This story gave me the chills !! 😏

 

German Doctors Are Attempting to Reverse Death and Resurrect Humans

• A company called Tomorrow Biostasis is focusing on human cryopreservation in the hopes it can eventually reverse death.
• The new Berlin startup has already preserved the bodies of about 10 deceased humans.
• Liquid nitrogen is the main ingredient used to ensure cryopreservation.
• According to a report from Tech.Eu, the company’s “standby ambulance” has already been busy, with cofounder Emil Kendziorra working to launch Europe’s first cryogenics company (there are already a handful of them in the United States). Kendziorra’s goal: As soon as somebody dies, Tomorrow Biostasis immediately responds to preserve the person’s body and/or brain in a state of stasis. Then, once future advances materialize, the company will treat and reverse the person’s original cause of death and bring them back from the dead to enjoy a life extension.
• When the bodies get transported to Rafz, Switzerland for long-term storage at the European Biostasis Foundation—the process is technically considered a scientific body donation, to make it legal—they get cooled to -196 degrees Celsius and placed inside an insulated tank with liquid nitrogen to lock in the preservation.
• Of course, waiting for medical advancement to progress to the point it can reverse what caused your death isn’t the only hurdle in this entire cryopreservation concept. There’s still the small issue of nobody knowing how to actually revive a dead cryopreserved human. Sure, they can freeze the brain to preserve cells and tissues, but bringing a previously dead brain back to life with regular function and memories isn’t quite a thing in our world—yet.
• https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technology/german-doctors-are-attempting-to-reverse-death-and-resurrect-humans/ar-AA17dn8P?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=8aee92684d5a4cccb44c542fe72c9e87&ei=14
  

America's radical right is full-blown fascist

Patience has run out

I held off as long as I could. I just can't do it any more. It's long past time to call a spade a spade. Most Republican Party elites (~95% ?) are full blown American-style fascist tyrants (Christian nationalist zealots and/or brutal brass knuckles capitalists). Most of the Republican rank and file (~85% ?) are either (i) full blown American-style fascist tyrant supporters, or (ii) horribly duped and manipulated into a false belief that they are innocent, terribly persecuted pro-democracy patriots valiantly defending democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, mom, the flag, apple pie, inconvenient truth, etc. 

I don't know what the other ~15% might be, maybe mostly chronically pissed off people mad at the world and/or their plight in it. Regardless, both narratives are indisputably much more bullshit than truth.

Regardless, the false radical right narrative is much more bullshit than valid complaint.

Another warning

Salon writes:

Republicans caught off guard by the left's ferocious backlash

The GOP is an authoritarian, extremist political party that is out of the mainstream of American life

Reacting to the counter-culture of the 1960s and the massive social changes it engendered, the left wing of the Democratic Party was always admonished by the centrist and conservative wings not to go too far or too fast. The media even blithely asserted that "America is a conservative country" as if it were an act of God. This article of faith hobbled progress for a very long time and empowered the Reagan Revolution through the Tea Party and Donald Trump's MAGA movement.

Nobody ever seemed to consider that enabling the right wing to become more and more extreme over the course of many years might engender a backlash of its own. It appears as if that time may have finally come — and it's clear the Republican establishment doesn't know what to do about it. The question is whether the Democratic establishment does either.

The most interesting aspect of it remains the fact that the Republican establishment is circling the wagons around him once again while Republican voters seem determined to push him to the nomination.

Donald Trump has been dragging the GOP down for years but they just can't quit him. However, the party's rapid descent into extremism is bigger than Trump and the backlash is continuing to show itself in ways that are shattering the status quo.

The swing state of Wisconsin has been a battleground for years with a polarized electorate that has had power swinging back and forth between the two parties with razor-thin margins. It was assumed that the high-stakes election this week for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be similarly tight. The future of the outrageous gerrymander that makes Republicans massively over-represented in the state legislature was at issue but, most importantly, abortion rights were front and center. Abortion has been illegal in the state since last June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and an archaic law banning abortion that had been on the books since 1849 was no longer moot. The hard right legislature and the conservative state Supreme Court wasn't going to fix that.

And then there was the grotesque display we witnessed in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday when the Republicans expelled two Black lawmakers, Justin Pierson and Justin Jones, for staging a protest for gun safety legislation on the floor of the House. Here's an illustration of what took place: an odious, condescending comment delivered by a Republican House member who is clearly hard-pressed not to go full Bull Connor and address his colleague as "boy":

Rep. @Justinjpearson: “You all heard that. How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”

Pearson responds to Rep. Farmer’s belittling, disrespectful rant. #TennesseeThree pic.twitter.com/5uWznU7atq

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 6, 2023

Yes, calling most mainstream Republican voters and most GOP elites full-blown American fascists is divisive. I get it. 

But it is true. There is not one shred of good faith or good will left in among Republican elites, politicians, major donors, professional propagandists or most of the rank and file. Not one damned shred shred. 

The radical right shows no willingness to reasonably compromise. No acceptance of inconvenient fact, true truth or sound reasoning. Almost nothing pro-democracy is there. America's radical right is a wasteland of lies, slanders, corruption, false narratives and pro-tyranny sentiment.

Acid sarcasm about Clarence Thomas

A Walmart parking lot:

America’s preferred playland

An acidic WaPo opinion piece by Alexandra Petri says what I have been thinking since I read the ProPublica reporting yesterday about Clarence Thomas and his corrupt, sleazy behavior and jaw-dropping lies:

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. … I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it.” — Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking in a documentary about his life, quoted in a ProPublica report released Thursday that Thomas has accepted undisclosed luxury trips from a prominent Republican donor, including travel by yacht and private jet, for more than two decades.

Please keep in mind, my fellow Americans, that each moment I spent on the yacht was torment! That is why I did not disclose it. It was not my idea of a vacation. Every second I spent on those magnificent islands, in those bucolic retreats, eating meals cooked by private chefs, I was seething internally, wishing I were in a Walmart parking lot.

The horrible private yacht

The terrible private jet

The miserable private estate

“Is everything to your liking?” numerous solicitous waitstaff aboard the yacht asked, and I sighed, dropping my cigar butt into the provided ashtray with a heavy heart. “No,” I said. “This — ” here I indicated the blue sky, the balmy sea breeze — “is not my idea of a good time, for I am a man of the people, with the tastes of the people, and I wish I were pursuing amusement as they do, by driving to Walmart on the weekend to make memories.”

A tear came to my eye as I spoke, for I could picture them so clearly, the happy weekenders, the salts of the earth who flocked to Walmart parking lots for their entertainment. Their children in the back seats, clamoring, “Walmart! Walmart! Walmart!” Their wrinkled elders, saving their pennies so that they could arrive at that cherished destination. Those parking lots are so full, always, and that is surely because they are a magnet for Americans who want to enjoy themselves.

Well, that describes me. I am not above anyone, except in the slight technical sense that I do control what rights you get to have. But you need not worry: I understand you and I am not contemptuously pandering to you: I genuinely think that you drive to Walmart for the delight of it! The simple joy of moving the carts around and putting them back, stopping at the little stop sign, and yelling indistinctly at your children not to run in front of other people’s cars! A classic American vacation!  

So be reassured, my fellow Americans! I am just like you. I am not ruling over you without remembering what life is like for you. I, too, put on my pants one leg at a time — with only the most nominal assistance from my billionaire friend’s butler. Every time I have eaten caviar, it has been with great distaste, as I loudly remarked that it paled in comparison with Dippin’ Dots. All the private jet flights? Well, they lack the comfort and security of a larger plane, and I do not get to watch the charming United preflight video or rejoice in the whimsical Southwest safety announcements, nor partake in the American family pastime of sitting in an airport (that heaven on earth, full of shops and treats!) for hours while my flight is delayed and delayed and then canceled. I am denied such joys. Do you not feel sorry for me, when you hear that?

And the yachts were just miserable. Awful. I bit into the meal prepared by the chef and wrinkled my nose with disgust, sad the instant I noticed that it was not a DiGiorno pizza.

I prefer to be where the rest of you — the rest of us! — love to be, which I assume from how much time you seem to spend there must be the parking lot of Walmart. Or an RV park! Yes, that is all I wish. The simple life.

So, you see, I could not possibly disclose any of these things, for they were not blessings but curses. These are the weights I must bear in my position. If someone with the power I wield were not meant to accept these heavy burdens, surely we as a court would have adopted a formal ethics code. But there is no need: It is understood that I take no pleasure in any of this. The American people need not worry. The yachts were suffering enough.

Note the exotic plants

Poor Clarence suffering for us!

News chunks: Indian authoritarians officially whitewash inconvenient history; Etc.

From the Dying Democracies Files: The NYT writes about how authoritarians routinely deal with inconvenient history: 

When Indian children began the school year this week, students in thousands of classrooms were issued new textbooks on history and politics that either watered down or purged key details from India’s past that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party finds inconvenient to its Hindu nationalist vision for the country.

The changes took aim at references to the links between Hindu extremism and the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi; the secular foundation of post-colonial India; and the 2002 riots in Gujarat, where hundreds of Muslims were killed in days of indiscriminate retaliatory violence at a time when Mr. Modi was the state’s top leader. Chapters on Mughal history, covering hundreds of years of Muslim rule, were either slashed or removed.

Among the deleted passages from 12th-grade history and politics texts:

• Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate” him. 

• “Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to the dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics.” 

The governing party’s leaders have also tried to minimize the founding fathers’ arguments for why India’s diversity could survive only under a secular umbrella, co-opting the legacy of many secular leaders as they push to remake India into a Hindu-first nation.

With that divisive campaign, anti-Muslim hate speech has proliferated, holy sites have been aggressively contested and Hindu lynch mobs have killed Muslims on suspicion of slaughtering or even just transporting cows, which are considered holy by Hindus.

If anyone thinks that things like this cannot happen in modern America today, then they would be wrong. Completely, undeniably, flat out wrong. 

The corrupt, authoritarian theocratic Christian nationalist (CN) movement has already rewritten inconvenient American history. Millions of American adults today firmly believe blatant CN lies that constitute core, unquestionable CN dogmas. The CN movement has created and spread its creation myth for American history. CN myths constitute an aggressive cancer that is spreading its deeply immoral poison to millions of minds.

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Book review: The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American: The Founding Myth is a 2019 book by Andrew Seidel. Seidel is a constitutional law attorney who argues church-state separation lawsuits for the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  

Roberta Winter wrote a review of The Founding Myth for the New York Journal of Books, which includes these quotes and remarks:

“This political environment, in which the separation of church and state is treated as a kind of heresy rather than the real rock upon which our government stands, is what makes the timing of Seidel’s book so fortuitous.”

The Founding Myth is an invigorating double-shot espresso that reveals how the original Constitution and the version slathered in religious tomes to serve political purposes are not the same document. [note the similarity to what the Hindu nationalists deleted from their falsified version of history] The former adheres to the principles of separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and the recognition of the people in the democracy. The latter is best exemplified by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who explained the imprisonment of children at the southern border by invoking God, “Every soul should be subject to the governing authorities because there is no higher authority except that which God has established.”

The founders of the first Congress were in fact free thinkers and more inclined to agnosticism, especially Washington. The portrait of his kneeling at Valley Forge was in fact an artist’s rendering not based on fact. The Declaration of Independence is opposed to biblical law and draws from democracies of cultures much older than Christianity, such as the ancient Greeks.

Since the McCarthy era of the 1950s Christians have lobbied successfully for constitutional exceptions to the Constitution, inserting God onto the currency, on public buildings, and even into the pledge of allegiance that children were required to cite daily in public schools. The latter would seem to be treasonous, citing a loyalty to God, rather than to the nation. And of course, there are plenty of healthcare exemptions in the name of religion, vaccine exemptions, birth control exemptions, and even withholding medical care from children in the name of God.

Christian nationalism views religion as a substitute for morality and above the law, so aptly demonstrated by Trump and his followers, who view themselves as the chosen ones. Secular people were more likely to demonstrate altruism in assisting the Jews in the Holocaust. As Steven Weinberg observed, “but for good people to do evil things that takes religion.”

On the first Fourth of July following Trump’s presidency, National Public Radio tweeted the entire text of the Declaration of Independence, 140 characters at a time. Many Trump supporters lost their minds, because they assumed that NPR was calling for a rebellion against Trump.

Jefferson and Madison were incredibly critical and suspicious of organized religion. Jefferson wryly observed, “priests dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light.”

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Public opinion about Christian nationalism: Pew Research Center published the following poll data and findings in Oct. 2022.

45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a ‘Christian Nation’

But they hold differing opinions about what that phrase means, and two-thirds of U.S. adults say churches should keep out of politics

Growing numbers of religious and political leaders are embracing the “Christian nationalist” label, and some dispute the idea that the country’s founders wanted a separation of church and state. On the other side of the debate, however, many Americans – including the leaders of many Christian churches – have pushed back against Christian nationalism, calling it a “danger” to the country.

Most U.S. adults believe America’s founders intended the country to be a Christian nation, and many say they think it should be a Christian nation today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey designed to explore Americans’ views on the topic. But the survey also finds widely differing opinions about what it means to be a “Christian nation” and to support “Christian nationalism.”

For instance, many supporters of Christian nationhood define the concept in broad terms, as the idea that the country is guided by Christian values. Those who say the United States should not be a Christian nation, on the other hand, are much more inclined to define a Christian nation as one where the laws explicitly enshrine religious teachings.

News bits: Clarence Thomas is corrupt; Eric Trump is a liar; etc.

ProPublica just dropped a nasty into Clarence Thomas' punchbowl. For years Thomas has received gifts apparently worth millions of dollars and not reported it. We can all rest assured that Thomas will dismiss this as a mere minor oversight, a tiny tempest in a teapot and a partisan socialist witch hunt packed full of slanderous lies. ProPublica writes:

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.  

[As would be 100% expected] Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.” 

Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. When she was on the bench, Gertner said, she was so cautious about appearances that she wouldn’t mention her title when making dinner reservations: “It was a question of not wanting to use the office for anything other than what it was intended.”

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”  

In his statement, Crow said that he and his wife have never discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas. “We have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he added.  

“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.” [What an effing liar!]

That is about as corrupt, morally disgusting and insulting as it can get for a Supreme Court justice. Thomas and Crow never once discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas? Yeah, sure. 

This corrupt sleaze is just more to add to a mountain of evidence showing that America’s radical right elites are corrupt authoritarians (full-blown fascists, IMFO), are in open contempt for the rule of law and are immoral grifters and liars, both by endless lies of commission (I like Walmart parking lots) and endless lies of omission. Lies of omission here apply both to Thomas’ “oversight” in not reporting his gifts and to his refusal to answer questions in accordance with standard and effective radical right KYMS propaganda tactic.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

Yes, good government types wring their hands and despair over the demise of any shred of respect for ethics and real or apparent conflicts of interest. But by now, the radical right has gutted ethics and normalized conflicts of interest as merely business as usual.

Maybe someone will call for impeachment of Thomas, but we all know what a useless farce impeachments are.

Ugh, I gotta take a shower to get the slime off.

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In other radical right sleaze news, Eric Trump lied about the T**** supporter crowd size in both New York and Florida. The thug claimed ‘tens and tens of thousands’ came out to support his father, but that was gross exaggeration. One snarker commented that Eric was not good with maths or big numbers. He really intended to say ‘tens and tens of thousands’ came out to support his father.

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From The Chatbots Are Fun Files: This artificial intelligence thing looks like it is going to be an endless source of mischief and misery for some, but lots of entertainment for the public. The WaPo writes:

ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal 

and named a real law prof as the accused

The AI chatbot can misrepresent key facts with great flourish, even citing a fake Washington Post article as evidence

One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. Turley’s name was on the list.

The chatbot, created by OpenAI, said Turley had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to touch a student while on a class trip to Alaska, citing a March 2018 article in The Washington Post as the source of the information. The problem: No such article existed. There had never been a class trip to Alaska. And Turley said he’d never been accused of harassing a student.

No doubt that the Republican Party is going to unleash its chatbots after intensive training on slandering liberals, socialism, and Democrats, and attacking everything woke, and inconvenient truth and history.

Q: Is it just me, or have the wheels come off the cart? It feels like a surprisingly bumpy ride.

Time for physics: The 1801 double slit experiment revisited

Physics: The 1801 double slit experiment revisited in 2023

As we all recall from high school physics, in 1801 Thomas Young proved the dual wave-particle nature of light. He shot a beam of light into two narrow slits in a piece of metal and saw an interference pattern. Later, the same thing was observed with electrons, then whole atoms and later still with whole molecules. Light and those other things had both wave and particle properties.  

The old-fashioned double slit experiment

Simulation of light wave hitting the double slit

(9 sec. video)

And, as we all know, the double slit experiments like this were a way to use 3-dimensional space to demonstrate the dual wave-particle nature of light and matter, at least on a small scale. Now, using the same material that is in cell phone screens, indium tin oxide (ITO), physics nerds have been able to do a double slit experiment where the slits are in time, not space. The image below helps to visualize what is going on.

A laser pulses to cause the ITO layer to cycle between 

being reflective for a short time and then transparent  

In the time or temporal double slit variant, a light beam hits a very thin layer of ITO, which can very rapidly go from transparent to reflective opaque when pulsed with light. The changes are driven by oscillating super short laser light pulses that flip the ITO layer from cycles of opaque to transparent in about 10 femtoseconds (fs). One fs is 10x(-15) or 1⁄1 000 000 000 000 000 of a second, i.e., (i) one quadrillionth, or (ii) one millionth of one billionth of a second. In essence, what the nerds did was build and successfully operate the machinery for a temporal double-slit-diffraction experiment. That demonstrated the feasibility of time-modulating materials to control light.

Chief temporal double slit experiment nerd 

Romain Tirole at the Imperial College London

messing around with his experiment stuff

This research is translated from physics to English in this short summary article and this article that Vice published. The Vice article comments:

To the team’s astonishment, the results of the experiment revealed more oscillations than predicted by existing theories, as well as far sharper observations, which points to “unexpected physics” in the findings, according to the study.

“When we measured the spectra, we were very surprised by how clear they showed up on the detectors,” Tirole said. “How visible these oscillations are depends on how fast we can switch our metasurface on and off [and] this means that the speed at which our metamaterial changes is much faster than what was previously thought and accepted. This is exciting as it implies that new physical mechanisms are still to be uncovered and exploited.”

“In our experiment we show that this wonder material has an even faster switching speed, 10-100 times faster than previously thought, which enables a much stronger control of light,” he also noted.  

The breakthrough paves the way toward new research into the enigmatic properties of light, and the many emerging technologies that rely on optical phenomena. Tirole and his colleagues are especially eager to try to repeat the experiment with a time crystal, a very strange quantum system that has revolutionized many fields in physics.

“A double slit experiment is the first brick on the road to more complex temporal modulations, such as the much sought time-crystal where the optical properties are temporally modulated in a periodic fashion,” Tirole concluded. “This could have very important applications for light amplification, light control, for example for computation, and maybe even quantum computation with light.”

This new line of research could turn out to be a very big deal. Once physics nerds get a whiff of possible things like unexpected physics, new physical mechanisms and the capacity to fiddle with very strange quantum systems, they are relentless. My sense of this is that if the complexity of such short time manipulation becomes easier, this line of inquiry ought to bear some important fruit within ~ 3 years. That's pretty quick compared to the pace of research into brains, consciousness and the like.