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Tuesday, August 25, 2020

A Quick Run Around The Web (8/25/2020)

VIDEO: "Ruger Mini 14 Is it Obsolete?"--Sootch00 (18 min.)
A look at the newer model Mini-14 and discussion of the platform.

SHOOTING/SELF-DEFENSE/PREPPING:

  • "Gun Review: Beretta 3032 Tomcat Inox .32 ACP Pistol"--The Truth About Guns. A review of this pocket/hide-out pistol, including a discussion of the several advantages to the tip-up barrel system used in this and similar Beretta pocket pistols. One of the advantages is that it does away with having to rack the slide, which can be a difficult proposition at best with some of the small pistols. The author explains:
    It may seem silly to some, but the best feature of the Tomcat is its “tip-up” or tilting barrel design. While tiny guns often get recommended to small people — women, those with small hands, older folks, etc. — that’s usually ill-advised. A tiny gun has a tiny slide allowing minimal purchase and typically has a stiff recoil spring. That can make racking a challenge for some.

    In fact, semi-automatic pistols in general can be difficult to manipulate for anybody with less grip strength or dexterity. Just ask the guy I bought my HK P7 from; an older gentleman selling off his entire semi-auto pistol collection due to arthritis that made it too difficult to rack a slide.

    On the Tomcat, there’s potentially no reason to ever rack the slide. Push the barrel release lever forwards and the barrel pops up, providing full access to the chamber. Simply drop your +1 round into it, click the barrel closed, and you’re good to go.

    This whole process can be done with the safety lever engaged, making it safer than chambering a round in most semi-autos. Plus there’s no fear of bullet setback. Heck, it even allows you to clean the chamber, bore, and breech face without disassembling the firearm at all.

I had, at one time, a Beretta .22 with the tip-up barrel. I really appreciated the feature. However, concerns with the reliability and effectiveness of .22 cartridges for self-defense led me to sell it in order to upgrade to my J-frame revolver.

  • "Dry Practice Safety"--Tactical Professor. He notes that reading police incident reports can be useful, including for descriptions of negligence discharges. He quotes the following from an LAPD report:
    Officer A brought his/her back-up service revolver home with the intention to clean it.

    With the muzzle of the revolver pointed toward the ground, Officer A held the revolver with his/her right hand and used his/her right thumb to push the cylinder release button, disengaging the cylinder from the revolver. Once the cylinder disengaged, Officer A placed his/her left hand under the open cylinder and used his/her left index finger to depress the ejector rod, releasing the live rounds into his/her left hand. Officer A did not count the live rounds and placed them on top of the kitchen counter directly behind him/her. Officer A then closed the cylinder.

    Officer A held his/her revolver with two hands in a standing shooting position. He/she raised his/her revolver and pointed it in the direction of the vertical blinds covering a sliding glass doors, which led to an exterior patio. Officer A placed his/her finger on the trigger and pressed it to dry fire the revolver. Officer A conducted two dry fire presses of the trigger.

    According to Officer A, he/she normally conducted dry trigger press exercises approximately three times per week, on his/her days off. However, Officer A stated that he/she usually practices with his/her semi-automatic service pistol, and this was the first time that he/she practiced with his/her revolver.

    According to Officer A, believing his/her revolver was still unloaded, he/she placed his/her finger on the trigger and pressed it a third time, which caused the revolver to discharge a single round. No one was injured by the discharge.

This actually isn't as hard to happen as you might think. Particularly with the smaller J-frames--which this probably was--the cartridge in the chamber closest to the grip may not always fall completely free if all you do is tip the firearm up and let gravity pull the rounds out. Combined with its proximity to the frame and often being shaded or just blending in, it is easy to overlook that cartridge. And, yes, I speak from experience, having almost started to engage in dry-fire when I noticed that I was one cartridge short in the pile I had dumped out. After that, I was much more cautious and made sure to not only count cartridges, but also rotate the cylinder against a lighted backdrop of some sort to make sure that I could easily verify that all chambers were empty.
  • "Necessity vs. Luxury"--Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You. The author relates a discussion at a survival Facebook group about what to do if the air conditioning went up, with many of the responses being "suck it up" or in a similar vein. The author thinks that people need to have a little more realism and empathy in their responses, writing: "Sure, human beings survived millions of years without A/C, but for someone with COPD, heart disease, or other chronic health issues, high heat can be a serious issue. While it is just a comfort issue for most folks, for some it could truly be life or death." As the author points out, humans survived millions of years without steel knives, yet how many would consider a steel knife to be a luxury?
  • "Is Old Ammunition Safe to Shoot?"--The Truth About Guns. Generally yes, although as the article points out, you need to be aware that if you get ammunition that is old enough (and not too far back, actually, for East Bloc countries), the powders and/or primers may be corrosive. The author also warns against using reloaded ammunition since you don't know anything about the care used in loading it, or to what pressures. I regularly shoot without issue surplus ammunition that dates from the 1980s, which makes it almost 40 years old. I've shot ammunition dating back to World War II and the 1950s without issue as well. As long as there are no obvious problems such as bulging, corrosion, dampness, there generally won't be an issue. Be sure to take a look at the container that the ammunition came in to make sure that there is no evidence that the ammunition has been wet.
  • "Cold Open - Part 1: Cold-Weather Survival Tips & Techniques"--Off Grid Web. This is an interview with a cold survival expert covering misconceptions, tools and equipment and much more, packed with good information. For example, this bit about hydration in cold weather:
    One thing people never talk about is hydration in the cold. People talk about how you shouldn’t drink cold water, but you need to stay as hydrated as you can in extreme cold — it’s just as important as hydrating in extreme heat. Blood regulates body temperature. When you’re too hot, it takes the heat from your organs; your blood vessels dilate and radiate that heat off the surface of the skin. When you’re too cold, it constricts on the surface of the skin and to the extremities like your ears, nose, and fingers, which is why your hands get cold first. The body restricts blood flow to those areas when you’re cold and focuses it on the internal organs so you don’t get hypothermia. If you’re dehydrated at all, you’re going to get colder faster and have much less blood on the surface of your skin, so you’ll be much more prone to frostbite. Pre-hydrate for a few days before you go on any cold-weather expeditions as if you’re going on a hot-weather expedition.

    The quickest way to absorb water is if it’s at room temperature and an isotonic solution, which is 0.9-percent salt. Your body works on what’s called the sodium-potassium-electrolyte pump. We don’t run out of potassium the way we do salt, because we don’t sweat it out like salt. Salt opens the door to the cell to let water in, so if your drink is too salty it pulls water out of the cell. If it’s just salty enough it lets it into the cell. An isotonic solution matches the salinity of our body’s cells naturally so you can hydrate the quickest and safest. When you get an IV of saline, that’s what they’re giving you.

    Caffeine dehydrates you, and it’s a vasodilator, so it affects your blood pressure. When you’re really red-lining, like when I was a firefighter and working on the fire line, it’s not a good idea to have caffeine. What we’d do is after we drank 2 liters of water, our third liter would always have an electrolyte replacement in it. That’s so we don’t become hyponatremic. If the salt level in your body gets too low, that’s called hyponatremia and it can kill you. That means your body can’t absorb water anymore. You’ll drink a liter of water, and urinate it right out. If you’re hyponatremic and drink water without salt, you’re hurting yourself. Avoid caffeine and alcohol. There’s that old belief that drinking alcohol makes you warmer, but that’s because it makes the blood vessels on the surface of your skin dilate and is radiating away heat.
    Since mask wearing effectively takes away our ability to observe other’s facial expressions what are some other things we can watch? Perhaps one of the most important things to watch when trying to read someone’s emotions or intent are the hands. Many people have developed the ability to control facial expressions, but our hands seem to have a mind of their own. Are the other person’s hands balled into fists? This is a good indicator of anger or that they intent to hit something or someone. Are their hands in their pockets? This could indicate the presence or a weapon or a relaxed state depending on the presence of other indicators. Open hands with palms facing out is a calming gesture indicating the person isn’t looking for a fight.

    Feet can be another good indicator. Pay attention to what direction the feet are pointing.  Are they standing in a fighting stance? If their feet are turned away from you, they may be planning to flee either to avoid conflict or after attacking. Shoulders are another important thing to pay attention to. Are they relaxed or tense? Is the person trying to flex and make themselves look bigger? Are they squared up for a fight? Also watch for indications that the person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Are they shaking or have slurred speech? If the person is looking around excessively, they may be looking to see if there are witnesses present before doing something harmful.

He also notes that "Masks give people a certain level on anonymity. This seems to embolden some people and make them more aggressive. It’s similar to the anonymity we see with comments on the internet. If someone is trying to start trouble with you your best option is to not engage or to disengage if things escalate."

VIDEO: "BLM protesters use baseball bats to intimidate, assault man walking away from Portland riots"--Teetron 9000 (1 min.). A reader pointed to me this video of an incident on August 15, 2020. He (the reader) also had some more detailed background from one of the three men that were the target of the crowd's ire. But two things stuck out. First, the men had no intention on going into a riot situation--they thought that it was still at a "peaceful protest" stage. So, it shows that conditions can quickly change on the ground, and, per Farnam's rules, don't go to stupid places. Second, and probably more important, was the tactics employed by the BLM rioters: the men were being pummeled with large rocks thrown from the crowd, but because (i) those throwing the rocks were further back in the crowd, (ii) the protesters had immediately pepper-sprayed the men, and (iii) were shining bright lights in the men's faces, the men could not see who was throwing the rocks. Although the specific actions are not ones I've seen before, the general tactic--the ones throwing crap hiding behind a screen of "peaceful protesters"--is a standard modus operandi of BLM and Antifa. 

THE COLLAPSE:
  • Reminder: what we are seeing now is a form of the Cloward–Piven strategy in action. Cloward and Piven envisioned starting a revolution by overloading the welfare system causing a national crises: 

They stated that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare "would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would: "...deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."

    The supposed goal was "to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income," with a national level socialist government apparently being a feature rather than a bug. Thus, in reality, "the Cloward-Piven strategy would lead to the complete control of citizens through Socialism/Communism." 

    Piven denied this, of course, writing in 2010:

“A Strategy to End Poverty,” which I wrote with Richard Cloward, was influenced by the changing focus of the [Black Civil Rights] Movement. We tried to think through the institutional context in which the minority poor found themselves, from the distortions of the New Deal welfare programs that denied them assistance, to urban fiscal constraints and intergroup conflicts that paralyzed local governments, to the possibilities that locally-based movements could provoke reform by creating problems that reverberated upward in the federal grant-in-aid system. Our objective was not, as later critics of the Glenn Beck variety later charged, to propose a strategy to bring down American capitalism. We were not so ambitious. But we did think that the minority poor and their allies might create sufficient disturbance to force reforms in the American income support programs. And we were not entirely wrong.

Although, she also wrote that:

Protest movements are necessarily local, whether in Ferguson or Athens, because that is where people are concentrated, where they form relationships and experience their grievances. But to score victories, these local protests have to create disturbances that threaten sometimes far away centers of economic and political power. That is how we sometimes win deep reforms.

(Underline added). In their original 1966 article, the two explained:

    By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest, which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognizable eruption to public attention. Public trouble is a political liability, it calls for action by political leaders to stabilize the situation. Because crisis usually creates or exposes conflict, it threatens to produce cleavages in a political consensus, which politicians would ordinarily act to avert.

    Although crisis impels political action, it does not itself determine the selection of specific solutions. Political leaders will try to respond with proposals, which work to their advantage in the electoral process. Unless group cleavages form around issues and demands, the politician has great latitude and tends to proffer only the minimum action required to quell disturbances without risking existing electoral support. Spontaneous disruptions, such as riots, rarely produce leaders who articulate demands; thus so terms are imposed, and political leaders are permitted to respond in ways that merely restore a semblance of stability without offending other groups in a coalition.

    When, however, a crisis is defined by its participants–or by other activated groups–as a matter of clear issues and preferred solutions, terms are imposed on the politicians’ bid for their support. Whether political leaders then design solutions to reflect these terms depends on a two- fold calculation: first, the impact of the crisis and the issues it raises on existing alignments and, second, the gains or losses in support to be expected as a result of a proposed resolution.

* * *

    As to the impact on existing alignments, issues exposed by a crisis may activate new groups, thus altering the balance of support and opposition on the issues; or it may polarize group sentiments altering the terms, which must be offered to insure the support of given constituent groups. In framing resolutions, politicians are more responsive to group shifts and are more likely to accommodate to the terms imposed when electoral coalitions threatened by crisis are already uncertain or weakening. In other words, the politician responds to group demands, not only by calculating the magnitude of electoral gains and losses, but by assessing the impact of the resolution on the stability of existing or potential coalitions. Political leaders are especially responsive to group shifts when the terms of settlement can be framed so as to shore up an existing coalition, or as a basis for the development of new and more stable alignments, without jeopardizing existing support. Then, indeed, the calculation of net gain is most secure.

    The legislative reforms of the depression years, for example, were impelled not so much by organized interests exercised through regular electoral processes as by widespread economic crisis. That crisis precipitated the disruption of the regionally based coalitions underlying the old national parties. During the realignments of 1932, a new Democratic coalition was formed, based heavily on urban working-class groups. Once in power, the national Democratic leadership proposed and implemented the economic reforms of the New Deal. Although these measures were a response to the imperative of economic crisis, the types of measures enacted were designed to secure and new Democratic coalition.

They argued that the civil rights movement had acted to break down old Democratic coalitions and form new political coalitions within the party. They also noted that Democrats were already at that time (1966) increasingly reliant on black urban voters in order to prevail at the national level, and believed that their plan would not only keep blacks loyal to the Democrats on a national level, but also would motivate them to continue to turn out to vote. Thus, even if Piven is to be believed that the goal was not a socialist government, it was clear that the goal was to bring about the dominance of the Democrat party.

    Generations of community organizers made sure to enroll as many on welfare as possible. And, blacks have remained a solid voting bloc. But an unconditional right to a guaranteed income never came about, nor did the Democrats achieve electoral dominance on the national level. Instead, as one critic put it, the plan merely "created generations of black people for whom working for a living is an abstraction." Moreover, as the Wikipedia article points out, "Michael Tomasky, writing about the strategy in the 1990s and again in 2011, called it 'wrongheaded and self-defeating', writing: 'It apparently didn't occur to [Cloward and Piven] that the system would just regard rabble-rousing black people as a phenomenon to be ignored or quashed.'" Oops.

    The solution? The number of people on welfare had to be expanded. Immigration accomplished this, but still didn't lead to the desired outcome. 

    Suddenly, however, whether by accident or plan, we had a pandemic that caught the imagination, and fear, of the public. What years of community organizing hadn't been able to accomplish, the reaction to the pandemic could. The shutdown of whole economies has stressed systems of welfare and unemployment insurance, requiring the federal government to inject money into the unemployment program as additional benefits, plus led to at least one round of stimulus checks without regard to qualifications (except income), and promises from both parties of additional checks. If there were to be further long term shut downs on a national scale, those stimulus checks would quickly morph into a guaranteed income.

    On top of the foregoing, we have also seen some of the worst rioting since the 1960s and 1970s. Whatever else the rioting is accomplishing, it has refocused attention on black Americans; or, as Cloward and Piven put it, "determine[d] the selection of specific solutions." Reparations for slavery and "defunding the police" (i.e., crime without consequences) is suddenly on the table. Undoubtedly, it was believed that the protests would motivate black voters to turn out for Democrats. It certainly has caused corporate America to bow down to wokeness, and hastened the removal of white men (the kulaks of the present revolution) from the public sphere.

    Dozens of armed 'anarchists' descended on the Denver Police Headquarters late Saturday and damaged buildings, set fires and injured an officer, city officials said Sunday. 

    The group, consisting of between 50 to 75 demonstrators, were said to be wielding a varying degree of weapons - from axes to guns - during the incident yesterday evening.  

    Fireworks were shot at officers, an American flag and a tree outside a courthouse were set ablaze, windows were shattered and fast-food restaurant was broken into during the unrest, news outlets reported.
    A group of about 200 people, dressed mostly in black and masked, rioted in Northeast Portland in residential areas where they pointed lights into the windows of homes and chanted “Out of your house, into the streets.”

    “What Lives Matter? Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter,” the crowd chanted, embracing the idea that land in the United States was stolen from Native Americans.
    'We can't control what happens with the police, but we can control what happens in our school systems,' said Michael McFarland, head of the National Alliance of Black School Educators and a superintendent of the Crowley Independent School District in Texas. 

    After a summer of teacher workshops focused on updating curricula, millions of students will return to U.S. classrooms in coming weeks - virtually or in person - that focus more on black history and experiences, according to interviews with teachers, officials, publishers and others.

    John Marshall keeps a picture of Breonna Taylor in his office at the headquarters of Kentucky's largest school district, a visual reminder, he says, of the need for curriculum changes that better honor and focus on black stories.

* * *
    Some of the changes don't necessarily involve new material, but rather teaching the same material from a new perspective.

    In the Jefferson County schools, for instance, teachers discussing the Space Race of the 1960s plan now to focus on the black women mathematicians whose computations underpin modern rocket science.

    In Houston, teachers at YES Prep public charter schools will dissect James Baldwin's iconic book of essays 'The Fire Next Time' less as a history of racial struggle and more as a guide for black students to overcome injustice.

    These and other recommendations came after school districts spent summer months updating educational materials because most public school textbooks are only updated by publishers on a fixed schedule.

Just a note on the movie and book, Hidden Figures, about the black female mathematicians:

"You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams," author Margot Shetterly explained. "There were sections, branches, divisions, and they all went up to a director. There were so many people required to make this happen. ... But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible."

The movie also fictionalized other aspects to make the discrimination seem worse that it was actually.

     Just recently, the publisher Springer Nature retracted a paper “Poverty and Culture” by Lawrence Mead of New York University, from the journal Society [Society, 2020]. Mead’s crime: simply arguing that black culture differs from white culture and this may be a contributory factor to greater black poverty in the U.S. This provoked the Woke mob and publisher caved, overturned the careful peer review system in the process [Springer Nature retracts paper that hundreds called “overtly racist,” Retraction Watch, August 6, 2020].

    An even more disturbing case occurred back in June. American psychologist Cory Jane Clark is an assistant professor of psychology at Durham University, in the northeast of England. She is also “Director Academic Engagement” at the Heterodox Academy, which claims to promote “diverse viewpoints” and be “open inquiry are critical to research & learning.” She has even published an article demonstrating that “Liberals” are more biased, and resistant to evidence that questions their biases, than non-Liberals [Equalitarianism: A source of liberal bias, By Bo Winegard et al., SSRN, 2018].

    But Woke pressure is now so strong on academics that even those who have previously been inclined to question its dogmas are feeling the need to conform.

    Consequently, Clark tweeted, that she and her colleagues had decided to withdraw one of their scientific studies. 

    An insider at Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s biggest advertising and PR companies, exclusively shared screenshots from a “diversity” training day in which employees received instructions by proponents of radical politics of race, which included the corporate wokeness indoctrination such as the idea that the slogan “Make America Great Again” is a form of “covert white supremacy.”

    During the online day of training, which the insider described as an “insane Maoist jubilee,” employees received instruction on how to favor people in hiring and promotion on the basis of their skin color, that people who don’t feel guilty about racism have “white privilege,” and were advised to direct company money to far-left causes as part of “corporate social responsibility.”

  • "This Is How We Get Them To Bend The Knee"--Captain's Journal.  Herschel offers as further evidence of the Marxist revolution we are experiencing a series of Tweets about the riots and destruction in Wisconsin, including one from an apparent activist, Iola Ella, which reads: "Thank you to the people of Kenosha. This is how we get them to bend the knee. This is an essential part of the path to our Freedom Dreams. Leftists who claim this limits our ability to win lack a meaningful understanding of movement history and the politics of insurrections." The phrase "Freedom Dreams" is a reference to a book of the same title by Robin D.G. Kelley about black Marxist radicals and black nationalism.

VIDEO: "Robbery Victim Uses Vehicle To Get Even"--Active Self Protection (5 min.)
Armed robbers stop a car and rob the occupants. Then, as the robbers walk away, the driver runs into them with his car. A reminder that just because one party thinks the fight/conflict is over, it doesn't mean that the other person will agree.

MISCELLANY: 
    On Tuesday, August 11th, in what appears to be a pre-planned attack, a 1000-strong mob of Muslim men, raising the Islamic chants of 'Nara-e-Taqbeer' and 'Allah-hu-Akbar’, descended on the streets near DJ Halli and KG Halli police station. The violent mob was armed with iron rods, sticks, petrol bombs, and other sharp objects.

    It was alleged that a Hindu Dalit boy had made a derogatory post about the Prophet Mohammad; the subsequent madness sprang from it. The mad mob had gone berserk and barged into the residence of a local Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). A separate mob of armed Muslims proceeded to attack the local police headquarters. They locked the gates from outside and pelted stones, damaged the lined-up vehicles, and then set the police station on fire. They didn’t spare the local ATMs, nor the public or private properties either.

    Shopkeepers were intimidated to pull down the shutters and run for their lives. The house of the MLA was set ablaze. It turns out the Hindu Dalit boy who had made the derogatory Facebook post was the MLA’s nephew. The uprising claimed two lives, leaving at least sixty police personnel severely injured. The situation could only be brought under control after imposing section 144 throughout the riot-affected area. For the uninformed, imposing Section 144 is like calling a curfew in India.
Two black Maryland teenagers found guilty of killing a middle-aged white man via sucker punch at the county fair were let off by the presiding female judge with shockingly lenient sentences of probation and anger management. The teens punched the man after asking him for a dollar. After the first teen landed the knockout blow, the other one spit on his lifeless body. The small crew then proceeded to dance around the lifeless man, 59-year-old John Weed, like a bunch of maniacs.

We tend to think of "without rule of law" as a state of anarchy where no laws are applied as to anyone. But "rule of law" refers to a state where laws are applied in a (mostly) predictable and even-handed manner. When the laws are not applied against one group or population, that too is a situation where rule of law has broken down. It is just that in those cases, the population which is still held accountable has no recourse under the law or outside the law because they still face punishment. That is why we see the rioting and looting going on for night after night is because the rioters are not being subject to the law. 
    Clinesmith, who served as an assistant general counsel in the National Security and Cyber Law Branch of the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, admitted in his plea agreement that he had added the phrase “was not a source” to an email from an unidentified governmental agency, most likely the CIA, concerning Page’s “operation contact” with that agency.

    Clinesmith admitted that he had altered the email after a Crossfire Hurricane FBI supervisory special agent (SSA) had asked him to determine if Page had ever been a source for that agency, and wanted something “in writing.” Clinesmith forwarded the altered email to the SSA. That cleared the way for the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain the final FISA surveillance order on Page.

    Significantly, the plea agreement also noted that “[o]n August 17, 2016, prior to the approval of FISA #1, the [other governmental agency] provided certain members of the Crossfire Hurricane team a memorandum (‘August 17 Memorandum’) indicating that [Page] had been approved as an ‘operational contact’ for the [other governmental agency] from 2008 to 2013 and detailing information that [Page] had provided to that [agency] concerning [Page]’s prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers.”

So, the question is who were the certain members? The article goes on to discuss who might be those members, as well as other things that the group failed to do in order for the FISA warrant to be approved. 

    The meetings first began when he was recruited while studying as an ROTC student at the University of Minnesota in Russia in 1996, although he had first visited the country as a 19-year-old in 1994. 

    It all started with him handing over the names to his Russian handlers of four Catholic nuns he had visited while in Russia. 

In fact, according to the article, he applied to be a Green Beret was after his GRU handlers told him that he was of little use to them as an infantry captain. 

  • Ditto: "It’s Happened Again – Professor, NASA Researcher Accused Of Collaborating With China"--Hot Air. The researcher is Zhengdong Cheng of College Station, Texas.
  • "Study: Remdesivir doesn't boost outcomes in moderate pneumonia from COVID-19"--UPI. According to the study, which will be published by JAMA, "[p]atients given a 10-day course of the antiviral drug fared no better than those who didn't receive it [but were treated with corticosteroids], and were just as likely to die, the data showed." Also, "[t]hose that were administered a five-day course of remdesivir saw an improvement, 'but the difference was of uncertain clinical importance,' according to the researchers." And these are researchers that work for Gilead, the manufacturer.  This contradicts earlier research that suggested statistically significant benefits to giving Remdesivir to patients with severe cases. 
  • The cure has turned out to be worse than the disease: "4 Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of the Lockdowns"--FEE. They are: (i) a massive spike in suicide rates and a mental health crises; (ii) an increase in drug overdoses and substance abuse; (iii) higher incidents of hunger due to the loss of jobs/income; and (iv) a surge in domestic violence.
  • "Spain to Build 30-Foot Walls Around Its African Cities to Stop Illegal Migrants"--Breitbart. Doesn't matter much if they don't defend the walls. I don't think they need something as drastic as the defenses in Deathworld, but they are going to need some form of active defense.
  • A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "The Rise of Sky-Net"--Marcus Wynne. You may have heard in the news about DARPA's contest that pitted an AI against an experienced fighter pilot (and another AI in the competition) in a dog-fight in a simulator, and the AI beat the pilot 5-0. Marcus Wynne has some more information to put this into context:

    Fighter pilots go through an exhaustive selection, assessment and training process that identifies the best candidates with the genetic predisposition (superior cognition under stress, superior visual/kinesthetic processing at the neurological level, aggressiveness coupled with a level of pre-conscious perceptual processing that can’t be taught as a baseline unless you go all Crispr). They must progress through arduous training and eventually combat with its infinite variables to achieve the 1% of the 1% that defines fighter pilot instructors.

    For an artificial intelligence to beat a human at that skill level, decisively, 5 out of 5 times, is a defining moments in AI and the evolution of warfare.

He goes on to discuss the implications that this has for other fields of combat, as well as the question of whether an AI could "escape" its box, and would we even know. Read the whole thing.

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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 25, 2020 at 5:55 PM

    RE: "Necessity vs. Luxury"... air conditioning:

    Modern homes in the sun belt are designed with air conditioning in mind, and cooling them without air conditioning is difficult. Speaking from recent experience, they are even more difficult to cool without electricity to operate fans to move air inside the home or pull in outside air.

    I will be exploring options for battery or 12 VDC powered fans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentAugust 25, 2020 at 6:07 PM

      That is true. Homes in many hot areas used to be built on stilts to allow air to circulate under the floors, windows and doors were intended to create breeze-ways, and larger porches were important for social purposes because that is where the family or visitors would spend time in hotter weather. In the desert southwest, thick adobe or brick walls were the norm in order to keep out the daytime heat.

      Delete
  2. Alexander DanielJune 9, 2021 at 5:44 AM

    I agree with all the benefits of Beretta 3032 Tomcat Inox but anybody can tell me why my gun is hot while I fired 4 to 5...

    ReplyDelete