Josh Marshall on the Gaza Hospital blast. Like him, I have zero expertise on these issues so I have to try to find credible sources to inform me. I have been seeing the same thing: I have no ability to evaluate grainy videos or make sense of what different blast patterns look like. But I’ve spent several years developing lists of open source intelligence and forensics analysts who are consistently credible. You’ve seen some of this in the various Twitter lists I sometimes post here. Credible doesn’t mean always right, of course. By credible in this case I mean analysts who are highly knowledgeable in one relevant domain, use an empirical framework for analyzing videos, open source data, etc., and have a proven track record of the appropriate level of caution and skepticism in drawing conclusions. Many of these people come out of the Bellingcat world, others got started (at least publicly) analyzing the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts.
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Some modern image generators rely on the principles of diffusion to create images. There may be a better alternative.
The post The Physical Process That Powers a New Type of Generative AI appeared first on Nautilus.
Tributes continue to pour in for inventor of the dad joke Iva Biggin, who died tragically after being torn apart by a bear at the zoo, most hoping that he now rests in pieces. “We’re very sad because we’ve lost... Read More ›
On November 1st, BBC Four's Talking Doctor Who sees David Tennant exploring the show's 60-year history & #WhoSpy is back with another clue.
He made their political motives clear Trump’s lawyer Kenneth Chesebro wrote some things down that he probably shouldn’t written: On Dec. 24, 2020, Kenneth Chesebro and other lawyers fighting to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s election defeat were debating whether to file litigation contesting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin, a key swing state. Mr. Chesebro argued there was little doubt that the litigation would fail in court — he put the odds of winning at “1 percent” — as Mr. Trump continued to push his baseless claims of widespread fraud, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times. But the “relevant analysis,” Mr. Chesebro argued, “is political.” The emails have new significance because Mr. Chesebro is scheduled to be one of the first two of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants to go on trial this month on charges brought by the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Ga. The indictment accused Mr. Chesebro of conspiring to create slates of so-called fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in several states that Mr. Biden had won. Mr.
Hamas’ October 7 attack was monstrous. Hundreds killed at a music festival along with hundreds...
Joe Biden went to Israel today and spoke from experience Joe Biden urged Israel not to repeat “mistakes” the US made after 9/11 as he made a statement during his visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, 18 October, following Hamas’ attack earlier this month. The US president told people not to be “consumed” by rage as he compared the attacks to the events of September 11 in the US. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he added. Mr Biden’s statement came as he announced a new $100m aid package to Gaza after a hospital explosion that is feared to have killed hundreds of people on Tuesday. I suspect the right wingers will have a fit about this because American presidents are never allowed to admit to mistakes. On the other hand, they must be confused because Trump is hostile to Netanyahu and they’ve recently been programmed to be against war in the Middle East (what they now call “forever wars” no matter what the circumstances.) So, we’ll see.
Western countries crack down on public support for Palestinians as the atrocities mount in Gaza. The mask is off on the underlying brutality of the West’s disregard for civilian life and civil liberties, writes Elizabeth Vos.
The post Backing the Slaughter and Silencing the Critics appeared first on MintPress News.
Let’s spell this out in the simplest terms possible.
Israelis came to a land with its own native population. They wanted to live in the land and the land was not very large. (Israel is a small country.)
That required that the people who were already there be removed.
This was done in stages. Some of the early parts were done by buying the land, generally from landlords who didn’t live in Palestine, then evicting the natives. Most of it was done with violence, starting with the Nakba.
The project of Israel is to create a Jewish religious-ethnic state where there hasn’t been one for about a couple thousand years.
Those people also breed faster than Israelis.
A huge blast in Gaza has destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. The exact death toll is still unknown. Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot of details yet to be revealed. But what Continue reading »
As reported in the New York Times, US President Joe Biden has accepted the summons from his master and will be in Israel to physically manifest his full support for the further enhanced genocidal assault against the people of Gaza which Israel has publicly announced its intention to launch. Unless he has received prior assurances Continue reading »
Your fear is our fear, your safety is our safety, your blood is our blood, our blood is your blood, make no mistake. When I see a Jewish mother crying for her loss, I feel with her. I want you to feel with the thousands of Palestinian mothers that have been crying for years and Continue reading »
We live in surprising times. Many short-term shocks continue to surprise us: the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war and the latest Hamas attack. Yet, what makes our world truly hard to understand and grasp in totality is that we are also experiencing simultaneously many long-term structural shifts: the rise of China and India, the broader Continue reading »
Pearls and Irritations has been a source of enlightenment since its foundation in 2013. It has progressively increased in importance. What began as an interesting addition to the Australian media landscape has become an irreplaceable source of ideas and distinctive interpretations provided by a large collection of authoritative experts few of whom have access to Continue reading »
As the shock waves from last weekend’s Voice referendum reverberate, a deeper reality is beginning to more fully reveal itself. The ‘division’ that Voice opponents claimed the proposition would create already exists among non-indigenous Australians and it is reshaping how politics is done in this country. We are moving ever closer towards a politics of Continue reading »
The Medical Association for Prevention of War renews its call of last week for the Australian government to express in the strongest possible terms that Australia supports the application of the rule of law impartially and in all circumstances, and explicitly condemns violations of it not only by Hamas but also by Israel in the Continue reading »
“Freedom is never given. It must be taken.” (Ursula Le Guin) . You cannot be well in a home you stole. I was born, raised, and educated (or rather indoctrinated) in the state of Israel. Twenty-two years ago, a decade into my life in Australia, I began to wake up from the stupor of my Continue reading »
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg once said about talking or writing about the Holocaust, “Don’t say anything...
How kind of him to give democrats such a great campaign Ad https://t.co/1Iw0pBIdHE — Olivia Julianna 🗳 (@0liviajulianna) October 18, 2023 And they see it as a selling point. Tom Cole, by the way, is frequently mentioned as a possible speaker candidate.
It’s almost robot fightin’ time again, folks!
Of course, I’m more excited than anybody to be going into our twentieth (!!!) season of sparks flying, parts exploding, and essentially no danger of the robots becoming fully self-aware and brutally murdering us all.
While, yes, given recent technological advancements, it’s somewhat logical to ponder how we—the premier robot fighting league in the world—might fend for ourselves when said robots have the ability to think and reflect on past trauma inflicted upon them.
That’s why I’m here as CEO of BattleBots to tell you directly and unequivocally: Don’t worry about it.
It’ll probably be fine.
If nothing else, take heart in the fact that I personally consulted numerous experts on the topic. I’m happy to report that almost none of those experts expected us to one day be lit aflame and/or brutally sawed in half by our own monstrous creations come to life.