Free Republic

Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could be the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry’s rapid growth during the pandemic. The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he will raise the case of Egyptian-British hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah with Egypt's leadership during the COP27 climate summit that opened on Sunday (Nov 6), the same day Abd el-Fattah said he would stop drinking water. Abd al-Fattah rose to prominence with Egypt's 2011 uprising but has been detained for most of the period since. Sentenced most recently in December 2021 to five years on charges of spreading false news, he has been on hunger strike for 219 days against his detention and prison conditions. In a letter dated Nov 5 to...

Amateur radio operators will join a powerful international network tracking NASA's Orion spacecraft after it launches toward the moon this month. NASA officials announced that a network of 18 volunteers, organizations and space agencies will assist with tracking Artemis 1, which will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to orbit around the moon after blasting off from Earth atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Launch is set for no earlier than Nov. 14. The selected volunteers, including two individuals in the amateur radio community, will "demonstrate whether they can receive Orion's signal, and use their respective ground antennas to passively...

Everything I’m reading and hearing about the Tuesday midterm elections is a “massive red wave.” “Panic in New York.” “Blake Masters Takes Razor Thin Lead.” “Majority of Voters Support J.D. Vance.” “Red Wave Tuesday? Final Rasmussen Poll: GOP Leads Generic Congressional Ballot by 5 Points.” “The Democrats are in Trouble.” “Hispanics Across Arizona, Florida, Texas Abandon Democrats.” “Laxalt, Lombard Lead Democrat Opponents with Hispanic Voters.” And on and on it goes. I watched Sean Hannity interview Newt Gingrich Friday night. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Newt. He predicted 54-55 Senate seats for Republicans, and “20-50” seats picked...

The Taurids meteor shower was set to peak this weekend but it's unclear what caused the house fireNorthern California officials are looking into if the bright ball of light seen in the sky Friday night is a meteorite that landed on and destroyed a Nevada County home. Witnesses came from all over the region following the path of the bright ball in the sky to see where it landed and that path might have led to Dustin Procita's home. He was inside the house with his two dogs when he said something hit his home and started a fire....

Elon Musk, with the Twitter acquisition, is now the subject of much attention by the general public. Elon is not shy about saying whatever he wants — and being a computer-nerd genius with more money than King Charles III and his late mom, he is sometimes a little obscure. Like today: pic.twitter.com/4UQlClBSct— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022This one was puzzling enough that the editors asked me for a translation. “Version control” is the way software developers keep track of changes in order to make sure you know what’s changed in case you f—— something up. Your version control is...

The sky in Chular was buzzing this weekend and alive with the sound of giant-scale model airplanes. Hundreds came out to see pilots show off with loop-de-loops and upside-down flying for the Salinas Area Modelers Fly-In. "People come from all over the state basically, a couple people from Nevada have come over, a lot of people from the Bay Area that were here yesterday for the event," said organizer James Collins. To qualify as giant scale planes have to have an 80-inch wingspan. The crafts were flying between 50 and 100 miles per hour on Sunday with a speed limit...

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to unwittingly sign up as a naïve adolescent for a sociology course at a mid-sized state university, waited too long to withdraw during the add/drop period, and so were forced to sit through a semester’s worth of frothing diatribes against the White Patriarchy delivered by a menopausal hippie divorcée with a neon-dyed bowl cut, as I have, these are the least surprising poll results in human history:“The US polling, which was conducted as part of the 2022 American Family Survey, found that liberals were about 18 percentage points less likely to be “completely satisfied”...

The country’s Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa, said officials believe all bodies have been recovered from the airplane. “We’re starting to pull out the luggage and personal items from the aircraft. A team of doctors and security agencies have started the process of identifying the dead and notifying the families,” Majaliwa said. The airline confirmed the death toll and amended the number of survivors down to 24 in an updated statement on Sunday evening. Earlier, the carrier as well as local officials had said that 26 of the 43 people on board had been rescued. “Precision Air extends its deepest sympathies...

Less than a week from a "bloodbath" midterm for Democrats, you'd think Joe BIden would be on his best behavior as he stumps for votes across the country.Fat chance, Fat. Joe Biden's gaffe spout has been turned to 11, vowing as he did in California to put the coal industry out of business, just as Pennsylvania goes to the polls:"No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it. Even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of the existence of the plant," Biden said. "So it's going to become a wind generation," Biden...

I will always be grateful for the presidency of Donald Trump and, if he is the GOP nominee for president in 2024, I will support him. But I am very disturbed that yesterday, at an airport rally in Pennsylvania, he attacked Ron DeSantis...with one of his derisive nicknames, except that this one doesn’t even make any sense: Trump mocks DeSantis as "Ron DeSanctimonious" at a rally tonight in Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/efTl2vNQRB — The Bias (@thebias_news) November 6, 2022President Reagan of blessed memory left us with a very useful 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not attack another Republican."In today’s political environment, with the...

The gas vans that used exhaust fumes to kill thousands of Jews during transportation were designed by SS colonel Walter Rauff. He was a friend of Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich, and oversaw the killing of 100,000 people. Yet, a few years after World War II, the Israeli secret service hired him as a spy and helped him flee justice to South America. Rauff also worked for West Germany’s intelligence agency, founded under C.I.A. supervision by another Nazi turncoat, lieutenant general Reinhard Gehlen.The Allies swore to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, but only few were caught and tried. In the...

The U.S. has the world's largest population of prisoners, and Texas holds more incarcerated people than any other state. As climate change continues to increase the severity, frequency and duration of heat waves, the approximately 160,000 individuals in Texas prisons—as well as the people who work in these settings—come under intense physical duress in prisons without climate controls, according to a new study. The study examined the relationship between heat exposure and mortality risks in Texas prisons, focusing on how these risks vary between prisons with air conditioning and those without it. The researchers analyzed data gathered between 2001 and...

Lifelong surfer Jim Affinito is convinced a shark wanted to eat him for Halloween dinner. The Prunedale resident was enjoying a surfing session on Monday, Oct. 31, with no other surfers around on a beautiful late autumn afternoon off of Otter Point in Pacific Grove. At age 50, he has surfed many times in those same waters since he was a teenager. After about 45 minutes Affinito paddled out to deeper water about 100 yards offshore then sat up on his board waiting to catch a wave. Suddenly he felt a hard jolt from below that sent him into the...

From the article: Perhaps sharing more than his wife might prefer, the president confided that Mrs. Biden insists he combat the effects of age in other ways. “She gets very upset if I have not fully shaven, all this excessive amount of hair I have,” he said. “You know what I mean?”

Multiplatinum artist Kid Rock slammed television icon Oprah Winfrey on Saturday and called her a “fraud” after Winfrey endorsed the Pennsylvania Senate campaign of Democrat John Fetterman over his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom Winfrey has known and worked with for decades. “Oprah helped Dr. Oz with his career,” Kid Rock tweeted Saturday in a post that was retweeted over 10,000 times. “I assume because she vetted him and found him to be a wonderful person. Now she is against him. Oprah is a fraud. -Kid Rock.” Winfrey, a Democrat, announced on Thursday that she is supporting Fetterman’s Senate...

Explanation: Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the featured image from 2012, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted. Once complete, the resulting image was added to a starfield, then also color inverted. Visible in the image of the Sun are long light filaments, dark active regions, prominences peeking around the edge, and a moving carpet of hot gas. The surface of our Sun can be a busy place,...

The Central Coast staple, Phil’s Fish Market, opened their new Castroville location, on Saturday. After 20 years of service in Moss Landing, the iconic Phil’s Fish Market had to move because the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute did not renew its lease. "Instead of seeing the ocean they see artichokes,” says Phil DiGirolamo, Phil’s Fish Market Owner. The location is right next to the Castroville sign off Merritt Street. "You go down to Moss Landing and you go to what we call the island. There are no more cars, there's no more people there, it's almost deserted. When Phil was...

The global economy is at risk of crippling hyperinflation and “extraordinary” conditions that could prompt the worst financial crisis since World War II, according to major hedge fund Elliott Management. Elliott Management, led by famed billionaire investor Paul Singer, warned clients that extreme conditions present in the current economic landscape have “made possible a set of outcomes that would be at or beyond the boundaries of the entire post-WWII period ... The letter also cautioned that economies around the world are “on the path to hyperinflation” — a term referring to uncontrollable acceleration in the cost of daily necessities. While...

There are a lot of guns in America — this nation has collectively more civilian-owned guns than we have citizens. Unlike the rest of the developed world, firearms ownership in America is broadly held, with an estimated 40% of American households owning at least one gun; and unlike the rest of the world, gun-owning Americans tend to think of their weapons not as something dangerous, but as something that keeps them and their families safe.