UN, Israel, and US; Real Nuclear Threat; The Anti-Disagrees-With-Gov Law; Robot Spouse; and The Deep Year

Israel

What Does UN Vote on Israeli Settlements Mean and What’s Next? bloomberg

United Nations Security Council 2334, which passed Dec. 23 by a vote of 14-0 with the U.S. abstaining, describes Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. It was the first time U.S. President Barack Obama declined to block a Security Council resolution that Israel considered hostile, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of staging a “shameless ambush” against his country. Netanyahu warned countries that backed the measure they would pay a diplomatic and economic price.

Netanyahu has declared that Israel will not not abide by the terms of the resolution. For the Palestinians, Resolution 2334 is “a moral victory and a symbolic victory, but at the end of the day nothing is really going to change on the ground and Israel will continue with its settlement construction,” Abusada said. Nearly 600,000 Jews now live in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem beyond the 1967 boundary.

Also see Israel summons US ambassador as Netanyahu lashes out at Obama cnn and A final insult to Israel washingtontimes

Pakistan

Pakistan issues nuclear warning to Israel in response to 'fake news' story independent.co.uk

[Pakistani Defense Minister] Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in a tweet: "Israeli [Defence Minister] threatens nuclear retaliation presuming [Pakistani] role in Syria against Daesh. Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear state too."

The anonymously-authored story [to which Khawaja appears to be responding] features an apparently invented quote from former Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon, who resigned in May this year, sayig [sic]: "If, by misfortune, they arrive in Syria... we will destroy them with a nuclear attack."

Censorship

Obama Quietly Signs The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act" Into Law zerohedge

Late on Friday, with the US population embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the administration, Obama quietly signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) congress.gov which authorizes $611 billion for the military in 2017.

...with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate "Russian Propaganda" with "fake news" (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially "fake"), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also "fake news" and thus falls under the "Russian propaganda" umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be "foreign propaganda."

The signing of this is true (inside the defense bill), and certainly seems intentionally 'hidden' (late Friday before Christmas), but right now to me it's unclear the actual ramifications of this law. Worth keeping an eye on...

Society

Love Wins: French Woman Wants to Marry Her Robot truthrevolt.org

Lilly’s partner is a robot called InMoovator, who she 3D-printed herself and has been living with for a year. On her Twitter page, where she goes by ‘Lilly InMoovator,’ she says: ‘I'm a proud robosexual, we don't hurt anybody, we are just happy.’ Now, Lilly is reportedly engaged to the robot and says they will marry when human-robot marriage is legalized in France.

Unfortunately this does not appear to be satire...

AI

2016: The Year That Deep Learning Took Over the Internet washingtontimes

On the west coast of Australia, Amanda Hodgson is launching drones out towards the Indian Ocean so that they can photograph the water from above. The photos are a way of locating dugongs, or sea cows, in the bay near Perth—part of an effort to prevent the extinction of these endangered marine mammals. The trouble is that Hodgson and her team don’t have the time needed to examine all those aerial photos. There are too many of them—about 45,000—and spotting the dugongs is far too difficult for the untrained eye. So she’s giving the job to a deep neural network

Other...

The Overlooked Paleontologist Who May Have Inspired 'She Sells Sea Shells' mentalfloss w!