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ENGINEER BUILDS VOICE-CONTROLLED EXOSKELETON SO HIS SON COULD WALK "DAD, YOU'RE A ROBOTICS ENGINEER, WHY DON'T YOU MAKE A ROBOT THAT WOULD ALLOW US TO WALK?" In order to help his son get around without a wheelchair, a French robotics engineer named Jean-Louis Constanza built a robotic exoskeleton that lets his son stand up and walk around by issuing voice commands. “My son Oscar, one day he said to me ‘Dad, you’re a robotics engineer, why don’t you make a robot that would allow us to walk?'” Constanza sad in a video interview with the BBC, as translated by the publication. So he did just that, cofounding the company Wandercraft to develop and manufacture assistive robotic devices that can grant extra mobility to wheelchair users, according to the BBC. For now, the exoskeleton is too heavy and clunky for consumer use, but the company has sold a few dozen to hospitals in multiple countries at about $178,000 each. All his son, Oscar, has to do is strap in to the exoskeleton while sitting then say “Robot, stand up” and the machine will help him stand and balance as he walks. While there are plenty of robot exoskeletons out there, the voice input is a useful trick for making sure the machine actually does what it’s supposed to at the right time. “This is new for me because before to walk, I’ve always had assistance,” Oscar Constanza told the BBC. “And now I no longer need assistance so I feel independent.”

Nature's way of removing the unfit from the gene pool.

Trump's lackeys are falling all over themselves trying to deflect the damning testimony by simultaneously blaming Pelosi and minimizing the horror of the insurrection. They are in near panic because the police testimony is very personal and very credible, so it is difficult to discredit.

7 Key Takeaways From The First Day Of Jan. 6 Commission Testimony Tuesday marked the first meeting of the House select committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with hours of emotional testimony about the mob of angry Donald Trump supporters who stormed the building and terrorized its occupants. Four law enforcement officers delivered prepared remarks before the panel and answered questions: U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, and Metropolitan Police officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges. Each was on the front lines of the attack and spoke of injuries they sustained both mentally and physically. Each also showed varying degrees of emotion on the stand ― whether they were clearly holding back tears or reaching for a tissue. Here are seven key takeaways from the hearing. Dunn described being called a ‘n****r’ by a crowd of rioters. He wasn’t alone in experiencing racist abuse. As more and more Trump supporters streamed through the building, Dunn, who is Black, recalled telling them they should turn around. “In response, they yelled, ‘No, man, this is our house. President Trump invited us here. We’re here to stop the steal. Joe Biden is not the president. Nobody voted for Joe Biden,’” Dunn said. He continued: “I do my best to keep politics out of my job, but in this circumstance, I responded, ‘Well, I voted for Joe Biden, does my vote not count? Am I nobody?’ That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys? This n****r voted for Joe Biden.’ Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, ‘Boo! ******* n****r!’” “No one had ever, ever called me a n****r while wearing the uniform of a Capitol police officer,” Dunn testified. In Dunn’s telling, another Black officer he served with ― who was in his 40s ― had never been called that word to his face at any point in his life until the afternoon of Jan. 6. After heavily armed law enforcement arrived at the scene and cleared the building of rioters, Dunn said he sat and spoke with some other officers of color. He broke down. Officers suspected that some of the Trump supporters were armed with guns. “We scanned the crowd, but these people, they know how to conceal their weapons,” Hodges said. “If it’s in a backpack, there’s not much you can do.” Dunn also testified that “any reasonable police officer” would assume some of the rioters had guns based on the imprint beneath the clothing at their hips. The officers had been prepared for peaceful demonstrations outside the Capitol, where members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were formally certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. But Dunn described a screenshot he received in a text from a friend the morning of Jan. 6 that detailed the Trump supporters’ violent plans for the day. The screenshot read, “among other things, that ‘Trump has given us marching orders,’ and to ‘keep your guns hidden,’” Dunn said. It also “indicated there would be ‘time to arm up.’” Several of the officers testified that they believed they might die. One man attempted to gouge out Hodges’ right eye, but the officer managed to extract himself from the man’s grip before any “permanent damage” was done, he said. Some weren’t as lucky: At least one officer lost an eye in the riot. As they battered law enforcement, hordes of Trump supporters accused the officers of being traitors to their country. Hodges referred to them as “the terrorists” throughout his congressional testimony. Asked why he used that term while some Republicans had called the rioters mere “tourists,” Hodges quipped: “Well, if that’s what American tourists are like, I can see why foreign countries don’t like American tourists.” He feared that he would, “at worst, be dragged down by the crowd and lynched” that afternoon. Fanone said he believed there was “a very good chance I would be torn apart or shot with my own weapon” during the melee. Members of the crowd accused Gonell of choosing his “paycheck” over loyalty to the United States ― a country the Dominican-born officer had grown up revering. “To be honest,” he said, “I did not recognize my fellow citizens who stormed the Capitol on January 6 or the United States that they claimed to represent.” Responding to Trump’s claim that the rioters were “hugging and kissing” the law enforcement officers at the scene, Gonell snapped: “I’m still recovering from those ‘hugs and kisses’ that day.” Dunn led a moment of silence at the hearing at the start of his remarks. Sicknick died of what a medical examiner called natural causes after the riot, where he was sprayed with chemical irritants. He later collapsed. U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that the medical examiner’s ruling “does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.” The events have taken an immense mental health toll on sworn officers in the nation’s capital. Sicknick was one of five people to die either during the riot or in its immediate aftermath. Two police officers who were at the Capitol that day died of suicide afterward. Others have chosen simply to leave: Gonell testified that “many” of his colleagues in uniform “have quietly resigned” from the force in the last six months. Dunn encouraged his colleagues in his prepared statement not to be ashamed of seeking professional mental health care, as he has. Gonell called out the discrepancy between Jan. 6 and the law enforcement response to racial justice protests. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Gonell said, he and his colleagues had “all the support we needed and more.” Yet only a smattering of officers were assigned to guard the Capitol on Jan. 6. They were left fighting for their lives for hours as higher authorities dragged their feet on deploying backup. “Why the different response?” Gonell asked. Fanone let his anger show, hitting the table and calling right-wing lawmakers’ actions ‘disgraceful.’ As shown in clips from his body-worn camera and other video footage, Fanone was dragged into the crowd at one point in the rioting, where he was beaten and electrocuted. Following the attack, a doctor told him at the hospital that he had survived a heart attack. Later, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. But the ordeal was made all the more difficult, he said, when some politicians and right-wing pundits decided to downplay the damage of Jan. 6. “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them, and the people in this room. But too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell wasn’t actually that bad,” Fanone said. “The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful!” he said, ending on a shout as he slammed his hand down on the table. “My law enforcement career prepared me to cope with some of the aspects of this experience,” he said. “Being an officer you know your life is at risk whenever you walk out the door, even if you don’t expect other law-abiding citizens to take up arms against you. But nothing — truly nothing — has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day, and in doing so, betray their oath of office.” 7 Key Takeaways From The First Day Of Jan. 6 Commission Testimony | HuffPost

I am waiting/hoping for Meredith to get onto the field and awe the coaches. His story is such that I hope he not only makes the starting lineup but stars and settles into Winnipeg with his family. He ought to be a great addition to our community.

Which parts of anatomies are being kissed?

The four horsemen of the Idiotpocolipse with the collective smarts of an avocado.

time for him to face the music.

Damn. Read this at 9:30 and now I want pizza. Santa Lucia pizza in particular.

And this is what happens when you doze through science class because you think you will never need to know this stuff.

He was always a bit batty and spent most of his time hanging around with a child.

New report exposes a shady campaign to pay online influencers to spread lies about vaccines No matter how high the COVID-19 death count climbs — according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, it has passed 4.1 million worldwide — anti-vaxxers in different parts of the world are trying to discourage people from getting vaccinated. Some of these efforts include outright disinformation. But in some cases, internet users will aggressively push back against anti-vaxxer lies. According to BBC reporters Charlie Haynes and Flora Carmichael, two such internet users in Europe are German journalist and YouTuber Mirko Drotschmann and French YouTuber Léo Grasset, who reports on science. Hayes and Carmichael explain, "An influencer marketing agency called Fazze offered to pay (Drotschmann) to promote what it said was leaked information that suggested the death rate among people who had the Pfizer vaccine was almost three times that of the AstraZeneca jab. The information provided wasn't true. It quickly became apparent to Mirko that he was being asked to spread disinformation to undermine public confidence in vaccines in the middle of a pandemic." Meanwhile, in France, the BBC reporters add, Grasset "received a similar offer" from Fazze and was offered 2000 euros "if he would take part." "Both Léo and Mirko were appalled by the false claims," according to Hayes and Carmichael. "They pretended to be interested in order to try to find out more and were provided with detailed instructions about what they should say in their videos…. Fazze's brief told influencers to share a story in French newspaper Le Monde about a data leak from the European Medicines Agency. The story was genuine, but didn't include anything about vaccine deaths. But in this context, it would give the false impression that the death rate statistics had come from the leak." New report exposes a shady campaign to pay online influencers to spread lies about vaccines - Alternet.org

Chacun a son gout.

The Olympics have lost their attraction for me. The whole enterprise is a private corporation run by Europe's former and current nobility, which is a minor complaint. The real gripe for me is the massive bribes paid to the Olympic organizers by the cities, states and countries in order for them to host the games and almost always lose massive amounts of money, which have to be borne by the taxpayers. The corporate sponsors ante up massive amounts of money and have large numbers of prime seats reserved for them and these seats are often empty, which is why the stands are rarely shown on TV. And lastly, the PEDS abuse is rampant and the masking of these is so sophisticated that they are rarely detected. Moreover, the Olympic organizers are often complicit in covering up the abuse, as the revelation of the extent of the abuse by the stars would tarnish the Olympic image and their income.

Michael Flynn Boasts Maybe He’ll ‘Find Somebody In Washington’ With His New AR-15 The disgraced Trump national security adviser “should be recalled to active duty and court-martialed,” said the wife of whistleblower Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Disgraced Trump administration figure Michael Flynn boasted on Sunday that maybe he’ll “find somebody” in Washington with a new assault-style rifle a California church gave him. Flynn, the former national security adviser pardoned by Donald Trump for lying about his Russia contacts, made the jaw-dropping remark after he was gifted the gun at the “Church of Glad Tidings” in Yuba City, California. Church members roared with laughter and clapped when Flynn suggested hunting humans in the nation’s capital. “We were trying to come up with a rifle that we thought was appropriate for a general, so we went with an old-school Woodland camouflage ... one of our top-quality guns,” said Jason Parker, who works for a gun company. The weapon he presented to Flynn appeared to be a Woodland Camo AR-15. A smiling Flynn responded loudly: “Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C." Michael Flynn Boasts Maybe He'll 'Find Somebody In Washington' With His New AR-15 | HuffPost

Anti-vaxxer warns doctors and nurses of execution by hanging for administering life-saving vaccines The conspiracy theories promoted by anti-vaccine activists reached a fevered pitch during a Saturday rally. Conspiracy theorist Kate Shemirani suggested there could be Nuremberg-like trials where doctors and nurses would be hanged for administering the coronavirus vaccines, which promoted one British doctor to alert London's Metropolitan Police Service. Conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer and struck-off nurse Kate Shemirani is here literally threatening NHS doctors with… https://t.co/DDBZRVUX5z — Rachel Clarke (@Rachel Clarke) 16271 Anti-vaxxer warns doctors and nurses of execution by hanging for administering life-saving vaccines - Alternet.org

Not time to break out the champagne yet, but very, very good news.

No big deal. We've had mooning around for along time.

The prevailing thinking in the alt-right camp is that anyone who does not get vaccinated but still gets sick had weak genes and needed to be weeded out anyways. If this sounds suspiciously similar to Nazi eugenics, you are correct. After all the Trumpenfeurher gos sick and recovered miraculously all by himself, right? He had der korrect ubergenes, at least by his thinking. All those doctors were just hovering around him in awe as he healed himself.

Take a cold shower.

‘I’m at Breaking Point’: Radio Host Who Regrets Mocking Vaccines Is ‘Fighting for His Life’ A conservative radio host in Tennessee, who repeatedly spread misinformation about coronavirus and mocked vaccines but changed his tune after falling seriously ill, was still fighting for his life on Saturday, weeks after contracting the virus. Phil Valentine, who hosts a talk radio show on 99.7 WWTN-FM in Nashville, is hospitalized and is receiving supplemental oxygen while in critical care battling COVID pneumonia, his family said in a statement Friday. “They say he is still not getting well.. please pray for me,” his wife, Susan, told the station on Saturday morning, according to a tweet. “I am at a breaking point.” On Saturday afternoon, Julia Campbell Shirley declined to comment on her son-in-law’s condition before hurriedly telling The Daily Beast: “I certainly think people should be vaccinated.” Valentine had repeatedly downplayed COVID-19 and dismissed guidance from health officials about the seriousness of the virus and the importance of getting vaccinated. ‘I’m at Breaking Point’: Phil Valentine, Radio Host Who Regrets Mocking Vaccines, Is ‘Fighting for His Life’ (thedailybeast.com) Japanese Pharma Firm Joins Pfizer and Merck in Race to Develop COVID Pill Cure Reuters The race to develop an oral cure for COVID-19 has just heated up with the announcement that Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi has started human trials for its once-a day tablet meant to neutralize the virus in patients. Pfizer and Merck are already in later-stage trials for similar treatments, which are presently missing as a tool to battle the pandemic. Pfizer’s twice-daily treatment could be available by the end of 2021. The advent of a reliable cure would be especially important for those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons, say medical experts.

So much for the macho Man.

Not just dumb, but a special kind of stooopid.

You sure that wasn't Alberta?