Heaviside's vector calculus, also known as vector analysis, was developed in the late 19th century as a way to simplify and unify the mathematical treatment of physical phenomena involving vectors, such as those described by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. At the time, Maxwell's equations were typically expressed using quaternions, which are a type of mathematical notation that involves four complex numbers. The quaternion algebra, developed by James Clerk Maxwell and William Rowan Hamilton, was a more complex mathematical system that had been used to describe physical phenomena, but it was eventually replaced by vector calculus due to its relative simplicity and ease of use.
Quaternions involved complex numbers and required the use of four dimensions, which made them more difficult to work with and interpret. In contrast, vector calculus used a more familiar three-dimensional coordinate system and involved only familiar algebraic operations. Quaternions were found to be somewhat difficult to work with and interpret, especially for those who were not familiar with the notation.
In contrast, vector calculus provided a more intuitive and familiar way to represent and manipulate vectors, using familiar concepts such as magnitude and direction. As a result, vector calculus quickly gained widespread adoption and eventually replaced quaternions as the preferred method for expressing and solving problems involving vectors in physics and engineering. Heaviside's vector notation, which uses arrow notation to represent vectors and dot notation to represent scalars, is much easier to use and understand than quaternions, which are a type of mathematical notation that uses four-dimensional complex numbers.
While quaternions were primarily used in the study of electromagnetism, vector calculus could be used to represent any type of vector quantity, including displacement, velocity, acceleration, and force. This made it a more widely applicable tool for solving problems in many different fields of science and engineering.
In this video, we're looking at how there are two sides to every Maxwell, equation, and therefore there are two ways of understanding each of Maxwell's equations.
Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism fall under the umbrella of classical physics, [NO THEY DO NOT!!!!] and describe how electric and magnetic fields are allowed to behave within our universe (assuming the equations are correct of course). Electric and magnetic fields show how electrically charged, and magnetic objects respectively, exert forces on each other.
Each of Maxwell's equations is a differential equation that can be written in one of two forms - the differential form, and the integral form. In this video, we look at two of these equations, and how each of them has two variations. We begin by studying the first Maxwell equation, which says (in the differential form) that the divergence of any magnetic field is always equal to zero.
The physical interpretation of the above statement is that if we consider any closed volume of space, the net magnetic field passing either in or out of the region must always be zero. We can never have a scenario where more magnetic field enters or leaves any closed region of space. The divergence of the magnetic field simply measures how much field is entering or leaving the volume overall. And this must be equal to zero.
Conversely, this same equation can be written in integral from (i.e. from a slightly different perspective). The integral equation says that the integral of B.dS is equal to zero. B is once again the magnetic field, and dS is a small element of the surface surrounding the volume discussed above. This method breaks up the outer surface covering the volume into very small pieces, counts the amount of magnetic field passing the surface element, and then adds up the contributions from all the elements making up the surface. This addition of contributions is given by the surface integral over the closed surface. In other words, the integral form of this Maxwell equation states the same thing as the differential form but looks at it from a slightly different perspective. Note: the integral must be a closed integral i.e. there should be no holes or breaks in the surface.
We also see a similar sort of thing with the second Maxwell equation, which looks at the behavior of electric fields. The differential form states that the divergence of the electric field is equal to a charge density divided by epsilon nought, the permittivity of free space. This therefore says that for any closed volume, the net amount of field entering or leaving the volume is directly related to the density of charge enclosed within the volume. Therefore if the net charge in the volume is zero, then the net field entering or leaving it is also zero. If the net charge is positive, the divergence is greater than zero, and if the net charge is negative, the divergence is less than zero.
The integral equation states that the sum of the electric field contributions to each of the small elements making up the area surrounding the volume is equal to the total charge enclosed within the surface, divided by epsilon nought. So once again this is looking at the same scenario from a slightly different perspective.
Each Maxwell equation has these two ways of writing it, and one can easily convert from the differential form to the integral form if one knows differential calculus. It is generally simple to move between these forms, and we can use whichever one is mathematically most convenient to us at any given time.
Maxwell's equations describe the behavior of electromagnetic fields and the way in which they interact with matter. These equations do not directly specify the types of electromagnetic waves that can be propagated, but they do provide the underlying principles that govern the behavior of electromagnetic waves.
According to Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic waves can propagate through a medium or through free space. In both cases, the waves can be transverse, meaning that the electric and magnetic field components are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Transverse electromagnetic waves are often referred to as "TEM waves."
However, it is also possible for electromagnetic waves to propagate in a longitudinal direction, meaning that the electric and magnetic field components are parallel to the direction of propagation. Longitudinal electromagnetic waves are often referred to as "LEM waves."
In general, LEM waves are not as common as TEM waves, and they tend to be less well understood. However, they can still be generated and studied in certain circumstances, such as when an intense electromagnetic field is applied to a plasma or when charged particles are accelerated in a beam.
So, to answer your question, yes, Maxwell's equations do allow for the propagation of longitudinal electromagnetic waves, although they are not as common or well understood as transverse electromagnetic waves.
Maxwell's equations describe the behavior of electromagnetic fields and the way they propagate through space. These equations can be used to predict the behavior of both transverse electromagnetic (TEM) waves, which have electric and magnetic fields that are perpendicular to the direction of propagation, and longitudinal electromagnetic (LEM) waves, which have electric and magnetic fields that are parallel to the direction of propagation.
In general, Maxwell's equations are valid for any type of electromagnetic wave, including LEM waves. However, LEM waves are not commonly observed in nature and are not typically discussed in the context of Maxwell's equations. This is because LEM waves are generally not stable and tend to rapidly dissipate or transform into TEM waves.
There are some specialized situations in which LEM waves may be observed, such as in plasma physics or in certain types of metamaterials. In these cases, Maxwell's equations can be used to understand the behavior of LEM waves and to predict their properties.
wikipedia |Oliver HeavisideFRS[1] (/ˈhɛvisaɪd/; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taughtmathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vector calculus, and rewrote Maxwell's equations
in the form commonly used today. He significantly shaped the way
Maxwell's equations are understood and applied in the decades following
Maxwell's death. His formulation of the telegrapher's equations
became commercially important during his own lifetime, after their
significance went unremarked for a long while, as few others were versed
at the time in his novel methodology.[2]
Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his
life, Heaviside changed the face of telecommunications, mathematics, and
science.[2]
Heaviside's uncle by marriage was Sir Charles Wheatstone
(1802–1875), an internationally celebrated expert in telegraphy and
electromagnetism, and the original co-inventor of the first commercially
successful telegraph in the mid-1830s. Wheatstone took a strong
interest in his nephew's education[5]
and in 1867 sent him north to work with his older brother Arthur
Wheatstone, who was managing one of Charles' telegraph companies in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.[4]: 53
Two years later he took a job as a telegraph operator with the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company laying a cable from Newcastle to Denmark
using British contractors. He soon became an electrician. Heaviside
continued to study while working, and by the age of 22 he published an
article in the prestigious Philosophical Magazine on 'The Best Arrangement of Wheatstone's Bridge for measuring a Given Resistance with a Given Galvanometer and Battery'[6] which received positive comments from physicists who had unsuccessfully tried to solve this algebraic problem, including Sir William Thomson, to whom he gave a copy of the paper, and James Clerk Maxwell. When he published an article on the duplex method of using a telegraph cable,[7] he poked fun at R. S. Culley, the engineer in chief of the Post Office telegraph system, who had been dismissing duplex as impractical. Later in 1873 his application to join the Society of Telegraph Engineers
was turned down with the comment that "they didn't want telegraph
clerks". This riled Heaviside, who asked Thomson to sponsor him, and
along with support of the society's president he was admitted "despite
the P.O. snobs".[4]: 60
In 1873 Heaviside had encountered Maxwell's newly published, and later famous, two-volume Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. In his old age Heaviside recalled:
I remember my first look at the great treatise of Maxwell's when I
was a young man... I saw that it was great, greater and greatest, with
prodigious possibilities in its power... I was determined to master the
book and set to work. I was very ignorant. I had no knowledge of
mathematical analysis (having learned only school algebra and
trigonometry which I had largely forgotten) and thus my work was laid
out for me. It took me several years before I could understand as much
as I possibly could. Then I set Maxwell aside and followed my own
course. And I progressed much more quickly... It will be understood that
I preach the gospel according to my interpretation of Maxwell.[8]
Undertaking research from home, he helped develop transmission line theory (also known as the "telegrapher's equations"). Heaviside showed mathematically that uniformly distributed inductance in a telegraph line would diminish both attenuation and distortion, and that, if the inductance were great enough and the insulationresistance not too high, the circuit would be distortionless in that currents of all frequencies would have equal speeds of propagation.[9] Heaviside's equations helped further the implementation of the telegraph.
James Clerk Maxwell's original 20 equations are a set of equations that describe the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, and how they interact with matter. These equations are considered to be some of the most important and fundamental equations in physics, and they form the foundation of classical electromagnetism. Original Maxwell equations were written using quaternions and potentials. Quaternions combine vector and scalar part. Electric and magnetic fields were defined as difference in potential. There were two kinds of potentials - electric and magnetic. Today's "Maxwell's" equations are actually Heaviside equations, which are limited edition of the original electromagnetic theory.
The 20 equations are:
Gauss's Law for Electric Fields Gauss's Law for Magnetic Fields Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction Ampere's Law The Biot-Savart Law The Lorentz Force Law The Electric Field Intensity Equation The Magnetic Field Intensity Equation The Electric Flux Density Equation The Magnetic Flux Density Equation The Electric Displacement Field Equation The Magnetic Vector Potential Equation The Electric Scalar Potential Equation The Magnetic Scalar Potential Equation The Electric Charge Density Equation The Electric Current Density Equation The Continuity Equation for Electric Charge The Continuity Equation for Electric Current The Lorentz Transformations The Wave Equation for Electromagnetic Waves
These equations describe a wide range of phenomena, including the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, the forces acting on charged particles in those fields, the generation and transmission of electromagnetic waves, and the relationship between electric and magnetic fields and the charges and currents that produce them. They are used in many areas of physics, including electromagnetism, electrical engineering, and particle physics, and have had a wide-ranging impact on our understanding of the physical world.
antiwar | More than half of House Republicans didn’t attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Wednesday night address to Congress, The Hill reported on Thursday.
How many Members of Congress refused to attend tonight's speech because they do not support Zelenskyy's Ukraine? Important to know this and why.
According to The Hill, 86 out of 213 House Republicans were
at the Capitol for Zelensky’s speech. While some of the absences could
be explained by lawmakers getting an early start on Christmas travel, as
about a third of House members had active letters to vote by proxy on
Wednesday, there is growing opposition to the policy of arming Ukraine
among Republicans.
Ahead of Zelensky’s address, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote on
Twitter that he would not be attending the speech of a “Ukrainian
lobbyist.” Some Republicans that attended the address were spotted
sitting during moments when the rest of Congress was giving Zelensky a
standing ovation, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Lauren Boebert
(R-CO).
For any Members of Congress who refused to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why.
After the speech, Boebert said in a video posted on Twitter
that she wouldn’t support “sending additional money to this war” until
“Congress receives a full audit of where our money has already gone.”
Gaetz released a statement
that said Zelensky “should be commended for putting his country first,
but American politicians who indulge his requests are unwilling to do
the same for ours.” Gaetz said the speech did not change his stance on
“suspending” aid to Ukraine.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), who attended the address, said the
speech sent the wrong message. “We should be focused on trying to
contain the war, not expand the war. And this kind of sends the message
we’re kind of OK with expanding the war. And I think we should be
sending a different message,” he said.
Massie, Boebert, Gaetz, Davidson, and 53 other House Republicans all voted against
the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that was passed back in May. Since
then, new aid for Ukraine has been rolled into other massive spending
bills, including the new $45 billion that was packed into the $1.7
trillion omnibus bill the Senate passed on Thursday.
While there is some dissent among Republicans, the majority of GOP
members in Congress still support arming Ukraine, and Republican
leadership is extremely hawkish on the issue. Rep. Michael McCaul, who
is expected to lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee next year, has
criticized President Biden for not sending Ukraine more advanced and longer-range weapons.
dailycaller | The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a new statement Wednesday following the latest “Twitter Files” dump.
The FBI accused the “Twitter Files” release as an attempt “to discredit” the agency by disclosing information
on the FBI’s correspondence with Twitter in October 2020. Journalist
Matt Taibbi revealed that the agency warned the previous executives at
Twitter of a “hack-and-leak” by “state actors” surrounding the story of
Hunter Biden’s laptop to influence the 2020 presidential election.
“The
correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than
examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government
and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over
multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the
FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to
allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women
of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the
statement began.
“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding
the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting
to discredit the agency,” the agency concluded.
The
“Twitter Files” revealed that the FBI and Twitter worked closely in the
lead up to the 2020 presidential election. Internal documents published
Monday found that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million between
October 2019 and February 2021 for managing its financial burdens caused
while complying with the agency’s requests. (RELATED: Twitter Gave ‘Special Protection’ To Pentagon Propaganda Accounts, Docs Show)
Taibbi
reported he found no evidence that the FBI had involvement in Twitter’s
suppression of the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop,
though new reports released by author Michael Shellenberger indicated
they may have, in fact, been involved.
Former FBI Deputy General
Counsel James Baker argued Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety Yoel
Roth’s claim that the Post’s report did not violate the social media
site’s policies on October 14, according
to Shellenberger. The agency had already been in possession of Biden’s
laptop since December 2019, indicating that the agency knew the Post
reported the story accurately.
Musk announced Dec. 6 that he fired Baker for allegedly withholding the release of documents related to the suppression of Biden’s laptop.
The agency also flagged
certain tweets for Twitter to remove from the platform, the files
found. Some agents were even employed at the social media company.
Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the incoming House Oversight Chair, said Tuesday that Congress should block funding of the FBI until it disclosed the alleged involvement in Big Tech censorship.
“In
the beginning, I thought that there were probably two or three rogue
employees who were orchestrating this cover up of the Hunter Biden
laptop story, but now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80
agents,” Comer said. “We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over $3
million for their time, all the time they took over the past couple of
years in telling them who to suppress, who to ban. You know, it’s just
things that the government has no role in.”
“The FBI was never
granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force
that policed the social media sites. Now this we know with Twitter,” he
continued. “We’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg. Who knows what
went on at YouTube and Google. This is an agency that’s out of control.”
Slate | Musk is the richest man in the world and yet comports himself online
like a pustulous incel on a Mountain Dew bender. Though Taibbi and Weiss
were each once ensconced at the absolute top of the American mainstream
media—Weiss at the opinion section of the New York Times, Taibbi as a
star writer for Rolling Stone—both have since migrated to Substack,
where they each run popular and lucrative newsletters that exist to bite
the hands that once fed them
Their
shared thesis, to oversimplify, is that the mainstream media, Big Tech,
and other important cultural institutions now follow a shared set of
ultra-liberal speech codes that have been imposed from within by woke
young employees. Cowed by their strident staffers, executives at these
institutions have allegedly abdicated their leadership responsibilities
and have, so to speak, allowed the inmates to run the asylum. Dare to
express opinions that transgress these implicit speech codes—dare to say
anything that might offend even a single “social justice
warrior” within these spheres—and you’ll quickly find yourself
excommunicated. The broader implications of this alleged ideological
uniformity, Taibbi and Weiss argue, are devastating for speech and
democracy.
And
actually, fair enough. There is ample historical precedent for leftist
political movements using speech codes as tools to empower repressive
regimes, just as there are countless moments in history when right-wing
dipshits have stoked moral panics rooted in cultural revanchism and
risible claims of conspiracy in order to consolidate power and influence
for their own curdled ends. The challenge and obligation of citizenship
in a democracy involves, in part, remaining alert to the various
strains of demagoguery that are circulating at any given period of time,
accurately assessing the relative threats that they pose to democratic
principles, and taking notice when prominent voices seem intent on
deflecting your attention from mountains while warning endlessly about
molehills.
American
democracy has indeed taken a bit of a beating over the past few years,
but the most violent blows have been landed by the Trumpist right and
its opportunistic enablers. While neither Taibbi nor Weiss is blind to
the threats that Trumpism has posed to democracy, their recent output
sure does make it seem as if the predominant crisis facing America today
is one of creeping illiberalism and ideological uniformity in tech,
media, and the Democratic Party. Though Taibbi and Weiss do not
self-classify as conservatives, the drum that they’ve been banging for a
few years now is functionally indistinguishable from the one that the
American right wing has been banging for as long as I’ve been alive—a
concordance that matters intensely when attempting to parse the import
of the Twitter Files.
WSJ | So compromised are the national reporting staffs of the Washington Post, the New York Times and other outlets that they can’t be trusted on the biggest story of the day. A Jeff Bezos, say, would have to take a page from the CIA’s own
history and recruit a “Team B” off-site from his Washington Post to
investigate the laptop ruse, then require his newspaper to report the
truth however discomfiting to its newsroom and leadership.
The laptop ruse also ought to have you rethinking the FBI’s and Robert Mueller’s dragging out of the collusion inquiry to damage a president they distrusted. It ought to have you rethinking James Comey’s
convenient resolution of the Hillary Clinton email matter based on
secret “Russian intelligence” that he made sure would remain hidden from
you even today.
Our
press would bring these stories to light if it could refute them, but
it can’t so it ignores them. And no, Twitter and Substack aren’t a
substitute for institutions that can deploy teams of reporters and
substantial resources to investigations.
The
point has long since stopped being whose ox is gored, Mr. Trump’s or
Mr. Biden’s. American voters whatever their sympathies don’t want their
government and media lying to them to shape their political choices.
(Put aside lying in a way that falsely incriminates a nuclear-armed
hostile power as trying to fix a U.S. election on behalf of one of the
candidates—an element of this episode that none want to confront.)
The election is over; the truth is kept from you now to protect the
guilty, not to save the country from the supposed menace of Trumpism. In
a different universe far, far away—that is, America pre-Donald Trump—a
conscientious press would be reporting the hell out of all this.
Now
House Republicans will have to do the job instead, implicitly holding
the press to account in the process. Whether Joe Biden actively promoted
his son’s ventures is a secondary question but will yield to further
investigation. Whether active-duty officials joined in lying to news
outlets about the laptop origins will become clear as the Twitter
revelations are followed up. One question I think we can say is already
resolved conclusively: The 51 former officials lied to the public with
deliberation and premeditation to influence a presidential election, and
the national press abetted them.
systemupdate | Remember that shooting spree that killed five people in a gay bar in
Colorado Springs just a little over three weeks ago? You'll be forgiven
if you don't remember. That's because, after days of intense media
scrutiny, that shooting spree has all but disappeared from our
discourse. The reason? It appears, sadly, that this horrific episode
cannot be blamed on the corporate media's political enemies.
The
reason we heard so much at first about these Colorado Springs murders,
as opposed to the countless other mass murder sprees happening in the
U.S. every week that are apolitical in nature is that the media were
sure they instantly knew the motive of the killer. He was, of course, a
gay-hating, right-wing, Fox News-watching fanatic motivated by a deep
contempt for LGBTs to the point that he wanted to murder them. Almost
nothing was known about the killer. Even less was known about his
motive.
But that made no difference. We were instantly subjected
to a gleeful orgy from left-liberal political and media precincts,
insisting that the real killers, the ones who had blood on their hands,
were not so much the killer himself, but conservatives who express
criticism of the LGBT dogma -- usually the T part of that equation.
Tucker Carlson; Chris Rufo; The Libs of TikTok Twitter accounts, various
from Republican politicians: the usual list of enemies of the media.
These
people, the media's ideological enemies, were blamed for this shooting
in Colorado Springs, even though the media had no idea whether the
killer had any opinion about those people they had blamed or whether he
had even heard of all of them or any of them. They just asserted, with
absolutely no evidence, that the killer was motivated by anti-LGBT
antipathy, that he was taught by Fox News and whatever other individual
politicians or activists most hated by whichever media figure was
assigning the blame.
Less than 24 hours after those murders, Pete
Buttigieg who was apparently still the secretary of transportation,
even though he seemed to talk about everything except transportation,
wasted no time in penning the blame on his ideological enemies. Quote:
“If you're a politician or media figure who sets up the LGBT community
to be hated and feared -- not because any of us ever harmed you, but
because you find it useful -- then don't you dare act surprised when
this kind of violence follows. Don't you dare act surprised”
Bernie
Sanders did not even wait until the next day. On the very day of the
shooting, he apparently knew everything about the motive of the killer
and who was to blame. Quote: "Let's be clear, the terrible shooting in
Colorado Springs this weekend is a direct result of the hateful and
violent rhetoric that has been allowed to grow in this country. We must
stand united with the LGBTQ+ community and speak out against bigotry
everywhere we find it”.
That social conservatives, especially
those who descend from some planks of this very new gender ideology
dogma, were the real killers, was instantly consecrated as truth, even
though it never had and still does not have a shred of evidence. In
fact, lawyers for the suspect, Anderson Lee Aldridge, said in the very
first court filings that Aldridge identifies as non-binary and uses
they/them pronouns.
News reports then discovered that Aldridge
had sought a name change at the age of 15 and then suffered online
bullying, centered on mocking him as a homosexual. From the start, the
police have said and continue to say they do not know his motive. And
while some online extremism experts began doubting the authenticity of
Aldridge's self-identification as non-binary, suggesting that perhaps
he's just trolling -- who knew that such doubts were allowed now over
someone's expressed sexual orientation? Perhaps that's only confined to
these “online extremism experts” -- the picture that began emerging was
very unclear at best and bereft of evidence to support the preferred
narrative.
That's why this media spree completely disappeared
from sight. Without the ability to blame it on one's political
adversaries, all the fun is gone. It has no utility and thus is of no
interest in the media any longer. Nobody ever cared about those victims.
The victims are only of interest if they can be exploited for political
gain. All of this reflects one of the most demented and soulless new
political tactics to eagerly blame every mass shooting attack on one's
political enemies, regardless of whether there is evidence to support
that accusation.
Now, just imagine. Seriously, just imagine how
so sociopathic you have to be to hear about a mass shooting spree with
multiple innocent victims and eagerly wait for the green light to blame
your political opponents for the dead people. And if that doesn't come
about because the motive isn't what you hoped for or you can't determine
it, you just lose interest in the entire crime, or you just fall back
onto the standard tactic of blaming your enemies anyway, because they're
the reasons that guns were available in the first place.
All of
this, in turn, is based on an even more insidious premise that words do
not merely express ideas but are themselves violence. This is the rotted
premise, the principle one that is causing more and more people to
embrace the virtues of censorship. The idea that having centralized
state and corporate authorities ban certain ideas is necessary to keep
us safe because those ideas themselves are violent. For people who think
this way, there is no difference between expressing an idea and pulling
the trigger of a gun because in their worldview, as they themselves
say, words are literal violence. Literal violence.
kunstler | In effect, the people running things went
from a war against a particular person to a war against reality and its
twin sister, truth. Now they are deeply invested in unreality and
untruth to the point where they have forgotten how this whole fiasco
started and all they can do is desperately patch the dike they had to
construct against the informational deluge of truth and reality coming
at them like a tsunami rolling across the sea. The harder they work at
this futile task of defense, the more absurd they make themselves,
leading to ridicule, humiliation, and finally condemnation in whatever
remains of the legal arena, where their deeds will finally be judged.
The first stage of that outcome for them is to pretend that none of it is happening. That’s why The New York Times and Washington Post
ignore the news that the gallant knights of the FBI and several other
tentacles of the Intel octopus mounted a ferocious, long-running psy-op
through the new phenomenon of social media — which happened to rise in
importance through this whole period of national discord. In effect, the
intel agencies seized the transmitters (as Fidel Castro might put it) and used them very effectively to control their hallowed narratives.
The second stage is deploying a ruse
to distract the public’s attention: That’s why CNN allowed Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-CA), the most accomplished liar in all of American politics,
to set the stage on Sunday for this week’s criminal referrals against
Mr. Trump to be issued out of the House Special J-6 Committee he sits
on. That will give America something else to talk about than how they’ve
been gaslit and deceived for years. If The Party of Chaos can only
bring The Insurrection back into the spotlight, they will feel safe
for a little while during the Christmas holiday — because shortly after
the new year, there will be a different crew running the J-6 committee
and, for the first time in a couple of years, they will be looking into
neglected and tacitly suppressed matters such as the FBI’s actual role
in that event, and Nancy Pelosi’s failure to honor the then-president’s
request for national guard troops to protect the Capitol building.
Between then and now, we must expect
to see the release of Elon Musk’s Twitter files regarding the
interactions between federal public health officials and the social
network during the years of Covid-19. You understand that these
officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky,
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and many others, lied about absolutely
everything concerning the pandemic and continue lying to this moment
about the putative remedy for it: mRNA vaccines, which happen to be
killing a lot of people these days. These disclosures will be very
serious business. Soon will come congressional inquiries, subpoenas,
compelled testimony, and perhaps even criminal referrals.
Of course, the professional and
managerial class also happens to be the most stalwart group of vaccine
champions in the land and thus the most psychologically invested in
thinking they did the right thing taking all those shots — while forcing
as many others to submit, whether they consented or not. The psychology of previous investment
is a prime generator of self-delusion. It looks like that class of
people will be proven incorrect the hard way. It turns out, after all,
that the mRNA “vaccines” were very effective — but only at being deadly.
The excess mortality has already kicked in. It’s 18 percent above
normal, for instance, in Australia right now, because they’re keeping
track. Our officials don’t want to keep track. They don’t want to know,
and they certainly don’t want you to know. This is what you get when you make war against truth and reality.
On Friday, Twitter released additional information showing that the
FBI and CIA actively pushed for censorship, supplying lists of accounts
to be suspended or banned.
Journalist Matt Taibbi described Twitter as acting as a “subsidiary” of the FBI and wrote that “between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”
The evidence continues to establish a system of censorship by surrogate or proxy.
While the First Amendment applies to the government and not private
corporations generally, it does apply to agents or surrogates of the
government. Twitter now admits that such a relationship existed between
its former officials and the government.
As (outgoing) Chair of House Intelligence, did you approve hidden state censorship in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States @RepAdamSchiff?
Once again, however, the major networks and newspapers have largely ignored the story. There has been a full mobilization of media, political, and business interests
against Elon Musk and Twitter to oppose the restoration of free speech
protections at the company. The media is heavily invested in suppressing
this story after years of denials of any problems of censorship.
Previously, they denied censorship was occurring. When such censorship
became obvious, they denied that there was any involvement of the FBI
and the government. Now that such involvement is confirmed, they are
simply not covering the story.
Instead, the media is “all-in” on the doxxing suspensions (which Musk has now lifted). I have been critical
of Musk’s response to the doxxing controversy. In part this is due to
the scope of the suspensions and the fact that they occurred only 24
hours after the new policy was implemented. I would have preferred
warnings and further clarity on the issue, particularly in what
constituted doxxing in some of these tweets from journalists.
Despite the overwhelming coverage, there is little explanation of the media’s approach to the underlying doxxing question. Some have said that this is a “grey area” or may be below the threshold.
For years, the media has supported suspensions due to doxxing. In
this case, the location of Musk’s plane may have been used by an
individual to threaten his family. Most reports omit any discussion of
whether the sending of such live locations information is doxxing. If it
is, it has long been banned by most sites and journalists are not
exempt.
Previously, figures connected with mainstream media from CNN to the Washington Post
have been accused of doxxing. Liberal groups were accused of doxxing
conservative justices and others, including dangerously posting
information on the children of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It does not seem to matter when the targets are conservative, Republican, or libertarian.
democraticunderground | This is the tweet from Taibbi that started it, a continuation of the transparency in the Twitter Files Musk hired him to post on Twitter.
Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.
Lieu's response:
Dear @mtaibbi: I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the
@FBI and you are lying. The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement.
Taibbi replied, and then Musk jumped in with a reply addressing Lieu, though his reply went only to Taibbi and the RW media outlet RSBN:
Taibbi to Lieu:
Being on that committee you should know:
- How much has been spent, and how many DHS/DOJ employees have been assigned, to monitoring and flagging social media?
- Why is the FBI asking for "location information" about ordinary Americans and media outlets like
@RSBNetwork?
Musk to Lieu:
Replying to @mtaibbi and @RSBNetwork
Congressman Lieu, were you aware of this program and did you approve it? Simple questions require simple answers.
While this is just on Twitter now, and probably the RW media outlets cheering Musk on, this will be affecting what the GOP majority does in the House, starting next month
WaPo | A new office at the Pentagon is scrutinizing hundreds of reports of
unidentified objects in air, sea, space and beyond, senior U.S. defense
officials said Friday, and while it has discovered no signs of alien
life, the search is set to expand.
The issue has taken on increasing seriousness as a bipartisan group of
lawmakers presses the Defense Department to investigate instances of
unidentified phenomena and disclose publicly what they learn.
Established in July, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is
evaluating recent reports and soon could evaluate accounts that date
back decades, officials said.
The
Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Ronald Moultrie, told reporters
during a news conference, the first to discuss the office and its
ongoing work, that “At this time … we have nothing” to affirm the
existence of space aliens.
The
proliferation of drones, including those operated by foreign
adversaries and amateur hobbyists, account for many of the reports,
officials said.
“Some
of these things almost collide with planes,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, the
director of the new office, who spoke to the media alongside Moultrie
on Friday. “We see that on a regular basis.”
The
U.S. government employs sophisticated sensors around the globe to
collect data, and the office analyzes it for relevant information, they
said, declining to elaborate.
While
most of the reports the Pentagon investigates are about aerial objects,
defense officials are increasingly concerned about unusual activity
below the surface of the ocean, in space and on land. For that reason,
the Pentagon now uses the term unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP,
rather than previous descriptions such as “unidentified flying object.”
Moultrie said that, “Unidentified phenomena in all domains …pose potential threats to personal security and operational security, and they deserve our urgent attention.”
Unidentified
“trans-medium” objects, he said, is a class of phenomena that would
jump between domains, like from the air to the sea. None has been
documented yet, Moultrie noted.
The
research is likely to expand next year. Congress wrote a provision into
the next defense policy bill, which is awaiting President Biden’s
signature, that requires the Defense Department to complete a
“historical record report” about detailing unidentified phenomena
observed and documented by the United States. If approved by Biden, the
National Defense Authorization Act will then trigger “quite a research
project, if you will, into the archives,” Kirkpatrick said.
Defense
officials already are digging through old reports. Kirkpatrick, a
physicist and career intelligence officer, said he will “adhere to the
scientific method — and I will follow that data and science wherever it
goes.” Some past reports, he acknowledged, may be highly classified and
not yet known to him.
autoevolution | We don't blame you if you're shocked the United States wielded a nuclear
spacecraft engine as far back as the 1960s. You're probably even more
shocked that hardly anyone remembers it. The Nuclear Engine for Rocket
Vehicle Application (NERVA) project would've been nothing short of a
crown jewel program for any other research team. But not for New
Mexico's Los Alamos Laboratories.
That's right; the NERVA engine was developed by the same team who brought the world the first nuclear-fission weapons. The
very same that helped end World War II. If there was ever a project
substantial or significant enough to overshadow literal nuclear rocket
engines, that certainly fits the description. For Los Alamos scientists
and engineers, it makes sense the first logical step post-Manhattan
Project would be in the direction of rocket engines.
Come the end of the Second World War, novel German rocket science from
future NASA personnel like Wernher Von Braun was now in the hands of the
Americans. But while the V2 chemical rocket was nothing short of
witchcraft to average folks in the mid-1940s, it wouldn't be long for
experts to ask if there was another, more powerful means of fueling
rocket engines.
In the following decade, a torrent of proposals across America for
nuclear-powered planes, trains, and automobiles defined the 1950s as the
start of the atomic era. Right alongside preposterous ideas like Ford's Nucleon
passenger car was one of the first working concepts for a nuclear
fission-powered thermal rocket. One that, in theory, could provide power
and fuel economy no traditional chemical rocket could ever dream of.
Though any number of nuclear isotopes could theoretically do the job,
Los Alamos Labs and Westinghouse chose enriched Uranium-235 for the
NERVA application. This choice was made because U-235 is lighter and
less prone to super-criticality than its Uranium-238 cousin. As a
result, it has the potential for an incredibly high measurement of what
rocket scientists call a specific impulse.
With the potential to heat hydrogen fuel to 2,400 Kelvin (3860.3°F,
2126°C), the NERVA engine could have provided American spacecraft with
exceptional performance while not being so wasteful that it couldn't
conserve fuel for an entire mission. The potential for space exploration
seemed palpable during the NERVA development. Be it traveling to near
planets like Mars and Venus or even places farther off like the Asteroid Belt. It was all suddenly theoretically possible.
In August 1960, the recently formed NASA established the Space Nuclear
Propulsion Office with the sole purpose of overseeing the NERVA program
and any developments made afterward. With offices in Germantown,
Maryland, Cleveland, Ohio, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the resources
and personnel required to keep the program running spanned the
continental U.S.
Six NERVA technology demonstrators were built between 1964 and 1973. The
highest power threshold NASA could muster during testing was a scarcely
believable 246,663 newtons (55,452 lbf) of thrust and a specific
impulse of 710 seconds (7.0 km/s) in the NERVA Alpha variant. This
engine could theoretically operate in deep space and maintain this level
of thrust throughout the duration of a space mission. So you can only
imagine what NASA may have had planned.
Records indicate Wernher Von Braun envisioned a successor booster rocket
to the Saturn V, called the Nova series. Had it been built, the
nuclear/chemical hybrid rocket would have joined the Space Shuttle in a
spacecraft fleet that would have been nothing short of astonishing. One
can only imagine how humans could have landed on the surface of Mars by the early 1980s had everything gone to plan.
dailymail |As swimmers
know, moving cleanly through the water can be a problem due o the huge
amounts of drag created - and for submarines, this is even more of a
problem.
However, US Navy funded researchers say they have a simple solution - a bubble.
Researchers at Penn State Applied Research Laboratory are developing a new system using a technique called supercavitation.
The new idea is based on Soviet technology developed during the cold war.
Called supercavitation, it envelopes a submerged vessel inside an air bubble to avoid problems caused by water drag.
A
Soviet supercavitation torpedo called Shakval was able to reach a speed
of 370km/h or more - much faster than any other conventional torpedoes.
In theory, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h.
This
would reduce the journey time for a transatlantic underwater cruise to
less than an hour, and for a transpacific journey to about 100 minutes,
according to a report by California Institute of Technology in 2001.
However, the technique also results in a bumpy ride - something the new team has solved.
'Basically
supercavitation is used to significantly reduce drag and increase the
speed of bodies in water,' said Grant M. Skidmore, recent Penn State
Ph.D. recipient in aerospace engineering.
'However, sometimes these bodies can get locked into a pulsating mode.'
Creating a
supercavitation bubble and getting it to pulsate in order to stop the
pulsations inside a rigid-walled water tunnel tube had not been done.
'Eventually
we ramped up the gas really high and then way down to get pulsation,'
said Jules W. Lindau, senior research associate at ARL and associate
professor of aerospace engineering.
They found that once they had supercavitation with pulsation, they
could moderate the air flow and, in some cases, stop pulsation.
'Supercavitation technology might eventually allow high speed underwater supercavitation transportation,' said Moeney.
China is also developing a'supersonic' submarine that could travel from Shanghai to San Francisco in less than two hours.
Researchers
say their new craft uses a radical new technique to create a 'bubble'
to surround itself, cutting down drag dramatically.
In theory, the researchers say, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h.
The technology was developed by a team of scientists at Harbin Institute of Technology's Complex Flow and Heat Transfer Lab.
Li Fengchen, professor of fluid machinery and engineering, told the South China Morning Post he was 'very excited by its potential'.
The new sub is based on Soviet technology developed during the cold war.
NYPost | The mayor of El Paso declared a state of emergency Saturday ahead of
Wednesday’s deadline to lift a COVID-era policy that is expected to
result in more than 6,000 migrants crossing the border a day into an
already overwhelmed city where hundreds are already sleeping on the
streets.
“Our asylum seekers are not safe,” said El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser at
a specially called press conference to announce the emergency measures.
“We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that’s not the way we
treat our people.”
Temperatures have dipped into the 20s in the city, he said, and
migrants who have been released into the city are sleeping on downtown
streets.
“I want to make sure that people are treated with dignity,” Leeser
said, adding that he made the decision to call a state of emergency
after a conference call with federal, state and municipal officials. The
city government is working with local non-profits that are helping
newly arrived migrants travel to other parts of the country where many
have family.
“We all talked about what was best for our community,” he said,
adding that more than 1,500 migrants have been crossing the border daily
into the city ahead of the Dec. 21 lifting of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that saw migrants sent back into Mexico.
The sober press conference was in sharp contrast to the one called on Thursday. Leeser
walked off with the microphone to avoid answering questions after he
was challenged about not calling a state of emergency to cope with the
migrant influx. At the time, he said that the federal government had
promised the beleaguered city $6 million to help it cope with the
crisis.
“We were able to get the funding without having to [declare an emergency],” Leeser claimed Thursday.
On Saturday, Leeser did not rule out using a nearby military base to house some of the migrants, and that the city was cooperating with state and federal authorities to address the situation.
statista | Despite being one of the leading tourism destinations in the world,
Mexico regularly makes international headlines due to widespread
violence and organized crime. According to the Global Peace Index (GPI),
Mexico ranks among the least peaceful countries in Latin America.
Although internationally recognized as a country with a complex and
high criminal activity, where drug trafficking and related crimes are
commonplace, pettier crimes such as theft on the street or pickpocketing
on public transportation are some of the most reported occurrences in Mexico,
followed by fraud and extortion cases. Kidnapping, on the other hand,
is one of the crimes against personal freedom that most afflicts the
Mexican population. In 2018, Mexico was the Latin American nation with the highest number of kidnappings.
The perceived level of insecurity in Mexico
has worsened in the past few years, with almost 76 percent of the adult
population stating they did not feel safe where they lived. Baja
California and Zacatecas, in particular, are among the Mexican states with the poorest peace levels.
This feeling of insecurity directly affects the population's quality of
life, as many people avoid performing basic outdoor activities due to fear of becoming a crime victim.
For instance, 69 percent of Mexicans who participated in a survey did
not allow underage children or teenagers to go out on their own.
Violence in Mexico is already considered an epidemic and it has
significant repercussions on public health, specially when it comes to
longevity and the overall life expectancy of the Mexican population. Annual murder rates stand at 13 intentional homicides committed per 100,000 inhabitants
at the first half of 2021. The alarming rate of life-threatening crimes
particularly affects women. In the past decade, Mexico registered an
increasing number of femicides, the second highest in Latin America.
Violence is also a deterrent for economic growth. Crime does not simply
increase people’s vulnerabilities and endangers lives; it also imposes a
heavy burden on both public and private financial resources. In 2021,
the cost of violence in Mexico
amounted to a staggering 4.9 trillion Mexican pesos. This amount
includes not only preventive and containment measures but also the
economic losses due to victimization, the expenditure related with the
judicial system and the recovery and well-being of the victims. In
Mexico City, for example, violence was estimated to cost over 45,600 Mexican pesos per capita in 2021.
How is an LLM like a mechanical clock?
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Let's think about LLMs a little more here, but first let's think about
mechanical clocks.
A clock movement is an arrangement of gears and springs and lev...
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
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eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
