Quote:NORAD detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on July 24, 2024. NORAD fighter jets from the United States and Canada conducted the intercept.

The Russian and PRC aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace. This Russian and PRC activity in the Alaska ADIZ is not seen as a threat, and NORAD will continue to monitor competitor activity near North America and meet presence with presence.

NORAD detects, tracks and intercepts Russian and PRC aircraft operating in the Alaska ADIZ (July 24, 2024)

Quote:Could we be trapped inside a simulated reality, rather than the physical universe we usually assume?

It's a tantalizing theory, long theorized by philosophers and popularized by the 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix." What if there was a way to find out once and for all if we're living inside a computer?

A former NASA physicist named Thomas Campbell has taken it upon himself to do just that. He devised several experiments, as detailed in a 2017 paper published in the journal The International Journal of Quantum Foundations, designed to detect if something is rendering the world around us like a video game.


Now, scientists at the California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly) have gotten started on the first experiment, putting Campbell's far-fetched hypothesis to the test.

And Campbell has set up an entire non-profit called Center for the Unification of Science and Consciousness (CUSAC) to fund these endeavors. The experiments are "expected to provide strong scientific evidence that we live in a computer-simulated virtual reality," according to a press release by the group.

Needless to say, it's an eyebrow-raising project. As always, extraordinary claims will require extraordinary evidence — but regardless, it's a fun idea.

Simulation Hypothesis

Campbell's experiments include a new spin on the double-slit experiment, a physics demonstration designed to show how light and matter can act like both waves and particles.
Campbell believes that by removing the observer from these experiments, the actual recorded information never existed in the first place. That's instead of current quantum physics suggesting the existence of entanglement that links particles across a distance.

In simple terms, without a player, the universe around them doesn't exist, much like a video game — proof, in Campbell's thinking, that the universe is exclusively "participatory."

Campbell isn't the first to explore a simulation hypothesis. Back in 2003, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper titled "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?"

Basically, his idea was that if we progress far enough technologically, we'll probably end up running a simulation of our ancestors. Give those simulated ancestors enough time, and they'll end up simulating their own ancestors. Eventually, most minds in existence will be inside layers of simulations — meaning that we probably are too.

Campbell's hypothesis takes a different tack than Bostrom's "ancestor simulation," arguing that our "consciousness is not a product of the simulation — it is fundamental to reality," in CUSAC's press release.

If he were to be successful in his bid to prove that humanity is trapped in a virtual reality — an endeavor that would subvert our basic understanding of the world around us — it could have major implications.

Campbell argued that the five experiments could "challenge the conventional understanding of reality and uncover profound connections between consciousness and the cosmos."

Former NASA Scientist Doing Experiment to Prove We Live in a Simulation

(07-30-2024, 12:44 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Has anyone seen a good meme that switches Kamala's face with that of Joe Camel ?

A "Joe Kamala" meme, so to speak.

Cheers--

Quote:U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison in February, was supposed to be included in Thursday's swap.

And now we have confirmation from the Kremlin on the release of 13 prisoners who were being held in Russia.

President Vladimir Putin pardoned the prisoners “with the aim of returning Russian citizens detained and imprisoned on the territory of foreign states,” according to a statement released by the Kremlin.

“The Russian side is grateful to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko for the gesture of goodwill and the pardon of a German citizen sentenced to death, R.Krieger,” the statement added.

“Moscow is also grateful to the leadership of all countries that assisted in the preparation of the exchange.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed the release and return of eight Russian nationals as part of today’s prisoner exchange in the Turkish capital.

“The Russians were exchanged for a group of individuals who acted in the interests of foreign states [and] to the detriment of the security of the Russian Federation,” the state-run TASS news agency said.

Two children were also said “to have returned to their homeland” as part of the deal.

Germany has finally issued a statement about today’s prisoner exchange, saying it was “not an easy decision.”

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said there was a “public interest in enforcing a prison sentence on a convicted criminal.” He appeared to be referring to the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin.

But this had to be set against the “freedom, welfare and in some cases, the lives of innocent people detained in Russia,” Hebestreit was quoted as saying by AFP.

****

Meanwhile, amid the joy surrounding the release of Russian political prisoners, ex-president Dmitry Medvedev is striking a more somber note.

“Of course, I would like the traitors of Russia to rot in a dungeon or die in prison, as often happens,” he wrote on Telegram. “But it is more useful to get out your own people who worked for the country, for the Fatherland, for all of us.”

“And now let the traitors feverishly pick up new names and actively disguise themselves under the witness protection program,” he added.

The family of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan issued a statement following his release today.

The BBC reports that Turkey’s presidency confirmed 26 prisoners were exchanged in Ankara.

“The prisoners are from the U.S., Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus,” the news outlet said, citing a statement.

As It Happened: World Watches as Russia, West Hold Major Prisoner Exchange

Quote:Very shortly, when one will have written the year 2000, there will come from America not a direct prohibition, but a kind of prohibition against all thinking, a sort of law which will have the aim of suppressing all individual thinking. On the other hand there is the beginning achieved in this direction of suppressing all individual thinking into pure materialistic thinking where one does not need to work upon the soul on the basis of external experiments, in which the human being is handled as if he were a machine.

Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man (4 April 1916, Berlin)

For if the world continues in its development as it is strives for in the sense of these materialistic impulses, then we will gradually enter into a development through which not only someone who unlicensed is forbidden from doing anything for human health, but also one in which relating to science, there is a prohibition against anyone saying anything other than that which is approved by those who have taken a kind of vow under the materialist world order.

Today many things are forbidden, of which people do not feel any coercion from prohibition. But we are approaching times when, like any unlicensed concern for healing of human beings, every word will be banned, except in an institution guaranteed and approved by the materialistically developed powers.

Contemporary worldview war (1916-01-07-GA165)