PNG to SVG
Best online tool to convert PNG to SVG. Create beautiful SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) from your PNG images.

82 in. x 54 in. Emergency Mylar Blanket Rescue Heat Preservation Insulated Blanket Waterproof, Weatherproof (10-Pack)

Includes 10 units ($1.48 /unit)
$14.79 /package

Rather, this takes wokeness in children’s programming not just to another planet, but well into another universe. Jarring cuts with various questionable claims are interspersed with black children raising their fists and shouting “Slaves built this country!” over and over. That is then parlayed into a demand for financial reparations.

And we the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic predjudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.

Slaves built this country.

In another section, it is asserted that Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves and that “Emancipation is not freedom.” Other generalized claims include the idea that slavery made “your families” rich, a statement pointed at all white Americans, and that slavery built the banking and shipping industries.

There are several problems here, beginning with the fact that it’s just incredibly divisive and harmful to teach children eight generations removed from slavery that they are oppressed victims due to the suffering of their ancestors. Anyone who watches that clip and is impressionable is going to walk away thinking they have a right to be angry at and punish those that don’t look like them. //

It is a grossly inaccurate simplification of American history to teach kids that “Slaves built this country.” Slavery contributed to parts of the early economy in the United States, but it did not build the country into what it is today (or even what it was a hundred years ago).

Why? Because slavery is an evil, atrophying institution that stunts the growth of a nation instead of accelerating it. In the case of the United States, it locked generations of slaves and non-slaves alike in abject poverty. Slaves were obviously not paid while their forced labor then crushed the market for the labor of non-slaves. Compounding the situation, because most slaves weren’t allowed to be educated and the vast majority of non-slaves at the time were so poor they couldn’t afford to be, generations of advancement were lost across the board.

Slavery was not good. It had no redeeming qualities. It did not “build this country.” Instead, those who perpetrated it mired the country in place for decades for the benefit of a very select few. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that the United States actually began its march to global dominance beginning with the industrial revolution.

Lastly, even if one wants to ignore everything I’ve just written, the “Slaves built this country” line also suffers from a math problem. There were a little over three million slaves in the United States in 1850 (the last pre-war census taken). In comparison. there were 23 million Americans in total. Non-slave-owning adults made up the vast majority of that number and almost all of them worked hard labor jobs in relative squalor, with the largest populations of people residing in non-slave states. In other words, they also “built this country,” and it does not downplay slavery to admit that context. //

Brytek
an hour ago
slavery didn’t build this country, but it most certainly nearly destroyed it. Slaves were mostly used on plantations in the south, but slaves also existed in scattered areas of the north. The building and construction of this country was mostly done by paid laborers not slaves. The CRT notion of reparations is an appeal to the weak minds of carefully groomed people who have been raised up for such nonsense. Every single group of humans deserves reparations given past sins against their ancestors by someone - some more egregious than slavery. Take the American Indians, or native peoples anywhere where they were “colonized”. I think the Jews deserve reparations from the entire world over their treatment for 1000’s of years. What about the people in Spain and Southern France who had to live through the attack and enslavement by the Moors - do they not deserve reparations? Can any amount of payment wash clean anyone’s ancestors ‘sins” - of course not and their offspring are not guilty of their distant ancestors behaviors. This grab for reparations is simple a money grab based on the gene pool lottery, got some of them slave genes in ya - collect a payment. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
2 hours ago
This bit of revisionist history completely ignores millions of indentured servants who were effectively slaves except for having a time when they would gain their freedom.

Slavery was evil and our countries greatest sin. Our country was among the first to end it and helped end piracy worldwide to end slavery worldwide.

It was also practiced by every culture in human history except the Intuit in the arctic. Nobody has clean hands and her propaganda is nothing more than hate speech.

“In 2009, LS Power, a New York private equity company, tried to build a power line over Minidoka. Thankfully, the Department of the Interior moved LS Power’s Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP) power line away from the park. Today, LS Power seeks approval from the Bureau of Land Management to build the giant Lava Ridge wind project on federal land within two miles of the park’s visitor center.” — Friends of Minidoka

In Episode 329 of District of Conservation, Gabriella speaks with two leaders behind the “Stop Lava Ridge” movement, Diana Nielsen and Dean Dimond, to discuss the significance of the proposed Lava Ridge Wind Project in Southern Idaho. This proposed project is endorsed by the Biden administration as part of their goal to generate 25 gigawatts of onshore wind energy by 2025. This interview ties with today’s release of Conservation Nation Episode 12 on the very subject. Tune in to learn more!

Virtue-signaling politicians don’t want wind turbines like Lava Ridge near them. They let others pay the price of their energy fantasies. //

If all goes according to plan, Magic Valley Energy will soon be installing up to 400, 740-foot-tall wind turbines, 485 miles of new roads, miles and miles of transmission lines, and buildings filled with half-ton battery modules on upwards of 197,000 acres at Lava Ridge in southwestern Idaho.

The company is named after a beautiful valley that soon won’t be nearly so magical.

The acreage is equal to 15 percent of Delaware, and the turbines, at 740 feet tall, are larger than the Washington Monument — an appropriate comparison because the project is being advanced in cooperation with a climate-obsessed Biden administration determined to replace fossil fuels with “clean” energy.

For the administration, saving the planet from computer models of manmade climate disasters is far more important than saving land, scenery, habitats, wildlife, and ways of life from the ravages of wind and solar installations.

In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other federal agencies, is preparing to expedite wind and solar permit approvals, no matter the effects on Mother Earth. They’ve even decreed that bald and golden eagles killed by wind turbines are merely “incidental takings” — unintentional losses due to otherwise lawful activities — and thus irrelevant in permitting decisions. Nor do they consider the incomprehensible amounts of mining (in faraway lands with lax environmental standards) required to produce the metals, minerals, and concrete those installations will need.

The gaggle of Google employees peered at their computer screens in bewilderment. They had spent many months honing an algorithm designed to steer an unmanned helium balloon all the way from Puerto Rico to Peru. But something was wrong. The balloon, controlled by its machine mind, kept veering off course.

Salvatore Candido of Google's now-defunct Project Loon venture, which aimed to bring internet access to remote areas via the balloons, couldn't explain the craft’s trajectory. His colleagues manually took control of the system and put it back on track.

It was only later that they realised what was happening. Unexpectedly, the artificial intelligence (AI) on board the balloon had learned to recreate an ancient sailing technique first developed by humans centuries, if not thousands of years, ago. "Tacking" involves steering a vessel into the wind and then angling outward again so that progress in a zig-zag, roughly in the desired direction, can still be made.

Under unfavourable weather conditions, the self-flying balloons had learned to tack all by themselves. The fact they had done this, unprompted, surprised everyone, not least the researchers working on the project.

"We quickly realised we'd been outsmarted when the first balloon allowed to fully execute this technique set a flight time record from Puerto Rico to Peru," wrote Candido in a blog post about the project. "I had never simultaneously felt smarter and dumber at the same time."

This is just the sort of thing that can happen when AI is left to its own devices. Unlike traditional computer programs, AIs are designed to explore and develop novel approaches to tasks that their human engineers have not explicitly told them about.

But while learning how to do these tasks, sometimes AIs come up with an approach so inventive that it can astonish even the people who work with such systems all the time. That can be a good thing, but it could also make things controlled by AIs dangerously unpredictable – robots and self-driving cars could end up making decisions that put humans in harm's way. //

Video game AI researcher Julian Togelius at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering can explain what's going on here. He says these are classic examples of "reward allocation" errors. When an AI is asked to accomplish something, it may uncover strange and unexpected methods of achieving its goal, where end always justifies the means. We humans rarely take such a stance. The means, and the rules that govern how we ought to play, matter.

Baby Olme, who is expected to arrive in April 2023, has become one of the first babies in the Department of Defense to clock 9.2 hours in a supersonic aircraft.
As Maj. Lauren Olme, 77th Weapons Squadron assistant director of operations, fires up the engines of a B-1 Lancer on Dyess Air Force Base, she is living out her lifelong dream of being a pilot. In addition to that dream, she achieved a new feat that will impact future generations of servicewomen: Flying while pregnant.

Chinese balloon shot down of Myrtle Beach

While in many countries it is a citizen's duty to serve occasionally on a jury, there are some ways to avoid such duty if it would prove a true hardship. Failure to respond to a summons for jury duty is not a good idea: that could result in up to two years' incarceration or a substantial fine. However, if you have a legitimate reason for avoiding jury duty, you should go through the legal process of getting yourself excused.

Searching Google for downloads of popular software has always come with risks, but over the past few months, it has been downright dangerous, according to researchers and a pseudorandom collection of queries.

“Threat researchers are used to seeing a moderate flow of malvertising via Google Ads,” volunteers at Spamhaus wrote on Thursday. “However, over the past few days, researchers have witnessed a massive spike affecting numerous famous brands, with multiple malware being utilized. This is not ‘the norm.’”

Communication Commission (FCC), True Anomaly is now gearing up for its first orbital mission. In October, True Anomaly hopes to launch two Jackal “orbital pursuit” spacecraft aboard a SpaceX rocket to low earth orbit. The Jackals will not house guns, warheads, or laser blasters, but they will be capable of rendezvous proximity operations (RPO)—the ability to maneuver close to other satellites and train a battery of sensors upon them. This could reveal their rivals’ surveillance and weapons systems or help intercept communications.

The quirky work of two brothers' lives has found a wider audience on Steam and Itchi.io, and now they have some breathing room.

The month before Dwarf Fortress was released on Steam (and Itch.io), the brothers Zach and Tarn Adams made $15,635 in revenue, mostly from donations for their 16-year freeware project. The month after the game's commercial debut, they made $7,230,123, or 462 times that amount.

"The fairytale ending is reality, but you didn't kiss the toad," Zach Adams wrote on Bay 12 Games' forums. "You gave him money." He went on to write the kind of grateful response to fans you don't often see from game developers:

The appreciation you give us is part of our being now. It carries us in the cars we drive. It sustains us as the food that we eat. There is now no longer any existence except the one that you have provided. When we pass from this world, you will be the reason we are remembered.

Tarn Adams noted that "a little less than half will go to taxes," and that other people and expenses must be paid. But enough of it will reach the brothers themselves that "we've solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people." It also means that Putnam, a longtime modder and scripter and community member, can continue their work on the Dwarf Fortress code base, having been hired in December.

An extensively drug-resistant bacterial strain is spreading in the US for the first time and causing an alarming outbreak linked to artificial tears eye drops, according to an alert released Wednesday evening from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, the germ has caused various infections in 55 people in 12 states, killing one and leaving others hospitalized and with permanent vision loss.

Without wastewater sampling, the eradicated virus could have easily spread.

An eradicated form of wild polio surfaced in routine wastewater monitoring in the Netherlands last year, offering a cautionary tale on the importance of monitoring for the tenacious virus, researchers report this week in the journal Eurosurveilance.

The sewage sample came up positive for infectious poliovirus in mid-November and genome sequencing revealed a strain of wild poliovirus type 3, which was declared globally eradicated in 2019. Its potential revival would be a devastating setback in the decades-long effort to stamp out highly infectious and potentially paralytic germ for good. //

For brief background, there are three types of wild polioviruses: type 2 and type 3 have been eradicated, with the former being knocked out in 2015. Wild poliovirus type 1 continues to circulate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are also occasional vaccine-derived polioviruses that circulate in communities with low vaccination rates, which recently occurred in New York.

The positive wastewater sample last year was the first and only indication of a polio infection with the bygone strain in the Netherlands. It occurred in an employee of a vaccine production facility run by Bilthoven Biologicals, which makes inactivated polio vaccines. The Netherlands had set up routine wastewater surveillance around the production site to monitor for such a viral escape. //

reviewer1 Smack-Fu Master, in training
3y
40
As a brief supplementary primer on poliovirus vaccines, there are two major versions, Salk's inactivated polio vaccine and Sabin's oral polio vaccine. Both of them are incredibly good at protecting against the paralytic disease of poliomyelitis. They are both less than 100% effective at preventing infection and replication of the virus in a vaccinated person's intestinal tract. So they protect the vaccinated person but should not be counted on to build towards herd immunity because they don't prevent someone from getting infected, making a few million new copies of the virus and putting those back into the water supply (or whatever else they touch without washing their hands properly). For more, see: https://www.who.int/teams/health-pr...specifications/vaccines-quality/poliomyelitis

The oral polio vaccine is better at producing a mucosal immune response in the intestines, so it's better at preventing someone from getting meaningfully infected at all. However, the oral polio vaccine uses live attenuated virus. The tricky thing about live virus is that it mutates and, given enough time, those mutations can undo the attenuation mutations and allow it to become more virulent.

So each vaccine has strengths and weaknesses. At this point, I think the most important thing to know is that being vaccinated for poliovirus protects against getting sick, not against getting infected, and infected people can and do shed virus that can infect others. //

FreeRangeOrganicSoyLatteCappuccino Ars Praetorian
2y
2,629
Uncivil Servant said:
Just to be clear, the inactivated vaccine still protects against infection as well as paralytic polio, but the oral attenuated vaccine provides better protection against the initial infection compared to the inactivated vaccine.

There's an important distinction between "the inactivated vaccine is less effective in preventing (non-paralytic) infection compared to the oral attentuated vaccine" and "the inactivated vaccine does not prevent (non-paralytic) infections".

The oral vaccine also has some advantages in terms of storage and transporation in rural areas of developing nations. It's also a lot easier to administer, especially to young children. But yes, it comes with risks. Hopefully soon polio will go the way of smallpox and rinderpest.
Click to expand...The inactivated vaccine (iPV) provides minimal protection against intestinal mucosal infection. So a person vaccinated with iPV is immune from paralytic complications of polio, can still be infected with polio and continuously poop out viral particles. iPV protects the person, not the population.

The oral vaccine (OPV) provides protection against BOTH intestinal mucosal infection and the paralytic complications of polio. However, there is a chance that the OPV mutates and reverts back to an active virus.

Presumably, this vaccine factory worker was working with a lab sample of type 3 polio and got sloppy with technique. That some worker was presumably vaccinated using the iPV which protected them from paralytic polio, but did NOT protect them from getting polio into their gut and replicating/shedding virus.

CKing123 Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
7y
192
mgforbes said:
Does getting both the injected and oral version of the vaccine confer better immunity, or is it a case of when you've had one, the other one doesn't work?
So OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine) provides antibodies in the guts which means you can blunt transmission and provides protection against infection for a few months. IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine) only creates antibodies in blood so you can still get infected and shed the virus (you can for OPV after a while too, but you will blunt transmission). However, the antibodies in blood prevent polio from getting to nerves and causing paralysis. However, if you ever have had OPV, you can be given IPV later and it will increase antibodies in the guts once again without requiring you to take OPV again.

On July 24, 1983, the Kansas City Royals' George Brett hit a ninth-inning home run against the New York Yankees that would become the most controversial homer in baseball history. Here is an oral history of the Pine Tar Game.

"The bat handle, for not more than 18 inches from the end, may be covered or treated with any material (including pine tar) to improve the grip. Any such material, including pine tar, which extends past the 18-inch limitation, in the umpire's judgment, shall cause the bat to be removed from the game. No such material shall improve the reaction or distance factor of the bat." — Rule 1.10 (b), Official Rules of Baseball, 1983

2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth's Moon—a history-making clandestine project—and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan's mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient—enough so to have built a lost civilization.

Atlas Air flew home the last 747 ever produced on 1 February, marking the end of 747 deliveries from Boeing after 53 years.

A day after a gala ceremony fit for the Queen of the Skies the 747-8F registered N863GT thundered down Paine Field’s Runway 16R and lifted into the air to the awe of gathered onlookers. After a low pass at Paine, the flight headed east for Cincinnati, but not before drawing a special tribute to the 747.

En route from Everett to Cincinnati, the Atlas Air 747 took the time to draw a crown and “747” over eastern Washington. The 152 kilometer (94.5 mi) wide by 95.8 km (59.5 mi) high piece of sky art took 2 hours 35 minutes to complete at an altitude of 12,775 feet. The flight plan for this portion of the flight included 39 separate way points.

The final 747 delivery

The delivery of N863GT marks the final 747 to fly away from Everett after 1,574 model 747s came off the production line. From the first 747-100 to the shortened 747SP to the most successful variant, the 747-400, to the final 747-8, Boeing’s most iconic work has exited the building at Paine Field. The building will now be repurposed for 787 rework and a fourth final assembly line for the 737 MAX.

Just days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to China for “high-level talks,” the Pentagon announced that the US government has detected a Chinese spy balloon drifting over the continental United States for the past two days.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said:

“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now. The U.S. government, to include Norad, continues to track and monitor it closely. The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the US government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

A senior official told Fox News that the government is “confident” the balloon belongs to the People’s Republic of China.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) is sounding the alarm about an unsettling trend of companies with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party buying up U.S. military academies, including the one attended by Donald Trump when he was a teenager

Identical fork is restored after DMCA counterclaim. //

adespoton Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y

In general, reverse-engineering source code from a compiled binary is less straightforwardly illegal than simply cracking a game's DRM for piracy purposes, for instance. As the EFF explains, US case law includes certain fair use exceptions that can allow for this kind of decompilation work for research or interoperability purposes.

In the case of Grand Theft Auto, though, the game's End User License Agreement specifically asks players to agree not to "reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, prepare derivative works based on or otherwise modify the Software, in whole or in part." Back in 2005, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a similar anti-reverse-engineering EULA to take down BnetD, a reverse-engineered version of Blizzard's Battle.net that allowed the service to be emulated on private servers.

That's not quite how US Copyright works. If something's fair use, it doesn't matter what the EULA says, as Fair Use means copyright doesn't hold sway, which means any agreements based on copyright claims are meaningless.

The big difference here is that bnetd was used to create competition for the official battle.net server, so it didn't pass the Fair Use test. If it were released on Github today, there'd be no issue, as battle.net is no longer hosted by its creator, so there IS a fair use claim in play today.

And before people argue that copyright doesn't care about intent and competition... copyright of course does not; but Fair Use, which precludes copyright, does.

So while Take Two could argue that this game engine release that's binary compatible with their assets competes with current offerings of other games, Fair Use argues that Take Two no longer supports their game on modern hardware, so this third party code steps into that gap to enable assets to be used in the way intended at time of original purchase.

So at the end of the day, this isn't really any different than Right to Repair regarding John Deere and Apple: it's repairing an existing (and purchased) product so it can still be used. Take Two can't (successfully) argue that since they make a new tractor they want people to buy, they can stop people from upgrading the last tractor they sold them.