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XXXTentacion: Tupac 2.0?
XXXTentacion: Controversy rages after rapper's shooting death
The killing of US rapper XXXTentacion has set social media ablaze: vicious arguments have broken out about how to memorialise such a problematic figure, as fans pore over conspiracy theories about the perpetrator and even question if the rapper was killed at all.
Florida police have confirmed the 20-year-old, born Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, was shot dead on Monday.
Despite this, fans are probing videos purporting to show him after the shooting. Posts online point out potential discrepancies in his facial tattoos and question the lack of visible blood, bullets and shattered glass in the footage. Some suggest his death was faked as part of an elaborate prank for a future video release.
A video from several months ago of XXXTentacion denying his own death (after an apparent suicide prank on his own channel) has also re-circulated widely, leading to further confusion.
[...] He spent much of last two years in and out of jail or on house arrest.
At the time of his death he was awaiting trial for beating and falsely imprisoning his former partner, Geneva Ayala, having already pled no contest to charges of home invasion robbery and aggravated battery with a firearm in a separate case.
I made this unaccepted submission about him a few weeks ago:
Related: Spotify Removes Two Artists From Playlists Due to "Hate Content and Hateful Conduct"
United States (Un-Ironically) Commemorates World Refugee Day
On World Refugee Day, we join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and our international partners in commemorating the strength, courage, and resilience of millions of refugees worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes due to persecution and conflict.
As global displacement has reached record levels, it is vital that new actors – including governments, international financial institutions, and the private sector – come to the table to assist in the global response to address it. The United States will continue to be a world leader in providing humanitarian assistance and working to forge political solutions to the underlying conflicts that drive displacement.
I mean, sure, we'll send your children to an internment camp for the crime of applying for asylum. But, other than that, the US is totally down to help!
United States Commemorates World Refugee Day [www.state.gov]
Xbox One and PS4 Not Powerful Enough for the Elder Scrolls 6
Elder Scrolls VI Officially Announced
The revelation of The Elder Scrolls VI at this year's E3 came as a complete surprise for most gamers, since no one was really expecting news about the open-world adventure. The teaser trailer is only 36 seconds long, and it opens up with a foggy flyby of a large mountainous area.
[...] Unfortunately, there is no gameplay, no details on the characters, no information on the story, and nothing about the mechanics, physics, or technology other than that game director Todd Howard revealed that the current generation of home consoles are not not powerful enough to run the game, including the Xbox One and PS4.
I take this to mean that Xbox One X and PS4 Pro are also not powerful enough.
Recently it was leaked that Microsoft was working on various products, including the next Xbox "Scarlett" for around 2020. There were no technical details. However, there have been reports about the AMD CPU and graphics architecture that will be used in PS5 (and maybe Xbox):
PS5 Possibly uses AMD Ryzen CPU as Sony Appears to be Actively Working with the Tech – Rumor
Sony working with AMD on PS5 gear
What we might see is the same 8 core count in these consoles, except using more powerful Ryzen cores, possibly on the 7nm GlobalFoundries/TSMC node. Maybe they will have 2 threads per core instead of 1.
Here's a bit of Navi news:
AMD’s Navi will be a traditional monolithic GPU, not a multi-chip module
Coyote and Apple
Einstein Follow-up
Chinese defend Einstein's portrait of their people as 'filthy' and 'obtuse'
Chinese internet users have defended Albert Einstein’s recently published travel diaries in which the physicist calls the Chinese “industrious, filthy people.”
[...] While some internet users called for a “boycott of Einstein” and said his observations proved “all humans, even Einstein, have a stupid, shallow side,” most said the China Einstein witnessed is nothing like it is today. “Einstein went to China at the wrong time,” said one Weibo user, describing the early years of the Chinese republic, established in 1912, which came after centuries of imperial rule. “Hunger, war, and poverty all pressed on the Chinese. How could Chinese people at the time gain Einstein’s respect?”
Many were in strong support of the scientist: “This is called insulting China? That’s ridiculous. Did the Chinese in that era look dirty? When I see the photos from then, they look dirty, Einstein depicted the true state of that era.” Others compared the scientists’s observations to that of Lu Xun, considered the father of modern Chinese literature, who was best known for his scathing satire of Chinese society in the early 20th century. “We praise Lu Xun because he pointed out our disadvantages. Why should we blame Einstein for this?”
[...] The state-run Global Times published an editorial on Friday praising the level-headed response of Chinese internet users. The author, who goes by the pen name Gengzhige, wrote: “I’m curious what Einstein would write now if he saw the open attitudes most Chinese show today toward his private diary.” The editorial elicited over 2,000 comments. One of the most liked responses said: “Dignity is earned by oneself, not given by others.”
But there were some dissenting voices amongst the comments: “This is just racism. We can see that Einstein is strong in physics but he doesn’t understand humans at all.”
Some Chinese Are Actually Defending Einstein's 'Racism' Against Their Ancestors
Previously: Albert Einstein: Racist
Mueller jails his first 'witch', Manafort taken into custody
President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is going to jail.
On Friday, Manafort was ordered into custody after a federal judge revoked his house arrest, citing newly filed obstruction of justice charges. The move by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made Manafort the first Trump campaign official to be jailed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Already under intense pressure to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of securing leniency, Manafort now loses the relative freedom he enjoyed while he prepared for two criminal trials in which he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Trump Foundation Engaged in "Persistently Illegal Conduct”
Remember all those unproven allegations lobbed at the Clinton Foundation without any evidence? Turns out Trump was projecting again and it was HIS foundation committing crimes, according to the NY Attorney General.
The New York attorney general filed suit against President Trump and his three eldest children Thursday, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the president’s personal charity, saying Trump repeatedly misused the nonprofit organization — to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his golf clubs and to stage a multimillion-dollar giveaway at his 2016 campaign events.
In the suit, filed Thursday morning, Attorney General Barbara Underwood asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.
Underwood said that oversight of spending at Trump’s foundation was so loose that its board of directors hadn’t met in 19 years, and its official treasurer wasn’t even aware that he was on the board.
Instead, she said, the foundation came to serve the spending needs of Trump — and then, in 2016, the needs of his presidential campaign. She cited emails from Trump campaign staff members, directing which charities should receive gifts from the Trump Foundation, and in what amounts.
New York files suit against President Trump, alleging his charity engaged in ‘illegal conduct’
Albert Einstein: Racist
Holy war?
Holy war? Holy crap! Forget all the distractions in the news. Erdogan is apparently going off the deep end.
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday strongly criticized Austria’s move to close mosques and expel Turkish-funded imams, slamming the decision as anti-Islamic and promising a response.
“These measures taken by the Austrian prime minister are, I fear, leading the world toward a war between the cross and the crescent,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul.
Hello, liberals, progressives, and fellow travelers! Wakey, wakey! Are you woke?
This is exactly the thing that many of us have been warning against, for the past ten years, and more. Islam is most certainly NOT a "religion", and absolutely not a "religion of peace". Islam is a complete society, with a religion, politics, military, and everything necessary for a complete civilization. And, Islam is intolerant of EVERY FORM OF religion, politics, military, and all else that is necessary for a civilization.
Austria decides to crack down on Muslim activists, and Erdogan is talking about a holy war.
His comments came the day after the Austrian government announced it could expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families and would shut down seven mosques as part of a crackdown on “political Islam,” triggering fury in Ankara.
Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), the junior partner in Austria’s coalition government said the move concerned imams with alleged links to the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations (ATIB) organisation, a branch of Turkey’s religious affairs agency Diyanet.
Isn't Erdogan supposed to be the head of a "secular government"?? WTF is he talking about, "holy war"? I guess he has put the lie to that old claim. The Turkish army has failed in it's mission to safeguard secularism.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-warns-austria-imam-crackdown-will-lead-to-holy-war/
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1318351/middle-east
“Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalization have no place in our country,” Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the ruling center-right People’s Party said.
http://indianexpress.com/article/world/austria-to-shut-down-mosques-expel-foreign-funded-imams-5209799/
The moves follow a “law on Islam”, passed in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim organisations to have “a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society”.
“Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalising tendencies have no place in our country,” said Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who, in a previous job as minister in charge of integration, steered the Islam bill into law.
This topic only came to my attention, several minutes ago. It popped up in my news feed, at OneAmerica - http://www.oann.com/austria-plans-to-shut-down-mosques-expel-foreign-funded-imams/ Newsfeed says the story was posted at 4:30 AM, but when I click it at about 11:00 AM, it has been taken down. A web search turns up many hits, almost all of them on foreign nations. None on America's mainstream media. Search terms used are "austria expel imam". Try it - Duckduckgo gives me pages of results, none of them from abc/nbc/cbs/cnn/fox/turner/hearst. None.
Helluva thing, if the whole Korean thing gets defused, while Islam is busy launching a holy war against the rest of the world.
What say the apologists?
