Category Archives: Transhuman News

Weve partnered with Playdius Ent, the indie game label by Plug In Digital, to organize a Post Human W.A.R. beta giveaway. This indie title is a turn-based tactical and psychological strategy game, according to the developers at Studio Chahut.

Post Human W.A.R. launched earlier this month on Steam Early Access, but youll be able to get in by picking one of the 500 codes available in the giveaway below. Do note that these codes wont give you access to the full game once the beta is over; the Early Access phase is reportedly going to last two months, which should mean that Post Human W.A.R. is set to release at some point in July.

Post Human W.A.R. Beta Giveaway

At the dawn of our third millennium, mankind went extinct, leaving behind a deeply affected planet Earth. Ferocious mutated animals, household robots converted for warfare, and inventive monkeys in tracksuits battle it out to decide the fate of the human heritage.

Form your armies and set off on an adventure through solo campaigns, or face off against players online! Experience a purely strategy-oriented gameplay with nothing left to chance, and filled with tactical challenges, bluffs and absurd humor.

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Try Post Human W.A.R. with our Beta Giveaway - Turn-based Strategy & Tactics Indie Game - Wccftech

Asecurity camera recorded four black-clad gunmen as they rushed into a Netherlands supermarket. The camera watched them wave a gun in the face of a female employee. It watched her quietly hand over the money.

Later,MarieLindegaard, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, reviewed this crime and21 other commercial robberies to study the behavior of victims and bystanders.

The supermarket robbery hit close to home. It was Lindegaard's local grocery store.

After the crime, a few nearby male employees approached the victim, talking for a few seconds. A female employee left her position at the tobacco counterto walk across the length of the store.She embraced the victim intensely. She held the victim in her arms for a very long time, as if the victim was a small baby, Lindegaard said, hugging her and moving her back and forth. The victimbegan to cry.

Women were more likely to console victims than men, Lindegaard and her colleagues reported Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.If a victim was an employee, another employee was more likely than a stranger to soothe the victim, a factor the study described as social closeness. These findings and others show that humans are a lot like other great apes.

Only a few species have been scientifically documented consoling victims of aggression: human children, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas. The new study is the first to observe consolation in adults, Lindegaard wrote in an email to The Washington Post. Other studies had concluded that consolation behavior in chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates was similar to humans, but they actually meant human children, she said.

For both humans and chimpanzees, scientists defined consolation as afriendly touch. The cameras recorded 249 people and 3,680 possible pairs of interactions. Gender, social closeness and the threat of violence played a role. Physical proximity did not.

Whenrobbers wielded weapons, or forcefully threatened victims, the odds of consolation increased sharply. A co-worker was several times more likely to offer consolation than a stranger. Women were about three times more likely to provide comfort than men.In 4 of 22 robberies, no one was consoled.

Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University who was not involved with the research,called for more studies like this one, based on observations instead ofsurveys. Many human studies based on questionnaires don't find gender differences in empathy, he said. In real-life observations, however, striking gender differences have been found in children, with girls expressing empathy (consolation behavior) more often than boys, de Waal said, just as in the present study.

The reaction by bystanders, such as embracing and touching of the victim, is extremely similar, de Waal said. It is the prototypical empathy response of the primates.

A few weeks ago, Dear Science answered a question about evolution that sparked a flurry of more questions. The Post's Sarah Kaplan answers them here. (Gillian Brockell,Julio Negron,Sarah Kaplan/The Washington Post)

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Chimps and people console victims in surprisingly similar ways - Washington Post

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner on Wednesday met with notorious Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who isaccused of allowing thousands of extrajudicial killingsas part of a drug crackdown. The Colorado Republican says the pair talked about human rights abuses in the Philippines, battling extremismand North Korea.

I am very concerned about the direction that things are heading in the Philippines, Gardner told The Denver Post in a phone interview Thursday after getting off a plane back to the U.S. Im very concerned about the extrajudicial killings and Im very concerned about the rule of law, and if it is being followed when it comes to human rights. Imvery concerned about human rights abusesand thats why I brought it up face to face.

Gardner said he also met with several other high-ranking Filipino officials, as well as the chairman of the Philippines Human Rights Commission, Chito Gascon.

Instead of engaging in press release diplomacy, Gardner said, Im actually going to do something about it.

Gardner met Duterte in Manila, the Philippines capital. ThePhilippines Presidential Communications Operations Office, which released photos of the two men shaking hands and speaking, called the meeting a courtesy call.

The meeting came during a four-day trip that Gardner, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia, took to the regionwhile Congress has been in recess. On that trip, he alsovisited withU.S. military leaders in the region, senior officials in South Koreas newly elected government and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

The senator from Yuma met, too, withSung Kim, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines.

ProgressNow Colorado, a left-leaning advocacy organization, quickly criticized Gardners meeting with Duterteand demanded a full accounting of Gardners meeting with a murderous strongman who has been condemned by international human rights organizations.

Sen. Cory Gardner owes the people of Colorado an explanation for why he cant meet with us, but has time to visit with murderous Filipino strongman Rodrigo Duterte, said ProgressNows executive director Ian Silverii. Since taking office last year, Dutertes regime has been accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings, encouraging lawless vigilante violence against civilians, and threats against journalists. Duterte has boasted about personally committing murder. Duterte is the last person Sen. Gardner should be associating with, and yet there he was a headline in Filipino news media, smiling and shaking hands with this murderous strongman.

Gardner brushed off the criticism, saying liberal groups did not attack U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, his Democratic counterpart in Colorado, after hisvisit to Cuba.

Gardner also said he was able to secure a guarantee from Duterte that the Philippines would stop trade with North Korea. That they would help us on North Korea.

President Donald Trump and Duterte spoke on the phone about two months ago. A White House statement in April described the call as very friendly and said the U.S.-Philippine alliance is now heading in a very positive direction.

Duterte has taken a friendlier approach with Trump versus the antagonistic stance he had toward President Barack Obama, whom Duterteoncetold to go to hell for criticizing the Philippines leaders bloody anti-drug crackdown.

During Obamas final months in office, the Philippine president moved to build closer economic ties with China and Russia while repeatedly threatening to end his nations longstanding military alliance with the U.S.

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In interview, Cory Gardner says he talked with notorious Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte about human rights abuses - The Denver Post

Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Corey Stewart on Tuesday accused one of his rivals of participating in human trafficking, a claim he based on work Ed Gillespies lobbying firm did for Tyson Foods when the poultry giant was charged with smuggling Mexicans across the border to work in its U.S. plants.

In essence, Ed Gillespie is complicit in smuggling illegal aliens into this country, Stewart said. Hes complicit in human trafficking.

Stewart, who faces Gillespie and state Sen. Frank Wagner (Virginia Beach) in the June13 GOP primary, made the claim one day after The Washington Post reported that Tyson paid Quinn Gillespie & Associates more than $1million for help on a range of issues, including the criminal case, which ended in acquittal.

[GOP front-runner Ed Gillespie in a tight spot on immigration]

Gillespies campaign dismissed Stewarts claim which came exactly two weeks before the primary as a baseless attack.

Corey Stewarts campaign has been a constant stream of fabrication and falsehoods, Gillespie spokeswoman Abbi Sigler wrote in an email. Tyson Foods retained Quinn Gillespie in 2001 to provide public relations services dealing with charges for which a jury later found the company not guilty. As The Washington Post reported, Tysons made clear the firm was not retained to lobby on the issue and Ed was not involved in the day-to-day work for them.

Polls show Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman and onetime adviser to President George W. Bush, with a double-digit lead over Stewart, who is chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, and Wagner heading into the homestretch. Gillespie left the lobbying firm in 2007. Many political analysts think Stewart turned himself into a fringe candidate months ago by making the preservation of the states Confederate monuments the central issue of his campaign.

[Do Corey Stewarts Confederate antics help Ed Gillespie or hurt the GOP brand?]

But Stewart sees an opportunity to reset the race by playing up Gillespies ties to Tyson, noting that a sizable chunk of the electorate is undecided or even unaware of the race.

Now people are tuning in, he said, suggesting that voters will turn away from Gillespie when people find out that Ed Gillespie has been complicit in human trafficking of illegal immigrants into this country, illegal immigrants who are murdering and battering and raping American citizens.

On Facebook, Stewarts campaign promoted The Post story under an inaccurate headline of its own making: BREAKING: Gillespie Exposed for Receiving $1M+++ for Colluding with Illegal Alien Human Trafficker. The actual Post headline was, In Va. governors race, Gillespie in a tight spot on immigration in Trump era.

Tyson hired Quinn Gillespie & Associates in December 2001, just days before the U.S. Justice Department charged the poultry giant with illegally smuggling Mexicans into the country to work at processing plants in Virginia and elsewhere. Tyson acknowledged some smuggling at the time but maintained that it had been the work of rogue employees and was not sanctioned by corporate leaders. The company was acquitted.

Tyson paid Gillespies firm more than $1.1million from 2001 to 2007 to lobby Bushs White House, the Senate and the House on a range of issues, according to federal lobbying disclosures. Gillespie was listed as a Tyson lobbyist for several of those years. He was registered to handle issues that included amnesty proposals, immigration reform, country of origin labeling, and labor and workforce issues, according to those forms.

Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman, told The Post last week that the company hired Gillespies firm for public affairs consulting, not lobbying, when our company was facing immigration charges. ... Most of the work done by Quinn Gillespie for our company did not involve Mr. Gillespie.

In response to Stewarts comments Tuesday, Mickelson issued a statement saying: Wehave zero tolerance for employing anyone who is not authorized to work in this country and use all available tools provided by the U.S. government to check the documents of the people we hire.

Even without this latest development, immigration has been a tricky issue for Gillespie, who hails from the partys establishment wing and supported the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration initiative in the U.S. Senate that called for tighter border security as well as a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 12million undocumented immigrants. Gillespie now says he never supported the amnesty aspect of the proposal; he says he wanted a pathway to legal status, not citizenship.

Gillespie has struck a big tent tone in TV commercials, which have him promising to be a governor for all Virginians, while his Facebook ads show images of a massive border wall and a handcuffed illegal immigrant.

Stewart also tried to appeal to various GOP constituencies as he blasted Gillespies work for Tyson, by turns describing the illegal Tyson workers as murderous and exploited.

He spoke at a morning conference at a county office building, surrounded by photos of Virginians who he said had been killed by illegal immigrants.

If it werent for the efforts of Ed Gillespie and Tyson, some of these people would still be alive today, Stewart said.

Asked whether he had any evidence that illegal immigrants who had worked at Tyson plants had killed anyone, Stewart said, No, but I know a significant portion of those who come here illegally, they have criminal backgrounds and commit crimes.

At the same time, Stewart suggested that Gillespie had helped to exploit the immigrants, saying that they were smuggled into the country to work for wages and under conditions that no American would accept.

Theres another victim, too, and that is the illegal immigrants themselves, Stewart said. Theyre paid next to nothing, and theyre forced to work in conditions that no American would work in. ... And hes been making a million dollars.

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Stewart blasts Gillespie's work for Tyson Foods - The Washington Post - Washington Post