CNN - Negroponte: Internet is way to world peace - November 25, 1997 - "Tired of all the hype about the Internet? Well, think again -- one respected Internet guru says it will bring world peace. Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory, told an information technology conference in Brussels on Tuesday that the potential of the global computer network has actually been vastly underrated. "I have never seen people miss the scale of what's going on as badly as they are doing it now," he said, predicting that the Internet would do no less than bring world peace by breaking down national borders. Twenty years from now, he said, children who are used to finding out about other countries through the click of a mouse "are not going to know what nationalism is." Negroponte faulted European countries outside of Scandinavia, including France and Germany, for not climbing on the Internet bandwagon, saying they were on par with the Third World."
Lol
Missing hotel owner found inside crocodile - "A South African hotelier is believed to have been eaten by a 15ft crocodile after human remains were found inside the swollen reptile. The animal was shot from a helicopter and airlifted from the crocodile-infested Komati River in a daring police operation before a post-mortem examination was carried out. A ring was found inside the belly of the 500kg apex predator and is thought to have belonged to Gabriel Batista, 59. The businessman was swept away in floodwaters while trying to drive across the Komati River in the north-east of the country a week ago. Investigators will carry out DNA tests on the bones and flesh found inside the crocodile. Batista’s four-wheel-drive vehicle became stuck when he attempted to cross the Komati River last week. He is believed to have been swept away by the floodwaters. It is not known whether Batista had drowned by the time he was attacked by the crocodiles or if he was eaten alive. In the wake of his disappearance, police spent four days flying drones and helicopters over the river during the search and noticed a crocodile with a swollen belly basking in the sun on a small island. Capt Johan “Pottie” Potgieter, the commander of a police dive unit, told News24: “Besides having a massively full tummy, he didn’t move around or try to slip into the river despite the noise of the drones and the chopper.” The crocodile was shot by a police marksman from a helicopter and airlifted away from the river to nearby Kruger National Park... As well as the body parts, six different types of shoes were found, according to Capt Potgieter. He said this could indicate it had killed other people, but not necessarily, adding: “A crocodile will eat or swallow anything.”... The Nile crocodile is the largest species in Africa, with some individuals rivalling the saltwater or estuarine crocodiles that live in Australia and Southeast Asia. One of the most dangerous reptiles in the world, Nile crocodiles can grow as long as 20ft and weigh more than 680kg. The species is responsible for several hundred confirmed human deaths per year, although the true number may be higher because many attacks happen in remote areas and are not reported to the authorities."
Blame the EU for your increasingly bossy car | The Spectator - "When Eileen, a 75-year-old British grandmother, bought a brand-new car she found its advanced driver-assistance repeatedly told her the speed limit in a 30mph zone was 80mph and then kept jerking the steering wheel to ‘correct’ her, even when she was trying to park. She told Which? that driving had gone ‘from a lifeline to a nightmare’. ‘I’ve seriously considered getting some old, beat-up car from five years ago that doesn’t have this technology,’ she said. Car safety features are boring and intrusive, like having a man with a clipboard and lanyard permanently in your backseat. Indeed, the Which? survey of more than 1,500 motorists found we are increasingly switching off all that ‘safety’ tech because it’s actually dangerous, distracting or useless. From automatic lane-assist steering adjustments to internal monitors of how drowsy you are, the ludicrous gadgets encrusting today’s cars are easy to poke fun at. The unfunny bit is that we pay extra for all this daft technology. We even pay for the unaccountable, rather shadowy organisation that has caused its proliferation. This little-known body is the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. It is based in Leuven, Belgium, but its multi-million-pound budget finances specialist car-testing labs across the world, including in Thatcham in Berkshire. NCAP’s lifespan has corresponded with an auto revolution. Its testing ideology has shaped every new car built in Europe since the 1990s. It is why modern cars chirp, beep, brake, warn, nudge and glare at you. But the way Euro NCAP works is not straight-forward. It gets away with an extreme health and safety agenda that wouldn’t be tolerated in a normal regulatory body. NCAP is a specialist ratings agency that crash-tests new cars and gives a simple star classification. The trouble is no one predicted how powerful a sales tool this would become. Five NCAP stars has become the gold standard, and car companies have become slaves to the stars. A four-star car looks unsafe, even if national law says it’s fine. Producing a three-star car would be commercial suicide... In the early years tests were simple: front and side impacts, child seats, basic restraints. Cars got stronger. Airbags multiplied, seat mounts stiffened. Everyone started earning five stars and this undoubtedly saved lives. Then Euro NCAP needed a new way to spread out the field. It added tech with more dubious credentials. Vehicles were marked down if they didn’t have the sort of gadgets Apollo moonshots would have thought superfluous. Hence cars laden with automatic emergency braking, lane-keep intervention, speed-limit detection, driver-monitoring cameras, pedestrian detection, cyclist detection, side radar, rear radar, matrix headlights and over-the-air updates for safety functions. Manufacturers loaded cars with sensors, processors, algorithms and screens – not because drivers wanted them, but because without them, star ratings fell. The result is you don’t slip behind the wheel any more – you log in behind a heavily padded wheel in a seat that vibrates when you stray, with a camera watching your eyelids, radar monitoring the car ahead and microphones listening for emergency vehicles. The future of motoring is AI choosing when to brake. We’re not far from software deciding how fast you should be going. Drivers blame car brands for forcing this on them. But manufacturers added all this digitised nonsense because Euro NCAP told them to. If a gadget is unreliable, expensive and irritating but scores highly, it goes in. We pay for it in the bloated price tag of cars, maintenance and repair bills, weight and fuel efficiency, and hence environmentalism. Some motoring experts have expressed concern that all the tech is distracting drivers. Don’t worry, they’ll probably come up with gadgets to make sure you don’t get distracted by, er, the other gadgets... Gains are marginal at best and costs are surely excessive. A car’s cockpit now feels like a padded interrogation room... In the context of the EU’s ‘Vision Zero’ road agenda – a strategy aiming for zero road deaths or serious injuries by 2050, which the UK is still wholesomely embracing – there is a prevailing narrative: ‘More tech = fewer deaths = good.’ It isn’t anti-safety to question how far we must go down this road. Trillions of miles are driven annually by Europe’s drivers. If the goal is zero deaths, no level of intrusiveness is off the table... You could carry on making cars ‘safer’ indefinitely. But beyond this point, we are no longer improving transport – we are constraining human behaviour."
Meme - "*I've played these games before*
Singaporeans when they go to Malaysia for cheap petrol
Singaporeans when companies leave Singapore for cheaper everything"
Meme - BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan: "For those of you keeping score at home, MAGA wants to impeach any federal judge who disagrees with the raving fucking lunatic convicted felon because reasons. we're in the stupidest timeline."
BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan: "IMPEACH JUSTICE ALITO."
BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan: "IMPEACH Clarence Thomas."
Study: Left-voting people are more intolerant than their right-voting counterparts - "The more left-leaning someone is, the less likely he or she will accept others with a different worldview. That is the remarkable conclusion of a new study. That is the conclusion of a new study on polarisation by the Mercator Forum on Migration and Democracy (Uni Dresden). Researchers discovered that those who pride themselves in being tolerant and open-minded are often less accepting than the conservatives, whom they accuse of being intolerant. Educated people with a high income who live in urban areas, in general, are the most intolerant to others with a different opinion, the researchers write in their report. They are more polarised than their lower-income, rural and lesser educated fellow citizens. Often, the less intolerant people vote for left-wing or environmental parties, while voters of Christian Democratic or other more conservative parties are more accepting toward people with opinions differing from their own. "On average, those who hold comparatively progressive positions aimed at political change tend to evaluate people holding similar positions very positively while expressing very negative feelings toward those who have different opinions. By contrast, people who hold comparatively conservative views or who locate themselves in the political centre are less polarised", the report states. Swiss political scientist Michael Hermann is not surprised by this outcome. "Leftists claim to work for the good, for the weak and minorities, and they see themselves more in the right, and also in the right to tackle those who are on the 'wrong side'", he explains to Livenet. Author Bettina Weber points out that polarisation has increased because people do not see their worldview as a political attitude anymore. "Increasingly, they see it as part of one's own identity", she says. For that reason, Weber believes, it is harder to find a political compromise. "Everything becomes very personal, and anyone who does not share their own view is quickly perceived as a threat." Not the issues of gender equality or policies concerning sexual minorities are most dividing, but issues of immigration, the Covid-19 pandemic and social benefits cause the most polarisation, the study concludes. Concerning immigration, citizens in Czechia, Sweden and the Netherlands are clearly for stricter rules and tightened legislation. In Spain, on the other hand, people lean more towards a more liberal and welcoming policy for migrants."
A European (10 countries), non-American study adding to the mountain of evidence that left wingers are less tolerant. Time to misquote Popper to justify liberals being less tolerant
Melissa Chen on X - "Fascinating to see that Chinese researchers and whistleblowers are exposing high profile science journals such as Nature for publishing fraudulent papers. This same rot mirrors the replication crisis and distrust of scientific journals that's been going on in the US. Prestigious journals like Nature, Science, and Cell have morphed into gatekeepers of narrative rather than truth, amplifying irreproducible work while sidelining inconvenient findings. Publish-or-perish incentives combined with ideological capture - DEI mandates, politicized climate and biomedical research - have all but eroded credibility. Fraudulent papers proliferate because the system rewards quantity and alignment with prevailing orthodoxies over careful replication and falsification. It's refreshing to see accountability surfacing in China. Maintaining public trust in science demands relentless scrutiny, not institutional sanctity."
Sama Hoole on X - "When butter was demonised, Unilever sold margarine. When tallow was demonised, Procter and Gamble sold Crisco. When eggs were demonised, Kellogg's sold cereal. When red meat was demonised, Cargill sold soy. When raw milk was demonised, Nestle sold infant formula. When leather was demonised, BASF sold PVC. When wool was demonised, ExxonMobil sold polyester feedstock. When animal fat was demonised, the seed-oil industry grew from a niche product to the most consumed food ingredient on earth. Every demonisation of an animal product made a specific group of shareholders very rich. Every one of those products had been eaten by humans for thousands of years without incident. The science changed the moment a substitute existed to sell. Follow the money. The advice will start to make a lot more sense."
Trust the Science!
Meme - Cris @lionesspike: "her choking back tears while delivering this information makes it even funnier"
Spencer Althouse @Spencer...: "lol at this moment from Rose Byrne's Golden Globes speech "I want to thank my husband, Bobby Cannavale, who couldn't be here because we're getting a bearded dragon and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey, so thank you, baby""
Meme - Anatoly Karlin 🧲💯 @akarlin: "Important Turkiye 🇹🇷 maps:
* TFR
* IQ
* Hijab prevalence *TFR and Hijab prevalence correlated and anti-correlated with IQ*"
Soner Cagaptay @SonerCagaptay: "📌Turkey's collapsing population: Less than a decade, a quarter of the country's 81 provinces had above-replacement fertility rate. Considering the trend line, in 2025, the number will be down to only 3 out of 81 provinces (Urfa, Mardin, Sirnak), and then 0 in 2026-27"
Meme - gothhouse: "Have you seen our Dunkin' Donuts video? #goth #gothgirl #dunkin #dunkindonuts"
bellbobagginses: "We are so cute"
oozingorifices: "Please stop fetishizing goth culture"
The girls are buttercupcosplays, pinkchyuwu, queen.nephie & bellbobagginses
This is the reality behind the fake story: "FOUR WOMEN HAVE BEEN FIRED AFTER FLASHING THE SECURITY CAMERAS WHERE THEY WORK AS AN ACT OF REVENGE AGAINST THEIR BOSS. A shocking and controversial incident has made headlines, where four women were fired after flashing security cameras at their workplace as an act of revenge against their boss. The women, who worked in a corporate environment, reportedly carried out the act as a form of protest after facing mistreatment or dissatisfaction with their employer. While their actions have sparked widespread discussion about workplace culture, employee rights, and the lengths to which people may go when they feel wronged, the consequences have been significant. This incident highlights the importance of maintaining professional behavior in the workplace, even in moments of frustration or disagreement with management. It also underscores the need for employers to create fair and respectful environments where employees feel heard and valued. While the act itself may have been impulsive, it has brought attention to the potential underlying issues that can lead to such drastic decisions. The story serves as a reminder of the complex dynamics between employers and employees and the critical role of mutual respect in a healthy work environment."
Meme - New York Times/Emperor Papatine: "OPINION. INTERESTING TIMES. Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the Court. Why the left can't win without a new Constitution."
Meme - *Swimming pool full of pee*
*People in urine pointing at one person* "Another Billion for Ukraine. Vote Blue No Matter Who. Men are women. Ban gas. You're racist. 137 Genders"
*Miserable person in clean water* "People wanting to afford groceries and gas"
Meme - Fokebus @fokebus: "Scary how accurate #Concord was #sydneywilson *Bazz (trans character**"
Meme - RichardRatBoy @RichardRa...: "New COD Zombies looks crazy"
James Chin on X - "NON-MUSLIMS in Selangor who are still coping to accept pig farming ban in the state has apparently been slapped with another shocker that houses of worships within areas designated as commercial zones are not permitted” given existing buildings cannot be arbitrarily converted into Places of Worship Other than Islam (RISI)... 'The rule is supposedly for “new townships” and land will be provided for non-Muslims. This means Chinese temples, Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras & churches must compete for probably the single non-Muslim space.'"
Moderate Islam strikes again
Meme - "I don't make milkshakes because I don't want anyone in my fucking yard."
AITA for saying I didn’t sleep with a girl because I didn’t want to get STDs? : r/AITAH - "I go to a small liberal arts college. As a result of being very small, two pertinent patterns emerge: 1) everybody knows everything about each other's business 2) the pool of people that are a) single b) actively looking for something romantic and/or sexual and c) of a compatible orientation with you is very small. There's this one girl that's physically very attractive who was single and wanted to date/sleep around a lot, so essentially all the straight/bi guys were into her. I was initially attracted to her too, but when I saw she was sleeping around a lot, the interest waned. She and I know each other from some classes, and we hung out at study groups/saw each other at parties a lot, during which she would flirt with me. As I said, I find the whole sleeping around a lot, especially with almost all the guys I know, thing gross, so I wasn't into her and politely ignored it. My friends asked me why I turned her down when she was clearly into me and is really hot, I said that I didn't want to get STDs. The point I was making was half a joke, and half a statement that she's slept around so much that I wouldn't be surprised if she's caught something. Some of my friends laughed, but one said I was an AH and disrespectful for speaking about her that way."
Mpox patient had 75 sexual partners in 21 days - "A new study into the spread of Mpox in Ireland between May 2022 and May 2023 has shown that one of the people infected had 75 sexual partners in the previous 21 days... The gender of those infected was male in 226 cases and female in three cases, according to the study... The median number of sexual partners for those infected was two over the previous 21 days. Almost 99% identified as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men. While Ireland was the country of birth for almost half of those infected, just under a third came from Latin America."
Damn stigma and homophobia!
My family of five tried to cut out ultraprocessed foods for a week. Here’s what we learned - The Globe and Mail - "As our week without UPFs wore on, a few friends asked if I was feeling healthier and more energetic. I was not. Whatever boost I might have gained from eating cleaner was outweighed by how tired I was from being on my feet in the kitchen most of the day. All told, I spent about 25 hours planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning up during our week without UPFs. Cutting out UPFs was only possible because cooking and interviewing for this story was my job for the week, much like the whole-food influencers whose performative meals are their chief source of income."
myra on X - "Abortion is $500 Plan B is $50 A condom is $5 Being gay is free the choice is you"
Abdul Halim Khan: The rapist imam who exploited a religious ‘curse’ - "To fellow Muslims in London’s Tower Hamlets district, Abdul Halim Khan seemed a pillar of the community. The respected imam was a familiar face at his local mosque, delivering prayers and always on hand to dispense the Almighty’s wisdom. To certain members of his flock, however, his spiritual talk took a very different turn. During private religious guidance sessions with women and young girls, Khan would claim he had become possessed by a “jinn” or spirit. He would then carry out rape and sexual assaults, blaming the malign entity that was “inside” him. That same jinn, he would then warn his victims, would also wreak vengeance if they told anyone what had happened. Khan committed his abuse over an 11-year period from 2004 to 2015, with one of those he preyed on aged just 12. Eventually, his youngest victim reported him to a teacher at her school in 2018. That then triggered a long and complex investigation by the Metropolitan Police, which led to six more victims coming forward and Khan’s conviction after a three-month trial. To break their silence, witnesses overcame not just their worries of retribution by Khan’s ‘jinn’, but their fear of testifying against an influential man of standing... In Tower Hamlets, mental health professionals in the local NHS trust are specially trained to deal with cases of alleged jinn possession, where both patients and their families may be reluctant to accept normal medical diagnoses. There is also a thriving industry in clinics specialising in “ruqyah”, or spiritual healing, which advertise exorcism services for jinn possession. Faith healers, also known as raqi, also hold sessions and seminars at local mosques."
I'm surprised there've been no reports (yet) of racism or Islamophobia leading to a coverup
Amazon's Singapore retreat: Why its US playbook failed in Southeast Asia - "Amazon ended local fulfilment in Singapore because it could not leverage its strengths against rivals in Southeast Asia’s highly competitive e-commerce landscape... The tech giant announced it will phase out local fulfilment, including Amazon Fresh grocery delivery, and stop working with third-party sellers on Amazon.sg... Amazon.sg will focus on international offerings from its United States, Japan and Germany stores. Nearly 80 per cent of local customers already shopped for such products in 2025, it said... Southeast Asia's e-commerce market has grown to US$157.6 billion (S$201.5 billion) in gross merchandise value, with more than 98.8 per cent of market share consolidated around three platforms – Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada – according to a Momentum Works report in April. Shopee, owned by Singapore-based Sea, leads the region, followed by ByteDance-owned TikTok Shop and Alibaba-owned Lazada. Amazon first entered Southeast Asia via Singapore in 2017. Many platforms in the region were initially inspired by the tech giant, said Momentum Works' Mr Li. “However, over the years, Chinese e-commerce players have evolved a different set of playbooks involving high leverage of China’s supply chain, refined category operations, as well as content commerce and heavy reliance on content as a competitive lever. “Chinese-originated or inspired e-commerce platforms have adapted that set of playbooks well in Southeast Asia,” he said. “Content commerce” refers to a blend of sales and media-driven marketing like livestreaming. This is something that platforms like TikTok Shop and Shopee have grasped better than Amazon, said Mr Li... Singapore made little sense as a fulfilment hub for Southeast Asia, said analyst Alex Szabo, founder of advisory outfit TeakCharge. “Supplier bases are in China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Last-mile economics in fragmented destination markets do not benefit from a centralised Singapore warehouse.” The local market is also too small to justify the cost of building fulfilment capabilities at scale against entrenched incumbents, he added."
Steve Guest on X - "Greenpeace is cooked: "A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345 million in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago, a figure the environmental group contends it cannot pay.""
Bill Gates: ‘If I designed the tax system, I would be tens of billions poorer : r/FluentInFinance - "Pure virtue signaling. He can always pay more"
"He sets up a foundation and then deducts the money he puts into it on his taxes and receives millions in "donations." He then spurs investment in companies through his foundation and then invests privately in them. It's a GRIFT."
"There were some big fuck-ups, mostly from being top-down and not listening to people on the ground. He forced some countries to blow their malaria budgets on his vaccine, but then they had no money for simple mosquito nets and aerial spraying of mosquito breeding grounds near population centers, the vaccine wasn't perfect, uptake wasn't as good as they'd hope, and without the nets and simple spraying, malaria deaths increased. They're trying again now, and hopefully they learned something, but I don't know. I think Melinda did. I'm not sure about Bill. They also fucked up their whole charter school push. They started with the premise that teachers and unions were the problem, and that profit motive and competition was the solution, and it failed miserably. Gates paid for a RAND Corporation analysis, and it was pretty damning. The best it could say was that without unions, it was easier to fire shitty teachers, but overall teacher effectiveness and student outcomes were not improved:"
"The malaria net thing has other factors. It was found that nets were incredibly unfashionable. Just imagine a sunscreen that has a hideous white sheen or whatever thing you know would increase your longterm life safety but don't do because you find it socially unacceptable. That's why people weren't using mosquito nets. And then people were using the nets for other things, like trying to fish with them, etc. There were other issues at play. The charter schools thing is a massive screw up, and probably one born out of a multi-billionaire's isolation from the real world. In any case, Gates is one of the few cases where I actually think he cares about using his wealth to do the most good possible, but realizes that it's also incredibly hard to know how to do the most good per dollar spent. It's easy to waste money. It's hard to use it effectively. So, he's tried several things at small(er) scale that have failed. He's tried to scale other things up that seemed promising and those have had varying levels of success and failure. But the reality is it's hard. We have entire nations and multi-national organizations and we haven't solved all our problems with those political/power structures. He's one guy with a ton of money. The upside is he only has to answer to himself, so he can be a maverick, cut through bureaucracy and corruption. The downside is that when he screws up, he looks like an idiot."
"The blurb you posted indicates there was some improvement. Just not dramatic and not across the whole project. It also states they were able to get rid of ineffective teachers. If this is bad, then isn't the marginally worse alternative also bad? And actually a tad bit worse? Did the Gates Foundation approach cost more or less than the alternative? If it cost less and there were equal or slightly better outcomes, then that is an indictment of the alternative. The foundation didn't get the results it wanted, but this blurb is certainly no endorsement of the alternative."
Best countries ranking: Canada ranks 19th on global scale - "Canada has dropped to 19th on a new best countries ranking list, one position behind the U.S. The results, U.S. News Best Countries ranking, appears dramatic when compared with Canada’s previous placements – fourth in 2024 and second in 2023 – but the rankings themselves have changed significantly, according to U.S. News. Rather than relying primarily on perception surveys, the new model evaluates countries using 100 statistical indicators grouped into eight broader categories to evaluate 100 countries. The measures draw on data provided by international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)... Litke described the shift as moving from “reputation to reality.” “The idea is to give stakeholders across the board the ability to see where countries are actually at - essentially creating a national progress report,” he said... Canada placed 18th in opportunity and 21st in economic development. These categories spotlight Canadians facing persistent affordability concerns. While Canada maintained relatively balanced results across multiple categories, it did not place among the top tier in areas connected to economic performance. Recent housing outlooks suggest affordability challenges continue extending beyond major cities like Toronto and Vancouver into places once considered accessible including Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. Housing forecasts also suggest slower construction activity and weaker market demand may continue in some regions despite persistent affordability pressures. Canada placed 20th in infrastructure and 27th in health. It also landed at 27th in the civic health ranking. For Canadians, these categories touch some of the country’s most visible domestic debates – health care access, transit systems, population growth and the capacity of public services. Litke said a category looked beyond whether health care coverage exists. “In health, for example, we’re looking at not only coverage and cost, but also access and availability,” he said... the rankings take into account measurable indicators rather than perception – meaning a country’s reputation no longer translates into a stronger score."
I can't wait for all the cope. It'll be something along the lines of it being US News so it must be biased and untrustworthy, because if US News quotes UN and OECD data, that data must be fake. And it's so biased that the US only got 18th place
