version

Well-known member
Just seen this as a rebuttal to someone making a wishy washy, conspiracy theory-type statement about science and rationality,

Here are the pitfalls of pseudoskepticism that repeat over and over in topics such as these:

1) Denying, when only doubt has been established.
2) Double standards in the application of criticism.
3) The tendency to discredit rather than investigate.
4) Presenting insufficient evidence or proof.
5) Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof.
6) Making unsubstantiated counter-claims.
7) Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence.
8) Suggesting that unconvincing evidence provides grounds for completely dismissing a claim.
 

catalog

Well-known member
be interesting to see if this develops legs, or is just increasing desperation on his part (he could do with either a life-threatening illness, that he miraculously recovers from, or a new baby, and for some reason seems to fear biden). i seem to remember there was some disagreement as to whether the virus had been 'discovered' at the wet market or not - had it been diagnosed in someone 2 months before?
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
when a hole in the sky is finally cut open, do we pull a god down by its shoes & demand answers, head the fuck out ("here to go" like Brion Gysin contested) or do all the dark #gods flood in?

#the interdimensional pedo-reptilian turquoise tracksuited (Jimmy Savile?) Prometheus gods

run out of skins
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Right-wing conspiranauts are unanimous in their conviction that loads of deaths are being falsely attributed to covid-19, because apparently the government wants us all to think they've done far worse at protecting us from a deadly disease than in fact they have.

(This despite the excess death rate being consistently more than twice the official covid-19 death rate, so even if some deaths where it wasn't the main cause are being logged as covid-19 deaths, these are obviously outweighed many times over by people who've died of it without being diagnosed with it, and who are being marked down as having died simply of flu or pneumonia or whatever.)

Seen this on social media from both Slim Jenkins and Bangpuss (late of this parish).
 

version

Well-known member
Huge, mysterious list appears online of where people met, personal information and more of tens of millions

A huge data dump includes the personal information of tens of millions of people and where they have met ? and its origin is a mystery.

The breach includes almost 90GB of people's personal data, including details of where they have been and met people.

But there is no clue where the information has actually come from in the first place.

Though the information has been hosted publicly, and available to anyone, there is no hint about where it was first collected from.

The dump includes listings of individual people, including information on their social media sites, phone numbers and addresses. Unusually, however, it also includes details about where people have met, and information about where the people listed within the dump may know each other from.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...personal-information-breach-crm-a9515931.html
 

version

Well-known member
Peter Thiel and Oswald Mosley's grandson offering the services of Palantir to the British government and the NHS for a quid...

Britain?s battle against coronavirus has had plenty of heroes. Peter Thiel may be the most unlikely one of all. The Trump-supporting Silicon Valley billionaire is the founder of Palantir, a data crunching company better known for its shadowy work for intelligence agencies including MI5 and the CIA ? and helping track down Osama bin Laden.

Palantir?s technology is used by BP to boost efficiency and by the US and UK armed forces to wage war. So when the NHS revealed that Palantir was building emergency data mining tools to help Britain cope with the pandemic ? for no fee ? there were understandable reservations. What might be expected in return? ?Palantir has a lot of toxic baggage with its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the way in which its software is being used,? says Phil Booth, founder of Med Confidential, a campaign group focused on heath data privacy.

In reality, Palantir?s offer of help for the NHS should probably not have come as a surprise.

Until now, however, despite lucrative contracts with other government departments and lengthy discussions, there had never been an NHS project which Whitehall felt required Palantir?s software.

In the past few weeks, that has changed ? in what Mr Thiel must view as a victory for the chief of Palantir?s UK business: Louis Mosley.

The UK boss of the secretive CIA-backed data company which is helping the NHS tackle coronavirus is Louis Mosley, the nephew of the former motor racing boss Max Mosley and grandson of Sir Oswald Mosley, the Telegraph understands. With no official title on the website or social media presence, Mosley, 36, who has previously been pictured in Tatler, has been leading the UK office of the Silicon Valley company for almost three years.

The former Tory activist worked in academia and finance before taking the reins at Palantir, which was founded by early Facebook-backer Peter Thiel. Mr Mosley is not listed on the company's most recent documents filed to Companies House, which name as directors the former Foreign Office advisor Sir Daniel Bethlehem, who is understood to have an independent role overlooking corporate governance, and Alexander Carp, Palantir's chief executive.

Software engineering companies often have a flat hierarchical structure owing to the nature of collaborative, project-based work, however it is unusual for a company of Palantir?s size not to announce who is running its European hub and London office with 600 employees and is in control of most of the research and development of its premier data mining platform, Foundry. It all began with an invitation from Boris Johnson in March. As the pandemic hit, about two dozen leaders from the UK technology industry were invited to No 10 to be asked to help.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary and mastermind of NHSX ? the health services?s technology arm ? and Johnson?s adviser, Dominic Cummings, have made no secret of their wish to boost the UK health system?s use of cutting edge tools.

Cummings is a long-standing fan of Thiel?s, praising him on a blog back in 2017. One of the least sexy, yet most critical, challenges was integrating bits of data from hospitals, laboratories and factories so that the Cabinet could get a better grasp of how the virus was spreading ? and make better decisions. Also on the wishlist was better contact tracing and modelling to help predict how the disease would evolve.

The companies pitched and within days Google, AWS, Microsoft, Palantir and Faculty AI were asked to start work immediately.

For Palantir, that meant putting 40 engineers to work ? for a nominal fee of ?1. For just over a month, the NHS has been using Palantir?s Foundry software to bring together lab test results, hospital and supply chain data to see which hospitals need beds, gear or ventilators.

It is possible that the contact tracing data from the NHS app being trialled on the Isle of Wight could also be integrated, leading to earlier predictions.

It?s fair to assume Palantir won?t keep offering its services for free forever. After all, there are wages to be paid. And with its employees receiving an average ?220,000 per year according to records from 2019, they do not come cheap. Some believe that it is access to NHS data, among the most lucrative data sets in the world, that is the real attraction here.

?Palantir is asking for ?1 to send tens of software engineers,? says Eerke Boiten, director of Cyber Technology Institute at De Montfort University.

?If you look at their behaviour in the US they clearly do not see themselves as a charity and they do not act like they have a social conscience. So what?s the reason behind it??

Palantir now has 600 employees in its London office. Foundry is largely engineered here.

In the past, the political views of Thiel and Alexander Karp, the US chief executive, who has described himself as a socialist, have proven divisive. The company says politics is left at the door. With winter coming ? when the NHS is under maximum pressure ? and the threat of a second wave, UK health chiefs may need all the help they can get. Just as Palantir saw coronavirus coming by calling in employees from different countries, it might have predicted that it will be embedded into our health system for the foreseeable future.

But it won?t be without a fight. ?We must beware Palantir ? and any other data mining company ? bearing gifts during a pandemic,? says Ioannis Kouvakas, legal officer at Privacy International.

?Palantir?s welcome assurances must be verified once the pandemic is over. This is the only way we can make sure that a public health crisis will not turn into an opportunistic power grab.?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...cked-palantir-embedded-nhs-socialite-running/
 

Leo

Well-known member
Why some protesters in America wear Hawaiian shirts
Accelerationism, the boogaloo and the meaning of the extreme right


In more than 30 of America’s 50 state capitals crowds have been gathering to protest against stay-at-home orders, buoyed by tweets from the president encouraging them to “liberate” their states. A few among them, toting assault weapons, are dressed incongruously in Hawaiian shirts. They might seem comical were it not for the fact that, in some corners of the internet, such leisurewear is recognised as the uniform of the extreme right.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
This “man” is slowly bringing my piss to simmer levels. Every play from the hard right playbook, adding conspiracy at every level eg: anti fascists in the pocket of globalist, corporate elites, on and on. Personally, as much as I think violence is abhorrent, a few choice slaps in the real world wouldn’t go amiss. Celtic subforum are slowly drawing out his clique’s real agendas

 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This “man” is slowly bringing my piss to simmer levels. Every play from the hard right playbook, adding conspiracy at every level eg: anti fascists in the pocket of globalist, corporate elites...
Yep. Just yesterday I saw some fuckhead on Twitter claiming that Soros - ahem, sorry: ((((((Soros)))))) - is "funding Antifa".

Because, you know, hedge fund multi-billionaires and radical left-anarchist direct action groups are like peas in a pod, aren't they?
 

version

Well-known member
Soros does fund certain groups, causes and whatnot, but he's pretty up front about it. He has a foundation, declares donations and I've never seen anything reputable on all the shit the right fling at him. I'm never gonna trust a billionaire, but he doesn't seem drastically different from any of the others. He just happens to be Jewish so inevitably becomes a target of bigoted conspiracy theorists.

The Antifa thing seems to have replaced Isis as the right's great enemy now, although iirc they aren't a defined group or organisation like Isis so they're having to pretend they are for the sake of having a clear opponent.
 
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