Did a 19th-century author really predict Trump’s election, Russiagate, and the potential collapse of the country?
It’s impossible to say for sure, but the ever-resourceful and endlessly curious users of Reddit and 4chan have unearthed some fascinating evidence to give some substance to the fantasy.
In the late 1800’s, an American lawyer, political writer, and novelist named Ingersoll Lockwood penned two fantasy novels about a highly-imaginative little boy named “Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastin von Troomp, commonly called, ‘Little Baron Trump,’ and his wonderful dog Bulger.” Little Baron Trump is the main character in both The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulgarand Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey, which follow the wealthy boy and his dog as they leave “Castle Trump” to embark on a journey underground to explore the theory that the earth is not solid, but inhabited by people who were chased underground by “terrible disturbances.”
The boy learned of this theory through a manuscript given to him by his father called World within a World, which was written by a celebrated thinker and philosopher named Don Fum. Before leaving Castle Trump in the Marvelous Underground Journey, Baron’s father refers to Don as a “safe and trusty counselor” and reminds him of the Trump motto – “the pathway to glory is strewn with pitfalls and dangers.” As Baron goes on a search for the portal to the “World within a World” with Don as his guide, his travels take him to the Ural mountains in Russia. So Little Baron Trump and his dog are guided by Don to Russia.
While all of this is fascinating – and one heck of a coincidence – it’s Lockwood’s third book that really throws everyone for a loop…
“The Chicago Platform assumes, in fact, the form of a legendary propaganda. It embodies a menace of national disintegration and destruction.”
That quote, taken from Garret A. Hobart’s public speech of acceptance of the Republican nomination on September 10th, 1896, also serves as the epigraph of a book also published in 1896 by Ingersoll Lockwood, titled 1900 or The Last President. It was stamped by the Library of Congress on September 28th, just two weeks after Hobart gave that speech.
The Last President opens in New York City on November 3rd, 1896, with the announcement of the newly-elected president of the United States, who happens to be an outsider candidate – the candidate who represented the “common man,” who would liberate the people from the grip of the bankers, and “undo the bad business of years of unholy union between barters and sellers of human toil and the law makers of the land.”
Aka, an anti-establishment candidate.
The very first page describes New York in turmoil over the announcement, with mounted policemen yelling through the streets:
“Keep within your houses; close your doors and barricade them. The entire East Side is in an uproar.
Mobs of vast size are organizing under the lead of Anarchists and Socialists, and threaten to plunder and despoil the houses of the rich who have wronged them for so many years.”
As the riots advance upon Madison Square, the book reads,
“The Fifth Avenue Hotel will be the first to feel the fury of the mob.
Would the troops be in time to save it?”
…
According to Newsweek, Trump Tower now sits where The Fifth Avenue Hotel used to stand.
There are many theories floating around the internet; some say Barron Trump is actually Lockwood, who traveled through time to write about his adventures; others believe Steve Bannon is a 50-year old Barron Trump and they’re time-traveling together; another believes “we are all Barron and Barron is all of us,” and some of us are simply chalking it up to 2017 having a competition with itself to see just how weird it can get.
The Election Integrity Project California provides a list of 11 California counties that have more registered voters than voting-age citizens.
In addition, Los Angeles County officials informed the project that “the number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144% of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”
When the world’s first digital computer was completed in 1946 it opened up new vast new worlds of possibility. Still, early computers were only used for limited applications because they could only be programmed in machine code. It took so long to set up problems that they were only practical for massive calculations.
That all changed when John Backus created the first programming language, FORTRAN, at IBM in 1957. For the first time, real world problems could be quickly and efficiently transformed into machine language, which made them far more practical and useful. In the 1960’s, the market for computers soared.
Like the first digital computers, quantum computing offers the possibility of technology millions of times more powerful than current systems, but the key to success will be translating real world problems into quantum language. At D-Wave, the first company to offer the technology for commercial use, that process is already underway and it is revealing massive potential.
Swallowing Complexity Whole
One of the toughest problems in mathematics is known as the traveling salesperson problem, which asks to find the shortest route between a list of cities. It sounds fairly simple and, in some sense it is, but in terms of computation it is enormous. Traditionally, engineers have used shortcuts, such as the Monte Carlo method or genetic algorithms to solve it.
The traveling salesperson problem is also pervasive. Practically anytime you want to make a complex process more efficient, you need to do this kind of combinatorial optimization. Logistics businesses need to solve a version of it every time they plan a route. Semiconductor manufacturers encounter similar issues when they design and manufacture chips.
D-Wave has begun to work with investment managers on the related problem of designing portfolios. In order to generate the maximum returns for a given risk profile, a fund manager needs to not only choose among the thousands of available securities, but also minimize transaction costs by achieving the most optimal portfolio in the minimum number of trades.
In each case, D-Wave’s quantum systems allow us to swallow complexity whole, rather than using shortcuts that reduce efficiency. Jeremy Hilton, Senior Vice President, Systems, at D-Wave says “Complex processes are all around us. By using quantum computing to operate them more effectively, we can make just about everything we do run more smoothly.”
Enabling A New Era Of Medical Science
When the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, it ushered in a new era of medicine. Rather than treat every patient the same way, it showed that we could design treatments to suit a particular genetic makeup. This has been especially effective in targeted cancer therapies.
While these are major advances, our newfound knowledge has also revealed our limitations. Unlocking the secrets of DNA exposed how little we know about the proteins it codes for, just as early successes with targeted therapies have shown us how much more we can achieve by working with complete genomes rather than just isolated markers in our chromosomes.
Unfortunately, conventional computers aren’t powerful enough to perform these tasks well, but early indications are that quantum computers can close the gap. Scientists at Harvard have found that quantum computers will allow us to map proteins much as we do genes today. D-Wave has also formed a partnership with DNA-SEQ to use its quantum computers to explore how to analyze entire genomes to create more effective therapies.
Mapping the human genome was a triumph of technology as much as it was an achievement in biology. It was, essentially, more powerful computers that allowed us to analyze human DNA on a massive scale.However, if we are to advance further, quantum systems will likely be a big part of the answer.
It’s Not Nice To Call Your Mother An Idiot
Take a look on the Internet and you can find hilarious lists of autocorrect mangling phrases, like changing “I don’t” to “idiot” in a text to your mom. These are embarrassing mistakes, but they usually don’t cause too much trouble. However, in other applications, like picking a terrorist out of a crowd through facial recognition, the stakes are far higher.
These problems arise because of how machine learning algorithms are designed and trained. Like our brains, they process different aspects of an experience, such as colors and shapes and integrate them into larger concepts, such as a human face, a type of hairstyle or the signature style of a popular designer.
However, in order for this process to work well, the more elemental aspects need to be correctly identified or they will pass on bad information to the higher levels of the system. Because of the limited capacity of conventional computers, data is lost in the training process and things are not recognized correctly, resulting in insults to your mom and terrorists misidentified.
Here again, quantum computing can help close the gap. D-Wave is working with a number of partners, such as NASA, to help train artificial intelligence systems to reflect human thought processes far more completely than is possible with conventional computers, which will help to minimize mistakes.
D-Wave’s Hilton told me that quantum computers will make it possible for our technology to develop something akin to intuition, allowing them to know that something is wrong even if they can’t point to exactly why.
Augmenting Human Intelligence
In 1968, just a decade after John Backus introduced FORTRAN, Douglas Engelbart presented the results of his project to “augment human intellect” and it turned out to be so consequential that it is now called The Mother of All Demos. Until that point computers were, much like quantum technology today, merely computational devices that few people ever saw.
Yet Engelbart showed that they could be much more. Using something he called a “mouse” and a keyboard, he showed how just about anyone could navigate around a screen and operate a computer. Later, Xerox developed its Alto computer based on Engelbart’s ideas, which formed the basis for Steve Jobs’ launch of the Macintosh in 1984.
Today, quantum computing is somewhere between the arrival of FORTRAN and Engelbart’s “Mother of all Demos.” Highly trained specialists are able to translate real world problems into language a quantum computer can understand, but for most people the technology is out of reach. That will change in the years to come.
I’m not implying that we will all have quantum computers in our homes, but we will likely be able to access them in the cloud and they will help us solve problems that seem impossible today. D-Wave’s Hilton told me “the quantum computing revolution may be even more profound than the digital computing revolution a half century ago and it will happen much faster.”
Once governments perfect Quantum, there will be a new world order and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may be the first easy target. This means many things thought to be secret – won’t be secure in the not to distant future. Quantum is in early stages of development, but it already can break 32 characters long passwords in just a few minutes, far faster than conventional computing power. Perfect Quantum, and things will never be the same. The race is on.
What is Quantum Physics?
Quantum Physics basically allows for particles to be in two states at the same time one is the wave state and other is the particle state. Much like time travelling back to time and saving the world, while your true self is busy sleeping.
Don’t take time travel part seriously, but the Quantum Theory is indeed True.
As impossible as it sounds, it is possible, and it can be used to improve processing speeds exponentially faster than supercomputers.
How much processing power is enough?
It can never be truly said. Processing power is the same as a person greed for money, the more you have it the greedier you become. Some assumptions about the need of processing power required in future were largely wrong.
Normal Computer Vs Quantum Computer
Howard Hathaway Aiken, the original conceptual designer behind IBM’s Harvard Mark-I computer in 1940’s, stated that just 6 digital computers would satisfy the computing needs of the United States (What?).
One Law that is almost true until now, is the Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on a microprocessor continues to double every 18 months. As of 2016, the largest transistor count in a commercially available single-chip processor is over 7.2 billion—the Intel Broadwell-EP Xeon.
Microprocessor transistor counts.
Talking in layman terms, the transistors comprises registers used to; Avoid instructions from having to leave the chip (i.e. go to RAM) to complete and keep the pipeline full or avoid going to RAM by predicting dependency outcomes.
Making Quantum Computers Possible!
The idea of Quantum computing was given by a physicist. Paul Benioff is credited with first applying quantum theory to computers in 1981.
Quantum computers are different from binary digital electronic computers based on transistors. Whereas classical computers require that the data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1).
Classical computers encode information as bits, that can be in one of two states, 0 or 1. Quantum computation uses quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in ‘superposition’ of states that is, a single qubit can be either 0 or 1 or superposition of 0 and 1. Layman Terms: Qubits exist in a form of rotating sphere (electron spin), with spin either in direction of axis x, y or z which may be spinning down, orup or maybe right(superposition). We represent it here as 0, 1, superposition.
Spinning States of Qubits.
Consider a two-level quantum system, where a qubit, is in a two configuration system for each cell. Physicists like to call this a two-level system (TLS.)
The quantum state of a two level system one qubit is given by,
|ψ = α|0 + β|1 (Not exact formula)
A pair of qubits two qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states,
|ψ = α00|00 + α01|01 + α10|10 + α11|11 (Not exact formula)
Three qubits in any superposition of 8 states. In general, a quantum computer with n qubits can be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2n different states simultaneously (this compares to a normal computer that can only be in one of these 2n states at any one time)
This, together with qubits’ ability to share a quantum state (a state of a quantized system which is described by a set of quantum numbers as shown in above formula.) is called ‘entanglement’, which should enable the computers to essentially perform many calculations at once enabling parallel processing. And the number of such calculations should, in principle, double for each additional qubit, leading to an exponential speed-up.
Quantum Computers thus have the potential to perform faster than any silicon-based computer, as proved above.
Not as simple as it sounds.
A quantum computer with a given number of qubits is fundamentally different from a classical computer composed of the same number of classical bits.
For example, representing the state of an n-qubit system on a classical computerrequires the storage of 2n complex coefficients, while to characterise the state of a classical n-bit system it is sufficient to provide the values of the n bits, that is, only n numbers.
Quantum algorithms are often probabilistic, in that they provide the correct solution only with a certainly known probability, not non-deterministic.
This is due to its superposition of up to 2n states. However, by repeatedly initializing, running and measuring the quantum computer’s results, the probability of getting the correct answer can be increased.
Although this fact may seem to indicate that qubits can hold exponentially more information than their classical counterparts, care must be taken not to overlook the fact that the qubits are only in a probabilistic superposition of all of their states. This means that when the final state of the qubits is measured, they will only be found in one of the possible configurations they were in before the measurement.
Memory Stored by Qubits.
It is generally incorrect to think of a system of qubits as being in one particular state before the measurement since the fact that they were in a superposition of states before the measurement was made directly affects the possible outcomes of the computation.
One of the greatest challenges is controlling or removing quantum decoherence.This usually means isolating the system from its environment as interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere.
Quantum Decoherence.
Cypher or Cryptography breaking with Quantum Computer.
Integer factorization, which is an essential part of the security of public key cryptographic systems, is believed to be computationally infeasible with an ordinary computer for large integers if they are the product of few prime numbers (e.g., products of two 300-digit primes). But qubits can make it possible.
By comparison, a quantum computer could efficiently solve this problem using Shor’s algorithm to find its factors, provided qubit doesn’t get affected by decoherence. This ability would allow a quantum computer to decrypt many of the cryptographic systems in use today, in the sense that there would be a polynomial time (in the number of digits of the integer) algorithm for solving the problem.
By comparison, a quantum computer could efficiently solve this problem using Shor’s algorithm to find its factors, provided qubit doesn’t get affected by decoherence. This ability would allow a quantum computer to decrypt many of the cryptographic systems in use today, in the sense that there would be a polynomial time (in the number of digits of the integer) algorithm for solving the problem.
In particular, most of the popular public key cyphers are based on the difficulty of factoring integers or the discrete logarithm problem, both of which can be solved by Shor’s algorithm specifically made for quantum computers. In particular, the RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman algorithms could be broken. These are used to protect secure Web pages, encrypted email, and many other types of data.
It can even crack Digital Signatures, so they could sign with you on a document without either of the sender or the receiver knowing.
Cypher or Cryptography breaking with Quantum Computer.
But, other cryptographic algorithms do not appear to be broken by those algorithms. More precisely the algorithms which do not primarily depend on factorization and discrete logarithm problems to which Shor’s algorithm applies, like the McEliece cryptosystem based on a problem in coding theory.
Conclusion:
Quantum computers may take over the technology world as well as help us in various fields of research like aviation, crypto analysis, medical, where a DNA in a single organism is 150 Zettabytes (1021) even storage of which is not possible in classical computers. Maybe Robots with Quantum Computers will take over the world, Who knows what will happen!!!
Amid a growing ‘swarm’ of over earthquakes (now over 1000), and Montana’s largest quake ever, scientists are growing increasingly concerned that the so-called ‘super-volcano’ at the heart of Yellowstone National Park could be building towards a Category 7 eruption. So what is a ‘super-volcano’ and what does its explosion mean for life on earth? NatGeo explains…
Eruptions of this supervolcano expel so much material that the crust caves in, creating a craterlike depression called a caldera.
Yellowstone is known as a supervolcano because of the violence and size of its explosions.
The plume of hot rock has been calculated at more than 600 miles deep. But scientists suspect it actually descends as far as 1,800 miles, all the way to what’s known as the Earth’s outer core-mantle boundary.
The reservoirs and plume are superheated, spongelike rock holding pockets of molten material called magma. The reservoirs’ heat, which originates in the plume, is what keeps the area’s geysers boiling.
Ancient rain and snowmelt seep down to just above the volcano’s magma reservoirs, until they are superheated and rise again through the fractures. Volcanic heat and gases help propel steam and water toward the surface, where they escape through hot springs or geysers.
Hot water rises from a deep reservoir into a teapot-shaped chamber. As water and gases fill the sealed space, pressure builds, preventing boiling. Some water spills into the spout, releasing pressure and allowing the water in the chamber to boil. Steam and water then blast up the spout.
Pressure builds behind a narrow constriction until steam shoots through. Some water splashes out, then jets of steam and water explode, rising on average 130 feet. As the chamber drains, pressure drops, and the process begins again.
Highest recorded eruption – 184ft
Eruptions per day on average – 17
Minutes length of eruption – 1.5 to 5
The park’s hydrothermal features cluster in basins at the margins of lava flows or near faults. Rivers and streams are heated as they pass through these basins. Heat and escaping gases are also evidence of the subterranean forces that lie below Yellowstone.
So how would a supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone impact the regional ecosystem, and the US more broadly? Well, as The American Dream blog’s Michael Snyder points out, it would be nothing short of catastrophic.
Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those living in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.
Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.
Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.
In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.
The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.
In the end, billions could die.
So yes, this is a threat that we should take seriously.
Still scratching our heads as to why Pontiac was killed, back in 2010 Pontiac was readying a brand-wide redesign and Road&Track and some of the other auto magazines thought they had Car of the Year all but wrapped up wrapped up…Hmm … Dumb!
Automobile enthusiasts around the world know brands like Studebaker, Plymouth and Packard, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any of these on the roads today. Former powerhouses in the American auto market, as Visual Capitalists’s Chris Matei notes, they have since become beloved by collectors, but lost to the general public.
Today’s infographic comes from TitleMax and it looks at 14 now-defunct car brands and the circumstances that took them from highways to bygones.
This is big news! U.S. currently under contract to house displaced citizens in case of super-volcano calamity!
…
The U.S. is currently under contract with at least 4 countries all of which have agreed to house displaced U.S. citizens in the unfortunate event the Yellowstone super-volcano were to erupt. Hundreds of billions of dollars were paid to foreign governments to facilitate the agreement which spans a ten year period from its signing, ending in 2024.
The U.S. plan for relocation was formulated after a recent scientific analysis of the park revealed that Yellowstone’s supervolcano has the potential to violently erupt within the next 10-years as noted by others including the famous astrophysicist Michio Kaku.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park on Friday triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0.
Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, animal, and plant life in the Continental United States.
Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.
Here we go, figure where you stand with these age/net worth breakdowns…
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 25 to 35
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 25 to 35 ranks at the 22.67% Median Net Worth : $16,000.00 Mean Net Worth : $100,146.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $700.00 to $77,900.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 25 to 35
90% $204,900.00
75% $77,900.00
50% $16,000.00
25% $700.00
10% -$18,800.00
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 35 to 45
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 35 to 45 ranks at the 15.11% Median Net Worth : $47,050.00 Mean Net Worth : $352,390.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $6,600.00 to $213,500.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 35 to 45
90% $620,000.00
75% $213,500.00
50% $47,050.00
25% $6,600.00
10% -$5,950.00
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 45 to 55
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 45 to 55 ranks at the 11.73% Median Net Worth : $102,800.00 Mean Net Worth : $560,169.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $12,001.00 to $396,100.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 45 to 55
90% $1,005,600.00
75% $396,100.00
50% $102,800.00
25% $12,001.00
10% -$500.00
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 55 to 65
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 55 to 65 ranks at the 7.87% Median Net Worth : $173,100.00 Mean Net Worth : $821,817.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $26,800.00 to $572,000.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 55 to 65
90% $1,506,000.00
75% $572,000.00
50% $173,100.00
25% $26,800.00
10% $660.00
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 65 to 75
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 65 to 75 ranks at the 4.02% Median Net Worth : $226,550.00 Mean Net Worth : $1,036,434.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $71,130.00 to $681,800.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 65 to 75
90% $2,027,010.00
75% $681,800.00
50% $226,550.00
25% $71,130.00
10% $8,170.00
Net Worth Summary Statistics for Households Aged 75 to 99
Net Worth Percentile Rank : A net worth of $0.00 for ages 75 to 99 ranks at the 4.54% Median Net Worth : $194,700.00 Mean Net Worth : $631,811.00 Net Worth 25th – 75th Percentile Ranges : $65,300.00 to $410,500.00
Here is how much money you would have to have to rank at certain percentiles for ages 75 to 100
On a remote island that is just 800 miles (1,300 km) from the North Pole, the Norwegian government has built a failsafe in the freezing cold that protects thousands of the most vital crops from extinction. Officially called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, it already holds close to a million samples of crops around the world, with each sample holding about 500 seeds.
Interestingly, Comey’s dismissal is only the second time the head of the FBI has been fired. The last time it occurred was during Bill Clinton’s presidency when the president dismissed William S. Sessions. Generally, as can be seen from the following infographic featured in the Independent, the position of FBI chief doesn’t involve a high level of job security.
As shown in the Statista chart below, the GDP has a strong correlation with how many people live in those areas. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the Southeast, which has the combined population of 12 states, amounting to approximately 83 million (or a quarter of U.S. citizens), also has the biggest GDP share, standing at 21.4 percent of total GDP. The thinly populated Rocky Mountain area (12 million inhabitants) has a share of 3.4 percent of the GDP.
Is the oldest business in your state a mom-and-pop shop, or a famous megabrand?
Today’s infographic from Busy Beaver Button Co. maps the diverse range of companies that claim to be the oldest in their respective states. While many of them exist today as modest family-owned businesses such as pizzerias or taverns, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that some have also grown into respected brands known around the country, like Jim Beam or Imperial Sugar.
A large recurrent coronal hole last seen in March will become geoeffective beginning April 23rd. A moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm watch was added and high latitude sky watchers may be in for an aurora treat once an expected solar wind stream arrives past Earth. More updates in the days ahead. Stay tuned to SolarHam.com where you will find the most up to date information.
According to http://www.solarham.net/, who uses NOAA data, Geomagnetic Storm has been declared for the past few days.
Here is an interesting poll…Hmm Inquiring minds want to know, why is it so hard to just report the news as it really is?
Almost two-thirds (64%) of those who believe the media favors a political party say it is the Democratic Party. Only about a third as many (22%) believe the media favors Republicans.
A total of 8,761 documents have been published as part of ‘Year Zero’, the first in a series of leaks the whistleblower organization has dubbed ‘Vault 7.’ WikiLeaks said that ‘Year Zero’ revealed details of the CIA’s “global covert hacking program,” including “weaponized exploits” used against company products including “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”
WikiLeaks tweeted the leak, which it claims came from a network inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, “would rock the technology world“, the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”
Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in “false flag” cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant. Discussing the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks’ source notes that it “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.
I have often been asked to comment on Jim Rawles’ concept of the Redoubt for survival relocation. Rawles’ criteria of distance from population threats, defendability, and agricultural suitability focus upon a fairly limited area of the Western US, centered around Idaho, and includes Western Montana and parts of Eastern Washington and Oregon. In reality, it’s a fine area and certainly matches my core recommendations in Strategic Relocation for security, safety and livability, but it may be too limiting for most people.
However, having consulted with people and designed high security residences for the last 40 years around North America, I realize all too well that most people have financial, distance from family, weather and other personal limitations that simply won’t allow for relocation to an area so far north and remote from their needs as the Redoubt. Some people, for example, need access to an international airport hub, which doesn’t exist in the Redoubt. Others need a drier, sunnier climate for health reasons or even more solar potential. Others simply need something closer to the metro area that have to remain in due to job or family reasons.
The map in Figure 1 below represents what I would recommend as an Expanded Secure Relocation Area. I don’t use the term “redoubt” because of its military defense implications. Even though I believe in defensibility at the retreat level I don’t like to infer that some broader military resistance strategy is possible for most people. For individual families I prefer less confrontational strategies of blending in, or getting out of the way, or concealment as the best form of defense for most people.
The area I have outlined is what is generally referred to as the Intermountain West and includes the Great Basin—that high desert plain between the Cascade/Sierra Mountains of Washington, Oregon and California over to the middle of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. These two mountain ranges converge as they get further north and merge in Canada. They provide a pretty formidable barrier for those coming from the West Coast or the Midwest. In addition, the Great Basin has within its boundaries hundreds of miles of trackless desert and mountain areas that provide isolation by distance and hardship for anyone entering the area without vehicles, fuel and water.
That doesn’t mean everything within these bounders is equally safe, secure, or livable. Obviously, border areas near California or Denver are not as safe as those in the central areas more distant from population threats. A person must be careful to select specific locations that meet the survival criteria others and I have outlined in Strategic Relocation. The climate, for example, in this expanded area allows for a lot more use of solar in Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, and Northern Arizona. And even though much drier than the Northwest, snowfall does fill mountain reservoirs which provides a reliable flow of irrigation water if you pick the right area. Sure, the high mountain deserts can’t provide for large masses of people, but we aren’t trying to save the whole world here, just those who have the forethought to relocate in advance of the coming world crises, be they war, economic or disease.
This expanded security area centers around Salt Lake City, which is the only big metro area in the region and which has the full range of commercial facilities including an international airport (hub for Delta Airlines). Most of the other smaller cities in the West have feeder flights into SLC. The Salt Lake Valley itself is not recommended for security, even though it is safer than most other large metro areas, unless you have an additional retreat in or past the many secure areas which surround SLC. Unlike Denver, where the high mountains are miles away from the unsafe city area, in Utah the Wasatch Front of the Rocky mountains come right down to the city’s edge and provide not only quick access to mountain retreat areas but a barrier to social unrest from the cities.
This isn’t to say that you have to be anywhere near SLC or the center of the expanded secure area in order to find safety. I still highly recommend the Northern Idaho and Western Montana areas of Rawles’ Redoubt. But for people who have to remain in California or Southern Arizona, it’s just too far for a retreat. That is why I have included the forested higher elevations of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah for those needing to get out of Southern California or Phoenix and reach their retreat in one day.
I have excluded much of Eastern Wyoming, such as the mountains and valleys around Sheridan Wyoming simply because of the danger inherent in being downwind of the Yellowstone caldera. It’s just too potent of a volcanic threat to areas east of Yellowstone Park to recommend for retreats or full time residences. I’ve only included about half the Colorado Rockies in Colorado to avoid being too close to Denver and Colorado Springs, which are major nuclear targets and contain high density urban threats.
I’ve placed the borders of the secure zone clear into the Cascade and Sierra Mountains of the three most Western states even though they may be too close to the urban areas of Washington, Oregon and California—but that depends on how close you are to the major mountain passes that channel people through the mountains. You can find good retreat areas in those border areas if you carefully select areas not visible from or easily accessible from the highway passes. This exemplifies why I emphasize more specific location criteria in Strategic Relocation rather than everyone trying to find the mythical “safe area,” which supposedly allows them to buy a home in a suburban area and feel safe. It’s never that simple. Safety is only relative—even in this general secure zone—so you must take care in selecting the homesite, as well as take precautions to secure your home, as I detail in my larger work, The Secure Home.
In summary, this expanded area gives you a lot more options both for full time residences near major commercial centers, and for retreats and survival farms in rural areas—in what we survival experts consider the safest general area in the United States.
This is also a good area for ultimate retreats for those who will develop their preparedness strategy first in other areas of the US to the East—which are all covered in great detail in Strategic Relocation. What I mean is that if you need to stay in the East or Midwest, you should always think about “where do I go from here” if my initial retreat strategic fails or is overwhelmed with refugees? In general, if social unrest occurs in the US it will flow from the overly populated East and Northeast to the Midwest. There will also be flows outward from LA, SF, and Seattle to the more rural areas but will generally stay within the area confined between the Coast and the mountains. Few will dare flee into the hostile desserts of California and Nevada.
If you have the financial resources to develop a staged strategic relocation (suburban safe home, farm retreat and short-term mountain retreat) that’s always better than putting “all your eggs in one basket.” But, in the final analysis, don’t despair if the task seems daunting or beyond your financial reach. While you should stretch and save to achieve your preparedness goals, we all have limits and can only do so much. We do what we can and then depend on God’s help to make up the difference. Be sure and seek inspiration in any relocation choice you make. These major decisions in life should not be made by human criteria alone.
Joel Skousen is a political scientist, by training, specializing in the philosophy of law and Constitutional theory, and is also a designer of high security residences and retreats. He is the author of Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places and has also developed a fact-filled companion DVD to help those looking to relocate out of major cities.
Visit the Strategic Relocation Blog for more information and resources on the best places to live in America and how to find the perfect survival property.
This is a big big problem, and not in the mainstream media…
The Fukushima Disaster
We noted a few days after the Japanese earthquake that the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs that at Chernobyl … and that the cesium fallout from Fukushima already rivaled Chernobyl (we also noted that Fukushima radiation could end up on the West Coast of North America. And see this.).
And that Fukushima’s reactors had actually suffered something much worse than a total meltdown: nuclear melt-throughs, where the nuclear fuel melted through the containment vessels and into the ground. A few months later, we reported that radiation will pollute the area around Chernobyl for 5 to 10 times longer than models predicted – between 180 and 320 years.
The following year, we pointed out that the operator of the Fukushima plant admitted that they couldn’t find the melted fuel from Fukushima reactor number 2 … and that the technology doesn’t yet even exist to clean up Fukushima.
Highest Radiation Level At Fukushima Now Dwarfs That At Chernobyl
The highest radiation levels ever measured at Chernobyl were 300sieverts per hour … an incomprehensibly high dose which can kill a man almost instantly.
To put this in perspective, radiation is usually measured in thousandths of a sievert, called millisieverts. For example, most people receive around 2.4 millisieverts per year from background radiation, or only 0.0002739726 per hour.
But a radiation level of 530 sieverts per hour has just been measured at Fukushima’s number 2 reactor.
This new record at Fukushima is 70% higher than that of Chernobyl. (The highest level previously measured at Fukushima was 73 sieverts per hour, in March 2012.)
1. Bananas – Bananas are rich in magnesium, a muscle relaxant, as well as sleep-promoting hormones serotonin and melatonin.
2. Almonds – Almonds contain tryptophan and magnesium, which both help to naturally reduce muscle and nerve function while also steadying your heart rhythm.
3. Honey – A teaspoon of honey contains glucose, which tells your brain to shut off orexin, the chemical known to trigger alertness.
4. Oats – Grains in oatmeal trigger insulin production and raise your blood sugar naturally. Oats are also rich in melatonin.
5. Turkey – The post-Christmas lunch nap is no coincidence – turkey is packed with sleep-inducing tryptophan.
To work out the answer, you firstly need to understand the cost of each product.
From the first line, you can tell that each drink is worth 10, while on the second line you can decipher that a burger is worth five.
On the third line – remembering that there is a total of four packet of chips – you can see that each packet of chips is worth one.
Finally, applying the rule that multiplication comes before addition, you can multiply the chips by the drink, totaling 10, before adding the burger, giving the answer 15.
South Dakota is the #1 inbound state regarding population movement, #2 is Vermont, #3 is Oregon and #4 is Idaho. New jersey is the # 1 outbound, with #2 being Illinois, #3 New York and #4 Connecticut.
Over 600 days in orbit, but not much known about its missions…
An Air Force X-37B robotic space plane is shown after it landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The fourth mission of the program is now underway and just passed 600 days in Earth orbit.
Credit: USAF/Boeing
The U.S. Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane has now spent 600 days in Earth orbit on the vessel’s latest mission, and is nearing a program record for longest time spent in space.
The robotic X-37B lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 20, 2015, kicking off the program’s fourth space mission (which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-4, or OTV-4).
If the uncrewed spacecraft spends 74 more days aloft, it will break the duration record set during OTV-3, which touched down in October 2014
Milestone record keeping
The first OTV mission began on April 22, 2010, and concluded on Dec. 3 of that year, following 224 days of orbit. OTV-2 lifted off on March 5, 2011, and landed on June 16, 2012, after 468 days in orbit.
The record-setting OTV-3 mission chalked up nearly 675 days in orbit, circling Earth from Dec. 11, 2012, until Oct. 17, 2014.
All three previous OTV missions have come down to Earth at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but that may change for OTV-4’s landing, whenever it occurs.
It turned into a Christmas tradition, and hopefully it won’t ever change!
On this day in 1931, America was spiraling into the depths of the Depression. Thousands of banks had closed and there was a national panic that more closings might be imminent. And large corporations announced huge layoff programs, stunning many who thought they were safe. Those who had a job were grateful just to be employed. Among those were a group of construction workers in New York City. As they stood amidst the rubble of demolished buildings in midtown Manhattan, they talked of how lucky they were that some rich guy had hired them for a new but risky development. And, since it was near Christmas, they decided to celebrate the fact that they had a job.
They got a Christmas tree from a guy in a lot on the corner who apparently had discovered that folks with apartments suitable for 18 foot trees were not too free with the green pictures of dead presidents in 1931. So the workers stood the big tree up in the rubble and decorated it with tin cans and other items on the lot. A photographer saw it as a perfect symbol of 1931. It caught on immediately and each Christmas as the project proceeded a new tree was put up. And even after the project (Rockefeller Center) was completed, management put up a new (and much bigger) tree each year.
Complements of Art Cashin
Category: Commentary |
Comments Off on It Was 1931 … An America Was Spiraling Into The Depths Of The Depression, And Christmas Was Just days Away Tags: Christmas at Rockefeller Center
The most recent Gallop Poll on Economic Confidence just hit all time high … and it all came since Trump was elected president. So … inquiring minds want to know, what would have happened if it was Hillary Clinton? Hmm
This is some kind of inflation … In 1974, a single scoop of ice cream could be purchased at a Thrifty Drug Store for just a nickel. Then the price increased to $0.10 in 1976, to $0.15 in 1981, jumped to $0.35 by 1991, exploded to $1.29 in 2010, to $1.79 by 2013 and yes, to $1.99 now. Wowwwww
An interesting map and definitely not good if you live around Northern Colorado,SE Wyoming or Western Nebraska which has 3 locations in close proximity.
Gallup first began asking if Americans trusted the mainstream media in 1972. America’s trust and confidence in mainstream media stood at its highest level back in 1976 at 72%. We are now at all time new lows. We’re not surprised!
