All posts tagged: conference

Grimes Upset After Elon Musk Brings Son To Trump Press Conference

Grimes Upset After Elon Musk Brings Son To Trump Press Conference

Published by Sam

Grimes and Musk dated on-and-off for around four years, during which time they had three children. On Tuesday, Musk joined Donald Trump – of whom he has been a vocal supporter – for a press conference in the Oval Office, during which the US president introduced the eldest of the Tesla founder and Canadian singer’s children, X Æ A-Xii, to members of the press as a “great guy” and a “high IQ individual”. When one X user praised Grimes’ son for being “very polite” and “so cute” at the press conference, she responded: “He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank [you] for alerting me. But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.” “It’s absurd that someone can be this cancelled for something their ex did before they even heard it happened,” she wrote on social media, upon discovering a fan intended to cover their Grimes tattoo in the wake of the Musk controversy. She added: “I am not him. I will not make a statement every time he does …

What Was the Wannsee Conference?

What Was the Wannsee Conference?

Published by skeptic

  The Wannsee Conference was held on January 20, 1942, near Berlin, Germany. Fifteen high-level German officials from various strategic agencies gathered to coordinate the necessary steps for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The conference and subsequent Wannsee Protocol dictated the establishment of the extermination camps in Europe, most notably in Nazi-occupied Poland. There is no written document specifying the decision of the Nazi policy towards Jews. As widely believed, the order for the total extermination of the European Jews was given by Adolf Hitler orally in 1941. As a result of the decision made during the Wannsee Conference, 1.7 million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943.   Prerequisites of the Wannsee Conference: The Concepts of Lebensraum & The Aryan Race The War Cripples by Otto Dix, 1938. (The “cripples” are four veterans marching down the street, an ordinary sight in Germany after the World War I) Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries   The leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, more commonly known as the Nazi Party, acquired control of …

The Yalta Conference: Moving Forward From WWII

The Yalta Conference: Moving Forward From WWII

Published by skeptic

  The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimean Conference, was a wartime meeting of the leaders of the Allied Powers—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. It took place from February 4 to 11, 1945, at Yalta, a resort town in the Soviet Union’s Crimea (today a part of Ukraine). Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt led the delegations from their respective nations. The key outcome of the conference was demilitarizing and establishing Germany as a democratic state after the war, outlawing the Nazi Party, and establishing an international organization, the United Nations.   Prerequisites for the Yalta Conference The Big Three–Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin—at the Yalta Conference by T. Lelkov, 1945. Source: Art UK   By the time the Yalta Conference was held from February 4 to February 11, 1945, the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II was already apparent. The Red Army of the Soviet Union succeeded in pushing back Nazi forces from Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria in March 1945, as well …

The Download: understanding AI, and what to expect from the UN’s climate conference

The Download: understanding AI, and what to expect from the UN’s climate conference

Published by skeptic

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI’s “mind” We don’t know exactly how AI works, or why it works so well. That’s a problem: It could lead us to deploy an AI system in a highly sensitive field like medicine without understanding that it could have critical flaws embedded in its workings. A team at Google DeepMind that studies something called mechanistic interpretability has been working on new ways to let us peer under the hood. It recently released a tool to help researchers understand what is happening when AI is generating an output.  It’s all part of a push to get a better understanding of exactly what is happening inside an AI model. If we do, we’ll be able to control its outputs more effectively, leading to better AI systems in the future. Read the full story. —Scott J Mulligan What’s on the table at this year’s UN …

Secularists call for renewal of liberal values at NSS conference

Secularists call for renewal of liberal values at NSS conference

Published by skeptic

Educators, parliamentarians, and academics highlighted the need to challenge religious threats to universal freedoms at a National Secular Society conference in London on Saturday. Shedding light on the complex issues affecting liberal societies, speakers from a wide range of backgrounds emphasised the importance of secularism to liberal values. Liberal values and the secular state Opening the first panel of the day, Professor Ronan McCrea of UCL said liberalism is the “idea that disagreement is permanent, and the search for truth ongoing”. Journalist Emma Park said the starting point for liberal society is that “civil liberties are precious and should be jealously guarded”. She emphasised the importance of the twin values of free thought and free speech. Liberal Democrat peer Paul Scriven, who introduced a bill last year to disestablish the Church of England, gave an inside perspective on how the Church has a “special hold on the levers of power”. He said experiencing the influence of the 26 bishops given automatic seats in the House of Lords impressed upon him the need for disestablishment. Anglican …

A Friendly Invitation to the Speakers at the G3 Cessationist Conference – OpentheWord.org

A Friendly Invitation to the Speakers at the G3 Cessationist Conference – OpentheWord.org

Published by skeptic

By Dr. Michael Brown To all the speakers at the G3 Cessationist Conference and to all those who appeared in the Cessationist movie, I want to give you a personal invitation. This is not a challenge, and this is not meant to be a provocation. Instead, this is a genuine, heartfelt invitation for the glory of God and the good of His people, an invitation to enter into a serious public dialogue about the cessationist-continuationist controversy. Will you please take a moment to read on? Since 2013, I have offered to debate any of the speakers from the Strange Fire conference on a simple topic: According to the Scriptures, are the gifts of the Spirit – including tongues and prophecy and healing – normative for today? To date, none of the speakers responded to my invitation, although I subsequently had debates with Dr. Sam Waldron, Dr. Theodore Zachariades, and (in more limited form) with my friend and colleague Dr. James White. Last year, at the invitation of Christianity Today, I wrote an article explaining why …

Church property conference offers congregations more than prayer to keep their buildings

Church property conference offers congregations more than prayer to keep their buildings

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — As many as 100,000 church-owned buildings are expected to be sold or repurposed by 2030, according to an analysis in a new book, “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition.” Though Sunday attendance has recovered in part from COVID-19 restrictions, a decades-long decline has continued to take its toll, and the squeeze on churches has only gotten tighter in the post-pandemic economy, according to fall 2023 data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. As a result, congregations face hard choices about what to do with large sacred structures that are underutilized, costly to keep up and suffering from deferred maintenance. “Everything keeps getting more expensive, but we have fewer people in the congregation to pay for it,” said Jainine Gambaro, a member of Franklin Reformed Church in Nutley, New Jersey. “We keep going by the grace of God, but it’s an issue.”   Gambaro was one of some 100 church leaders and congregants who gathered online and in person Friday and Saturday (Sept. 20-21) to hear from a …

Labour conference, UN high-level meetings

Labour conference, UN high-level meetings

Published by Sam

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gives a remark on the 72nd UN General Assembly in UN Headquarters on September 19, 2017 in New York, USA. Picture: Aditya E.S. Wicaksono/Shutterstock A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Leading the week  Instead of basking in the glow of a generational election victory, Labour approaches conference season facing up to the reality that governing is much less fun than being in opposition. Embroiled in a series of rows over its pensioner-bashing economic policies, gloomy messaging and – with a little nod to previous administrations – political donations that benefit the prime minister’s spouse, the party will arrive in Liverpool this weekend knowing that the honeymoon period is now well and truly over: so what can we expect from Keir Starmer’s top team over the next few days?  Given the party’s desire to keep blaming the Conservatives for the dire state of the economy and public services, expectation management may be the watchword for ministers’ speeches next …

Groundbreaking conference to examine lasting impact of religious abuse

Groundbreaking conference to examine lasting impact of religious abuse

Published by skeptic

Pictured: Pragna Patel [top left], Zara Kay [top right], Dr Kristin Aune [middle right], bottom row left to right: Alexander Barnes-Ross, Yehudis Fletcher, Rachael Reign, Dr James Murphy Leading experts in the impact of religious abuse and religious trauma will convene in October for a specially organised conference from Humanists UK – the Faith to Faithless Apostasy Conference 2024: The Systemic Nature of Religious Abuse. The conference offers a unique opportunity to learn about the mechanisms of religious abuse and its lasting impact. The assembled experts will specifically look at the trauma suffered by so-called ‘apostates’ – people who leave high-control religious communities – which can result from abusive behaviours which range from shunning, domestic violence, and coercive control through to so-called ‘honour-based’ violence, which can include sexual violence and attempted murder. The event has been organised by the expert team behind Faith to Faithless, Humanists UK’s specialist service supporting ex-religious people coping with religious trauma and loss of community. This year’s event will be live-streamed on Wednesday 9 October from 11:00 to 16:00. ‘The …

Humanists UK success at Lib Dem conference

Humanists UK success at Lib Dem conference

Published by skeptic

  Humanists UK enjoyed great success this week at the Liberal Democrats Party Conference where we heard from MPs of the critical importance voters placed on humanist issues during the election campaign. Humanists UK  attends all the major party conferences to meet with parliamentarians, to advocate for humanist issues, and to engage with our party-political members and supporters. We were also at the Green Conference and will be at the Labour and Conservative Conferences. We were delighted to have 20 MPs drop by our stand to discuss key campaigns like humanist marriages, assisted dying, and education, and found widespread support for our positions, including many key frontbenchers. One MP told us ‘We heard humanist issues much more on the doorstep this election, especially issues to do with schools’, showing the increasing significance of our work.   A packed-out speaker event on the need for a secular state, chaired by Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats’ (HSLD) Jenny Wilkinson, was addressed by our Chief Executive Andrew Copson as well as by the newly elected Tom Gordon MP …