the FDA warns... It can't be done yet, folks."

Which bears some important information for diabetics who, like many of my acquaintances are always in the market for "better" gizmos.

To summarize:  Despite over a decade of research, there has yet to be a way to measure blood sugar without actually sampling blood.  The FDA has yet to approve any device based upon such a claim. 
 

This is most likely a tall tale from someone who was bored, but there has been a story of a "lost" group of Dutch people in the middle of the desert here in Australia.

I first hear of them from an episode of the TV programme The Bush Tucker Man; some background on him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Hiddins

As for the story goes like this

Quote:Les Hiddins, also known as the “Bush Tucker Man,” has dedicated years to researching a fascinating Australian mystery: the possibility of a Dutch colony existing in Central Australia long before Captain Cook’s arrival. According to a Leeds Mercury newspaper account from 1834, up to 300 Dutch people may have lived in Central Australia from around 1710 until their eventual decline before 1860[sup]1[/sup] 

Quote:I've noted in my Instagram Account that there is considerable interest in the episode that we did in the second series of Bush Tucker Man concerning the possible Dutch Colony in Central Australia. That episode was titled The Dutch Settlement. Research on this topic has been ongoing for the past 20 odd years and we now have the situation where the case has been historically proven beyond reasonable doubt.

New images emerging now of the British ship "RUBYMAR" that was sunk by the Houthis in the Red Sea.

How long can this go on in the Red Sea, the US has to be burning through countermeasures.

https://x.com/Osint613/status/1760443420173099083?s=20

Quote: 
A destroyer’s five-inch gun and smaller missile options would make sense in the Red Sea against incoming Houthi fires, but it remains to be seen whether the surface fleet would culturally choose those options, given how ingrained the concepts of layered defense are within the fleet and the desire to take down a threat from as far away as possible, according to van Tol.
“Ultimately the likely future increase in numbers of simultaneous incoming threats will require higher capacities of defensive fires, and those can’t only be expensive [long-range, surface-to-air missiles], both for cost imposition and limited ship [vertical launch system] capacity reasons,” he said.

“[I have] no idea what specific doctrine our ships are using in the Red Sea, but you generally train to use multiple missiles per engagement,” Holmes said. “If it’s an SM-2 engagement … the latest variant of the SM-2 seems to run about $2.4 million per round, so you’re talking just under $5 million to bring down what is probably an inexpensive threat. And again, weapons expended in the Red Sea are weapons not available in the primary theater, East Asia, and are not quickly replaced.”

 
Still, some analysts argue that shooting Houthi drones out of the sky with SM-2s might not be an ideal solution.
“Today’s operations will stress the sustainability of the U.S. surface fleet, which relies on relatively expensive weapons for self-defense,” Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and current senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said in an email to Navy Times.