Free Republic

LONDON — Like thousands of pubs across Britain, the Red Lion and Sun fears financial ruin this winter as its energy costs surge, just as business was starting to recover from the fallow years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nestled in a leafy north London suburb, the pub’s annual energy bill is on course to more than quadruple this year to 65,000 pounds ($76,000) from 16,000 pounds, said James Cuthbertson, a director of The Frisco Group, which manages the pub along with two others in the capital and southeast England. “We need to come up with an extra 50,000 pounds in...

Faced with an impossible puzzle, lab monkeys in a recent experiment showed unflappable resolve: They continued to guess what they thought must be the correct responses, even when rewards were doled out at random or in ways meant to disincentivize the animals from sticking to their guns. In short, the monkeys’ spuriously learned convictions—their seeming insistence that there must be a structure and solution to an unsolvable puzzle—outweighed their desire to maximize rewards during the experiment. The study, published August 23 in PNAS, suggests that the monkeys create internal representations and assumptions about how to solve a puzzle or address...

California will suffer an energy shortage and “Flex Alerts” through Labor Day due to high temperatures, and residents will be asked to conserve electricity during afternoons and evenings, which means refraining from charging electric vehicles, among other uses.

Boris Johnson has given the green light to the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk, promising £700m of government funding for the project. He confirmed the move during a speech from the site in one of his final acts as prime minister - and amid the rising cost of living crisis - saying he was "absolutely confident it will get over the line" in the next few weeks. The government has previously said the £20bn power plant would take just under a decade to build and could power six million homes. Mr Johnson is due to be replaced as...

Japan’s digital minister, who’s vowed to rid the bureaucracy of outdated tools from the hanko stamp to the fax machine, has now declared “war” on a technology many haven’t seen for decades — the floppy disk. The hand-sized, square-shaped data storage item, along with similar devices including the CD or even lesser-known mini disk, are still required for some 1,900 government procedures and must go, digital minister Taro Kono wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday. “We will be reviewing these practices swiftly,” Kono said in a news conference Tuesday, adding that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has offered his full support....

Read this FR Post, read all of it. It's not too long or complicated: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4087463/posts You do not need to analyze anything in the CVRs; you need only get a copy. You might simply call and have them emailed or downloaded. Or you might have to go into your County Clerk’s office to pick them up. BUT DO SO SOON. Once you have your County’s CVRs, you will be connected with national coordinators. You may also contact your County Sheriff according to the discussion in the above FR link.

If there is one thing you can say for the Democrats, it is that once they get a winning formula, they will follow it again and again in their quest for power. They’ve done this for decades. Playing the race card, manipulating the language, and demonizing both their opponents as well as those who support their opponents. In 2020, we saw the emergence of another tactic: hiding the candidate. Pennsylvania Democrats have taken note of the “hide the candidate” strategy and are using it with their senatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, whose campaign has consisted of a few memes...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

With all of the hype about 3-D printed guns, I've noticed a surge in interest in constructing your own guns. Not just assembling, but also building a rifle from scratch. The growing interest appears to be centred on making a political statement rather than evading rules. A declaration that the signal cannot be stopped. With a renewed interest in this type of build, I wanted to compile a list of all the guns that can be made from 80 percent receivers. 3-D printing guns is cool, but they aren't particularly good or effective weapons. 3D printers are costly, and the...

Does Trump win 2024? A series of Emerson College polls conducted between August 15 and 29 appear to show former President Donald Trump with a commanding lead over President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch. The news bodes well for the Republicans in November’s mid-terms, assuming that former President Donald Trump’s legal challenges and wrangling with the FBI don’t turn off voters in the coming months. Trump holds substantial leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia – giving the former president a shot at winning back a total of 36 electoral college votes should he hold all states he won last...

Don’t ask, don’t tell.That’s how gun owners and law-enforcement officers should approach New York’s unconstitutional new gun law.I won’t tell you what I’m carrying, and don’t you ask me what I have.We may be the targets of illegal oppression, but we don’t have to be accomplices to it. Beginning today, carrying handguns is prohibited almost everywhere in the state of New York. They can’t be carried on public property, and they can’t be carried on private property unless the owner or lessee posts a large sign declaring that they are welcome.When you eliminate public property and private property, that’s all...

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) hit historic lows this week as President Joe Biden continues to order a record release of barrels from the emergency stockpile. The SPR now sits at around 453 million barrels – the lowest level in 37 years. For perspective, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2021, the United States consumed an average of about 19.78 million barrels of petroleum per day. If oil and gas production were to halt completely, today’s SPR would have just enough supply to fuel the United States for 22 days. ------------------------------- Whole story depicted in Bloomberg Graph...

The Kroger Company, a supermarket giant, published an “allyship guide” that told employees to use “inclusive language,” celebrate transgender holidays, and even support an organization that bails violent criminals out of prison.

Democrats are seeing new glimmers of hope for their chances of ousting Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in Florida after months of hand-wringing over just how aggressively they should pursue his seat. Until recently, the Senate race drew little attention from national Democrats who have grown increasingly skeptical that their candidates can remain competitive in the Sunshine State after a spate of narrow, though still painful, losses. Top party officials instead looked to Senate contests in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two states that President Biden carried in 2020 — as safer bets.

President Biden’s approval rating hit 40 percent during the month of August in a new Quinnipiac University poll, a 9-point spike from just one month ago. The new poll, published on Thursday, found that 40 percent of respondents approve of the job Biden is doing in the Oval Office, rising from the 31 percent low approval rating he received from Americans in the same poll in July.

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S WORD ZECHARIAH'S PROPHECY OF JESUS Z E C H A R I A H CHAPTER 9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the...

Here’s something I bet you did not see coming either – Lindsey Graham was actually right about something, in this case when he warned the malicious morons of the left about the terrifying consequences of their desire to eliminate a political opponent by framing him in a jurisdiction that is 95% Democrat and where every juror either is, married to, or having a tacky fling with, a Biden administration Deputy Assistant Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Yam, Potato, and Brian Stelter Affairs. indsey Graham – an Air Force colonel who served his country, unlike the vast majority of the Ukraine flag-waiving,...

Trash talk is common in sports. Whether it’s lighthearted or nasty, the purpose is the same: to intimidate your opponent and make them lose focus and feel less confident in their ability to win. Democrats and their friends in the media are engaging in their own form of trash talk when it comes to the midterm elections. They wave around some meaningless poll or quote an “expert” who would have us believe that Republican Senate candidates are weak, President Joe Biden has had some great successes, the Democrats’ fundraising numbers give them a huge advantage, and Republicans can’t possibly win...

Most Americans are still not persuaded to buy electric cars despite the federal government’s multi-billion dollar push to promote the vehicles. A majority 54% of American adults think electric cars are not practical, compared to 28% who say they are practical for most drivers, found the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey. Broken down by party affiliation, 66% of Republicans, 46% of Democrats and 51% of unaffiliated voters said electric cars are not practical. The Department of Transportation intends to spend almost $5 billion over five years to help states create a network of electric vehicle charging stations....

The defeat of Marylin Mosby was a huge victory. But with a left-wing mayor still undermining the rule of law in Baltimore, the fight isn’t over yet. Recently, in American Greatness, I examined the significance of the crushing electoral defeat of Marylin Mosby, Baltimore’s George Soros-backed city prosecutor. Seventy-two percent of Democratic voters rejected her pro-criminal agenda. The victory for law-abiding citizens was huge. Of all the corrupt, dysfunctional, crime-ridden Democrat-run U.S. cities, Baltimore stands out as the prime example of the result of destructive leftist policies. Under Mosby’s pro-criminal tenure, murders in “Charm City” skyrocketed 62 percent during her...