Tracker

WHO: COVID Still An Emergency But Nearing 'Inflection' Point GENEVA (AP) — The coronavirus remains a global health emergency, the World Health Organization chief said Monday, after a key advisory panel found the pandemic may be nearing an “inflexion point” where higher levels of immunity can lower virus-related deaths. Speaking at the opening of WHO’s annual executive board meeting, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “there is no doubt that we’re in a far better situation now” than a year ago — when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was at its peak. But Tedros warned that in the last eight weeks, at least 170,000 people have died around the world in connection with the coronavirus. He called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against “misinformation” about the pandemic. “We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce hospitalizations and deaths to the lowest possible level,” he said. Tedros’ comments came moments after WHO released findings of its emergency committee on the pandemic which reported that some 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered — with nearly 90% of health workers and more than four in five people over 60 years of age having completed the first series of jabs. “The committee acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflexion point,” WHO said in a statement. Higher levels of immunity worldwide through vaccination or infection “may limit the impact” of the virus that causes COVID-19 on “morbidity and mortality,” the committee said.

Answer: the Riders will probably be interested. Any port in a storm.

History says that its only a matter of time until a player shaves or throws a game. It has happened before and thus will happen again. All you need is a player (typically a star) who has run into financial distress and an entity with enough vested interest in the game outcome and enough money to seduce that player. People are people and money and ego are always in play.

Loved him in Fenster and Dickens.

Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’ This past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously correlated even if they are separated by large distances. But as weird as the phenomenon appears, why is such an old idea still worth the most prestigious prize in physics? Coincidentally, just a few weeks before the new Nobel laureates were honored in Stockholm, a different team of distinguished scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google reported that they had run a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can work like a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel realized in this recent experiment exists only in a 2-dimensional toy universe, it could constitute a breakthrough for future research at the forefront of physics. But why is entanglement related to space and time? And how can it be important for future physics breakthroughs? Properly understood, entanglement implies that the universe is “monistic”, as philosophers call it, that on the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is part of a single, unified whole. It is a defining property of quantum mechanics that its underlying reality is described in terms of waves, and a monistic universe would require a universal function. Already decades ago, researchers such as Hugh Everett and Dieter Zeh showed how our daily-life reality can emerge out of such a universal quantum-mechanical description. But only now are researchers such as Leonard Susskind or Sean Carroll developing ideas on how this hidden quantum reality might explain not only matter but also the fabric of space and time. Entanglement is much more than just another weird quantum phenomenon. It is the acting principle behind both why quantum mechanics merges the world into one and why we experience this fundamental unity as many separate objects. At the same time, entanglement is the reason why we seem to live in a classical reality. It is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Entanglement applies to objects comprising two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle that “everything that can happen actually happens” is applied to such composed objects. Accordingly, an entangled state is the superposition of all possible combinations that the components of a composed object can be in to produce the same overall result. It is again the wavy nature of the quantum domain that can help to illustrate how entanglement actually works. Picture a perfectly calm, glassy sea on a windless day. Now ask yourself, how can such a plane be produced by overlaying two individual wave patterns? One possibility is that superimposing two completely flat surfaces results again in a completely level outcome. But another possibility that might produce a flat surface is if two identical wave patterns shifted by half an oscillation cycle were to be superimposed on one another, so that the wave crests of one pattern annihilate the wave troughs of the other one and vice versa. If we just observed the glassy ocean, regarding it as the result of two swells combined, there would be no way for us to find out about the patterns of the individual swells. What sounds perfectly ordinary when we talk about waves has the most bizarre consequences when applied to competing realities. If your neighbor told you she had two cats, one live cat and a dead one, this would imply that either the first cat or the second one is dead and that the remaining cat, respectively, is alive—it would be a strange and morbid way of describing one’s pets, and you may not know which one of them is the lucky one, but you would get the neighbor’s drift. Not so in the quantum world. In quantum mechanics, the very same statement implies that the two cats are merged in a superposition of cases, including the first cat being alive and the second one dead and the first cat being dead while the second one lives, but also possibilities where both cats are half alive and half dead, or the first cat is one-third alive, while the second feline adds the missing two-thirds of life. In a quantum pair of cats, the fates and conditions of the individual animals get dissolved entirely in the state of the whole. Likewise, in a quantum universe, there are no individual objects. All that exists is merged into a single “One.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-more-physicists-are-starting-to-think-space-and-time-are-illusions?ref=home

Inside The Online Community Where Home-Schoolers Learn How To Turn Their Kids Into ‘Wonderful Nazis’ On Nov. 5, 2021, a married couple calling themselves “Mr. and Mrs. Saxon” appeared on the neo-Nazi podcast “Achtung Amerikaner” to plug a new project: a social media channel dedicated to helping American parents home-school their children. “We are so deeply invested into making sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi,” Mrs. Saxon told the podcast’s host. “And by home-schooling, we’re going to get that done.” The Saxons said they launched the “Dissident Homeschool” channel on Telegram after years of searching for and developing “Nazi-approved material” for their own home-schooled children — material they were eager to share. The Dissident Homeschool channel — which now has nearly 2,500 subscribers — is replete with this material, including ready-made lesson plans authored by the Saxons on various subjects, like Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee (a “grand role model for young, white men”) and Martin Luther King Jr. (“the antithesis of our civilization and our people”). There are copywork assignments available for parents to print out, so that their children can learn cursive by writing out quotes from Adolf Hitler. There are recommended reading lists with bits of advice like “do not give them Jewish media content,” and there are tips for ensuring that home-schooling parents are in “full compliance with the law” so that “the state” doesn’t interfere. The Saxons also frequently update their followers on their progress home-schooling their own children. In one since-deleted post to Telegram, they posted an audio message of their kids shouting “Sieg Heil” — the German phrase for “hail victory” that was used by the Nazis. Over the past year, the Dissident Homeschool channel has become a community for like-minded fascists who see home schooling as integral to whites wresting control of America. The Saxons created this community while hiding behind a fake last name, but HuffPost has reviewed evidence indicating they are Logan and Katja Lawrence of Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Logan, until earlier this week, worked for his family’s insurance company while Katja taught the kids at home. The Anonymous Comrades Collective, a group of anti-fascist researchers, first uncovered evidence suggesting the Lawrences are behind Dissident Homeschool. HuffPost has verified the collective’s research. The Lawrences did not respond to repeated requests for comment made via phone calls, text messages and emails. A HuffPost reporter also left a message in the Dissident Homeschool channel asking Mr. and Mrs. Saxon for comment about the Anonymous Comrades Collective’s research. That message was immediately deleted by the channel’s administrators, who then disabled the channel’s comment and chat functions. A short time later, Katja Lawrence deleted her Facebook page. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/home-school-nazis-telegram-dissident-saxon_n_63d596c4e4b01a43638e6a0a

I understand the confusion and frustration of all those who cannot understand Garland's glacial pursuit of Trump and his co-conspirators. However, from where I stand (metaphorically) , I perceive that America is teetering on the edge of yet another civil war, and Trump has to be convicted on the basis of as close to irrefutable evidence as humanly possible. Trump's thralls will never accept any evidence, no matter how blatantly culpable he is shown to be, but there are some probably semi-open to accepting it. That is the audience the process theatre is playing to. According to what I learned in sociology, there is a certain percentage that , when reached by violent dissidents, becomes the threshold of civil war. There are LOT of potentially violent, armed extremists in the US with differing perceived grievances but with equally similar willingness to resort to violence to gain their ends. Trump is their poster boy and the icon behind which the "Christian" right, anti-vaxxers, racists, fascists and conspiratory-believers could potentially unite. They would be at each other's throats in no time, but would do a lot of damage while together and probably plunge the US into marital law and authoritarian rule.

How Reagan Convinced Himself He Didn’t Sell Arms for Hostages Shocking news about secret arms-for-hostage deals rocked Washing­ton in late 1986. The first hint came with a White House announcement on November 2, that David Jacobsen, an American held hostage in Lebanon by Iranian-directed Islamic forces, had been released. As Secretary of State George Shultz read a draft White House statement about the development, he noted that it referred to freed “hostages,” with the “s” crossed out. That told him that the White House had expected Jacobsen would not be alone. Shultz suspected that the news meant that clandestine White House efforts to free captive Americans in the Middle East by send­ing arms via Israel to Iran might be responsible. He had first heard about the possibility in mid-1985. Within a few weeks, the dimensions of the story expanded exponen­tially with word that some Iranian payments for American arms had been secretly diverted to the rebel Contra forces in Nicaragua that Washington hoped would topple the leftist Sandinista regime. The funding was in clear violation of a congressional cutoff of aid to the Contras. Overnight, the affair, quickly dubbed the Iran-Contra scandal, engulfed the White House. Shultz realized that President Ronald Reagan faced an explosive crisis similar to Watergate that might upend his presidency. The fiasco staggered Shultz. It exposed his own failure to stop the arms-for-hostage dealing at several critical moments when he heard about pieces of it, objected to it but stopped short of forcefully intervening. He had delib­erately kept his distance, telling the White House officials who managed the arms shipments to Iran that he did not want to know the details. The scandal also forced Shultz to face up to Reagan’s weaknesses as president, for the affair, at its core, was a colossal blunder. As Shultz confronted the issue, he struggled mightily to remain loyal to Reagan while simultaneously protecting his own reputation and legacy. In doing so, he barely escaped indictment for obstruction of justice.

I accept e-transfers.

Its a good thing, your punctuation was spot-on or that would have been a sexual advance.

Trump calls for wild education overhaul by 'certifying' patriotic teachers and allowing parents to elect school principals Former President Donald Trump has launched a new attack on education with his proposed plan of action to revise how public school administrators and faculty members are put in place. In a new presidential campaign ad, Trump expressed a need for more "patriotic teachers" as he called for the termination of school faculty members he described as “radicals.” According to Trump, there should also be a “direct election” process for school principals. Under that election system, students’ parents would have the right to appoint principals. Trump is also pushing for the defunding of schools that follow a curriculum that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.” "Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs," Trump said in the clip, as he went on to share his proposed plan. "Here is my plan to save American education restore power to American parents," he began. "First, we will cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political critical content onto our children. We're not going to allow it to happen. Next, I will direct the Department of Justice and Education to open civil rights investigations into any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination." He continued, "That includes discrimination against Asian Americans. The Marxism being preached in our schools is also totally hostile to Judeo-Christian teachings, and in many ways it's resembling an established new religion. Can't let that happen. For this reason, my administration will aggressively pursue potential violations of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. That's very simple." Although Trump has expressed concern about discrimination, he has actually made repeated discriminatory remarks, namely anti-Asian slurs that have been leveled at Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) wife, Elaine Chao, who also served as former U.S. secretary of transportation under his administration.

Even a blind squirrel will find the occasional acorn.

It has been said that people get the government they deserve. If Albertans are stoopid enough to re-elect her and her government, they will have established themselves as Alabama north- Albertabama.

Sadly, it has worked for them all too often.

The Cons have used this tactic since the Filmon government saw that it was going to lose the pending election: throw money away left and right while cutting tax revenue. That way the incoming NDP had to raise taxes and delay social initiatives while the PCs cried out in anguish that they tried to warn people about the reckless, irresponsible socialists ruining the province.

I think you are giving Stefansson and Co. too much credit.

Former County GOP Chairman Faces Child Pornography Charges -KELOLAND News Rocky Hayes, who previously served as chairman of the GOP in Jones County, South Dakota, has been charged with three counts of child pornography possession, The Argus Leader reported Thursday. The 47-year-old is facing accusations of have child sexual assault material in his Dropbox account, and he will have an initial court hearing on Feb. 9, according to court documents. Hayes was listed as the Jones County GOP chairman as recently as 2020 but his name has since been removed from the South Dakota Republican Party website. It’s unclear when he was removed as chairman. Hayes runs a graphic design and communications firm; a spokesperson for the South Dakota GOP told the Leader that the party’s relationship with both Hayes and his business were “terminated.” (And he didn't even have a pizza restaurant)

Putin’s Pre-Emptive Strike Plan Exposed in Satellite Photos An analysis of satellite imagery shared exclusively with The Daily Beast provides a snapshot of Moscow’s “worried” response to a major offensive expected this year. Russia is building up a network of fortifications and trenches along the front in Ukraine, in apparent anticipation of a new round of heavy fighting, according to satellite imagery analysis shared exclusively with The Daily Beast. The analysis from Brady Africk, an open-source intelligence analyst, shows that Russia is building up fortifications all along the front in Luhansk, from the Russian border down to Donetsk, and throughout Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The satellite imagery indicates that Moscow may be on edge about a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks—or may even be preparing its own offensive to try to seize more Ukrainian land, nearly one year into the war. “They’re trying to basically consolidate their gains and keep the parts that they’ve held on to thus far,” Africk, who works at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Beast. “I think it’s definitely both a message to soldiers in Ukraine, and to everyone who might be watching, that they’re going to at least try and stay.” The recent buildup of fortifications—depicted in an interactive map created by Africk—could indicate Russian forces are worried about losing their hold in those regions, according to William Courtney, a former special assistant to the president for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. “They are expecting counteroffensives, and they know that the West is going to be providing more and better equipment. They know that the West has already provided a lot of artillery which can be used to, if you will, blast away through fortifications,” Courtney told The Daily Beast. “The Russian purpose is to slow Ukraine down and try to stop it where it can,” said Courtney, now an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. An analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggests Russia is preparing to be on defense as well. “Russian forces are clearly concerned to some degree about Ukrainian advances and they want to be able to secure these lines in case of Ukrainian advances,” Karolina Hird, Russia Analyst at the ISW, told The Daily Beast. “The type of defensive fortifications we’re seeing do suggest defensive intent.” Russia is currently using the cold winter months to regroup, retrain, re-equip, and prepare for next steps in the war after a series of losses to Ukrainian forces last year, according to a White House National Security Council assessment shared with reporters this week. The United States, meanwhile, is helping Ukraine prepare to go on the counteroffensive against Russia, according to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

Simplifies my Christmas shopping!

If anyone wants an insight into the US conspiracy movement, watch "Shadowland" on the history channel.