Questions on using our Google Nest

We got a Google Nest hub for Christmas, and are just starting to figure out things to do with it.

I know about all the standard features, but the one thing we really want to be able to do with it is to somehow get it to do notifications from our school bus app (the bus has a GPS on it, and so the bus app tracks it and gives us a push notification when the bus is nearby; it's absolutely awesome, because the kids know exactly when the bus is coming and aren't standing at the bus stop forever waiting).

We can get the notifications on our phone, but we'd really like to have that notification pop through the Google Nest. The app is not a Google app, so I think the only thing we can really do is to have that push notification get recognized by the Google aspect of our phone.

Does anyone have experience using the Google Nest and would know if there is a way to do this?

NASA intern loses her job over tweets

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...am/1066538002/

A woman may have lost a highly coveted NASA internship following a profanity-laced back-and-forth with a user on Twitter. That user? Famed former NASA engineer and current space council adviser Homer Hickam.
The user Naomi told off is Homer Hickam, the former NASA engineer and inspiration of the 1999 film "October Sky," based on his memoir"

State of the Union - Pelosi Rips up Speech

Did anyone catch the State of the Union speech? I didn't, and didn't really see any need to find out what was said.

However, the video caught my eye. There was the Speaker of the House, on live television, ripping up a speech that had just been given by the President of the United States.

My first thought was that I was appalled. Have we sunk that low? Is this what we've become?

My second thought was, "That was totally awesome!" Trump has gotten away with so much of this kind of junk, including refusing to shake hands with the Speaker of the House at the beginning of the speech, that, unfortunately, the Democrats kind of are forced to get down in the gutter with him. He led us there, and the American people rewarded him. Ok, people. This is what you wanted. Reap what you sowed.

As for the speech itself, I didn't listen to it, and I don't intend to, but by the headlines it sounds like he decided to give a campaign speech. In some sense, all State of the Union speeches are campaign speeches. The President always wants to say either that he has made things so much better, or he will make things so much better, or that he could make things so much better if only the people from the other party who control Congress would pass his agenda. That's normal. However, there's a form to it. There are styles, and conventions about it. Of course you push an agenda, that's what's supposed to happen, but you do it in a dignified way.

Not Trump.

So, good on Nancy for using her position on national TV to make a statement, and a dramatic one. I don't know if it will "work" politically. i.e. will it gain votes for Democrats or lose them, but "When they go low, we go high." didn't work out so well. Take the gloves off, Democrats.


As for the speech itself, the only thing I know about it is that Trump gave Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom, demonstrating once more that he views the customs of the United States as just another tool he can use for self-aggrandizement and politicizing the government for his own purposes. If the truth be told, I actually admire Rush. In the early days of his program, I actually enjoyed it and wished more liberals would listen. There is no doubt that he changed America and is extremely accomplished. However, that isn't really Medal of Freedom kind of stuff. Daily doses of attacking political enemies in vitriolic but frequently inaccurate rants isn't what I think of as the highest values our country upholds. Just inviting him as an honored guest following his cancer diagnosis would have been kind of cool, but of course Trump has to go over the top on everything, and ends up devaluing the award itself.

So, a night of politics. The thin veneer of dignity that accompanies the State of the Union address has been stripped away as Trump continues to run roughshod over American traditions. We certainly live in interesting times.

Kayaker lost in the Everglades for nearly two weeks found alive

67-year-old kayaker Mark Miele began a trek through the Everglades on January 22 and was supposed to return home a week ago. When he didn't, his family alerted the authorities, who began an extensive search. On Friday, searchers found his wallet and phone "washed up" on a river bank, and rescuers established a new search area based on clues provided by the phone.

Quote:

"By downloading the data on Mark's phone Sunday night, deputies found his most recent coordinates logged on January 31 and our aviation unit began a targeted search of the area," the sheriff's office said. Shortly before noon Monday, the aviation unit located him and provided his location to a Marine Unit along with officers from the National Park Service. He was found a few miles from where his phone had washed up wearing a life jacket and floating in the water face-up. Rescuers in boats rushed to the area and plucked him from the murky waters. Miele is in stable condition at a local hospital, and his family thanked local and state authorities for rescuing him.

This is a happy ending. Mr. Miele left specific instructions with his family on what to do if he did not return home at the designated time, and they were followed. It sounds like he's in remarkably good shape considering how long he ostensibly has been lost.

Bloxham tapes (PLR)

As a brief intro since ive posted a few of these now

I dont like the existence of supernatural things in general, so generally I like having them debunked. Particularly the idea of humans having any "untapped" knowledge or "psi abilites" or anything like that.

Does anyone know of any more recent debunking of the bloxham tapes? I realize that some of the cases have been pretty definitively debunked, but theres one that seems a bit more compelling than the others, about a servant called alison who worked for jacques couer.

Im aware most of her cases were debunked by melvin harris and ive seen the skepdic entry for it

Ian lawton made a response to melvin harris that seemed somewhat convincing though (the idea is that it came from a book, and while the fact that she thought jacques wasnt married and didnt have children was compelling, since it was the same as in the book, other details dont match) however, part of me thinks either A, hes lying about having read the book (lawton is lying), or she just got difference sources other than the book mixed up

Compiling the statements Ian Lawton said that she made that werent realted to the book, he definately seemed a bit biased in interpretations and some of the facts just dont seem accurate

A guy called iverson researched these cases and found historical evidence for these facts, but part of me feels that he might have gotten them wrong in his research somehow, because alot of his facts either dont check out on google or seem a bit false

Anyway, here are the statements that clearly dont appear in the book (note, all of these they said were right) and my thoughts on each statement (and the justification for each) since i can post notes

Her name was Alison
- obviously doesnt matter
She was found on Alexandria
- doesnt matter
The kings name was Charles de Valois
- thats right, but not a huge hit
Agnes Sorrel (Kings mistress) was known of maid of frontameu
- she was from frontemeau, but she was known as lady of beauty, so i would say this is wrong
Currency was Ecus Dor
- this was correct.... in 1236 lol. This currency was discontinued by the time she supposedly had lived, and it was actually ecu la couronne that was a gold coin by the time. Either way currency was called livre
O

Twitter Mob Justice

I'm going to post a link to what is admittedly a very long YouTube video as a hook for this. I realize that many of you won't be able or willing to watch it all, so I'll try to give a brief outline of what's in the video.

[yt]OjMPJVmXxV8[/yt]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8

The video comes from a YouTube creator named Natalie Wynn, a transgender woman who makes a lot of videos on transgender-related topics as well as other topics. Just to give you an idea of what to expect, the video currently has over 1.6 million views and the thumbs-up-to-thumbs-down ratio is 123K to 3K. The title of the video is Canceling and it's 100 minutes long, or about the length of a typical movie.

Anyway, it's about this whole phenomenon called "Cancel Culture", which is something that she recently experienced when she asked a controversial trans man named Buck Angel to read a few lines in one of her recent videos. Buck Angel is controversial because of perceptions that he holds "transmedicalist" views, and is therefore an enemy of nonbinary trans people.

In the video she also talks about another recent case not involving herself. And later, another case in which a person actually committed suicide after being "canceled".

Anyway, I've never experienced anything like this myself, since I'm not famous and since I generally prefer to remain anonymous on the internet. But it opened my eyes to just how vicious and seemingly petty these things can be. It goes beyond criticism into demands that "others in the community" also participate in boycotting/ostracizing/denouncing the person being "canceled" or face ostracism themselves. They usually start with someone saying something "problematic" but it could also be something as simple as offering support for someone else who is being "canceled" or failure to denounce them.

Southern border humanitarian aid vols' convictions overturned

A US District Court overturned the convictions of four aid providers who were fined and sentenced to probation for leaving food and water caches for undocumented migrants in an area along the Mexico-Arizona border in the US where thousands of migrants' remains have been recovered over the last two decades.

Quote:

The defendants in the case — Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse, and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick — were fined and given probation in March of last year for entering the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge in the summer of 2017 without a permit, driving on a restricted access road and leaving food, water, and other humanitarian aid supplies for migrants passing through in the summer heat. They were the first among a group of volunteers with the faith-based humanitarian group, No More Deaths, to go to trial for their aid work in 2019. The remains of roughly 3,000 migrants have been recovered in Pima County alone since 2000. Experts are confident that the true death toll is much higher. Situated at the heart of the Sonoran Desert, the Cabeza Prieta refuge is one of the deadliest spaces in the region. As Márquez made clear in her decision, the No More Deaths volunteers admitted to the factual claims in the case: that they left aid supplies in “an area of desert wilderness where people frequently die of dehydration and exposure.” But in appealing their convictions, Márquez went on to write, the defendants had successfully argued that their actions — imbued “with the avowed goal of mitigating death and suffering” — were protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA. Federal prosecutors had argued that the government had a compelling interest in “enforcing the border and controlling immigration,” Márquez wrote, and while the defendants were not charged with immigration offenses, the government “nonetheless” argued that their actions “furthered and encouraged illegal smuggling activity” on the wildlife refuge. “The government seems to rely on a deterrence theory, reasoning that preventing clean water and food from being placed on the refuge would increase the risk of death or extreme illness for those seeking to cross unlawfully, which in turn would discourage or deter people from attempting to enter without authorization,” the judge wrote. “In other words, the government claims a compelling interest in preventing defendants from interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death.” “This gruesome logic is profoundly disturbing,” Márquez wrote. “It is also speculative and unsupported by evidence.” In 2017, 32 sets of human remains were recovered on the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, the judge noted. “The government produced no evidence that these fatalities had any effect in deterring unlawful entry,” she wrote. “Nor has the government produced evidence that increasing the death toll would have such an effect.”