So the "White Lives Matter" banner that was flown over the Burnley vs Manchester City game earlier this evening appears to have been towed by G-ENEA, a Cessna which is registered to Air Ads Ltd.
Finding this was actually a bit more difficult than I thought. Nothing came up on flight tracking sites.
However, the image from the Telegraph was clear enough to just about see the registration code, except I though the "E"'s were "C"'s, so I didn't get it right away.
I established it was a Cessna, probably a Cessna 206, which is a pretty common plane. Not going to be much help.
I figured this kind of banner and the skill required to fly it isn't common, so I checked air banner companies in the UK and compared their planes against the one seen in the @Telegraph picture.
The first company I checked had plenty of Facebook images showing a matching plane.
The livery and registration code are both clearly consistent.
Air Ads have just posted this to their Facebook page.
I suspect it may be dawning on them that they've made an extraordinarily bad decision.
Probably should have tried harder to find the flight track. @AramShabanian managed to find it on ADBS Exchange!
Confident that this picture claiming to show an "explosion near the pentagon" is AI generated.
Check out the frontage of the building, and the way the fence melds into the crowd barriers. There's also no other images, videos or people posting as first hand witnesses.
Whenever an event like this takes place, it will affect a large number of people. Even leaving aside that fact this picture is clearly AI generated, it's immediately possible to identify this as a fake by geolocation and conducting searches on social media.
Most extreme physical events in populated areas (bombings, terrorist attacks, large fights) have a recognisable digital ripple. It doesn't work the other way round.
*This* is why it's so difficult (I'd argue effectively impossible) to create a believable fake of such an event.
Finally, a good article which actually discusses the nuances of AI generated imagery and doesn't baselessly hype it as some kind of catastrophic end to the concept of objective truth.
Want to know the real threat from this kind of imagery right now?
It's the false assumption that anything can and will be faked, which is 1. not true and 2. allows powerful actors to get away with stuff by waving their hand crying "fake". npr.org/2023/05/08/117…
.@EliotHiggins creation of images showing Trump get arrested did precisely nothing in terms of actually persuading any serious people that Trump had been arrested, yet was subject to a hysterical set of fact checks and baseless claims that everything can be faked.
The OPCW IIT has released its report on the 2018 chemical attack at Douma, concluding there are reasonable ground that it was carried out by the Syrian regime. This thread will highlight some important points.
The core is the chemistry section from p.25 onwards. The report makes clear that samples taken from the scenes are consistent with the presence of chlorine gas, originating from the two cylinders at Location 2 (cylinder on the roof) and Location 4 (cylinder on the bed)
This is stronger worded and better supported than the previous FFM reports, but still consistent.
I’ve already seen one prominent person try to claim that the previous FFM report did not uncover any evidence of a chlorine attack. This is a blatant and pretty shameless lie.
I’ve been looking at the Kerch Strait bridge explosion and thought I’d make a thread of things I’ve noticed.
Firstly: the explosion affected the Ukraine-bound lane of the bridge at approximately 45.300105, 36.513240.
It seems at least three spans of the bridge have collapsed. Two at the location where a train is burning (location 1), and another further to the east (location 2).
The most significant damage took place at Location 1.
Many have noted that at the moment of detonation, a large truck had just driven onto this span, which may or may not be an important point.
One important note is that the NAFO, like so many other similar efforts, is not state-run campaign.
I feel that literature of the last few years has missed how impactful a bunch of pissed-off people can be, instead focusing on state-level efforts which are mostly pretty lame.
It seems that a lot of state-level "memetic warfare" is actually pretty unsuccessful, whether it's some bizarre Russian Facebook page with 20 follows or a US covert propaganda campaign, which got a "handful" of likes and RT's.
Ah, I see @thenation is publishing straight-up atrocity denial again.
I wonder how long before people realise that a not insignificant reason this publication exists is to cover up mass-murder committed by the worst regimes in the world.
It is disgraceful that this kind of hateful and objectively incorrect statement is published by what is still regarded as a stalwart of the left in the US.
The “research” conducted by Maté on CW use in Syria included work done by a magic AI machine and a vicious anti-semite.
Meanwhile Postol based much of his “research” regarding Ghouta on advice from a Syrian-regime affiliated chemistry undergrad in Australia.