If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Canadian authorities are clearly making a concerted and targeted effort to grab control over various aspects of their citizens’ online activities, and the way internet companies are allowed to operate. And that’s true both of the government and the legislators, who are not afraid to support dubious bills if it benefits their immediate political interest. Another such draft, now moving close to becoming law, is Bill S-210. It is designed to push the implementation of age verification, choosing sites that feature sexually explicit material as its primary target. We obtained a copy of the bill for you here. Such methods, however, bring up serious privacy concerns affecting everybody on the internet, all the more so since S-210 is described as going beyond porn sites and threatening those found to be non-compliant with blocking and fines. This one was not supported by the Liberal government, which dubbed it “fundamentally flawed” – whether because that government is truly worried about privacy violations and overreach (other controversial bills it has pushed do not suggest that it truly does). It could be opposing it for purely political reasons. Namely, the bill received full support from the opposition in the parliament, led by the Conservatives, and observers say it is now at the Standing Committee on Public Safety for review. In addition, thanks to MPs who push delay tactics when it comes to witnesses whose testimony might have produced amendments, S-210 might become law in its current form. The bill has been in the Senate for several years, with the main criticism centered around a proposal to utilize biometric data (facial recognition, and face scanning being one of the ideas), while undermining constitutionally protected freedom of expression by extending its power over regular services that, due to their nature, although not being adult sites, include adult material – such as search engines and social media. In other words, the bill could end up unmasking pretty much every internet user. Envisaged fines go from approximately $183,587 (first offense) to $367,175 (each subsequent). The main goal seems to be to make sure age verification gets implemented. And if that is done – then the “thinking of the children” becomes less important. Namely, if they have age verification, sites and services can argue they are not guilty of breaking any rules since they “believed” somebody was at least 18. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Canada: Government Pushes Flawed Internet Age Verification and Blocking Law, Fines Up to $500,000 for Non-Compliance appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Is “The Big One” Coming? There Have Been More Than 1000 Earthquakes In California And Nevada In The Past 7 Days

January 6, Covid Stir the Fascist Soul of the Educated Liberal Female

25 minutes before sunrise on June 4th, a rare event known as the Parade of Planets will occur

Speaker Johnson to Schumer: Put Up or Shut Up on Netanyahu's Invitation to Address Congress

Despite disappearing around 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals continue to live on in the DNA of most modern humans. The persistence of these ancient genes indicates that our distant ancestors had a thing for stocky, big-nosed hominids, and new research has revealed exactly how these interspecies sexy times played out.It’s estimated that between 1 and 4 percent of the genomes of all non-African humans alive today come from Neanderthals. These genes have helped to shape our appearance and behavior, although until now researchers had struggled to recreate the encounters that resulted in this exchange of genetic material.To piece the story together, the authors of an as-yet un-peer-reviewed study analyzed the genomes of 59 ancient Homo sapiens individuals, all aged between 45,000 and 2,200 years old. Of these, 33 lived more than 10,000 years ago, with Siberia’s famous Ust’-Ishim man being among the oldest of the lot.These prehistoric genomes were then compared to those of 275 present-day humans from across the world. Using computer software, the researchers were able to trace the evolution of Neanderthal genes across the millennia and work out exactly how many generations it would have taken for them to diverge in the way they did.“By measuring the ancestry covariance for each of the 16 ancient individuals that lived between 40,000 and 20,000 [years ago], we infer that the Neandertal gene flow occurred between 321 and 950 generations before these individuals lived,” write the study authors. More specifically, they found that the flow of Neanderthal DNA into the modern human genome occurred over a period of 6,832 years, with the average time of introgression being 47,124 years ago.In other words, the love affair between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals began around 47,000 years ago and lasted for almost seven millennia.The full impact of this prehistoric petting is something we’re still trying to unravel, although it’s clear that Neanderthal ancestry is not found in all regions of our genome. Some regions are completely devoid of Neanderthal DNA and are therefore known as "archaic deserts", while others contain unusually high levels of Neanderthal variants.This suggests that much of the genetic material we picked up from our ancient cousins was probably deleterious and therefore disappeared thanks to natural selection. Certain genes, however, may have conferred survival advantages, and were passed on down the generations.Exploring these so-called “candidates of adaptive introgression”, the researchers came across 347 Neanderthal genes that are well-preserved in both ancient and present-day populations, “suggesting that many of these genes were immediately beneficial to modern humans as they encountered new environmental pressures outside Africa.”According to the researchers, these helpful Neanderthal genes are largely found in regions of the genome that are “related to skin pigmentation, metabolism and immunity.”A preprint of the study can be found on bioRxiv.

On May 21, startup BrainBridge unveiled its concept for a world-first head transplant system, promising to combine artificial intelligence with the latest in robotics to literally remove a human head and put it on a new body. If everything works as intended, once the head is in place, the person will apparently be able to get up and go about the rest of their life with a brand-new set of healthy limbs and organs. Sounds fantastical? Right now, science says it probably still is.BrainBridge project lead Hasham Al-Ghaili, who revealed the plans for the transplant machine in a series of posts on Instagram, told Longevity.Technology, “The goal of our technology is to push the boundaries of what is possible in medical science and provide innovative solutions for those battling life-threatening conditions. Our technology promises to open doors to lifesaving treatments that were unimaginable just a few years ago.”    In its introductory video, the company claims that BrainBridge’s use of robotics will help speed the transplant process up – you can’t leave a head without a body for too long and expect it to survive. Two robots will simultaneously operate on the donor and the recipient, in an environment where the conditions can be tweaked precisely, without having to worry about making it comfortable for human medical staff.Donor bodies would come from young, otherwise healthy people who have experienced brain death; heads from people with diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative conditions, or injuries that have led to paralysis, could then be swapped onto the younger, healthy donor body for a new lease on life.BrainBridge says its process will preserve the recipient’s “consciousness, memories, and cognitive abilities.” It will still be you, just on a new scaffold.  They also make the bold claim that “the brain is capable of lasting several hundred years” according to their estimates, meaning that swapping out a tired body for a newer model could be the gateway to extending a human life beyond our current wildest dreams – if you take their word for it, that is.   But the big question remains: can they really do it?Is a head transplant a realistic possibility?Many have been fascinated by the idea of transplanting a human brain or entire head. Movies from classic comedy-horror Young Frankenstein to the bang-up-to-date Poor Things have dealt with the subject, and it crops up in dozens of books – not all of them fictional. It was inevitable, really, that scientists would begin to explore the possibilities in the real world too.One such pioneer was Robert J. White, a surgeon whose revolutionary techniques birthed a new standard in neurosurgery, but who was also perennially fascinated with what he called the “total body transplant”. White performed a number of experimental operations on monkeys. Although they could survive the initial procedure, the technology hadn’t yet caught up to enable the reattachment of all the myriad nerves in the spinal cord, so moving their new bodies was impossible.More recently, in 2017, controversial neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero claimed to have performed a “successful” head transplant on a human – the only catch being that both humans involved in this procedure were deceased before the surgery even began. Still, Canavero was back in 2023 claiming that a living brain transplant was next on his list. Canvero’s proposed technique has at least one commonality with BrainBridge’s futuristic surgery setup, in that they both propose to use polyethylene glycol (PEG) to re-fuse severed nerves. There’s some research to suggest that PEG could have utility in the surgical treatment of peripheral nerve injuries, but that’s a little different from successfully stitching back together an entire nervous system.Even if we can, does that mean we should?The potential pitfalls with human head transplants don’t end there. We’ve already touched on the need for speed and keeping conditions right to stop the tissue from beginning to degenerate, and if BrainBridge is able to build a machine that works as they intend, they seem confident that they can address these issues. We’ve got robots doing surgery in space now, so having two automatons working on human bodies at the same time isn’t so farfetched, right?But the biggest question marks hang over what might happen once a person wakes up from a head transplant. BrainBridge claims their system would keep people’s consciousness intact – but there’s still so much we’ve yet to understand about the very nature of consciousness. It’s a similar story with memory, with so many theories about how it works and no clear consensus.    Other technical questions include the possibility of immune rejection, and pain control following such a traumatic surgical procedure. And if head transplants ever did become a realistic possibility, there would be serious ethical discussions that would need to be had. “The idea that you can just take someone’s head and just plop it on someone else’s body and it will be the same person is a theory. We take it for granted that it’s true but it’s certainly not taken for granted in other cultures or historically,” said Paul Root Wolpe, a professor of bioethics at Emory University, in a 2017 statement. It’s not for us to say whether or not BrainBridge’s ambitious technology will ever come to fruition. Many ideas that were once thought restricted to science fiction have become a reality. But right now, a human head transplant is not a realistic possibility – and if it were, it’s not clear whether that would actually be a good thing."'In many ways, it's like a dozen unlikely, ridiculous claims bundled into one convenient package," neuroscientist and honorary research fellow at the Cardiff University Psychology School Dr Dean Burnett told MailOnline.Still, it appears that Robert J. White was eerily prescient in his thinking. According to historian Brandy Shillace, author of a recent book on his life and work, White “remained convinced that the surgery would be performed, somewhere, someday, and that his work would be exonerated.”

Last night, CBS's FBI admitted something that every political canvasser already knows: Republicans proudly fly American flags outside their home. On Tuesday night's season finale, "Ring of Fire," FBI agents hunt down Somali terrorists who killed CIA agents. The show begins with the mysterious murder of victims who have no social media presence and minimal personal information. After tracking down burner phone data, agents Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) and Omar Zidan (Zeeko Zaki) find a restaurant where one of the victims, Christine, met with an unknown contact. They ask the restaurant owner for any information he may have about the man with whom Christine met. The owner tells them the man, Jack (Jim Conroy), that he flies "a flag outside" his home so criminals will think he is a Republican and a gun owner who can defend himself. Bell: That's Christine. Zidan: Do you know who she's with? Restaurateur: Oh, yeah, that's Jack. I don't know his last name, but he comes in here a lot. He lives in the neighborhood. Bell: Okay, do you know anything else about him? What he does for a living? Restaurateur: Just that he drives a pickup truck, and, um, he has a flag outside of his house. He said it keeps the criminals away. Bell: Really? Restaurateur: Yeah, you have a flag outside, people think you're a Republican. They think you own a gun. The flag outside Jack's home is indeed an American flag. It turns out Jack is a CIA agent. He helps the FBI connect the murders to Al-Shabaab terrorists on U.S. soil. The brief bit of dialogue at the restaurant, intentionally or not, captures certain realities: Republicans tend to be more patriotic and are associated with law and order and the right to self-defense. If there is an accidental conservative on FBI's writing staff, I hope he or she slips in some more revealing dialogue next season. Such moments of truth are rare on network television.

Despite the legal justifications viewed as anywhere from flimsy to non-existent, ABC, CBS, and NBC rose to the occasion for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) by spending an interminable 573 minutes on the trial of former President Donald Trump, an un-American leftist charade to influence the 2024 election. NewsBusters examined every allusion to and mention of the Trump trial on the major broadcast networks during their flagship morning shows, evening newscasts, and Sunday political talk shows, starting with the morning of jury selection on April 15. In the 38 days since the trial began, the networks have dedicated 573 minutes and 25 seconds.  Put another way, the networks have force-fed viewers more than nine hours of coverage. ABC obliterated the competition with a combined 237 minutes (236:36) between Good Morning America (GMA), This Week, and World News Tonight, accounting for roughly 41 percent of the overall total. GMA also claimed the distinction of being the newscast with the most time spent on the trial with 136 minutes (136:29). The chief reason for this dishonor was thanks to co-host and former Clinton flack, George Stephanopoulos. As he’d introduce the show’s Trump trial coverage, his openings were nauseating. “We’re going to start with the trial of Donald Trump. What a moment in American history. 45 men have served as president. Donald Trump is the only one ever indicted for the crime. That’s happened four times. He will enter the courtroom this morning as the only former President to ever stand trial on criminal charges,” he somberly said on April 15. Reacting the next day, Stephanopoulos excitedly told chief Washington correspondent and three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl that “we’ve been talking about the political and legal calendars clashing for about a year,” and “[y]esterday, it became real and it felt the dynamic may be changing from....earlier when Donald Trump was so convinced this was helping him every day.” “I could see it in his behavior, in his demeanor. This was a wake-up call for Donald Trump. This is his new reality. He is now criminal defendant Trump....[H]e is in a courtroom where he has no control. The judge is the boss and, for the most part, he has to be silent. You could see the bitterness, the anger, I think, the — the energy drained from him,” Karl proclaimed. Stephanopoulos struck a similar tone on April 22, hours before opening statements: We begin with something unprecedented in American history. Opening statements in the criminal trial of a former President. Presidents have been impeached. They’ve resigned. They’ve been voted out of office. Never before has a former President faced a jury of his peers in a criminal court. Fast-forward to May 15 and senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott was shaken by Republicans showing up to support Trump in court: A striking moment in politics, George. This is not just any Republican lawmaker. This is the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency showing up in this Manhattan courtroom outside to blast the American judicial system and to do what Donald Trump cannot do, which is go after the witnesses...[I]f you had a any doubt this is a Republican party that has lined up around the former president, all you have to do is look at that image of Trump and all those Republicans lining up behind him[.] NBC was firmly in second place with 199 minutes (198:47). That said, the peacock network shouldn’t be confused with Trump supporters. Along with time allotted, a story’s placement within a newscast illustrates what the network believes is most important (and hopes you agree). NBC Nightly News earned that distinction as they opened 17 times with the trial. “In a moment he had desperately tried to delay or derail, Donald Trump took the defendant’s seat in a Manhattan courtroom today for the start of his first criminal trial, a historic moment for a former American president that brought him practically face-to-face with a stream of prospective jurors. New Yorkers, who could potentially determine his fate,” NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt boomed on April 15. Holt was also moved on May 7 by the Stormy Daniels testimony: “A star prosecution witness in the criminal trial of Donald Trump appeared on the witness stand...[Trump] coming face-to-face with adult film actress Stormy Daniels as she testified, at times graphically, about a sexual liaison she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006.” Longtime NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell ironically complained on the April 21 Meet the Press that “the trial is crowding out everything else,” including President Biden’s ability to fully use the bully pulpit. And, from an ethical standpoint, who has NBC used for analysis and reporting on the trial? Saturday Today co-host and senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett, who’s the daughter of longtime Obama family confidante Valerie Jarrett. Like their perpetually lackluster ratings, CBS was in third place with just over 138 minutes (138:02). CBS carried the perhaps laudatory distinction of having its hour-long Sunday talk show Face the Nation devote the least amount of time for any of the nine newscasts at just 13 seconds over five shows. CBS Mornings co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King kvetched on April 16 that she was “worr[ied] that the audience just hears white noise when they hear all of these cases running together.” King would be proven right as a PBS NewsHour/NPR Marist poll on May 1 found 55 percent of Americans were “not very closely” or “not closely at all” following the proceedings. CBS still tried to make fetch happen with dramatic proclamations, like this one from CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell on May 20: [T]onight, a dramatic day in court...The first-ever criminal trial of a former American president is nearing an end. Late today, the prosecution has rested...Witnesses on the stand today made for what some experts are describing as a wild day. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, admitted under oath to stealing money from the Trump Organization during an intense cross-examination. And then, fireworks during testimony of a defense witness that led to the judge clearing the court room and reprimanding the witness for rolling his eyes and making comments under his breath. In somewhat of a tell to how the liberal media actually feel about the trial, their Sunday political talk shows have been surprisingly tempered with a combined 36 minutes and six seconds. Over three quarters (28:13) came from an unsurprising source: ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. While not a former president, another significant story of political corruption has gone next to unnoticed with the trial of liberal Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ). The details are salacious, even with the absence of sex. Gold bars? Check. Wads of cash stuffed in random places? Check. Cars? Check. Influence-peddling with Arab countries? Check. The trial began with jury selection on May 13, but there’s only been seven minutes and 56 seconds on ABC, CBS, and NBC with zero seconds on the Sunday, May 19 political talk shows. That meant the Trump trial had received 72 times more than what the “big three” had spent on the Menendez trial. While ABC had spent nearly four hours on the Trump trial, they’ve only mustered a scant 23 seconds on Menendez since his trial commenced (via a single brief on the April 15 World News Tonight). NBC was well ahead with three mentions totaling three minutes and 24 seconds and CBS also had three segments, but were slightly ahead at four minutes and nine seconds. A major U.S. senator is on trial in an election year, facing hundreds of years behind bars. But given his party, the networks have allowed the left to skate by. If this were a Republican on trial for identical charges, there’s no doubt other major Republicans would be tied directly and indirectly to the case. Look no further than the wholly political Trump trial.

Newsweek joined the establishment media Tuesday in advancing falsehoods and smearing Tucker Carlson. Although the outlet has since updated its piece to reflect a disparate reality, it nevertheless maintained its insinuation that the populist commentator is deferential to the Russian regime. Some older episodes of Tucker Carlson's show were translated for the benefit of East Slavs, then broadcast on a state-owned Russian news channel. This was done "without legal permission," according Dean Thompson, head of programming and production operations at the Tucker Carlson Network. Newsweek beclowned itself, reframing this theft as a partnership. Blaze News previously detailed how Newsweek's "senior news reporter" Brendan Cole falsely claimed that "the show is part of a joint project with Carlson TV, in which he will interview figures and politicians who have 'alternative views to the mainstream.'" Cole had apparently taken the Russian government newspaper Rossiskya Gazyeta at its word and reportedly refrained from checking in with Carlson or his team. Neil Patel, CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network, made clear that "the Tucker Carlson Network has not done any deals with state media in any country," adding that "whoever is currently pretending to be the old Newsweek brand would know that if they had checked with us before printing like news companies are supposed to do." Newsweek's smear, packaged as an article entitled, "Tucker Carlson launches show on Russian state TV," garnered a great deal of attention and plenty of traction, serving to bolster some critics' biases in the U.S. and elsewhere. The corresponding post on X garnered millions of impressions and hundreds of reposts, including by bloggers such as Bari Weiss as well as longtime Carlson critics like Julia Ioffe and "The Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper. 'It's pretty dark.' Even though the tweet has since been taken down and the article has been altered, the damage appears to have been done. Various blogs and publications — including the Kyiv-based Ukrainska Pravda — that ran with the claim have yet to provide corrections. Some online exponents of Newsweek's false narrative, such as Heath Mayor of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, have even refused to cede the ground they believe they gained in the ongoing war on Tucker Carlson's character when confronted with the real story. Tucker Carlson told Philip Melanchthon Wegmann of RealClear Politics, "Total bull**** in every way." "Newsweek is very obviously trying to give the Biden administration a pretext to read my personal communications under FISA," continued Carlson. "It's pretty dark." Biden recently ratified the bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, putting the government in a prime position to spy on Carlson — which may not be the first time. Citing insights from "a whistleblower within the U.S. government," Carlson suggested in 2021 that the National Security Agency had "been monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an effort to take [his Fox News] show off the air." When pressed about the Newsweek report, Carlson told CNN's Hadas Gold, "It's all fake, obviously, like most stories in American news media. Of course I have no partnership with Russia. The first I'd heard anything about this was [this] morning." Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson responded, "It's important to note that this alarming incident appears to be more than 'fake news' — as if that wasn't bad enough — but a deliberate attack on Tucker Carlson and his media business." "Newsweek, as is so much of the media today, is a pawn in a much larger game. It is clear that some in the federal government want to surveil him, if they don't already, because of his dissenting political views. This is dangerous stuff. Honest media outlets cannot continue allow this sort of thing to keep happening. We must work together to fight back," added Peterson. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, host of "System Update," noted, "This original Newsweek headline predictably went viral, claiming Tucker Carlson has 'launched' a new program on Russia state TV. The 'edited' article now makes clear the whole story is bull**** — false — but it was an irresistible McCarthyite smear." — (@) This is not the first time Carlson has been accused of collaborating with Russian state television to broadcast his show. The BBC's Francis Scarr spotted an ad for the Russian translation of Carlson's program, noting in September, "Russian state TV's rolling news channel Rossiya 24 seems to say that Tucker Carlson has landed himself a new job there." In the face of a similar wave of outrage and ridicule, Carlson told the Financial Times' Max Seddon, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never heard of this, or the channel. Of course I'm not hosting a show on Russian television. That's absurd. Please." "More Russia-related bull****. There's so much I can't keep up," added Carlson. Blaze News has reached out to Dean Thompson for further comment and will update this article in the event of a response. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!