DNC Sentate Prepares to Turn on Biden over Afgan Withdrawal Fiasco

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

Senate Democrats pledge to investigate Biden’s ‘flawed execution’ of Afghanistan withdrawal

From www.independent.co.uk
2021-08-17 20:52:28

Excerpt:

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a scathing assessment of Joe Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and pledged his committee to investigate its “flawed execution.”

The senator said the committee would “seek a full accounting” of the US exit, Donald Trump’s “flawed negotiations” with the Taliban, and the Biden administration’s failure to anticipate the rapid collapse of Afghan security forces despite assurances.

“Congress was told repeatedly that the Afghan Defense and Security Forces were up to the task, that it had the troops, equipment and willingness to fight,” the senator said in a statement issued by the committee on 17 August.

“To see this army dissolve so quickly after billions of dollars in US support is astounding,” he said.” The American and Afghan people clearly have not been told the truth about [Afghan security forces’] capacity and deserve answers.”

The statement from…

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Farmers Turn to White House to Regain Right to Repair Their Own Tractors

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

Farmers seeking ‘right to repair’ rules to fix their own tractors gain White House ally

From www.cbc.ca
2021-08-21 14:06:26

Excerpt:

Grain farmer Cole Siegle didn’t have time to waste when a combine his family was using to help with the harvest started acting up.

An onboard computer glitch was the problem — a quick fix with the right equipment.

Instead, the Alberta farmer had to wait for a dealership technician to drive out to diagnose and reset the system. It was a five-minute job that idled the combine for two hours.

It was “extremely” frustrating, he said of the incident from two years ago. In those couple hours, he said the combine might have harvested the equivalent of roughly $20,000 worth of canola.

It’s situations like this behind wrangling over whether “right-to-repair” laws are needed to ensure farmers can fix their own machinery, or whether they open the door to legalizing the kind of modifications the industry says would have implications for safety and privacy.

“I’m not going to rewrite the software,” Siegle said.

“I just want to be able to read these codes … and then [be]…

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Turks Admint that Taliban is Their Ally

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

The Taliban Consider Turkey An Ally — Greek City Times

From greekcitytimes.com
2021-08-22 16:21:38

Excerpt:

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said in Jerusalem on Sunday that the Taliban considers Turkey as an ally.

I have to say that this is something that has created a very positive element, our cooperation, to address climate change and the results of climate change. @IsraelMFA

— Nikos Dendias (@NikosDendias) August 22, 2021

I will meet with the Israeli Minister of Energy, @KElharrar, afterwards to speak about energy cooperation, interconnectivity, renewables, gas. We can really create a lot of things, beneficial for our three countries, for the region and also for Europe. @IsraelMFA

— Nikos Dendias (@NikosDendias) August 22, 2021

Our objective today was also to find new ways to institutionalize our participation of strategic partners of our trilateral scheme. Luckily, they are many. And we believe that other countries eventually will share the same principles with us and the same values with us.@IsraelMFA

— Nikos Dendias (@NikosDendias) August 22, 2021

You, @yairlapid,…

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FBI Warns Silicon Valley that Chinese Spies Are Among Their Ranks

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

FBI to Silicon Valley firms: your Chinese and Russian workers are spying on you

From boingboing.net
2021-08-19 13:35:09
Rob Beschizza
Excerpt:

There are your conclusions about the extent of the threat from foreign governments, but then there’s your government’s conclusions about the extent of the threat from them, you and the people you associate with. The FBI is reportedly warning Silicon Valley companies—in secret—that their Chinese and Russian workers may be forced to (or simply paid to) spy on them.

But the risk to tech companies is real, the FBI says: Employees are being persuaded, or more typically, coerced by foreign autocracies into stealing information or handing over login credentials. In one case [FBI special agent Nick] Shenkin worked on, Chinese government agents threatened to deny an employee’s mother dialysis back in China if he didn’t steal proprietary information from a large hardware/software company.

“This is a quotidian activity,” Shenkin told Protocol in an interview. “This is a massive fundamental activity that bolsters and is one of the mainstays of many autocratic countries and their…

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While Cancelling Americans for Not Being DNC, US Social Media Prepares to Platform the Taliban

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

Facebook and Twitter weigh giving a voice to the Taliban

From fortune.com
2021-08-21 11:00:00

Excerpt:

Their actions will have lasting impacts on the diplomatic stage and on the lives of everyday people in Afghanistan.

The militant group’s rise to power is forcing Silicon Valley’s biggest internet companies to revisit their policies on how to treat controversial political actors. While the Taliban is banned from holding accounts or spreading propaganda on most big online networks, its takeover of the government means the tech giants will soon have to decide whether to expand its access or grant it the ability to manage Afghanistan’s official state social media channels.

They may also have to make decisions about whether to keep up or flag content that both praises and criticizes the group, with potentially perilous consequences for those posting it.

..

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Dating Our Past Using Magnets

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

Magnetic Field May Provide New Ways of Dating Ancient Archaeological Artifacts

From scienceblog.com
2021-08-17 14:30:31
UC San Diego
Excerpt:

Archaeologists traditionally rely on finding organic remains for radiocarbon dating to pinpoint new finds in time, but often these are not found on sites dating over 5,000 years ago. As a result, dating sites in the ancient Levant from the Holocene (the last ca. 10,000 years) can be problematic – leading archaeologists and geophysicists to expand the possibilities for assessing the age of ancient artifacts with archaeomagnetic dating.

In an article published* in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Department of Anthropology have filled in some of the regional gaps in the record of Earth’s magnetic field. To do so, they used artifacts from the Neolithic period spanning roughly 8,200 to 5,500 years ago.

“Earth’s magnetic field has changed significantly in the past with implications for related phenomena, such as deep-Earth…

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Life Might Be Broader and More Complex Than Previously Imagined, Scientists Say

Freedomist Editor August 23, 2021

Scientists Are Proposing a Radical New Framework to Redefine Life on Earth

From www.sciencealert.com
2021-08-17 18:02:52

Excerpt:

….biologist Chris Kempes and complex systems researcher David Krakauer from Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico have posed the idea that our focus on evolution as a driving force of life may have “blinded us to additional general principles of life”.

To explore this, the researchers broaden the definition of “life” to the union of two energetic and informatic processes that can encode and pass on adaptive information forward through time.

Using this definition vastly increases what can be seen as life, to include concepts such as culture, forests, and the economy. A more traditional definition might consider these as products of life, rather than life itself.

“Human culture lives on the material of minds, much like multicellular organisms live on the material of single-celled organisms,” Kempes explains.

Based on their new definition, the researchers argue that life has emerged many times on Earth, and that we in fact are co-existing with many forms of current life.

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The Case to Strike Roe?

Freedomist Editor August 17, 2021

Supreme Court to Consider Significant Pro-Life Case

From thetablet.org
2021-08-16 15:34:52

Excerpt:

Tell us about the upcoming Dobbs Supreme Court case.

This is the first time in almost thirty years that the U.S. Supreme Court have evidenced any interest in permitting states to limit abortion prior to viability, commonly understood to occur at or near 24 weeks of pregnancy, when the child can live outside the mother’s womb. The Mississippi law before the Court only prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is less than 0.7 percent of all abortions occurring in Mississippi and less than 5 percent of all abortions in the US. A win in this case is essential to building a culture of life, in which the lives of unborn children, and all human beings, are respected and protected.

Which is the most important amicus brief being submitted to the Court for this case and why is it the one you led?

Our amicus brief for 240 Women Scholars and Professionals, and Prolife Feminist Organizations, is crucial to persuading the Court that, contrary to the Casey Court’s claim that “[t]he ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by the availability of abortion,” women’s advancements in education, employment, and economic well-being are independent of abortion.

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Math and Language Use Different, Separated Brain Networks

Freedomist Editor August 17, 2021

How (and Where) the Brain Analyzes Math and Language When Spoken

From scitechdaily.com
2021-08-16 17:00:44
Society for Neuroscience
Excerpt:

Math and language processed by separate networks even if heard together.

Separate math and language networks segregate naturally when listeners pay attention to one type over the other, according to research recently published in JNeurosci.

Mathematical language borrows words from everyday speech, yet the brain processes math and language in two separate networks. While previous studies examined how these networks process written numbers and words, few looked at the processing of spoken mathematical language.

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Elon Gets Probed by US After Tesla Autopilot Crashes

Freedomist Editor August 17, 2021

US opens probe into Tesla Autopilot software after several crashes, Auto News, ET Auto

From auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com
2021-08-16 14:51:00

Excerpt:

San Francisco: The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot software, to assess the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist and enforce the driver’s engagement with the dynamic driving task during Autopilot operation.

There have been several Tesla Autopilot-related crashes, currently under investigation by the US NHTSA.

In a statement, the agency said that the probe will cover Tesla Models Y, X, S, and 3 vehicles released from 2014 through 2021.

“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” the NHTSA said.

“The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the…

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