The authoritarian crusade against the car

The elites are deliberately making driving more difficult and expensive.

Drivers are getting a bad deal these days. Whether it is because of exorbitant emissions-zone charges, road closures under various low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), or just poorly maintained infrastructure, one almost gets the sense that there is a concerted attack on our ability to get around by car.

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AI is the biggest threat to mankind since the Manhattan Project

Like the creation of the atomic bomb, artificial intelligence will change everything – the problem is we just don’t know how

At 5:29am on July 16 1945, the world entered the nuclear age. Deep in the New Mexico desert, scientists watched the first test of “the gadget”: a nuclear bomb with a 13lb radioactive core. This was “Trinity”, the climax of the Manhattan Project, one of the most expensive research and development projects ever undertaken. The men who had birthed this atomic weapon watched through protective goggles, shielded in bunkers 10km away from where the gadget had been hoisted up a 100ft tower to mimic the effect of being dropped from a bomber.

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Stop trying to make ‘digital blackface’ happen

The media is invested in keeping Americans divided

Sweet Brown is wearing a tie-dyed tank top, a scarf knotted around her short dark hair. She’s talking to the camera like it’s someone she knows intimately, telling the story of her brush with death: “I said, oh lord Jesus, it’s a fire! Then I ran out, I didn’t grab no shoes or nothing. Jesus! I ran for my life!” And then she delivers the line that will make her famous: “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

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‘Vulkan files’ leak reveals Putin’s global and domestic cyberwarfare tactics

Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine war

The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.

Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations. Its weapons are more advanced than those of Peter the Great’s era: not pikes and halberds, but hacking and disinformation tools.

The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. On the surface, it looks like a run-of-the-mill cybersecurity consultancy. However, a leak of secret files from the company has exposed its work bolstering Vladimir Putin’s cyberwarfare capabilities.

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Russian wives tricked into exposing pilot husbands behind Ukraine civilian attack

Ukraine hacktivists tricked a group of Russian military wives into posing for a photo shoot that outed the identities of their husbands — who were purportedly responsible for bombing a Mariupol theater-turned-shelter last March, killing hundreds of civilians.

The virtual false-flag operation exposed twelve elite Kremlin combat pilots to potential war crime charges in connection with both the brutal theatre massacre and hundreds of other air strikes on Ukrainian homes and businesses, The Kyiv Post reported.

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Biden’s Northern Exposure: Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau share a basic admiration of China.

“So today, I applaud China for stepping out,” said Joe Biden on Friday before the Canadian Parliament. The members immediately burst out in laughter. “Excuse me,” Biden said, “I applaud Canada.” The Delaware Democrat might have been right the first time.

Under Justin Trudeau, it’s becoming ever harder to distinguish Canada from China, and Trudeau is a big fan of the Middle Kingdom. He made that clear back in 2013, when asked which nation he admired the most.

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Sounds like an equity hire bonanza …

WARMINGTON: Sources say impropriety probe results into seven suspended female youth jail guards expected soon

Roy McMurtry Youth Centre The Ford government and the Ontario corrections community is bracing for the results of an investigation into seven female jail guards suspended last year at Brampton’s Roy McMurtry Youth Centre under a cloud of scurrilous allegations, according to sources.

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World’s end: enjoy the decline

There’s an evergreen appeal to books about the world going to hell. There might be better or worse times to tell a story about civilization falling apart – the ‘30s and ‘70s were ripe for it; the ‘60s and ‘90s not so much. We’re in one of those doomsaying boom times again.

I think of Oswald Spengler publishing his ground-breaking feel-bad chart-topper The Decline of the West in 1918, just when no one would deny that things had gone very wrong and were likely going to get worse. He must have smiled tightly to himself as he anticipated the public reacting to his assertion that “we have to reckon with the hard cold facts of a late life, to which the parallel is to be found not in Pericles’ Athens but in Caesar’s Rome.”

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Rex Murphy: Go green or go broke — the Liberals’ new budget does both

Budgets, like Bidens, bore me.

Like another in the fellowship of the great minds of our day, I pay no attention to monetary policy. Or to fiscal policy.

And what is a budget but a massive tool of that latter? Budgets get as much attention from “communications advisers” — the most empty phrase and occupation of our time — as they do from … people who might know something about the economy. Most likely more. Besides, budgetary promises do not stand up in time, at all.

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‘Florida will not assist in an extradition’: DeSantis offers Trump sanctuary after former President’s attorney said he was expected to surrender in Manhattan next week

 

Florida Governor and 2024 rival Ron DeSantis offered Donald Trump a partial lifeline on Thursday, saying he would try to thwart the extradition of the former president from his state.

He made his promise after news broke that a Manhattan jury had voted to indict him over $130,000 in hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump said Democrats would regret ever persecuting an innocent man when his supporters dump them out of office.

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Is this the reason Harry and Meghan stepped down as working Royals?

… But now Archewell have released tax filings for 2021 and they show what we all knew to be true the whole time. Meghan and Harry have spent the last three years doing very little at all. The documents show that the couple worked a grand total of one hour each a week at the foundation, racking up a time sheet of 52 hours in a year. Those chickens aren’t going to look after themselves.

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RUBENSTEIN: Yes Canada, there is an indigenous genocide, at least if you also believe in Santa Claus

‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’ is a line from an editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church titled, “Is There a Santa Claus?”

It appeared in the New York newspaper The Sun Sept. 21, 1897, and became one of the most famous editorials ever published. Written in response to a letter by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asking whether Santa Claus was real, the editorial became so popular over the years, The Sun began republishing it during the Christmas season, including every year from 1924 to 1950, when the paper ceased publication.

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