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Car Black

Hacked self-driving cars will create traffic chaos say US researchers

highway traffic
© AP Photo/ Damian Dovarganes
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Multiscale Systems, Inc. have revealed findings from a study on the potential ways in which hackers could spread traffic chaos.

According to data gathered by researchers, travel delays might become the least of people's concerns in the near future, when tens of millions of self-driving cars are reportedly expected to be on American highways, according to the media report.

'Unlike most of the data breaches we hear about, hacked cars have physical consequences', assistant professor and study co-leader Peter Yunker of Georgia Tech's School of Physics said in a written statement about the research, cited by The Daily Mail.

Yunker and three co-authors simulated what a group of hacked autonomous cars could do to traffic in a place like Manhattan, where streets and avenues form a grid designed to reduce the potential for gridlock.

Fatal accidents and injured or sick people dying in ambulances stuck in gridlock are two potentially severe consequences of cyber-attacked vehicles connected to the Internet, according to the study.

Comment: See also:


USA

Pornographic Democracy

left protesters trump
To represent anything is to reduce and deform it, obviously, for even Leonardo's Mona Lisa is but a stick figure compared to the witty, voluptuous and redolent broad, whose repartees, smiles, jokes and burps, from moment to moment, can only increase her charm and terror, and that's why man never allowed himself to be engulfed by any medium, be it oil painting, music or literature. After the most satisfying page, he still looked up and walked outside. Traveling vast distances, Chekov discovered heaven in Ceylon and hell in Sakhalin, and Flaubert was only being reductive when he goofed, "The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy." He, too, had plenty of lust for the actual.

Well, a perpetual orgy is certainly here, but it has nothing to do with literature, or even literacy, and it's not voluntary. If pornography can be understood as a lurid usurpation of the real, then we're watching an endless pornographic movie. Most democratically, we're all trapped in this foul theater. An orgy of the virtual has taken over every aspect of our lives.

Pornography multiplies frequency, duration, angles, positions and sexual partners, an endless and eternal sexual buffet, except that none of it is really happening. Similarly, American democracy gives the appearance of boundless participation by all citizens, for they can't just vote in caucuses and elections, but cheer at conventions, march in protest, write letters to newspapers, comment on the internet and follow, blow by blow, the serial mud wrestling between opposing politicians. Pissed, they can freely curse Bush, Obama or Trump without fearing a midnight knock on the door. Alas, none of their "political activities" actually matters, for Americans don't influence their government's policies, much less decide them. It's all an elaborate spectacle to make each chump think he's somehow a player, in on the action, when he's actually all alone, in the dark, to beat his own meat, yet again.

He has railroaded, premasticated opinions on everything, but without the means to act on any of it. Only his impotence is real.

Cult

The Manson Murders, JFK, 9/11 And The Psychopathy of Power

MKUltra Jolly West Manson

“With Alan Scheflin, a forensic psychologist and law professor who’d written a book on MKULTRA, I laid out a circumstantial case linking (CIA mind control guru Jolly) West to Manson. Was it possible, I asked, that the Manson murders were an MKULTRA experiment gone wrong? ‘No,’ he said, ‘an MKULTRA experiment gone right.’” (CHAOS , p. 369)
I moved out of Southern California in the summer of 1969. I was ten years old, and my parents were fleeing decadence and depravity in favor of the more wholesome Midwest.

Before our move, a story had circulated about some local (Newport Beach) high schoolers who had "gone on an LSD trip" and gotten caught by police. As I understood it, the teenagers had "taken LSD" and started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, "tripping" all over the neighborhood and waking people up to the sound of thundering hoofbeats overhead. At the time I wondered whether LSD conferred a miraculous leaping or flying ability, since the houses in Lido Sands, though rather tightly clustered, were mostly spaced perhaps eight or ten feet apart, which seemed like a long way to jump.

I vaguely recall this "LSD-fueled teenage midnight horsemen of the apocalypse" story having something to do with my parents' decision to move back to Wisconsin. Southern California circa 1969, a few years after the hippie movement had peaked and turned into a bad trip, didn't seem like a good place to send your kids to high school. (Little did my parents know that the 60s would hit Wisconsin high schools ten years late, putting me and my siblings directly in the path of the psychedelic hurricane.)

Years later, as an "experienced" (in the Jimi Hendrix sense) subversive teenage wannabe intellectual, I would read about the Manson murders and notice how convenient they had been for the Establishment. From the moment Charlie Manson's grinning, demonic face started leering from every front page and TV screen in America, the whole hippie-antiwar thing had seemed a whole lot scarier. I read the official version of the Manson myth, Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, and thought: This is too crazy to be true. None of the Wisconsin hippies I know are even remotely like these characters. Maybe it's something they add to the fluoride in the Southern California water.

Pistol

Afghan soldier opens fire on US troops, kills two soldiers

US forces in Afghanistan
© REUTERS/Rodi Said
An Afghan soldier has shot and killed two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, officials say.

A spokesman for the Afghan military said on July 30 that the two soldiers were killed when a member of the Afghan National Army opened fire on troops inside a military base in the district of Shah Wali Kot the previous day.

The soldier who turned his gun on the Americans was wounded during the attack and is now in custody, said the spokesman, Ahmad Sadiq.

The U.S. military said on July 29 that two of its service members were killed in Afghanistan, but provided no details.

Attention

Middle-school students' life-threatening 'prank' sent teacher to hospital after allergic reaction

Bananas
What may have been considered a prank by a group of middle-schoolers could have cost an art teacher her life. All of the students involved are just 12 and 13 years old, but school security said they were well aware their teacher had a serious allergy when it was used against her last school year.

"That could be attempted murder," a Columbus City Schools (CCS) security officer is heard telling Columbus Police officers in a body camera video. The call about the attack came from Starling K-8 school last November. On the video, the security officer is seen escorting police to the art teacher's door where signs stating "Banana Free Zone" are posted. Another sign instructs students to wash their hands if they've eaten a banana that day.

Heart - Black

Illegal migrant purchased infant for $80 in Guatemala to get priority release in US

border patrol illegal migrants
© Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times
Supervisory Border Patrol agent Marlene Castro speaks to a group of illegal aliens who just crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States in Hidalgo County, Texas, on May 26, 2017.
Children are being rented, bought, recycled, and kidnapped so that single adults, mostly men from Central America, can gain quick release into the United States after crossing the border illegally.

The cost of renting a child varies.

"We've had indications ... that it could cost anywhere from a few hundred — or even in some cases, less than $100 — up to $1,000 or more," said Kevin McAleenan, acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a congressional hearing on July 18.

McAleenan said in one case, a 51-year-old illegal alien had purchased a 6-month-old baby for $80 in Guatemala so that he could easily get into the United States. The man, a Honduran national, confessed to border agents when he was faced with a DNA test.

Comment: The Democrats are determined to keep the floodgates open.


Black Cat

Not just Baltimore, American cities are inundated with rats

A Rat
© Pinterest
Amid the war of words between President Donald Trump and Congressman Elijah Cummings over tweets about Baltimore, an uncomfortable truth is emerging: many American cities have a problem with rats, lots of them.

Describing the district represented by Cummings (D-Maryland), including Baltimore, as a "rat and rodent infested mess" in a tweet over the weekend, the president drew a wave of condemnation from critics, some of whom interpreted the remark as a racist dog whistle about the city's residents. Upon closer examination, however, Baltimore indeed ranks among the country's most rodent-friendly cities, though not quite the worst.

Coming in at number nine (out of 50) on an annual list of America's rattiest cities compiled by the pest control service Orkin, Baltimore has a pest problem no matter how one slices it. The battle to control the city's prolific rodent population was even chronicled in a 2017 documentary, Rat Film, which eventually aired on PBS.

During a tour of the city last year, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh - who has since resigned in disgrace - observed "Woah, you can smell the rats," in a video clip that has gone viral.

Pests in cities tend to gather where trash accumulates, and rats in particular will nest wherever there is warmth and easy access to food (and they'll eat just about anything). Though some might find the furry creatures cute, rats are no joke, carrying a range of infectious diseases, including hantavirus and hemorrhagic fever. If that wasn't bad enough, the animals also reproduce at a disconcerting rate, birthing around 60 pups per year on average, allowing them to quickly overtake certain urban areas.

Attention

Dengue fever spreads to 50 districts in Bangladesh

dengue fever victim bangladesh
© Rashed Shuman
Six-year-old Sneha stares blankly, lying on a bed at Dhaka Shishu Hospital yesterday morning. She was not admitted as the hospital is already overwhelmed with dengue patients.
DGHS says; 3 die in Dhaka;1,096 more new cases reported; city schools step up measures to combat Aedes mosquito

Dengue has spread to 50 districts with a record 1,096 patients having been diagnosed with the viral disease yesterday alone.

Three days ago, dengue cases were being reported from only 17 districts and the day before yesterday reports came in from five new districts. The number of districts with dengue cases shot up to 50 yesterday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Dengue spreads, 3 die

At least three people, including a child, died in the capital and Savar yesterday after they had been diagnosed with dengue. So far, 35 people have died after being diagnosed with the disease.

The government claims that eight people have died of dengue so far.

Comment: Mother Nature striking back?


Handcuffs

Man illegally arrested for mocking police on FB can now sue for damages

facebook
© REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro
A federal appeals court on Monday said an Ohio man who was acquitted of a felony after creating a parody Facebook page that mocked a suburban Cleveland police department can sue the city and two police officers over his arrest.

In a 3-0 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Anthony Novak can pursue several claims over his March 2016 posting of what he admitted was an "insulting parody" of the Parma police department's Facebook page.

Novak had sued for damages after being acquitted in August 2016 of disrupting police services over his parody page, which was taken down after about 12 hours.

Heart - Black

The fruits of American bombs: 327 kids killed in Afghanistan so far in 2019, as civilian casualties of foreign forces rise

coffins
© REUTERS / Omar Sobhani
A carpenter prepares coffins for sale at his shop in Kabul, Afghanistan
At least 3,812 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of this year, with 89 kids killed by airstrikes alone, a new UN report reveals. International forces were responsible for over 300 civilian deaths.

Between January and June 2019, 1,366 civilians were killed, of whom at least 327 were children, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)'s report says.

While the overall figure is down compared to last year's record high, there has been a 31 percent increase in casualties caused by government and foreign forces, with 717 Afghan civilians killed.

Ground raids and clashes were responsible for most civilian casualties, followed by air strikes and bombs. Airstrikes caused 519 civilian casualties, including 363 deaths - a 39 percent increase in airstrike casualties from the previous year, which the UN said highlights "the lethal character of this tactic."