If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Senator J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate in the November presidential election, has past ties to tech, but also strong opinions about it. Informed by the knowledge of the industry many politicians lack, Vance is anti-Big Tech monopolies, and positive on cryptocurrencies. Appearing on the CBS News show Face the Nation, the potential future vice president reiterated his previously stated by-and-large approval of FTC Commissioner Lina Kahn’s work, and the two seem to be particularly in agreement on the need to break up Big Tech monopolies. The case for spinning off companies like Google has been talked up over the last years from both political camps in the US, unsurprisingly, however, from different angles. Vance focuses on the danger of such large entities controlling speech. “I don’t want Google or a billionaire that controls Google that’s in bed with China to be able to censor American information and that’s exactly what they’ve done,” Vance told CBS. He also mentioned the anti-trust lawsuit against Google launched during Trump’s first term in office, noting that they both “look at this in the same way.” Speaking of the difference between “Small Tech” and “Big Tech,” Vance singled out the monopolistic power the latter has to control some key elements, such as Google’s digital advertising power vs. for example X. “I don’t think that Elon Musk has any monopoly – he’s not using his company to try to destroy competitors,” Vance remarked, explaining the importance of anti-trust initiatives around the technology sector. In pushing for better anti-monopoly rules, Vance hopes the Trump presidency would achieve two goals: secure better-paid jobs at home, and freedom of expression. This is not the first time that Vance has criticized Google, but also Facebook and others for their left-leaning bias, posting on X in February that it was “time to break Google up.” As for cryptocurrencies, Vance, like Trump, wants to avoid overindulgent regulatory measures. Also earlier this year, he criticized the approach taken by Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler during a Y Combinator event RemedyFest. Some reports see these policy points as appealing to a number of Silicon Valley actors, which, after all, isn’t uniformly left – although its biggest players seem to be. But Vance’s messages, particularly around cryptocurrencies, seem to resonate among venture capitalists and the likes of Elon Musk, who are willing to put their money where their mouth is and support the Trump-Vance ticket with large campaign contributions. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post VP Nominee JD Vance Calls for Breaking Up Google appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

The Fall of the January 6th Prosecutions?

The Trans Infection Spreads to the Paralympics

Right now, we are looking for signs of life on Mars at the surface, and perhaps soon in the ocean of liquid water found deep in the crust.Finding signs of life (if that were to happen) could tell us about how life evolves, whether it is abundant in the cosmos, or even whether that life is related to us – taken from Earth to Mars or Mars to Earth as material from the planets flew through the solar system. When NASA sends robot explorers to the planet, it is careful not to contaminate them with life, leaving the planet as pristine as we can. There are even forbidden areas (or Special Regions) where life may be more likely, which we have so far stayed clear of for fear of contaminating it with Earth microbes.But say we found that Mars is now a cold, dead planet, and humanity continues to grow and thrive, future humans may consider colonizing it. There, rather than global warming being a problem, we would actually need to heat the planet artificially in order to make it livable for us, and whatever creatures we bring along for the ride. There have been plenty of proposals on how to do this, from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to fluorinated versions of methane, ethane, and propane. But these ingredients are rare on Mars, making them less practical for the huge terraforming project – and a new team has a different suggestion which they compare to glitter in size. "We show here that artificial aerosols made from materials that are readily available at Mars—for example, conductive nanorods that are ~9 micrometers long—could warm Mars >5 × 103 times more effectively than the best gases," the team explains in their paper.The idea is that the small particles of aluminum and/or iron would be swept up into the atmosphere, like Martian dust. The material, only a little smaller than commercially available glitter, would then warm the planet by capturing and scattering more radiation from the Sun."For a 10-year particle lifetime, two climate models indicate that sustained release at 30 liters per second would globally warm Mars by 30 kelvin and start to melt the ice. Therefore, if nanoparticles can be made at scale on (or delivered to) Mars, then the barrier to warming of Mars appears to be less high than previously thought."There are of course a lot of unknowns involved. If Mars has life, altering the planet's temperature could kill it off. If the Martian soil were found to contain compounds toxic to Earth-based life, warming it up a bit would have very little benefit for human settlers. NASA's Mars Sample Return should help answer this. While heating the planet would melt the surface ice, it's also possible this would soon drain into the planet, requiring a lot of management. We also don't know if Mars has enough of the required materials to make the "glitter", or whether it would need to be brought from Earth, making the project a lot more difficult and less feasible.However, it could be possible to heat the planet using essentially glitter, adding a little razzle-dazzle at the same time.The study is published in Science Advances: Planetary Science.

The Altar Stone at Stonehenge may have been sourced from northeast Scotland, at least 700 kilometers (434 miles) away from its final placement in southwest England. It’s not clear how prehistoric humans managed to transport the 6-ton rock to the other side of the British Isles, but the new research adds further intrigue to the story of the famed Neolithic site.Construction at Stonehenge began around 5,000 years ago, with multiple modifications and additions made over the following 2,000 years. It was previously thought that the henge was comprised of two rock types: the large iconic sarsen, likely sourced around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away near Marlborough, plus the smaller bluestones, collected from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales.For centuries, it had been assumed that the Altar Stone, a large sandstone block measuring 5 by 1 meters (over 16 by 3 feet) buried flat in the heart of the monument, was one of the Welsh bluestones, but recent research showed that wasn’t the case.To uncover its mysterious origins, scientists from Curtin University and Aberystwyth University took a closer look at its geochemical makeup. When I found out that it was Scottish, my team and I thought: ‘No way did people move this. It's just too far.’ It's completely unprecedented.Anthony Clarke“The Altar Stone is a sandstone made up of individual grains, kind of like grains at the beach that have been squished together, and some of these grains are minerals that contain uranium. Over geological time, uranium will decay to lead and we know the rate at which that decay process occurs. So in a way, each of these grains is almost like a miniature atomic clock,” Anthony Clarke, lead author and PhD student at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told IFLScience.“If we date several of these grains within the Altar Stone, it allows us to build up a fingerprint of ages, like a barcode, a serial series of numbers. That can be statistically compared to source rocks throughout Britain and Ireland. When we did that, it was very much distinctly Scottish,” he explained.The Altar Stone is the flat stone seen here underneath two bigger fallen Sarsen stones.Image credit: Professor Nick Pearce/Aberystwyth UniversityIn particular, the Altar Star shares some uncanny similarities with the Old Red Sandstone found in the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland, around 750 kilometers (466 miles) away from Stonehenge.“When I found out that it was Scottish, my team and I thought: ‘No way did people move this. It's just too far.’ It's completely unprecedented,” Clarke added. “Even today, a journey from Scotland [to southwest England] is pretty arduous. Back then, the land was heavily forested. There were mountain ranges: the Pennines, the Cairngorms, the Grampians, and the Southern Uplands. It was boggy,” he noted.Blown away by the distance, the team explored the possibility that the rock was moved southwards across the British Isles by glaciers. However, they found that almost all the ice flows over the past 1 million years had gone northwards, the opposite direction of the rock’s movement. There’s also no sign of ice movement on the stone, either.         This led them to conclude that the only way the Altar Stone could have traveled this huge distance was by boat. Plenty of archaeological evidence shows that marine transport routes were well-established across Neolithic Europe and people had developed surprisingly sophisticated vessels around this time. While the transit of the Altar Stone would be the longest recorded journey for any stone used in a monument during this period, it’s not a totally crazy idea that it was shipped all the way down Britain’s coast.“It seems that maybe the ancient world was a lot more connected than we might think,” Clarke concludes.The new study is published in the journal Nature. 

Reports of a rare virus in three European countries have sparked fears of an “emerging threat to global health”. Oropouche virus, sometimes referred to as a “sloth virus”, typically spreads in the Americas but seems to have made its way across the Atlantic for the first time – how concerned should we be? Here’s everything you need to know.What is Oropouche virus disease?Oropouche virus disease is a tropical viral infection transmitted by biting midges and some mosquitoes and thought to originate in sloths, hence its being dubbed “sloth fever”. Symptoms include fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and joint pain – similar to those of dengue, chikungunya, Zika, or malaria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Patients may also experience sensitivity to light, dizziness, pain behind the eyes, nausea, vomiting, and a rash. Typically, symptoms last for under a week but often reoccur a few days or even weeks later.Previously, the virus has been reported in parts of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, with a total of two deaths having been documented, both in Brazil. So far in 2024, outbreaks have been reported in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and most recently in Cuba. There is no evidence that it has been spread in the United States.Now, it has been reported in Europe for the first time, although its primary vector (the Culicoides paraensis midge) is absent on the continent.The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) announced in a report that 19 cases of Oropouche virus disease were detected in Europe in June and July – 18 of which were in travelers returning from Cuba, and one from Brazil. Of these, 12 were in Spain, five in Italy, and two in Germany.How worried should we be?Although there have been over 500,000 cases of Oropouche fever recorded since the discovery of the virus in 1955, there is very limited knowledge of the disease. It has been described in an editorial in The Lancet Infectious Diseases as “mysterious” and an “emerging threat to global health” – but what we do know about it suggests there’s no need to panic.According to the CDC, most people with Oropouche recover within several days to a month. In rare cases (fewer than one in 20), it can progress to more serious disease, such as meningitis, encephalitis, or bleeding – but death from Oropouche is thankfully rare."The prognosis for recovery is good and fatal outcomes are extremely rare," the ECDC confirms.Reassuringly, no direct, horizontal, human-to-human transmission of the virus has been documented so far.In Brazil, however, there have been six possible reported cases of the disease being passed from mother to child during pregnancy. What risk this may pose for the fetus is still under investigation and has not yet been confirmed.The ECDC describes the chances of exposure to Oropouche in Europe as “very low”, and the risk of catching the disease while traveling to the Americas is, they say, "moderate". “The likelihood of infection increases if travellers visit the more-affected municipalities of the northern states of Brazil and/or the Amazon region, and/or if personal protection measures are not taken.”How to protect yourselfThere are currently no vaccines to prevent or medicines to treat Oropouche, so the best way to protect yourself is to prevent bites from midges and mosquitoes from happening in the first place.The CDC recommends wearing insect repellent, using effective window and door screens, and utilizing a fan when outdoors to help blow biting midges away.Wearing long-sleeved shirts and long trousers is also advised.The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

Austrian physicists have measured the Leggett-Garg inequality using neutron interferometry, leading to a clear conclusion: no classical theory can accurately describe reality. This study provided new evidence that a particle can exist in a superposition of two states associated with different spatial locations—even at distances of several centimeters. Can quantum objects be explained by classical theory, or do particles indeed exist in multiple places simultaneously, as quantum physics suggests? In 1985, scientists Anthony Leggett and Anupam Garg addressed this question by proposing a theoretical test: if the world can be described without invoking superposition and other quantum phenomena, it must conform to a specific inequality. If the world is truly quantum in nature, this inequality will be violated. The Leggett-Garg inequality is conceptually similar to the more widely known Bell inequality, which describes the relationship between the behaviors of two entangled objects. However, the Leggett-Garg inequality concerns the temporal evolution of a single object’s state. Scientists hypothesized that an object could be measured at different moments in time, with each measurement yielding one of two possible results. By statistically analyzing how these results correlate over time, it is possible to test whether classical realism holds. If classical realism is correct, the level of correlation cannot exceed a certain limit (with K being less than 1). However, if quantum mechanics governs the behavior of objects, then K will be greater than 1. Previous experiments have already shown violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality in various quantum systems, including photonic qubits, nuclear spins, and superconducting qubits. However, the research conducted by physicists from the Technical University of Vienna introduces notable advancements, as reported by Physics World. By using a neutron interferometer, they were able to measure the positions of neutrons in three distinct regions: in front of, inside, and behind the interferometer. “The results we obtained cannot be explained within the framework of macrorealistic theories—only by quantum theory,” said Sponar. According to the measurements, the neutron must exist in a coherent superposition of states, a fundamental property of quantum mechanics. This research shows that particles can exist in multiple places at once, which can’t be explained by classical physics. It confirms that the strange behavior predicted by quantum physics is real and can’t be described by any traditional theory. This is a big step in understanding how the quantum world works. The post No classical theory can accurately describe reality, study shows appeared first on Anomalien.com.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid devoted much of Tuesday’s edition of The ReidOut to freaking out over the idea that Republicans will use various methods to undermine November’s election results should Donald Trump lose. One idea that was particularly unhinged was the idea that purging voter rolls is so problematic that it led Reid to warn that Republicans are even trying to rig the election in Wyoming. Reid claimed, “In Ohio, the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, purged nearly 160,000 people from the state's voter rolls. In Wyoming, a state that’s not even in play, they voided 28 percent of their voter registrations in a mandatory purge. In Georgia, Georgia Elections Board has this new inquiry for certifying election results. There's a website that the NAACP in the state says you have 20 days to take this down because people could literally mass delete people from the voter rolls. This is what we're up against.”     In Ohio, LaRose claimed that about two percent of registered voters were removed. Removals occur if voters died, moved away, or have not been active for four years, not because Republicans are trying to rig the election. In Wyoming, it is every two years. In Georgia, the website Reid referred to had some initial privacy problems, but once those were resolved, it is simply a way for people to cancel either their own voter registration or that of a deceased loved one. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics President Noah Bookbinder sidestepped Reid’s statement about voter rolls to circle back to an earlier part of the segment, “Yeah, I think the key is knowing what the law is and being out there and vigilantly enforcing it. And, you know, so you can see in issues like county election certification, there's not actually any doubt as to what you can and can't do. You need people who are willing to go out in advance and say you can't do this and then actually back that up.” Not willing to give up the voter roll talking point, Reid turned to Black Voters Matter Co-founder LaTosha Brown, “True The Vote, which is a notorious group that tries to intimidate voters. They're, sort of, leading the charge to try to scare people and push people off voter rolls, et cetera, but isn't the real answer to this a massive win? Right? Like it's got to be huge turnout?” Brown agreed, “It has to be. We have to send a message loud and clear. There has to be a huge win around democracy that we're fighting, that democracy is on the ballot. Women's right to choose is on the ballot. Our reproductive health is on the ballot. Our future of this nation is on the ballot and so we need to make sure that there's a convincing win that sends a message loud and clear that this will not be tolerated.” When you are a progressive freaking out about Wyoming, it may be time to consider that you’re simply looking to be offended. Here is a transcript for the August 13 show: MSNBC The ReidOut 8/13/2024 7:17 PM ET JOY REID: Noah, you’ve got in Ohio, the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, purged nearly 160,000 people from the state's voter rolls. In Wyoming, a state that’s not even in play, they voided 28 percent of their voter registrations in a mandatory purge. In Georgia, Georgia Elections Board has this new inquiry for certifying election results. There's a website that the NAACP in the state says you have 20 days to take this down because people could literally mass delete people from the voter rolls. This is what we're up against. NOAH BOOKBINDER: Yeah, I think the key is knowing what the law is and being out there and vigilantly enforcing it. And, you know, so you can see in issues like county election certification, there's not actually any doubt as to what you can and can't do. You need people who are willing to go out in advance and say you can't do this and then actually back that up. REID: And I'm going to give you the last word on this, LaTosha. True The Vote, which is a notorious group that tries to intimidate voters. They're, sort of, leading the charge to try to scare people and push people off voter rolls, et cetera, but isn't the real answer to this a massive win? Right? Like it's got to be huge turnout? LATOSHA BROWN: It has to be. We have to send a message loud and clear. There has to be a huge win around democracy that we're fighting, that democracy is on the ballot. Women's right to choose is on the ballot. Our reproductive health is on the ballot. Our future of this nation is on the ballot and so we need to make sure that there's a convincing win that sends a message loud and clear that this will not be tolerated.

Monday night, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech giant and owner of X, conducted a historic virtual interview over his social media platform with former President Donald Trump that his team dubbed “THE INTERVIEW OF THE CENTURY!” Despite being plagued with technical difficulties, including a late start caused by a denial-of-service attack and poor audio quality on President Trump’s end, the two-hour interview garnered a billion views, marking a win for free speech and alternative media. “Musk’s act of commercial statesmanship by buying a media apparatus enables free political speech at a time when it is being crushed. Conversation with Trump tonight proves the thesis. This is a commercial-cultural movement in the midst of a cold civil war. And this = how to win,” Matthew Peterson, the editor in chief of Blaze Media, posted on X. Musk explained why the Biden-Harris administration has been so bad for Americans' wallets and urged the next administration to cut spending to reduce inflation. Here are the seven most important topics Elon Musk discussed with President Donald Trump: 1. Failed assassination attempt Right off the bat, Musk and Trump delved into the failed assassination attempt. Trump recalls the moment when he felt the bullet graze his ear and told Musk his escape was “an act of God.” “For those people that don't believe in God, I think we gotta all start thinking about that. You have to, you know, I'm a believer. Now I'm more of a believer,” Trump said. While Trump focused on how he was thankful that he survived the assassination attempt, Musk took a jab at the Secret Service’s failure and said, “How on earth does a shooter get on a roof 130 yards away? That seems crazy. I think most people are wondering how on earth could such a thing happen." Then, after Trump explained the entire situation again, how the shot was “not a long shot” and how it was a miracle that he turned his head toward the illegal immigration graphic at the right moment, Trump made a joke, saying, “Illegal immigration saved my life.” 2. Open borders Speaking of illegal immigration, Trump’s most important policy issue, Trump and Musk traded jabs at the border czar, Kamala Harris. Following the Harris campaign’s recent ad portraying her as being tough on immigration and the false claim that she was never the border czar in the first place, Trump argued the Biden-Harris administration has been a disaster for the border. “[Kamala] could close it up right now. [The Biden administration] could do things right now. It's horrible,” Trump said. Trump also criticized the current administration for letting “people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things” into this country. “She was totally in charge. She could have shut the border down without [Biden]. … She was in charge of the border, and the border was the worst ever,” Trump added. Musk replied, “And if we have another four more years of open borders, and it's gonna be even worse, with another four more years, it's gonna be even worse than it's been for the past three and a half years. I'm not sure we've got a country.” 3. Interventionism run amok Not only is America more dangerous under the Biden administration, but so is the rest of the world. The Biden-Harris foreign policy has led to violence across the world, which Trump claimed would never have happened if he were still the commander in chief. From the Middle East to East Asia and Russia, Trump blames the high tensions across the world on Biden’s frenzied foreign policy. “All this stuff that you're seeing now, all the horror … look at Israel. They're all waiting for an attack from Iran,” Trump said. He also insisted that if he were still president, “Israel would have never been attacked [by Hamas]” in the first place, “Iran would not be attacking” since it knew "not to mess around,” and Putin would never have [invaded Ukraine] if he was in charge. Then, Trump told Musk about a conversation he had with Vladimir Putin while he was president, in which he told Putin, “Don't do it. You can't do it, Vladimir. [If] you do it, it's gonna be a bad day. You cannot do it.” Most importantly, Trump urged a return to a foreign policy that seeks to de-escalate foreign conflicts. He criticized Biden’s incompetence in dealing with Russia and warned that “it can lead to World War III.” “I think you're right. I think people underrate the risk of World War III. And it's just, when looking at the risk of global thermonuclear warfare, it's game over for humanity,” Musk replied. 4. Cost of living Perhaps the most important policy issue this election cycle, tied with the border, is inflation and the economy. For the past four years, Americans have lived in a highly inflationary environment due to the left’s radical economic plans. “It's a disaster with inflation. The inflation, it doesn't matter what you make. The inflation has eaten you alive,” Trump said. Musk explained why the Biden-Harris administration has been so bad for American’s wallets and urged the next administration to cut spending to reduce inflation. “Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it's written by the government,” Musk explained. “So if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply. And if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that's inflation.” Then, Musk volunteered himself to help solve the inflation and spending problem and said he would “be happy to help out” on “a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayers' hard-earned money is spent in a good way.” 5. Education reform One of the biggest drivers of government deficits is the federal government's spending billions on federal agencies. The Department of Education, which has faced considerable scrutiny from conservatives over the past half-century for being inefficient and seizing control from states and parents, would be first on the chopping block for President Trump. “I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I wanna close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” Trump told Musk. If Trump follows through, state legislators would have more control over their education policies, which could result in more school choice legislation at the state level — a massive victory for families who want to choose where they send their kids to school. 6. Energy, AI, and tech Americans can’t afford electricity, either. That’s why Trump vows to “bring energy prices down” in his next term. “Not only gasoline; it's the cost of heating your house and cooling your house. That has to come down. It's gone up 100%, 150%, and 200%, and that has to come down. When that comes down, and we're gonna drill, baby, drill,” Trump promised. Furthermore, Trump understands the need for efficient energy access to support AI innovation. AI development is driving the swell in energy consumption, which requires immediate reaction from legislators and industry leaders. Some have warned AI’s demand for energy is “pushing the world toward an energy crisis.” “And I know you're a big fan of AI, and I have to say that AI, and this is shocking to me, but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything,” Trump told Musk. “So you're gonna have to build, we're gonna have to build a lot of energy if our country will be competitive with China, because that's our primary competitor for this AI. You're gonna need a lot of electricity. You're gonna need tremendous electricity, almost double what we produce now for the whole country, if you can believe it,” he added. 7. The far left Trump asked Musk why he is voting for him to cap the interview off. Essentially, Musk, a former “moderate Democrat,” thinks the Democrats are swinging too far left. “They're rewriting history and making Kamala sound like a moderate when in fact she is far left, like far, far left,” Musk complained. “Worse than Bernie Sanders. … She's a radical left lunatic,” Trump replied. Lastly, Musk urged fellow moderates to vote for Trump. “I'm just trying to point out that my track record historically has been moderate; if not moderate, slightly left. And so this is to people out there who are in the moderate camp to say I think you should support Donald Trump for president. And I think it's actually a very important junction in the road. And we're in deep trouble if it goes the other way,” Musk said.

Here is what the New York Times doesn’t tell you.