An image shared on X claims to show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watching Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s speech. Netanyabou Watching Sayyed Nasrollah’s speech!!!! ? pic.twitter.com/BCxZaD0m9p — LEYLA (@LeylaRostami) June 20, 2024 Verdict: False The image of Netanyahu is from 2020, not recent. It does not show Netanyahu watching a Nasrallah speech. Fact Check: The United States […]

“The greatest conservation opportunity on the planet,” isn’t in the Amazon, the Andes, Australia, or anywhere else you’d likely imagine. It’s in South Sudan. In a story that truly demonstrates how much there is left to explore in the world, the world’s largest migration of land mammals is now understood to take place in South […] The post South Sudan’s Epic Effort to Protect the World’s Little-Known Largest Mammal Migration appeared first on Good News Network.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. We now live in a world where “fact-checkers” organize “annual meetings” – one is happening just this week in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These censorship-overseers for other companies (most notably massive social platforms like Facebook, etc.) have not only converged onto Sarajevo but have issued a “statement” that includes the town’s name. The Poynter Institute is a major player in this space, and its International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) serves to coordinate censorship for Meta, among others. It was up to IFCN now to issue the “Sarajevo statement” on behalf of 130 groups in the “fact-checking” business, a burgeoning industry at this point spreading its tentacles to at least 80 countries – that is how many are behind the said statement. No surprise, these “fact-checkers” like themselves, and see nothing wrong with what they do; the self-affirming statement refers to the (Poynter-led) brand of “fact-checking” as essential to free speech (will someone fact-check that statement, though?) The reason the focus is on free speech is clear – “fact-checkers” have over and over again proven themselves to be either inept, biased, serving as tools of censorship, all three, or some combination of those. That is why their “annual meeting” now declares, with a seemingly straight face, that “fact-checking” is not only a free-speech advocate but “should never be considered a form of censorship.” But who’s going to tell Meta? In the wake of the 2016 US presidential elections, Facebook basically became the fall guy picked by those who didn’t like the outcome of the vote, accusing the platform of being the place where a (since debunked) massive “misinformation meddling campaign” happened. Aware of the consequences its business might suffer if such a perceived image continued, Facebook by 2019, just ahead of another election, had as many as 50 “fact-checking” partners, “reviewing and rating” content. In 2019, reports were clearly spelling out how the thing works – it’s in stark contrast with the “Sarajevo statement” and the “… never censorship…” claim. And this is how it worked: “Fact-checked” posts are automatically marked on Facebook, and videos that have been rated as “false” are still shareable but are shown lower in news feeds by Facebook’s algorithm. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also said that warning labels on posts curb the number of shares by 95%. “We work with independent fact-checkers. Since the COVID outbreak, they have issued 7,500 notices of misinformation which has led to us issuing 50 million warning labels on posts. We know these are effective because 95% of the time, users don’t click through to the content with a warning label,” Zuckerberg revealed. That was before the 2020 vote. There is not one reason to believe that, if things have in the meanwhile changed, they have changed for the better – at least where free speech is concerned. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Fact-Checking Network Says Online Fact Checks Aren’t Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Did SCOTUS Start Dismantling the Bureaucratic State?

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In a world first, Denmark will tax farmers for the greenhouse gas emissions belched out by their cows, pigs, and other livestock. The agreement was announced on June 24 by the Danish government after months of discussions between politicians, farmers, business leaders, and other parties. “Agriculture is Denmark's largest emitter of CO2. It cannot continue. That is why we are the first country in the world to introduce a climate tax and speed up green measures, so that we are more certainly on track to reach the 2030 target. Now there is a lot of work to be done to realize the agreement," Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s Climate, Energy, and Supply Minister, said in a statement.Under the agreement, farmers will be taxed 120 Danish kroner (around $17) per ton of carbon dioxide emitted from livestock in 2030, increasing to 300 Danish kroner ($43) per ton in 2035.The return of proceeds will then be pumped back into the agricultural sector as a “transition support pool” to assist the green transition of the industry.   Under another part of the policy, over 30 billion kroner ($4.3 billion) will be set aside for the conversion of swathes of carbon-rich lowland soil and the planting of 250,000 hectares (6.2 million acres) of forest. Famous for its cured bacon, Denmark is one of the world's largest pig meat exporters, as well as a prominent producer of beef and dairy. According to its government, the new agreement hopes to maintain its place as a world leader in agriculture and food production in the 21st century, while being good to the planet. “Today we are writing a new chapter in Danish agricultural history," said Minister for Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries, Jacob Jensen. "Denmark is a proud food-producing nation, where we have some of the world's most skilled farmers, for whom we now ensure a stable framework to continue producing world-class food for many years into the future. With the agreement, we create growth and jobs throughout the country, while taking good care of our climate, environment and nature."  Livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of all global greenhouse gases, according to UC Davis. Much of this is generated by the burps of cows, as well as other ruminant animals like goats and sheep. As these animals digest grass and other plants, a process occurs called “enteric fermentation” that creates methane – a potent greenhouse gas – as a byproduct. The greenhouse gas is then emitted by the animal, from where it enters Earth’s atmosphere and traps heat, contributing to climate change.While Denmark’s latest announcement doesn’t directly mention methane, it will help to address this problem by targeting carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas that’s also emitted in significant quantities by agriculture.Many countries around the world are looking to tackle the problem of livestock-related emissions. One often floated idea is a “meat tax” to put levies on high-emission foods like beef and dairy. Some believe these kinds of policies are almost inevitable in the decades ahead – although they are likely to meet some intense resistance. Earlier this month, New Zealand U-turned on its plan to tax livestock burps due to concerns it could devastate their world-famous farming industry.

The Antikythera mechanism has fascinated people for over 120 years and research in recent years has brought more insight into this incredible device. The fragments that remain have revealed that it was likely used to calculate celestial events such as eclipses and the positions of the planets. Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have added to the evidence of its links to the Moon, with some statistical techniques commonly used in gravitational wave research.The pair, Professor Graham Woan and Dr Joseph Bayley, independently employed different techniques following some exciting X-ray analysis of the object some years back. There is some uncertainty about the number of holes in one of the rings, which is believed to be a calendar. Only a portion of the ring survives and since the mechanism spent 2,000 years underwater, it is not easy to be certain.Based on the data from the X-ray analysis, Woan and Bayley employed Bayesian statistics to work out the number of holes in the rings. They found that 354 or 355 holes was the most probable number. Lunar calendars tend to have 354 days. From the analysis, this value is 100 times more likely than 360 holes, like in the Egyptian solar calendar, making a 365-hole ring (like a true solar year) extremely improbable.“Towards the end of last year, a colleague pointed to me to data acquired by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was looking to make a replica of the calendar ring and was investigating ways to determine just how many holes it contained,” Professor Woan said in a statement. “It struck me as an interesting problem, and one that I thought I might be able to solve in a different way during the Christmas holidays, so I set about using some statistical techniques to answer the question.”The techniques in question were the Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling methods, commonly used to work out the probability of one result based on incomplete data. These methods suggest that the full ring had a radius of 77.1 millimeters with either 354 or 355 holes, each 0.028 millimeters apart.“Previous studies had suggested that the calendar ring was likely to have tracked the lunar calendar, but the dual techniques we’ve applied in this piece of work greatly increase the likelihood that this was the case,” Dr Bayley explained. “It’s given me a new appreciation for the Antikythera mechanism and the work and care that Greek craftspeople put into making it – the precision of the holes’ positioning would have required highly accurate measurement techniques and an incredibly steady hand to punch them.The study is published in The Horological Journal.

For thousands of years after mammoths had gone extinct elsewhere, they survived on Wrangel Island off Siberia. The cause of their final demise remains debated, but new evidence indicates we can rule out one popular explanation: inbreeding. Despite being descended from no more than eight individuals, the Wrangel mammoths had enough genetic diversity to still be here, if something else hadn’t killed them.The world misses mammoths, as proven by the fact that investors are putting millions into plans to try to bring them back. There’s reason to believe if they were still around, they could be key players in the fight against global heating by keeping permafrost from melting. So why aren’t they here?That question has two parts. One involves the question of why mammoths went extinct from most of their range at the end of the last ice age. The question remains contested between those who blame a changed climate and those who suspect human activity. It’s an example of a debate that rages regarding a wide range of big animals that have died out since modern humans left Africa.The second part is much more narrowly focused, although it might have the same answer. As sea levels rose at the end of the Ice Age some mammoths living on what had been a peninsula were cut off from mainland Asia as their home turned into Wrangel Island. They survived there for 6,000 years, long after all (or maybe most) of their relatives had gone, but then they didn’t, leaving us to work out why.Professor Love Dalén of Stockholm University led a study to test the genetics of the Wrangel Island mammoths for clues, in light of previous reports that Wrangel mammoths were losing their sense of smell and outstanding insulation. However, the DNA does not support this. “We can now confidently reject the idea that the population was simply too small and that they were doomed to go extinct for genetic reasons,” Dalén said in a statement. Samples collected from 14 mammoths preserved on Wrangel, and seven elsewhere, indicate an extreme bottleneck on the island. A maximum of eight individuals at one time, presumably when isolation occurred, were ancestral to the entire subsequent population. That’s definitely not a basis for a healthy long-term population. The mammoths’ immune systems were probably particularly affected. Meanwhile the mainland population appears to have been remarkably genetically stable over tens of thousands of years, even during a period of sudden warming 14,000 years ago.Nevertheless, the mammoths reached a population of 200-300 within a few hundred years. “[I]t was probably just some random event that killed them off, and if that random event hadn't happened, then we would still have mammoths today,” Dalén said. If only.Indeed, comparing the ages of the samples, the team concluded the most harmful mutations were being eliminated from the Wrangel population, while more minor ones accumulated. Had they survived, the Wrangel Island mammoths may have been capable of reclaiming the global tundra.This isn’t just a tale of what we’ve lost, however. The finding could influence strategies for saving endangered species today. We know some other mammals, humanity included, have been through narrow bottlenecks, but this could be a uniquely thin one followed by hundreds of generations of descendants we can study.“Mammoths are an excellent system for understanding the ongoing biodiversity crisis and what happens from a genetic point of view when a species goes through a population bottleneck because they mirror the fate of a lot of present-day populations,” said first author Marianne Dehasque.With so many endangered species, there are always arguments about triage, and whether some have reached a point where they are beyond saving, with resources better directed elsewhere. Yet if just eight mammoths could create a semi-healthy population, maybe almost animal is saveable.Dehasque draws another lesson from the findings, saying, “It’s important for present day conservation programs to keep in mind that it’s not enough to get the population up to a decent size again; you also have to actively and genetically monitor it because these genomic effects can last for over 6,000 years.”       If you’re imagining an island so small the mammoths had nowhere to roam, and may have died from overgrazing, you’re wrong. Wrangel Island is a surprisingly big place for somewhere you’ve probably never heard of in any other context. At 7,600 square kilometers (2,900 square miles) it’s not much smaller than Crete, which could certainly support hundreds of elephant relatives if anyone wanted to make it happen. Bali and Prince Edward Island are among the better known examples of substantially smaller places.None of the samples used in this study came from the mammoths’ last 300 years. However, the authors have now obtained specimens from that period and will test them in the hope of finding clues to resolve the disappearance they conclude was quite sudden.The study is published in Cell. 

In 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory looking for near-Earth asteroids spotted an object as it hurtled past our Sun at 38.3 kilometers per second (23.8 miles per second). Soon, telescopes around the world pointed in the unusual object's direction, trying to capture as much data as they could before it moved away from the Sun. Looking at visible light reflecting off the object, scientists were able to determine its size and shape, finding it is around 400 meters (1,300 feet) long, and likely shaped like a pancake.The speed and trajectory of the object A/2017 U1 suggested that it did not come from our Solar System, and that it will leave our Solar System again. ‘Oumuamua, as it is now called, was our first confirmed interstellar visitor. In 2019, we had our second confirmed interstellar visitor in 2I/Borisov, our first rogue comet.     So, is the Solar System absolutely teeming with interstellar objects, or are these rare occurrences that we happened to spot?That's a difficult question to answer, as (mentioned above) we have only ever seen two such objects moving at a relative velocity suggesting that they did not come from the Solar System. But papers have attempted to put limits on how many (or few) objects we should expect to find within certain orbits.We have a few other clues that can help with this. Looking at the organization of our own Solar System. For instance, what we have learned about planet formation suggests that we should have sent a lot of our own comets on their own interstellar journey."Oort cloud formation models predict that for every comet that reaches the classical outer Oort cloud, a factor η = 3—100 more are expelled into interstellar space," one paper on the topic explains. "If most stars have planets, and if planetary formation is usually accompanied by comet ejection, then there should be a substantial population of free-floating interstellar comets."Astronomers have also proposed that if there are a lot of interstellar objects out there, our Solar System may be able to capture them. Teams have found that interstellar objects whose orbit takes them within that of Jupiter would likely end up being obliterated by the gas giant within a few million years, with highly inclined orbits beyond that lasting longer.There are objects in the Solar System – known as Centaurs – with high inclinations and unstable orbits. "If a Centaur orbit is integrated forward or backward in time, it will invariably either hit the Sun, the planets, or be ejected from the Solar system," one paper explains. Given enough time, Centaurs will be ejected from the Solar System, or collide with a planet (the most likely being the gas giants). "The past lifetime is trickier to interpret literally because it would mean the Centaurs cannot have lived in the Solar system more than 1–100 Myr in the past. This indicates that they must all have been captured from the interstellar medium in the recent past."The team used a precise orbit determination method to look at the possible orbits of 17 high-inclination Centaurs, and a further two trans-Neptunian objects, going back billions of years into the past. Doing so, they found that their orbits were nearly polar 4.5 Gyr in the past, far from the common orbital plane expected if they had formed in the Solar System. Instead, the team suggests they were likely captured as the Solar System passed through the interstellar medium.As for the precise number of how many interstellar objects are passing through the Solar System, that remains unclear. Recent studies have had more information to work with, given that we have found interstellar objects, with one estimating that "at any one time, there are ∼104 interstellar bodies of [Oumuamua]-size closer to the Sun than Neptune. Each takes ∼10 years to cross the planetary region before returning to interstellar space."We will learn more by looking for more interstellar objects, something which will hopefully become easier when the Vera C. Rubin Telescope begins searching the skies. If we find more, we may even be able to catch up with them.

Humanity is evolving, and all spheres of life are transforming with it, reports dailymail.co.uk. Technology has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our existence, and according to one scientist, it’s time to introduce these advancements into the penitentiary system. In a groundbreaking new concept, a researcher has proposed a futuristic prison where criminals could serve their sentences in just a few minutes instead of years or decades, as reported by the Daily Mail. The project, called Cognify, involves implanting synthetic memories of crimes into prisoners’ brains, but from the victims’ perspectives. Developed by Hashem Al-Ghaili, this concept aims to create a lasting therapeutic effect by making these memories permanent. Victims’ memories will be broadcast to criminals. Photo: Hashem Al-Ghaili The proposed system includes a virtual reality-like device that displays AI-generated footage of the crime, paired with a brain implant that induces emotional states such as remorse and regret. This approach aims to instill feelings that some individuals may not be able to evoke on their own. Globally, millions of people are incarcerated, and authorities claim that prison time deters future crimes. However, more than a hundred studies from 2021 suggest that imprisonment does not effectively prevent reoffending. Based on this data, Al-Ghaili designed a future prison to help criminals genuinely learn from their past actions. According to Al-Ghaili, Cognify will eventually be able to create and implant artificial memories directly into prisoners’ brains. These complex, vivid, and realistic memories will be generated in real-time using AI. In practice, the rehabilitation process would last only a few minutes, but it would feel like years to the criminal. The rehabilitation will be customized for each case, considering the severity of the crime and the sentence. Memories can be tailored to meet each subject’s rehabilitation needs. Initially, prisoners will undergo high-resolution brain scans to create detailed maps of their neural pathways. These maps will be used by the Cognify device to target specific brain areas responsible for memory, reasoning, and logical thinking, including the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, parietal lobe, and anterior cingulate cortex. Once deployed, the device will broadcast AI-generated memories of the prisoners’ crimes, which could range from domestic violence to fraud. In addition to visual effects, prisoners may also experience physical reactions, such as the pain and suffering endured by the victims. Cognify will also feature encrypted storage for sensitive inmate information and rehabilitation data. Al-Ghaili believes that his concept will revolutionize the criminal justice system, significantly reducing prison terms and the costs associated with maintaining prisons. The post Futuristic prison concept promises rapid rehabilitation using Synthetic Memories appeared first on Anomalien.com.