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Invasion

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The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

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dreadhead
2 hours ago
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Vancouver Island, Canada
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Bomb cyclone photos: Storm hits Vancouver Island the hardest

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A major clean-up was underway across many parts of Vancouver Island on Wednesday after a powerful bomb cyclone battered the South Coast.



























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dreadhead
2 hours ago
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Vancouver Island, Canada
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1-year probation for ‘stupid actions’ of B.C. man who drove into ocean in livestream stunt

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A B.C. man won't get jail time for driving his car into the ocean in a social media stunt the judge called "stupid."



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dreadhead
2 hours ago
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Vancouver Island, Canada
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Another Forbes 30 Under 30 CEO Is Indicted for Fraud

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A once-vaunted member of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 club was indicted this week on charges that she defrauded investors out of nearly $10 million while leading a chatbot company that worked with some of the nation’s largest school districts.

Joanna Smith-Griffin was the CEO of AllHere Education, which convinced districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District to spend as much as $6 million on an animated talking sun named “Ed” that was supposed to reduce student absenteeism and increase engagement. The company collapsed earlier this year and filed for bankruptcy as questions swirled about its finances and The 74 Million reported on whistleblower concerns that its LAUSD chatbot was leaking student data.

Smith-Griffin joins a growing list of Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees who have gone on to be charged with massive corporate fraud schemes.

A grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court alleges that the company’s problems began as early as 2021 when Smith-Griffin was courting investors for a Series A funding round. According to federal prosecutors, Smith-Griffin told potential investors that AllHere had generated $3.7 million in revenue during 2020 and had secured contracts with the New York City Department of Education and Atlanta Public Schools. In fact, the company had brought in only $11,000 during 2020 and didn’t have contracts with those districts, according to the indictment.

AllHere raised approximately $8 million in funding and Smith-Griffin allegedly used approximately $150,000 of the money she received from selling her own shares in the company to investors to make a down payment on a house in North Carolina. During the course of the years-long scheme, Smith-Griffin also allegedly transferred at least $600,000 in company funds to her personal accounts.

Over the next several years, Smith-Griffin continued to send updates to investors that misrepresented the company’s finances, according to the indictment. In March 2023, she allegedly told investors that the company needed an emergency loan to pay its employees because AllHere’s cash, amounting to more than $10 million, had been deposited with Silicon Valley Bank, which had just collapsed. In fact, the company only had $1.7 million deposited with the failed bank, and the payroll numbers Smith-Griffin gave to investors were inflated, according to the indictment.

When AllHere began raising money in a Series B funding round, Smith-Griffin allegedly inflated the company’s revenue numbers again, claiming that it had generated nearly $22 million in revenue from 2021 through 2022 when in fact the actual revenue was less than $500,000, according to the indictment.

Based on those misrepresentations, an investor proposed buying a $35 million minority stake in AllHere that valued the company at approximately $135 million, according to the indictment. But as the investor dug into AllHere’s finances, it began to see problems and pulled out of the deal.

The alleged scheme began to fall apart in May 2024 when one of AllHere’s investors contacted the company’s accountant—instead of getting updates directly from Smith-Griffin, as investors had previously done—and received an accurate financial statement that showed the company was pulling in far less revenue than its CEO had been claiming.

To reconcile the differences, the investor began talking with an outside financial consultant who worked with AllHere. During a video call with that consultant, the investor received an email with fraudulent information about non-existent contracts that purported to be from the consultant, according to the indictment. When the investor asked about the email, the consultant denied sending it. Prosecutors allege that Smith-Griffin created a fake email address in the consultant’s name in order to send the message.

After AllHere’s investors began comparing notes, the company’s board removed Smith-Griffin as CEO. In June 2024, AllHere furloughed most of its employees and the next month it filed for bankruptcy.

Smith-Griffin has been charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

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acdha
2 hours ago
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Fake it til you make it … to federal prison
Washington, DC
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Study: Why Aztec “death whistles” sound like human screams - Ars Technica

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Aztec death whistles don't fit into any existing Western classification for wind instruments; they seem to be a unique kind of "air spring" whistle, based on CT scans of some of the artifacts. Sascha Frühholz, a cognitive and affective neuroscientist at the University of Zürich, and several colleagues wanted to learn more about the physical mechanisms behind the whistle's distinctive sound, as well as how humans perceive said sound—a field known as psychoacoustics. “The whistles have a very unique construction, and we don’t know of any comparable musical instrument from other pre-Columbian cultures or from other historical and contemporary contexts,” said Frühholz.

A symbolic sound?

For their acoustic analysis, Frühholz et al. obtained sound recordings from two Aztec skull whistles excavated from Tlatelolco, as well as from three noise whistles (part of Aztec fire snake incense ladles). They took CT scans of whistles in the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, enabling them to create both 3D digital reconstructions and physical clay replicas. They were also able to acquire three additional artisanal clay whistles for experimental purposes.

Human participants then blew into the replicas with low-, medium-, and high-intensity air pressure, and the ensuing sounds were recorded. Those recordings were compared to existing databases of a broad range of sounds: animals, natural soundscapes, water sounds, urban noise, synthetic sounds (as for computers, pinball machines, printers, etc.), and various ancient instruments, among other samples. Finally, a group of 70 human listeners rated a random selection of sounds from a collection of over 2,500 samples.

The CT scans showed that skull whistles have an internal tube-like air duct with a constricted passage, a counter pressure chamber, a collision chamber, and a bell cavity. The unusual construction suggests that the basic principle at play is the Venturi effect, in which air (or a generic fluid) speeds up as it flows through a constricted passage, thereby reducing the pressure. "At high playing intensities and air speeds, this leads to acoustic distortions and to a rough and piercing sound character that seems uniquely produced by the skull whistles," the authors wrote.

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fxer
2 hours ago
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Bend, Oregon
acdha
5 hours ago
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Washington, DC
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Study: Why Aztec “death whistles” sound like human screams - Ars Technica

2 Shares

Aztec death whistles don't fit into any existing Western classification for wind instruments; they seem to be a unique kind of "air spring" whistle, based on CT scans of some of the artifacts. Sascha Frühholz, a cognitive and affective neuroscientist at the University of Zürich, and several colleagues wanted to learn more about the physical mechanisms behind the whistle's distinctive sound, as well as how humans perceive said sound—a field known as psychoacoustics. “The whistles have a very unique construction, and we don’t know of any comparable musical instrument from other pre-Columbian cultures or from other historical and contemporary contexts,” said Frühholz.

A symbolic sound?

For their acoustic analysis, Frühholz et al. obtained sound recordings from two Aztec skull whistles excavated from Tlatelolco, as well as from three noise whistles (part of Aztec fire snake incense ladles). They took CT scans of whistles in the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, enabling them to create both 3D digital reconstructions and physical clay replicas. They were also able to acquire three additional artisanal clay whistles for experimental purposes.

Human participants then blew into the replicas with low-, medium-, and high-intensity air pressure, and the ensuing sounds were recorded. Those recordings were compared to existing databases of a broad range of sounds: animals, natural soundscapes, water sounds, urban noise, synthetic sounds (as for computers, pinball machines, printers, etc.), and various ancient instruments, among other samples. Finally, a group of 70 human listeners rated a random selection of sounds from a collection of over 2,500 samples.

The CT scans showed that skull whistles have an internal tube-like air duct with a constricted passage, a counter pressure chamber, a collision chamber, and a bell cavity. The unusual construction suggests that the basic principle at play is the Venturi effect, in which air (or a generic fluid) speeds up as it flows through a constricted passage, thereby reducing the pressure. "At high playing intensities and air speeds, this leads to acoustic distortions and to a rough and piercing sound character that seems uniquely produced by the skull whistles," the authors wrote.

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fxer
2 hours ago
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Bend, Oregon
acdha
5 hours ago
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Washington, DC
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Three great modern myths

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Ezra Klein sez:

This drives me crazy. There are three great myths of the past five years that I'm going to go to my grave still fighting everyone about:

  1. The 2021-22 inflation surge was sparked by the excessive size of Joe Biden's ARP. But it wasn't. The "excessive" size of ARP contributed no more than a fraction of a percent to inflation. Larry Summers was wrong.
    .
  2. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a chaotic mess. But it wasn't. Under the circumstances it was actually a remarkable success and one of the great achievements of Biden's presidency.
    .
  3. Operation Warp Speed was Donald Trump's greatest triumph. But it wasn't. It was conceived entirely by Congress and the private sector. All Trump did was parachute in a couple of months later and give it a name.


These are all hills I'm willing to die on. And I probably will.

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fxer
2 hours ago
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Bend, Oregon
benzado
3 hours ago
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New York, NY (40.785018,-73.97
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Speaking Of

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I have a friend (Catalan) who is a big deal in the opera world. Years ago he was flying to Chicago for work-related stuff. He was supposed to attend a show that evening, but was barely going to make it, if at all, given the timing of the flight arrival.

Being in a hurry, after getting off the plane, he and his partner stupidly started running, which especially in the post 9-11 era was a bit of a nono. It was certainly a lot of a nono before clearing immigration/customs.

A security guard quickly stopped them.

Uh, sirs, what the hell do you think you are doing?

My friend [flustered and determined, with far from perfect English]: I am going to see [Spanish accent/pronunciation] Oh-pay-rah!

The security guard sprung into action, quickly escorted them to the front of the line, and rushed them through.

His partner, also Catalan, but much more familiar with the US, had to explain:

He thought you were going to be appearing on Oprah.
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benzado
3 hours ago
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New York, NY (40.785018,-73.97
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