"My reading of Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan convinced me that “the myth of technological neutrality” was just that. In conversations with friends, often somewhere downtown, I disputed the view that these technologies merely added technical capacities to our lives. They exerted a negative spiritual, cultural, and political effect. They were superseding better ways of being and acting, while empowering certain groups over others. I argued that the first question about any technology was what kind of people it made us into. I convinced basically no one.

"Today, the Institute for Family Studies, of which I am executive director, is a leader in efforts to require age verification for social media platforms and pornography sites, as well as to weaken the hold of smartphones over the lives of kids."

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/10/the-myth-of-technological-neutrality

I see that Maggie Smith has just died. RIP.

https://youtu.be/TvBtPjtTAOQ

Never forget.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aj5whlRTYs

Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now:

"An ambitious effort to understand the Earth’s climate over the past 485 million years has revealed a history of wild shifts and far hotter temperatures than scientists previously realized — offering a reminder of how much change the planet has already endured and a warning about the unprecedented rate of warming caused by humans.

The timeline, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past temperatures ever produced, the authors say."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/19/earth-temperature-global-warming-planet/

ROBINMG 🚀

My first job was working for IBM in the 1980s. The most important lesson I learned was "never work for IBM." It was a soul crushing experience working for a company with such a destructive business model. Those chickens have not only come home to roost, but they've also torn down the coop and are busy selling marshmallows toasted over the flames of the wreckage remaining from the barn.

"I thought the most informative aspect of this IBM employee’s critical rant about the former tech giant is the way it reveals how the corpocracy ends up devouring itself once it makes the shift from production to services. We’re presently seeing this transformation take place in the game space, as the corpocratic-“game developers” seek to capture customers and feed upon them over time rather than simply make good games and sell them to gamers.

"And the larger corporations, of course, can’t survive by feeding on individual consumers, so they have to predate upon smaller corporations, locking them into “service contracts” and keeping them dependent upon their increasingly inferior technologies. The inevitable results are exactly the opposite of the theoretical benefits of so-called “capitalism”."

https://voxday.net/2024/09/28/the-corpocracy-devours-itself/

⚠️ As of this morning, over 400 roads remain closed in North Carolina. All roads in Western NC should be considered closed.

Remember: As crews work to clear and inspect roads and bridges, please give them room.

Go to http://DriveNC.gov for the latest road information.

Didn't anyone realize his ex was "Helene" before turning him loose to comment on the hurricane?

nitter.poast.org/LizCrokin/status/1839707008926126270

"Norwitz says the reason he took on the “crazy” experiment was to invoke “intellectual provocation” on the extreme messaging when it comes to the topic of diets on social media.

"Describing it as “legit-bait” Norwitz used his bizarre diet and storytelling to get more researchers interested and involved in the study of metabolic health."

https://nypost.com/2024/09/25/lifestyle/harvard-medical-student-nick-norwitz-ate-720-eggs-in-a-month-and-cholesterol-levels-dropped/

"Richard Fox is an incredible sci-fi author with his Ember War series and for Baen Books, and yet Author Nation is choosing to discriminate against conservatives who don't want to play pronoun games."

https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/author-nation-book-conference-cancels

Bob Moran's book is available for preorder, now, with shipping world-wide.

https://bobmoran.newsprints.co.uk/

Wow! Dr. Robert Redfield, former CDC Director, just wrote a powerful editorial in Newsweek endorsing @realDonaldTrump and @RobertKennedyJr’s bold plan to Make America Healthy Again.

"After more than 40 years in the public health arena, it might surprise some of my colleagues to know I think President Trump chose the right man for the job: Robert Kennedy, Jr."

"We know chronic disease is more than 75 percent of the country's $4 trillion annual health care expenditure. Unfortunately, we have become a sick nation."

"More than 40 percent of school-aged children and adolescents have at least one chronic health condition."

"Obesity in American children has increased dramatically since John F. Kennedy's presidency, from around 4 percent in the 1960s to almost 20 percent in 2024."

"Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture."

"A large portion of the FDA's budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies. NIH is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, and its scientists are allowed to collect royalties on drugs NIH licenses to pharma."

"President Trump has pledged, if elected, to establish a panel of top experts working with Kennedy to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases."

"Kennedy pledged that 'within two years, we will watch the chronic disease burden lift dramatically' if he's given the tools he needs to make a change. I believe him. And I think President Trump will empower him. I support their noble effort to heal our children."

"The exorbitant cost of the failing health of our kids, the needless suffering and death, can be ended by a Kennedy Commission on Childhood Chronic Disease."

https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1838980470912209345

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-has-plan-make-americas-children-healthy-again-its-good-one-opinion-1957026

@KanekoaTheGreat

"Eighty-five years ago this month, on September 1, 1939, under the reign of Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler, Germany invaded Poland. In a systematic campaign of obfuscation, denial, and historical revisionism, the Allied victors have consistently ignored the truth of events leading up to this invasion, including a century of geopolitical tensions, diplomatic hurdles, ethnic conflicts, territorial disputes, vindictive reparations, and hastily redrawn boundaries with no consideration for preventing future conflict.

"Western history books, relying on sanitized government documents, selective sources, and propaganda, have erased significant truths to claim the grounds for a Second World War were unavoidable. Nothing could be further from the truth—as the eminent historian of this great conflict David Irving noted, "Perhaps, this war was more pointless than the First World War and most certainly should have been avoided."

https://thegoodcitizen.live/p/for-no-reason-at-all

⚡🇱🇧 Hezbollah has just confirmed the death of it's General Secretary, Hassan Nasrallah.

@worldpravda

❗️ Crew Dragon Launches to the ISS with Russian Alexander Gorbunov and American Nick Hague

The spacecraft has successfully reached orbit.

Despite having space for four crew members, Gorbunov and Hague embarked on the mission together. The two vacant seats will be occupied during the return flight by astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who arrived at the ISS in June on Boeing’s first Starliner spacecraft.

Video: #NASA

@science

Friend or foe?
A refreshing take:
The enemy was always you.

BREAKING: Gilead Sciences has announced a recall of its antiviral drug remdesivir.

Remdesivir had a 53% mortality rate in clinical trials done in Africa. This is the same medication they forced on us while preventing us from using hydroxychloroquine & ivermectin!

Subscribe and share ➡️➡️ @DrSimoneGoldLA

For the first time in history, a photograph from the surface of Mars shows both Earth and Mars’ moon Phobos in a single frame! This unique image was captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover, offering an unprecedented view of our home planet alongside one of Mars’ moons from the Martian landscape.


@science #space #mars