Welcome to The Outer Limits!

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Paul Krugman: An Alien Invasion Could Fix the Economy

By Aug. 16, 2011

According to the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize laureate, you know what would end the economic slump in 18 months? Aliens.

Paul Krugman probably feels like an alien himself these days, considering Washington is completely ignoring his unwavering arguments for more fiscal stimulus as President Obama and Congressional Republicans try to out-deficit-reduce each other. So maybe that’s why Krugman has aliens on the brain.

While talking off the cuff on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program (Zakaria is also a TIME Magazine contributor), Krugman conjectured about what would happen if aliens landed on earth and attacked us.

“If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months,” Krugman says, referencing an episode of The Twilight Show in which an alien threat was manufactured to bring about world peace.

While Krugman is obviously using the idea as a provocative thought experiment, there’s a serious argument behind it, which boils down to the government gaining the incentive to raise taxes so it could build war-fighting materials, much like the U.S. did during World War II when tax rates were astronomical. The war was the single biggest factor in finally helping the U.S. dig out of the Great Depression, largely because it generated jobs and exports.

But the way most people seem to feel these days, aliens have been in Washington for some time. They just don’t appear to be helping matters much.

from:   https//business.time.com/2011/08/16/paul-krugman-an-alien-invasion-could-fix-the-economy/

Let’s Talk Astrology

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5 Myths and Misunderstandings About Astrology – Debunked

July 29th, 2020

By Nikki Harper

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

Astrology can be a controversial subject, with fervent followers and equally fervent detractors. As an astrologer, you quickly get used to people dismissing your subject out of hand. After all, it’s all made up nonsense, right? And there are 13 signs, anyway, not 12. And it’s ridiculous to claim that planets millions or even billions of miles away are causing us to act in a certain way. And they say the sun is a planet when it isn’t. And they say our fate is predetermined, with no free will. And they tell you the earth is at the center of the universe. And anyway the signs don’t even line up with where they used to be. And I’m a Leo but I hate drama. And I’m married to a Gemini and they say that Leo and Gemini aren’t a good match. And why in the world would one twelfth of the whole world’s population be going to have a bad day next Thursday?

Actually, neither I nor any astrologer I have ever dealt with has said or believes these kinds of things, all of which are based on fundamental misunderstandings of what astrology is and what it claims to do. I make no effort to convince anyone that astrology can be a useful psychological and spiritual tool; that’s up to each of us to discern for ourselves. If you’re cautiously interested in astrology, though, but have been put off by some of these myths and misunderstandings, here’s a rundown of the top five astrology myths – debunked. Understanding where astrologers are coming from may help you better decide whether this is something you’d like to pursue or not.

1 – There are 13 Signs, not 12 and I’m Now an Ophiuchus Not a Scorpio!

No, there aren’t, and no, you’re not. This myth periodically resurfaces and is usually attributed to NASA having ‘discovered’ a new constellation and thereby created or discovered a new zodiac sign. The last time this did the rounds on social media was only a couple of weeks ago.

NASA have not discovered a new constellation, or a new zodiac sign. Astrology signs are NOT, repeat NOT, the same as astronomical constellations. Ophiuchus is a very large constellation which has been visible for thousands of years. It does sit between the astronomical constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, but that does not mean it was missed out of the zodiac – did you know that there are actually 88 officially recognized constellations in the night sky? It’s not like astrologers just accidentally missed out Ophiuchus, silly astrologers! For this myth to make any sense at all, NASA would had to have discovered 76 new ‘zodiac signs’ and rewritten the history of astrology altogether. Which they, um, didn’t.

Astrology signs, zodiac signs, sun signs – call them what you will – are effectively units of measurement which were named after a selection of constellation, but have nothing more concrete than that to do with the constellations of the same name. Each astrology sign measures 30 degrees of the ecliptic. We may say that Mars is currently at 12 degrees Leo – but this is just a shorthand, symbolic way of saying that Mars is currently at 132 degrees of the ecliptic. The signs could really have been named anything, they’re just measuring/marking these twelve 30 degree sectors. The ‘discovery’ (not) of a new astronomical constellation is therefore completely irrelevant.

2 – The Astrology Signs Don’t Match Up with the Constellations Anyway

This is actually true – but the corresponding assertion that ‘therefore astrology is nonsense’ has no basis. The truth behind this misunderstanding is quite complex. It’s partly to do with the fact we covered above, that astrology signs are NOT the same as constellations. It’s also to do with something called the precession of the equinoxes. This is an astronomical phenomena which has been known since at least 300BC. When the sun rises on the morning of the vernal equinox in March each year, astrologers say that this marks 0 degrees Aries, and the start of an astrological new year. This is the point from which we start to count those 30 degree sectors in the sky. Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the sun would indeed have risen at this time in front of the astronomical constellation called Aries.

However, due to a wobble in the earth’s axis (the precession of the equinoxes), the point at which the sun rises on the vernal equinox gradually shifts, over the course of 25,800 years, against the background of different astronomical constellations. In this modern age, when the sun rises on the vernal equinox, it is against the backdrop of the astronomical constellation of Pisces, not Aries. Here’s a short video explaining how it works:

What does this tell us about astrology? Nothing much. Because, remember, the astrological signs are shorthand for those 30 degree sectors around the ecliptic. These sectors always begin at the point of the vernal equinox, with the first 30 degree named Aries, the second 30 degrees named Taurus, and so on. That the vernal equinox now takes place aligned with the astronomical constellation of Pisces is interesting, but not broadly relevant.

Then only way the precession of the equinoxes is relevant to astrology is in the concept of astrological ‘ages’. Because the vernal equinox point is now against the backdrop of Pisces, we say we are in the astrological age of Pisces. Thousands of years ago, it was the astrological age of Aries. At some point, it will become the much talked-about astrological age of Aquarius – but astrologers cannot agree on when this will happen, or if it has already happened, because it depends on where you define the boundaries of the astronomical constellations. In his book World Horoscopes, respected astrological researcher Nick Campion lists six pages worth of suggested dates collated from the research of other astrologers, ranging from as long ago as 1447 through 2012 to as far ahead as 3597! Besides, not all astrologers even agree that astrological ‘ages’ are a thing, so….

3 – Astrologers Believe that Planets Somehow Cause Things to Happen on Earth

Nope. We don’t. No astrologer I’ve ever dealt with believes that there is a cause and effect at play here. The astrologer’s creed is ‘as above, so below’. Astrology is a symbolic language, above all else, and the basic concept is that the dance of the planets (and yes, we do know that neither the Sun nor the Moon are actually planets)  and the complex angles they create between one another symbolically REFLECTS the prevailing energy on earth.

In other words, astrology works on the principle that there is a relationship between celestial events and events on earth, but it is not a cause and effect relationship. Nothing to do with gravity or electromagnetism or any other physical effect.

4 – Astrology Claims to Predict the Future (Thereby Negating Free Will)

No, it doesn’t. Astrology cannot predict the future, because each of us has free will and can shape our own future. However, because we can predict the exact movements of the planets, which are believed to reflect the energies co-occurring at time on earth, we can and do try to predict what kinds of energies might be at play at any given point in the future.

My old astrology tutor used to liken it to a weather forecast. We can tell you whether it’s likely to be raining in the middle of next week. But whether you choose to hunker down at home, swearing and brooding, or whether you choose to go out and dance in the rain – that is free will. That is up to you.

But what about horoscopes, telling you that next Thursday you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger? Of course, it’s not realistic to say that one twelfth of all humanity will experience the same thing on any given day – which is why sun sign horoscopes, as entertaining as they may be, are of extremely limited use. They’re popular, and if well written with proper astrological insight they can sometimes be revealing, but typically only for people whose sun sign is very strong and who were also born in roughly the middle of that sun sign period (because of the way most horoscopes are calculated). Horoscopes are popular, which is why astrologers keep writing them, but no astrologer I know would pretend that they are 100% accurate for everyone, or anything more than a well-meant generalization.

5 – Astrology is Only About Sun Signs – But I Don’t Feel Like a Gemini

No, no, no. Astrology does not classify the whole of humanity into twelve classes which define your whole life. At the time you were born, every planet was somewhere in the sky above you. Depending on the date and time and place of your birth, we create a map of the planetary locations for that time and place. This is your birth chart. Your birth chart has every planet in it, somewhere. And for a proper astrology reading, the birth chart as a whole must be considered, and the nuanced interplay of dozens of different positions, angles and movements must be carefully synthesized and interpreted.

The sun is indeed considered to be a powerful part of a birth chart, but far from the only part. The Ascendant is also important – the sign rising in the east at the moment of your birth. So is the midheaven – the sign directly overhead. So are the positions of the moon and all of the other planets, and in particular the angles they form between one another. In many charts, the sun is in the end not even the most dominant or powerful force in a chart; in many others, its importance is heavily mitigated by other factors.

If you’re ‘a Gemini’, that just means that the sun was in Gemini when you were born. If you don’t think you act or feel or behave like ‘a typical Gemini’, you’re probably right, and there are umpteen potential reasons for that, depending which other factors are stronger in your individual chart.

It’s for this reason, by the way, that all of the ‘Gemini goes well with Virgo but not with Leo’ stuff in relationship guides must be taken with an enormous pinch of salt. Because we are all unique, diverse individuals, each with our own blessings and faults, the truth is that any sun sign may go well with any other sun sign – or not. Human relationships are far too complex to be reduced to sun signs. Relationship astrology – synastry – can do a good job of analyzing a given relationship and finding ways to help it thrive, but that is done via detailed comparison of both individuals’ whole birth charts, and of the astrological factors affecting both of them in that time period.

If you feel that astrology doesn’t resonate with you, then of course that’s fine, nobody compels you to find it interesting or useful. However, I hope to have at least cleared up some of the most common reasons people give for dismissing astrology; it is a far more complex and nuanced art than most of its detractors understand, and it does not actually make most of the claims for which its critics so despise it.

About the author:

Nikki Harper is a spiritualist writer, astrologer, and Wake Up World’s editor.

from:    https://wakeup-world.com/2020/07/29/5-myths-and-misunderstandings-about-astrology-debunked/

Are You Sure This Is An Example of What NOT To Do?

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Sweden Close to Reaching Herd Immunity Countrywide

In the U.S., even as the COVID-19 curve appears to have flattened, and death rates for some groups have fallen to almost zero,1 dire warnings about an ominous “second wave” continue.

Likewise, Sweden, a country that has handled the pandemic differently than most of the globe, is being chided for its looser restrictions and lack of lockdowns, even as data suggest their refusal to implement a full shutdown of their society may have been the best approach after all.

While most other countries instituted stay-at-home orders and shuttered schools and businesses, Sweden did not.

Herd Immunity Sweden

While high schools and universities closed and gatherings of more than 50 people were banned, elementary and middle schools, shops and restaurants have remained open during the pandemic.2

Now, news outlets are trying to use Sweden as an example of what not to do to fight COVID-19, citing a high death toll.

“The country’s mortality rate from the coronavirus is now 30% higher than that of the United States when adjusted for population size,” CBS News reported,3 but this doesn’t tell the full picture of how Swedes have fared in comparison to the rest of the world.

Sweden May Be Close to Reaching Herd Immunity

If a novel virus is introduced to a population, eventually enough people acquire natural immunity so that the number of susceptible people declines. When the number susceptible is low enough to prevent epidemic growth, the herd immunity threshold, or HIT, has been reached.

With SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, some estimates have suggested that 60% to 70% of the population must be immune before HIT will be reached, but researchers from Oxford, Virginia Tech, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine4 found that when individual variations in susceptibility and exposure are taken into account, the HIT declines to less than 10%.5

Independent news source Off-Guardian6 cited data from Stockholm County, Sweden that showed an HIT of 17%,7 as well as an essay by Brown University Professor Dr. Andrew Bostom, who explained:8

“… [A] respected team of infectious disease epidemiologists from the U.K. and U.S. have concluded: ‘Naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may place populations over the herd immunity threshold once as few as 10-20% of its individuals are immune.’”

And, as pointed out in Conservative Review:9

“… Naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly — especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents — is an eminently reasonable and practical alternative to the dubious panacea of mass compulsory vaccination against the virus.

“This strategy was successfully implemented in Malmo, Sweden, which had few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while ‘schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.’”

Off-Guardian continues with Stanford’s Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt, who is among those in support of Sweden’s lighter restrictions.

Levitt successfully predicted the trajectory of COVID-19 deaths in China, including when the deaths would slow, and has stated that the pandemic would not be as dire as many have predicted.

Have Sweden’s COVID-19 Deaths Peaked?

What’s more, in an interview with The Stanford Daily, Levitt stated in May 2020, “If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown.”10

As of July 17, 2020, there were 5,619 deaths in Sweden due to COVID-19,11 and in a study released by Levitt and colleagues June 30, 2020, which analyzes COVID-19 outbreaks at 3,546 locations worldwide, it’s predicted that Sweden’s total COVID-19 deaths will plateau at about 6,000.12

So far, Levitt is spot-on, and it appears, indeed, that Sweden’s COVID-19 deaths have slowed, peaking at more than 100 deaths per day and now, midsummer, tallying in the low teens.

The intensive care unit at Stockholm’s Sodertalje Hospital has also cleared out, housing 77 cases during the pandemic’s peak and only four cases as of July 17, 2020.13

Sweden’s Epidemiologist Calls Lockdowns ‘Madness’

Sweden continues to stand by their handling of the pandemic, despite heavy criticism.

The country’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, even described the rest of the world’s lockdowns as “madness,” considering the steep side effects they ultimately cause.

Levitt suggested that not only did lockdowns not save lives, but likely cost lives due to social damage, domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism and other health conditions that were not treated.14 Bloomberg reported:15

“‘It was as if the world had gone mad, and everything we had discussed was forgotten,’ Tegnell said in a podcast with Swedish Radio … ‘The cases became too many and the political pressure got too strong. And then Sweden stood there rather alone.’”

Tegnell stated that shutting down schools was also unnecessary during the pandemic, and scientists from the Institut Pasteur in France indeed found that there was no significant transmission of COVID-19 in primary schools, either among the students or from students to teachers.16

“The study also confirmed that younger children infected by the novel coronavirus generally do not develop symptoms or present with minor symptoms that may result in a failure to diagnose the virus,” study author Bruno Hoen added.17

Meanwhile, while Sweden has encouraged its citizens to engage in social distancing, mask usage is another story, and Tegnell has stated that there’s little evidence for wearing face masks.18

Stanford Expert Slams Lockdowns

Outside of Sweden, other experts, including epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, have also spoken out against statewide lockdown measures in response to COVID-19.

Ioannidis suggests that 150 million to 300 million people may have already been infected globally and may have developed antibodies to the virus, and the median infection fatality rate has remained low at about 0.25%.19

As continues to be demonstrated, the elderly and those with underlying health problems appear to be most vulnerable, and protecting such populations should have been a priority. But lockdowns for young, healthy people are far more questionable.

Speaking with Greek Reporter, Ioannidis said:20

“The death rate in a given country depends a lot on the age-structure, who are the people infected, and how they are managed. For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%. For 45 to 70, it is probably about 0.05-0.3%.

For those above 70, it escalates substantially, to 1% or higher for those over 85. For frail, debilitated elderly people with multiple health problems who are infected in nursing homes, it can go up to 25% during major outbreaks in these facilities.”

Overall, Ioannidis said the mathematical models that predicted hospitals would be overrun by COVID-19 patients were “astronomically wrong,” and although a handful of U.S. hospitals did become stressed, no health systems were overrun.

“Conversely,” he said, “the health care system was severely damaged in many places because of the [lockdown] measures taken,” while lockdown measures have also significantly increased the number of people at risk of starvation while leading to financial crisis, unrest and civil strife.21

What’s more, one study even found that 81% of people not exposed to SARS-CoV-2 were still able to mount an immune response against it, which “suggests at least some built-in immune protection from SARS-CoV-2 …”22

US Surgeon General Opposes Mask Mandate

With mask usage becoming an increasingly polarized debate, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams encouraged mask usage but spoke out against making them mandatory due to concerns that it could lead to rebellion.23

In my interview with Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., a former full professor of physics, and a researcher with the Ontario Civil Liberties Association in Canada, we also discussed the controversial topic of masks.

Rancourt did a thorough study of the scientific literature on masks, concentrating on evidence showing masks can reduce infection risk, especially viral respiratory diseases.

If there was any significant advantage to wearing a mask to reduce infection risk to either the wearer or others in the vicinity, then it would have been detected in at least one of these trials, yet there’s no sign of such a benefit.

He said in our interview:

“It makes no difference if everybody in your team is wearing a mask; it makes no difference if one is and others aren’t. Wearing a mask or being in an environment where masks are being worn or not worn, there’s no difference in terms of your risk of being infected by the viral respiratory disease.

“There’s no reduction, period. There are no exceptions. All the studies that have been tabulated, looked at, published, I was not able to find any exceptions, if you constrain yourself to verified outcomes.”

This is another area where Sweden has stayed ahead of the curve, as they’ve resisted asking the public to wear masks based on lack of evidence of effectiveness and the risk that they offer wearers a false sense of security.

Tegnell did state that officials are considering whether to recommend masks during use of public transportation, but stressed masks “definitely won’t become an optimal solution in any way.”24

Sweden Speaks Out Against WHO Warning

In late June 2020, the World Health Organization counted Sweden among European countries at risk of seeing a resurgence of COVID-19.

The warning was based on WHO data showing Sweden had 155 infections for every 100,000 inhabitants in the past 14 days, a higher rate than in most of Europe.25

Tegnell, however, said that this was a “total misinterpretation of the data” and WHO was confusing Sweden with countries just at the outset of their epidemics.

Instead, any rise in infections is likely due to increases in testing, Tegnell said, adding,

“They didn’t call to ask us. The number of admissions to intensive care is at a very low level and even deaths are starting to go down.”26

Time will tell whether Sweden’s strategy, which avoided lockdowns and widespread mask usage, turns out to be the right one after all, but some believe the writing is already on the wall.27

“Dr. Michael Levitt and Sweden have been right all along,” Off-Guardian reported.

“The only way through COVID-19 is by achieving the modest (10-20%) Herd Immunity Threshold required to have the virus snuff itself out.

“The sooner politicians — and the press — start talking about HIT and stop talking about new confirmed cases, the better off we will all be.

“Either way, it’s likely weeks, not months, before the data of new daily deaths will be so low that the press will have to find something new to scare everyone. It’s over.”

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

From the author: The existing medical establishment is responsible for killing and permanently injuring millions of Americans, but the surging numbers of visitors to Mercola.com since I began the site in 1997 – we are now routinely among the top 10 health sites on the Internet – convinces me that you, too, are fed up with their deception. You want practical health solutions without the hype, and that’s what I offer.

from:    https://humansarefree.com/2020/08/sweden-close-to-reaching-herd-immunity-countrywide.html

Turn Off the MSM Rant and Open Your Minds

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Corporate Controlled Mainstream Media (MSM) Exists to Demoralize the Public

It has become increasingly obvious that the corporate controlled mainstream media exists to demoralize the public by cherry-picking stories that favor a narrative that promotes victimization.

by Patrick Herbert

Incidents that are in the minority are amplified and with purposeful repetitive selection to give the impression that the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular narrative are in the majority.

Mainstream Media Traitors Lies Cia Mind Control Manipulation

I have observed the effect that mainstream narratives have on both the collective and individual level, and the ferocious intensity with which people are convinced that the world that they read about has a one-to-one correspondence with a reality that they believe exists right outside their front door.

One need not look any further than the ocean of mask wearing individuals walking about in public, convinced that the breath of their neighbor or fellow pedestrian is a weapon of mass destruction.

The media has purposefully promoted the concept that those who do not wear a mask are an existential threat to you and your family.

According to them, you are a victim to their callous behavior; that ultimately freedom loving people who refuse to wear a mask are a threat to society.

This is intentional, for as you have been victimized you will willingly forgo any of your freedoms for a guarantee of safety.

Oh, and for good measure, the media will add that they are probably Trump supporters and thus COVID-19 deniers, a tactic sure to enrage the reader even further and a blatant effort to steer the reader politically.

While the fake pandemic is a great example of the media’s role in victimizing its audience, this tactic has been deployed for long before then, primarily for the promotion of a political, racial, and gender divide as part of the effort by those at the top to divide and rule over the population.

As the attention span of the average reader has shrunk, the media has focused its energy on manufacturing loaded headlines.

For the most part, it is the headline exchanged between people who do not have the time to read the content but want to lend credence to their own perspective on an issue.

A heavy emotionalized headline will do just that, and using technology you can fire that headline in every direction like a machine gun.

These headlines are thusly shared rapidly via text messaging or as a post to timelines on the various social medias.

As the world is currently filled with an army of social justice warriors (SJW), so too are their timelines filled with selective headlines that emotionally emphasize the severity of the issues they feel they are valiantly fighting for or against.

Reading through the cherry-picked and heavily manipulated headlines on mainstream media news websites, we can see the reoccurrence of common themes: everyone is a racist, everyone desires to keep women and minorities down, members of the LGBT+ community are in danger, and COVID-19 is killing everyone, everywhere, at every moment.

Victimization. Demoralization.

Cia Owns Everyone

Also manipulated are the pictures that accompany the stories. Normally, these are selected in ways that will further the psychological impact of that which the article is trying to convey.

A story about Joe Biden making gaffes will be accompanied by a picture of Joe Biden looking confused. A story about COVID-19 will show covered gurneys surrounded by people in hazmat suits.

A story about racism will show pictures that emphasize the narrative, such as a picture of people in robes typically worn by the Klu Klux Klan.

I have even seen stock photography of young white men holding torches, mouths open as if yelling, with a headline suggesting they were white supremacist Trump supporters.

With these elements combined tactically, it should be quite obvious that we are not confronted with organizations that seek to inform us but instead to propagandize us along a divide, and within that divide they seek to victimize and demoralize us.

The divides are many, from political to race right down into gender with there being radical subdivisions as we have been introduced to various complexities related to gender and further complicated by what we are told is a biological misunderstanding, with a narrative that is going so far as to try and alter our own perceptions of our own gender biology.

J. K. Rowling has been incessantly attacked for a seemingly innocent defense of what she considers to be the definition of a biological female, something that she has lived and identified with her entire life.

Those attacking her feel some level of injustice has been bestowed upon them, that somehow they are being denied their own identity. Some go so far to claim that these grievances are no less destructive than a physical attack.

How did they reach these conclusions? Victimization.

Certainly we all experience discrimination at some point in our lives but the truth is it happens in perpetuity when one reads the headlines and stories promoted by the mainstream media.

Mika Brzezinski

There is a definitive psychological impact and the people behind the engineering of these divides understand this.

You do not have a black vs. white, man vs. woman, gender biology vs. gender fluidity, religion vs. religion, woke vs. unwoke, without the victimization of one or the other.

There is no better place than to engineer this divide by promoting victimization than through the corporate mainstream media elements most consumed by a majority of the population: television news, news papers, magazines, and websites; an effort done most intentionally in order to manipulate large swaths of society into divided positions much like on a chess board.

It is the narratives that they build in our minds that allows them to control us emotionally, for we forgo any semblance of emotional control when we allow ourselves to become victims.

We are segmented into like-minded collections, played against each other across the board in whichever way is politically, financially, and/or socially expedient to the corporate media masters for reasons that they seek to benefit from.

The majority of humanity, the 99%, are thus relegated to the role of simple pawns in a much larger game whose existence they may never even be aware of.

from:   https://humansarefree.com/2020/08/corporate-controlled-mainstream-media-msm-exists-to-demoralize-the-public.html

Legality of Geo-Tracking and Infrared Spying

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Contact Tracing: US Supreme Court Already Has Ruled that Tracking People by Cellphone Is Unlawful

July 31, 2020 KrisAnne Hall and Dr. Pamela Popper 0

Pixabay
Contact Tracing uses cellphone GPS data to trace individuals and groups to a particular location, and your private data will be controlled by county officials. Counties are also considering using infrared technology to “look” inside private homes and buildings to determine the number of people who are gathered. However, the US Supreme Court previously has ruled that it is NOT lawful for the government to use such data to track individuals without a warrant. The Court also has ruled that a government entity must have a warrant to use infrared technology to look inside a private building. For government officers to use cell data or infrared technology to track people, they must have express permission from each person or a warrant for every individual. Otherwise, tracking will be an unlawful search and seizure. Attorney KrisAnne Hall wrote an open letter for citizens to share with county officials advising them of these rulings. She believes citizens would win civil-rights lawsuits based on these rulings. Dr. Pamela Popper is asking anyone whose cell phone has been used to contact trace them to reach out to her to participate in a lawsuit. -GEG

“…The use of cell phones by government entities to geo track people is not a new nor an unsettled issue.  Although it may be legal for a hospital or university to purchase such data from a cell phone provider for research purposes, it is NOT lawful for the government to use the data from data scientists to track individuals without a warrant -even though that data comes from a third party. In Carpenter v. U.S.,the Supreme Court held that a government entity MUST have a warrant to use cell data to geo track someone, even when that data comes from a third party.

Additionally, the Supreme Court held in Kyllo v U.S. that a government entity must have a warrant to use infrared technology to look inside a private building and to do so without a warrant is a violation of our rights to privacy.

For government officers to use cell data or infrared technology to track people, they must have either express permission from each person or a warrant for every single individual or that tracking will be an unlawful search and seizure. If our officials use this technology for contact tracing without warrants, regardless of where the data comes from, it will be tantamount to legal negligence. Given the recency of these Supreme Court cases it is highly likely that the counties would lose a civil rights challenge and the taxpayers will foot the bill.”

Read Attorney KrisAnne Hall’s full sample letter here:

https://makeamericansfreeagain.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Model-Open-Letter-Re-Contact-Tracing-and-The-Supreme-Court.pdf

from:    https://needtoknow.news/2020/07/us-supreme-court-already-has-ruled-that-tracking-people-by-cellphone-is-unlawful/

Things That Make You Wonder

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Motorcyclist dies in crash. Must be COVID.
By Sovereign Man – July 24, 2020

Via Sovereign Man

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Art museum curator cancelled for not abandoning “white male artists”

Gary Garrels was the Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

After giving a presentation on the importance of diversity in art, he ended by saying, “don’t worry, we will continue to collect white male artists.”

His word choice may be curious, but his entire point was that diversity should include everyone… and that means white, male artists too.

He had mentioned at another point that specifically excluding white artists would be reverse discrimination.

But this egregious sin was enough to elicit a Change.org petition from his co-workers calling for his ouster.

The petition claimed that Gary may be “deliberately racist.” It also claimed his use of the term “reverse discrimination” is “white supremacist and racist language.”

Gary bowed to the mob, and resigned.

Somehow, this petition did not violate Change.org’s policy against using petitions to bully.

Click here to read the full story.

Florida motorcycle crash victim “died of Covid”

Sadly, a man from Florida who crashed his motorcycle succumbed to Covid-19.

At least, that was according to the Florida Health Department.

Florida initially counted the motorcycle death as one of those rare cases where a 20-something year old died of Covid.

This came to light during a press conference with a local health official.

When reporters asked if any of the young victims had any underlying conditions, the health official said, “The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident.”

He added, “But you could actually argue that it could have been the Covid-19 that caused him to crash.”

After the media picked up the story, the state corrected the data.

But it makes you wonder– how much can you trust the official statistics?

Click here to read the full story.

22 peer-reviewed scholarly articles on Covid-19 have been retracted

Speaking of official statistics being wrong, a lot of the official information has turned out to be wrong too.

Wear a mask, shut down your business, swear off social contact, and remain in your home cowering in fear. That is the most scientific way to beat Covid-19, according to many news outlets and rabid peers.

But scientific journals aren’t so sure about the facts on Covid-19.

A website called Retraction Watch keeps track of papers and studies withdrawn from scholarly and scientific journals.

So far, it has counted 22 peer-reviewed scientific papers and experiments on Covid-19 that were originally published, but later had to be retracted for various reasons.

For instance, one study found that coronavirus infects t-cells, but later realized the methodology was wrong, and the virus does not invade t-cells, like HIV.

Another retracted study said coronavirus could spread 15 feet through the air via water droplets.

Several of the retracted studies were from China. And that only adds to the confusion. Were they retracted for faulty science? Or were the results accurate, but the Chinese government forced a retraction in order to placate their narrative?

The point is, science is doing the best it can. They’re breaking new ground every day. But there’s still a tremendous amount of uncertainty about Covid. Even when they reach conclusions, they sometimes later find out that their conclusions were wrong.

Yet despite this uncertainty, politicians have no trouble shutting down the global economy and trampling over individual freedoms.

Click here to read the full story.

Grocery giant bows to 17-year old Twitter mobster

Oh what a glorious cultural revolution comrades! When any teenage girl with internet access can do her part to strike the root of prejudice in our society.

This time the victim of the Twitter mob is Trader Joe’s, a grocery chain known for its quirkiness.

Trader Joe’s liked to have a little fun with branding its culinary offerings from around the world.

For instance, the store sells Mexican food under “Trader José,” Chinese food under “Trader Ming,” Italian food under “Trader Giotto” and so on.

But one teenage tyrant, a 17 year old girl, found this offensive. So she started a petition– once again Change.org helped facilitate this important social reform.

The petition claims that using variations of Joe in branding foreign foods “belies a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes…”

“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures – it presents “Joe” as the default “normal” and the other characters falling outside of it.”

The petition, now signed by a mob of almost 5,000 random internet users, also took issue with the inspiration for the original Trader Joe’s store.

The founder read an apparently racist book, and rode an apparently racist Disney ride, which together gave him the idea for his clearly racist business of selling food products from around the world.

Trader Joe’s quickly yielded to the Twitter mobsters, saying although the names were “rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect.”

Click here to see the petition.

from:    https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/motorcyclist-dies-in-crash-must-be-covid/

Unlocking the Secrets of Black Holes

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Black Holes Contain Photon Rings That Record “Movies ” Of Cosmic History

A new paper claims that black holes retain a kind of photon-based record of space-time history that could yield some of the secrets of the universe.

Jake Anderson
Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

 

(TMU) – A new paper claims that black holes retain a kind of photon-based record of space-time history that could yield some of the secrets of the universe.

Astronomers and physicists studying the M87 black hole, recently renamed Pōwehi (which means “embellished dark source of unending creation”), made history earlier this year when they released the first photographic image of a black hole. In their new paper, they argue that the ghostly ring of fire we see could harbor historical records – which some have called “movies” – of the cosmos.

The argument is based on an interferometric study of the vast swirling wreaths of light that are trapped in perpetual orbit around the black hole’s event horizon. This light is comprised of photons, which scientists believe may behave like the rings inside a tree trunk, concentric sequences of information that betray overall age and development.

In the paper, entitled “Universal Interferometric Signatures Of A Black Hole’s Photon Ring,” they write:

“Together, the set of subrings are akin to the frames of a movie, capturing the history of the visible universe as seen from the black hole.”

Studying these rings of photons could help scientists learn more about theories like Einstein’s general relativity.

They could also crack more of the mysteries of black holes, which continue to be one of the most puzzling and monstrous objects predicted by physics. For example, do black holes defy the mandates of quantum mechanics and destroy all information? Do they contain dark matter? Do they curve space-time so severely that matter is sent to the future? Can black holes break the laws of physics by existing in five-dimensional space?

The list goes on and on. Many of the world’s most prominent physicists, including Stephen Hawking and Einstein himself, have spent careers and lifetimes trying to unravel the enigmatic existence of black holes. This has led some thinkers to some very strange theories. For example, mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose has suggested that we may actually be able to see the imprints of black holes from alternate universes.

Because of the many related puzzles, the opportunity to study historical records left behind by rings photons inside black holes is tantalizing to scientists.

However, the rings do not exist in perpetuity. Each one is only six days older than its predecessor and is eventually obliterated inside the black hole singularity. So while they cannot be used to peer into the entire history of the universe, “measuring the size, shape, and thickness of the subrings would provide new and powerful probes of a black hole spacetime.” 

Scientists have described the discovery as approaching a “cosmic hall of mirrors, where the black hole’s gravity takes light from all directions, warps it and beams it to us as an infinitely recast image of the hole’s surroundings. The result is an epic movie of the history of the universe, as witnessed by a black hole, playing on a dramatically curved screen tens of billions of kilometres across.”

As we continue to learn more about black holes, what will they whisper to us about the nature of reality and the secrets of the cosmos?

from:    https://themindunleashed.com/2020/07/black-holes-contain-photon-rings-that-record-movies-of-cosmic-history.html

Pocket Dinosaurs

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Scientists Discovered A Tiny Relative Of Dinosaurs And Pterosaurs

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Life restoration of Kongonaphon kely

Life restoration of Kongonaphon kely, a newly described reptile near the ancestry of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, shown to scale with human hands. The fossils of Kongonaphon were found in Triassic (~237 million years ago) rocks in southwestern Madagascar and demonstrate the existence of remarkably small animals along the dinosaurian stem. Art by Frank Ippolito, ©American Museum of Natural History

By Anthony McLennan / Truth Theory

Fossils found in Madagascar suggest that dinosaurs’ ancestors could have been small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand.

When most of us think of dinosaurs, we think of massive beasts, perhaps several times the size of an elephant or as large as the biggest of whales. The Titanosaurs, for example, is believed to have weighed up to 90 tons. And although we know that smaller dinosaurs did exist, the thought of one fitting comfortably into a person’s hand would have seemed inconceivable to many people.

But now, after additional analysis on Kongonaphon fossils which were discovered in Triassic rocks (~237 million years ago) in 1998 in Madagascar, there seems to be a strong case to suggest that dinosaurs’ ancestors were once only as big, or rather as small, as 10 centimeters.

Kongonaphon-Alex Boersma

Life restoration of Kongonaphon kely, a newly described reptile near the ancestry of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, in what would have been its natural environment in the Triassic (~237 million years ago).
© Alex Boersma

The tiny bug slayer

The mini dinosaur’s full name is ‘Kongonaphon kely’, or ‘tiny bug slayer’ – derived from both ancient Greek and the Malagasy language.

The latest findings were released in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month.

“Although dinosaurs and gigantism are practically synonymous,” read part of the published report, “an analysis of body size evolution in dinosaurs and other archosaurs in the context of this taxon and related forms demonstrates that the earliest-diverging members of the group may have been smaller than previously thought, and that a profound miniaturization event occurred near the base of the avian stem lineage.”

Kongonaphon compared

Body size comparison between the newly discovered Kongonaphon kely and one of the earliest dinosaurs, Herrerasaurus.
Silhouettes from phylopic.org by Scott Hartman (CC BY 3.0) and AMNH/Frank Ippolito

The fossils which were found, have been linked to both dinosaurs and flying pterosaurs (huge flying reptiles, which weighed up to 250 kilograms), both of which belong to the group Ornithodira.

Little is known about the origin of Ornithodiras. But this new report suggests that a the presence of “fuzz” on the skin of both pterosaurs and dinosaurs could be linked with them having a common ancestor – the ‘Kongonaphon kely’, or ‘tiny bug slayer’.

from:    https://truththeory.com/scientists-discovered-a-tiny-relative-of-dinosaurs-and-pterosaurs/

What Is Under Your Feet?

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Inner Earth: Scientists Discover Mountains and Plains 370 Miles Beneath Earth’s Surface

At school, we are thought that Earth is divided into three layers, which are the cortex, the mantle and the nucleus, which in turn is divided into an internal and external nucleus.

by Janice Friedman

A basic and accurate scheme, but that nevertheless leaves out other subtler layers that scientists are now beginning to identify in the deep interior of our planet.

A team of geologists has detected a previously unknown layer in the middle of the Earth’s mantle, whose characteristics are reminiscent of those of the planet’s surface.

Inner Earth Scientists Discover Mountains And Plains 370 Miles Beneath Earth’s Surface

A new study published in the Journal of Science, authored by geophysicists Jessica Irving and Wenbo Wu of Princeton University, in collaboration with Sidao Ni of the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics of China, describes how researchers used data from the seismic waves of a large earthquake in Bolivia to locate, at a depth of 660 kilometers, a new region inside the Earth, one that has left them speechless: it features a mountain range, and plains, very similar to those on the surface of our planet.

And to be able to peer deep inside the planet, researchers had to make use of the most powerful waves that exist on our planet, the seismic waves generated by massive earthquakes.

“You want a big, deep earthquake to get the whole planet to shake,” said Irving, an assistant professor of geosciences.

For this particular study, the key data were obtained from seismic waves captured after an 8.2 magnitude earthquake, the second most powerful ever recorded, which shook Bolivia in 1994.

“Earthquakes this big don’t come along very often,” Irving said.

“We’re lucky now that we have so many more seismometers than we did even 20 years ago. Seismology is a different field than it was 20 years ago, between instruments and computational resources.”

But data alone is nothing if you don’t know how to make use of it.

That’s why scientists used the group of Tiger supercomputers from Princeton University to simulate the complex behavior of scattered seismic waves in the depths of the Earth.

The technology applied for this analysis depends almost entirely on a single property of the waves: its ability to bend and bounce.

Thus, in the same way, that light waves can bounce (reflect) in a mirror or bend (refract) when they pass through a prism, seismic waves travel directly through homogeneous rocks but are reflected or refracted when finding limits or roughness.

“We know that almost all objects have surface roughness and therefore scatter light,” said Wu, the lead author on the new paper, who just completed his geosciences Ph.D. and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology.

“That’s why we can see these objects — the scattering waves carry the information about the surface’s roughness. In this study, we investigated scattered seismic waves traveling inside the Earth to constrain the roughness of the Earth’s 660-km boundary.”

Scientists were left stunned by the roughness of the boundary. As they explain, its rougher than the surface layer we live on.

“In other words, stronger topography than the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians exist at the 660-km boundary, explained Wu.

While the new study undoubtedly describes one of the most sensational discoveries made beneath our feet, their statistical model doesn’t offer much insight that could allow precise height determinations.

Nonetheless, scientists say that there’s a chance that some of these underground mountains are larger than anything we’ve seen on the surface of the planet.

They say that the roughness wasn’t equally distributed, either. According to scientists, just as the crust’s surface has smooth ocean floors and massive mountains, the 660-km boundary beneath our feet has rough areas and smooth patches.

from:    https://humansarefree.com/2020/07/inner-earth-scientists-discover-mountains-and-plains-370-miles-beneath-earths-surface.html