Q Top – Church Ticker

Bigot Hunters Challenge Free Speech, Court Says

The balance between the right to be offensive and the right to blast the offensive is just now being considered in American jurisprudence with the rise of the power of social media to galvanize shame brigades capable of destroying whole businesses, never mind individual lives. Appeals court: U of Michigan bias team could chill free speech – Inside Higher Ed Excerpt: A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the University of Michigan could be dampening free speech on campus by allowing a group that helps students who have experienced potentially prejudicial acts to operate at the institution. Speech First, a Washington, D.C.-based civil liberties watchdog, sued Michigan last year, asking for an injunction to halt the activities of the university’s Bias Response Team, which helps investigate incidents deemed racist, sexist, hostile to LGBTQ students or otherwise offensive to certain groups of people.

Leyla Acaroglu: the disruptive designer reshaping minds to change the world – UN Environment

Professional Disruption of WrongThink Mastered at UnSchool

Meet Leyla Acaroglu. She founded "The Unschool of Disruptive Design. Here is an excerpt from the website's page on the disruptive design method: The 12 units in the Disruptive Design Methodology synthesize a broad range of thinking and doing skills and tools, including systems thinking, gamification and game theory, ethics and empathy, life cycle thinking, research strategies, applied systems intervention, cognitive and behavioral sciences, ideation and creative problem solving, and sustainable production. Each of the learning modules fit together to form the practice of Disruptive Design, which is the applied approach to designing creative interventions for positive social change. Leyla Acaroglu: the disruptive designer reshaping minds to change the world – UN Environment Excerpt: Acaroglu is passionate about the need to equip young people with the cognitive and creative tools necessary to take a leap into an alternative future. In 2014, she founded The UnSchool of Disruptive Design—a global experimental knowledge laboratory for creative rebels and change agents. If Acaroglu’s work inspires these budding innovators, they also galvanize her. “The UnSchool and the work I do with these people who are coming to learn how to change in the world, is the biggest optimism shot I could get any day of the week,” she said. In her bid to rework education, Acaroglu has designed a circular economy curriculum—the Circular Classroom—for Finland and is working on another for Southeast Asia. She is also a passionate advocate for disrupting the gender-based stereotypes of leadership. This thinking reflects calls by the United Nations for women to be included as key decision makers in the critical transformation needed to tackle climate change. Editor's Note: It would seem that Leyla has decided not to equip humans to imagine a future of their own preferneces, but rather to continue the Prussian model of education in providing for students the particularly CORRECT future the child should imagine. The phrase "take a leap into an alternative future" describes one future, and a future, it would seem, she has fully mapped out for all of the students she has been given power to engineer, thanks to the United Nations. Leyla falls in line with many of the other social engineers that have come before her. From Robespiere to Pol Pot, history is littered with the dead of the well-intended social engineers of the new human. Let us hope her dream is not fulfilled, for the sake of all.

A Century of Deathly Echoes for Congo After Leopold, the Belgian King that Killed 10 Million People

King Leopold had a simple task, turn the Congo into a viable money venture To that end, he succeeded. But in the process, he directed actions that led to the deaths of over 10 million people in Congo. The after-effects of that genocide still linger in the land. Caspian Report gives us a brief primer on the history of King Leopold. He also shows us how the specter of Leopold still affects the people of Congo to this day. King Leopold’s ghost still haunts the Congo – The Caspian Report - Video The #Congo’s natural resources have inspired a most unnatural history of greed and violence, which cost the lives of some 10 million. In the heart of Africa lies a country called the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a vast place with lush forests, vigorous rivers, and incredible riches such as gold, timber, uranium, cobalt, diamond, etc. These natural resources have inspired a most unnatural history of greed and violence. For over a century, the Congo has been haunted by the memories of its past. While other African nations have come to terms with a history of exploitation and colonisation, the Congo continues to relive the unshakable legacy of one man – King Leopold II of Belgium, whose ventures cost the lives of some 10 million.

Bio-Customized 3D-Printed Sushi is Here, and It’s Weird – Yahoo News

Raw Fish Printed and Made to Order, Yes…You Heard Me…Printed

In our daily lulz category, there's this item, a story about a food service company that specializes in printing sushi, to exacting specifications by customers, for restaurants. There's something fishy going on, boomer. Yeah there is, but the kids seem to love it. Bio-Customized 3D-Printed Sushi is Here, and It’s Weird – Yahoo News Excerpt: ….how is it possible to make sushi with such precise nutritional requirements when it typically just consists of some rice, seaweed, raw fish, and vegetables? Well, the sushi chefs aren’t exactly in the back of the restaurant chopping ingredients. Everything is prepared by an enormous 3D printer with robotic arms, which injects vitamins and minerals into the food. The company (Open Meals) provided some renderings at the time of what they expected the sushi to look like. Now, we can see photographs that show us just how weird 3D-printed sushi really is. With the way the 3D printer “extrudes” each piece of sushi, the result is strikingly pixelated, looking like something straight out of Super Mario Brothers.

Indonesia Prepares to Go Full PC With New Spate of Morality Laws

In response to rampant government corruption in Indonesia, it appears the people are now throwing their support behind new morality laws designed to assure that people live the right way, for the good of the whole. The essential part of the video happens between the :45 mark and the 1:30 mark in the video. The news reporter, from ABC News Australia, seems to bemoan the lurch towards the right in Indonesia while being part of an organization that consistently supports similar type morality laws in Australia (ones that control dangerous thoughts).

Will They Or Won’t They Prosecute the Prosecutors?

The first 13:56 of this video gives you the full background information leading up to the final analysis by the oracle of London himself, Alexander Mecouris, of The Duran, on whether or not there will potentially be indictments following the final report on the investigation of the investigation, the report by Michael Howowitz, the Justice Department's Inspector General. The crux of the analysis falls between the 13:56 and 15:30 marks.

New 800 volt inverter could provide multiple benefits for electric vehicles – The Driven

This Porsche is Not Only Fast, It’s Also Fast Charging

More power, greater range, and much faster charge times are what the new Porsche 900 volter inverter could add to your e-car experience. The Driven The new Porsche Taycan that was officially and finally unveiled last Thursday is somewhat unique in the electric vehicle arena, kitted out with a 800 volt architecture as compared to the usual 400 volts of other electric cars.….that 800 volt architecture is also the reason for the Taycan’s faster charging time. On a 270kW DC charger it can charge its 93kWh battery from 5-80% in just 22.5 minutes, twice as fast as a vehicle with 400 volt architecture. A new highly advanced inverter chip from vehicle propulsion tech company Delphi Technologies could see other carmakers follow suit, allowing fast charging as well as other electrical architecture upgrades.

The Plague That Made People Dance Themselves to Death – Weird History

How a Medieval Town Did Twitter Rage Before Twitter Was a Thing

Spoiler alert- Learn how mass hysteria led a town to dance itself to death. With just the idea of demons entering their bodies and taking over their souls, one town decided to go full-on with mass hysteria and, much like twitter did, manifest this by twittering themselves to death, or dancing, in the public square. Seems.....prescient. Weird History Medieval Europe had no shortages of super deadly disease outbreaks that could wipe out a chunk of the population without much effort. But none of them were quite as fun as the bizarre case of Frau Troffea and the dancing plague that had upwards of 400 people compulsively dancing in the streets, some even to their deaths. Today, we’re going to examine the Plague that Made People Dance Themselves to Death.

The UN Lets Us Know the Plans for Skynet are Coming Along Nicely

As the nations of the world continue to use their new tool, ai, to do everything from figure out their best marketing strategy to when to go for a fourth and short and when to go it, the most important aspect of ai development from an national perspective is how it can help you develop advance, autonomous weapons. To that end, the work is going along nicely, which is neat to hear.Artificial Intelligence to Drive Future Weapons Development – Defenseworld.netExcerpt: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating the defence industry to aid and improve human decision-making. Over the past few years several new products and technologies have come into play which indicates that this technology is on an upward trajectory.AI has a clear edge in areas such as super-fast decision-making required in repetitive tasks and combining multiple data inputs from various sensors to throw up options for decision-making and even making some of these decisions by itself.In March 2019, the UN held a meeting to discuss a ban on autonomous weapons called by 25 nations which was opposed by the US, South Korea, Russia, Israel, China and Australia. These countries have made substantial investments in unmanned, autonomous systems.

Fake Human Embryos are All the Rage at the University of Michigan

In a laboratory in the University of Michigan, researchers are growing near-facsimiles of human embryos, with a pre-determined life expectancy of 4 days. They are creating these embryos from stem cells that have been encouraged to produce a human-shaped embryo, sans the placenta. Meet the artificial embryos people are calling “uncanny” and “spectacular” – MIT Technology ReviewExcerpt:….researchers at the University of Michigan are reporting that they’ve learned to efficiently manufacture realistic models of human embryos from stem cells. They think the advance will let them test fertility drugs and study the earliest phases of pregnancy, but it is also raising novel legal and ethical issues.The artificial embryos were made by coaxing stem cells to spontaneously form tiny ball-shaped structures that include the beginnings of an amniotic sac and the inner cells of the embryo (the part that would become a person’s limbs, head, and the rest of their body) though they lack tissues needed to make a placenta….The ones developed by the Michigan team, which was led by bioengineer Jianping Fu and biologist Deborah Gumucio, were only allowed to live four days and don’t have all the cell types needed to qualify as a real conceptus, as the implanting embryo is known, and are likely to have other abnormalities and limitations…..

We Can Be Young Again, Science Says It’s So….

Nevermind the hyperbole in the title below, this make-me-young-again drug study reduced the 'biological age' of the individuals by over 2 years. This means, folks, we may yet again revisit zits if we take too many make-me-young-again drugs. Imagine a world of 90 year old teens. Gasp. What fun.Mind-blowing drug trials show it’s possible to reverse biological age – BGRExcerpt:A study recently published in Aging Cell reveals that a specific regiment of growth hormones and medications shows promise in actually reversing a person’s biological age. The research was conducted on a very small scale, with just nine adults participating and no control group, but the findings are nonetheless exciting.For a full year, the tiny group of volunteers stuck with a strict drug routine that included the growth hormone and a pair of drugs commonly used to treat diabetes. Their biological ages — which is a measurement of the changes in a person’s genetics over time and is commonly used to determine the age of a person’s body in comparison to chronological age — were tracked for comparison.After the experiment was over, the biological ages of the individuals were determined to be approximately 1.5 years younger than when they started a year prior, meaning that they were actually 2.5 years younger than they would have been by the time the trials were over. The decrease in biological age persisted for six months after the participants finished the trials.

Elon Musk’s Charm Offensive in China Pays Off Amid Trade War – Bloomberg Technology

Elon Conquers China’s Great Wall, the Tax Wall, with Sweetheart Deal for Tesla

Somehow, Elon Musk managed to go into China, in the midst of a red-hot trade war, and get a sweetheart tax deal from the party head himself, Chairman Xi.Elon Musk’s Charm Offensive in China Pays Off Amid Trade War – Bloomberg TechnologyElon Musk’s charm offensive in China appears to have paid off. During a visit last week to the country, the billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. won a tax exemption for the electric-car maker, got to promote his ground-digging Boring Co. passion project and even drew praise on social media for his frugal food and accommodation choices — he was spotted eating dumplings and staying at the Holiday Inn. Bloomberg’s Selina Wang has the story.