Society's ChildS


Robot

10 Reasons why technological progress is now reversing - or how Silicon Valley started breaking bad

Ted Gioia
The Honest Broker
Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00 UTC
I recently shared 52 warning signs that technological progress is reversing.

By my measure, this reversal started happening around a decade ago. If I had to sum things up in a conceptual chart, it would look like this:

technology upgrades
The divergence was easy to ignore at first. We're so familiar with useful tech that many of us were slow to notice when upgrades turned into downgrades.

But the evidence from the last couple years is impossible to dismiss. And we can't blame COVID (or other extraneous factors) any longer. Technology is increasingly making matters worse, not better — and at an alarming pace.

I've now provided extensive (and, I believe, irrefutable) evidence of this in a series of articles. Here are links to a few of them. But I have avoided answering, up until now, the biggest question — which is why is this happening?

Or, to be more specific, why is this happening now?
Read More...
Evil Rays

Instilling fear: The media has created a "climate anxiety" crisis

James Murphy
New American
Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00 UTC
climate fear
One of the saddest things about the ongoing climate hoax is how it is affecting the mental health of citizens, particularly children. After decades of doom and gloom prophecies, many individuals are reaching the conclusion that the world would be better off with fewer emitters of carbon dioxide, which is one of the greenhouse gases alarmists claim is abnormally warming the world.

"Climate Aware" Therapists

Luckily for us, a new branch of psychotherapy has emerged to assist us in dealing with the hopelessness of this "climate anxiety." A network of "climate aware" therapists is being created across the U.S., U.K., and Canada to help people deal with the mental-health impacts of climate change.
Read More...
Books

Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers' court win

Ashley Belanger
Ars Technica
Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:02 UTC
books, bookshelves, empty shelves
© Tim Macpherson/gettyimages
As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.

IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a "devastating loss" for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.

To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court's decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA's controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law. An April court filing shows that IA intends to argue that the publishers have no evidence that the e-book market has been harmed by the open library's lending, and copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it.

"We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed — the same technology used by corporate publishers," Chris Freeland, IA's director of library services, wrote in the blog. "But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn't be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that's why we are appealing."

IA will have an opportunity to defend its practices when oral arguments start in its appeal on June 28.

Comment: All this does is drive piracy.

Read More...
Handcuffs

Migrants flooding NYC's justice system — making up '75% of arrests in Midtown' — as 'pathetic' sanctuary city laws handcuff cops

Larry Celona, Marie Pohl, Carl Campanile, Kevin Sheehan and Chris Nesi
New York Post
Mon, 02 Sep 2024 14:39 UTC
Jefferson Maldenado, Bernal Rodriguez, illegal immigrants
© Marie Pohl / NYPostBernal Rodriguez (left) revealed he was arrested for stealing French fries. Jefferson Maldenado (right) has been arrested in New York City five times since arriving in the US earlier this year.
Jefferson Maldenado, a 31-year-old migrant from Ecuador, has been arrested in New York City five times since arriving in the US earlier this year.

His latest bust was for stealing a pair of pants and a beer from the Target near Herald Square.

Asked why he committed the crime, the migrant thief said, "I wanted to change my clothes and think.

"I wanted to sit down and think about my life, about what to do. Because this is not a normal world."
Read More...
Stock Down

First Dollar General, now Dollar Tree shares plunge as both discount retailers warn of core customer under pressure

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Wed, 04 Sep 2024 13:58 UTC
Dollar Tree
Shares of Dollar Tree plunged nearly 12% in premarket trading in New York after the discount retailer, which operates thousands of stores nationwide, posted fiscal second-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street expectations. The company also slashed its full-year outlook, pointing to mounting financial pressures on middle-income and higher-income customers. This comes less than a week after major rival Dollar General reported a "financially constrained core customer" that sent shares crashing the most on record.

Dollar Tree reported this morning that the macroeconomic environment is pressuring its middle — and higher-income consumers. Traffic increased during the quarter, but the average ticket size decreased. It said second-quarter comparable sales and adjusted earnings per share missed Wall Street's expectations.
Read More...
Binoculars

FBI reveals alleged Apalachee HS shooter Colt Gray, 14, was probed over 2023 school shooting threats

Christopher Scarglato and Patrick Reilly
New York Post
Wed, 04 Sep 2024 13:29 UTC
Apalachee High School
© ZUMAPRESS.comGeorgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey confirmed that authorities are probing any possible links between the 2023 threats and Wednesday’s shooting at Apalachee High School.
Colt Gray, the teen suspected of gunning down four people at a Georgia high school Wednesday, has been on the FBI's radar since last year — when he was investigated by local authorities in connection to online school shooting threats, the bureau revealed.

In May 2023, the FBI received several anonymous tips about threats to carry out violence at an unidentified school, with the harrowing posts including photos of guns, according to a Wednesday night statement from the bureau's Atlanta field office.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Office identified Gray, then 13, as a possible suspect and interviewed him and his father.

Gray's dad told investigators at the time that he had hunting guns in the house — but his son didn't have unsupervised access to them, according to the statement

Gray, now 14, also denied making the school shooting threats.

Comment: See also: Student Colt Gray, 14, identified as suspect in Georgia school shooting that left 2 students and 2 teachers dead

Read More...
Heart - Black

Student Colt Gray, 14, identified as suspect in Georgia school shooting that left 2 students and 2 teachers dead

Joe Marino, Olivia Land and Alex Oliveira
New York Post
Wed, 04 Sep 2024 14:23 UTC
Apalachee High School, Winder, GA
Apalachee High School is located in Winder, about 45 minutes northeast of Atlanta.
A crazed 14-year-old gunman rampaged through a suburban Georgia high school on Wednesday morning, committing a horrifying mass shooting at the start of the school year that left two students and two teachers dead.

Nine other people at Apalachee High School in Winder - about an hour outside of Atlanta — were hospitalized with gunshot wounds, including a math teacher who was left with a shattered hip. At least two victims were airlifted to a hospital.

One terrified survivor described how the gunman stopped and pounded on his barricaded classroom door and demanded "open up!" before moving on.
Read More...
Bad Guys

Volkswagen considers German factory closures for first time in 87-year history


Euronews
Tue, 03 Sep 2024 23:46 UTC
worker at a Volkswagen assembly line in Wolfsburg
FILE
Jobs with VW in Germany are meant to be protected until 2029, but the firm could now renege on that promise.

Germany's Volkswagen says auto industry headwinds mean it can't rule out plant closures in its home country - and must drop a longstanding job protection pledge in force since 1994 that would have barred layoffs through 2029.

"The European automotive industry is in a very demanding and serious situation," Oliver Blume, Volkswagen Group CEO, said in a statement Monday.


Comment: But it's not just the automotive industry, because one of the world's leading chemical producers, BASF Germany, has cited that due to high gas prices it will be shutting down factories.


He cited new competitors entering the European markets, Germany's deteriorating position as a manufacturing location and the need to "act decisively".

Comment: Germany's pathocrats have made it quite clear that, in one way or another, they're hellbent on repeating history, and so, to give just a few eerily familiar examples they're: arming the genociders in Israel; sacrificing their economy and their military in yet another attempt to destroy Russia; deindustrialising their economy in the name of the nefarious green agenda; and legalising possession of child pornography.

The German people, perhaps having some intuition as to where this might be heading, have made it clear they intend to vote accordingly. However, rather predictably, the German government have unleashed the state apparatus on those that would dare to dissent:

Read More...
Sherlock

The big lie of 'skilled' migrant workers saving western economies

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Tue, 03 Sep 2024 22:30 UTC
migrants
There are a great many tall tales circulating these days in association with illegal immigration. Possibly one of the most prevalent claims from the political left is that western economies "need illegals" in order to support the dragging economy and fill a hungry labor market. An extension of this idea is that many of these migrants are "skilled workers" that the west desperately needs for vital roles.

But how much do the US and Europe really need illegal immigrants in order to keep western economies going? And how many of them actually bring important skills to western labor markets? Would they be sunk without these people? Or, would they be much better off?

First and foremost it should be noted that in the US there is ample evidence to show that the Biden Administration has been engaging in statistical manipulation for the last four years, and this includes labor statistics. While there was indeed a clear shortage of workers in the service sector during covid lockdowns (and the helicopter money supplied by covid stimulus and PPP loans), recent revisions to BLS numbers have cut at least 819,000 jobs from the books that Biden originally took credit for. In other words, those jobs never existed.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

UK: 5 children under 14-years-old 'seriously assault' elderly man in park, he later dies in hospital

Miriam Burrell
The Standard
Wed, 04 Sep 2024 21:58 UTC
Bhim Sen Kohli
© Facebook Bhim Kohli was walking his dog when he was 'seriously assaulted' by a group of young people and later died in hospital, police say 4 hours ago
The family of an 80-year-old grandfather killed in a park have remembered him as the "joker of the family", as four of five children arrested on suspicion of his murder were released without further action.

Father-of-three Bhim Kohli died in hospital after being attacked by a group of young people while he walked his dog in Franklin Park, near his home, around 6.30pm on Sunday in Braunstone Town, Leicestershire Police said.

Officers arrested five people - a boy and a girl aged 14 and one boy and two girls aged 12 - on suspicion of murder but later confirmed on Tuesday that four had been released with no further action.

Leicestershire Police said a 14-year-old boy remains in custody.

Comment: Unfortunately this kind of behaviour isn't unheard of in the UK, especially in the more poverty-stricken areas, however, by most metrics, life in the UK is worsening, and alongside it incidents such as this are increasing: A news report on the attack:



Read More...