Free Republic

“Down with autocracy” and “Down with war” read the banners of the March 8 (Feb. 17 in the Julian calendar) Women’s Day march in St. Petersberg, Russia that began the 1917 Revolution… Leon Trotsky would later reflect, “The February revolution was begun from below… the initiative being taken by the women textile workers of their own accord, demanding bread for the children.” Besides the desperation of the times, Russia had strong currents of feminism, going back to Catherine the Great who ruled the empire from 1762 to 1796… The Russian Revolution was the first in history to seek women’s emancipation...

Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki opens up about uncovering secrets, working with Pamela Anderson, and the global power struggle that turned the WikiLeaks founder into a political target. For filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, the story of The Six Billion Dollar Man began with a leak — one that shook even a seasoned documentarian known for tackling political corruption and moral collapse. “It started about five years ago,” Jarecki says. “My producing partner Kathleen Fournier and I came into possession of absolutely groundbreaking and shattering information on the Assange case that had never been seen by the public before.” That information, he adds, revealed...

The dog may have protected its owners from bears. Exploring new caves during the Upper Palaeolithic was fraught with danger, which is why one group of ancient humans in Italy made sure to take their trusted four-legged companion with them when they stepped into the darkness. Analyzing the fossilized foot and paw prints left behind during this subterranean excursion, researchers say that these 14,400-year-old tracks represent the world’s oldest direct evidence of humans living alongside a domesticated dog. A total of 25 preserved canid prints were discovered in various chambers of the Grotta della Bàsura in northwest Italy. In some...

Sometimes, image is everything As someone who has formerly worked in retail spaces, I learned firsthand how the setting in which a particular brand displays its products in its stores could make or break the shopping experience for both buyer and seller. This is the reason you see sales associates and other employees in clothing stores like Zara and Uniqlo meticulously and continuously adjusting displays, removing clutter, and rearranging loose clothing pieces. While the buying experience may not be exactly apples-to-apples, much of the same sort of mindset can be applied to car dealerships. Everything from a sales associate’s introduction...

Frank Athen Walls is scheduled to be executed Dec. 18 for the murders of Edward Alger and Ann Peterson in their Fort Walton Beach-area mobile home. Source: Okaloosa County Sherrif's Office/Florida Department of Corrections Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Tuesday for a man convicted of killing two people during a 1987 burglary in Okaloosa County. Frank Athen Walls, 58, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 18 at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Raiford, according to the warrant signed Nov. 18. Walls was first convicted in July 1988 of two counts of first-degree murder for killing Edward...

Scientists at the University of Santiago de Compostela have unveiled a new photocatalytic method that converts methane and other natural gas components directly into versatile chemical building blocks. Researchers have created an iron-based catalyst that controls methane’s extreme reactivity, opening the door for natural gas to serve as a sustainable feedstock for high-value chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. Natural gas, one of the most plentiful energy resources on Earth, consists mainly of methane, ethane, and propane. Although it is commonly burned for power and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have long looked for ways to convert these stable hydrocarbons into useful...

World leaders are heading into the final days of COP30, the United Nations climate meeting in Brazil. They are trying to agree on how to curb global warming and pay for the costs of an increasingly hotter planet. For the past eight years, one of the primary objectives of the annual negotiations has been to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the temperatures in the late 1800s. That temperature goal was established after a landmark international scientific report laid out the catastrophic effects of exceeding that amount of warming. But that goal is no longer plausible, scientists...

Across TikTok and university campuses, young men are rewriting what masculinity looks like today, sometimes with matcha lattes, Labubus, film cameras and thrifted tote bags. At Toronto Metropolitan University, a “performative male” contest recently drew a sizeable crowd by poking fun at this new TikTok archetype of masculinity. The “performative man” is a new Gen Z term describing young men who deliberately craft a soft, sensitive, emotionally aware aesthetic, signalling the rejection of “toxic masculinity.” At “performative male” contests, participants compete for laughs and for women’s attention by reciting poetry, showing off thrifted fashion or handing out feminine hygiene products...

New York Attorney General Letitia James wants the details of Lindsey Halligan’s interactions with the grand jury that indicted her — after a judge found “profound investigative missteps” in Halligan’s handling of the case against ex-FBI Director James Comey. James wants prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, helmed by ex-White House aide Halligan, to turn over certain records from the grand jury that indicted her for bank fraud charges tied to claims that she lied on documents for a mortgage on a second home in Virginia. The request came after US Magistrate Judge William...

President Trump’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is being hailed Wednesday as the “first ever truly pro-Second Amendment” choice to lead the agency. ATF Deputy Director Robert Cekada’s nomination to the top job at the bureau was quietly transmitted to Congress on Tuesday and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cekada, a former NYPD detective, has been with the federal law enforcement agency in various roles since 2005 and has served as deputy director since April. “In his role as Deputy Director, we have worked closely with Robert Cekada to ensure law-abiding gun...

A fifth person has died at a lavish Florida Disney World resort in a chilling string of deaths in less than a month that’s cast a dark shadow over the “Most Magical Place on Earth.” The unidentified guest was reportedly pronounced dead at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa in Lake Buena Vista, just steps from Disney Springs, on Nov. 8, the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed to The Post Wednesday. “Although there was a death at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort, we declined jurisdiction,” the Medical Examiner said in a statement, noting the body was ultimately turned over to...

Sarah Ferguson is continuing to feel the heat from a scandal involving her controversial ex-husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The former Duchess of York’s upcoming children’s book, “Flora and Fern: Kindness Along the Way,” has been withdrawn from publication following recent public fallout, multiple outlets report. The book was originally scheduled to be published on Oct. 9. It was postponed until Nov. 20, until now reportedly being scratched completely. “It’s not been delayed, it’s being pulped,” one publishing insider told the Daily Mail. “It’s an acknowledgment of the inevitable. No one is going to want to buy it.” A spokesperson for Ferguson...

According to an ABC News Australia report, a new study of a cut mark in the bone of a giant kangaroo recovered from southwestern Australia’s Mammoth Cave suggests that the cut was made after the bone had fossilized. Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales once thought the cut mark was evidence that humans living in Sahul, a paleocontinent made up of what are now Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea, contributed to the extinction of many species of megafauna some 40,000 years ago. "We were convinced that humans…were trying to cut the bone open to get, perhaps, marrow,"...

China has hit the jackpot, once again, after discovering one of the largest deposits of gold ever recorded in the country’s history. Off the back of surging gold prices, the discovery could be worth upwards of $192 billion. China’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported that the Dadonggou deposit in the northeastern province of Liaoning contains about 2.586 million tonnes of gold ore, according to Chinese state media. With an average grade of 0.56 grams per tonne, this totals around 1,444 tonnes of gold. Some media reports have claimed the load could be worth over $192 billion at current prices. To...

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The Sizzler restaurant chain once had 700 locations. Now it has only 74, but it’s launching a resurgence. Key Points * Sizzler peaked in the 1990s with 700 locations; now only 74 remain in the U.S. * The chain struggled after changing its identity, filed bankruptcy during the 2020 pandemic. * Leadership is refocusing on classic features and remodeling to boost sales and relevance. Sizzler was a popular restaurant chain in the 1980s and 1990s, although it officially launched in 1958. When it started, Sizzler’s goal was to make a steakhouse that was affordable, as a fast-food craze swept the...

The Straits Times reports that pieces of a wooden ship estimated to have been between 160 and 230 feet long have been unearthed on Malayasia's Pulau Melaka, or Malacca Island. Ruzairy Arbi of Malaysia's National Heritage Department said that the ship was discovered during an excavation conducted by his department and the Melaka Museum Authority. Initial study suggests that the vessel was made of saga wood, which is native to the Malay Archipelago, and dates to the thirteenth century. "At this stage, we are still assessing the available data and artifacts to piece together the ship's history," he said. "We...

Makeup mogul Jeffree Star is blasting parents who push transgenderism on kids calling them “fucking weirdos.” The makeup icon, known for his outrageous personal style, spoke out on the issue during an appearance on The Skinny Confidential podcast. “Why are we encouraging our kids to be a different gender and feed them false information when they’re so young?” he said. “When I grew up and started looking different, my mother encouraged me to just be myself. When I started wearing makeup and being more feminine and wanting to do certain things… it wasn’t like ‘Oh my God, Jeffree needs, what...

The endowment dramatically increased its holdings of a spot bitcoin ETF since its previous such report. According to a new SEC filing, the Harvard University endowment’s largest publicly-traded investment is now in the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which is a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) operated by Blackrock. The filing indicates the endowment increased its holdings of IBIT from 1,906,000 shares to 6,813,612 shares since its previous such report. At current prices, the value of those IBIT holdings sits at around $364 million. This is already down rather heavily from the roughly $443 million valuation included in the filing, as...

A new breakthrough shows that some of biology’s most fragile molecules can persist far deeper into the past than scientists ever imagined. By decoding ancient gene activity from Ice Age remains, researchers have opened a window into the real-time biology of long-extinct animals. Credit: Shutterstock =========================================================================== For the first time, researchers have uncovered Ice Age RNA preserved within permafrost mammoth tissue, offering a rare glimpse into real-time gene activity from tens of millennia ago. Researchers at Stockholm University have, for the first time ever, isolated and sequenced RNA molecules from woolly mammoths that lived during the Ice Age. The team...