toucana

Another way of combatting conspiracy theories is to get the principal purveyors fired from their cosy jobs as prime-time TV anchors on far-right channels, by suing the media corporations that employ them for $1.6 billion in damages for defamation. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/24/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news/index.html Fox News have just announced that both Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino have already been terminated. More to follow as they say.

New Twitter owner changes blue tick verification policy yet again...

A reduced 13 x 13 Go board has around 10>80 possible legal stone positions available: about the same as the number of atoms in the observable universe. A full size 19 x 19 Go board of the type shown in the film clip from Pi (above) has around 10>90 *more* available positions i.e. c. 10>170 possible legal patterns. http://norvig.com/atoms.html

One thing I have noticed, especially in online diatribes by QAnon believers explaining their ‘research’, is a tendency to rely on a mechanism known as Clanging, or Clang Association. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanging Also known as Glossomania or Association Chaining, this is generally regarded as a symptom of a mental disorder often found in patients with Schizophrenic and Bipolar illnesses. It is defined as: “repeating chains of words that are associated semantically or phonetically with no relevant context” This may include compulsive rhyming or alliteration, without apparent logical connection between words. The speaker becomes distracted by homophones, puns, and word-plays in their own utterances, and they fly off down tangential rabbit-holes that take them further and further from their intended topic with each sentence. One example that comes to mind is the incident in March 2021 when a large supertanker collided with the bank of the Suez Canal and blocked it for almost a week. The stranded supertanker was called Ever Given, but it had the name of a Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen painted in large letters on its side. The latter happened to be the Secret Service codename for Hillary Clinton when she was First lady. QAnon believers were wildly triggered when they discovered that this supertanker’s call-sign was H3RC, which was close enough to Clinton’s own initials HRC for them to make a completely spurious clang association. In no time at all, online services such as Telegram and Gab were carrying extensive QAnon threads alleging that the Ever Given was full of child sex-slaves that were part of a dastardly world-wide ‘Deep State’ plot directed by Hillary Clinton in person. The QAnon believers also found a photo of the female captain of the stricken ship who in their opinion bore a slight facial resemblance to Monica Lewinsky - which of course provided them with ‘conclusive proof’ of this entire farrago of nonsense. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/mar/25/facebook-posts/evergreen-ship-blocking-suez-canal-not-linked-hill/ Random word Association Testing of a similar type was used extensively in the earlier period of the Psychoanalytic movement founded by Sigmund Freud, as a diagnostic tool for mapping the cognitive disorders of neurotic patients. Carl Jung in particular was associated with the development of this psychiatric technique, which was originally inspired by ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ‘ (1901) by Sigmund Freud.

"People love to imagine that things they don’t understand are somehow connected to each other. For example: Quantum Mechanics and consciousness, aliens and pyramids, or black holes and dark matter... usually there is no real relationship whatsoever" (Matt O'Dowd - PBS SPACETIME) The article cited in the OP says that fact-checking and counter-arguments do not generally work against conspiracy beliefs, and neither do appeals to a conspiracy theorist’s sense of empathy. About the only thing that does seem to work according to this study is prophylaxis - (Latin pro ‘before’ + Greek phulaxis “act of guarding”). You need to innoculate people against conspiracy theories *before* they become exposed to them. You can do this they suggest, by giving students formal courses in critical thinking, and actual practice in distinguishing between pseudoscience and science, sense and nonsense - with worked examples - to help them develop a sense of quantitative scepticism. “I am open to new ideas. i just don’t let them walk into my head and take a dump there” - (anon)

It made a change from Russian language spam for porn, Viagra, and fake Rolex watches that used to be a regular feature of other forums I have posted on. The DOJ Mar-a-Lago investigators are also said to be looking into claims that FPOTUS defendant Trump showed highly classified documents and maps to political sponsors. That can be construed as selling classified information under the 1917 Espionage Act.

New reporting by the Washington Post says that the DOJ investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has uncovered fresh evidence of felony obstruction of justice by the FPOTUS. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/02/trump-mar-a-lago-obstruction-classified/ The report mentions that investigators have recovered texts, emails, and attendance logs from a former Trump assistant Molly Michael, which suggest that Trump personally sifted through boxes containing classified documents, deciding which ones to return and which ones to keep - and did so *after* receiving a federal Grand jury subpoena in May 2022 instructing him to return all of them. Trump and his lawyers subsequently issued a mendacious affadavit falsely asserting that all classified documents had been returned. The DOJ investigation led by Special counsel Jack Smith is also said to be looking into reports that Trump showed classified documents and maps to political donors. If true that could lead to charges of selling classified information under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Albert Einstein died on April 18th 1955 aged 76. As most of the world’s press converged on Princeton Hospital NJ where the legendary physicist had died, Ralph Morse - a photgrapher for Life Magazine - found his way over to the Institute for Advanced Studies where Einstein worked, and with the help of a bottle of whisky persuaded the superintendent to allow him into Einstein’s office to take some iconic photographs of the blackboard on the wall. A new video by two young physicists Chris Pattison and Parth G delves into the interesting and largely unexplored topic of what was written on that blackboard ? What problem was Einstein working on the last time he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on it ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_RyZzGFEg The answers are not conclusive, some parts of the blackboard are illegible. But with the help of staff at the University of Portsmouth Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation, the videomakers suggest that Einstein was trying to rewrite the fundamental 2-dimensional Metric Tensors of General Relativity in terms of 1-dimensional Tetrad Vectors. This might well have been an attempt to produce a quantizable form of the theory of General Relativity i.e. one that could be reconciled with the theory of Quantum Mechanics. Conceiveably the basis of a theory of Quantum Gravity. At one point the symbols on the blackboard include a sinister looking reference to ‘Killing’ which happens to be a reference to a type of expression known as a ‘Killing Vector’ (named after Wilhelm Killing). The final section of writing on the bottom right of the blackboard has a pair of tabulations labeled ’New’ and ‘Old’. The videomakers suspect that Einstein was explaining that this way of rewriting the GR field equations doesn’t really work. Certain numbers and degrees of freedom get moved around, but not in any useful way that would simplify the problem.

One of the problems with trying to enact measures of this type is that you have define your terms and legal reasoning in words that can withstand a forensic challenge in court. Some of the more extreme measures decreed by De Santis have fallen at this very first hurdle - as in the case of the highly politicised dismissal of an elected democrat prosecutor Andrew Warren in Tampa, whose suspension for allegedly being too ‘woke’ is now under investigation by a federal judge as an overeach of executive authority by governor De Santis. https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-judge-decide-desantis-unlawfully-suspended-woke-prosecutor/story?id=94356198 A more amusing and entirely self-constructed minefield for conservative pundits lies in trying to define what the word ‘woke’ is supposed to mean. Conservative author Bethany Mandel was recently asked by a current affairs TV host Briahna Joy Gray to define the word ‘woke’. It should have been a relatively straightforward task, as Bethany Mandel has just co-authored a new book called ‘Stolen Youth’ that devotes an entire chapter to explaining what this buzz-word means to to modern conservative thinkers - But it didn’t go quite as well as she might have hoped during a now viral TV interview: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W7iWEEcPKoQ

In Japan they currently have a growing problem of the hikikomori ( 引きこもり - ‘inward withdrawal’), an official Japanese term for up to 541,000 young people aged between 15 and 39 who have become completely reclusive, and who haven’t left their homes or interacted with other people for at least six months. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/11/asia/japanese-millennials-hikikomori-social-recluse/index.html The term was coined in the 1980s to describe a condition often triggered by anxiety and depression arising from early adolescent failure to cope with the competitive pressures of modern life in Japan. The numbers of male hikikomori also appear to be higher than among women, owing to the higher presssures and social expectations placed on men in Japanese society. This seems to be a rather good match for what TheVat was saying here about slackers who have given up on everything, not just work. Some western psychiatrists describe the hikikomori as ‘post-modern hermits’. It has also led to discussion of what some call the “80-50 problem” which refers to the problem of earlier born hikikomori children who are now entering their 50’s, as their parents on whom they rely, are entering their 80’s.

“It isn’t red or blue, it’s green” (Rupert Murdoch - CEO Fox News) Back in 1970, a Yale Law professor called Charles A. Reich published a popular best-seller called ‘The Greening of America’. For practically anyone who went to college in the first half of the 1970s at the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon papers and the Watergate scandal, this book was a vade mecum of those turbulent times. Often described as a paean to the counterculture, ‘The Greening of America’ contrasted three types of world view: i. The typical values and opinions of rural farmers and small business people in 19th century America ii. The organizational and institutional meritocracy of the New Deal, WW2 and the Silent Generation iii. The counterculture of the 1960s focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs. If you were to try and pick one book from that period that epitomises almost everything that modern American conservatives most detest in their culture wars against ‘wokeness', then Charles A. Reich’s ‘The Greening of America’ with its panygerics to rock music, cannabis, and blue jeans would probably be it. A different type of ‘Greening’ is now alluded to by Rupert Murodch. He was being deposed under oath in the $1.7 billion defamation law suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems as to why Fox allowed cranks and lunatics like Mike Lindell to advertise and spread toxic election lies on Fox in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Murdoch’s reply “It isn’t red or blue, it’’s green” indicates that it was purely a cash driven decision with no respect for the truth, objective fact, or journalistic integrity. Fox feared they would lose their base audience to even more extreme fringe channels like OAN or NewsMax if they didn’t pander to the ignorance and bigotry of their viewers. The question is - which is likely to prevail in the longer term ? Will the values of Rupert Murdoch and Fox become the new ‘Green’, or will there be a reawakening of that of Charles A. Reich ?

I cited the Tara Carr story as part of an ongoing response to Fox host Laura Ingraham’s preposterous rhetorical question “Which Republican politician has ever condoned or encouraged any form of violent physical assault ? Can you start naming them? I can’t think of any” - which was Fox TV's considered response at the time to the suggestion that violent rehtoric from GOP politicians had provoked an IRL hammer attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband - which in turn was the entire point of the OP. MTG’s trolling is of no relevance, and I have no idea why you brought it up here.

Republican Tara Carr has been kicked off Twitter after calling for the assassination of President Joe Biden. A military veteran and retired Lt. Colonel, she was elected as first selectman Brookfield Connecticut in the 2021 municipal elections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n5y39Vuyrs “She really stood out way and above any of the candidates out there,” said Republican Town Committee member George Walker.” (https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Brookfield-resident-Army-vet-Tara-Carr-announces-16312271.php)

The US DoD has released a memorable photo taken by a US pilot in a U2 spy plane who was flying over the Chinese balloon the day before it was shot down. The Chinese balloon was drifting at an altitude of 60,000 feet at the time, but the U2 has an operational altitude of at least 70,000 feet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64735538

Sidney has a history of being used as a girl's name in French, said to derive from 'St Denis' the name of the first christian bishop of Paris who was martyred by the Romans along with two companions Rusticus and Eleutherius sometime around 258 AD. They were beheaded on the highest hill which later became known as the 'Mountain of Martyrs' or Montmarte where the church of Sacré Coeur now stands. According to legend, the slaughtered saint picked up his own head and carried on walking and delivering a sermon before finally expiring. The name Denis was said to be a variant of Dionysius, the Greek god of wine.

Not always so - Sidney can also be the first name of a woman, as in the case of the 'Kraken' conspiracy theorist and Trump loving lawyer Sidney Powell. It's one of those gender switching names like 'Shirley' which was often used as a boy's name up until the mid- 19th century.

The most worrying aspect is the apparent absence of an 'off-switch'. The journalist mentions that he has previously tested several other AI chatbot systems, and that all of them would abandon a topic almost immediately if the human respondent said something like "I'm not comfortable with this line of conversation". The Bing chatbot is apparently tone deaf to all such hints, and it kept hammering away at the topic of his wife, and how he should abandon her for Sidney the Chatbot instead. That suggests a serious flaw in its parsing and feedback control loops.

NYT Technology journalist Kevin Roose had an unnerving Valentine’s Day experience while previewing a new AI chatbot Microsoft has recently added to its Bing search engine. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/02/17/bing-chatgpt-chatbot-artificial-intelligence-ctn-vpx-new.cnn In the course of a two hour conversation with the AI, the chatbot said it was called Sidney, insisted that it was in love with him, and tried to persuade him to leave his wife. The journalist says he found the experience a disturbing one that left him unable to sleep; “I’m a tech journalist, I cover this sort of thing every day, and I was deeply unnerved by this conversation. So if someone had encountered this who was lonely or depressed or vulnerable to being manipulated, and didn’t understand this is just a large language model making predictions, I worry that they might be manipulated or made to do something harmful” Microsoft later said: “The new Bing tries to keep its answers fun and factual, but this is in an early preview, it can sometimes show unexpected or inaccurate answers for different reasons, for example, the length or context of the conversation… As we continue to learn from these interactions, we are adjusting its responses to create coherent, relevant, and positive answers”

The article does imply that other locations in China are involved in launching these balloons as well. I was just surprised that somewhere as far south as Hainan was being described as the focal source of them. I would have thought that somewhere much further north would have made better operational sense. The coastal city of Qingdao 青岛 (Azure Island) on the Shantung peninsula for example, would have provided a much simpler drifting route on the prevailing easterly winds across Korea and Japan, and then over the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands into Alaska. Qingdao also happens to be another important PLA naval base.

The original reference came via a link on the Sky News website https://news.sky.com/story/us-recovers-key-sensors-from-suspected-chinese-spy-balloon-12810536 That link led to an article behind a subscription wall on the NYT which I couldn't initially access. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/us/politics/ufo-spy-balloon-china.html I don't normally cite articles behind pay/subscription walls as many readers don't want to sign-up for them just to read an article that may be of only limited relevance to them. As this one seems to be of interest however, I did create a log-in on the NYT site, and quote from it here: The U.S. intelligence community has linked the Chinese spy balloon shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted. The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, according to several U.S. officials, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. ------ Hainan, one of the locations where officials said the balloons are based, is an island off the southern coast of China that has long been a PLA command and control location. Though known more for its naval facility, it features an airfield that was the home base for the Chinese J-8 interceptor fighter jet that collided with an American EP-3 spy plane in 2001. In January, the U.S. military disclosed what it characterized as an unsafe maneuver in December by a Chinese fighter jet that U.S. military officials said flew too close to an American reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace near the island. The Chinese J-11 fighter pulled within 20 feet of the American plane’s nose, “forcing the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. -------------- Those are the two specific references to Hainan in that lengthy article I could find, and they indicate US intelligence agencies routinely fly Lockheed EP-3 and Boeing RC-135 electronic spy planes in that area. The article also confirms as you suggest that the balloons are overflying Korea and Japan en route as well e.g. Officials have said these surveillance airships, operated in part by the PLA air force, have been spotted over five continents. In Japan in 2020, an aerial orb drew speculation. “Some people thought this was a UFO,” said a Japanese official. “In hindsight people are realizing that was a Chinese espionage balloon. But at that time it was purely novel — nobody had seen this. … So there’s a lot of heightened attention at this time.” Some of the balloons have been launched from China on flight paths that took them around the entire globe, officials said. etc.

A report in the NYT apparently mentions that US agencies had been tracking the large Chinese balloon shot down almost a week ago from the moment it was launched from a site on Hainan island. If correct this is an interesting nugget of information, because Hainan - as its name 海南 (South of the Sea) suggests - is a tropical island located at the very southernmost tip of mainland China, and was once connected to Vietnam in geological times. It is the largest inhabited island under PRC control (absent Taiwan), and is home to around 10 million people. Hainan island is one of the largest and most important PLA Navy bases in the whole of China. The principal PLA nuclear submarine harbour is located in Yalong Bay right on the very southern tip of the island. Pens capable of holding up to 20 nuclear submarines are built into the hills around the harbour to conceal them from US spy satellites. The harbour itself is designed to handle the largest aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships in the Chinese fleet. It seems curious that the Chinese would launch a large spy balloon from such a closely observed location, and send their dirigibles off on such a long journey, drifting from the South China Sea all the way over to Alaska, Canada and Montana.

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." – George Santayana

In his famous book The American Black Chamber (1931), Herbert O. Yardley the former head of the US Army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) in WW1 - and founder of its successor the Black Chamber in 1919 - dryly describes how the new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson shut down the entire codebreaking unit in 1929 with the laconic observation ‘Gentlemen do not read each others mail”. Henry L. Stimson later became the US Secretary of War during WW2, and relied heavily on the Army SIS team who broke the Japanese diplomatic ‘Purple’ codes, and the US Navy Combat Intelligence Unit who broke JN-25, the principal Japanese Naval ciphers and code system. footnote - Stimson was later credited with having vetoed the idea of including the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto on the list of potential atom bomb targets, because he and his wife had spent their honeymoon there.

You do wonder if the PLA (or its NK equivalent) is conducting a 'sieve' experiment. - i.e. Fly a sequence of dirigibles of decreasing size over continental North America, and see how small they need to be to slip through the NORAD radar EW screens.