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Happy Halloween BTW...

In our culture where "live your own truth" is the worldview of a seemingly ever-increasing number of Americans, women and children in the U.S. are especially in danger. This is because, as pop-culture "philosopher" Cameron Diaz put in 2013, on marriage and sex, tens of millions of Americans have decided it's best to "make our own rules." As Americans have shunned marriage at a record pace, co-habitation among U.S. couples has exploded. In 2019, Pew Research reported that in the U.S., among people age 18 to 44, a significantly larger share "have cohabitated at some point than have been married...

(CNN)Since their discovery, the ancestry of hundreds of mummified bodies buried in boats in an inhospitable desert region of northwest China has puzzled and divided archaeologists.... Their Western looks; felted and woven wool clothing; and the cheese, wheat and millet found in their unusual graves suggested they were long-disticance herders.... However, a new study by Chinese, European and American researchers that analyzed the DNA of these 13 mummies, sequencing their genomes for the first time, has painted a different picture. Their analysis suggested that the remains did not belong to newcomers but a local group descended from an ancient ice...

Netflix's 'Colin in Black and White' shows a star athlete reaching toward Blackness If you had any questions about where Colin Kaepernick's activist spirit originated, a look at Netflix's new limited series, Colin in Black and White, removes all doubt. These days, Kaepernick is known as the ex-San Francisco 49ers quarterback whose decision to kneel during the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial injustice inspired others and kicked off years of conflicts. He became a free agent in 2017 and remains unsigned by an NFL team, a situation many analysts attributed to political blowback from the controversy sparked by...

[H/T Ymani Cricket]ransomnote: This 7 minute video containes examples from 1971 in which government officials admit the flu vaccine doesn't work and may be harmful at higher levels, or the adeno virus given soldiers contains a cancer causing agent which they have just happened to find in previous 'vaccines'. It's all there - normalizing toxic vaccines and after making statements that they don't work or contain cancer causing agents, they assure the public that vaccines are good and we should be vaccinated. The vaccines may cause cancer and the flu vaccines are not effective, lessons learned etc. just get the...

The Virginia gubernatorial race was a contest that Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe was expected to cruise to victory in, and with considerable ease. His rival Republican Glenn Youngkin wasn’t even supposed to be a factor. But as an ancient Hindu text states ‘“When doom is inevitable, the person’s intellect works against his or her best interest.” After a series of major gaffes, McAuliffe is now trailing behind Youngkin in a recent Fox News Poll among likely voters in Virginia. Youngkin’s lead is now eight points which is outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Among the reasons for this fall...

At the beginning of October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to two journalists — Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov — for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” The committee noted that “they are representatives of all journalists … in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.” Fair enough. It is also fair to point out that it’s possible that part of the reason why the committee gave the award to a couple of reporters was to avoid...

Dilbert creator Scott Adams tweeted this week: ”The country’s energy is strange. Everything is amped up in every direction. Something big is coming.” He’s rarely wrong about such things. Adams said he doesn’t know what that something big is, but I’m hoping it is a major shift in America’s political tectonic plates. I may be looking too hard for it, but I, too, feel it in my bones. Infrastructure FaceplantFor one thing the wacky spending program the Democrats were proposing and fiddling with seems to have hit the shoals, trapped between the far left and the more moderate senators Kyrsten...

The Wisconsin Elections Commission held an emergency meeting and its members shot back after a county sheriff claimed that it violated state law during the 2020 election. A statement signed by five of the six commissioners, released Thursday after the meeting jumped immediately into a closed session, denied the WEC broke the law when it permitted nursing homes to allow staff instead of special voting deputies to assist residents with completing ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. "We knew that for the protection of residents, only essential workers (which did not include SVDs) were being allowed into facilities across the...

The new anti-Biden slogan of "Let's Go Brandon!" has truly taken the country by storm, as a more polite way of saying "F*ck Joe Biden!" A Southwest pilot recently signed off using the phrase, as Colleen Long reported for the Associated Press. On Friday morning on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, to audible gasps from some passengers. Southwest said in a statement that the airline “takes pride in providing a welcoming, comfortable, and respectful environment” and that “behavior from any individual that is divisive...

Controversy will unfortunately be the story of Saturday’s marquee Michigan–Michigan State clash if the Spartans come back and win this afternoon’s game. Late in the second quarter, Michigan linebacker David Ojabo strip-sacked Michigan State quarterback Payton Thorne. The ball rolled into the end-zone before Wolverines star Aidan Hutchinson recovered it for a touchdown to make it a 26-14 Michigan lead. The refs reviewed the play to check whether or not Thorne was down before he fumbled the ball. Replay appeared to confirm it was a clean fumble before Thorne hit the ground. The replay center somehow saw otherwise. The officials...

Joe Biden met Pope Francis on Friday, October 29, in the US President's official visit to the Vatican since his inauguration. Biden is the second Catholic president in US history and is in Rome to attend the G20 summit which took place on October 30-31. Biden arrived at the Vatican’s San Damaso Courtyard at 12 pm on October 29. Msgr Leonardo Sapienza, the regent of the papal household, as well as Gentlemen of His Holiness, welcomed Joe Biden and his wife, First Lady Jill Biden. Shaking hands with the lay dignitaries, Biden said, “Thank you, it’s good to be back....

The US and EU have agreed to end a festering dispute over US steel and aluminium tariffs imposed by former president Donald Trump in 2018, removing an irritant in transatlantic relations and averting a spike in EU retaliatory tariffs, US officials have said. Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on Saturday that the deal would maintain US section 232 tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% aluminium, while allowing “limited volumes” of EU-produced metals into the US duty free.... ...EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis confirmed the deal, writing on Twitter that “we have agreed with US to pause” the trade...

They are often seen wearing a red armband patrolling residential neighbourhoods of Chaoyang, the biggest district of Beijing, which is home to nearly 3.5 million people. On a sunny late autumn afternoon, they will sit with a group of retirees in the sun and chat away. But when an individual of interest turns up, their attention quickly diverts to them.... ...For years, volunteers in the Chinese capital have become a part of its daily social fabric. They help run their neighbourhoods by picking up litter and guiding those who are lost. They also observe, listen and follow every clue that...

There were about half a dozen prisoner of war camps in Tennessee during World War II — the best known of which was Camp Crossville, in Cumberland County. We know a lot more about Camp Crossville than the others because of Gerhard Hennes. Hennes was a German officer captured in North Africa in May 1943. Five months later, he entered the gates of Camp Crossville, where he was interred for two years. After World War II, Hennes would become an American citizen, and in 2004 he published The Barbed Wire: POW in the USA. In it he gives a detailed...

The Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica is widely known as the most beautiful Taco Bell in the Bay Area, if not the world. But despite its breathtaking beachside location and Taco Bell’s penchant for marrying people, no one has hosted their wedding reception there. Until now. Analicia Garcia and Kyle Howser, high school sweethearts from Sacramento, wanted to keep their wedding low-key and fun. “When we got engaged, I think we both knew we didn't want to do a big, huge traditional wedding,” said Garcia. “... I saw on TikTok that the Las Vegas Taco Bell Cantina does weddings. How...

The Wolf Man tries to warn a dimwitted porter that Dracula wants his brain for the Frankenstein monster's body.

The Fresno Nightcrawler — often described as walking, ghostly pants — is known far beyond California's central San Joaquin Valley. It's become a darling of the cryptids — creatures typically described as mythological in nature, whose existence are widely considered unproven. "It's up there with Chupacabra, the Mothman and Bigfoot," said Michael Banti, founder of Weird Fresno, about the Fresno Nightcrawler's popularity. "It's very niche. It seems to be bigger outside of Fresno than inside."

Monsters and ghosts may be Halloween icons, but true spirit chasers know most of them are mere child’s play compared to those told in Latino folklore. That’s because tales of the supernatural have intrigued and enriched Hispanic culture throughout history — especially on holidays like Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), coming on the heels of Halloween on Nov. 1, and through the haunting legends that find their way into pop culture all year round. Thanks to depictions in films and shows ranging from Supernatural and Disney’s Coco to episodes of South Park and The X-Files, folks...

Last week, the discovery of the oldest known piece of artificially colored jewelry in Japan was unveiled. Although the Mainchi reported that the 23,000-year-old bead was actually unearthed five years ago, the finding was made only made public this month in anticipation of its debut at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum in Naha, Japan. The bead, which is considered a prime example of early creative development, is expected to provide valuable information about Paleolithic culture. The bead was carved from a tusk shell and painted with a red pigment, only of which traces remain in the groove of...