Is this another ‘hand signal/sign’ @samfisher @rabbitleader ?

Yes and No.
That one is actually a bit harder to determine, as most people adopt that hand position, as part of their regular body language.
It actually signifies an openness to discussion and a demeanor of deep contemplation, which is why, when someone does that, before beginning a discussion with them, it's a good sign that they're open to negotiation and are actually willing to hear your side / terms.
Or, it's used when someone is in deep thought, or quiet contemplation.
However, it is also seen and used, by particular masonic orders as a variation of the Square and Compass hand signal, itself also a commonly used hand position in people's regular body language depending on whether the sharpest point, made by the 2 fingers in the triangle, are pointing upwards. This makes adopting that position uncomfortable and deliberate.
My view.
Tate is an initiate.
That's without doubt. My suspicion is though, that first of all, that's not him doing a deliberate hand sign and second, that he, like Russel Brand are Royal Arch/ York / Oak Rite Masons, which are the more light side of the balance within Freemasonry?
That's just my best guess, so don't quote me on that, its just the vibe I get.

Sun Simulation and Giant Tree Stumps (Part 1): Hey Stumpy!

Ok, it's bubble bursting time, so some of you may not like what's about to be said here, but I think this needs to be said as logic seems to have, not so much left the building, but rather jumped out of a 20th storey window and plummeted to it's death, when it comes to these 2 topics?

All over TikTok, Telegram, X and even YouTube, the topic of is the Sun still real after the 8th April eclipse and also, another topic that seems to come out of the woodwork, before being absolutely trounced back under the rock it came from and to fester a few years before returning, that being Giant Tree Stumps.

Let's start with the Stumps first, shall we, as these are the easiest to get your grip back on, because it doesn't take too much logical thinking, to conclude this idea is completely infeasible.

Let's take the Devil's Tower, in the US, as a good example of an oft cited perfect example of an ancient giant tree stump.
The first thing to address is it's size. The Devil's Tower is 867 feet high and it's base encompasses 2.1 Square miles at it's base. It's flat top at it's summit is 1.5 acres.
So already, you can probably tell, it's pretty damn big and far bigger than it's photo makes it appear.
Let's just say, for arguments sake, that this was an ancient tree stump?
That trees total height would be roughly twice the size of Everest. Trees usually grow in height, a factor of 10 (so × 10, 10 times) the circumference of it's trunk.
So, you have a tree, twice the size of Everest and the first problem is, at least 1/3 of it, will be poking out of the atmosphere.
So no oxygen.
The tree, therefore, would die before it got that big.
But let's just say it stopped growing when it scraped the edge of space and it died.
When it did, it would fall over.
Now imagine, a tree, 2/3 the size of Everest. How heavy that would weigh?
That weight impacting the ground. What damage would it do to the surrounding landscape, as it impacted with the ground. You'd expect to see some sort of trench being left in the ground at least. A mountain range at most, stretching out from where it was, wouldn't you?
The same would be expected, if it was chopped down and speaking of which, who exactly would be the one doing the chopping?
The pictures below are of the Devil's Tower and the surrounding landscape around it. See if you notice anything?
Also, bear in mind that the Devil's Tower, in comparison to other proposed ancient Giant Tree Stumps, is barely a sapling...

Sun Simulation and Giant Tree Stumps (Part 2): It's none too bright in here!

Ok, onto Part 2 of my bursting of bubbles, Sun Simulation.
First of all, let's get the Elephant in the room out of the way first. Yes there are patents for various Sun Simulators, yes there are a few in use.
However...
None are orbital Sun Simulators. They're all ground based. They're also waaaaaaaaaay smaller than many of you might think and primarily used in agriculture, for use with hydroponically grown food and weather simulation experiments.
That's it.
No other uses, no other variations / sizes of it in use.

"But that's not what's in the sky. For a start, the simulated sun is white... Not Yellow! The Sun is always yellow!!", I hear some of you yelling from the back.

Yes, the Sun is Yellow... Except when it isn't. Do you know how long the Sun has been white for?
Roughly 11 years now.
After that, it'll be Yellow again, for 11 years.
After that, it'll be white again, for 11 years and so on.
Do you know why?
Because the sun has a maximum cycle of 11 years, with more solar activity, sunspots and magnetic storms.
Then it has 11 years, of it's minimum cycle, where it has less solar activity, sun spots, magnetic storms. But... Calling it a minimum, is kind of misleading as, though they happen less frequently, they're faaaaaar more intense.
The white colouration is due to this somewhat dormant state, as it's atomic and chemical structure is different and it's more volatile as a result.

Anyway, like last time, let's say for arguments sake that there really was a Sun Simulator, what would we see?
Well, for a start, for the sun to still be the size of our usual sun as we see it in the sky and just as bright, with our most powerful bulbs (led's likely) it would first of all, have to be twice the size of the sun to simulate the same light intensity and that would have to be twice as far away from the Earth too, so we could still see it and not be destroyed by the gravity from that very same object.
Result:
We all freeze. Because there's not enough heat coming from those lights and we're also twice as far away.

"But they're using mirrors not bulbs, so ner!!", I hear from the back again, "They're reflecting light from the actual sun, onto the Earth, so double ner!"

Is that so... Well, to make enough light, to light the whole sky and make, you know, daytime, you'd have to have a structure the exact same size as the Earth, in order for enough light to be reflected back onto the Earth. Also, you don't want it too close either because, gravitational effects on the planet, planet goes bang after it sucks in big mirror.
So you'd have to move the mirror further away. The further you move it, the less light it reflects at the Earth.
Less light, also means less heat = We freeze again, only this time it's dark.

"But we have it orbiting just past the moon, it's called the JWST", you say.

The JWST is tiny, we wouldn't see any light coming from it.

"But we have one orbiting and it's smaller, so closer..." you say?

Smaller, less illumination in the areas surrounding the direction the mirror is facing, meaning it will be daytime in New York and...
That's it...
Nowhere else would be in "daylight"
That's not to mention that New York would also be burning to the ground because, the closer the mirror is to Earth, the more focused the beam reflected and... Well, I think you get the idea?

Soooooo... Any questions?

Trump assassination attempt

To resolve this issue, we offered him a chance to do a live voice chat, on Data Chats, with the test of the team to aire out our differences and present evidences when needed. We even offered to find an independent moderator, to moderate that voice chat, to ensure things remained fair and everyone got a chance to respond.
Matthew refused that offer. He then left the group and when someone accidentally deleted him, a good while later, I didn't see any problem with it, after all, he'd not been on the page for some time and as far as I knew, he showed no interest in returning. Besides, if he did want to come back, he could just ask me and I'd reinstate him.

Now bear in mind, this is just for the chat page, all this time he's still been able to post to Data Drops.
Not long after that, I got a DM from Matthew, saying that he'd become aware of being banned and could I reinstate him, because he was unable to read the page. That he didn't want to rejoin, nor communicate with anyone in the group, he just wanted to be able to view it? Now, when he did this, though I was confused by his request, I still did it anyway. In my view, I didn't really see too much of a problem with it? However, I was unaware of the feelings of the rest of the team towards him and one of them, thought he'd rejoined the page and deleted him again in a panic. They then immediately informed me about it, through DM's. Matthew then DM'd me about it.

Around this same time though, there was several things going on in my personal life and so i wasn't on Telegram for extended periods, as I dealt with that, one of which being the anniversary of my brothers death last year and some other things, so it was a good while before I saw any of the DM's and replied.

Between his sending of that message and my replying, he took to his personal page and again questioned the teams integrity and my own and yet again the topic of Thumper arose, along with various other accusations and smears.
This understandably made me absolutely furious, but once again and against my better judgement, I reinstated him, but removed his ability to post to the page etc, after all he stated that all he wanted to do was read what was on it, so why would he want to post anything to chat.
If he changed his mind at some point, I'd just switch those settings back on. I also explained why it'd taken me so long to reply too, so he knew that it would take longer to get an answer from me if he needed anything?
His reinstatement, however, was on the condition that, after reading what he'd posted about his ban the last time on his page, the fact was I felt that it appeared he was trying to score points to both disingenuously make him look better from this situation, in the eyes of his group. But also make us look in the wrong and deter others from visiting the page by his followers spreading this messsge to others. For that, I made it clear he was only reinstated for as long as he didn't use anything on the chat for that purpose again. He agreed.

Then Thumper banned him randomly, because he thought it'd be funny to wind him up and he would've reinstated him if he'd reached out and stopped being a pansy?

Again, this is all during a time when I'm having things to deal with in my personal life, Matthew knew it would be a while before he got a reply and yet he went back to his page, to do exactly the same thing again.

So, for the first time I did something I don't usually do and I decided to consult the team, rather than just automatically reinstate him, as would usually occur, if someone messages me about being banned?

(To be absolutely clear: I never ban anyone, unless they're spammers / bots, or on the very rare occasion, that they fit the profile of a 77th like op, of which there has been 2.
If you plead your case, for why you were using their same tactics, your ban gets lifted. Message me with a barrage of insults instead, or not at all and it usually indicates you're an op. Or, as is often the case, myself and my sausage fingers, or a new admin has done it by mistake.

In any case, you get reinstated)

This time I decided to talk to the team, to see how they felt about me lifting Matthew's ban and basically put it to a vote. I thought that was the fairest way to do it?

When I consulted the team, about this new ban and whether they thought I should reinstate him again, they each told me what they thought. These are a few of their main points:

1) The thought of Matthew lurking in the background, at random and seemingly taking notes, to be used against them and at a later date, made them extremely uncomfortable and actually caused them to not feel as though they could 'speek freely' as a result.

2) His tendency to seemingly take up the opposite side of the argument, with only a select few of the research team, irrespective of how implausible, ridiculous and / or demonstrably wrong that opposing argument was, he would take that position. This gave the appearance of this not being a legitimate opinion that he was genuinely holding and more in line with it being deliberately targeted towards them and just to cause an argument, for reasons of... Who knows, more point scoring perhaps?

3) His tendency to do this and often, for them, made an already challenging environment on the page difficult to be in (keeping a page 100% free speech, is more difficult than you think? Causing tremendous strain on the admins and myself, but is also extremely rewarding because of this. Think of the wild west, but as chat page and you'll be pretty close to what it's like?) So due to his constant and repetitive back and forth with this select number of the admin, his whining when he was insulted by them, constant requests for the banning of tbose admin and the general drain this had on the team, this was reflected on the page and traffic dropped significantly.

4) His request to only view the page and not interact, nor communicate in any way, raised serious suspicions and concerns, as to his true motivations.

There were more points raised, but these were just a few of the keys. Many of the research team felt that, if he was allowed back on, then they would regrettably be forced to leave, because the page would no longer be the safe space it is, for people to say what they like?
Now remember, all this time, he had never been banned from the main Drops page, just on Chat. He's still able to post on Drops, those posts automatically are forwarded to the Chat page and so he is still able to read the comments on his posts and any replies to those comments.

This is just a ban for the chat page, a page he did not want to communicate on, just view what we were saying?

After hearing the points from the team, I then had a think about whether or not to agree to his request and after careful deliberation, I concluded that, because he didn't want to communicate with the group, that he just wanted to read what was being said and no one was sure why that was and his past actions raised serious concerns.

So for the following reasons, his wanting to lurk and not communicate. That this would actually have a chilling effect on the ability for people to be able to 'speak freely'. I had no choice but to consider this as his deliberate attempt at sabotaging the page and to affect how the page is run, in his favour.,

No one who visits Data Chats, should feel unable to state exactly what's on their minds, how they feel and how they think? But know that, when doing so, you should expect to be challenged, questioned and yes, on occasion mocked for your opinion. As long as you can handle that, then you'll be perfectly fine on our chat page, those who aren't tend to leave of their own accord. Matthew didn't want to be part of that, he didn't want to be involved and he likely had an ulterior motive for doing so than what he had stated.

This was the reason for his ban. Yet he stated that, because of this, we were no longer a 100% free speech platform and demanded that I state as such in future. That statement he has repeatedly made and that statement is 100% false.