Zappa.com

Make way for the iron sausage...

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Lesser-evilism is war.

^^^Another case of Brazilian McGuyver creativity...

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"Honest! I thought it was carpets!"

British police find 39 bodies in truck container, arrest driver

"LONDON — British police have launched a murder investigation after the bodies of 39 people were found in a truck container outside London.
Officials across Europe were trying to piece together how and why the people were found dead in the tractor-trailer, which was discovered early Wednesday at an industrial park in Essex, about 15 miles east of London.

The driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, has been arrested on suspicion of murder."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/39-people-found-dead-truck-container-southeast-england-n1070396

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You're probably wondering why I'm here
(not that it makes a heck of a lot of a difference to ya)

Google claims 'quantum supremacy' for computer

By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website

Google says an advanced computer has achieved "quantum supremacy" for the first time, surpassing the performance of conventional devices.



The technology giant's Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform a specific task in 200 seconds that would take the world's best supercomputers 10,000 years to complete.

Scientists have been working on quantum computers for decades because they promise much faster speeds.

The result appears in Nature journal.

In classical computers, the unit of information is called a "bit" and can have a value of either 1 or 0. But its equivalent in a quantum system - the qubit (quantum bit) - can be both 1 and 0 at the same time.

This phenomenon opens the door for multiple calculations to be performed simultaneously. But the qubits need to be synchronised using a quantum effect known as entanglement, which Albert Einstein termed "spooky action at a distance".

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...meanwhile, in Chile:

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What's really happening in Brazil?

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hey punk let's make justice justice again

...still in Chile (mind you, one of the two countries in SA not to share a common border with Brazil), the other being Equator, in which social insurgency also happened these days):



Ghost, Brazil is the example of what happens to a country when lies and ignorance meet together with a broadly backward-oriented conservative elite. Chile and Brazil dwell along the worst economic equality indicators in the world... This week, here in Brazil, the congress just passed the new social (un)security laws, that basically says the most poor will earn even less and work most likely to the end of their lives. They were pushing hard to implement the private capitalization mode that was used in Chile in their dictatorial neo-liberal economic reforms in the 70s. Now Chile seems to have one of the highest suicide rates among elderly in the world. The difference is that Chile population is way more literate than here (it seems to me) and endured an even worse dictatorship than here, where people where gathered in stadiums to be slaughtered, or thrown from airplanes into the sea, taking small children to see their parents raped and tortured and so on...

Besides the most bizarre and surreal political developments of lately, what is really happening here in Bolsonistan, and that not many seem to have noticed is a major mysterious tar/oil spill, apparently in international waters and now has polluted a major part of the huge Northeaster Brazilian coast, where the best tourist destinations (beach wise) are...

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The main news providers in NZ seldom report on South America or South Africa, they appear to be obsessed with the USA the UK,
Europe and our nearest neighbors Australia Japan and the South Pacific Islands.....
We only hear about Russia China India and the Middle East when it's USA related or when really bad shit happens.....

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hey punk let's make justice justice again

Massive Ship Stuck in Niagara Falls Rocks for Over a Century Could Plunge Off Edge
Niagara Parks officials say the iron scow was considered to be an unmovable landmark before storms dislodged it from a rocky perch
Published Nov 4, 2019 at 1:36 AM | Updated 4 hours ago

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Massive-Ship-Stuck-in-Niagara-Falls-Rocks-for-Over-a-Century-Could-Plunge-Off-Edge-564334431.html



Severe weather that battered the Northeast this past weekend appeared to have loosened a massive ship that had been stuck near Niagara Falls for over a century.

Halloween night's heavy storms moved the dumping scow more than 150 feet downstream, Niagara Parks officials said. It's unclear how long the ship will stay there but measures are being taken to protect visitors in case it plunges off the falls' edge.

Niagara Parks officials say the iron scow was considered to be an unmovable landmark before storms dislodged it from a rocky perch.

The scow broke loose from a towing tug on Aug. 6, 1918, with two men on board. Gustav F. Lofberg and James H. Harris were quickly drifting toward the Falls, but their decision to open the scow's dumping door and flood the compartments slowed down the ship and possibly saved their lives.

They became stuck in the rocks along with the ship and emergency officials rescued the two men the following day. However, the ship was not deemed salvageable.

Lead in some Canadian water worse than Flint, investigation finds

Martha Mendoza, The Associated Press Published 7:19 a.m. ET Nov. 5, 2019


MONTREAL – Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have been unwittingly exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water, with contamination in several cities consistently higher than they ever were in Flint, Michigan, according to an investigation that tested drinking water in hundreds of homes and reviewed thousands more previously undisclosed results.

Residents in some homes in Montreal, a cosmopolitan city an hour north of the U.S.-Canada border, and Regina, in the flat western prairies, are among those drinking and cooking with tap water with lead levels that exceed Canada’s federal guidelines. The investigation found some schools and day care centers had lead levels so high that researchers noted it could impact children’s health. Exacerbating the problem, many water providers aren’t testing at all.

It wasn’t the Canadian government that exposed the scope of this public health concern.

A yearlong investigation by more than 120 journalists from nine universities and 10 media organizations, including The Associated Press and the Institute for Investigative Journalism at Concordia University in Montreal , collected test results that properly measure exposure to lead in 11 cities across Canada. Out of 12,000 tests since 2014, one-third – 33% – exceeded the national safety guideline of 5 parts per billion; 18% exceeded the U.S. limit of 15 ppb.

What the Canadian water investigation found

In a country that touts its clean, natural turquoise lakes, sparkling springs and rushing rivers, there are no national mandates to test drinking water for lead. And even if agencies do take a sample, residents are rarely informed of contamination.

“I’m surprised,” said Bruce Lanphear, a leading Canadian water safety researcher who studies the impacts of lead exposure on fetuses and young children. “These are quite high given the kind of attention that has been given to Flint, Michigan, as having such extreme problems. Even when I compare this to some of the other hotspots in the United States, like Newark, like Pittsburgh, the levels here are quite high.”

Many Canadians who had allowed journalists to sample their water were troubled when they came back with potentially dangerous lead levels. Some private homeowners said they plan to stop drinking from the tap.

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Well, look at it this way...it's a new un-"tapped" resource for distilling down and making fishing lure weights...

...recycle!

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Lesser-evilism is war.

Lula: Brazil court ruling could free jailed ex-president

Top Brazil court ends early prison rule in decision that could free Lula

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s Supreme Court decided on Thursday to end the mandatory imprisonment of convicted criminals after they lose their first appeal, a politically charged ruling that may lead to the release of former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The reinterpretation of Brazil’s penal code [wrong: the amendment of a change they made to the constitution interpretation, made in a way that allowed Lula of being removed from the democratic election process], allowing convicts to exhaust their appeal options before being locked up, could benefit dozens of high-profile prisoners, among them Lula, jailed last year for taking bribes.

By a 6-5 vote, the court overturned a three-year-old rule that contributed to the success of Brazil’s biggest corruption investigation, the so-called Car Wash operation that put dozens of company executives and politicians in jail for bribes and kickbacks.

The prospect of serving immediate prison time after losing a first appeal encouraged suspects to negotiate plea deals with prosecutors, providing them information that helped unravel the biggest graft scheme in Brazil’s history.

The Car Wash prosecutors said the ruling would make their job harder and favor impunity because of Brazil’s “excessive” appeal processes. They said in a statement that the court’s decision was out of sync with a country that wants an end to corruption.

Lula’s lawyers said they would seek his immediate release by the lower court that convicted him. He was jailed in 2018 for eight years and 10 months after he was found guilty of taking bribes from engineering firms in return for government contracts.

Chief Justice Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli, who cast the deciding vote, said releases would not be automatic but decided by courts on a case-by-case basis.
POLARIZED COUNTRY

Lula, 74, governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, its first working-class president. He left office with sky-high popularity ratings thanks to social policies that raised millions from poverty, but his critics say he ruined the country by allowing corruption to flourish.

Lula’s release would heighten tensions in a polarized nation that elected far-right President Jair Bolsonaro last year. Lula had been favored to win the 2018 election but his imprisonment barred him from running.

If and when he is released, Lula would be free to engage in politics but would not be eligible under Brazil’s Clean Record law to seek elected office for eight years after his first conviction in June 2017.

His Workers Party welcomed the court’s decision. Its leader, Gleisi Hoffmann, called it “a very important step to strengthen democracy and the Constitution at a time when they are under threat from an extreme-right government.”

Sergio Moro, the Car Wash trials judge who sentenced Lula and is now justice minister in Bolsonaro’s government, warned before the court’s decision that overturning the rule would be a big setback for the fight against corruption. [Read: the man who convicted Lula, w/o solid evidence and whose decision benefited the current person being president of Brazil is now his all powerful ministry...].

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Top speed in all of The Netherlands is to be lowered to 100 km/h (60 MPH) to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

(grabs the popcorn to see how it pans out)

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Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

As an emergency response to the 1973 oil crisis, on November 26, 1973, President Richard Nixon proposed a national 50 mph (80 km/h) speed limit for passenger vehicles and a 55 mph (90 km/h) speed limit for trucks and buses. On 2 January 1974, he signed the Emergency Highway Conservation Act, setting a new national maximum speed limit.

Prior to 1974, individual states set speed limits within their boundaries and highway speed limits across the country ranged from 40 mph to 80 mph. The U.S. and other industrialized nations enjoyed easy access to cheap Middle Eastern oil from 1950 to 1972, but the Arab-Israeli conflict changed that dramatically in 1973.

The act also prohibited the Department of Transportation from approving or funding any projects within states that did not comply with the new speed limit. Most states quietly adjusted their speed limits, though Western states, home to the country’s longest, straightest and most monotonous rural highways, only grudgingly complied.

Today speed limits across the country vary between 35 and 40 mph in congested urban areas and 75 mph on long stretches of rural highway. U.S. drivers now drive almost as fast as their European counterparts, who average between 75 and 80 mph on the highway. On some roads in Italy, it is legal to drive as fast as 95 mph.

Rayma Suprani



RAYMA, one of the few female cartoonists in Venezuela, speaks about the role that humor plays in resisting tyranny, and how cartoons are the thermometers by which we measure freedom. She believes that critical drawings are crucial to testing the strengths of a democracy. RAYMA worked at El Universal, one of Venezuela’s largest newspapers, for 19 years before she was fired last year after publishing a cartoon that mocked the legacy of Hugo Chávez and the state of the Venezuelan health care system. She remains defiant, and reminds us that freedom of expression should have no limits. Humor is the key to ending repression, RAYMA says, and stresses that we should teach our children to wield pens, not guns.

What is it currently?

It was 120 for the longest time, but one of the spearhead projects of the disastrous PVV-supported government (2010-2012) was to raise the speed limit to 130. Which was difficult because the roads aren't equipped for that.

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Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

They learned that the penis mightier than the sword...

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I'm petulant, and I'm having a frenzy...

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There was a shooting at a High School in Santa this morning California one dead wounded count has been fluctuating, that's Dove's neck of the woods, hope all is well with her...

Santa Clarita. Santa is OK. Christmas will not be cancelled.

Count is now two dead, two injured. Sixteen year old shooter tried to off himself with his last bullet to his head but so far he is still alive.

Spoons made me fat.

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Lesser-evilism is war.