Image Composite Editor (ICE) is an advanced panoramic image stitcher created by the Microsoft Research Interactive Visual Media Group. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the app creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. ICE can also create a panorama from a panning video, including stop-motion action overlaid on the background. Finished panoramas can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading them to the Photosynth web site. Panoramas can also be saved in a wide variety of image formats, including JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop’s PSD/PSB format, as well as the multiresolution tiled format used by HD View and Deep Zoom.

John Solomon’s site “Just The News” has obtained what is said to be a 29-page memorandum prepared by an Atlanta firm called “Seven Hills Strategies” (SHS) which identified — in real-time — problems observed by representatives of the firm as it provided logistical support to Fulton County election workers on Election Day 2020 and the days following. The memo is written in the form of a timeline of events and observations as they happened, laid out in chronological sequence, with the date and time entries of the events described. //

Let me begin with this caution: I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this document. It surprised me — to put it mildly — that this document exists, yet has remained secret for this long. Until its provenance is better known, and we know more about the company that created it, I would say let’s be interested in its contents, but not adopt them uncritically without more information about where it came from. //

uplateagain
17 hours ago edited
If Raffensberger's change in attitude two weeks ago is related to this document, it's only because he realized two weeks ago that John Solomon was onto him about it. In other words... his attitude changed because he got caught. He has had this document since November 12th.

The Daily Wire reports that the Western Conservative Summit found that for those who attended, “The top five candidates, in order of most approval to least, were: Ron DeSantis (74%), Donald Trump (71%), Sen. Ted Cruz (43%), Mike Pompeo (39%) and Sen. Tim Scott (36%),” //

John Cardillo
@johncardillo
People want action and DeSantis has proven he’s willing to act.

Anecdotally, those I speak to trust DeSantis FAR more on personnel. //

Indeed, it’s no secret that personnel staffing problems plagued President Trump’s administration from the get-go.

GOP hacks from the Republican National Committee and other D.C. swamp creatures took advantage of the new president’s inexperience dealing with the government, and, rather than appointing those who supported President Trump, folks like Reince Priebus saw it their duty to fill his administration chock full of Paul Ryan, George Bush-type appointees.

“Maybe this is their job. Maybe they’re paid to do it,” Boebert said in an interview with the Washington Examiner on Saturday. “You see this from extreme leftist progressives because either this is their job, either they are paid to do it, or they have nothing better to do, they’re sitting at home collecting a check, and this is their life.”

“I mean, I don’t have time for that,” the Republican lawmaker said. “You don’t see conservatives doing things like this because we have families to take care of, we have jobs to work at, we have communities to grow. And that’s our focus — not to destroy, but to build.”

Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry were wealthy landowners in South Carolina’s Colleton District in the 1830s, in what is now Charleston County. The couple owned 84 slaves each for a total of 168, at a time when most of their peers owned a handful. Their slaves worked their plantation and made them rich. Angel and Horry also traded slaves for profit, showing no regard for dissolving slave families. They were no kinder or crueler to their slaves than anyone else. They were considered “slave magnates” because of the number of slaves they owned. They were referred to as the “economic elite.” They were also black.

Black people owned black people in all 13 original colonies and in every state that allowed slavery. Frequently, freed black people would go on to own more slaves than their white neighbors. In 1830, nearly a fourth of the free black slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves, and several owned more than 30, far surpassing their white slave-owning neighbors.

Yes, black people, frequently former slaves themselves, owned slaves. While it can be said that many black people owned family members to protect them and keep them close, black slave owners also bought and sold slaves for profit. Renowned African-American historian and Duke University Professor, John Hope Franklin, wrote “The majority of Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in their property. There were instances, however, in which free Negroes had a real economic interest in the institution of slavery and held slaves in order to improve their economic status.” Franklin also wrote that roughly 3,000 free black people in New Orleans alone owned slaves. //

Why don’t history teachers include this in their curriculum? You know why! How can they demonize white people and divide us racially and if they taught the truth? What reason would they have for teaching the commie Critical Race Theory? How can black people demand reparations if you know thousands of black people owned slaves as well? How can they propagate the myth of “systemic racism” if we were all just allowed to get along?

Remember, it’s no longer about equality in our country, it’s now about equity. YOU need to pay for what other white, and black, people stopped doing over 155 years ago.

California will spend $500 million to thin forests to prevent fires
dailymail.co.uk //

This is long overdue. When you look at the historical trends of California fires, it was clear that a lack of proper forest management and suppressing of natural burns had caused the last half-decade of carnage. Now that Trump is out of office, California can admit he was right without having to admit he was right. It’s all very convenient, but it’s also deeply cynical. How many people suffered because Democrats wanted to play politics with forest fires? Never mind that in some cases, the fires were man-made, which meant that blaming climate change was even more farcical in those instances.

In the end, Trump was right and his detractors were wrong, again. But they weren’t just wrong by chance. They purposely lied at the expense of people’s lives and homes in order to avoid having to agree that a Republican president was right.

Last week, Schilling explained the group in more detail to Buck Sexton.

“It hit me about a year and a half ago that everyone in D.C. has a special interest arm that’s fighting for them, that’s getting the bad guys unelected and getting their allies elected — except for the American family,” Schilling told Sexton. You have, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech, you know you get all these “bigs” but there’s no big family.

“So we wanted to found the Big Family an NRA style membership organization to get families active and engaged in politics. So, if you’re opposing school choice or if you’re fighting for critical race schools or any of this crazy stuff, we’re going to come after you just as you know the NRA puts gun owners after you, we’re going to come after you. We’re going to get you unelected for hurting our kids,” Schilling continued.

A Boston professor created an invention that reflects the heat off of rooftops and even sucks the heat out of homes and buildings - and the real kicker is that it is 100 percent recyclable.

Yi Zheng, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, created "cooling paper" so that a building or home could essentially keep cool on its own, with no electricity required, according to Northeastern University's blog.

The paper can cool down a room's temperature by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit - a game-changing alternative to air conditioners that require a lot of electricity and money from home owners. //

Zheng's invention works through the "porous microstructure of the natural fibers" inside the cooling paper, which absorbs warmth and reemits it away from the building. The cooling paper itself is made out of common paper.

The light-colored material is part of Zheng's studies into nanomaterials. His idea was first sparked after seeing a bucket full of printing paper. //

Zheng and his team used a high-speed blender from his home kitchen to turn the paper into a pulp and mixed it with the material that makes up Teflon.

The product can coat buildings and homes, reflecting solar rays away from the interior and even absorbing heat from cooking, electronics and human bodies out of the indoor space.

Even when the paper is recycled, it still performs as well as the original. ///

Nice, but saying that it cools buildings is somewhat misleading: it can cool buildings below the temperature they might otherwise be without it, but it can't cool it below ambient temperature, which is half the point of air conditioning. The other half is reducing humidity, and it does nothing for that.

What this could well do is make existing air conditioning more efficient, and that is a worth doing.

While the 46th president talked about grave unspecified threats to global peace, word seeped out of his administration that he was actually cutting – as in reducing — U.S. defense spending amid a ubiquitous panoply of threats.

It’s a familiar Democrat tactic, seizing funds from national defense spending to finance the freebies that Biden and his party are so fond of doling out. //

Here’s a chilling observation: “America is rapidly piling up debt past 100% of GDP while shrinking its defenses.” That will make it extremely difficult to compete in the future with authoritarian countries that might have aggressive intentions but no foible-filled Congress to address.

Take China, for instance. It now has more than 350 ships in its military fleet. The U.S. but 300. While the U.S. intends to retire nearly $3 billion in older ships to save money in coming months, China continues building apace.

It commissioned three new warships on the same day recently, a nuclear submarine and two for amphibious operations in the nearby South China Sea.

Since building new ships takes years of designing and construction, today’s decisions to cut back the Navy’s fleet and arsenal will determine American capabilities to counter any Chinese aggression in 10 years’ time.

By then, of course, the same crowd will be running China. Joe Biden will be long gone and the repercussions of any unpreparedness will be left for others to face.

The Hill
@thehill
Sen. @tedcruz: "Critical race theory is bigoted, it is a lie and it is every bit as racist as the Klansman in white sheets." //

You can’t position yourself as a champion against racism and then push CRT, which at its very core is racist. You only have to look at Ibram X. Kendi, the current figurehead pushing CRT, and his “anti-racist” movement understand that.

Kendi proposes that racism isn’t actually racism if it’s creating “equity” in the system. Note the distinct language shift from the prior term of “equality.” In other words, the proposition is that racial discrimination is actually good if it somehow elevates those viewed as “oppressed” by current systems. Of course, how the current systems cause oppression is a question always left unanswered. Are there specific laws that need to be changed? Which ones, exactly?

Further, to push the perverted idea that it is moral and necessary to be racist in the pursuit of equity, CRT proclaims that white people hold implicit, inbred racial views and benefit from “privilege” that justifies discrimination against them to balance outcomes. Obviously, things get even more convoluted and complicated from there, but the nuts and bolts of what the modern left call critical race theory is simply racism by another name. //

Racism is racism, and there is no justification for it. At the end of the day, it is the government’s job to provide equality, not equity. Equity of outcome is an impossible goal that takes agency away from individuals, supposing that all hard work leading to success is somehow tainted. //

JohnTruman edintexas
2 days ago
Time to abolish the Race-Hustler Industrial-Complex.

“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

Booker T. Washington

“The bitterness and hate ... would have long since been obliterated in this state, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.”

Senator Hiram Revels (1827-1901)