Fun science video. You've probably seen/heard of a few. The graphene-Aerogel is very cool!





Black alchemy? Vantablack is the world's darkest commercial material made of carbon nanotubes that absorbs 99.965% of the visible spectrum.

It looks interesting when in the sky.

More info at Surrey NanoSystems

H. Moser & Cie of very rare watches uses Vantablack on several of their models.

No problems here, none at all.


George Soros scoops up 220 U.S. radio stations ahead of 2024 election

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/202...-ahead-20/

Quote:A Republican insider “close to the situation” told the Post that Mr. Soros could be making the election-year purchase in a bid to influence public opinion.

“This is scary,” the source said.
Audacy owns more than 220 stations across the country and in almost all major markets.

Quote:The debt buyout has alarmed conservatives, who have railed against Soros' multimillion dollar payouts to progressive political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.

One conservative X/Twitter account said the Hungarian-born financier will 'use the stations to attempt to influence voters in the coming elections'

'How long do you think that guy will allow all of those conservative radio stations to stay in operation?' added Stacy Washington, a right-of-center podcaster and commentator.

It's just the latest media investment for Soros, who became a bogeyman for US conservatives after throwing millions behind liberal District Attorneys' election campaigns.

The Army has once again cancelled the light attack helicopter and will supposedly save 5 billion dollars that can be used for drones. 

The fallout from Ukraine is having a serious effect on military doctrine and the future of war fighting as it should.

On this I agree with Trump...

Quote:Rob Schmitt comments on former President Donald Trump's recent words on NATO, how Trump handled NATO countries refusal to pay their fair share into the alliance and more on NEWSMAX's "Rob Schmitt Tonight"

Quote:The first part of this two-part documentary series begins by following young men and women on their way to “earning their Wings.” In a rigorous course of instruction, they learn to lift off and land a supersonic aircraft on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, still considered one of the most difficult and hazardous tasks. Eugene Ely first attempted the death-defying feat in 1911. Ely’s act of landing a fragile bi-plane on a make-shift wooden deck would eventually transform into a weapon of unprecedented power and influence. The episode concludes with World War II and the U.S. victory in the Pacific, when carrier aviation reigned supreme. However, Naval soon would face a threat to its existence — not from an enemy source, but from a competing technology — the nuclear bomb.

The second part of this two-part documentary series begins with the potential demise of naval aviation, as many in the military establishment promote nuclear weapons and pronounce carrier aviation obsolete. Korea, and later Vietnam, offer a startling reminder of the utility of naval aviation, and undermine the post-World War II conviction that the U.S. will fight all of its wars with nuclear weapons. As the Cold War deepens, the installation of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba brings the nation to the brink of nuclear war. Another important function of naval aviation – reconnaissance – rallies world opinion and helps diffuse the crisis. Photographs of the Soviet missiles taken by low-flying naval aviators provide incontrovertible evidence of the Soviet Union’s lying. Following the age of nuclear terror came a new low in Vietnam, where doubts about the military merged with racial animosities to undermine morale among naval aviators. The episode concludes by exploring the technological evolutions like GPS-guided weapons that continue to transform the field. Interviews and vivid archival footage from Afghanistan and Iraq highlight the new moral challenges of asymmetrical warfare today.

Cognitive Warfare: The Forgotten War with Tanguy Struye de Swielande




Good presentation without being overly detailed.

Quote:Tanguy Struye de Swielande is Professor of International Relations at UCLouvain. He specializes in geopolitics, geoeconomics and the foreign and defense policy of the major powers (USA, Russia and China), the Indo-Pacific region, decision-making analysis, foresight cognitive warfare and the impact of new technologies on world order.

The nature of warfare has evolved, with the result that we are sometimes faced with new wars that do not speak their name. Disinformation campaigns have become veritable weapons of mass disruption, undermining the smooth functioning of our democratic societies. They spread and circulate rapidly, are inexpensive and have a high impact. For Professor Giordano, the human brain has thus become the battlefield of the 21st century.

What is cognitive warfare? Is China the master of cognitive warfare? Why are democracies losing? Are resources and the 4th industrial revolution the missing link? From neuroscience to the metaverse: cognitive warfare 2.0?

00:20 Cognitive Warfare and its Implications
03:01 Social networks have shifted from bringing people together to spreading fake news and polarization.
08:15 Cognitive Warfare is the weaponization of public opinion to influence policies and destabilize institutions.
10:54 Cognitive Warfare involves external and internal forces influencing people and political processes.
16:09 Difficulty in determining ground truth
18:23 Our brain's bias influences our stance on conflicts.
22:54 Boundaries homogenize relational environment
25:14 Social media influences people more through emotions and visuals.
29:57 Chinese diplomats using aggressive tactics on social media for influence.
32:24 Cognitive Warfare aims to destabilize democratic societies.
37:09 Tik Tok is causing concentration and critical thinking problems in young people
39:33 Challenges of post-truth era and shift in authoritarian regimes
43:51 Cognitive Warfare involves complex technological investments.
46:03 Semiconductors, renewables, resources, and international norms play crucial roles in cognitive warfare.
50:34 Metaverse competition between US and China
52:50 Need for cognitive resilience to protect the brain

The Secretive CIA Cold War Corona Project | Upscaled Original Footage

Around 4 minutes in is CIA spymaster, holder of many UFO secrets, Richard Bissell. Some fascinating aspects about the program you may have forgotten about or never heard.





The Corona program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force. The CORONA satellites were used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union (USSR), China, and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972.

Now this is entertaining. They are starting to realize they GOT what they voted for. I wonder how many will follow through with ditching the DNC.



Chicago Immigrants Just Got ANOTHER Victory Over African Americans

Thread is for us to post our sightings.  aerial phenomena, out of place animals, unnatural events, anything puzzling worth sharing.

I have one.  years ago was on my front deck on a Labor Day evening.  I saw stars being blacked out.  the blackout moved across the sky.  I saw small lights front and back and I think middle.  I concluded it was an airship, too high to see the actual ship but low enough to block stars.  still not %100 sure!

if any of you have seen something, please share.

No, not those black holes... Censored Images From America’s Great Depression.

US Farm Security Administration's (FSA) ambitious project to document the lives of farming families & relocation of families during the 1930s across the USA.

Roy Emerson Stryker of the Farm Security Administration commissioned a small army of photojournalists to travel America portraying the poor, their shattered homes, and a bereft American landscape. The unforgettable results include Walker Evans’s famous portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother.

This small but outstanding exhibition reveals the brutal cropping of history behind those iconic images. Only a minority of photographs satisfied the FSA. Stryker did not simply put the rejects in a filing cabinet. He and his staff punched holes in the negatives so they could not be printed without the defacing presence of a big black hole. They literally "killed" the unwanted pictures.

But they’re neither objects nor stains, rather punch holes made by Roy Stryker, director of the FSA’s documentary photograph program, and his team of editors. The holes marked pictures as unfit for purpose. But what was the purpose of the Government program if not to show it all?

The holes have become additions, extra points of interest.

Why were these images killed? What is it about each image we see here that caused the editors to act as censors? Looking at the holes in the sky, we might put on our tinfoil hats and look for conspiracy, supposing the images have been redacted to remove traces of flying objects. What is the man picking up from the grass? Why is another man’s face obliterated? Who is the missing face in the crowd?

At the final count, around 100,000 images by photographers like Gordon Parks, Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott had been ‘killed’.



In 1939, Stryker finally put aside his practice of punching holes in negatives, allowing the "bad" shots to live on unscathed.



New York photographer Bill McDowell published a book of a selection of FSA negatives, along with his recreation of the photo without the black spot. The 2016 book called "Ground: A Reprise of Photographs from the Farm Security Administration".

McDowell's site explains the black spots: "The FSA photography division was run by Roy Stryker, who routinely defaced FSA negatives with a hole punch to prevent them from being printed, much to the consternation of the photographers." McDowell wants to make the original vision of photographers whole again. "Each photograph in 'Ground' is the result of three separate acts of picture-making: the original photographer's deliberate compositional and contextual choices, Stryker's hole punch, and my re-contextualization," he said.

Today we can see them all (most of them) at the National Archives. But back then the desire to show the places and faces of America in the mire was controlled to fit a message.

Here's a few photos of what the censors didn’t want you to see: the black hole photographs. These pictures each contain an inky black disc of nothing. A black sun hangs with pendant menace and mystery.

Quote:Another FSA staffer, Ben Shahn, referred to Stryker’s style as “a little bit dictatorial”:

He ruined quite a number of my pictures. . . . Some of them were incredibly valuable. He didn't understand at the time. . . . Later on, during the war . . . I went to look for [a] negative and he[‘d] punched a hole through it. Well, I shot my mouth off about that. But, I didn't know what was done with a lot of my negatives, naturally. He learned, then, not to do that, you see, because this was an invaluable document of what life was like in 1935 and when I was looking for it in 1943 or '44 it didn't exist anymore.

The Kept and the Killed Essay by Erica X Eisen for The Public Domain Review.