90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

China Critic Enes Kanter Freedom Stars in Ad Set to Run During Primetime Olympics Coverage

Kanter has been outspoken critic of China's human rights abuses

Boston Celtics center and 2021 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year Enes Kanter Freedom will star in an ad set to air during primetime broadcasts of the Beijing Olympics.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) this week launched the $1.5 million campaign, which features Freedom speaking on the virtues of free speech while wearing a "Free Tibet, Free Taiwan, Free Hong Kong, Free Uyghurs" T-shirt. In the minute-long spot, the Turkish immigrant notes that "without freedom, we cannot do anything."

"People should feel lucky and blessed to be in a country like America where there's human rights," Freedom, who had his Turkish citizenship revoked after criticizing the Turkish regime, says in the ad. "And obviously America is having her own problems—but change can only happen in America with freedom of speech."

The 2022 Beijing Olympics have brought renewed scrutiny to China's human rights issues. The United States did not send diplomatic representatives to the games in protests of China's genocide of Uyghur Muslims. U.S. leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) cautioned athletes against criticizing the CCP after China threatened to punish Olympic athletes who speak out against the regime while in Beijing.

NBC refused to air an ad created by Republican congressman Mike Waltz that also featured Freedom and was critical of sponsors for sticking with the games despite the human rights abuses.

A Muslim himself, Freedom is an outspoken critic of authoritarian regimes. He became a U.S. citizen last year after the Turkish government targeted his family for his criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The regime jailed Freedom's father and forced his family to publicly disown him. His family could be arrested if they attempt to contact their son.

Freedom has criticized the International Olympic Committee for overlooking China's "abuses."

"The IOC has ignored Beijing's abuses for years," he wrote in a November Wall Street Journal op-ed calling to move the games out of China. "All the gold medals in the world aren't worth selling your values and your principles to the Chinese Communist Party."

FIRE's ad will air on network and cable news channels during Olympic broadcasts and primetime programs, including...

Addicts That Depend On You For Their Fix - The Ultimate Voting Block.

Truth Is More Insane Than Fiction...

Outta site, buy your kicks from the man in the white

Feels alright, powder pleasure in your nose tonight

See the men paint their faces and cry

Like some girl it makes you wonder why

City life, sure is cool but it cuts like a knife, it's your life

So forget all that you see

It's not reality

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Can't you see what this crazy life is doing to me

Life is just a fantasy, can you live this fantasy life

10 Most Absurd Excuses From Democrats Caught in Mask Scandals

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Democratic politicians have consistently supported strict mask mandates for normal citizens. Yet they have just as consistently violated their own policies while attending parties, meeting with donors, or taking part in photo ops with masked children.

These Democrats appear to believe that COVID-related restrictions do not apply to important people such as themselves, but rather solely to the unwashed rubes they represent. That is presumably why most Democrats have responded so indignantly after getting caught in violation of a Democratic-imposed mask mandate or some other COVID policy they claim to support.

The Washington Free Beacon has curated the top 10 most absurd responses from Democratic politicians caught in COVID-related scandals. There were plenty of examples from which to choose, and there will inevitably be more scandals in the coming weeks, as Democrats scramble to reverse their strict masking policies in a desperate attempt to avoid a midterm wipeout. We will update as needed. Enjoy!

10. "I should have been more astute to the specifics of the regulations."

Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose

Spoken like a true nerd after he was busted for hosting a large Thanksgiving dinner party in violation of state health guidelines limiting the number of households at private gatherings. On the same day his violation was exposed, Liccardo posted a tweet urging constituents to "cancel the big gatherings this year and focus on keeping each other safe."

9. "I am human."

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D., Mich.)

The governor has repeatedly violated her own state-imposed mask guidelines in Michigan, and once flouted the Washington, D.C., mask mandate at a crowded bar near the White House. After being photographed in East Lansing at a large maskless gathering in violation of a Michigan Health Department order, Whitmer claimed to be "human," which is why she neglected to "stop and think about" the importance of rules.

8. "Don't be ridiculous."

Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C.

Bowser accused "right-wing nuts" of "spreading disinformation" after she was photographed without a mask at a wedding reception just days after imposing an indoor mask mandate throughout the district. The mandate included an exemption for individuals who were "actively eating or drinking." Bowser was not, but implied that she was, and called her critics "ridiculous." The Washington Post gave the mayor Four Pinocchios for her "poor spin."

7. "Everyone feels traumatized."

Lori Lightfoot, mayor of Chicago

That's how Lightfoot, a frequent violator of state and local mask mandates, defended herself for shouting into a bullhorn amid a crowd celebrating Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. "There are times when we actually do need to have … relief and come together, and I felt like that was one of those times," she said. "This has been a super hard year on everyone. Everyone feels traumatized."

6. "I was feeling the spirit."

London Breed, mayor of San Francisco

Despite issuing one of the strictest masks mandates in the state of California, the mayor was defiant after being photographed dancing at a jazz club without a mask. "I got up and started dancing because I was feeling the spirit and I wasn't thinking about a mask," Breed said. "I was thinking about having a good time." She is also a repeat violator.

5. "Homophobia."

Visage à trois #26

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

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Visage à trois #24

China's 2022 Genocide Games are a ratings DISASTER—down 43% from 2018 games The drop in views set a record low for the network since NBCUniversal began broadcasting the games in 1988.

NBC has suffered a huge blow to its ratings as only 16 million viewers tuned in to watch the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony, down from the 28.3 million viewers who tuned in during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February 2018.

The drop in views set a record low for the network since NBCUniversal began broadcasting the games in 1988.

According to Variety, the total audience delivery, or TAD, of 16 million viewers is down 43% compared to the previous games. Noting that while comparing the usually more popular Summer Olympics to Winter Olympics is less fair, it’s worth noting that the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympic Games opening ceremony drew 17 million viewers last July, which was at the time the smallest viewership for the event in 33 years and can be attributed to the lack of fanfare surrounding the games, which occurred at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing’s numbers are worse than that.

As was the case with previous broadcasts, the torch lighting ceremony aired live in the morning on NBC and its streaming service Peacock and was replayed again at primetime. As with last year’s games, the Olympics this year are happening in mostly empty arenas, devoid of spectators.

NBC’s numbers are expected to struggle as the network grapples with the challenge of bringing viewers to what some viewers have dubbed the “Genocide Olympics” on account of China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority group in the Xinjiang autonomous region, with many stating their intent to boycott the proceedings.

NBCUniversal is contracted to broadcast 2,800 hours of Beijing Winter Games coverage across multiple platforms, including all of...

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Videos That Are:

Usually Short.
Usually Timely.
Usually Scraped, Gleaned And Pilfered From Social Media.

Visage à trois #21

New soft robot material to morph from ground to air vehicle using liquid metal

Researchers have developed a new approach for shape changing at the material level. They use rubber, metal, and temperature to morph materials and fix them into place with no motors or pulleys.

Imagine a small autonomous vehicle that could drive over land, stop, and flatten itself into a quadcopter. The rotors start spinning, and the vehicle flies away. Looking at it more closely, what do you think you would see? What mechanisms have caused it to morph from a land vehicle into a flying quadcopter? You might imagine gears and belts, perhaps a series of tiny servo motors that pulled all its pieces into place.

If this mechanism was designed by a team at Virginia Tech led by Michael Bartlett, assistant professor in mechanical engineering, you would see a new approach for shape changing at the material level. These researchers use rubber, metal, and temperature to morph materials and fix them into place with no motors or pulleys. The team's work has been published in Science Robotics. Co-authors of the paper include graduate students Dohgyu Hwang and Edward J. Barron III and postdoctoral researcher A. B. M. Tahidul Haque.

Getting into shape

Nature is rich with organisms that change shape to perform different functions. The octopus dramatically reshapes to move, eat, and interact with its environment; humans flex muscles to support loads and hold shape; and plants move to capture sunlight throughout the day. How do you create a material that achieves these functions to enable new types of multifunctional, morphing robots?

"When we started the project, we wanted a material that could do three things: change shape, hold that shape, and then return to the original configuration, and to do this over many cycles," said Bartlett. "One of the challenges was to create a material that was soft enough to dramatically change shape, yet rigid enough to create adaptable machines that can perform different functions."

To create a structure that could be morphed, the team turned to kirigami, the Japanese art of making shapes out of paper by cutting. (This method differs from origami, which uses folding.) By observing the strength of those kirigami patterns in rubbers and composites, the team was able to create a material architecture of a repeating geometric pattern.

Next, they needed a material that would hold shape but allow for that shape to be erased on demand. Here they introduced an endoskeleton made of a low melting point alloy (LMPA) embedded inside a rubber skin. Normally, when a metal is stretched too far, the metal becomes permanently bent, cracked, or stretched into a fixed, unusable shape. However, with this special metal embedded in rubber, the researchers turned this typical failure mechanism into a strength. When stretched, this composite would now hold a desired shape rapidly, perfect for soft morphing materials that can become instantly load bearing.

Finally, the material had to return the structure back to its original shape. Here, the team incorporated soft, tendril-like heaters next to the LMPA mesh. The heaters cause the metal to be converted to a liquid at 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit), or 10 percent of the melting temperature of aluminum. The elastomer skin keeps the melted metal contained and in place, and then pulls the material back into the original shape, reversing the stretching, giving the composite what the researchers call "reversible plasticity." After the metal cools, it again contributes to holding the structure's shape.

"These composites have a metal endoskeleton embedded into a rubber with soft heaters, where the kirigami-inspired cuts define an array of metal beams. These cuts combined with the unique properties of the materials were really important to morph, fix into shape rapidly, then return to the original shape," Hwang said.

The researchers found that this kirigami-inspired composite design could create complex shapes, from cylinders to balls to the bumpy shape of the bottom of a pepper. Shape change could also be achieved quickly: After impact with a ball, the shape changed and fixed into place in less than 1/10 of a second. Also, if the material broke, it could be healed multiple times by melting and reforming the metal endoskeleton.

One drone for land and air, one for sea

The applications for this technology are only starting to unfold. By combining this material with onboard power, control, and motors, the team created a functional drone that autonomously morphs from a ground to air vehicle. The team also created a small, deployable submarine, using the morphing and returning of the material to retrieve objects from an aquarium by scraping the belly of the sub along the bottom.

"We're excited about the opportunities this material presents for...

Official data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms that the Covid-19 vaccines are now showing a negative effectiveness against hospitalisation and death. A negative effectiveness that is declining by the week.

This does not just mean the vaccines are ineffective; it means they are damaging the immune systems of the recipients who are now many times more likely to be hospitalisaed with Covid-19 or die of Covid-19 than the unvaccinated population.

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The UKHSA decided to stop showing case hospital and death rates for the double vaccinated from their Week 3 report onwards in order to hide this fact from the British taxpayer.

They are hiding the size of the double vaccinated population in Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5.

So we used the most accurate mathematical extrapolation methods that it is realistically possible to use, to deduce the double vaccinated population from Week 3 to Week 10, in order to discover what they are trying to hide.

Here is the extrapolation…

EXTRAPOLATION

f(x+h) = f(x) + f(x)-f(x-h) + (f(x)-2f(x-h)+f(x-2h))/2 1st order approximation
f(x-h) = f(x) + f(x)-f(x+h) + (f(x)-2f(x+h)+f(x+2h))/2 1st order approximation

So f(x+h) = 2.5f(x)-2f(x+h)+0.5f(x+2h)
And f(x-h) = 2.5f(x)-2f(x-h)+0.5f(x-2h)

So Week2 = 2.5Week3-2Week4+0.5Week5 for the 3 Dose Population
And Week3 = 2.5Week2-2Week1+0.5Week52 for the 2+3 Dose Population

But an entire vaccine dose takes around 12 weeks for each age group these days. So we must taper off the increments to zero. We do that using the following formula from Week4 forward for the 2+3 Dose extrapolation.

Week4 = Week3 + 0.9x(1.5Week3-2Week2+0.5Week1)
Week5 = Week4 + 0.9x(1.5Week4-2Week3+0.5Week2)
Week6 = Week5 + 0.9x(1.5Week5-2Week4+0.5Week3)
Etc.

We are just adding 90% of the normal extrapolation increment each week (rather than 100%) to take account of the ever decreasing number of people left to be vaccinated.

We take Week 52 figures (which the UKHSA did not produce) to be Week51 figures because not many people rushed to get vaccinated over Christmas and New year. So the 14 day period covered by Week51 and Week52 was equivalent to 7 days outside the festive period as regards the numbers of people vaccinated.

Here are the results of the extrapolation showing the size of the double vaccinated population for each age group –

Right. So now we have all the double vaccinated populations for each age group. That is what the UKHSA is trying to hide from us for Week 3 to Week 10.

The UHKSA has now moved from greying out the unvaccinated case rates in Table 13 of their Vaccine Surveillance reports up to Week 4, to refusing to publish the basic double vaccinated population data from Week 3 onwards, from which double vaccinated case rates, hospitalisation rates and death rates can be produced.

They did this because those rates, which we now reveal, destroy the false narrative that vaccines although failing to protect against infection, do offer some protection against hospitalisation and death.

There is a whole other article to be written on how or why a UK Government Statistics Agency paid for by the British Taxpayer, could end up acting in the interests of two American drugs companies and against the interests, health and life of those who...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #227

FALSE FLAG COMING? DHS Warns of ‘Heightened’ Terror Threat From COVID Policy Skeptics, Election Fraud Reformers

On Monday, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an advisory warning of a “heightened” terrorist threat from COVID skeptics and election fraud reformers.

“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence,” the DHS wrote in their warning released on Feb. 7.

DHS listed “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” as the top cause for their terror advisory.

“For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19. Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021,” they wrote, providing no supporting evidence to bolster their claim.

They added that “COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates—have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures.”

“Some domestic violent extremists have continued to advocate for violence in response to false or misleading narratives about unsubstantiated election fraud. The months preceding the upcoming 2022 midterm elections could provide additional opportunities for these extremists and other individuals to call for violence directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers,” the DHS advisory claimed.

If it was not already obvious enough that the DHS produced this document for the political propaganda purpose of dehumanizing their political opposition, they also stated that “a small number of threat actors are attempting to use the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan last year as a means to exacerbate long-standing grievances and justify attacks against immigrants.”

The DHS stated that they are working with private institutions, such as monolithic tech corporations, in order to institute Big Brother and choke the free flow of information in response to this supposedly heightened threat.

“DHS is working with public and private sector partners, as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse or could inspire violence,” they wrote.

This advisory is highly alarming and could signal that a false flag attack is imminent. With the delegitimized Biden regime cratering and the Democrat Party becoming loathed by the American people, this could be their last desperate gambit to...

The IG is trying to determine if the Capitol Police have been illegally spying on members of Congress, their staff, or visitors to their offices.

The inspector general for the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has opened a formal investigation into whether the law enforcement agency tasked with securing the Capitol has been inappropriately surveilling elected members of Congress, their staff, and visitors to their offices, The Federalist has learned. The opening of the investigation follows news reports and accusations from lawmakers that USCP has overstepped its bounds as it tries to recover from the January 6 riots that tarnished both the Capitol and the reputation of the law enforcement agency that was supposed to keep it safe.

USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger confirmed the opening of the inspector general investigation in his response to congressional inquiries about USCP police tactics, reported in a January 24 article published by Politico, including surveilling and compiling intelligence dossiers on members of Congress, their staff, and visitors.

“While I am confident in our methods, I am asking the USCP Office of the Inspector General to review the USCP’s programs related to these security assessments to assure both this Committee, the Congress as a whole, and the public that these processes are legal, necessary, and appropriate,” Manger wrote to seven Republican lawmakers.

According to the Politico article, USCP analysts had been directed by Julie Farnam, the acting director of USCP’s Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division, to “run ‘background checks on people whom lawmakers planned to meet, including donors and associates.”

“When staff were listed as attending these meetings, Capitol Police intelligence analysts also got asked to check the social media accounts of the staffers,” the Politico article alleged.

In his letter to lawmakers, Manger denied the allegations detailed in the Politico article and claimed USCP’s activities were...