As military-grade robotics get cheaper and more capable, someone will arm them and put them on American streets.
Robot-maker Sean Bielat says he’s fine with the Dallas Police Department’s apparently unprecedented use of a police bomb-disposal robot to kill a gunman on Thursday. “A robot was used to keep people out of harm’s way in an extreme situation,” said Bielat, the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a spinoff of iRobot’s military division. “That’s how robots are intended to be used.”
Joergen Pedersen, the CEO of RE2 robotics and the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association’s robotics division concurred. “If these robots are used in manners for which they were unintended, we would expect that the officers who are there to keep citizens and themselves safe would use good judgment where the application of lethal force is a last resort,” he said.
On Sunday, speaking to Face the Nation, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings blessed the operation. “The chief had two options and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it,” he said.
The House failed to pass legislation on Monday to enhance a provision of the Patriot Act that encourages banks to tip off federal authorities to suspected cases of terrorist financing.
Many libertarians warned of potential privacy violations if the measure went into effect, which helped prevent it from reaching the necessary two-thirds majority to pass through the fast-track process under which it was considered.
While the bill won a simple majority of 229-177, it didn’t clear the supermajority bar needed for passage. The procedure is typically used for noncontroversial bills that pass easily.
This is a really good read from NEWSWEEK magazine.. the biggest threat to the United States right now is not from a foreign enemy.. but from one already here.. And the receipe for disaster lately has been cheap heroin..
From NEWSWEEK:
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group can challenge them in the near term.”
In other words, Mexican cartels have surpassed other international criminal organizations including the Italian mafia, Asian drug rings and the previous preeminent drug importer, the Colombians, to become the No. 1 source of dangerous illegal drugs in the United States over the past decade.
If heroin has yet to directly or indirectly touch you life, it will … give it a bit of time. It has far reaching and decimating..
And this year, a presidential campaign, what do we hear? Nothing much at all about this issue..
Nothing at all about the heroin epidemic and how to treat it.. Nothing at all about how this nation is falling apart at its core fabric..
Just a thought.. vote for someone who actually wants to change things as opposed to sweeping the problem under the rug..
That change may not necessarily be more law enforcement tactics. Not more legislation. But less.
I may or may NOT have mentioned this.. but my wife and I figured that it was not only good to have our son Ayden sign up for soccer, but that we should ALSO be the coaches for the team.. Call us crazy..
Call us insane.
Field clean up day was this past weekend.. The season starts Monday with a 7pm practice..
Yes, there will be strangeness… arguments.. (There already was an arugment over what dimension the field should be and whether it was being lined correctly or not — wonder if the same people who argued saw the abominble women’s game in the outfield of a baseball field?) But it will be rewarding..
We both want to be involved as much as possible with our son’s life as he gets older .. we also love soccer. It seemed like the perfect match.
….but there will be those moments when you question whether you’re in over your head.
The first moment for me could very well be tomorrow night when a group of 4 and 5 year olds stare at me like an alien as I tell them to stop touching the soccer ball with their hands..
It will be fun.
And YouTube will get plenty of hits from me … “how to coach kids soccer”….
…and a tremendous amount of people online in Centalia related message boards or Facebook pages are angry and want to run the guy out of town. People called him names like ‘bottom dweller and scumbag’ .. they also wanted to take him to unmentionable parts of the former town.. there are hostile ugly comments being thrown at him. It’s all weird.
Weird because…I actually wanted to do this.. he beat me to it!
I saw the number of people per weekend going to this town to tour and saw a goldmine. The fear deep in my soul held me back.
But the strange outcry of people anti-hot-dog vendor surprises me a little.
People: The town is over. it’s done.
If you think that the 200+ tourists per weekend is big, it will only get bigger.
As a former resident, I may be alone here, I am not angry someone is selling hot dogs in Centralia Pennsylvania.
They go to space with perfect vision and come back with a loss of acuity.
THE POST:
In 2005, astronaut John Phillips took a break from his work on the International Space Station and looked out the window at Earth. He was about halfway through a mission that had begun in April and would end in October.
When he gazed down at the planet, the Earth was blurry. He couldn’t focus on it clearly. That was strange — his vision had always been 20/20. He wondered: Was his eyesight getting worse?
“I’m not sure if I reported that to the ground,” he said. “I think I didn’t. I thought it would be something that would just go away, and fix itself when I got to Earth.”
It didn’t go away.
During Phillips’ post-flight physical, NASA found that his vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/100 in six months.
This is not a joke (but mostly a story showcasing how the US Women’s Soccer Team gets unfair treatment on a regular basis) ..
A match between the Western New York Flash and Seattle Reign FC of the National Women’s Soccer League on Saturday night was played at Frontier Field, a baseball stadium in Rochester N.Y., that could hold a pitch just 100 yards long and 58 yards wide according to match announcers.
Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Ali Krieger called this “shocking,” “embarrassing” and “unacceptable,” and tweeted at the league’s commissioner, Jeff Plush.
Richards’ performance as Kramer was so frantic that the crew kept extra hinges handy, in case he destroyed a door during one of his character’s manic entrances. It created problems, though, since Richards’ antics made his castmates laugh during filming and break his focus.
Armstrong writes: “When Alexander laughed during a scene . . . Richards’ begged, ‘You can’t, please. You don’t know how hard it is for me.’ (Because the laughter meant they had to reshoot the scene.)”
Because of Richards’ intensity and immersion into the role, his co-stars, writes Armstrong, “didn’t feel like they knew him, even later, after years on the set together.”
And more
Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus — both of whom were concerned early on about the show’s lack of conventional plot lines — had their own problems: Each believed they weren’t getting enough screen time.
As the show became a success, the cast found themselves in strange situations, including a bizarre feud with Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold.
The SECRET LIFE OF PETS is making over $103 million this weekend.
And deservedly so. The secret life of parents: Sometimes we like these movies.
This was the rebound movie for my family this week.
My son, Ayden, had a 105 temp this week and a terrible viral infection that caused one ER visit and another doctor visit … it was just an awful week. By the end, however, a full recovery was made (kids are so quick with this) and we decided Friday to go to see this movie.
There is something about movie theaters that cheers my son up.. and me.. and my wife. After a week of hell and sickness, we needed the rebound movie.
Minus the flu recovery, the movie itself was pretty entertaining.
I’d relay this to you: Parents, take your kids to go see it. You’ll like it too. And your child was sad/sick/depressed over the past week, it’s especially good..
The talk show legend wrote this on Facebook late this week:
Update on me:
I am now home after five days in what must be one of the greatest Hospitals in the World, St Rose. I am not in good shape, so weak I can not dress myself. I want to Publicly thank my Wife Airyn who never left my side and helped every moment day and night and still is. I went through every test known to Man. Had a hole punched in my Lung, MRI, Pet scans, X-Rays, more blood tests then could be counted, was on Morphine the whole time. Had so many IVs running it started to get hard to find a vein. If I make it I will have the best Wife in the World to thank as well as the best Hospital. Can’t really type more now but that is the current situation, more later.
Art
He was in for days for complications of COPD and pneumonia ..
President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected the notion that this week’s stunning violence is a signal that the U.S. has returned to some of the darkest days of its past, saying that as painful as the killings of police and black men were, “America is not as divided as some have suggested”
THE NEW YORK POST printed before the 5th officer perished.. but their cover this morning will be blazing through the early streets of New York City and beyond .. they are calling it a “civil war” and showcasing images of dead police officers next to their squad cars..
Those who slept peacefully through the night and are waking up to news this morning are going to have their souls rocked..
I woke up around 230am as my phone kept buzzing with breaking news events.. I tried to ignore at first until I realized just what those breaking news alerts were saying…
My mind turned into panic about the country.. Obviously I could not fall back to sleep and become glued to news coverage of the Dallas carnage.. I even turned on Coast to Coast AM and listened to George Noory take calls and try to get a mental handle no the mess that is occurring right now..
“I didn’t see anybody else get shot, just the cops. I saw cops getting shot, right there in plain sight. While we was running, like, they just kept shooting,“ Washington said. "We didn’t know where it was coming from”
-
These are the words of
Cortney Washington to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth in the chaos after the Dallas police carnage ..
The shootings occurred as Americans nationwide took to the streets to demand answers over the killings of two black men in two days. They wept, marched and chanted “Black Lives Matter."Crowds gathered outside Gov. Mark Dayton’s residence in St. Paul, Minnesota, miles from the spot where an officer killed Philando Castile in a car on Wednesday.
MORE
Gunshots rang out Thursday night during demonstrations against the shooting deaths of two African-American men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
A total of 11 officers were shot, Dallas police said. A standoff is underway as authorities try to negotiate with a suspect in a downtown garage.It was the deadliest single attack on law enforcement since the 2001 terror attacks, when 72 officers died, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
A total of 10 police officers were shot by snipers during the protests, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. An 11th officer was shot during an exchange of gunfire with one of the suspects, authorities said.
It is unclear at this time how many snipers were actually involved .. no motive has been released..
If you were in Washington DC last night (or many other East Coast cities) you hardly saw the July 4th fireworks shows. It was cloudy, murky, ugly, and rainy as a storm zipped by the major metros just in time for dusk fire shows..
If you watched PBS’ version, you saw something very different: Other fireworks shows from curiously clear skies.
Perhaps it’s only in D.C. where a PBS show can become a scandal.. But it did just that. Even forcing PBS so say sorry..
In the old days before the Internet people may not have questioned this. In the new era where information runs wild, it become an instant obsession of Twitter and social media.
PBS defended itself first, Tweeting:
We showed a combination of the best fireworks from this year and previous years. It was the patriotic thing to do.
When they realized they sounded like Twits they apologized over the social media airwaves for “for any confusion this may have caused”..
The fourth of July upon us.. the fireworks, the nostalgia.. the pride. I have always had mixed emotions no this holiday– more so than any other one as a matter of fact. It’s the birthday of American independence, it’s the festival of a nation united in common causes.. It sure took a long time for some of us to become more in common than others.. We have been through pain and tribulation as a country.
And we will again.
The ending of the WONDER YEARS from 1993 (yes, that long ago) was the same mixture of nostalgia and pain that Americans so often feel as they glare at the bombs bursting in air above their towns every year.. Kevin Arnold didn’t marry Winnie. And his dad had a heart attack. And things didn’t really go the way people thought they would .. or could.
Possibilities often dashed but somehow it all works it.
America has the same feeling sometimes.. The same coupling of pain and laughter, sorry and joy. All at once as well…
And that is just life. American life. Fourth of July 2016.
This being reported by a CBS news dispatch this morning:
SANTA ROSA – A man watching a horror movie was stabbed repeatedly at a Santa Rosa movie theater Wednesday afternoon, CBS San Francisco reports.
Santa Rosa police said the man was watching the movie when someone came up behind him and stabbed him. The victim, a 21-year-old man, remains in critical condition.
Police said the attack appears to be random and unprovoked.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat newspaper reported that the man was watching the movie “The Shallows” when he was attacked.
Santa Rosa police responded to a stabbing at about 4 p.m. inside the Roxy Theater, located at 85 Santa Rosa Ave.
Police said the suspect, identified as a 23-year-old man, stabbed the victim several times and then ran out of the theater toward the Prince Memorial Greenway.
Some witnesses called 911 while other witnesses assisted the victim until emergency crews arrived. The victim was taken to a hospital with multiple life-threatening stab wounds, police said.
Santa Rosa police said witnesses were able to provide officers with a physical description of the suspect and the direction that he fled. officers located the suspect at Prince Memorial Greenway and A Street. He was taken into into custody but his identity has not yet been released.
Flash-forward to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another uptick in extreme horror films, led by two franchises, “Saw” and “Hostel,” that reflected a darkening mood. In the wake of the 2003 Abu Ghraib scandal, mainstream entertainment passed on dealing with the morals and efficacy of torture, aside from the ticking-time-bomb fantasies of “24.” But the “Saw” series, beginning in 2004, steered right into the curve. Over seven straight Halloween weekends, young audiences turned up in large numbers to watch like-aged victims wriggle under elaborate torture devices. And as post-9/11 goodwill eroded into hostility toward U.S. foreign policy overseas, 2005’s “Hostel” imagined the grimmest possible fate for American backpackers in Europe.
All that said, the newest PURGE movie still looks ridiculous.
Gunmen seized a bakery in Dhaka overnight, killing 20 hostages and two officers in a standoff that ended Saturday morning, the Bangladeshi military said.
All the hostages killed were foreigners, the military said.
The attackers used guns, explosive devices and “a lot of sharp domestic weapons,” said Brig. Gen. Naeem Ashfaq Chowdhury of the Bangladesh army. The hostages’ bodies were found after the standoff ended more than 10 hours later.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said 13 hostages were rescued"We were able to save 13 people, we weren’t able to save a few,“ Hasina said at a news conference. Six terrorists were killed and one was captured alive, she said.One Japanese national and two Sri Lankans were among the hostages rescued, officials from both nations said.The rescued Japanese national was having dinner with seven other colleagues from Japan, who are missing, said Koichii Hagiuda, the deputy chief Cabinet secretary.
There is this notion around the world as of late: WE lack civility..
We are told by countless social observers that the death of civility has come and gone.. that we are worse off now because of social media and the internet than ever before .. that our rudeness has been peaking and not stopping.
But is any of that true?
Quite honestly, it would appear that the world is less civil than ever before. The headlines of fishwrappers prove that to us daily, right? The talking heads on the soon to be extinct TEE VEE set bloviate until their red-faced sweaty necks can’t take anymore .. And online? Oh online. Where comment threads on news articles feature insults and anonymous hateful tirades from one person to the next.. Basements across America!! Alive with keyboard bullies hiding behind screens.
So it would then appear that civility, is dead, right? Not so fast, muchacho..
There may be a number of factors at play … The first, and foremost point: The NET is an open forum of things that already existed in real life. It is a continuation of what people act like, just in a net version. Before online criminals were found and prosecuted (easier with the NET now don’t forget) there was still crime. Cyber crime has made identity theft and human trafficking simplier – but it has also given officials a better avenue to catch it. Yes, I know, there is a dark net… Whole other story.
I would argue that civility was never alive.
I would venture to say that if we were truly civil people throughout history, very civil things would have happened. Women were oppressed. Large portions of society were enslaved.. and even up until the latter half of the 20th century, people who were free from bondage were still being hung and tortured in towns across America. Civil for some .. very uncivil for others.
Sometimes civility is not needed. There are fans of Donald Trump who like his for a brashness that has not been seen in American politics in generations. Some equate him to Teddy Roosevelt. Others may say he is Eugene McCarthy with worse hair. Either way, his lack of civility caught on enough to be recognized and now, in fact, his insults have become sport. His Twitter is followed by millions of people anxiously awaiting his next insult and who he will choose to hear his wrath. And for all of those who say they take the high road, if THEIR candidate fought back against Trump in typical Trump style, they would be applauded for taking the stand. After all, how do you deal with someone who lacks civility? Join them.
Around the time of then Al Qaida beheadings being uplaoded and broadcast to the world online (long before ISIS), we were hit with relentless footage. The snooze media didn’t show the most revulting aspects. For that, you were able to just trek online. The information age suddenly turned gruesome and disgusting… footage of various hostages deaths made its way around the net in 2004 and beyond. Nick Berg was the first and most famous, but there were certainly many more after him. Along with that, the news that the American government approved what some term torture made its way to front pages… And then the perverbial excrement hit the fan when we found out soldiers were systmatically invovled with sexual and mental torture of Guantameno detainees. Around the same time, the horror movie SAW franchise became popular and other torture porn flicks made their way onto the cinema.. the first being HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES by Rob Zombie .. The 2000s have featured a cultural array of uncivil media.. Obviously, we would be told, a sign that we are uncivil.
Hold on a minute…
Those alive in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, may recall a video set that made its way around the world in the underground called FACES OF DEATH. The most famous scene probably is one where a group of wealthy elites slowly torture a monkey and eat its brain. But included with the series were other horrid and tragic featurettes that should go unspoken about on this forum. The 1960s and 70s also featured a series of films with depravity. Torture was in then. The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE may have been mostly bloodless, but the idea of torture and uncivil behavior was included.
Congress can’t get along now. But in the past would have fist fights.
There have even been presidents—presidents who are currently on legal tender!!—that killed others in duals. There have been labor unions that used violence to carve a better path to the future.. some of them, like the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania, were hung without due justice and killed without true reason.
If you want to talk uncivil, imagine a world where a “Civil” (really an oxymoron) War is taking place and brother is murdering brother in battlefields across the Eastern seaboard of the United States…
Imagine a system of torture devised to convince you to be a Christian. Or even the most Christian person of all, Jesus himself, being tortured by Roman guards and forced to die on a cross. Even if you don’t buy into Jesus, you can at least acknowledge that the very essence of punishment for years has been horribly uncivil.
Yes, I know the argument. The internet makes it easy to be anonymous. That is true. 4Chan and others have perfected the rapid speed of the net to get their social ways. But more and more people online are using their real names on sign ups for forums. Even Facebook commenting leaves it all ‘out there.’
Oh selfies, too.. that makes us uncivil, right?
Look back in history… people loved when cameras were invented and, while it may have taken 18 minutes to take a photo (no wonder people looked so miserable) people still clearly enjoyed having their photos taken for posterity. Every new generation growing up will judge their parents for the sins they commit. But then they’ll judge the new generation that comes after them just as much as they judged their elders. Judging .. judging… judging.. No solutions are rendered, but instead criticisms are hurled. Nothing changes.
Nothing is civil. And quite frankly. Nothing ever was.
The passage of time.. On a dirt path somewhere near an abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania, my wife and I climbed this.. It was when we first met. There were no trees then. Circa 2004. The earth takes over quickly when the toils of man focus on other absurd things.
Here is what you need to know based off of the few things people actually know: Newsfeeds are going to feature less click bait links.. less “you will never believe what she said” nonsense.. less politics and less divisive uncivil nonsense that clutters the otherwise cluttered newsfeed of the day.
Facebook wants to make it personal. Go back to the roots–family, friends, baby pictures, endless vacation shots from the mountains… You know the drill. 2008 stuff.
I am good with it. I check Facebook much less than before. But when I do, I get annoyed with the stream of news nonsense that is already known.
But there could be an ulterior motive at play here too..
Don’t forget the controversy that Mark Zuckerberg recently found himself in.. The site was stearing readers away from conservative content. But not only that media sin exposed, the bigger was how Facebook’s internal agorithms actually invent news stories and change new cycles–making less important things bigger. Think of it.. how can Chewbacca Mom, for as fun as she was, receive 70 million hits in a few minutes. It’s all in the code, baby. Make it look natural but behind the scenes know it’s not.
I am fine with friends and their status updates.
But what Facebook may have done wrong is wait this long. Maybe after all this time of being force-fed manipulated nonsense-content, people have moved on. Moved on to other platforms.. or just back to reality again? Time will tell.
Friends and families unite!!Facebook won’t bite. But Zuckerberg? He still has that tape overtop of his MIC..
Places like this DO exist.. Some may be alarmed by it becuse, to them, it means the government KNOWS something we don’t. Others may be calmed since we don’t know what the government knows, they are ready. All in your point of view.
But I was amazed that their let this NPR reporter in and that such an in depth report was conducted..
From the NPR story:
A big American flag hangs from the ceiling, and shelves packed with stuff stand so tall that looking up makes me dizzy.
“We have the capability, if something bad happens, that we can intervene in a positive way, but then we don’t ever want to have to do that. So it’s kind of a strange place,” says Burel. “But we would be foolish not to prepare for those events that we could predict might happen.”
The Strategic National Stockpile got its start back in 1999, with a budget of about $50 million. Since then, even though the details aren’t public, it’s clear that it has amassed an incredible array of countermeasures against possible security threats.
The inventory includes millions of doses of vaccines against bioterrorism agents like smallpox, antivirals in case of a deadly flu pandemic, medicines used to treat radiation sickness and burns, chemical agent antidotes, wound care supplies, IV fluids and antibiotics.
That is sort of what would have envisioned .. makes sense to me.. Glad it’s there. Hope we won’t need it.
But … if “we” need it, sufficed to say, not “everyone” will get it.
This article comes from the DAILY BEAST.. It’s weird. The lifestyles of the rich and famous and sex obsessed and just EYES WIDE SHUT kind of creepy..
From the BEAST:
Tickets for most New York parties cost $300 for couples who are Killing Kittens members, a private community for “the world’s discerning sexual elite,” according to its website. The standard entry fee for “single” women is $150, but tickets for festivities in the Hamptons cost $100 more ($400 for couples and $250 for single women)—and with good reason, Lee told me.
Also a hot topic of the orgy conference? Brexit. And how it is effecting their bottom line.
This article comes from the DAILY BEAST.. It’s weird. The lifestyles of the rich and famous and sex obsessed and just EYES WIDE SHUT kind of creepy..
From the BEAST:
Tickets for most New York parties cost $300 for couples who are Killing Kittens members, a private community for “the world’s discerning sexual elite,” according to its website. The standard entry fee for “single” women is $150, but tickets for festivities in the Hamptons cost $100 more ($400 for couples and $250 for single women)—and with good reason, Lee told me.
Also a hot topic of the orgy conference? Brexit. And how it is effecting their bottom line.
Call me a soccer dad. Actually my wife and Iare both soccer parents now. We don’t have the mini van.. we don’t really yet know what we have gotten ourselves into .. we are awash in fundraiser tickets and rule books about coaching.. but we did it. We made the leap.
WE WILL COACH A SOCCER TEAM.
While we are told by all that it’s the pre-K and K level, and that scoring does not matter and don’t even keep it, we know parents will. We know there will be trials and tribulations that come with the game… parents yelling a bit too much, getting a bit too involved in a game that should just be fun for people at a lower level of knowledge. We know that.
And even with the acknowledgement that sometimes it will not be easy to quell our own nerves, it is worth it. Worth it because my son is very enthusiastic knowing mom and dad will be a whistle away..
My wife and I have long believed that it was a good thing to be involved with our son’s education life as much as possible. As he gets older and makes his way through the strange twisted world of Pink Floyd style education at the hands of paid professionals, we will be as involved as we can. PTO meetings.. teacher conferences.. all of that stuff. And yes, soccer.
So we dive deep, head first, into the world of post-5-year-old parenting. There will be scary moments. Last night’s initial soccer meeting was scary for me – but moments that will come with joys and laughter. And memories to last. Don’t get me wrong, though, I will not over romanticize the fact that, at times, we will become tired with 7pm weeknight practices and all day events on Saturdays…
But, dear Watson, this is just the beginning. Along road to hoe indeed.
I started writing a book about parenting four years ago. I wanted to chronicle the first five years of life and how it hits a parent. I did not finish the book–life went so fast I stopped having time to write it. But I am considering finishing it up and making it finalized …
After soccer season I, though… .if Idid not have time before I don’t think I’ve seen anything yet!
The road begins with a tiny soccer jersey and a group of fun kids who have the world ahead of them. The best thing as a coach of such an age group we can do? Encourage them to be kind, laugh, and just enjoy every moment of life.
You know, the things adult forget to get as they age.
150 years later–after the town was formed–a celebration will take place in a nearby town. Centralia does not have a location to house hunderds of people for an event.. Centralia is gone. Wiped off the map by a mine fire that started decades ago. It has become a tourist site, Graffiti Highway is seemingly known worldwide, and horror movies have been based off of the goings on.
And those who have read this website for any given time will know: I was born and raised in the little town that died until my family moved due to the mine fire issue in the 1980s..
This weekend, the town is set to come together once more–the last time for many people in their 70s and 80s to see friends. I expect for a lot of people who I know deep down never got over the death of their town, this will be a nostalgic mix of sadness and laughter..
The summer stopped being fun lately.. Lots of strange roller coaster moments of potential disaster..
Firefighters rescued eight people who got stuck on a roller coaster 100 feet above the ground in Oklahoma city. Rescue is complete at Frontier City with no injuries.
Last month, artist Aaron Chervenak drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada to finally take the love for his smartphone to the next level by marrying it at a small wedding chapel.
The future is coming fast. This may be laughed at.. but in ten years we will be marrying robots .. and a whole new non human rights campaign will be waged..
The Matrix moment.. Ever have one? I did yesterday..
Let me begin by saying this: I recently had a chance to view ‘virtual reality’ in my friend’s headset. It was amazing. I was traveling in a car with Lebron James… I even played basketball with him. The footage inside the headset is unbelievable.. when you take the piece off, your brain so convinced that what it was seeing was real, actually feels a bit bad about being back in the ‘reality’ of this world—you know, the real one?
Yesterday while walking in a hallway at work in the basement level of my building—a location I have seen and traveled to countless times through the years, I had a moment.
A weird moment.. What was floating through my mind was already interesting.. I wondered, as I looked at the monotone colors of the floor and walls, if a retired person I knew came back for a day, how startled she’d be that everything was the same as it was when she left almost a decade ago. And that is when it hit me.. For a brief moment—very brief—the hallway walls became very 3D looking.. the floor looked very, very real. For a moment in time, I felt like I was walking in a virtual reality world, like everything that was “real” was only real virtually..
Yes, indeed. For that brief time—literally seconds of my life—everything was so real and vibrant. Like for the first time in years, my mind noticed I was alive. That things were around me. That or, perhaps, I felt like Truman Burbank from the Truman Show when he discovered that his entire life had been a prop and set for some multiseason television program watched by billions around the world. Of course, I have no delusion of grandeur, I am fully aware that my life has little importance in the big picture scheme of things. But then again, many other reality ‘stars’ lives don’t either but they just don’t realize it.
Anyway, all of that said, it was startling for that time. The Matrix moment, when you finally realize the computer program you’re within … you see the controls, almost. The takeaway, after seeing the virtual reality headset scene, is that the reality of what was in front of me looked so similar and felt the same.
I snapped out of it as quick as I snapped into it. For that moment, that brief time, I was alarmed with how vibrant and almost fake looking the scene in front of me.. And then everything immediatley become dull and flat again. Everything lost that edge, and the portal of awareness I entered in came back to the lifeless walls of depression that office environments to many times exhibit. So now what do I strive for? Another Matrix moment. Perhaps one that lasts longer—the staying power could help me search out more ‘reality’ than what I had just witnessed.
Yes, now, I will be searching for reality. Whatever reality is anyway.
It indeed is a sea change.. Who could have predicted this about 10 years ago.. or heck even five years ago:
U.S. adults spent 10 hours, 39 minutes a day consuming media in the first quarter of 2016. That’s up a full hour from the first quarter of 2015, and it’s thanks to a substantial increase in smartphone and tablet usage, according to Nielsen’s Q1 2016 Total Audience Report.
But for all of these changes, all of this ‘progress,’ are we smarter? More informed? Better off?
You can decide that one.
We just know this: TEEVEEis dead .. long live TEE VEE
Reading this amazing book about autism allied NEOTRIBES by Steve Silberman.. This is my favorite page his far.. I have family with autism who exemplify the descriptions to a tee ..
For those who care or understand, there may soon be an announcement that shreds the old world of information and replaces it with a new one..
“This is by far the most exciting thing that has happened in particle physics over the last three decades. If this hint of new physics is confirmed - something that could happen within just a few weeks, or possibly even within days - it is difficult to state the importance of such a discovery. It would be bigger than the detection of the Higgs boson, which was just confirmation of what was already known. "If the bump is real, we are about to start writing a whole new chapter in the history of fundamental physics. It is impossible to imagine where this could lead.”
The biggest since Higgs? The biggest since Einstein? The biggest ever?
The future is waiting. We are finally catching up.
Love the idea or hate the idea.. We have been talking about it as a future shock possibility for years. A time when robotics have taken over the manufacturing and service economies..
I have a strange and silly notion that the wage floor could actually be quite a positive thing. Maybe that’s the part of me that actually does see glasses half full from time to time..
Imagine a future where your safety net is there.. Where you can produce things you want to? Work where you to? Be who you want to be.. All with a set wage floor.
And where the absence of such a floor wild lead to a revolution, panic on streets, and mass violence and chaos due to an ever changing economic platform that leaves millions (if not more) without work..?
A wage floor vs the ….the possibility .. Which would you prefer?
The park is in my back yard, almost literally..We get there as many times a year as we can. This year, with my son Ayden being 5 and going on 25 in his intelligence, he has finally opened his world up to more there.. The rides. The kfun. The kfanstasy. The kfood? Well he is still a bit picky..
But seriously.. let me just say: Knoebels may be the single happiest, best, and most amazing place on earth.
The little secret 90 years young, tucked away in the mountains of the coal region, is quite possibly the only place on earth where I forget troubles for a bit… where life as it is – out there – is on hold.
You can ride rides. If you want. Play golf. Maybe. Eat food. Whichever.. get soaking wet.. or just drive a slow train into the woods …
Whatever. The floor is yours.
I sort of am half and half… I want to tell the world how amazing Knoebels is. But also , sometimes, just keep it a secret …
But the secret is out.
Knoebels. IT’S THE PLACE TO BE IN THE NEW CENTURY.
There may be a large amount of people who proclaim that Trump cannot win in November. But consider, many of those same people said he would not win the primaries.
In Britain, many voices said that Johnson could not win. And that the Brexit vote would not happen.
See a pattern?
Picture a future state dinner with two men from New York leading their respective nations. Picture them both with intensely bad hair.
The world is going through a monumental sea change in 2016.
James Wan and Peter Safran are producing the ‘Conjuring" spinoff. Miranda Otto has boarded Annabelle 2, New Line’s sequel to its 2014 horror hit.
David Sandberg is directing the spinoff to New Line’s Conjuring franchise that has stewards James Wan and Peter Safran producing.
The script by Gary Dauberman tells of a dollmaker and his wife who, 20 years after the tragic death of their little girl, welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home. Soon, however, the nun and the girls become the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.
The Supreme Court deadlocked Thursday on President Barack Obama’s immigration plan that sought to shield millions living in the U.S. illegally from deportation, effectively killing the plan for the rest of his presidency.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A masked man with a gun and ammunition belt opened fire in a cinema complex in the small western German town of Viernheim, near Frankfurt, injuring between 20 and 50 people and barricaded himself inside, German media reported on Thursday. Bild daily and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that elite police were on their way to the scene.
15-year-old Alabama girl had to be rescued by firefighters after she got her head stuck inside a giant Barney costume in a prank gone wrong.
Darby Risner said she wanted to scare her friends with the oversized Barney head when they came downstairs. She managed to scare her friends, but in an unexpected way.
Risner ended up stuck inside the Barney head, she told WVTM-TV
A good history lesson.. June 21 is the day in history when Schuylkill County Pa saw an enormous and horrible scenario develop.. One that changed history.
The area where this occurred is filled with history .. Today is one of those days.
Let me first say I sort of despise tofu.. I have been delved deep into the ‘veg’ diet for some time.. I have turned it into a lifestyle and am partially vegan–partially turkey and chicken eater, along with occasional fish. I have 1 meat day a week. And even with that meat day, I have been weening myself off more and more without much fanfare. The more you stop eating meat the less you’ll want it or need it.
I tried a low carb KETO diet for about three days. I may end it.. I got the KETOSIS FLU. A weak body and low energy level. I felt much better and healthier eating carbs in moderation with high amounts of vegetables, fruits, and good fats.
That all being said, I have really been trying to like tofu. Tofu, after all, is the perfect substitute. If only it didn’t taste like a wet sponge that has been soaking in dishwater, I may actually appreciate it. I envy those who brag that they can eat it, wet, right from the package. Not even preparation needed.. No, just a big sloppy glob of the nastiest material on earth.
But tonight, I made BBQ tofu in the oven, topped with green onions and hot and sweet peppers. It was edible. My wife enjoyed it more than me. My son turned his head in disgust–but he does that with lots of food.
Tofu.
Soy.. That is the problem.
I hear so many adverse things about soy–stop eating it, it will create breasts in men and increase female producing hormones we are told. But tofu, from what I see, is typically eaten by people awful thin and both men and women who seem to not incur the wrath of large breasts from too much estrogen..
I am really really trying to like tofu. I know eventually, say maybe a year from now, I will look back at this post and laugh at how I did not like the ‘Soylent Green’ of the vegan lifestyle. Or not.. Maybe I will just stick to dousing the product in endless amounts of undoubtedly high MSG-leveled BBQ sauce. The only good news is that the BBQ was high fructose free!
But not soy free, ironically. Nor was the plate.. Lurking below the tasty goodness of GMO free barbecue? Flaccid, nasty, gross tofu. Getting to know it is the toughest thing one can do.
Valvani, 44, turned himself in to authorities last week. He was charged with netting about $25 million for an unnamed investment firm using inside information on the pending approval of a generic drug. Valvani had pleaded not guilty.
This case may truly be a perfectly explainable suicide. But it also coincides with a rash of really bizarre banker deaths and suicides over the past 24 or so months. Really weird and creepy stuff.. Big money stuff I assume.
Guns and jewelry. Jewelry, of course, has no waiting period.
Investigators are combing through leads to figure out what exactly Omar Mateen decided to make the purchase.
From the report,
According to ABC News, Mateen made the purchase at a Kay Jewelers on June 6 in Jenson Beach. The store is located near the Lotus Gun Shop where Mateen was turned away after seeking to buy bulk ammunition and heavy-duty body armor.
Signet, which owns the jewelry store, didn’t confirm Mateen’s purchase but did say they were “working closely” with authorities in their investigation into the shooter.
There is no simple answer. The facts run deeper than what we will ever no. Shades of gray abound in this case..
To say that drones and technology are changing everything is STILL an understatement..
This from NBC NEWS:
Europe’s abortion battle was waged in the sky Tuesday as activists used a drone to deliver pills to women in Northern Ireland.
Two women took the pills after the aircraft made the short flight from the Republic of Ireland across the border to land at Northern Ireland’s Narrow Waters Castle. Police were on hand but did not intervene.
The groups who organized the pill drop off are pro-abortion that say anti-abortion laws in Northern Ireland are too harsh.. Only allowing pregnancy termination under certain criteria.
The abortion debate aside, I think this is presenting an even larger picture of the coming future. Drone everything. But.. The future is now. Obviously.
For years I have been laughed at by friends and co workers for placing tape or papers overtop of my computer MIC and camera.. (Tough to do with a smart phone unfortunately, but I try to leave it in other rooms when I have reasons to not be heard or recorded) … IF you closely study yesterday’s Mark Zuckerberg photo celebrating INSTAGRAM, you may notice the king of social media does the same thing. Tape overtop of the camera.. Overtop of the MIC..
He knows the secrets that only a few do. Your computer listens to you. It has been listening to you for years–software from Google was an early offender of privacy rights. Your computer and smart phone are capable of listening to your every conversation.. Recording your movement. And even snapping a photo of you when you don’t want to be seen.
All for Big Brother? Maybe. Some theories claim that is true. Others say the actual nefarious purpose is for advertisers to score big dollars.
But some say it’s to teach us. To school us. To prepare us. Preparation for a time when nothing is sacred and nothing is secret. When your ever move is known and your every known movement is stored …
Except for ZUCK, who seemingly is off the grid despite controlling it.
Twitter has launched a standalone app for influential Twitter users where they can only see the analytical performance of their tweets, meaning they won’t see “abusive” responses from “normal” users. The app, called Engage, will only show users the most important interactions they have on Twitter, mentions from users who are verified, and an “understand” tab that provides users with data analysis of their performance on the site.
The latest and final DON’T HUG ME I’M SCARED has finally been released.. And I have some thoughts about it. I plan on writing more after a few more viewings.
But for fans of the series, you really need to watch this. It sort of explains it all.. The damages of what media can do.. The evil forces behind the scenes.. The ways that people can be manipulated .. The ways that so many in society can be hurt by the whole process of life..
Give the video a whirl.. See what you think. I will have some more thoughts once I contemplate them.
But it’s clear that as June 19 moves to June 20, the importance of the entire DON’T HUG ME I’M SCARED series is abundantly evident.
This news in from the great state of Iowa.. Strange encounters with people either dressed in black or the MIBs.. You be the judge.
The Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office has taken notice, posting Monday on its Facebook page, “We have had several reports of ‘men dressed in black’ entering the roadway in rural Muscatine County.” Several people have told KWQC that these same individuals have been spotted walking across homeowners’ yards, although the MCSO Facebook post does not mention sightings on private property. The MCSO is now asking anyone who encounters the individuals to “call 911 immediately.”
The story is now gathering national and global attention, being linked in countless blogs and pages..
I love this article from the Chicago TRIBUNE.. The money quote:
But still the recent pileup of other rare events to explain - some of them, such as the transit of Venus, much rarer than a solstice full moon. Another facet of the improbability principle can help. It’s called “law of combinations,” which Hand illustrates with a classic puzzle regarding shared birthdays: What are the odds that two people will share a birthday in a group of 23? If you’re in the group, the chance that one of the other 22 people will share your birthday is low, but the odds that any pair will match is better than even.
Likewise, there are many ways that different combinations of the sun, moon and planets can align in some interesting pattern. Planetary alignments are always unique, said astronomer Alan MacRobert, an editor at Sky and Telescope. “Whenever there’s an alignment of planets you’ll read that it has not happened in 20,000 years,” he said. But that’s the case of every night sky. “There are an infinite number of configurations of the solar system and every one is rare,” MacRobert observed. The universe is superabundant with possibilities, and that’s part of what makes astronomy fun.
The only constant is change. And lately, weird occurrences.
