Rescuers in Indonesia pull six-year-old boy from rubble after deadly quake
On the fourth day of an increasingly urgent search, Indonesian rescuers narrowed their work Thursday to a landslide where dozens are believed trapped after an earthquake that killed at least 271 people, more than a third of them children.
Liberty Is Worth The Fight
Liberty Is Worth The Fight
Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,
“There comes a time,” Martin Luther King Jr. advised, “when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
Moral imperative, in other words, outweighs personal security, political correctness, and the psychological comfort of identifying with the crowd. During troubling times of human violence and suffering, it is always the lonely few — either blessed with innate courage or made resolute through private, grinding struggle — who dare to take a stand against encroaching evils tacitly accepted by the many. Such is the power of individual free will when man chooses principle as his guide.
Today is a time for the voices of the few to coalesce. What is at stake is nothing less than individual control over one’s life, liberty, property, privacy, and pursuit of happiness. Freedom of speech hangs in the balance, as do freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That many of these natural rights were recorded together in America’s First Amendment is not accidental. They are intimately interwoven. To weaken any one, weakens them all.
To freeze the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters demanding freedom from unwanted experimental “vaccines,” as was done in Canada, is to threaten speech, assembly, bodily autonomy, religious objection, property rights, and public resistance to government-caused harm.
To forbid a football coach from publicly praying is to force him to sacrifice both his religious freedom and freedom of expression; if the very things that most define us are relegated to the home, then religious identity and freedom of speech do not have far to roam.
Aside from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to create an official “Disinformation Governance Board” to “combat” free speech antithetical to the government’s point of view, reports show that DHS employees have regularly met with Facebook and Twitter to suppress and censor certain facts and opinions in online discussion of numerous issues dominating public debate — including such broad topics as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19, and “racial justice.”
To hand Western governments the power to decide what may or may not be published on social media deprives the public square of both unfettered free speech (within the bounds of Brandenburg v. Ohio) and a truly free press. To empower government actors with the authority to designate some thoughts as “mis-,” “mal-,” or “dis-” information — in other words, to permit politicians and bureaucrats to arbitrate what is true or false, helpful or harmful, protected opinion or malicious deception — is to abrogate entirely the protections of America’s First Amendment. To use private sector cutouts as the government’s implicit censors is not only a nefarious and cynical workaround — it is also illegal to act as a government agent to enable it to circumvent constitutional prohibitions, in this instance limiting who may participate in the modern-day equivalent of the traditional town square.
To censor dissenting views on experimental, yet coerced, medical treatments, two-tiered economic shutdowns (during which “Big Box” stores are inexplicably “allowed” to operate while economically vulnerable neighborhood shops are not), is mass censorship in the name of public health, shielding from scrutiny monstrous tyranny draped in the false cloak of the “greater” or “common good.”
When governments censor dissenting opinions from public debate, they serve no greater interests than their own. When governments claim to act for the people’s “own good” while banning contrary points of view, they all too often augment their own power at the public’s expense. When governments camouflage their orders behind claims of “good intentions,” then the most atrocious evils can be blissfully undertaken.
If you allow yourself to be blinded by any government’s “good intentions,” your eyes may one day be flooded with the sights of unspeakable harms. Hugo Chávez’s socialist government made many such promises “for the good” of the people of Venezuela, while his government’s endless public betrayals have left that nation’s citizenry suffering immeasurably still today.
This is a pivotal moment in human history, when centuries of steady progress toward human emancipation and individual liberty will either find new, urgent momentum or suffer regrettable retreat. Either freedom means something, or it does not. Either personal agency resides in the hands of every individual, or it disappears behind a view of people as nothing more than parts of collective groups. Either self-government demands each citizen have a voice, or the many must obey the edicts of an ever-expansive government run by the few. Either citizens are uniquely empowered to control the direction of their governments, or legal citizenship and nationality mean nothing at all. These are the simple yet serious stakes we face today. They are clear, unforgiving, and unavoidable.
The reason we are here now at this intersection in the history of liberty is not complex: it is the outcome of human nature. For most people in the West today, war and its painful consequences are unknown or have been distorted by time. Although violence and bloodshed continue uninterrupted in many places around the world, most Westerners have long been spared the horrors of war directly outside their doors. The difficulty for humans to appreciate what they cannot see has made them careless in preventing what they do not intimately know.
Many politicians cavalierly embrace totalitarianism once again. Citizens, once aware of the attendant dangers to peace when large corporations and national governments work hand in glove to push “politically correct” ideas upon society, are apparently so far removed from the twentieth century’s vivid lessons in fascist, communist, and Nazi propaganda that they fail to see the harm in bureaucrats and officeholders dictating to the public what it may believe.
Many Westerners have forgotten that freedom of speech and personal liberty — far from menacing “microaggressions” deserving of sanction — are the surest safety valves for mediating animosities inherent within any society before outright violence is unleashed in their stead. For many people, decades of relative peace have transformed hard-fought Western freedoms into disposable inessentials. Governments and international corporations think little of the risks to social cohesion — and probably do not even care — when they purposefully manipulate populations with mass media propaganda meant to reinforce the elite agendas of the World Economic Forum covering everything from energy use and food production to medical mandates and health passports. The same allure of ultimate power and control that fueled both world wars remains all too enticing.
Governments already acclimated to universal public surveillance and warrantless online tracking see central bank digital currencies, human tracking implants, and the imposition of social credit scores all on the horizon and believe the time for total control over citizens is near, so long as they are the ones doing the controlling.
As always, technology’s liberating benefits are accompanied by its powers to threaten populations and to suppress information that its directors may abhor. Radio and television connected the world as never before, but mass communication also rapidly fueled the rise of dictators and the spread of public indoctrination to new heights. Nuclear energy has provided both abundant power and the potential for apocalyptic destruction. Personal computers, smartphones and the internet have given ordinary individuals megaphones through which to articulate new ideas, yet that same cyberspace has opened up a brand new battlespace for government surveillance, propaganda, and mass manipulation.
Rather than ensuring citizens’ economic security and fostering freer markets, some governments appear to view technology as providing not only more efficient tools for redistributing wealth, limiting personal income, and levying taxes but also the means for creating a technocratic system of total surveillance in which bureaucratic control over what consumers buy and sell and the implementation of social credit scores can both reward “politically correct” behaviors and punish “wrong” points of view.
Technological advancement provides the means for both greater human freedom and absolute human abasement. When governments are allowed to make that choice for us, they will often choose the latter. Their concern is not our personal liberty but their power. For human freedom to flourish, only the people are capable of keeping government power in check.
It is therefore imperative that Westerners not lose sight of the most important battle already raging — one pitting individual freedom against total state control. Every other issue should be scrutinized through this lens. We are, indeed, at an intersection in the history of human liberty. Even if only a small minority comprehend what is now at risk, those few would do well to fight for preserving our individual freedoms against those governments and corporations working diligently to dilute them.
Either the light of liberty is once again rekindled, or it will be extinguished until a later day.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/23/2022 – 23:55
Analysis: The nation’s hope for a Thanksgiving reprieve is shattered by another tragic spate of gun violence
As the nation’s psyche was shattered by yet another mass shooting in Chesapeake, Virginia, the moments of terror recounted by Walmart employee Jessie Wilczewski — who survived a Tuesday night attack that killed at least six people — reflected the position of hopelessness where America once again finds itself when it comes to gun violence.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/24/politics/gun-violence-shatters-thanksgiving/index.html
‘We don’t do gay’: Father of Colorado shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich goes on anti-gay rant in bizarre interview
The father of accused mass shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich said his first reaction to learning Aldrich had been involved in a shooting at the club was wondering what his child was doing at a gay bar.
GREG GUTFELD: Karine Jean-Pierre swooped in to keep Dr. Anthony Fauci from answering question on COVID origin
It’s almost Thanksgiving — the time when we reflect and give thanks, which is something I do every day when I look into a mirror. Man, was God generous. Thanks, God.
VOICE: You’re welcome, Greg. By the way, your quads are looking great. The angels are really noticing.
Good to know. But we should all be thankful for our successes and most importantly, the failure of others. Me? I’d like to give thanks for Anthony Fauci for at least making Jesse Watters seem humble. God-willing, the spotlight-chasing doctor is retiring, and yesterday at the White House press briefing, he stood on a milk crate and took to the podium one final time, perhaps to tell us to start wearing four masks and be sure to put one on your turkey too. But instead of being Fauci’s swan song, the presser took a nosedive faster than Julie Banderas into a box of wine with a crazy straw.
JULIE BANDERAS: I don’t use straws.
I know that. Trying to be nice. The drama all started when a brave reporter for the Daily Caller tried to ask a simple question about the origins of COVID-19. You remember COVID, right? It’s that disease that just happened to start where Fauci had funded what sounded an awful lot like gain-of-function in coronaviruses. Yeah, it was that little pandemic that killed millions, decimated the global economy, and left a whole generation of young people dumber than your average CNN viewer. But before we could get an answer, Karine Jean-Pierre swooped in like Ana Navarro on free pizza.
REPORTER: What have you done to investigate the origins of COVID?
RAND PAUL PROMISES TO ‘SUBPOENA EVERY LAST DOCUMENT OF DR. FAUCI’ IN VICTORY SPEECH
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Hold on one second. We have a process here. I’m not calling out on people who yell. And you’re being, you’re being, you’re being disrespectful to your colleagues, and you’re being disrespectful to our guest. I will not call on you if you yell. And also, you’re taking time off the clock because Dr. Fauci has to leave in a couple of minutes, and I’m done, I’m not getting into a back-and-forth with you. Go ahead, Jeremy.
Go ahead, Jeremy. So, wait, he’s their guest? He’s like an MVP quarterback who decided to drop by and wow the crowd? No, he’s a ——- civil servant, and we pay his salary, which happens to be a small fortune — and he better damn well answer that question at some point. But if you thought Jeremy, whoever he is, was going to get his question in, you’d be sorely mistaken.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: It is not, it is not your turn. It is not your turn.
REPORTER: You need to call from people across the room. She has a valid question. She’s asking about the origin of COVID.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: I hear your question, but we’re not doing this the way you want it.
STATE AGS SAY FAUCI, ZUCKERBERG ‘COLLUDED’ TO KILL COVID LAB LEAK THEORY
Well, what way are you doing it exactly? I mean, I assume that is the way, you know, reporters ask important questions and the guests answer them. Damn it, it must be nice not to have to work that hard at a job. All you had to do was tick a few boxes and tell everyone to eff off. But Simon, I wonder if she’s done.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Simon, I’m done. Simon, I’m done. I’m done with you right now. Go ahead. Go ahead. You’re taking time away from your colleagues.
Of course, Simon. You know, assuming you could ask such questions is obviously guilty of white privilege. So that’s Fauci’s last briefing, and we still don’t know the origins of COVID-19 or how Karine Jean-Pierre got her job. Well, actually, we do.
But Fauci is retiring right before Republicans control congressional hearings. The timing is as convenient as my bathrobe falling open when my room service arrives.
Now we could believe the experts and assume COVID came from a lovely but slightly over-seasoned bat soup at a Chinese wet market. It’s not the cleanest place. They go by the five-second rule if you drop a jar of Ebola on the floor.
But really, Nancy Pelosi’s been eating bats for centuries, and she’s fine. Even her eyebrows look like little bats. Hell, for all we know, it could have come from the bathroom in “The View’s” green room. Probably would have been the least toxic thing in the water. The bowl routinely needs gain-of-function from a plunger. I know the janitors — or just maybe it could have been from a lab that does gain-of-function coronavirus research that just happens to be in the city where the outbreak began.
Point is, we don’t have any answers because they shoot down the question every time they get asked. And if you dare question the narrative, they’ll brand you someone who peddles in conspiracies, someone who thinks the earth is flat, someone who thinks we never landed on the moon, someone who really thinks that that’s Jesse Watters’s real hair — grow up. So the White House and KJP could deflect all they want, but the question must still be asked, and hopefully one day we’ll know for sure how and where the pandemic started and who’s to blame — probably right after we find out who shot JFK.
On this day in history, Nov. 24, 1874, the first commercially successful barbed wire is patented
Barbed wire is a commonly used product in agriculture, transportation and other industries.
The unique design and structure make this wire creation sturdy — and sometimes harmful to the touch.
And on this day in history, Nov. 24, 1874, the first commercially successful barbed wire was patented by Joseph Farwell Glidden.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, NOV. 23, 1859, WESTERN OUTLAW BILLY THE KID IS BORN IN NEW YORK CITY
Glidden was an American farmer originally from Charlestown, New Hampshire.
After growing up in Clarendon, New York, and finishing school, he returned to his father’s farm to work, according to Britannica.
Years later, he landed in De Kalb, Illinois, and obtained a farm of his own.
After seeing a sample of barbed wire at the De Kalb Count Fair in 1873, Glidden decided to make some improvements of his own on the product — and ultimately applied for a U.S. patent.
But he was not alone.
Two other men also applied for a barbed wire patent with changes of their own: lumberman Jacob Haish and merchant Isaac Leonard Ellwood, according to Encyclopedia online.
Glidden, however, was the man who was awarded the patent.
The original patent on barbed wire was filed in the United States in 1867, but Glidden obtained the patent on the new and improved form in 1874, according to Britannica.
Barbed wire normally consists of two long wires that are twisted together to form a cable.
The wire comes in many varieties, depending on its uses.
“Barbed wire will discourage unwanted entry and is suited to a variety of containment needs,” according to the Home Depot website about store-bought barbed wire.
“It can also be used with chain link or other fencing barriers for an additional layer of security.”
Shortly after obtaining the patent, Glidden also developed a machine to help with producing the new and improved barbed wire.
Glidden then asked Isaac L. Ellwood to join him in creating a fencing company: Barb Fence Company of De Kalb.
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The two worked together to create the product, which served as a way to protect livestock on their land.
The option of wood fencing was always there; however, it was expensive for landowners with hundreds of thousands of acres.
Barbed wire, however, was cheaper and easier to install.
Just one year after creating the fencing company, Glidden sold his half of the business to the Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, according to Encyclopedia online.
Glidden was thought to have received more than $60,000 and royalties for life on the patent.
Just 15 years after the creation of barbed wire, fenced-in land replaced the once-open range in the western United States, according to Britannica.
Virginia Walmart employee clinging to life after shooting: relative
Another employee shot during Tuesday’s massacre at a Virginia Walmart is expected to die as a result of his injuries, according to a relative.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/virginia-walmart-employee-blake-williams-expected-to-die-from-wounds/
Stories of Ukrainian resistance revealed after Kherson pullout
Two Russian soldiers walked down a street in Kherson on a spring evening in early March, just days after Moscow captured the city. The temperature that night was still below freezing and the power was out, leaving the city in complete darkness as the soldiers made their way back to camp after a few drinks.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/24/europe/kherson-pullout-ukrainian-resistance-intl/index.html
Google Cloud partners with Indian startup SuperGaming to offer gaming engine to developers
Google Cloud has partnered with SuperGaming to offer the Indian gaming startup’s proprietary gaming engine, SuperPlatform, to developers worldwide, the latest in a series of recent steps from the Android-maker to expand focus into the gaming industry.
The cloud arm of the search giant said Thursday that as part of its partnership, it will offer the Pune-headquartered startup’s gaming engine to help developers worldwide to help them manage their live ops, matchmaking, player progression and data, analytics, server scaling and merchandising. These tools are designed to help firms maintain, optimize and scale their games.
The upstart SuperGaming, which uses its gaming engine in its own titles as well as the official PAC-MAN game for mobile devices, has garnered millions of downloads to its mobile titles such as MaskGun, Silly Royale and Tower Conquest.
SuperGaming initially developed SuperPlatform to power its own games, and started to license the service to other developers in 2019.
Image Credits:
The two firms aren’t stranger to one another. SuperGaming originally relied on AWS for its cloud needs, but moved to Google Cloud a couple of years ago after seeing advantages including “a significant amount of savings,” SuperGaming co-founder and chief executive Roby John told TechCrunch in an interview.
That move put wheels in motion to make the platform available via Google Cloud as an independent software vendor for developers, said John. “I’m very excited to bring our platform to Google Cloud, which powers 70% of our top customers already,” he added.
Developers will continue to have the choice to use SuperPlatform on AWS as well as Azure, though Google Cloud will be SuperGaming’s preference as a result of the partnership, he said.
Prior to talks about a potential partnership, John said SuperGaming had been working closely with Google Cloud engineers to use the cloud platform for the upcoming battle royale game Indus. The teams on both sides exchanged insights that helped bring the partnership very organically, he said.
“The partnership is beyond just saying, okay, here’s computers and infrastructure and all the rest. It’s about saying, how can we come collectively together and with the business objective of succeeding,” said Bikram Singh Bedi, managing director, Google Cloud India, in the joint conversation.
The two did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Google Cloud’s competitors AWS and Azure do offer native liveOps solutions for game developers to let them run their games as a service and get real-time telemetrics. Google Cloud, however, seems to utilize SuperGaming’s expertise — alongside its platform — to bring some distinctions.
“It’s always about developers, or it’s about players. And this partnership allows us to influence both,” said Bedi.
SuperGaming, which counts U.S.-based Skycatcher, Tokyo’s Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund and Ant Group-backed BAce Capital among its investors, has so far raised $6.8 million, with $5.5 million infused through a Series A round last year.
The startup also launched TowerConquest: Metaverse Edition as its free-to-earn Web3 game, which it said will also run on Google Cloud — alongside the existing titles and upcoming Indus.
Google Cloud partners with Indian startup SuperGaming to offer gaming engine to developers by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/google-cloud-supergaming-partnership/
Mike White aiming to ‘capitalize’ on unexpected Jets opportunity
Mike White’s roller-coaster career is about to reach its highest peak yet.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/mike-white-looking-to-capitalize-on-jets-opportunity/