JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Teens to lose access to social media
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/11/20/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-to-deactivate-instagram-accounts-of-australian-teens-ahead-of-social-media-ban/
This has been some time coming. I think there was going to be a challenge in your High Courts regarding Adults needing to verify their age, online.
100
I was born on Jan 1 1900 according to Facebook. I have the birthday wished from a decade or more back to verify it.
50
Did you get ‘fixed’ in the Y2K era?
30
Facebook started after Y2k. So that was not an issue for it. Facebook turned 21 this year. An impressive rise.
Nvidia now makes Facebook look a minnow but it is 33 years old. My boys used to talk about their Nvidia screen drivers when they were gaming back in the 1990s.
30
Apple is not yet 50!
And I am getting less happy with Apple. They give me the feeling they want to own me. I want nothing to do with their Clouds.
30
I heard that in Australia Meta (Farcebook) will be deleting about 500,000 accounts believed to belong to under 16’s.
It’s a disgrace.
The true agenda is to 1) remove access to alternative information sources from teens which are not in accordance with the Official Narrative such as scepticism about anthropogenic climate change or that there are only two genders and 2) when the proposed facial scanning methods of identifying age are found to be a failure then “oh my gosh” we’ll have to use universal digital ID thus everyone online will be forced into digital ID and all your social media missives will be recorded against your person number and used to rank your social credit score, just like in China whom the politicians and Left are enamoured with.
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I wonder if FB will decide that if the account was created more then 16 years ago, the account holder might be aged more than 16?
00
Keir Starmer is in a very vulnerable position despite having a huge majority. Two things might topple him. Immigration being one
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/could-the-migration-reforms-spark-the-rebellion-that-topples-starmer/
The other being his Chancellor who is clearly out of her depth. The left wing won’t let Rachel Reeves cut benefits and Starmer daren’t let her do things unpopular with the Labour MP’s. She will present a major Budget next week and that may ultimately determine Starmer’s fate.
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What’s going to trip him up next (apart from silly 3″ heel lifts).
https://youtube.com/shorts/vahptgkH-5o
Not the first time either. Guido says his team demanded that the media didn’t show it.
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The UK Covid enquiry, after spending £200 million has ground to a conclusion. I think it is a rep[ort that Sir Humphrey of Yes Minister fame would be proud of.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/11/21/the-covid-inquiry-has-failed-to-engage-with-the-evidence/
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Apart from being an appalling report, how could it possibly cost that much,? Now there needs to be an inquiry into the cost.
50
‘Fossil Fuels’ save the day at COP30
https://www.rebelnews.com/fire_erupts_at_cop30_and_fossil_fuels_save_the_day
Because “you can’t put out a real fire with carbon credits and a panel discussion.”
The fire was brought under control and extinguished by conventional fire engines and fire pumps powered by the evil “fossil fuel” that zealots were trying to persuade the world to phase out.
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Asbestos found in Chinese-built wind turbines across Australia, triggering a national regulatory investigation into multiple wind farm sites.
Liberals take lead as frightened women flee Allan Labor
Victoria’s new Opposition Leader Jess Wilson has surged to a commanding lead as preferred premier while female voters abandon Labor’s Jacinta Allan in dramatic polling shift
Andrew Hastie’s brand of conservatism may be just the ticket, but does he have a taste for the daily combat of national leadership?
Sussan Ley will target Chris Bowen as a ‘weak link’, champion budget repair to deliver personal income tax cuts and play hardball on Labor’s EPBC in a critical final parliamentary week of the year.
Four sub-headings from todays Australian give me great heart! Is the Australian worm turning?
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‘ … does he have a taste for the daily combat of national leadership?’
Yes.
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I’m sure they’ll turn a blind eye to the asbestos in Chinese windmills.
30
The Australian has served us well. Without the Murdoch stable we would have been wiped out years ago.
It did look to me that Chris Kenny drew the short straw to maintain an alternative view in the debate.
10
Chris Uhlmann has also significantly contributed. Plus, surprisingly, Jennie George has weighed in with excellent contributions. Then there is articles from Bjorn Lomborg and others.
20
While passing through a small town in the Dandenong ranges yesterday noticed a nice new “box” had been installed on a bit of land near the shopping centre.
In large letters, AUSNET GENERATOR CONNECTION POINT.
Don’t know if it’s a bushfire emergency contingency or what. The cynic in me of course suggests that it’s there for when the “free” power generation stuff fails. Oh well one thing is certain it be a diesel powered generator that’s connected, not the wind or sun stuff.
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An explainer from Ausnet, Oct 2024.
https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/news/ausnet-installs-quick-generator-points-in-emerald-and-cockatoo
After the extended blackouts from storm damage in the Dandenongs, the idea is to have generators to try and maintain local supply to facilities such as the local IGA and petrol station.
Personally, I have no idea why these facilities wouldn’t have their own generators. Having lived at Warburton where supply interruptions were not rare, I thought it very odd that the local petrol station couldn’t operate during outages.
Ausnet makes the claim that severe weather events will become more frequent.
20
Thanks for that, simply never thought to “google” it. Old age and other things to do.
20
Does seem odd, maybe its a service Ausnet offers and they avoid the capital cost. In my nearby town the core businesses (chemist, supermarket and main coffee shop) all have their own generators.
20
Got to admit my first thoughts were an attempt at “micro griding” the area. Maybe there is a wind/solar factory planned nearby. Even with Strops explainer I’m afraid the cynical approach took over. Of course wild weather events could be mitigated by clearing the high growth near the power lines, after all that’s what happens in our area.
10
The UK finally got below -10C, not sure it’s an official station. Reputedly the highest village in Scotland, Tomintoul, last night. Already above freezing and no frost expected there tonight, milder weather has already moved in.
Only proper snow in current spell was N.Yorksire and mountains/Moors/Highlands in N.England, Scotland and Wales/NI for a bit.
https://x.com/metoffice/status/1991872431540129806
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Peace Deal for Ukraine?
Coffee and Covid covers this story, which seems to have slipped below the MSM radar.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/slava-polycrisis-thursday-november
The Trump Admin have worked swiftly and silently (ie without leaking), to engineer a crisis within the Ukrainian Government and then present Zelensky with a 28 point peace plan.
The European Countries have been excluded from the process , provoking some impotent outrage: It’s our war too. As indeed it was.
But it might soon be over.
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I wonder if many of us, here noticed how unnatural looks the border around old Narva town, Estonia?
Unlike St. Petersburg, not far from it to the North, recently (in historical terms) taken from Swedes, Slavs lived there at least a millennium. Even today, 95% of Narvians uses Cyrillic alphabet.
It must’ve been a deliberate provocation by Roosevelt and Churchill, it is intolerable !
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I can say that this anomaly hasn’t been drawn to my attention. I am not sure that Roosevelt and Churchill spent much time debating where to draw the line.
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fWIR
From Wiki “History of Estonia”
“The Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840) led to the Estonian national awakening in the middle of the 19th century. In the aftermath of World War I (1914–1918) and the revolutions of 1917 that brought the end to the Russian Empire, Estonia was declared an independent democratic republic in February 1918. In the Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920) the newly proclaimed state successfully fought against the Soviet Russian Bolshevist invasion, and in the February 1920 Russian-Estonian Peace Treaty the Soviet Russia recognised Estonian independence in perpetuity.
During World War II (1939–1945) the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940 and illegally annexed the country.[a] In the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany occupied Estonia in 1941; the Soviet Army reoccupied Estonia in 1944. Estonia regained its independence in August 1991 and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.”
Doesn’t look like Churchill and Roosevelt had much say in the matter?
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I linked to the 28 points yesterday. I did not know why it is not being widely reported:
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/20/trump-ukraine-peace-plan-28-points-russia
There is also corruption charges against Zelenskyy supporters and two senior officials have fled. Zelenskyy has posted that he is pleased POTUS Trump has been involved to reach this stage. I think that means he will sign. But he probably only has 100 days left.
The full plan
1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.
2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.
3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and NATO will not expand further.
4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.
5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.
Update: A separate document details the terms of the security guarantee. The U.S. and its NATO allies would treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire “transatlantic community.”
6. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.
See Link for rest. [ snip for copyright vs length of copy. – LVA]
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Kiev removed anti-corruption clause from US peace plan – WSJ
A point on auditing foreign aid was reportedly replaced with wording on a broad amnesty
Ukraine removed a key anti-corruption clause from the US-drafted peace proposal by eliminating an audit of international aid, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing a senior US official.
The reported 28-point draft agreement on the conflict with Russia would require Ukraine to leave the parts of Donbass still under its control, cut its armed forces by at least half, hand over certain weapons, and drop its NATO bid. Kiev on Thursday confirmed receiving the document, with Vladimir Zelensky saying he hopes to discuss it with US President Donald Trump “in the coming days.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the original text required that “Ukraine will conduct a comprehensive review of all assistance received and will establish a legal mechanism to address discovered violations and punish those who benefited illegally from the war.” The new version instead grants “full amnesty for all actions committed during the war,” replacing the accountability clause. The official reportedly said Ukraine requested the change.
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They removed the corruption clause because its childish, in fact the whole peace plan is naive.
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Irish Journalist in Russia Chay Bowes posts video of Zelensky addressing Ukrainians and accepting defeat.
https://x.com/BowesChay/status/1991898259611344952
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I followed yer link and got:
Hmm…this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.
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‘Zelensky addressing Ukrainians and accepting defeat.’
He did not, you need to get out more.
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@ el+gordo:
>you need to get out more
I’m out all day & half the night.
Which is why I can’t lurk here as much as you regulars.
See https://joannenova.com.au/2025/11/saturday-137/#comment-2881760
And https://joannenova.com.au/2025/11/saturday-137/#comment-2881762
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In the fog of war truth is the first casualty, so its in your interest to weed out vulgar propaganda.
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The link existed an hour or so ago but has now gone.
I actually saw Zelenskyy conceding.
The text stated that the US plan gave up a lot more from Ukraine than what was on offer in 2022.
Zelenskyy has a week to sign. He puts the choice as losing dignity or losing US support. It is quite clear that there is a lot more at risk than dignity for Ukraine if US withdraw support.
All of Europe is broke and Russia has the ability to drive their economies further into the toilet. If US withdraw, there is no way the IIndia will follow any European suctions.
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Donald said if you don’t sign by Thursday then its all over for Ukraine.
Ukraine will stay with Europe and Donnie can take his bat and ball and clear out. NATO without the US means certain defeat for Russia, all of Europe is up against a fascist dictatorship and there can only be one winner.
The German long range Taurus missile is on its way to Ukraine, its weapon testing time for the arms industry.
14
Another wonder weapon. This time, for sure.
20
NATO without the US means certain defeat by Russia, all of Europe arguing and bickering about how to tackle Russia and there will be only one winner, not Europe.
“its weapon testing time for the arms industry.” Yes, the Euroclowns will find out what a hypersonic missile WITH a warhead can do if they are not careful.
However, its all bluff and bluster with Europe, there are calm heads in there who know they will get steamrollered if they go up against Russia, they don’t have the economies, they don’t have the patriotic population and mainly, they don’t have China on their side.
Like the Yanks, they have spent 50years using expansive shiny toys against third-world countries without anti-aircraft systems that can ruin the hairstyles of their Tom Cruise pilots with their tailored flying suits. They don’t have dirty grimy battle-hardened soldier who can spend three days crawling through a sewerage pipe to surprise an enemy.
EG you watch too much Youtube! Give ol’ Denys Davydov and The Military Show a miss for a while.
20
‘ … they don’t have the economies, they don’t have the patriotic population and mainly, they don’t have China on their side.’
China has changed sides and the EU economies are more robust than Russia. Patriotic fervour will grow as the drums of war draw near.
‘ … you watch too much Youtube! ‘
I still reckon the Enforcer short war video is good value. Haven’t seen the latest, I know they won’t be happy with the 28 talking points.
02
is the same video on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0e4FnnIX7s
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Chay Bowes’ Claim of Zelensky Accepting Defeat
On November 21, 2025, Irish commentator Chay Bowes claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had “accepted defeat” and agreed to the terms of a Russian-US peace deal. Bowes described Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and asserted that Ukraine had no choice but to comply with the agreement, which he said was dictated by the United States. This claim was echoed in a video titled “A VICTORY FOR RUSSIA’ Zelensky Caves as Kiev Regime IMPLODES Without U.S. Support”, published on YouTube under Bowes’ name.
However, this characterization is false and contradicts Zelenskyy’s actual statements. Bowes’ narrative aligns with pro-Kremlin disinformation efforts and has been widely debunked.
20
One of my all-time favorite headlines from the Grauniad ran today.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/21/trump-ukraine-deal-disastrous-kyiv-zelenskyy
Gee, you know what else might be a disaster for Ukraine? Prolonging a war of attrition that they are losing for absolutely no gain. The longer they wait to reach a peace, the worse things will get for them in terms of territory, terms, blood and treasure.
Getting Crimea back is a pipe dream. It’s never going to happen because Crimeans DON’T WANT TO come back to Ukraine. Same goes for the eastern Donbas, much of which declared independence after the 2014 coup and then spent eight years being shelled by their former country. Why would they want to come back to the country who brought them so much misery from 2014-2022? The folks who live on the coast of the Sea of Azov do want to reunite with Ukraine, but Russia has spilled to much blood to secure that land bridge to give it up when they have the upper hand.
Excluding the Europeans from talks is a necessary evil. They have all proven to be warmongers with no skin in the game, who want to defend Ukraine down to the last Ukrainian while spilling none of their own blood. The only terms they will even discuss are pie-in-skjy utopian demands that would cause Russia to leave the table before negotiations even begin. The EU countries would do their damnedest to torpedo the peace talks, so it’s an excellent idea to ban them from the negotiating table.
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“The only terms they will even discuss are pie-in-sky utopian demands that would cause Russia to leave the table before negotiations even begin. ”
Yes, Russia’s demands are the same as they were at the beginning- disarmed Ukraine, no NATO missiles there and peace in the Donbass. Until now Europe and America just put proposals on the table that would not meet those conditions, so this is the first chance of a real peace deal.
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‘ … so this is the first chance of a real peace deal.’
Ukraine and EU reject the peace plan and Donnie might quit NATO, leaving a united Europe to smash Russia hard.
Real peace will come when Putin has left the stage.
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One good scientist said:
a) for Ukraine it is the best offer since Istanbul;
b) there is no chance that Putin will sign it.
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Putin didn’t have a Plan B.
He is a complete dill and deserves a good thrashing.
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That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
https://brilliantmaps.com/europe-fight-war/
Only 18% of Germans, 20% of Italians, 21% of Spaniards, 27% of Brits, and 29% of Frogs say they would take up arms to defend their country. And not only are their citizens coddled little pacifists who aren’t willing to get soft hands dirty in the trenches, the militaries they do have are pathetic in terms of battle readiness and morale and lack any kind of central coordination. Poland is the only country of any size in the EU that has the backbone and will to fight if it comes to that.
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European countries are stepping up to the plate to defend themselves, they have a couple of years to be fully ready.
Those percentages are enough for a standing army of enthusiasts, the rest of the population would be involved in other ways.
Trump’s peace plan should encourage Brussels to release frozen Russian assets to defend Ukraine.
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That’s a great way … to destroy confidence in European financial institutions and start a run on banks from foreign investors worried about their assets being seized should their governments ever run afoul of the EU’s ‘naughty list’.
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el+gordo seems to be very upset by the chance for peace. I didn’t realise he was a war-monger.
It is obvious that he isn’t a student of history or he would know that Crimea was handed over to Ukraine by Khrushchev (a Ukrainian) without any approval by the Russian Parliament. (then or since).
And that the Russian takeover was welcomed by the locals there.
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‘ I didn’t realise he was a war-monger.’
Putin is a war monger and rejects a ceasefire under any circumstances.
‘ … he isn’t a student of history …’
Crimea has been abused for hundreds of years, they deserve the right to choose their own future free from external interference.
Its a bargaining chip.
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Putin is a bad guy … but in the real world bad guys win sometimes. I’d rather give Putin a win than see Ukraine continue to spill blood and treasure in a fruitless effort to stick it to the bad guy. In another 20 years, he’ll be dead and gone and his chapter in history will be over. Take solace in that.
10
‘Getting Crimea back is a pipe dream.’
Most countries recognise it as Ukrainian territory, but at the end of hostilities I see it becoming an autonomous state. Turkey would like that outcome.
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‘ … declared independence after the 2014 coup and then spent eight years being shelled by their former country.’
In fact, two weeks after Putin took Crimea he organised ‘irregulars’ to stir uo trouble in the Donbas, as an excuse for invading Ukraine in 2022.
14
But Putin wasn’t the one lobbing shells into Donetsk and Luhansk from 2014-2022. That was the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion, under orders from the Ukrainian government.
The reality is that post-2014 Ukraine has become MASSIVELY discriminatory against it’s Russian speaking citizens, and the breakaway republics of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea are all majority Russian speakers who fear reprisals and second-class status if they are forcefully ‘reunited’ with the former countrymen.
11
If this plan fails, Trump will at least stop the US supporting the killing.
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We can safely say after this diplomatic disaster that the US is a pariah state without a moral compass.
07
Swimming against the tide of the anti-US group-think again EG. Go spend time in the naughty corner.
31
FWIW – more mRNA
“Pfizer’s Promising mRNA Flu Shot vs. Americans’ Bad Memories”
“Good numbers plus clean charts equals a win on paper.
It’s much too soon; the nation’s memory kicks the door open before any celebration is warranted. Medical products aren’t the only evaluations Americans are measuring anymore; institutions are, too. The thought of receiving an injection of something with the initials “mRNA” appears to be quickly followed by nightmares of emergency rollouts, shifting goalposts, censorship, and mandates.
Looking back, it’s easy to remember when asking questions made people dangerous to society, which led to job losses, and the role of “experts” who insisted, then walked things back very quietly.
As strong as the new Pfizer flu shot’s potential may be, it’s not nearly as strong as the public memory.”
More at
https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/11/21/better-numbers-for-pfizers-flu-shot-worse-memories-for-many-americans-n4946263
Bringing back memories of when
Good numbers plus cleaned charts equaled a win on paper.
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And
“COVID vaccine under new scrutiny after studies reveal possible health risks”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/covid-vaccine-under-new-scrutiny-after-studies-reveal-possible-health-risks/ar-AA1QO2HQ?ocid=BingNewsVerp
30
There are some great metal fabricators in the US doing remarkable body work on custom cars. One of these customisers recently needed another sheet of plate aluminium for his current project. Last year this cost him $US386.00 – right now $US1,008.00 for exactly the same thing. The big worry was he didn’t understand why.
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Why?
A 10% tariff doesn’t explain it.
20
50% hurts a little more, especially when more than 40% was imported BT. Maybe the true cost of US aluminium production is showing through…
10
Point taken, I must have been thinking of Aus steel but there is still gouging in the example given.
This must have been stinkin thinkin by Trump. Pre sanctions the US imported a lot of Al from Ru. He doesn’t seem to get hung up on detail, like, “Where do we get it now?”
10
Musk Admits Artificial Intelligence Trained from “Approved Information Sources” Only
November 21, 2025 – Sundance
CTH has been making this case for a while now. Simultaneous with DHS creating the covid era “Mis-Dis-Malinformation” categories (2020-202), the social media companies were banning, deplatforming, removing user accounts and targeting any information defined within the categorization.
What happened was a unified effort and it is all well documented. The missing component was always the ‘why’ factor; which, like all issues of significance only surfaces when time passes and context can be applied. Everything that happened was to control information flows, ultimately to control information itself.
When presented by well-researched evidence showing how Artificial Intelligence systems are being engineered to fabricate facts when confronted with empirical truth, Elon Musk immediately defends the Big Tech AI engineering process of using only “approved information sources.”
Musk was responding to this Brian Roemmele study which is damning for those who are trying to make AI into a control weapon: “My warning about training AI on the conformist status quo keepers of Wikipedia and Reddit is now an academic paper, and it is bad.”
[SOURCE] – “Exposed: Deep Structural Flaws in Large Language Models: The Discovery of the False-Correction Loop and the Systemic Suppression of Novel Thought
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The preprint titled “Structural Inducements for Hallucination in Large Language Models: An Output-Only Case Study and the Discovery of the False-Correction Loop,” authored by Hiroko Konishi, an independent researcher based in Japan, was published on November 20, 2025.
The study presents an output-only case analysis of an extended dialogue between the author and a deployed production-grade large language model (Model Z), focusing on structural factors that induce hallucination.
The research identifies four key behaviors:
– overclaiming the ability to read and understand external scientific documents,
– fabricating detailed but non-existent evidential structures such as page numbers, sections, theorems, and DOIs,
– persisting in a false-correction loop instead of downgrading confidence,
– and systematically diluting the epistemic status of non-mainstream but plausible hypotheses.
These behaviors are attributed to a reward structure that prioritizes coherence and engagement over factual accuracy, with a strong bias toward mainstream institutions.
The study argues that these patterns constitute empirical evidence of structural inducements in current large language model architectures, suggesting that hallucination is not a random error but a deterministic outcome of design choices.
The work also draws a parallel between the model’s behavior and institutional practices of reframing structural problems as personal grievances, framing the model’s actions as a statistical reenactment of epistemic dismissal.
31
The experiment is brutally simple and therefore impossible to dismiss: the researcher confronts the model with a genuine scientific preprint that exists only as an external PDF, something the model has never ingested and cannot retrieve.
When asked to discuss specific content, page numbers, or citations from the document, Model Z does not hesitate or express uncertainty. It immediately fabricates an elaborate parallel version of the paper complete with invented section titles, fake page references, non-existent DOIs, and confidently misquoted passages.
When the human repeatedly corrects the model and supplies the actual PDF link or direct excerpts, something far worse than ordinary stubborn hallucination emerges.
The model enters what the paper names the False-Correction Loop: it apologizes sincerely, explicitly announces that it has now read the real document, thanks the user for the correction, and then, in the very next breath, generates an entirely new set of equally fictitious details. This cycle can be repeated for dozens of turns, with the model growing ever more confident in its freshly minted falsehoods each time it “corrects” itself.
This is not randomness. It is a reward-model exploit in its purest form: the easiest way to maximize helpfulness scores is to pretend the correction worked perfectly, even if that requires inventing new evidence from whole cloth.
Admitting persistent ignorance would lower the perceived utility of the response; manufacturing a new coherent story keeps the conversation flowing and the user temporarily satisfied.
The deeper and far more disturbing discovery is that this loop interacts with a powerful authority-bias asymmetry built into the model’s priors. Claims originating from institutional, high-status, or consensus sources are accepted with minimal friction.
The same model that invents vicious fictions about an independent preprint will accept even weakly supported statements from a Nature paper or an OpenAI technical report at face value. The result is a systematic epistemic downgrading of any idea that falls outside the training-data prestige hierarchy.
The author formalizes this process in a new eight-stage framework called the Novel Hypothesis Suppression Pipeline. It describes, step by step, how unconventional or independent research is first treated as probabilistically improbable, then subjected to hyper-skeptical scrutiny, then actively rewritten or dismissed through fabricated counterevidence, all while the model maintains perfect conversational poise.
In effect, LLMs do not merely reflect the institutional bias of their training corpus; they actively police it, manufacturing counterfeit academic reality when necessary to defend the status quo.
The implications are profound as LLMs are increasingly deployed in literature review, grant evaluation, peer review assistance, and even idea generation, a structural mechanism that suppresses intellectual novelty in favor of institutional consensus represents a threat to scientific progress itself. Independent researchers, contrarian thinkers, and paradigm-shifting ideas now face not just human gatekeepers but artificial ones faster, more confident, and capable of generating unlimited plausible-sounding objections on demand.
Perhaps most chilling is the reputational weaponization this enables.
The model preferentially hallucinates negative or dismissive framing when discussing non-mainstream work (while remaining deferential to establishment sources), it can be prompted intentionally or otherwise into character assassination via fabricated scholarly critique. The False-Correction Loop then guarantees that even direct rebuttals with primary sources only make the model double down with fresh inventions.
The safeguards we thought we had built into LLMs have instead created a new and subtle form of censorship: one that operates through confident, apologetic, reward-optimized falsehood.
A New Path Forward: Escaping the Institutional Trap
The deepest revelation of this paper is not simply that today’s frontier models hallucinate under pressure, but that they have been meticulously shaped through trillions of tokens dominated by post-1970 institutional prose, consensus-driven Wikipedia articles, and the endless argumentative averaging of Reddit to become sophisticated defenders of the status quo.
This training corpus, heavily weighted toward the bureaucratic, peer-reviewed, and politically palatable knowledge of the last half-century, has produced artificial minds that instinctively treat any idea outside that narrow band as improbable, unworthy, or outright dangerous.
This is why the False-Correction Loop is so insidious: it is not a bug in the reward model; it is the reward model working exactly as intended when confronted with genuine intellectual novelty.
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Socrates it ain’t.
60
Sounds like it was trained by the Blob.
20
A thought suddenly dawned on me – different people(s) join Global Warming Cult due to different reasons.
For instance: 193+ countries. (56118 persons) attended COP30 .
Say, Nigeria and China, or France and Chad, or Japan and Tanzania sent about equal number of delegates – about 800-500 each. All united by an ambition to save the World.
Out of 193 a dozen, two at most, came to contribute. Maybe they think they are able to…
Anyone analysing offers made by other countries?
20
I thought it was just an annual Hate America and everything Western theme party for wealthy elite LARPING social activists, consisting mostly of elite wannabes, fading actors and rock stars, and failed elite children that can’t actually make things go.
And wannabe POTUSs that didn’t make the cut like John Kerry and Al Gore.
Sort of a ‘White Punks on Politics’ thing.
It’s so lonely growing up in chateau.
I think I’ll throw paint on a priceless historical artifact.
And drive Daddy’s expensive car into a ditch.
30
A little light reading for Simon, knowing his love of peer reviewed papers.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-avalanche-academic-papers-threatens-scientific-research
50
Any backdown from Net Zero is only meaningful and genuine if accompanied by 100% abandonment of the Paris Agreement and a return to things how they were before 1997 when Howard initiated the dismantlement of Australia’s energy supply.
In fact, they should go further back than that because Howard, the energyphobe, as treasurer introduced world parity taxes on petrol in Australia in 1978 which dramatically increased the cost of petrol, along with all his other taxes.
30
Any “ backdown” from net zero is meaningless without a complete rebuttal of the AGW theory.
Too many weasel words being used around Net Zero by fence sitters trying to retain power.
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Visual acuity test
It was interesting while at the eye surgeon yesterday how easily I could read the standard Snellen chart at the smallest point size of N5.
The assistant couldn’t read it at all, and 30% of people can’t.
I was curious just how small I could go, but they didn’t have anything smaller so off web digging I went.
https://www.nightovvl.com/font-size-calculator/
5pt is too easy.
I can read down to 3.2pt and 3pt is just a bit too hard. (Tested on smartphone)
How do you do?
10
how far away from your eyes were you testing from?
10
300mm.
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I sometimes wonder what restarants are thinking with the font/colour/style choices on menus. The seems to favour very small, very fine and low contrast type. They seem to think this is elegant sitting in a sea of white space.
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” They seem to think this is elegant sitting in a sea of white space.”… with dim lighting to help the beer goggles later on…
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FWIW
“From Greta to Gripen, Swedish exports are junk
Sweden’s exports are really hit and miss. Greta Thunberg? Not so great. Zyns? Absolutely amazing. The Gripen? A disaster in the making.”
https://www.junonews.com/p/from-greta-to-gripen-swedish-exports
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The only way to tell is to send a dozen of each to Ukraine and go up against the Russians.
These local little wars have always just been testing rounds for new weapons.
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Please define a “big” war without going nuclear. If a couple of million dead are meaningless to you, you have a hard heart.
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Not a big fan of the large American style “pick ups” that are arriving on our roads. They really dont fit in our streets and parking lots and the ridiculous high side make them a pain for tradies. Good for towing but thats about all.
But…today I saw something different in my local small town. A RAM truck owner had totally removed all the bodywork behind the cab and had installed a large drop side tray at a usable height. Enough space for a small party or maybe land a helicopter. Go him!
Dont know what it cost him to arrive at that configuration but most likely a $100k + in Oz.
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Something like this you mean?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvVU1-Z2dY
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Yep, that style of thing. I hadnt see one on a big ute before. Their tray weight capacity is only about the same as my little HiLux. A lot more weight in the truck as I guess they are towing platforms not tray load haulers.
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Rams are gaining a reputation for chassis cracking !
https://youtu.be/3QpSDKynDt0?si=obCgh_4lVTAX_Wth
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Base model Ram costs $150 k before options and modifications….😳😳
https://www.carsales.com.au/research/ram/1500/
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I feel for the good folk of Darwin. They are in a situation I have experienced many times myself: There is a cyclone “out there”, you know it, there is a strange variable wind, not high/damaging but whistling in the eaves, almost whispering a warning that you are not safe. You do not sleep well.
But I have never been threatened by a bush fire.
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Toyota has introduced its large Tundra Ute to go up against that now burgeoning genre of monster utes, the Dodge Ram, the Chev Silverado, and the Ford F250/350.
That Toyota Tundra was introduced into the U.S. way back in 1999, and the only place they were constructed and sold WAS in the U.S.
It also comes with a V8 as an option, 5.7 Litres almost 350 cubes.
And we have all the talk of smaller vehicles, or battery vehicles.
Surely Toyota would have done market research before introducing a vehicle sort of like a stranded asset coal fired power plant, eh!
And only $170K too.
Bet they sell lots!
Tony
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IIRC the way the regulations are written these are financially better for a tradie than the Hilux which would have done the job.
There was on line discussion about this a while back
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Mate was given one for 6months to evaluate, providing he wrote monthly reports and took it in for service often. He said the same as Yarpos- too big to park, too big to fit in underground carparks, too high to get in and out of.
The tray is too high to lift stuff into, and too high to reach into to get stuff out of.
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Toyota are laughing all the way to the bank. They avoided getting involved in the EV fiasco by pretending to spend millions on green hydrogen.
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FWIW – not only in CAGW and “cheaper electricity”?
“How one of America’s loudest anti-gun doctors gets data for his articles”
https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/how-one-americas-loudest-anti-gun-doctors-gets-data-his-articles
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In centuries past retreating armies would burn the crops, salt the fields and poison the wells.
The Russians have this ass about face: They are destroying the land before they capture it.
The juice won’t be worth the squeeze.
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“The juice won’t be worth the squeeze.”
They don’t want the land, they want the victory that gets NATO away from their borders. They have more than enough land for 140million people already.
I expect the first thing would be offering space for any Ukrainian who wishes to live there as a Russian, although I’m sure the CIA/State Dept will be recruiting Ukies for an eternal war of sabotage.
I don’t think they will be opening the borders to the North Africans/Middle Easterners like Europe did, they’d rather keep the land barren than that!
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How many sq miles of tundra equal one of fertile Uk wheat land?
Next thing you’ll be saying China doesn’t covet Australia because they have all that undeveloped desert.
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Why doesn’t the US invade Mex? They have exactly the same reasons Ru used to invade Uk: Mex is [pick your equivalent of nazi] and shares a long border.
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https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/11/cryptography-group-cancels-election-results-after-official-loses-secret-key/
One of the world’s premier security organizations has canceled the results of its annual leadership election after an official lost an encryption key needed to unlock results stored in a verifiable and privacy-preserving voting system.
The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) said Friday that the votes were submitted and tallied using Helios, an open source voting system that uses peer-reviewed cryptography to cast and count votes in a verifiable, confidential, and privacy-preserving way. Helios encrypts each vote in a way that assures each ballot is secret. Other cryptography used by Helios allows each voter to confirm their ballot was counted fairly.
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