Free Republic

U.S. stocks fell across the board as the post Fed rate hike rally faded and investors returned their attention to recession fears. New data on housing starts and permits showed a sharp pullback signaling a potentially steeper slowdown for homebuilders. In commodities, oil slipped to the $112 level.

Western Washington’s cold and wet spring continues, as record amounts of rain and low temperatures contribute to high snowpack in north Puget Sound. On June 7, snowpack levels reached 157% of normal in the Nooksack River basin, according to data available from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service. “We definitely are holding the snow up there,” said Scott Pattee, a water supply specialist at the USDA’s office in Mount Vernon. “It’s just the cold temperatures and the cool, wet weather we’ve seen this spring.” Across the region, snowpack levels remain high late in the season,...

India is buying up cheap sanctioned Russian oil, refining it, then selling it to the US and EU for huge profits, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The US has reluctantly given India permission to buy Russian oil because India has threatened to ditch their alliance with America and ally with China if the US dares to sanction them. While Americans and Europeans are being forced to pay record prices for gas as "the cost of standing up for freedom," the free nation of India is buying oil from Russia for a whopping $35 off a barrel...

'What we've seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg': Dr. Northrup The first of three peer-reviewed research studies on women who suffered menstrual irregularities or a decidual cast around the time COVID vaccines were rolled out begins to shed light on the sudden spike of this historically rare gynecological abnormality. A decidual cast is when the inside lining of the uterus (endometrium) is shed intact, the entire lining is shed in one piece. “What a decidual cast is is the sloughing off of the entire inside of the uterus all at once, generally preceded by several days...

With just 2 days left the average high temperature for Seattle in May is 59.7°. Here is a list of the average May high temperatures in Seattle the last few years. 2021 65.7° 2020 68.0° 2019 69.7° 2018 70.8° 2017 67.0° 2016 68.8° 2015 68.0° 2014 67.8° 2013 67.3°

The idea of undercover Russian spies and deep cover ‘sleeper agents’ has been a source of much intrigue and speculation ever since the height of the Cold War, inspiring countless works of fiction and continuing to maintain a prominent place in our understanding of espionage. But while TV programs such as long-running FX drama The Americans toyed with the idea of foreign spies hiding in plain sight in the heart of suburbia, in reality the exact same thing was playing out in real-time right under people’s noses. Recently declassified FBI files have now revealed the existence of a vast network...

Microsoft released Windows 11 last year with a long list of system requirements. Of the listed ones, two controversial requirements were the supported CPUs and TPM. As a result, several users ended up modifying the Registry files to install Windows 11 on unsupported PCs. In the recent update, Microsoft has now started adding a watermark to the desktop and Settings app for those using Windows 11 on PCs that don’t meet the official system requirements. In this article, we have detailed the steps for how you can remove the “system requirements not met” watermark in Windows 11.

Ever wondered what types of batteries are used to power electric and hybrid vehicles (EHVs)? Well, the majority of EHVs being driven on our roads today will use lithium-ion (Li-ion) or lithium polymer batteries. ... They pose a potentially lethal chemical hazard to anyone working on or near EHVs. ... Since the electrolyte is a liquid, there is always the possibility that it could leak from inside the battery – we’ve all seen standard AA batteries that have leaked leaving white potassium hydroxide crystals on their outer casing, right? Well, that’s the danger with lithium-ion batteries. If the electrolyte inside...

Major U.S. automaker Ford blamed its sizable investment in electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian for its dramatic revenue decline in the first quarter of 2022. Ford reported revenue of $34.5 billion between January and March, a 5% decline relative to the same period in 2021, and a net loss of $3.1 billion, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday. The Detroit automaker said its large investment in Rivian accounted for $5.4 billion in losses during the first quarter. “A net loss of $3.1 billion was primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company’s investment in...

BREAKING 🇺🇦— Video emerges of a drunk and (possibly) drugged Zelensky is in his office today. The video was uploaded and deleted.

After briefly falling below 6% last Friday, the average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped up to 6.875%, increasing by more than one percentage point. The rate is nearly two percentage points higher than the average rate just one month ago. Rates for most other loan categories increased as well, although not quite so dramatically. The average rate on a 15-year fixed-rate loan, however, moved lower. The latest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.875%. ⇑ The latest rate on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage is 5.143%. ⇓ The latest rate on a 5/1 ARM is 4.258%. ⇑ The...

Unexpected winter weather in Portland, Oregon, closed schools, downed trees and left residents without electricity as the state's largest city saw its first April snowfall in recorded history. Residents of Portland woke up to a blanket of snow Monday morning after cold air and wet weather caused unseasonably frigid overnight conditions. Portland saw its first ever snowfall documented in April since the National Weather Service (NWS) began keeping records in 1940. The snow follows other unusual weather events the Pacific Northwest has seen over the last year.

I wrote recently that, with over 2,000 deaths reported to the Yellow Card reporting system as adverse events following Covid vaccination, the true figure of U.K. deaths from short-term vaccine injury may be around 20,000. This is allowing for an under-reporting factor of 10, which, I argued, doesn’t seem unreasonable given analysis of an Israeli survey of booster recipients, which found under-reporting factors of hundreds or thousands for many adverse effects when compared to U.S. VAERS reports. The under-reporting factor for hospitalisation was 120, meaning 120 times more people reported being hospitalised as a result of their booster in the...

SPANAWAY, Wash. — Two deputies with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office were shot by a man during a SWAT operation in Spanaway on Tuesday. One of the deputies, Dom Calata, died on Wednesday from his injuries. The suspect, described by Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer as a “three-strike violent felon,” was shot and killed by deputies. Investigators with the Tacoma Police department said the operation started at around 8:30 a.m. Members of South Sound Gang Task Force were looking to arrest a man who had a warrant for second-degree felony assault. Due to the man’s prior felony convictions, the task...

States among the last to lift the mandate PORTLAND — After spending a majority of the pandemic under statewide indoor face covering requirements, Washington and Oregon will be lifting their mask mandates Saturday — marking a significant step in restoring normalcy. The milestone, which comes two years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, is on trend with the rest of the country as public health orders were dropped in droves. Oregon and Washington are among the last states to lift mask requirements. “We’re turning a page in our fight against the COVID virus,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee...

Mark Dice YouTube Video

Chainsaws are an important tool in any homeowner’s tool shed. From trimming trees to clearing fallen branches, there is no quicker way to cut through thick branches or take down a tree. In fact, you won’t get a tool with more power per inch than a chainsaw. But all that power comes responsibility. The chain of the chainsaw moves anywhere from fifty to even eighty miles per hour at full throttle, cutting through the thickest branches with ease. Just imagine what this tool can do to your fingers or toes after a small moment of distraction.

We may never know if an EV started the fire, but even if the EVs didn’t start the fire, they are certainly making it a lot more difficult to extinguish the fire. EV battery fires are chemically comparable to thermite fires, hot enough to melt steel, so there may not be much left to analyse by the time the ship fire finally burns itself out. This disaster could have real consequences for the EV market, both transporting EVs by sea or land, and consumer desire for a product which is potentially such a severe fire hazard. I would not be...

I don't know where Turley found this clip, but it is hilarious.

“The old joke is that nuclear fusion is 30 years away and always will be,” quips Greg De Temmerman, managing director of Paris-based energy think tank Zenon Research. In fact, the joke has become so hackneyed over the decades it has been banned by editors at the Economist. “But more seriously, many things are happening right now in the field,” De Temmerman adds. Jokes aside, they are. Earlier this month, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor eclipsed previous records by sustaining a high plasma temperature for minutes (1,056 seconds). It reached two milestones: a one-million-ampere current and a 1,000-second...