President Donald Trump is only a year and a half into his presidency and he remains one of the most controversial political figures of the day. Despite this, evangelical Christians have expressed their faithful support for him and his conservative policies. One group dedicated to challenging evangelicals and their positive relationship with the administration is The Satanic Temple (TST). “The Satanic Temple attracted ‘thousands’ of new members in just the first 36 hours after the election of Donald Trump,” the group reported. “The 4-year-old temple, which had a pre-Trump membership of around 50,000, has never before seen a spike in registration nearly this big.”
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Artificial intelligence is helping researchers learn about this mysterious occurrence. By using machine learning technology, a team of astronomers was able to study 72 new radio bursts blasting from FRB 121102 — the only FRB known to continually shoot out signals. Their findings, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, give insight into the radio waves’ periodicity and specific frequencies, but unfortunately leave us with more questions than answers. One suggestion for what the burst properties are involves signatures of technology developed by an advanced civilization…
Just a cosmic hop, skip and jump away, an Earth-size planet orbits the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri. Ever since the discovery of the exoplanet — known as Proxima Centauri b— in 2016, people have wondered whether it could be capable of sustaining life. Now, using computer models similar to those used to study climate change on Earth, researchers have found that, under a wide range of conditions, Proxima Centauri b can sustain enormous areas of liquid water on its surface, potentially raising its prospects for harboring living organisms.
Because transhumanism is usually associated with atheists, the Christian Transhumanist Association makes a point of detailing their Christian beliefs in a short creed: “We understand our Christian faith to affirm humans as scientific and technological creatures—creatures who create and discover, and who are commissioned to cultivate life, create new things, and renew the world. We further understand our Christian mission to charge us with healing, feeding, and restoring life—activities which provoke us to scientific and medical innovations, just as they have throughout Christian history.” Fundamentally, Christian transhumanists fail to understand Jesus’ primary objective during his earthly ministry. Because of that misunderstanding, they also fail to properly prioritize the mission of Christians…
A new study, years in the making, goes further than any other to demonstrate that resistant bacteria can move from animals to humans via the meat they become. It also provides a model of how new surveillance systems might reduce that bacterial flow at its source on farms. It’s just one study, but it possesses outsize significance, because it eliminates the uncertainty at the center of that bacterial flow. Outside of experimental conditions, it’s never been possible to prove that this antibiotic given to that animal gave rise to this bacterium that ended up in that human. But this new work dives so deeply into the genomics of bacterial adaptation in food animals and humans, it proves the link that ag would rather deny…
Blurring the boundaries separating man from machine, a technology growing in popularity allows computer chips to be implanted under the skin. This may be prohibited by the Bible but one rabbi warns of a greater danger: the chips could be used as a Nazi-like tool to control the populace.
The military’s research arm said Friday it will invest up to $2 billion over the next five years toward new programs advancing artificial intelligence, stepping up both a technological arms race with China and an ideological clash with Silicon Valley over the future of powerful machines. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Defense Department, said it will fund dozens of new research efforts as part of a “Third Wave” campaign aimed at developing machines that can learn and adapt to changing environments. DARPA director Steven Walker announced the effort Friday to an audience from American academia, private industry and the military at a symposium outside Washington, saying the agency wants to explore “how machines can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities.”
If you want to buy a beer at Flatstick pub in Seattle, don’t whip out a $10 bill to pay—you’ll walk away thirsty. Flatstick, a hot new mini-chain in the Pacific Northwest, doesn’t take cash. Neither does Bluestone Lane, a coffee chain with locations in New York, Philly and D.C. Patrons there have to pay with plastic or an app called LevelUp. Want to grab a Sweetgreen salad for lunch with cash? No can-do at many locations. Cashless commerce is popping up around the country, particularly in restaurants catering to a younger crowd, which is likely to leave home without any greenbacks, or even a wallet, and instead choose to live life with a smartphone and a few credit or debit cards attached…
Built in Planaltina, a satellite city of Brasilia, the lakeside temple complex features a pyramid, a spaceship-like temple, a six-pointed praying center, and several ellipse-shaped sculptures. While the valley’s physical setting can feel disorienting, it is not accidental. Meticulously designed, it is reflective of the religion’s intricate, all-comprising doctrines and beliefs—drawn from a diversity of religions and civilizations, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, the Inca, and ancient Egypt. According to Sunrise Valley followers, extraterrestrial beings landed on Earth 32,000 years ago to advance human civilizations. The beings then returned to Earth through successive incarnations across various cultures and eras. Valley members, known as mediums, believe themselves to be the beings’ latest incarnation, the Jaguars.
The reproduction of the Arch of Palmyra, a Roman victory arch that stood as the entrance to a pagan temple for almost 2,000 years, will make an improbable appearance in Washington D.C. and the International Criminal Court in the Hague as a “symbol of Peace and Resilience.” The original Roman victory arch was built in Palmyra, Syria at the end of the second century CE. Originally it stood in front of the Temple of Bel where pagans worshiped the Mesopotamian god, also known as Ba’al, in a form of idol worship that figures prominently in the Bible. The temple was dedicated in 32 CE but was constructed on the site of a pre-existing temple that goes back to the third millennium BCE…
