Timothy's Stories

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Any Idea, Plan, or Purpose may be Placed in the Mind through Repetition of Though

“Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.” — Napoleon Hill Read the full article

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Woman who Feels NO PAIN is Scientific Marvel...

Childbirth, burns and missing teeth: Meet the woman who feels no pain and could open door for new generation of medicines A pensioner who feels no pain or fear could open the door to a new generation of pain-relief and anxiety medications after scientists discovered the genetic mutations that make her so rare. For decades Jo Cameron has been cheerfully bumping, burning and bruising herself in all manner of mishap, yet she never stopped to ask why her injuries did not hurt. She gave birth to both her children without once resorting to drugs; she laughs off offers of anaesthetic during dental work, and when she burns herself while cooking on the Rayburn in her Scottish Highlands home, often the first she knows about it is the smell of her own burning flesh. Virtually nothing worries her. When a wayward white van careered into her car on a remote country road, leaving her upside down in a ditch, it was she, totally unfazed, who found herself comforting the driver. Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash Read the full article

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The Internet Knows You Better Than Your Spouse Does

The Internet Knows You Better Than Your Spouse Does The traces we leave on the Web and on our digital devices can give advertisers and others surprising, and sometimes disturbing, insights into our psychology. Examining the psychological profile that the algorithm derives from your online traces can certainly be entertaining. On the other hand, the algorithm’s ability to draw inferences about us illustrates how easy it is for anyone who tracks our digital activities to gain insight into our personalities—and potentially invade our privacy. What is more, psychological inferences about us might be exploited to manipulate, say, what we buy or how we vote. It seems that our like clicks by themselves can be pretty good indicators of what makes us tick. In 2015 David Stillwell and Youyou Wu, both at the University of Cambridge, and Michal Kosinski of Stanford University demonstrated that algorithms can evaluate what psychologists call the Big Five dimensions of personality quite accurately just by examining a Facebook user’s likes. These dimensions—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism—are viewed as representing the basic dimensions of personality. The degree to which they are present in individuals describes who those people are. If you enjoy computerized personality tests, you might consider visiting Apply Magic Sauce (https://applymagicsauce.com). The Web site prompts you to enter some text you have written—such as e-mails or blogs—along with information about your activities on social media. You do not have to provide social media data, but if you want to do it, you either allow Apply Magic Sauce to access your Facebook and Twitter accounts or follow directions for uploading selected data from those sources, such as your history of pressing Facebook’s “like” buttons. Once you click “Make Prediction,” you will see a detailed psychogram, or personality profile, that includes your presumed age and sex, whether you are anxious or easily stressed, how quickly you give in to impulses, and whether you are politically and socially conservative or liberal. Photo by Leon Bublitz on Unsplash Read the full article

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Quotes 2 – Napoleon Hill – 03/11/19

“Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” - Napoleon Hill Read the full article

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Quotes 1 - Napoleon Hill - 03/10/19

“Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire.” by Napoleon Hill Read the full article

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The spread of true and false news online (study)

The spread of true and false news online Lies spread faster than the truth. There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash Read the full article

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Don't look now: why you should be worried about machines reading your emotions

Don't look now: why you should be worried about machines reading your emotions Could a program detect potential terrorists by reading their facial expressions and behavior? This was the hypothesis put to the test by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2003, as it began testing a new surveillance program called the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program, or Spot for short Emotion detection technology requires two techniques: computer vision, to precisely identify facial expressions, and machine learning algorithms to analyze and interpret the emotional content of those facial features. Typically, the second step employs a technique called supervised learning, a process by which an algorithm is trained to recognize things it has seen before. The basic idea is that if you show the algorithm thousands and thousands of images of happy faces with the label “happy” when it sees a new picture of a happy face, it will, again, identify it as “happy”. Amazon, Microsoft and IBM now advertise “emotion analysis” as one of their facial recognition products, and a number of smaller firms, such as Kairos and Eyeris, have cropped up, offering similar services to Affectiva. Beyond market research, emotion detection technology is now being used to monitor and detect driver impairment, test user experience for video games and to help medical professionals assess the well being of patients. Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash Read the full article

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Global Warming Alarmism: When Science IS Fiction

Global Warming Alarmism: When Science IS Fiction The pervasive hype that we are experiencing a known human-caused climate crisis is based upon speculative theories, contrived data and totally unproven modeling predictions. Much of this emanates from politically-corrupted processes and agenda-driven report conclusions rendered by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is trumpeted in the media as authoritative gospel. Fritz Vaherenholt, a socialist founder of Germany’s environmental movement who headed the renewable energy division of the country’s second largest utility company, was once a big IPCC believer. Recently, however, his new book titled The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen, charges the organization with gross incompetence and dishonesty… especially regarding fear-mongering exaggeration of human CO2 emission influences. Photo by NASA on Unsplash Read the full article

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4 Rules you must Break to get filthy Rich

4 Rules you must break to get filthy Rich Nathan Latka became a millionaire while in college. He created custom Facebook fan pages and focused on an executive tab. He sold them for $700 and pre-sold 100. "I made people feel like that in order to be important they needed an executive tab," said Latka. In his new book, How To Be A Capitalist Without Any Capital, Latka shares the four rules you need to break to get rich. No. 1) Don't focus on one thing. No. 2) Copy your competitors. No. 3) Quit setting goals, they're keeping you broke. No. 4) Sell pickaxes to gold miners. Photo by Craventure Media on Unsplash Read the full article

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A digital gangster destroying democracy: the damning verdict on Facebook

A digital gangster destroying democracy: the damning verdict on Facebook Parliament's report into fake news raises many questions, but will the government act? Facebook is an out-of-control train wreck that is destroying democracy and must be brought under control. The final report of parliament’s inquiry into fake news and disinformation does not use this language, precisely, but it is, nonetheless, the report’s central message. And the language it does use is no less damning. Facebook behaves like a “digital gangster”. It considers itself to be “ahead of and beyond the law”. It “misled” parliament. It gave statements that were “not true”. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has treated British lawmakers with “contempt”. It has pursued a “deliberate” strategy to deceive parliament. Read the full article

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Anders denken over Geluk

Anders denken over geluk Als je voortdurend streeft naar geluk, voel je je juist vaak zoekend en ontevreden. Meebewegen met het leven, daar draait het eigenlijk om, ontdekt journalist Otje van der Lelij. Dat geluk tegenwoordig zo hoog op de agenda staat, heeft volgens Hans Thijssen, hoogleraar filosofie aan de Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen, te maken met de ontkerkelijking. ‘In het vroege christendom is het idee ontstaan dat het leven op aarde een lijdensweg is, waarin volmaakt geluk niet mogelijk is. Het enige wat mensen konden doen, was uitkijken naar een hiernamaals – waarin goede christenen beloond zouden worden met eeuwigdurend geluk.’ Nu de hemel is afgeschaft, willen we de hemel hier op aarde. Geluk en het najagen ervan, is een doel op zich geworden. Sterker nog: we vinden dat we er recht op hebben. De markt speelt hier gretig op in. Overal duiken coaches en motivatiesprekers op die het evangelie van het geluk verkondigen. En ons voorspiegelen dat ook wij gelukkig kunnen worden, als we maar deze workshop volgen of dit boek lezen. ‘Het vermarkten van geluk heeft een zekere devaluatie van het begrip met zich meegebracht,’ schrijft Herman Pleij, emeritus hoogleraar middeleeuwse letterkunde, in zijn essay Geluk!?. ‘Geluk is een hebbeding geworden. En wie van geluk geen gewoonte maakt, is een loser.’ Photo by Kyson Dana on Unsplash Read the full article

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Ten years after the ‘Berlin patient,’ doctors announce a second person has been effectively ‘cured’ of HIV

Doctors announce a second person has been effectively 'cured' of HIV For the second time, doctors appear to have put HIV into "sustained remission" with a stem cell transplant - effectively curing the recipient. Their work, which was published in Nature and will be presented at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle on Tuesday, may encourage scientists working on new gene therapies based on similar principles and give hope to those living with the infection. The case comes nearly 10 years after Timothy Ray Brown announced he was the so-called “Berlin Patient” — the first person who was functionally cured of HIV and able to stop taking antiretroviral drugs after an intensive round of chemotherapy and radiation and two bone marrow transplants. The person who received this latest transplant in London has not taken antiretroviral drugs since September 2017; he is not identified in the paper. “Those of us in the field have been waiting for a second cure via this approach,” said Dr. Keith Jerome, one of the leaders of HIV cure research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “As long as Timothy Brown was the only , we’d have always wondered if there something unique about it.” Jerome was not involved in the research published Tuesday. The researchers behind the paper are from an array of British, Spanish, Dutch and Singaporean institutions; the lead author is Ravindra K. Gupta, who is affiliated with the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and University College London. Read the full article

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Government research confirms Measles outbreaks are Transmitted by the Vaccinated

Government research confirms Measles outbreaks are Transmitted by the Vaccinated The level of hysteria surrounding measles is rising fast, although there has only been 159 cases in North America this season. People are freaking out and blaming the unvaccinated for this 'outbreak.' Vaccine advocates are demanding that anti-vaccine voices are scrubbed from public view. Facebook is working to ban all informed vaccine content from the site. Lawmakers are proposing a flurry of legislation aimed at severely punishing families that prefer not to vaccinate, even looking to remove vaccine exemptions at the federal level. Measles is a terrible disease, and no child should have to suffer, and while generations before us survived the disease, we have entered an era where the individual is pressed more and more to conform in every way to the demands of the hive. But is all the hype and panic aimed at the anti-vaccine community really justified? Are unvaccinated kids really the problem? A government study actually belies this narrative, pointing out that the measles is actually transmitted by the vaccinated. Sayer Ji from Green Med Info discussed this in detail in a 2016 article: Read the full article

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Shocking extent of how big Firms harvest your Data

Shocking extent of how big firms harvest your data The disturbing scale of the personal data harvested and traded by multinationals can be revealed today. Health details, children's voice recordings and copies of passports can be at risk when customers tick an online consent box. Analysis by the Mail found that Marriott International, Facebook, Asda, Paypal, BT and Tesco engaged in hidden data harvesting and sharing. Giant firms can use personal data to build a profile of customers for targeted adverts or to pass to other organisations. Emails detailing how Facebook accepted cash in exchange for access to its users' data were published by Parliament last night. The firm's staff discuss whitelisting companies including AirBnB, Tinder and Netflix – allowing them to retain access to Facebook user data if they placed enough advertising. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, wrote in a private email that access to user data could be licensed to advertising buyers. But he adds: 'If the revenue we get from those doesn't add up to more than the fees you owe us, then you just pay us the fee directly.' Photo by Wojtek Witkowski on Unsplash Read the full article

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How arrest of Chinese 'princess' exposes regime's world domination plot

How arrest of Chinese 'princess' exposes regime's world domination plot Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback. Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these "revenge hostages" have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. It turns out that “Princess” Meng, as she is called, is Communist royalty. Her grandfather was a close comrade of Chairman Mao during the Chinese Civil War, who went on to become vice governor of China’s largest province. She is also the daughter of Huawei’s founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei. Daddy is grooming her to succeed him when he retires. In other words, Meng is the heiress apparent of China’s largest and most advanced high-tech company, one which plays a key role in China’s grand strategy of global domination. Huawei is a leader in 5G technology and, earlier this year, surpassed Apple to become the second-largest smartphone maker in the world behind Samsung. But Huawei is much more than an innocent manufacturer of smartphones. It is a spy agency of the Chinese Communist Party. Photo by Anastasia Dulgier on Unsplash Read the full article

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DeepMind's AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical 'turning point' for AI

DeepMind's AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical 'turning point' for AI DeepMind's artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero is now showing signs of human-like intuition and creativity, in what developers have hailed as 'turning point' in history. The computer system amazed the world last year when it mastered the game of chess from scratch within just four hours, despite not being programmed how to win. But now, after a year of testing and analysis by chess grandmasters, the machine has developed a new style of play unlike anything ever seen before, suggesting the programme is now improvising like a human. Photo by Icons8 team on Unsplash Read the full article

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The Matrix at 20: Did we take the Blue Pill?

The Matrix at 20: Did we take the Blue Pill? This year, the sci-fi masterpiece The Matrix turns 20 years old. Written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers) and produced by Joel Silver, the film was released on March 31, 1999, grossing over $460 million worldwide. It won 4 Academy Awards (as well as BAFTA and Saturn awards) and is a staple on any sci-fi “greatest hits list.” It also secured its place as a classic American film when it was added to the National Film Registry in 2012 for permanent preservation. While the special effects may no longer impress us, what really stands out about the film after 20 years is the lingering suspicion that we’re being controlled by the technology we created. And, perhaps more frightening, that most of us would prefer to live in blissful ignorance rather than face the truth of living in a world where we have very little free will. Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com from Pexels Read the full article