Voice-morphing? Fake video? Holographic projection? They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons. Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands.
 
Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks. Eliminated are the robotic intonations.
 
The irony is that after Papcun finished his speech cloning research, there were no takers in the military. Luckily for him, Hollywood is interested: The promise of creating a virtual Clark Gable is mightier than the sword.
 
Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world. With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future.
 
"We already know that seeing isn't necessarily believing," says Dan Kuehl, "now I guess hearing isn't either." 
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nat...020199.htm
 

How GeoCities handled hate speech, and the profound need to log off more often.

For all the zoomers scrunching up their brows, here’s a primer. Back in the 1990s, before the birth of modern web hosting household names like GoDaddy and WP Engine, it wasn’t exactly easy or cheap to publish a personal website. This all changed when GeoCities came on the scene in 1994.

The company gave anyone their own little space of the web if they wanted it, providing users with roughly 2 MB of space for free to create a website on any topic they wished. Millions took GeoCities up on its offer, creating their own homemade websites with web counters, flashing text, floating banners, auto-playing sound files, and Comic Sans.

Unlike today’s Wild Wild Internet, websites on GeoCities were organized into virtual neighborhoods, or communities, built around themes. “HotSprings” was dedicated to health and fitness, while “Area 51” was for sci-fi and fantasy nerds. There was a bottom-up focus on users and the content they created, a mirror of what the public internet was like in its infancy. Overall, at least 38 million webpages were built on GeoCities. At one point, it was the third most-visited domain online.

Yahoo acquired GeoCities in 1999 for $3.6 billion. The company lived on for a decade more until Yahoo shut it down in 2009, deleting millions of sites.

Nearly two decades have passed since GeoCities, founded by David Bohnett, made its debut, and there is no doubt that the internet is a very different place than it was then. No longer filled with webpages on random subjects made by passionate folks, it now feels like we live in a cyberspace dominated by skyscrapers—named Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and so on—instead of neighborhoods.

https://gizmodo.com/interview-with-geoci...1849179509

Neuroscience has found that gestures are not merely important as tools of expression but as guides of cognition and perception.

The tendency to supplement communication with motion is universal, though the nuances of delivery vary slightly. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, people point with their noses and heads, while in Laos they sometimes use their lips. In Ghana, left-handed pointing can be taboo, while in Greece or Turkey forming a ring with your index finger and thumb to indicate everything is A-OK could get you in trouble.

Despite their variety, gestures can be loosely defined as movements used to reiterate or emphasize a message — whether that message is explicitly spoken or not. A gesture is a movement that “represents action,” but it can also convey abstract or metaphorical information. It is a tool we carry from a very old age, if not from birth; even children who are congenitally blind naturally gesture to some degree during speech. Everybody does it. And yet, few of us have stopped to give much thought to gesturing as a phenomenon — the neurobiology of it, its development, and its role in helping us understand others’ actions. As researchers delve further into our neural wiring, it’s becoming increasingly clear that gestures guide our perceptions just as perceptions guide our actions.

Gestures may be simple actions, but they don’t function in isolation. Research shows that gesture not only augments language, but also aids in its acquisition. In fact, the two may share some of the same neural systems. Acquiring gesture experience over the course of a lifetime may also help us intuit meaning from others’ motions. But whether individual cells or entire neural networks mediate our ability to decipher others’ actions is still up for debate.

When children are learning their first language, Macedonia argues, they absorb information with their entire bodies. A word like “onion,” for example, is tightly linked to all five senses: Onions have a bulbous shape, papery skin that rustles, a bitter tang and a tear-inducing odor when sliced. Even abstract concepts like “delight” have multisensory components, such as smiles, laughter and jumping for joy.  To some extent, cognition is “embodied” — the brain’s activity can be modified by the body’s actions and experiences, and vice versa. It’s no wonder, then, that foreign words don’t stick if students are only listening, writing, practicing and repeating, because those verbal experiences are stripped of their sensory associations.

Macedonia has found that learners who reinforce new words by performing semantically related gestures engage their motor regions and improve recall. Don’t simply repeat the word “bridge”: Make an arch with your hands as you recite it. Pick up that suitcase, strum that guitar! Doing so wires the brain for retention, because words are labels for clusters of experiences acquired over a lifetime.

Multisensory learning allows words like “onion” to live in more than one place in the brain — they become distributed across entire networks. If one node decays due to neglect, another active node can restore it because they’re all connected. “Every node knows what the other nodes know,” Macedonia said.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-b...-20190325/

Study finds sperm levels of men who kept their phones in their pocket during the day were quite seriously affected in 47 per cent of cases 
 
The new study shows that having a mobile phone close to the testicles - or within a foot or two of the body - can lower sperm levels so much that conceiving could be difficult.
 
The findings have led to a leading British fertility expert to advise men to stop being addicted to mobile phones. 
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/n...sperm.html
 
Is this why my balls aren't bouncing like they should? I'm also wondering how much subjects were paid for this study to take place...
 

 
 
 
 

This myth has caused human rights abuses around the world, forced population control, denied medicines to the poor, and targeted attacks on ethnic minorities and women. Is this another lie told in general by the scientists and those who are supposedly in the know?
 

The Overpopulation Myth

 

Hans Rosling is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.

 

In this talk 'Don't Panic - The Truth About Population' he comprehensively dispels the Human overpopulation myth which has been introduced into the subconscious mind of viewers of mainstream broadcasted media communications over the past thirty years.

 

Whilst the information in this video is credible, remain vigilant with respect to individuals because other viewpoints held by them might not be.

 

https://youtu.be/eA5BM7CE5-8

The Parable of the Talents
 
https://bible.org/seriespage/27-parable-...ke-1912-28
 
Recently I've begun to look at this parable because I've come across a point made by others as to whether the correct word is used in the story. Talents or gold! Some versions of it state gold. I know a talent has a definition of weight attached to it. But, my thought came from another definition of talent: the natural aptitudes we all have as human beings.
 
Language changes throughout the translation process. Ideas morph into certain behaviors associated with the the text. All the different versions in translation (from the older ones to the new) seem to state different meanings through time. A morass of legalese has crept into all facets of society. Consider how definitions and words can change over time to preach and teach a new view or philosophy forward. 
 
Why is gold stressed more in the modern versions of the bible. How many different versions in any language are there. I've seen bibles where whole passages have been changed to suit agendas. Words changed, missing verses, all kinds of rhetorical trickery. Veiling the true deeper aspects of what the bible has to offer.

Targeting the US Dollar’s Hegemony: Russia, China, and BRICS Nations Plan to Craft a New International Reserve Currency

During the BRICS Summit, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that the five-member economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa plan to issue a “new global reserve currency.”

“The matter of creating the international reserve currency based on the basket of currencies of our countries is under review,” Putin said at the time. “We are ready to openly work with all fair partners,” he added. Additionally, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are considering joining the BRICS group. Analysts believe the BRICS move to create a reserve currency is an attempt to undermine the U.S. dollar and the IMF’s SDRs.

The Financial World Splits in Half: Alternative Payment Rails, Stockpiling Gold, and the Clash of a Robust Dollar and Ruble

The strengthening of the BRICS nations has been going on well before the conflict in Ukraine began. For instance, in 2014, Russia developed the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), and later the Mir payment system was launched. That same year, in response to the annexation of Crimea, Russia started to stockpile gold in vast amounts.

China has been hoarding massive amounts of gold as well, as both countries hiked their gold reserve purchases a great deal a few years before the war. Russian banks also joined the China International Payments System (CIPS) making it easier for the two countries to trade. In April last year, China opened its borders to billions of dollars of gold imports, according to a report from Reuters.

https://news.bitcoin.com/targeting-the-u...-currency/

 

 

In pictures: Anak Krakatau back to life again! 3 eruptions within 12 hours

Anak Krakatau exploded 3 times on July 18, 2022.



https://strangesounds.org/2022/07/in-pic...hours.html

https://youtu.be/gBxTREZo2UE

Russia's Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of 'extraordinary' circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/...022-07-18/