https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/302101.pdf

The study is 38 pages long. I have condensed some of the data below. However, if you are so inclined, I recommend reading the whole thing to get the best understanding.

While the media uses the FBI standard of 4 or more people shot as a mass shooting, this includes mostly gang member on gang member shootings and other criminal activity. In order to successfully analyze the problem of mass shootings as we generally understand them, you need to look at the specific instances. You cannot stop school shootings by analyzing gang violence.

167 mass shootings from the last 50 years were analyzed. The database included over 160 independent variables. In addition, the study does not conflate gun deaths with mass shooting deaths. These are two very distinct categories.

Percentage of mass shootings during the period analyzed:
50%+ have occurred since 2000    
33% have occurred since 2010
20% were in the last 5 years
16 of 20 of most deadly were in the last 20 years
Mass Shooting Locations:
Workplace = 28.1%
Bars/nightclubs/restaurants = 14%
Retail locations = 12.9%
Schools = 12.9%
Churches = 6.4%
Other = 25.7%
Mass Shooter Demographics:
Male = 97.7% (only 4 were female)
Mean Age = 34.1 years old (ranged from age 11 to age 70)
White = 52.3%
Black = 20.9%
Hispanic = 8.1%
Asian/Middle Eastern/native American = 12.4%
Trauma and Suicidality:
80% of the shooters were in mental crisis
31% had experienced childhood trauma
30% of shooters were suicidal prior to the shooting
19.8% of shooters had previous hospitalization for psychiatric reasons
23.3% of shooters took psychiatric medication
Warning Signs:
48% of shooters leaked their plans ahead of time
23.4% of shooters left behind some kind of manifesto
21.6% of shooters studied other mass shooters
70% of shooters knew at least some of their victims
Firearms Used and How Obtained:
77.2% of shooters used hand guns
25.1% used some sort of “assault weapon” (some shooters used more than one weapon)
77% of shooters bought at least some of their weapons legally
13% made illegal purchases
19% stole their guns
80% of school shooters stole guns from relatives


*I know the media narrative is that 100% of mass shooters are white men, who vote R, use fully automatic weapons, and kill 10,000 people per day. While objectively false, it makes a lot of people feel good to have a boogey man. IMHO, one school shooting is too many. In order to stop them you need to analyze the problem. In this regard, the media is culpable of hindering the process in order to fufill their own ends.    

Whether we like it or not it is going to happen. Pretty soon we will not even have the choice. .We can say we are going to fight it all we want. 

Truth is, we will be eating bugs soon. 

Quote:Tyson Foods Invests in Insect-protein Manufacturer

Remember when the World Economic Forum told us that the world could be “conditioned” to eat insects as a primary source of protein? Now comes news that Tyson Foods, an Arkansas-based U.S. food corporation, has invested heavily in Protix, a provider of insect ingredients based in The Netherlands.

Quote:The two companies plan to build a U.S.-based factory, which will make insects into food for pets, poultry, and fish. But don’t worry, Tyson officials assure us that they will not be putting insects into our food … at least not yet.

Quote:Our partnership with Protix represents the latest strategic investment by Tyson Foods in groundbreaking solutions that drive added value to Tyson Foods’ business,” Tyson said. “The insect lifecycle provides the opportunity for full circularity within our value chain, strengthening our commitment to building a more sustainable food system for the future.”

You know, Wikipedia is a poor place to attain any objective information about a particular subject and it seems
the familiar divisive schoolyard politics still resides there. With their racial slant still prominent, I steered clear of
the site's slur of using the term 'sundown town' and strove to discover more mature literature for my inquiry.

I was researching the city of Fouke in the Miller County area of Texarkana in Arkansas with an aim to explore the
rather-short account of 'The Legend of Boggy Creek' which generated a movie of the same name.

After apprising myself on the history of the area -an intriguing past that saw a community germinate from a trading
post perched on the junction of two rivers into the rudiments of a town by the time 1836 began, I became engrossed
in how the little wet-land place developed. In 1889, those who had arrived from the tribulations the Civil War, chose
a site thirteen miles south of a prolific railroad and two miles away from a busy sawmill owned by a chap called
George W. Fouke.

Helping the newcomers to fill out their growing community, the name of their town quickly became decided upon
and the major business man and fellow Presbyterian's surname was proudly attained.
Oh and by the way, Mr Fouke's sawmill resided in Boggy Creek.

In 1902 a fellow called George Fouke erected one of the first buildings in Texarkana, Arkansas with electric power.
Due to the city technically straddling the border between Arkansas and Texas, the illuminated property was located
over the State Line on the Texas side, but at least it can be said that George continued the family penchant to help
others.

Anyway, back to the legend and the thing that allegedly abides in the flooded glades of Miller County.

With the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage still titillating the public, Bigfoot -a moniker donated by Andrew Genzoli
of the Humboldt Times newspaper, became a welcomed addition to the 'silly-season' in the media business and
a much-needed replacement from the British Loch Ness Monster.



It seemed for a while that California had the monopoly on the shaggy creature, but at the dawn of May in 1971,
a scary incident in Arkansas came along and made enough waves for a resident of Texarkana -Charles Pierce,
to pull out his home-built camera and documented via a little drama, the strange encounter that would become
known as The Legend Of Boggy Creek.
...........................................................

It had been going on for quite some time, but since major media outlets tend to exist on the east and west coasts
of the United States, it was left to the small periodicals in the 'fly-over-States' to report anything that might disturb
the communities they served.

The Daily Arkansas Gazette noted in 1910 that a 'strange beast' was supposedly witnessed approximately twenty
miles north of Fouke in Spring Lake Park. Other sightings of a unnerving creature continued to be reported around
Texarkana through the years and in the mid-sixties, it seemed the long-living Boggy Creek monster felt that letting
his guard down when around humans wasn't such a big deal.

In 1965, a teenage boy panicked after noticing the monster in the woods whilst deer hunting and fired his gun at
it to scare the beast away. The same year saw another youngster finding a hairy man or ape-like beast near a lake
on his family’s property.



The terrified lad described the thing as being seven-foot tall with reddish-brown hair about four inches long all over
its body. Adding it stood upright like a man and had extra-long arms, the boy felt it prudent to discharge his shotgun
three times as the thing approached and then leg it out of there.

After a female deer-hunter spotted a dark, hairy ape-like figure running on two legs along a pipeline, an organized
hunt for the Fouke Monster in 1965 took place where one of the men on horseback saw a large hirsute animal run
into the woods.

On and on the small-town reports came in, but when the sixties finally surrendered to the decade of the Watergate
scandal, Thatcherism in Britain, commercial microprocessors and the continuation of the Cold War, a certain shaggy
figure celebrated the coming of the turbulent Seventies by persisting in its wandering of the pastures, soy-bean fields
and highways around the growing community of Fouke.

But the incident that brought Charles Pierce to create his low-budget cult classic, was when Elizabeth Ford opened
her eyes from sleeping in her newly-purchased front room and saw a hairy arm with claws coming in through an open
window. It was the beginning of May in 1972 when Bobby Ford -Elizabeth's husband, decided do something about the
strange sounds he'd heard around his new home and it would prove a far more harrowing encounter than the previous
fleeting glimpses of the Boggy Creek monster.

Accompanied by his brother an unnamed companion, the three hunters sneaked around to the rear of Bobby's house
and came across the creature in the dark. Shining a flashlight on the mysterious shadowed frame , the trio shot at it
and believed it had fallen to the ground. Warily approaching to where the men believed the possibly-dead intruder lay,
a sudden scream from the house forced Bobby to race around to the front of the building and it was there that he was
grabbed by a hairy giant.

Breaking free from the grip of the beast, Ford reportedly ran so fast from the thing on his porch that he did not stop to
open the front door, but smashed right through it. Elizabeth was okay considering her sight of the reaching hairy limb
and glowing red eyes beyond the window, but later, Bob Ford had to be treated at a local hospital for minor scratches
and shock.

With the arrival of the Sheriff, the men gave their statements and related that they'd shot at the creature several more
times after the attack. But on a search of the area in daylight, all that the Sheriff's officers found were a set of strange
tracks and claw scratches on the Fords’ porch, yet no blood.

The Ford family had owned the house for less than a week when Jim Powell -a reporter for the Texarkana Gazette and
Dave Hall of Texarkana radio station KTFS went out to get a report on the unusual affair. The two news men found Bob
and his terrified brood in the process of moving out.

After acquiring the astonishing account and felt it was was worthy of an article, it wasn't long before the Associated
Press and United Press International wire services picked it up and broadcast it to the rest of the nation. Two years
later, The Legend of Boggy Creek movie was born and the city in Arkansas became relucent on the Bigfoot stage than
anything George Fouke would ever imagine.



Is the Boggy Creek Monster still out there...? Put yer' rubbers on and go and find out.

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I am very familiar with how digital computers work using software to give chips orders. 

Until now the best explanation I have been given on what is Quantum computing is that it is beyond Parallel computing (which I have championed since day 1!)



I just watched really good breakdown for laymen on what a quantum computer is,

and how AI will be able to perform on them,

as opposed to standard digital chips that we use now with it.

.

This was the one of the last story of any consequence I wrote at ATS. Harkening back to the fantasies and imagination of youthful exuberance. Here's hoping the light of that innocent daydreamer in us all never dims to oblivion.

     

About half way into this, classic South Park, firing on all cylinders and just roasting the stupidity that is our existence.

AI, crap hollywood, forced diversity and the funniest part to me, lack of basic labor skills.

Quote:The White House will reportedly reveal a ‘sweeping’ AI executive order on October 30

The Biden Administration is reportedly set to unveil a broad executive order on artificial intelligence next week. According to The Washington Post, the White House’s “sweeping order” would use the federal government’s purchasing power to enforce requirements on AI models before government agencies can use them. The order is reportedly scheduled for Monday, October 30, two days before an international AI Safety Summit in the UK.

The order will allegedly require advanced AI models to undergo a series of assessments before federal agencies can adopt them. In addition, it would ease immigration for highly skilled workers, which was heavily restricted during the Trump administration. Federal agencies, including the Defense Department, Energy Department and intelligence branches, would also have to assess how they might incorporate AI into their work. The report notes that the analyses would emphasize strengthening the nation’s cyber defenses.

On Tuesday evening, the White House reportedly sent invitations for a “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” event for Monday, October 30, hosted by President Biden. The Washington Post indicates that the executive order isn’t finalized, and details could still change.

Meanwhile, European officials are working on AI regulations across the Atlantic, aiming for a finalized package by the end of the year. The US Congress is also in the earlier stages of drafting AI regulations. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) hosted AI leaders on Tuesday at the second AI Insights Forum.

AI regulation is currently one of the most buzzed-about topics in the tech world. Generative AI has rapidly advanced in the last two years as image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E 3 emerged, producing convincing photos that could be disseminated for disinformation and propaganda (as some political campaigns have already done). Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Bard and other advanced large language model (LLM) chatbots have arguably sparked even more concern, allowing anyone to compose fairly convincing text passages while answering questions that may or may not be truthful. There are even AI models for cloning celebrities’ voices.

In addition to misinformation and its potential impact on elections, generative AI also sparks worries about the job market, especially for artists, graphic designers, developers and writers. Several high-profile media outlets, most infamously CNET, have been caught using AI to compose entire error-ridden articles with only the thinnest of disclosures.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-...rent-plant

This was interesting and I wanted to post it because I have found some pretty amazing benefits from the cannaboid world. CBD having some amazing medicinal properties to it.
Having run a hemp shop, I can tell you that it really does work for many different health issues. 

I believe the true science (as far as the medicinal side goes) has been hidden from us, thanks to big pharma.
__________From the article_________
"Scientists have discovered cannabidiol, a compound in cannabis known as CBD, in a common Brazilian plant, opening potential new avenues to produce the increasingly popular substance.

The team found CBD in the fruits and flowers of a plant known as Trema micrantha blume, a shrub which grows across much of the South American country and is often considered a weed, molecular biologist Rodrigo Moura Neto of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told AFP in June.

CBD, increasingly used by some to treat conditions including epilepsy, chronic pain and anxiety, is one of the main active compounds in cannabis, along with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC – the substance that makes users feel high."

_____________end quote___________


That's pretty significant. To actually find cannaboids in another plant is pretty big in my opinion. Especially when the health benefits are considered, and the possibility of having a common weed in someone's backyard can help with something like epilepsy. 

Now I wonder, how many more plants carry cannaboid properties.

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Interestingly, Russia built its own version of B83 thermonuclear gravity bomb relatively recently - in the 2000s.



Translation:

"In Russia, for the same purpose, in the period from 2000 to 2010, the SPAB for naval aviation was modernized, its nuclear explosion safety and security in unregulated operating conditions was increased. In addition, a modern SpAP (a close analogue of the American Mk83) has been developed and put into service for arming long-range aircraft, and the development of the SpAP for arming fourth and fifth generation aircraft equipped with a multiplex information exchange channel has been completed, ensuring the expansion of tactical possibilities of combat use."

Source: ELECTRONIC LIBRARY HISTORY OF ROSATOM - USSR Atomic Project (Russian text)


Looking up the B83 just so happened to lead me to much more recent directly related news...The Biden administration plans to develop a new nuclear bomb. Yes, you heard it right. The plan appears to be intended to persuade Congressional hardliners to agree to retire the B83-1 Megaton bomb.

Quote:Biden Administration Decides To Build A New Nuclear Bomb

[UPDATED] The Biden administration has decided to add a new nuclear gravity bomb to the US arsenal. The bomb will be known as the B61-13.

The decision to add the B61-13 comes shortly after another new nuclear bomb – the B61-12 – began full-scale production last year and is currently entering the nuclear stockpile. The administration stated that it would not increase the number of weapons in the arsenal and that any B61-13s would come at the expense of the long-planned B61-12.

According to defense officials, the B61-13 will use the warhead from the B61-7 but will be modified with new safety and use-control features as well as a guided tail kit (like the B61-12) to increase the bomb’s accuracy compared with the B61-7.

Although officials assured us that the B61-13 plan is not due to new developments in the target set, the press material from the Pentagon is more direct: B61-13 will “provides us with additional flexibility” by “providing the President with additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets.”

Like the B61-7, the B61-13 will be designed for delivery by strategic bombers: the future B-21 and, until it is retired, possibly also the B-2. It is not intended for delivery by dual-capable fighters. This decision to build the B61-13, however, appears to have less to do with a military need than striking a political deal to get rid of the last megaton-yield weapon in the US arsenal: the B83-1. This weapon was originally slated for retirement under President Obama until it was resurrected by the Trump administration; it has since become a focal point of the battle between the Biden administration, which wants to retire it, and congressional hardliners, who want to keep it.

Change Of Plan

The case for the B61-13 is strange. For the past 13 years, the sales pitch for the expensive B61-12 has been that it would replace all other nuclear gravity bombs. By re-using the B61-4 warhead, adding new safety and use-control features, and increasing accuracy with a guided tail kit, the agencies initially argued that it would be a consolidation of four existing types (B61-3/4/7/10) into a single type of gravity bomb.

Military officials have explained countless times that the B61-12 would be able to cover all gravity missions with less collateral damage than large-yield bombs. Increasing the bomb’s accuracy was the key reason why the tail kit was added, replacing the older drag parachute system of the older weapons.

By reducing the number of bomb types, the administration argued, it would be possible to reduce the total number of gravity bombs in the arsenal by 50 percent and save a substantial amount of money. Moreover, by using a warhead for the B61-12 with the least amount of fissile material, the proliferation risk from theft would be reduced, so the argument went. When the B61-10 was retired in 2016, the pitch obviously changed to consolidating three bomb types, rather than four, into one. But the Obama administration also wanted to use it to replace the ultra-high yield B83-1 and eventually the B61-11 earth-penetrator.

The Trump administration had different interests, however, and its Nuclear Posture Review decided to retain the B83-1 (for reasons that remain unclear, and appear to have as much to do with undoing any decisions from the previous administration and little to do with military requirements or target sets) and leave the fate of the B61-11 unanswered.

When the Biden administration took over, its Nuclear Posture Review decided to proceed with retirement of the B83-1 but did not say anything about the B61-11. The Republican-controlled House did not agree and have used the years since to solicit hardline views that the B83-1 is somehow still needed.

Privately, however, Air Force and NNSA official disagreed. A high-yield gravity bomb is no longer needed and maintaining the B83-1 would cost a lot of money that could be better used elsewhere. Moreover, the NNSA production schedule is packed and adding a B83-1 life-extension program could jeopardize much more important programs. Although the B61-13 will add stress to this backlog, it will not increase the NNSA’s planned plutonium pit production schedule.

B61-13 Characteristics

Confusingly, the name B61-13 has already been used for another nuclear weapon: the future bomb intended to replace the B61-12 in the late-2030s and 2040s. That weapon was first described in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan in 2015 (see images below).

Quote:ROGERS, WICKER STATEMENT ON B61-13 GRAVITY BOMB

Oct 27, 2023
Press Release

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and U.S. Senator Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released a statement following an announcement by the Department of Defense on the B61 gravity bomb.

“While we welcome the step of creating a variant of the B61, which will better allow the Air Force to reach hardened and deeply-buried targets, it is only a modest step in the right direction. The B61-13 is not a long-term solution, but it will provide our commanders, particularly in INDOPACOM and EUCOM, with more flexibility against these target sets. As the Strategic Posture Commission recently noted, China and Russia are in a full-on arms race, and the U.S. is running in place. Dramatic transformation of our deterrent posture – not incremental or piecemeal changes – is required to address this threat.”

Quote:Congressman Lamborn’s Statement on Development and Implementation of the B61-13 Gravity Bomb (October 27, 2023)

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Doug Lamborn released the following statement on the Department of Defense’s announcement of the development and implementation of the B61-13 gravity bomb:

“Around the world, our enemies are digging deeper underground, and the U.S. Air Force needs the tools to hold these targets at risk,” said Congressman Lamborn. “As Chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, I am pleased to learn that the Department of Defense and National Nuclear Security Administration are pursuing the development of B61-13, a new variant of the B61 gravity bomb that will enable the U.S. Air Force to strike hardened targets. While the B61-13 is a step in the right direction, it is not a long-term solution. We must continue to develop tools in our nuclear arsenal, like the SLCM-N, that provide the Commander-in-Chief maximum flexibility to deter our adversaries – particularly in the EUCOM and INCOPACOM theatres.”