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“Jetson ONE Is A $92,000 ‘Flying Sports Car'” – Autoweek
“You Could Soon Fly To Work In A $92,000 Flying Car That Can Reach 63 Miles Per Hour” – INSIDER
“The Jetson ONE Is A Personal eVTOL That Anyone Can Fly” – designboom
THE JETSON ONE WANTS TO MAKE FLYING AVAILABLE TO ANYONE
After the successful launch of its prototype in 2018, Swedish startup Jetson is back with its consumer version of the Jetson ONE: Jetson ONE eVTOL. available in 18 units — of which 15 have already been reserved — the personal electric aerial vehicle is here for anyone to own. and although all vehicles for 2022 have been sold, the company is now taking orders for vehicles to be delivered in 2023.
“Our mission is to make flight available to everyone,” said Peter Ternstrom, founder ofJetson.
“The Jetson ONE is an electric helicopter that you can own and fly. We intend to make everyone a pilot.”
This photograph taken on October 7, 2022 shows a Russian rocket sticks out a ground near the village of Ukrainka in a part of Southern Ukraine. Photo by DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
Two people were reportedly killed after Russian missiles landed in an eastern Polish village.
Poland is a member of NATO, which operates under the principle of collective defense.
Two people were killed after Russian missiles landed in an eastern Polish village on Tuesday, a US intelligence official told the Associated Press. The incident seemingly marks the first time that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has spilled across Ukraine’s borders and into the territory of a NATO member.
The missiles landed in the village of Przewodów, which is located in eastern Poland a short distance from Ukraine’s western border, and reportedly came amid a barrage of over 90 Russian missiles that targeted Ukraine’s infrastructure.
A Polish government official said the country’s prime minister called an emergency defense committee meeting. Russia denied reports that its weapons landed in Poland, with its state-run TASSnews agency calling reports they had “a deliberate provocation.”
A spokesperson for Poland’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement that a “Russian-made missile fell” into the region and that an ambassador for the Russian Federation has been asked to provide an immediate explanation.
The damage shifts attention onto the NATO alliance, which has repeatedly warned it will defend the territory of its allies from Russia. Poland is a member of the NATO, which operates under the principle of collective defense — enshrined in Article 5 of the alliance’s founding treaty. Under this agreement, an attack against one NATO country is considered an attack against the entire military alliance. But Article 5 has only been invoked once in NATO’s history, following the terror attacks against the US on September 11, 2001.
Article 5 states that NATO members will assist the attacked party or parties by “taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
It’s unclear what caused the Russian projectiles to land in Poland, which could have a major bearing on how the alliance reacts.
The US and its Western allies have warned Russia repeatedly that an attack on NATO territory would trigger a strong response.
“We have a sacred obligation under Article 5 to defend each and every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power,” President Joe Biden said in March.
Adrienne Watson, the White House National Security Council spokesperson, said Tuesday afternoon that “we’ve seen these reports out of Poland and are working with the Polish government to gather more information. We cannot confirm the reports or any of the details at this time. We will determine what happened and what the appropriate next steps would be.”
Echoing these comments, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said during a press briefingthat the US is “aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland near the Ukraine border. I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further.”
Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters he did not think the apparent strike was intentional.
“I have to believe that it was a mistake by Russia,” he said, per The Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin. “And I think if it is, Russia should come out very quickly and say that.”
Poland’s foreign affairs ministry and NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider. The Russian government also did not respond to an inquiry.
The incident immediately triggered remarks from top officials in neighboring countries.
“My condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland. Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime,” Latvia’s defense minister said on Twitter.
A spokesperson for the Hungarian government said that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would also convene a meeting of the country’s defense council in response to “the missile hitting territory of Poland.”
The incident comes as Russia fired a barrage of missiles across Ukraine on Tuesday, leaving half the population of Kyiv without power.
Pinning this comment from the Live thread to assuage people’s worry around article 5 being invoked in light of the 2 killed in the Polish border town.
This is NOT the start of WW3, folks. Calm. However, Poland has a lot of options to make things incredibly unpleasant for Russia without kicking off WW3.
The situation is still developing and I will update this comment as confirmed information comes in.
The current most credible theory is:
US official have told POLITICO it was likely caused by a missile strike or errant missile, not remnants of a missile Ukrainian armed forces shot down. Source
Polish Foreign Ministry confirm a Russian-made rocket fell on the territory. Source
Russia missiles did hit electrical infrastructure near Kovel, Ukraine, 50kms (31 miles) from the Polish border. Source
Ukraine confirmed earlier today 73 missiles (out of ~100) and 11 drones were shot down. Source
A quick refresh on NATO bylaws:
Article 5: An attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all of its members.
Article 4: The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.
Here’s everything you wanted to know about Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty but were afraid to ask.
Pentagon looking into Poland missile strike reports.
The Department of Defense Press Secretary, Brig Gen Patrick S Ryder, has said:
“We are aware of the press reporting on this. We have no information at this time to corroborate those reports but again, are taking them seriously and looking into them. And so I will make sure that we provide you with any updates as soon as we have them.”
He continues: “We’re looking into these reports – don’t have any information to corroborate them at this time. So I don’t want to speculate or get into hypotheticals. When it comes to our security commitments and Article 5, we’ve been crystal-clear that we will defend every inch of Nato territory.”
Update 19:59 GTM:
Lithuania PM” “Concerning news. Every inch of NATO territory needs to be defended.”
Update 20:07 GMT:
Russia denies any involvement in ‘missile strike on Poland’.
Russia has denied statements from Polish media outlets and officials that Russian missiles fell on the Polish village of Przewodó near the Ukrainian border.
The Russian ministry of defence posted on its Telegram, calling the reports “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.”
Update 20:20 GMT:
NATO Statement: “We are looking into these reports and coordinating with our ally Poland.”
Update 21:21 GMT:
Poland ‘raises military readiness’…
Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller has confirmed that there was an explosion that killed two Polish citizens, Reuters news agency reports
Poland is raising the readiness of its military units, he says, and “verifying if we need to activate Nato Article Four.”
That article says: “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
Update 21:33 GMT:
NATO Secretary General’s Tweet: “Spoke with President Duda about the explosion in Poland. I offered my condolences for the loss of life. NATO is monitoring the situation and Allies are closely consulting. Important that all facts are established.”
Update 21:40 GMT:
US President Biden has been briefed and is speaking to Polish President Andrze Duda, officials say.
Sweeping south from positions in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, Ukrainian forces have made their largest gains since routing Russia from Kyiv in April.
Ukrainian fighters in Kharkiv on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky said his military had captured large chunks of occupied territory in the north. Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have scored the most significant battlefield gains since they routed Russia from the area around Kyiv in April by reclaiming territory in the northeast, according to Ukrainian officials, Western analysts and battlefield imagery.
In his overnight address to the nation Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian military had captured scores of villages and large chunks of Russian-occupied territory across Ukraine since the offensive began. “In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of September,” he said.
On Friday the Ukrainian military appeared to be moving rapidly to cut off the city of Izium, a critical logistical hub for Russian military operations. The exact positions of Ukrainian forces in the area around Izium could not be independently established. But satellite data, independent military analysts and photos and videos of Ukrainian forces indicated that they had moved quickly toward Kupiansk, another logistical hub just north of Izium.
The new offensive in the north appears to have caught the Russian forces off guard. On Friday, its Defense Ministry said on Telegram that it was moving troops to reinforce the Kharkiv region, without specifying their numbers or specific locations.
Ukraine’s advances in the northeast sent a shock wave through Kremlin-friendly military bloggers, pro-war cheerleaders who typically call for more aggressive action.
“We need to be honest, the Ukrainian command has outplayed us here,” said Yury Podolyaka, a Ukrainian pro-Kremlin blogger with more than 2.2 million followers on Telegram. He warned that if the Russian forces failed to “stop the Ukrainian breakthrough” in the coming days “this will be the most serious combat defeat” for Moscow.
Ukrainian and Western officials cautioned that the offensive operations were in their early days, that the situation was fluid and that the gains were far from secure. Not all of the claims of advances by Ukraine could be independently verified, and much about the state of the fighting in both the east and the south of Ukraine is shrouded in uncertainty as the government in Kyiv enforces a media blackout, restricting journalists’ access to the front.
For months, Ukraine’s leaders declared loudly and often their intention to launch a counteroffensive in the south, around the port city of Kherson. And they proceeded to batter Russian supply lines, ammunition depots and command centers in the region with precision rockets, while massing troops and orchestrating covert attacks on military bases and Russian collaborators far behind enemy lines.
Ukrainian soldiers near the Kherson front this week. Ukraine’s leaders had long declared their intentions to retake Kherson, but said little about the north. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Ukrainian soldiers near the Kherson front this week. Ukraine’s leaders had long declared their intentions to retake Kherson, but said little about the north. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times But they said virtually nothing about the northeast, until this week.
Accounts from witnesses, the local Ukrainian authorities, Russian proxy officials, geolocated video on social media and satellite footage offered a window into the Ukrainian campaign.
On Thursday, Ukrainian officials said their troops had pushed through the town of Balakliya, less than 30 miles from the city of Izium, which lies close to the Donbas, the contested area of eastern Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has vowed to seize. President Zelensky released video of soldiers raising Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag above the town’s administrative building, and other officials posted videos, not all immediately authenticated, of locals coming out to greet the soldiers.
Ukrainian soldiers on Friday posted photos that purported to be in the vicinity of Kupiansk, which has served as the capital of the Russian occupation in the region. The Kremlin-installed head of the city administration, Vitaly Ganchev, urged women and children to evacuate as Ukrainian forces approached.
Mr. Ganchev said the city is under “constant rocket attacks from the armed forces of Ukraine,” according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.
In response to the growing threats in the south, the Russian military redeployed thousands of troops from the Donbas, apparently thinning their defenses in the north and providing an opening for the Ukrainians.
Russia’s seeming inability to secure a key flank near Izium also highlighted its challenge in defending occupied territory along front lines that stretch 1,500 miles from northeastern Ukraine to the Black Sea coast in the south. And the battlefield setbacks seemed to underscore the manpower issues plaguing the Russian army, which the United States estimates has suffered at least 80,000 wounded and killed since the invasion began in late February.
A Russian strike in the Kherson region this month. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
On Friday, some of Russia’s military bloggers voiced dismay over the inability of Russian commanders to prepare stout defenses. Others have demanded an explanation from the Russian military command or other authorities.
Maksim Fomin called on law enforcement to figure out why Russian forces were unprepared for the Ukrainian offensive. “The situation is very diffilcult,” he said. “Let’s exhale and say that we have been defeated.”
Yevgeny Poddubny, a Russian state TV reporter, posted a video of Russian transport helicopters that he said were transferring Russian troops to the Kupiansk and Izium areas, citing Russian defense officials.
Some of the pro-Kremlin bloggers have warned that the loss of large swaths of occupied lands in Ukraine would undermine the “Russia is here forever” message that the occupying authorities have been preaching in order to sway locals to support them.
Occupation forces outside Donetsk this month.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters While the Ukrainian gains in the north were capturing most of the attention Friday, the southern counteroffensive also made gains, with Ukraine’s Security Service releasing photos of what it said was the city of Vysokopillia, in the Kherson region. That claim could not be independently verified. Last week, Ukrainian forces reported that they had broken through the first line of Russian defenses in multiple locations in the Kherson region, where they remain engaged in fierce battles to drive the Russians back from well-fortified positions.
Occupation forces outside Donetsk this month. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said the campaign in the south did not appear to be a diversion to draw Russian forces.
“These appear to be interrelated offensives,” he said on Twitter on Thursday. “Kherson likely intended as a more deliberate, sequenced advance. Kharkiv to take advantage of favorable conditions.” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that Ukraine has made tangible gains in recent days, but he sought to temper expectations for what will probably continue to prove a bloody campaign.
“There is fighting — both offense and defense — all the way from Kharkiv all the way down to Kherson,” he said at a news conference in Germany. Still, General Milley said the Ukrainians were making efficient use of newly acquired weapons systems to set the stage for their offensive. The American-made HIMARS missile system, he said, has been used to strike more than 400 targets. And it is just one of a number of advanced weapons systems now being deployed by the Ukrainians. But he emphasized that Russia, although its supply lines were strained and its manpower troubles far from resolved, retained significant advantages in the war.
“The war is not over,” he said. “Russia’s a big country. They have very serious ambitions with respect to Ukraine.”
Authors: Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Marco Hernandez from New York. Anna Lukinova contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Alan Yuhas from New York.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/world/aeurope/ukraine-russia-kharkiv.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Published on: 9 September 2022
Texas Republicans are pushing for a referendum to decide whether the state should secede from the U.S.
Texas Republicans are pushing for a referendum to see if the state should secede from the U.S. Above, Kenny Wolfam open carries a pistol and wears a “Trump 2020” t-shirt while counter-protesting a “Moms Demand Action” protest at Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, Texas on June 17, 2021.
The demand for Texans to be allowed to vote on the issue in 2023 was one of many measures adopted in the Texas GOP’s party platform following last week’s state convention in Houston
Under a section titled “State Sovereignty,” the platform states: “Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.
Texas Republicans are pushing for a referendum to see if the state should secede from the U.S. Above, Kenny Wolfam open carries a pistol and wears a “Trump 2020” t-shirt while counter-protesting a “Moms Demand Action” protest at Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, Texas on June 17, 2021.
In another section on state governance, the platform states that Texas Republicans want the state Legislature to pass a bill in its next session “requiring a referendum in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.
The myth that Texas can secede from the U.S. continues because of the state’s history of independence, according to The Texas Tribune. Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and spent nine years as its own nation before becoming a U.S. state. Texas then seceded from the Union in 1861 before being readmitted following the end of the Civil War in 1870.
The U.S. Constitution makes no provision for states to secede and in 1869, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that states cannot unilaterally secede from the Union.
“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote.
Still, modern secessionist efforts have continued in the state for decades—and calls to secede tend to become louder when a Democrat is a president, according to the Tribune.
It’s not clear how popular the effort is among Texans, but the Texas Nationalist Movement’s website claims almost half a million Texans support its work to “make Texas an independent nation again.”
The movement’s efforts have been promoted by Texas Republicans. Last year, state Representative Kyle Biedermann introduced a bill that called for a “Texit” referendum, which was endorsed by Texas GOP chairman Allen West. The bill ultimately failed.
The bill was rebuked by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with Republican state Representative Jeff Leach branding it a “disgrace to the Lone Star State” and the “very definition of seditious.”
As well as the issue of a referendum, delegates also voted on more than 270 platform planks as the convention closed on Saturday. The votes will be tallied and certified in Austin, but it is rare for a plank to be rejected, party spokesperson James Wesolek told The Tribune. He has been contacted for additional comment.
The Texas GOP’s new party platform also called for full repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Other planks also indicated a further shift to the right for the party, giving prominence to culture issues. The platform describes homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” and also declares that the party opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity.
The platform also calls for a total ban on abortion and “equal protection for the Preborn.” Abortion is currently prohibited after around six weeks of pregnancy in Texas, but an imminent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the decision in Roe v. Wade that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide and trigger a law in Texas making abortion illegal.
The new Texas GOP platform also states that the education system should focus on “imparting essential academic knowledge, understanding why Texas and America are exceptional and have positively contributed to our world, and while doing so, also offer enrichment subjects that bless students’ lives.”
It calls for students to learn about the “Humanity of the Preborn Child,” including teaching that life begins at fertilization. It also demands that the state legislature pass a law prohibiting the teaching of “sex education, sexual health, or sexual choice or identity in any public school in any grade whatsoever.”
But there was one big difference, she added. FaceReader, being a piece of software and therefore immune to gender bias, proved to be the great equalizer: It detected RBF in male and female faces in equal measure. Which means that the idea of RBF as a predominantly female phenomenon has little to do with facial physiology and more to do with social norms.
February 2, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. EST
Queen Elizabeth has it. So does fashion designer Victoria Beckham. And actress Kristen Stewart – poor thing, she’s practically the poster girl.
Among the slew of pop culture icons said to be afflicted with so-called Resting Bitch Face (alternatively known as Bitchy Resting Face), the vast majority are women, though Kanye West is among the male examples. All of them have been mocked by Internet commenters for having a certain unintentional expression when their faces are not in motion – a look best described as vaguely annoyed, maybe a little judgy, perhaps slightly bored.
Since the RBF meme took over the Internet in 2013, fueled by a viral mock-PSA about “Bitchy Resting Face,” legions of people have identified the dreaded phenomenon in celebrity listicles, in their own social circles, even in the mirror.
the QUEEN BITCH HERSELF: Kristen Stewart of “Twilight” fame, often considered the poster girl for RBF
So Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, behavioral researchers with international research and innovation firm Noldus Information Technology, decided to investigate: Why are some faces seen as truly expressionless, but others are inexplicably off-putting? What, exactly, makes us register a seemingly neutral expression as RBF?
“We wanted this to be fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also to have legitimate scientific data backing it up,” Macbeth said.
The researchers enlisted Noldus’s FaceReader, a sophisticated tool engineered to identify specific expressions based on a catalogue of more than 10,000 images of human faces. The software, which can examine faces through a live camera, a photograph or a video clip, maps 500 points on the human face, then analyzes the image and assigns an expression based on eight basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and “neutral.”
To establish a baseline, Rogers and Macbeth first had FaceReader assess a series of genuinely expressionless faces. Those expressions registered about 97 percent neutrality, Macbeth said; the remaining three percent included “little blips of emotion” – a touch of sadness here, a hint of surprise there, but nothing significant.
Then they plugged in photos of RBF all-stars Kanye West, Kristen Stewart and Queen Elizabeth. Suddenly, the level of emotion detected by the software doubled to six percent.
One particular emotion was responsible for the jump: “The big change in percentage came from ‘contempt,'” Macbeth said.
And how exactly does a piece of software measure contempt in a face?
It’s in subtle signals, like “one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little,” Rogers explained.
Or: “It’s kind of a tightening around the eyes, and a little bit of raising of the corners of the lips – but not into a smile,” Macbeth suggested.
The cues are understated, yet the machine detects and interprets them the same way our human brains do, she said. “Something in the neutral expression of the face is relaying contempt, both to the software and to us.”
Consider actress Anna Kendrick, who has publicly bemoaned the effect of RBF on her life.
“When she was younger, directors would say, ‘Why don’t you smile more, you need to smile more, you don’t seem like you’re very happy,'” Macbeth said. “That’s something that’s expected from women far more than it’s expected from men, and there’s a lot of anecdotal articles and scientific literature on that. So RBF isn’t necessarily something that occurs more in women, but we’re more attuned to notice it in women because women have more pressure on them to be happy and smiley and to get along with others.”
Worried that you might have RBF? Now you can find out for sure. After publishing their results in October, Rogers and Macbeth invited members of the public to submit their own faces for analysis. Guys and gals alike are welcome to email photos of their most “neutral” facial expressions to jason@noldus.com, and FaceReader will tell you if you’re actually expressionless – or if you and the Queen have RBF in common.
Caitlin Gibson is a feature writer at The Washington Post. Since joining The Post in 2005, she has contributed feature stories, essays, long-form enterprise and local news to the paper and The Washington Post Magazine.
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