SoylentNews

Thoughts and prayers with the people of Iran. Who just had a major, major earthquake. 7.3, with hundreds and hundreds killed. I called the president of Iran to give condolences on the terrible earthquake. I tried to call him. But I couldn't get through because of his cell phone reception at the site.

I've said before, they have suckered us. Iran has suckered us. They have taken advantage of stupid people, stupid representatives, people that are incompetent, whether it's Kerry or our president. I don't blame Iran. After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens?

To the Supreme Leader of Iran, if you're listening, thank you for limiting the range of your missiles. I really believe you limited it. I accept it, because you said so. I have a lot of things going on, I'm very happy I don't have to worry about your missiles. Very happy. I know you work with North Korea. You have great chemistry with North Korea. Which has become a threat. As long as we stand together, that threat will never happen, doesn’t even have a chance. The entire civilized world must unite to confront the North Korea menace and the entire world is watching us right now.

To the families of the victims, we are praying for you, and we are here for you. And we ask God to help see you through this very dark period. May God bless the souls of the lives that are lost, may God give you the grace of healing and may God provide the grieving families with strength to carry on. Good luck to everybody! Good luck. ✝️🙏

Report: Green Beret killed by SEALs after he uncovered alleged theft

Two Navy SEALs being investigated over the death of an Army Green Beret in Mali in June are accused of killing him after he discovered they had been stealing, according to a report in the Daily Beast.

CNN has not independently verified the information in Saturday's article, which the Daily Beast attributes to "five members of the special-operations community who were not cleared to speak publicly."

Naval Criminal Investigative Service spokesman Ed Buice confirmed to CNN last month that the NCIS was investigating whether two members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six killed Army Staff Sgt. Logan J. Melgar.

The New York Times was the first to report that the SEALs were under investigation for Melgar's death at a US government compound near the American embassy in Bamako, the capital.

[...] The Daily Beast article cites two special operations sources as saying the SEALs under investigation over Melgar's death had been taking money from a fund used to pay informants. It says the sources allege that Melgar uncovered the theft and declined an offer to take a cut of the proceeds. On June 4, according to the Daily Beast's sources, an altercation broke out -- the cause of which the article says is unknown -- and Melgar stopped breathing. The SEALs and another Green Beret took Melgar to hospital, the Beast quotes former AFRICOM officials as saying.

Now that's what I call a dishonorable discharge.

Original story: Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32 (archive)

Roy Moore can still win

Moore has zero incentive to listen to calls from official Washington for him to leave the race. In fact, the louder those calls get, the more likely it is that Moore digs in even further.

Then there is the fact that the widespread condemnation of Moore among GOP senators is not entirely shared by Alabama Republicans.

Take Alabama state auditor Jim Ziegler, for one. In an interview, Ziegler downplayed the accusations against Moore by citing Scripture:

Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There's just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.

Then there was Alabama Marion County GOP chair David Hall, who told the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale this: "It was 40 years ago. I really don't see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14. She's not saying that anything happened other than they kissed."

In the Post report, however, the accuser also says Moore sexually assaulted her. She says Moore touched her and forced her to touch him.

Marrying young girls is old hat. We just grope and move on now.

Romney: 'Unfit' Moore 'should step aside'

Why do we care what Romney thinks, again?

Romney mulling Senate bid: report
I Never Liked Mitt Romney, But Now I’m Desperate for His Comeback

Oh, ok.

I went to the new restaurant that wants to become the 'McDonald's of pasta' — and they are onto something big

Ladner says Pasta Flyer's service model embodies the two cornerstones of fast food: speed and low prices. But he refers to the food itself as "slow" and more comparable to what you'd find at a traditional restaurant.

[...] I sampled four pastas: fusilli with basil pesto sauce, fettuccine with creamy Alfredo sauce, whole grain rigatoni with Nonna's meat ragu, and spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce. I was shocked to find that all four were of the same quality I would expect from an upscale Italian restaurant that charges around $25 for a bowl of pasta. The noodles were cooked to al dente perfection, the sauces were warm and rich, and the meat was flavorful and tender. The dishes were simple, but done right.

[...] To make this happen, Ladner says the sauces are held just above a temperature set by the NYC Department of Health. After a customer orders, their noodles are cooked in 15 seconds while their sauce is brought to a boil, and then the two are plated.

[...] Ladner says the wheat is milled directly before the pasta is made, resulting in a noodle that's "fresh and alive," and will still be al dente when you eat it a day later as leftovers. "It's the best pasta I know of in the world, and it's $7.50," he says.

I love what's happening with #SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Which did tremendously well in the Senate Commerce Committee. Senator Feinstein loves it. Senator Portman and Senator Blumenthal are sponsoring it. Sheryl from Facebook loves it, Facebook is all for it. 21st Century Fox, which is Fox News, loves it. Disney, which does great work with our precious children, loves it. Google, Oracle and HP, some of our biggest cyber companies, love it. Almost everybody loves it.

But some LOSERS don't love it. They don't get it. They say "Oh, SESTA is censorship!" It's not censorship. Believe me, it's not censorship. The Consumer Technology Association, the Internet Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation -- these are foolish people. They don't understand that we need to close up our internet. To stop the pimping that has turned America's internet into a big, big brothel. The biggest. As you know, we're having major, major problems with the pimping sites. The pimps have taken over our internet. SESTA can fix this problem easily and quickly. We can begin to #LockThemUp. China was having tremendous problems with its cyber, they got it under control. We must do the same. Folks, tell your senators, don't listen to the fools. Don't listen to the losers. Tell them to pass SESTA! We need it very badly. Time is quickly running out, we must act fast, and hopefully Congress will act faster and more effectively than anyone. I know one thing about Congress, if they work on it hard, it will happen. We DESPERATELY need SESTA. I am sitting in Beijing with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me. I have pen in hand. Believe me, I'm in China, I have pen in hand. 🇺🇸🇨🇳

So, I'm running a Debian knockoff. Did a distro upgrade, primarily because Liquorix kernel is barfing all over Jessie. The distro upgrade went alright, and some irritating quirks in the system were cured. I wasn't expecting that - how long has it been since a system ran noticeably better after an upgrade? Stuff is mostly incremental, and unnoticeable these days.

After booting to the new system, I attempt to install Liquorix again, and it barfs again. I do get a message this time, leaving me hopeful - I need a couple specific packages to satisfy Liquorix kernel. So, apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade. Those packages and a half dozen related are installed. But, apt-get barfs now. /var/apt/ is now locked. So, the only thing to do is dpkg --reconfigure -a

Not possible. My file system is read only now.

I didn't document stuff, so I can't reconstruct all the steps I took, but EVERYTHING failed. I read at least a dozen different pages, trying to figure out how to fix my fs. fsck was being entirely uncooperative, no matter which DVD/USB I booted to. So, screw it - I guess I'll have to install something. Look around the net a bit, think, look at the ISO's I already have downloaded, and decide on Manjaro. Write it to a USB, try again to recover my files system, and fail. I change my mind about installing Manjaro. I decide on Siduction - write that to USB, boot up, and again, decide to try recovering my file system (one more time) before proceeding with installation.

And, the file system is fixed. There were no errors or anything on the part of fsck. It found errors on my root file system, and fixed them. Simple as that.

Obviously, the system was recoverable. It's recovered. It can't get any more obvious than that, can it? So, why did all those rescue disk images, and various distribution ISO's all fail? For a few moments, I wanted to point at systemd as the culprit, but Siduction runs on systemd. So, what is different between Siduction, and everything else I was working with?

I might imagine that Siduction is the distro most similar to the installed system - but that gets me nowhere. None of the administration tools are "different" from one distro to another. I might imagine that one (or more) of my DVD's or USB's was improperly burnt. But, ALL OF THEM???

I might also presume that my SSD is getting ready to barf. Possibly, there is some kind of error going on in the "hard drive" that affected me a dozen times, but didn't trigger on (roughly) the 13th attempt to fix the system?

Or, maybe we're just experiencing an especially heavy cosmic ray storm? Phhhttt - I give up. I've got my system back. Unless it barfs on me again, I'll blame those cosmic rays, or gremlins. If it does barf, I'll stick a new SSD in, install Siduction, and hope it's not some other bit of hardware that caused the problem.

And, maybe I'll just give up on the Liquorix kernal. That's where all of this nonsense started.

Folks, time zones can be very confusing. In Massachusetts they're trying to decide, what time zone are they in? Here in China, as you know, they don't have time zones. And it can be very confusing for a child when his father goes very far away, crossing many, many time zones. I know some of you just finished a tremendous election. Very sad for those of you who are Dems. Because my great Republican Party did amazingly well. While your party is dead. It's dead and the DNC doesn't know why. They don't want to know. But I think the very crooked DNC is a big, big part of it.

It's been a year since our tremendous election of November 2016. One of the best elections, probably the best election ever in the history of the world. In which I said we'd better stop business as usual and not be beholden to ways of the past which were not working. And the American people gave me a HUGE victory. Which was really a victory for them. Because I always, always put the American people first. Some of my great Republican candidates do too. And those who do have done very well. Congratulations to the winners! Big wins for my Republican Party in the House of Representatives. Massive win in the Electoral College! pic.twitter.com/7ifv5gT7Ur

But we had a couple of LOSERS. .@ChrisChristie is a big loser. Maybe, probably the biggest, because he's very, very fat. A big fat slob. He needs to go on The Biggest Loser to lose a lot of weight. He didn't lose weight, he lost the election. He gave me his endorsement last year, but it was a big negative for me. A huge negative, almost a disaster. I think he was angling to be @VP, can you imagine if I'd picked him? It would be like Laurel & Hardy!

Ed Gillespie, who never supported me, also lost. He's a hard worker but he's a LOSER. He was always against what I stand for, against Making America Great Again. When my terrific alt-right went to Charlottesville to protect our statues, protect our heritage, culture & history, he was against them. And it was a disaster. So he lost, big league.

It's a sad day for our great states of New Jersey and Virginia. It's not sad, because they voted out LOSERS. Who are Republicans. Who happen to be Republicans. But it's sad because they voted in Dems. Who are losers because they're Dems. Who are Dems because they're losers.

Meanwhile, I'm in China. Which is amazing. Very different from the USA, it's like night and day. The wealth of China is amazing, it's really something. We've made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. Thinking about holding a big rally in Tiananmen Square! I'm kidding. Obviously I'm kidding. The Chinese are very rich and very happy. Of course they're happy, they have everything they could possibly want. Except Trump hotels. I'd love to have big, beautiful Trump hotels in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I'm very busy right now but my people, if you're listening, you can think about opening hotels there. That will be a great day for China.

Had a great time in Japan and Korea. Japanese burgers & Coke are just like ours. pic.twitter.com/9RiaibqNLO Korean food is fantastic. Strange, but amazingly good. They have something called Taco Tuesday. Which they do every Tuesday. It's a big tradition for them. I had a taco 🌮 and a burrito 🌯 -- those are like stuffed crêpes, they make them with a thin, round bread like a crêpe -- for lunch there. And for dinner there was corn, ribs and TRIPLE chocolate cake with raspberry sauce. It's the threesome of chocolate. Which I never had before. I had double chocolate before, they added a third chocolate. To make it three. It was the best chocolate cake you've ever had in your life. It was my first triple, I felt like I lost my virginity all over again. Like I was a baby before this. For me it wasn't a triple, it was a home run. Tremendous! I'm going to tell the chefs at the White House, at both White Houses, all about Korean food. Maybe they can bake me a cake with four chocolates! They say travel expands the mind. I think it can expand the waistline too. But a slob like Chris Christie can get fat without going anywhere. pic.twitter.com/wyOdmqcFLd

Stay safe while I'm away. Above all, stay away from the NFL. Don't go to the games, don't watch them on TV. Boycott the NFL until such time as they respect Anthem, Flag and Country. And good luck. Good luck, everybody. #USAStrong #NFLBoycott #Neverwatch #BoycottTheNFL #BoycottNFL 🇺🇸

Theoretical Physicists Are Getting Closer to Explaining How NASA’s ‘Impossible’ EmDrive Works

Theoretical scientists are trying to understand why and how EmDrive propulsion works. The NASA paper suggests a tentative explanation based on a quantum physics theory, "a nonlocal hidden-variable theory, or pilot-wave theory for short."

A new research paper by a Portuguese scientist, titled "A Possible Explanation for the Em Drive Based on a Pilot Wave Theory" is now trending among EmDrive enthusiasts in the NasaSpaceFlight forum. The paywalled paper proposes a similar model to the NASA one (here's an open access preprint you can read.)

Pilot-wave theories have been proposed since the 1920s by quantum physicists, notably Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, to make sense of the weird behavior of quantum matter. Recently, pilot-wave quantum theories have gained more popularity after it was discovered that pilot-wave quantum-like behavior can be reproduced in classical fluids and explained by classical (non-quantum) fluid dynamics.

Not enough meat on these bones for another story, but you might be interested.

Previously: Explanation may be on the way for the "Impossible" EmDrive
Finnish Physicist Says EmDrive Device Does Have an Exhaust
EmDrive Peer-Reviewed Paper Coming in December; Theseus Planning a Cannae Thruster Cubesat
It's Official: NASA's Peer-Reviewed EmDrive Paper Has Finally Been Published
Space Race 2.0: China May Already be Testing an EmDrive in Orbit
Physicist Uses "Quantised Inertia" to Explain Both EmDrive and Galaxy Rotation
EmDrive 3.0: Wait, Where's EmDrive 2.0?

Trump’s Legacy: Damaged Brains

The pesticide, which belongs to a class of chemicals developed as a nerve gas made by Nazi Germany, is now found in food, air and drinking water. Human and animal studies show that it damages the brain and reduces I.Q.s while causing tremors among children. It has also been linked [open, DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djh324] [DX] to lung cancer and Parkinson's disease [DOI: 10.1136/oemed-2013-101394] [DX] in adults.

[...] This chemical, chlorpyrifos, is hard to pronounce, so let's just call it Dow Chemical Company's Nerve Gas Pesticide. Even if you haven't heard of it, it may be inside you: One 2012 study found that it was in the umbilical cord blood of 87 percent of newborn babies tested. And now the Trump administration is embracing it, overturning a planned ban that had been in the works for many years.

The Environmental Protection Agency actually banned Dow's Nerve Gas Pesticide for most indoor residential use 17 years ago — so it's no longer found in the Raid you spray at cockroaches (it's very effective, which is why it's so widely used; then again, don't suggest this to Dow, but sarin nerve gas might be even more effective!). The E.P.A. was preparing to ban it for agricultural and outdoor use this spring, but then the Trump administration rejected the ban. That was a triumph for Dow, but the decision stirred outrage among public health experts. They noted that Dow had donated $1 million for President Trump's inauguration.

So Dow's Nerve Gas Pesticide will still be used on golf courses, road medians and crops that end up on our plate. Kids are told to eat fruits and vegetables, but E.P.A. scientists found levels of this pesticide on such foods at up to 140 times the limits deemed safe. "This was a chemical developed to attack the nervous system," notes Virginia Rauh, a Columbia professor who has conducted groundbreaking research on it. "It should not be a surprise that it's not good for people."

[...] Democrats sometimes gloat that Trump hasn't managed to pass significant legislation so far, which is true. But he has been tragically effective at dismantling environmental and health regulations — so that Trump's most enduring legacy may be cancer, infertility and diminished I.Q.s for decades to come.

Chlorpyrifos

Asked in April whether Pruitt had met with Dow Chemical Company executives or lobbyists before his decision, a EPA spokesman replied: "We have had no meetings with Dow on this topic." In June, after several Freedom of Information Act requests, the EPA released a copy of Pruitt's March meeting schedule which showed that a meeting had been scheduled between Pruitt and Dow CEO Andrew Liveris at a hotel in Houston, Texas, on March 9.[91] Both men were featured speakers at an energy conference. An EPA spokesperson reported that the meeting was brief and the pesticide was not discussed.[92]

In August, it was revealed that in fact Pruitt and other EPA officials had met with industry representatives on dozens of occasions in the weeks immediately prior to the March decision, promising them that it was "a new day" and assuring them that their wish to continue using chlorpyrifos had been heard. Ryan Jackson, Pruitt's chief of staff, said in a March 8 email that he had "scared" career staff into going along with the political decision to deny the ban, adding "[T]hey know where this is headed and they are documenting it well."[93]

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC

Clinton Ally and Former DNC Chairwoman Turns Tables, Accuses DNC of Rigging Primary Against Bernie