Via: National Post: This week, the United States national debt ticked above US$22 trillion for the first time, an amount equivalent to $67,000 per U.S. citizen. The U.S. federal government owes more money than any other institution in the history of human civilization. And it’s just getting worse. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in […]

Make sure everyone is bathed in directed energy weapon beams 5G network signals. Via: ScienceAlert: What they found was that slow periodic activity can generate electric fields which in turn activate neighbouring cells, constituting a form of neural communication without chemical synaptic transmission or gap junctions. “We’ve known about these waves for a long time, […]

Via: StudyFinds: Don’t want your child to have a cellphone? One recent study gives you good reason to make kids wait as long as possible for their first mobile device: it appears that radiation from phones can hurt a teenager’s memory. A research team at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute says that radio […]

Via: Muckrock: Agency wondered if ten psychics could cause a chain reaction that would cause a city to become lost in time and space.

Via: Richard Dolan:

Via: South China Morning Post: A Chinese surveillance firm is tracking the movements of more than 2.5 million people in the far-western Xinjiang region, according to a data leak flagged by a Dutch internet expert. An online database containing names, ID card numbers, birth dates and location data was left unprotected for months by Shenzhen-based […]

Via: The Conversation: For example, data about a mobile phone’s past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school. These predictions label who you are […]

Via: Ars Technica: On Friday, oil major Royal Dutch Shell and German energy storage company Sonnen announced that Shell would acquire Sonnen for an undisclosed amount. Sonnen has been one of the top competitors with Tesla’s Powerwall in the US home battery market. The company built its base in Germany, attaching batteries for self-consumption to […]

Via: Donald Hutton:

Via: Reuters: President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval, an action Democrats vowed to challenge as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Republican president’s move to circumvent Congress represented an escalation in his efforts to make good […]

Via: Bloomberg: Facebook Inc., under pressure to reduce harmful, misleading and fake content, said it is exploring removing anti-vaccine information from software systems that recommend other things to read on its social network. Information discouraging people from getting vaccines for their children, which has gone viral on Facebook, especially in its Groups product, may have […]

Via: San Francisco Chronicle: Dreaming of greener (read: cheaper) pastures? You’re not alone. According to a new survey by Edelman Intelligence, 53 percent of Californians are considering moving out of state due to the high cost of living. Millennials are even more likely to flee the Golden State — 63 percent of them said they […]

In other news: AI Generates Faces of People Who Don’t Exist Via: Guardian: The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction – dubbed “deepfakes for text” – have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse. OpenAI, an nonprofit research […]

Pelosi: Next President Could Declare National Emergency on Guns Via: New York Post: The White House announced Thursday that President Trump would sign the bipartisan border security bill — and then declare a national emergency to find the money for his long-promised border wall that Congress wouldn’t give him. “President Trump will sign the government […]

Via: CNBC: The auto industry’s electric vehicle revolution has only just begun, Morgan Stanley told investors in a note on Thursday, and the highly profitable pickup truck market is next. “An electric pickup truck successfully launched by a new player (i.e. Rivian or Tesla) could be a serious problem for the Detroit based [traditional automakers],” […]

Via: Reuters: U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest drop in more than nine years in December as receipts fell across the board, suggesting a sharp slowdown in economic activity at the end of 2018. The Commerce Department said on Thursday retail sales tumbled 1.2 percent, the largest decline since September 2009 when the economy was […]

Via: Supercluster: For most people, the ability to see a spy instrument from thousands of miles away but never know its purpose would be maddening. Yet for Molczan, the mystery is part of the thrill.

Via: Bloomberg: At Apple Inc., former top lawyer Gene Daniel Levoff was responsible for making sure employees didn’t violate insider-trading laws. It turns out he was the one who was buying and selling shares illegally, according to U.S. authorities.

I figured that the widget was linked to Google’s dossiers on all of us, but I had no idea about the rest of it. And researchers still don’t know everything Google is doing here. Via: Quora: How complicated can one little checkbox be? … Sweet dreams, human.

Via: End of the American Dream: Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that […]

Via: Houston Chronicle: Texas oil wells produced more than 1.54 billion barrels of crude in 2018, beating the previous record of 1.28 billion barrels set in 1973, TIPRO reported in its annual “State of Energy Report” early Monday morning.

Maybe they need to talk to the people in Marin County to see how it’s done: California: Three City Councils in Marin County Vote to Stop Installing Harmful 5G Towers Via: Richard Dolan:

Via: Reuters: Amazon.com Inc and General Motors Co are in talks to invest in Rivian Automotive LLC in a deal that would value the U.S. electric pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Via: ZeroHedge: Just south of Tampa, Fla., students at the Manatee School for the Arts (MSA) roam the hallways past an armed combat veteran who is constantly looking out for threats. By the end of February, another one will be manning a guard shack at at the school’s entrance. 39-year-old Harold Verdecia, a former infantryman […]

Via: ZeroHedge: Forget Face ID: a collaboration between the Defense Department and a NY-based company called TWOSENSE.AI, has birthed an artificial intelligence algorithm that could be embedded in smartphones and will be able to identify the device owner by the way they talk, type, walk and even by how “they spend their free time”. TWOSENSE.AI […]

Via: The Intercept: If Bezos were the political victim of surveillance state abuses, it would be scandalous and dangerous. It would also be deeply ironic. That’s because Amazon, the company that has made Bezos the planet’s richest human being, is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive, militarized and sprawling […]

Via: BBC: Russia is considering whether to disconnect from the global internet briefly, as part of a test of its cyber-defences. The test will mean data passing between Russian citizens and organisations stays inside the nation rather than being routed internationally. A draft law mandating technical changes needed to operate independently was introduced to its […]

Via: The Daily Bell: All the headlines would have you believe these cops were ambushed, attacked just for being cops while minding their own business. But when you look deeper at the case, you realize these cops didn’t get shot because of anti-police rhetoric. They got shot because they invaded an innocent couple’s home without […]

Via: Mint Press: WASHINGTON – In a leaked military manual on “unconventional warfare” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Army states that major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — are used as unconventional, financial “weapons in times of […]

Via: Vice: Around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. The documents also show that telecom companies sold data intended to be used by 911 operators and first responders to data aggregators, who sold it to bounty hunters. The data […]

Via: Reuters: If Volkswagen realizes its ambition of becoming the global leader in electric cars, it will be thanks to a radical and risky bet born out of the biggest calamity in its history. The German giant has staked its future, to the tune of 80 billion euros ($91 billion), on being able to profitably […]

Alex Strezev captured video of several helicopters landing: Via: ABC: Military helicopters were seen flying in formation around downtown Los Angeles and explosions were reported in the area that were all part of an exercise. The choppers and explosions caused many people to head to social media, scared about what they were seeing outside. Many […]

Via: ZeroHedge: A months-long investigation which tracked and exposed a massive covert weapons shipment network to terror groups in Syria via diplomatic flights originating in the Caucuses and Eastern Europe under the watch of the CIA and other intelligence agencies has resulted in the interrogation and firing of the Bulgarian journalist who first broke the […]

Via: Bloomberg: Tesla Inc.’s battery systems will be installed at more than 100 electric-vehicle U.S. charging stations this year. Electrify America, created by Volkswagen AG as part of a settlement from the automaker’s emissions-cheating scandal, said in an emailed statement Monday that it plans to add the Tesla Powerpack systems at charging stations across the […]

Via: Las Vegas Sun: A man who was shot and killed Monday by law enforcement after he breached the main security gate at the Nevada National Security Site has been identified as an Iowa resident, according to the Nye County Sheriff’s Office. Nekiylo Dawayne Graves, 27, died at the scene, about 8 miles into the […]

Just a quick note for people in New Zealand who are looking for organic, not-from-China bulk foods. Check out: goodfor.co.nz Depending on the items you’re after, the prices range from the best available in New Zealand to not so great, but the website mostly works and everything that the site said was in stock was […]

Just dementia patients… *wink* Via: DailyMail: The NHS is to use energy smart meters to monitor dementia patients in their homes. The devices will track patients’ daily routines, such as when they boil the kettle, cook dinner or turn the washing machine on. They will flag up any sudden change in behaviour which could indicate […]

Update/Confirmed: Sabrina Bittencourt Dead Via: Daily Mail: A woman who helped to bring down a Brazilian faith healer accused of sex abuse has taken her own life in Spain. Sabrina Bittencourt, 38, died at her home in Barcelona just days after accusing John of God – real name Joao Teixeira de Faria – of running […]

This is very difficult to watch. I only made it about a third of the way through this. “There’s no law against having a garden hose in your backyard… yet. We’re waiting for them to catch on.” Anyway, one more for your herniating California-Is-Hell file folder. Via: Exploring Alternatives: Related: L.A. Coliving: PodShare

Via: Green Entrepreneur: It was all over the news on Tuesday: CBS rejected a public service announcement highlighting the benefits of medical cannabis, which was intended to be aired during the 2019 Super Bowl. Long story short, what happened was Acreage Holdings, one of the largest U.S. based cannabis companies, which counts former House Speaker […]

And now, tobacco industry grade nonsense is being used to justify the insanity around screen time and children. “…little or no support for harmful links between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being.” Well-being. *snort* See what they did there? Try looking at language acquisition or physical development and screen time. The Actual Effects […]

Via: Miami Herald: A TSA agent committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of a Hyatt Regency Hotel near the Orlando International Airport on Saturday morning, sparking confusion and delays at the busy airport. The man landed at the airport’s atrium, near some security checkpoints. Gates 70-129 were closed for a few hours after the […]

Via: San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco has more drug addicts than it has students enrolled in its public high schools, the city Health Department’s latest estimates conclude. There are about 24,500 injection drug users in San Francisco — that’s about 8,500 more people than the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District’s […]

Via: Truthstream Media:

Via: TruthDig: On Friday, The New York Times continued its long, predictable tradition of backing U.S. coups in Latin America by publishing an editorial praising Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This will be the 10th such coup the paper has backed since the creation of the CIA over 70 years ago.

Via: Reuters: Germany will pick either the Eurofighter or Boeing’s F/A-18 fighter jet to replace its Tornado warplanes, knocking Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter out of a tender worth billions of euros, Defence Ministry sources said on Thursday.

Via: Buzzfeed: Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives, is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its vast genealogy database in an effort to solve violent crime cases, BuzzFeed News has learned. Federal and local law […]

Economic collapse got you down? Don’t want rent or electricity bills? Come kill for Uncle $cam! But before that, check out Anybody’s Son Will Do. This is the Marines, but it’s pretty much the same, regardless of military branch or country. Anybody’s Son Will Do (1983) Via: United States Army:

Via: Reuters: Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy. She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to […]

Via: Nature: Rather ?than building objects layer by layer, the printer creates whole structures by projecting light into a resin that solidifies. They nicknamed it ‘the replicator’ — in homage to the machines in the Star Trek saga that can materialize virtually any inanimate object. Researchers have unveiled a 3D printer that creates an entire […]

Via: The Optical Society of America: Researchers have demonstrated that a laser can transmit an audible message to a person without any type of receiver equipment. The ability to send highly targeted audio signals over the air could be used to communicate across noisy rooms or warn individuals of a dangerous situation such as an […]

Via: Bloomberg: Eight banks are being targeted in a European Union probe that alleges traders colluded to acquire and trade euro government bonds, a month after the EU regulators implicated lenders in a separate bond-trading case. The European Commission didn’t identify the banks being investigated for “a collusive scheme that aimed at distorting competition” for […]

Via: Deutsche Welle: A free trade agreement between Japan and the EU entered into force on February 1, covering 635 million people and almost one-third of the world’s economy. Dubbed the world’s largest free trade agreement, the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement removes duties on almost all agricultural and industrial products and opens up the service […]

Via: Forbrukerrådet: Google tracks users through “Location History” and “Web & App Activity”, which are settings integrated into all Google accounts. For users of mobile phones with Android, such as Samsung and Huawei phones, this tracking is particularly difficult to avoid. – Google is processing incredibly detailed and extensive personal data without proper legal grounds, […]

Via: The Hill: The Trump administration announced Friday that it would suspend its obligations under a decades old Cold War arms control pact with Russia on Saturday, citing Moscow’s violations of the treaty. The White House announced the decision to stop complying with the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in a statement from President […]

Via: CBS: “Normal scientists want to study, like, how fruit flies have sex or something, something that nobody really cares about,” said Dr. Zayner. “And what I want to study is, how do we make dragons or super-humans or something like that?” Zayner wants others to do it as well. Out of a West Oakland […]

Via: Politico: The White House is finalizing details of a potential national emergency declaration to secure President Donald Trump’s border wall, even as lawmakers are trying to broker an immigration deal that could avert another shutdown in just over two weeks. Trump met with his budget chief, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner […]

Via: Vice:

Via: Moms Across America: On Friday, January 18, Elizabeth Desiree of Washington state posted on Facebook that she just got a call from an employee at Costco and he told her that Costco would no longer be selling Roundup. She had written him a letter and he was calling her back. I was excited but […]

Via: The Intercept: In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on […]

Via: Fortune: Students at a California high school are getting less screen time since the school implemented a ban on cellphone use during the school day. After one teacher at San Lorenzo High School brought pouches, created by the tech start-up Yondr, into her classroom to lock away students’ phones, the entire school began using […]

Via: Drs. Wolfson:

China – Argentina – Patagonia ground station: Outrage, spying, unspecified doom in the media. United States – Australia – Pine Gap: *crickets* Via: Reuters: The United States has long been worried about what it sees as China’s strategy to “militarize” space, according to one U.S. official, who added there was reason to be skeptical of […]

Via: WCCO: Xcel Energy is advising residents in parts of central Minnesota north of the metro to turn down their thermostats and reduce their natural gas use. According to the energy provider, the extreme weather conditions have resulted in a “significant” strain on Xcel Energy’s natural gas system. “We need those in Becker, Big Lake, […]

Via: The Daily Dot: While the nation grapples with concerns over the spread of inaccurate and deceptive information online, deepfakes—videos in which an individual’s face is superimposed onto another—continue to advance at a quickening pace. Now, the new ones are downright terrifying. Also, here is the original video, which was created by @Villain_Guy https://t.co/LrzDLKJVet — […]

Via: CNBC: Amazon is using self-driving trucks developed by Embark to haul some cargo on the I-10 interstate highway, CNBC has learned. The trucks were previously noticed by a Reddit user, who photographed and shared images this week showing tractors emblazoned with the Embark logo and trailers painted with the Amazon Prime logo.

Via: Los Angeles Times: Tijuana, a city of 1.8 million that not long ago was celebrating a major reduction in violence, is in the grip of an unprecedented homicide crisis. A record 2,518 people were killed here in 2018 — nearly seven times the total in 2012. With 140 killings per 100,000 people, Tijuana is […]

Via: The Atlantic: Walgreens is piloting a new line of “smart coolers”—fridges equipped with cameras that scan shoppers’ faces and make inferences on their age and gender. On January 14, the company announced its first trial at a store in Chicago in January, and plans to equip stores in New York and San Francisco with […]

Ah… It de-identifies the location of cellphone users. Mmm hmm. Via: The Intercept: Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like “SimCity.” A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building […]

Via: Bloomberg: Boeing Co. lined up a surprise motivational speaker for an executive retreat in Arizona this month: former U.S. President Barack Obama. He was the second former U.S. president in two years to offer up leadership tips to managers gathered for Boeing’s annual desert planning session. George W. Bush addressed the group last year, […]

Via: DefenseOne: Getting fuel to remote operating bases is a big problem for the U.S. military. In 2008, during the height of combat in Iraq, the Government Accountability Office estimated that more than 900,000 gallons of fuel went to bases for basic power needs like lighting and refrigeration (on top of the 6.7 million gallons […]

Hmm. Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO Giants Know Something We Don’t: No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the […]

Via: BBC: Researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute have genetically modified chickens to produce human proteins in their eggs. They hope the project will one day lead to lifesaving drugs that are much cheaper to make. The team modified the genomes of the chickens so their eggs contain large amounts of high quality […]

Via: OilPrice.com: German auto maker giant Volkswagen has just upped its bet on electric vehicles (EVs) by announcing it will begin manufacturing batteries and charging stations for those cars, which the company plans to also start mass producing soon. The Wolfsburg-based company said it would invest 870 million euros (about $985 million) by 2020 to […]

The arms industry and the mercs did ok, too. Via: ArmyTimes: A two-volume Army study of the Iraq war is a deep examination of the mistakes and success of the war effort that also takes aim at critics who would slough off the conflict as they shift to near-peer threats. The study, commissioned by former […]

Via: The Hill: A group of transparency advocates released a massive number of hacked and leaked Russian documents on Friday in what is being viewed as retaliation against Russia’s sharing of hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. The documents, totaling 175 gigabytes in data, were shared on DDoSecret website […]

Mmm hmm. Via: Guardian: Modern life has led to greater isolation, which can fuel an array of disorders. If there are medications for social pains like depression and anxiety, why not loneliness?

Via: Reuters: The European Commission has added Saudi Arabia to an EU draft list of countries that pose a threat to the bloc because of lax controls against terrorism financing and money laundering, two sources told Reuters on Friday.

Via: Reuters: President Donald Trump agreed under mounting pressure on Friday to end a 35-day-old partial U.S. government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded from Congress for a border wall, handing a political victory to Democrats. The three-week spending deal reached with congressional leaders, quickly passed unanimously by the Republican-led Senate and […]

Via: Newsweek / AP: Robots aren’t replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of existing work, according to a new Brookings Institution report. The report, published Thursday, says roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs with “high exposure” to automation — meaning at least 70 […]

Via: Bloomberg: Amazon.com Inc. will use robots to deliver packages in the suburbs north of Seattle, its latest experiment to automate the last-mile of delivery that’s a labor-intensive and costly component of buying products online. The e-commerce giant on Wednesday announced a trial of “Amazon Scout,” autonomous delivery devices the size of a cooler that […]

Via: Reuters: Kang Sung-il buys Sancho, his Pomeranian, a toy every business trip and this Lunar New Year holiday will dress him up in a new $50 suit to visit ‘grandma’, Kang’s mother. Kang and his wife say children are too expensive and bring too much pressure. Instead they have opted to shower Sancho with […]

Via: Reuters: Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president on Wednesday, winning the backing of Washington and many Latin American nations and prompting socialist Nicolas Maduro, who has led the oil-rich nation since 2013, to break relations with the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump formally recognized Guaido shortly after his announcement and […]

For safety. *snort* Via: Register: Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers. Adblock Plus will most likely not be affected, though similar third-party plugins will, for reasons we will explain. The drafted changes will also limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibl

Via: Cnet: The crypto-enthusiast has donned a wig, jumped on a boat and is now on the run from the IRS. But that won’t stop his 2020 presidential campaign.

Via: Los Angeles Times: Prescription eyewear represents perhaps the single biggest mass-market consumer ripoff to be found.

Via: Who What Why: After five decades, the mysteries behind the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X may finally get the scrutiny they deserve. A group consisting of relatives of the Kennedy and King families, as well as their confidantes and other prominent voices, is calling […]

Via: Los Angeles Times: Indebted borrowers increasingly take out high-interest, adjustable-rate loans that are packaged into securities and sold to investors eager for a better rate of return. Everything’s fine while the economy is growing. But when it slows, those borrowers could default, causing problems to cascade through the financial system. If this all sounds […]

Via: Nikkei: Toyota Motor and Panasonic plan to set up a joint venture in 2020 to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, joining forces to compete more effectively on cost and scale with rising Chinese players in a key area for the future of the auto industry, Nikkei has learned. The venture, in which Toyota is […]

Via: Electrek: Petro Canada, formerly a state-owned oil company in Canada but now part of Suncor, becomes the latest oil company to get involved in electric vehicle charging. … Shell is arguably leading the charge through its involvement in the new Ionity charging network in Europe. The company is building its own chargers at its […]

Via: Reuters: Murders in Mexico rose by 33 percent in 2018, breaking the record for a second year running, official data showed, underlining the task facing the new president who has pledged to reduce violence in the cartel-ravaged country. Investigators opened to 33,341 murder probes compared with the previous year’s record of 25,036, according to […]

Via: New York Post: The Holy Father launched an app called “Click to Pray” on Sunday that’ll allow the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics to join him in prayer. The pontiff has a profile on the Android and iOS app that shows Catholics around the globe what he’s currently praying for. Users can then click […]

Via: DefenseOne: What Tony and several other former U.S. Special Operations Forces personnel received Newport Brain Research Laboratory, located at the Center, was a new treatment for brain disorders, one that might just revolutionize brain-based medicine. Though the FDA clinical trials to judge its efficacy and risks are ongoing, the technique could help humanity deal […]

Via: Guardian: The headline story is that it’s not so much about the nature of digital technology as about a new mutant form of capitalism that has found a way to use tech for its purposes. The name Zuboff has given to the new variant is “surveillance capitalism”. It works by providing free services that […]

Via: Electrek: As major motorcycle manufacturers around the world grapple with a new era of EVs, Ducati could be the next to roll out an electric motorcycle. That’s according to the company’s CEO who just confirmed Ducati’s commitment to developing a production electric motorcycle.