Free Republic

The debate over bitcoin's environmental footprint has shaken its price, and prompted a public discussion about the environmental footprints of various industries, from oil & gas to tech to Wall Street. In a gauge of the public's interest in the environmental footprint of various industries vs. crypto, one chart that sought to offer some context for the bitcoin network's energy usage went viral.Still, as Bloomberg concedes, all those emails, memes, videos, PDFs and photos need to be stored somewhere. And with most companies increasingly reliant on cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure, these companies are building data centers like...

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has appeared to suggest that people who refuse to get the vaccine may be banned from using the National Health Service. This is excellent news for at least two good reasons. First, it reassuringly demonstrates that just occasionally in his life Prime Minister Boris Johnson is capable of telling the truth. We now know with absolute certainty that Johnson was entirely honest and accurate in his assertion, in an old text message leaked by former Special Adviser Dominic Cummings, that Hancock is ‘totally —ing hopeless’. Second, it might possibly make so-called vaccine ‘refuseniks’ a lot...

We now know the name of the Chinese defector who has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a few months and what his position within the Chinese military and government was, among other details.

This was allegedly a mistake. If so, why did the school have the flyers in the first place?A middle school in Washington distributed flyers to 8th grade students teaching them that sex for kids as young as 11 is acceptable as long as the partners are under 14. The source of the flyer was Planned Parenthood who operated at the school in the past.Stewart Middle School in Tacoma, WA, says the flyers were erroneously distributed by a new teacher who has now been disciplined in some way. But if the teacher was pulling from past materials, why were these flyers...

Stephen Gutowski of The Reload has been covering the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ attempt to ban pistol braces. There’s no wiggle room. No grandfather clause. They’re trying to make them illegal, thus turning millions of Americans into felons for exercising their constitutional right to own firearms. Some 10-40 million Americans have firearms with these stabilizing pistol braces. It’s a backdoor ban. Biden doesn’t have the legislative majorities to pass what he wants to pass, so his people are looking at the existing regulations, tweaking them, and they found a big one here. This new ATF regulation is...

Illinois will hold lotteries for residents who have received COVID-19 vaccines, or plan to receive the vaccine, that could net adults as much as $1 million and vaccine-eligible youngsters $150,000 scholarships. In all, the state will award $10 million throughout the summer to vaccinated residents, according to the governor. Anyone already vaccinated is automatically entered in the drawings. [cut] "Getting the shot now is going to help us end this," Pritzker said at a news conference Wednesday. "If you do, you might even hit the jackpot."

A new report confirms election worker Ruby Freeman, and Atlanta election official Ralph Jones were BOTH involved in double scanning ballots late at night at the State Farm Center in Atlanta, Georgia on election night. Ralph Jones was the person who sent home all of the election observers. Then his crew, including Ruby and daughter Shaye, went to work on election night! Just the News released an explosive report on Thursday night exposing massive fraud in the Fulton County Georgia 2020 presidential election. A handpicked contractor in the State Farm Arena, Carter Jones from Seven Hill Strategies, wrote a 29-page...

<p>The White House announced the nomination of Thomas Nides on Tuesday as the US ambassador to Israel. Nides must still make it through his Senate confirmation hearing. And although he is a lesser-known figure than other previous ambassadors, no significant opposition is expected for his appointment.</p>

There’s an easy way to know when a narrative is being fabricated. One needs only look closely at the wording of statements and oftentimes the subsequent fact-checks to see when a coverup is in process. Such is the case with British Airways and their claims that four pilots who have died in one week are not “linked.”Reuters quickly came to their rescue and did a “fact-check” on the claims that are circulating across social media. They, of course, determined that it was “false” but just like the British Airways statement, Reuters conspicuously avoided the topic of vaccines. First, let’s look...

If you disagree with the Democrats, you’re a “domestic terrorist.”As the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, Joe Biden has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to fight Al Qaeda. Instead he’s going to fight other Americans. The Biden administration’s newly released National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism mentions Al Qaeda only once in its 30 pages. Even though the FBI continues to break up Islamic terrorist plots against America, the document only defines Muslims as victims. Just last month a Seattle Muslim convert was arrested. The convert had discussed driving a "semi-truck" through "the gay pride...

Ignoring long-term problems can work for a while, but eventually they catch up with you. Over the years, I have written many articles about alarming long-term trends in our society that desperately needed to be addressed. Of course the vast majority of those long-term trends never got much attention, because our political system tends to reward politicians that focus on short-term issues. As a result, many of the long-term trends that I have written about previously have now gotten to a point where they have started to become very serious short-term problems. In this article, I would like to share...

Turning America from a nation of home owners into a nation of renters.

I hate standup. Always have. I’ve seen a lot of it. “You gotta hear this guy!” “You gotta see her show! Even you would absolutely love it!” You just gotta.Bleh. Comedians making observations. Pointing out the absurdity of this or that. Coming at life from a slightly skewed angle. It’s so boring! It isn’t insightful. It isn’t even funny. Oh, I’m laughing my head off, sure. I’m surrounded by a bunch of hooting baboons. You have to laugh or they might notice and attack you.I don’t know why I’m this way. Could be because, growing up with ecumenical parents who...

The population on Earth is increasingly growing and people are expected to live longer in the future. Thus, better and more reliable therapies to treat human diseases such as Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases are crucial. To cope with the challenge of ensuring healthy aging, a group of international scientists investigated the potential of biosynthesising several polyamines and polyamines analogs with already known functionalities in treating and preventing age-related diseases. One of the most interesting molecules to study was spermidine, which is a natural product already present in people's blood and an inducer of autophagy that is an essential cellular process...

Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX) and several other House Republicans are calling for President Joe Biden to undergo a cognitive assessment after his trip to Europe. In a letter dated June 17, Jackson and his colleagues noted Biden agreed to such an assessment and detailed several examples of where Biden’s “mental decline and forgetfulness have become more apparent over the past eighteen months,” including: In March, forgetting the names of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Secretary Misidentifying time of day and Democrat members of Congress in February In May, confusing the dates of riding an Amtrak train...

Criticism against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is again on the rise, now that his nation is set to take the presidency of the Visegrad group of Central European nations next month. According a recent report, “Britain’s government has condemned comments made by Viktor Orbán about Muslims and migrants on the eve of a bilateral meeting between the Hungarian leader and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In a statement, No. 10 Downing Street said that Orbán’s 2018 comment to a German newspaper about ‘Muslim invaders’ and his later description of migrants as ‘a poison’ were ‘divisive and wrong.’” In...

Much like “Humpty Dumpty,” despite the Fed’s best efforts, you can’t create permanent inflation from artificial growth. Currently, depending on whether you are “bullish” or “bearish,” there is much angst over the prospect of higher inflation. If you are bullish, higher inflation is a reflection of surging economic growth. If you are bearish, higher inflation leads to rising costs and higher rates. However, we need a better definition of what inflation is. “In order to understand the effects of inflation it is helpful to understand that inflation is not a general rise in prices as such, but an increase in...

A company backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos is set to build a large-scale nuclear fusion demonstration plant in Oxfordshire. Canada's General Fusion is one of the leading private firms aiming to turn the promise of fusion into a commercially viable energy source. The new facility will be built at Culham, home to the UK's national fusion research programme. It won't generate power, but will be 70% the size of a commercial reactor. General Fusion will enter into a long-term commercial lease with the UK Atomic Energy Authority following the construction of the facility at the Culham campus. While commercial details...

As the media laments being totally wrong about the COVID lab leak theory, more details are coming out about the Chinese defector who has been taken into US custody. The man alleges that he has knowledge about a slew of chinse bioweapons programs and COVID. He alleges that the current pandemic was caused by a lab leak, and that bats were the real cover-up story. The defector alleges that while the lab leak was an accident, it was allowed to spread. Our friends at RedState wrote about this first, but Jen Van Laar has a new development. The identity of...

The long-deleted fight scene at the end of Season 8. Finally available.