Category Archives: Security

NZ Tesla Kills One, Airborne for 30m

An alleged wealthy self-obsessed liar is in court to face charges that he murdered a woman with a Tesla.

Johnston found Sharma lost control of the Tesla after hitting the “dip” travelling at more than 100km/h, while noting there were no warning signs of the dip.

The dip and speed were contributing factors in the crash; Sharma losing control of the Tesla was a causative factor.

He was able to track the car’s movements by using the skid marks, which showed the vehicle going straight.

Sharma told Constable Daniel Zainey at the scene the crash occurred because he swerved to avoid a raccoon.

“As someone born and raised in New Zealand, I’m aware that we don’t have raccoons but it didn’t seem the time and place to point that out,” Zainey told the court yesterday.

Zainey added Sharma seemed concerned about what was going to happen to him when questioned at the scene after the crash.

“He said, ‘am I going to jail, what’s going to happen?’ … he was really concerned,” Zainey said.

Trying to save a raccoon? Will the court please give this caring, warm nature conservationist a medal?

Oh, right, racoons don’t exist in New Zealand (North and Central America only), which begs how the accused dreamed up that excuse.

And the facts from the January 4, 2022 crash are that he was speeding unnecessarily in a notoriously dangerous car when he coldly and cruelly murdered his friend… witnesses adding that he whined to them about avoiding accountability.

Russian Immigrants Bringing Deadly Contagious Measles to Florida

Russia has been suffering one of the world’s worst measles virus outbreaks due to weak vaccination policy enforcement.

“Russia’s measles cases have been growing since late 2022. The rise in cases is due to the cyclic nature of the infection, stemming from a gradual increase in the number of people without immunity,” the spokesperson said.

Russians not vaccinated against measles and unvaccinated people coming to Russia from the neighboring countries make the majority of new patients.

Unvaccinated people coming…

The news hints at a return towards prevaccine days when Russia reported child fatality rates around 10%.

In the prevaccine era, 500,000–1,400,000 measles cases were reported annually in the Russian Federation, with an incidence ranging from 700.0 cases per 100,000 persons in 1950 to 1192.0 cases per 100,000 person in 1957 [1]. Peaks in measles incidence, usually occurring every 1–2 years, define a typical pattern of measles epidemics during this period. As one of the common childhood infections, measles was a major cause of child mortality, with the mortality rate substantially exceeding that for diphtheria. High case-fatality rates for measles (8.1%–11.1%) were reported in the country until the 1950s, when the rate decreased to 1.3%–1.5% after the introduction of sulfonamides and antibiotics. By 1958, the case-fatality rate had stabilized at <0.1%.

That’s right. Russia’s dictator after 2016 has been failing to maintain a vaccination policy, despite it being proven extremely effective since the 1950s.

Why?

Scientific researchers say Russian social-media trolls who spread discord before the 2016 U.S. presidential election may also have played an unintended role in a developing global health crisis.

They say the trolls may have contributed to the 2018 outbreak of measles in Europe that killed 72 people and infected more than 82,000 — mostly in Eastern and Southeastern European countries known to have been targeted by Russia-based disinformation campaigns.

When you put these stories together, it should be easy to see the next chapter.

The flow of contagious anti-vaccine Russians to Florida has created an “epicenter” for predictable American political and public health disasters.

‘Measles is the most infectious pathogen in humans that we know of,’ Kimberlin explained.

‘It’s like a heat-seeking missile. It will find the people who are not immune, and they’re going to get sick.’

[…]

Measles is a highly contagious, airborne virus that mostly affects children under five years old.

It can be prevented by two doses of the MMR vaccine and more than 57 million deaths have been averted since 2000, according to the WHO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The recommended two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97 percent effective against measles, the CDC reports.

We know already why vaccines most likely were not happening among the 2019 immigrant wave of Russian women who played Trump for access to America.

Social media is full of Russian women boasting about coming to America to give birth, sometimes staying at Trump properties. […] Roman Bokeria, the state director of the Florida Association of Realtors told NBC News that Trump- branded buildings in the Sunny Isles Beach area north of Miami are particularly popular with the Russian birth tourists and Russian immigrants.

Fast forward to today, given Trump’s role in unvaccinated immigrants landing in Florida, measles is spreading where we should expect and for reasons easy to identify.

Florida refuses to bar unvaccinated students from school suffering a measles outbreak

To be clear, Trump has publicly stated he opposes foreigners coming to America to give birth and he supports measles vaccination. In other words, he created the perfect big lie for him to import unvaccinated Russian women to give birth and infect Florida with measles.

There is a kind of madness here. Arendt described the “active, aggressive capability” to believe in lies (as compared to passive gullibility) that distinguishes modern political lying. Lies like this are grandly shameless, blatantly, and obviously fake.

In the spirit of John Snow, maybe it’s time to measure Trump properties for measles. Remove the pump handle, stop the spread.

Related: “Samoa’s Perfect Storm

How a collapse in measles vaccination rates [caused by RFK Jr] killed more than 70 children

How Disney’s 1964 Robotic President Lincoln Ended Up Training U.S. Military Today

This is an old obscure story but, with all the talk lately about robots manufactured by and for militant racists (e.g. Tesla), I thought it would be worth revisiting.

Disney made a robotic President Lincoln in 1964, which lectured audiences for dramatic effect. It since has been used as a model to train U.S. troops.

Having watched the facial animation progression from Wathel’s first efforts in 1955, thru Jack Gladish’s first Chinaman, then the 1964 Lincoln [through today]… We first implemented this sort of work in our projects for the US Marines in the Infantry Immersion Trainer at Camp Pendleton. We created a series of animatronic townspeople to populate the immersive training environment—some of them were slated to be hostile combatants.

Did I just read that a fake Lincoln was staged as a hostile combatant for Marines to train against?

Awkward.

Allegedly the justification for turning Disney’s Lincoln into enemy combatant was that animatronics were easier to build than using human actors. Does this mean no actors were willing to play Lincoln as an enemy of the Marines for some particular reason?

I mean the underlying theme of this story reminds me of…

…Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California was a hotbed of KKK activity–an open secret that was tolerated or aided by Marine Corps brass… white marine Klansmen openly distributed racist literature on the base, pasted KKK stickers on barracks doors and hid illicit weapons in their quarters…

Camp Pendleton, racist hotbed of the KKK, trained Marines with an animatronic staged as their enemy combatant… based on President Lincoln? What would President Lincoln say about that?

Oh no! Not the KKK again!

Were they training Marines on assassinating him? Here’s a 1977 interview of a Marine about their environment.

Q. Do you think the Klan has been rooted out of Pendleton?

A. Definitely not. Definitely no. It’s still here and they’re still organizing here. They might have calmed down a little bit; kept their stuff under cover a little bit more, but as far as being rooted out–no.

Lincoln blithely portrayed as the basis for enemy combatants seems to fit a sad narrative. Misuse of technology easily can poison human U.S. troops against democracy.

Robots manufactured by and for militant racists is a fascinating chapter of disinformation tools in American history, no?

Who regulates robotic “moments” for safety and integrity such as authenticity, and under what authority? Historians always want to know.

Forbes Ranks Tesla Optimus Robot Behind a 1960s Disney Toy

A 1957 robot from “Mars and Beyond!” Source: Disney

Absolutely scathing analysis is coming from Forbes, alleging Tesla robotics are just a clumsy fraud.

…while it’s cool to see a company like Tesla tinkering with robotics, it seems like we still have a long ways to go before we’re sharing our homes with robot servants—a promise of the future we’ve been waiting on for over a century. Optimus doesn’t appear have capabilities beyond anything we could do in 1964…

Just one century? That sounds like the original mechanical Turk story from the 1700s, if we really want to go back in time. And three centuries of such experience is why wise Germans tend to call Tesla products today “Getürked” (fraud).

Consider now how little has changed since the 1700s, in terms of charlatans and con-artists.

Fun fact: Driverless cars — road robots — run the same long timeline as other modern robots. They all basically are post-WWII science fiction.

Heavily promoted in the 1960s as our inevitable future, the buzz almost entirely died out by the 1970s (not least of all because the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam War destroyed trust in automation systems).

The 1958 solemn book about accidental nuclear war that inspired the famous 1964 comedy Dr. Strangelove

This is not to say hard problems can’t be solved. Rather that the people actually solving hard problems will fail wherever charlatans roam unregulated, because fraud destroys markets.

Attention-obsessed charlatans tend to burn so brightly they suck all the oxygen out of innovation, undermining authentic engineers as a perceived threat to false status.

Without fraud there would be no Tesla.