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Thailand's Pavilion at Osaka Expo Faces Backlash for Missing Futuristic Mark
Only if you stay indoors!!!!! -
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Why so many conspiracy theorists and what to do about them
Pseudo-science pretends to be legitimate science, but it lacks key elements like testable hypotheses, peer review, and reproducibility. Common signs include reliance on anecdotes, cherry-picking data, rejection of established science, and using jargon to sound credible – actually in some of the posts here it is just risible due to the posters total ignorance of the appropriate vocabulary. It thrives because it offers simple answers, plays on emotions, and exploits mistrust in authority. While it may feel empowering, pseudo-science is dangerous—it undermines trust in real science, leads to harmful health choices, and often preys on vulnerable people. Recognizing the red flags is key to stopping its spread. -
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Reckless BMW driver shifts blame in viral pickup pile-up crash: follow-up from the accident
https://thethaiger.com/news/national/reckless-bmw-driver-shifts-blame-in-viral-pickup-pile-up-crash -
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Trump Warns of US Withdrawal from Ukraine Peace Efforts Amid Stalled Negotiations
Those complaining about "biolabs" don't actually know what a "biolab" is. I worked most of my career in so-called biolabs. Nearly every university has several biolabs. Every hospital has at least 1 biolab. I know some of the Ukrainians doing work in these labs. You know one of the things they were working on? It sounds utterly amazing, but the application is rather dull. In the Noughties, they worked on death rays. Or rather, how they could direct plasma to disinfect a room, as an alternative to a formaldehyde bomb (which is still the gold standard). The idea didn't really work, but it illustrated a particularly Soviet approach to science. I knew the lab head. He couldn't speak English, wouldn't speak English. He'd go to a conference to present findings. He'd get a young lackey from the lab to translate to the conference. He would stand up, speak in Russian for a bit, show off some half arsed overhead acetates, when everyone else was using Powerpoint, and he'll get his lackey off to one side. The research was interesting, but the how show was embarassing. Nevertheless, the presentstions would be met with stoney silence. No one wanted to spend half an hour trying to get a question understood, while the break coffee was getting cold. On e of the many reasons for the support for Biolabs is related to why Ukraine had to get rid of their nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union collapsed overnight. It was extremely chaotic. Hollywood was full of plotlines involving evil renegade Soviet generals. We had rumours of backpack nukes being lost (largely a myth). Scientists getting recruited by rogue regimes. Cults like AUm Shinryoku were doing their level best to recruit scientists of the very highest ability, to support their apocalyptic paranoia. Ukraine was uttely brassic. It was left with an expensive toxic mess called Chernobyl. While it was largely the engineering brains of the USSR, it was now cut off from its main market; there was no Soviet government to buy its Sukhoi aircraft etc. It was left with scientists and engineers on the breadline. And a heap load of nukes, plus freezers full of god knows what. If Russia is accusing te US of running secret seapons labs, its because they are projecting. The entire Soviet BW programme was corrupt; go read Ken Alibek's account of it. He was an Uzbek in the Soviet military, and a military doctor. He was recruited to research Yersinia pestis, a bacterium endemic in Centra Asia, and carried by small mammals. What it causes we know as the Plague. Doctors in the Soviet Union were like others; they got into medicine to help people, and swore an oath. How dom you get a MD to research biological weapons. You don't. You tell the doctor we need research into developing better antibiotics. You tell the doctor to make it easier, we need to study the plague bacterium, and generate an attenuated version, so we are not forever working in a biohazard environment. In this way, Y, pestis became the Soviet Union's lab rat. In the West, we have Escerichia coli ("E. coli"), which for the most part, is a fairly benign bacterium (excepting food poisoning). All our knowledge of genetics is built around this bug. The same in the SU for Y. pestic. Then they want these doctors to understand how antibiotic resistance evolves, so they deliberately generate resistant strains. Then the research mysteriously stops. Soviet research is very different to Western research. In the West, we develop our scientists to have thinking skills, to develop initiative. University research groups tend to be quite small, and collaborative. Its a team effort. In the Soviet Union, they had some very good scientists. But the research groups were huge, but they weren't teams. Perm is a city populated by scientists. Everyone works for the institute. Someone decides on the objective; new killer biological weapon. Then splits the project into programs of work, all occurring concurrently. The silo'd groups, in each program have no idea of the ultimate objective, only their objective. There is no contact with other groups. Its a recipe for chaos; for scientific red herrings, blind alleyway, errors. Russian scientists, when you give them a task, are very good. But when you export them to the West, well, they are a bit crap outside of their comfort zone, and consequently, most spend their entire Western careers as little more than lab techs. I'm fairly typical of a Western Postdoc. My PhD was in Marine Microbiology, after a first degree that basically covered brewing. My research was into the role of bacteria is regulating the marine climate. I had a little postdoc role in the US, which was more like geochemistry. Got a few papers out. I segwayed into waste water microbial ecology, understanding how bacteria impact the functioning of aeration pumps in waste treatment. That lead to roles in government looking at infectious disease detection. All the while I'm extending my skill set, adapting. 30m years on, I am decoding the entire US medtec supply chain to understand tariff impacts, modeling 88,000 surgery codes for 40 countries and so forth. I see Postdocs in my company from former SU countries in my career who have completely ossified, unable to adapt their outlooks. When the SU collapsed, Alibek found himself to be an Uzbek colonel in a Russian Army, and consequently he was no longer trusted, and he made the decision to flee to the US, and spilled the beans on how Russia had been breaking the Biological Weapons Convention for years. Anthrax outbreak in the USSR in the early 80s? The Soviets blamed infected beef. The real reason was scientists driving their Lada from one lab to another, with a paint tin of the stuff, and forced at a checkpoint to open it, Hollywood style. First Soviet BW attack? About 1943, Francisella tularnesis used against German tank crews. Quite effective until the wind changed, causing outbreaks in Soviet troops. He revealed a Soviet BW programme in a terrible state, no one getting paid, broken safety equipment. I can back that up from experiences in visits to Perm; my Russian colleagues woild ask me to bring paper for the printers, some Western branded buffers etc. Any translators I needed, I had to pay with booze. Rubles were worthless, and hard currency attracted too much officialdom. Booze could be traded. So the nukes in Ukraine had to go. Ukraine knew they had to go. The country was full of skint engineers and scientists, surrounded by interesting looking kit. The kit had to be secured in place, and skint scientists given non-jobs, like plasma death rays, until they came up for retirement, and could live out their vodka-sozzled days at a country dacha. And also to ensure their skillset and knowledge, with the passage of time, became worth less and less. And speaking of safety, obviously there were and are huge differences in attitudes to health and safety. I know of two needle stick injuries involving the US and the SU, working with the Ebola virus. In the US, it was a female lab tech. She received the very best of medical care and recovered; its not that hard an infection to treat in the grand scheme of things. In Russia, the poor sod was locked in a chamber, with a diary, and asked to record his final moments, so that he would become a Hero of the Motherland. He didn't make it. What Nuland was referring to was probably the thousands of decrepti freezers containing material going back decades that the US didnt fully understand. The US assumption is that the Russians better understand what legacy material is there than they do, and maybe better than what the Ukrainians do, if records had become chaotic over a 30 year period. As for weaponsation of BWs, Its a bloody hard thing to do. Amerithrax was so-called weaponised Anthrax spores that essentially contaminated most of the US postal service, through the actions of some individual likely only known unto God. 2 people died. Aum Shinryko (might have misspelt that); Japanese Christian-Buddhist death cult who tried to cause WW3 and thereby arise from the ashes, got caught out when their home made Sarin contaminated the Tokyo underground, killing a relatively small number of people, including the heroic platform guard who kicked the offending milk carton into touch (school boy error). The trial revealed how they had driving around the Imperial Palace in Kyoto with a van pumping out botulinum toxin, hoping to kill the Emperor. Inconveniently no one noticed. They followed that up by using a agricultural crop sprayer to spray from the roof of an apartment block Anthrax that they were cooking up in the basement. Locals complained about the smell and their dogs being sick (they had ordered the wrong strain from the ATCC). This was a billion dollar cult, which used computer shops as fronts to generate funding, and which had recruited many of Japan's leading scientists. The concern from Nuland was that there might be some reference strains in that Ukrainian collection useful to the Russians. eg.. Marburg virus; one of those eyeball bleeding horrendous African viruses. Called Marburg, after the German city where 4 scientists died after obtaining material from Africa. The Soviets actually sent someone to dig up one of the bodies, to get a bit of tissue, so they could propagate the virus. The assumption is that there might be unique strains there of value to Russia, but of no value to the US. Preferably, there should have been supervised disposal of the material, but that can be quite complex, with respect to designing efficient disinfection processes. No doubt some will respond, take issue with me. I don't care. I have turned all notifications off; I will not have a scoobie do if you did respond. In that way, I am fully in control how I use the forum, not like some pavlovian dog responding the the bell, the like. I respond when I want to, Which might be never. -
122
Why so many conspiracy theorists and what to do about them
It was you Sir, who said 150+ years. All the medical procedures that were stated, were done during that time. Point me to one study/paper/experiment/trials that has Isolated a virus. I'll save you the trouble. You can't. There are not any. IMO, no vaccine has every been safe. effective or necessary. There is no such entity as an anti-viral drug. The flu is a natural body function.
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