…A flaw in the legislation meant that woody biomass was fully categorised as renewable, even if it came not just from wood residues or waste, but from whole trees. This meant that companies could directly harvest forests for pellets – rather than making pellets from the by-products of timber cut for other uses – in the name of sustainable forest management.
…Biomass, of which wood from forests is the main source, now makes up almost 60% of the EU’s renewable energy supply, more than solar and wind combined, and a vast cross-border industry has emerged to meet this demand.
‘Carbon-neutrality is a fairy tale’: how the race for renewables is burning Europe’s forests
Tag: science
Actual image of coronavirus; from electron microscope, colorized
The Art of The Steal: Volume 2 of the Navarro Report
The Democrat Party and its political operatives, with the unwitting aid of “useful idiots” from the Republican Party, stole the presidential election from Donald J. Trump.
The Democrat Party used a two-pronged Grand “Stuff the Ballot Box” Strategy to flood six key battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – with enough illegal absentee and mail-in ballots to turn a decisive Trump victory into a narrow and illegitimate Biden alleged “win.”The Art of The Steal: Volume 2 of the Navarro Report
Prong One dramatically INCREASED the amount of absentee and mail-in ballots in the battleground states. Prong Two dramatically DECREASED the level of scrutiny of such ballots –effectively taking the election “cops” off the beat. This pincer movement resulted in a FLOOD of illegal ballots into the battleground states more than sufficient to tip the scales from a decisive legal win by President Trump to a narrow and illegitimate alleged “victory” by Joe Biden.
The number of girls wanting sex-change has grown enormously; author claims it’s a fad
A fad with serious consequences. This is a well-researched article with a clear point of view.
…Nearly all of these detransitioners blame the adults in their lives, especially the medical professionals, for encouraging and facilitating their transitions rather than questioning them.
The book Silicon Valley tried to kill: ABIGAIL SHRIER’S investigation into the exploding numbers of girls wanting to change sex has caused an outcry in America – but her story must be heard
Was Oumuamua debris from an alien civilization? Astronomer says yes
…Loeb admits his theories have raised astronomers’ eyebrows, but he is resolute about his findings. “Some people do not want to discuss the possibility that there are other civilizations out there,” he told The Post. “They believe we are special and unique. I think it’s a prejudice that should be abandoned.”
Loeb said the skeptics are bending over backwards to assign natural origins to the object and that the explanations they’ve given to explain its weird properties don’t stand up to scrutiny.
A Harvard professor says an alien visited in 2017 — and more are coming
Georgia: Data scientists election fraud testimony
Georgia State Senate meeting on 2020 Election Fraud 12/30/20
This video is absolutely worth viewing. It’s long so jump around to get an idea of how the fraud happened. The testimony is riveting, detailed, and provided by highly credentialed experts. Given the importance of this election and the importance of fair elections to our political system, the testimony presented in this video is crucial to understanding what our country is facing today.
A Simple Test for the extent of Vote Fraud with Absentee Ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election: Georgia and Pennsylvania Data
Posted: 29 Dec 2020
US Department of Justice
This study provides measures of vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It first compares Fulton county’s precincts that are adjacent to similar precincts in neighboring counties that had no allegations of fraud to isolate the impact of Fulton county’s vote-counting process (including potential fraud). In measuring the difference in President Trump’s vote share of the absentee ballots for these adjacent precincts, we account for the difference in his vote share of the in-person voting and the difference in registered voters’ demographics. The best estimate shows an unusual 7.81% drop in Trump’s percentage of the absentee ballots for Fulton County alone of 11,350 votes, or over 80% of Biden’s vote lead in Georgia. The same approach is applied to Allegheny County in Pennsylvania for both absentee and provisional ballots. The estimated number of fraudulent votes from those two sources is about 55,270 votes.
link to original
Second, vote fraud can increase voter turnout rate. Increased fraud can take many forms: higher rates of filling out absentee ballots for people who hadn’t voted, dead people voting, ineligible people voting, or even payments to legally registered people for their votes. However, the increase might not be as large as the fraud if votes for opposing candidates are either lost, destroyed, or replaced with ballots filled out for the other candidate. The estimates here indicate that there were 70,000 to 79,000 “excess” votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Adding Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, the total increases to up to 289,000 excess votes.
Full paper available at above link.
A different take on covid vaccines
Few people realize that the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19—which the FDA has finally declared “highly effective,” and which is now being distributed to Americans—has actually been available for nearly a year.
But the government wouldn’t let you take it.
The vaccine, a triumph of medical science known as mRNA-1273, was designed in a single weekend, just two days after Chinese researchers published the virus’s genetic code on January 11, 2020.
For the entire duration of the pandemic, while hundreds of thousands died and the world economy was decimated by lockdowns, this highly effective vaccine has been available.
But you, and all the people who died, were prohibited by the government from taking it.
We Had the Vaccine from the Start—You Just Weren’t Allowed to Take It
Working memory is key to deep psychological transformation, Part 2
In science, working memory is generally thought of as either:
- “…the sketchpad of your mind; it’s the contents of your conscious thoughts.” (Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory)
- Or “…a core component of higher cognitive functions like planning or language or intelligence.” (Christos Constantinidis, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine) [Source for both]
Obviously, both versions are valuable and probably both are roughly true. Some “contents” of working memory are indeed sketchpad-like—a crack in the sidewalk or a passing bird—while others clearly are “core components of higher cognitive functions” and, I would add, long-term memory including all psychological factors.
Our psychology—be it “natured” or nurtured—functions in real-life in real-time because we remember it. It bears on us because it is in our minds, because it colors our minds, shades our thoughts and actions.
Working memory is key to understanding human psychology because it shows us how we really are functioning, thinking, acting, feeling in real-time.
Working memory is also fleeting. If you want to use working memory to understand your real-life psychology, you have to be able to analyze it in real-time. This means you have to capture its contents and examine them as near to their appearance in working memory as possible.
You can do this alone with good effect, but when you do it alone you are prone to self-referential bias and other mistakes. When you do it with another person, they can help you avoid self-referential mistakes as well as other less serious ones.
This is how FIML practice works and why it is done the way it is. FIML analyzes data discovered in the working memory.
So how do you do that? You do that by immediately noticing when something significant about the other person’s speech or behavior enters in your mind or arises in your working memory. Generally, that something will have psychological impact on you, though you might just be curious or notice it for other reasons.
Whether working memory is an independent sketchpad or a component of higher functions, analyzing whatever you feel like analyzing in it is valuable. Sometimes even very little things can have great psychological import.
Analyses of working memory through FIML practice are most productive when they entail what I have called “psychological morphemes.”
Psychological morphemes are the smallest units of human psychology. Metaphorically, they are a word or a letter as compared to a phrase, a paragraph, or even a book. They are the building blocks of larger psychological structures and also may occur as unique isolates.
Whenever a psychological morpheme appears in working memory, it is always interesting. Psychological morphemes almost always signal the onset of a larger psychological interpretation, one either stored in long-term memory or one arising just now.
By working with any and all psychological morphemes as they appear in your and your partner’s working memories and by working with them repeatedly, both partners will come to understand that some of these psychological morphemes have deep roots in their cognitive systems while others do not.
For example, a fleeting expression or tone you observe in your partner may cause you to feel jealous or disrespected. Do FIML immediately and find out what it was.
It’s either true or false or in-between. If you have a good and honest relationship with your partner, most of the time you will find a negative psychological morpheme that appeared in your working memory was false and that it is part of a psychological habit of yours that has deep roots in other cognitive functions.
A great benefit of FIML is repeated analyses of mistaken psychological morphemes leads to their extirpation, sometimes quickly sometimes more gradually. A second benefit of FIML is it makes all communications between partners much clearer and more satisfying. A third advantage is most of these gains lead to better understanding and competency with all people.
Part 3
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first posted NOVEMBER 14, 2018
Former Head of Israel’s Space Program: Aliens are here but we are not ready for them
The UFOs have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet. Trump was on the verge of revealing, but the aliens in the Galactic Federation are saying: Wait, let people calm down first. They don’t want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understanding.
They have been waiting for humanity to evolve and reach a stage where we will generally understand what space and spaceships are. There’s an agreement between the US government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here. They, too, are researching and trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe, and they want us as helpers. (Former Head of Israel’s Space Program: The Aliens Asked Not To Be Revealed, Humanity Not Yet Ready)
The Nine Features of Great Philosophy: The Ethical Skeptic
The Ethical Skeptic has become one of my favorite blogs and Twitter accounts. Today he posted a must-read: The Nine features of Great Philosophy. The image below provides a clear summary:
This kind of thinking works across all domains of rational endeavor, including psychology, psycholinguistics, communication, and semiotics. It also fits perfectly with Buddhist thought and practice.
I am happy to also say that FIML practice as explained on this site is well-characterized by these nine features. I tend to think of FIML as practical psychotherapy that can be used by almost anyone. At the same time, I am well-aware that FIML took many years to fully develop and that fundamentally it is a way to think.
FIML is a theory of communication that yields a method for much better communication. You could also say that FIML is a method of communication that also yields a theory of why we now communicate mostly badly; how to fix that and why fixing that leads to a much greater understanding of life.
Since FIML is a method of thinking or communicating, it has no content of its own. FIML does require honesty and the basic human virtues of self-examination, self-correction, willingness to learn and share, and the desire for wholesomeness or integrity. But other than that, FIML has no ideology, credo, belief system, or cultural envelope. It can be used by anyone anywhere to optimize interpersonal communication and individual psychology.
In fact, even non-humans could do FIML if they use a self-conscious communication system to convey subjective meanings that may be ambiguous.
There Could Be 300 Million (or More) Earth-Like Planets in Our Galaxy
This study suggests the most basic conditions for life may have occurred hundreds of millions of times in our galaxy alone. For a conservative estimate, that’s still a huge number. And while it may shrink as we learn more, it seems more likely it’ll grow. (link)
Scott Atlas: I’m disgusted and dismayed
Covid: A brief non-political assessment
Written by a group of Belgian doctors and health care professionals, this overview of Belgian covid policy is well-worth reading. It applies to many other countries, including USA.
We, Belgian doctors and health professionals, wish to express our serious concern about the evolution of the situation in the recent months surrounding the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We call on politicians to be independently and critically informed in the decision-making process and in the compulsory implementation of corona-measures. We ask for an open debate, where all experts are represented without any form of censorship. After the initial panic surrounding covid-19, the objective facts now show a completely different picture – there is no medical justification for any emergency policy anymore.
The current crisis management has become totally disproportionate and causes more damage than it does any good.
We call for an end to all measures and ask for an immediate restoration of our normal democratic governance and legal structures and of all our civil liberties. (Open letter from medical doctors and health professionals to all Belgian authorities and all Belgian media)
American Buddhist Net 