Free Republic

The most expensive home for sale in Atlantic Beach, Long Island, has just listed for $11.5 million. Indeed, this marks the biggest number seen for the chiefly laid-back area, though probably not for long. As Wall Street is set to return to a full five-day work week, the Hamptons is starting to seem pretty far away. This part of the island, with a lowly population of about 1,800, comes with all the perks of the Hamptons — right on the water, for starters — and it’s just a breezy hour away from the city and away from the crowds. Rarely...

As a child, Corrie Wallace would recite the same prayer every night: “Dear God, please let me wake up as a girl.” During adolescence, Corrie sank into depression and lethargy, coming to life only when playing video games with a female avatar. Nothing could relieve her gender dysphoria—the intense distress of feeling like a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

Elise Finch, the beloved and well-known meteorologist at CBS New York, has died. She was 51. Finch died at a local hospital on Sunday, according to the network’s announcement Monday morning. Her cause of death was not announced. “This is a very difficult morning for our CBS 2 family,” morning news anchor Cindy Hsu said on Monday’s broadcast, fighting back tears. […] Prior to joining CBS New York, Finch worked on NBC’s “Early Today Show” and MSNBC. …

Behind bars, his most famous accomplice – and the only one that has faced any repercussions – is so afraid to be targeted, she can’t even brave taking showers. Disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is constantly in hot water with FCI Tallahassee prison administration, ever since she used the prison’s video visit system to give an interview claiming that the infamous photograph of Prince Andrew with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was a fake. After lodging over 400 complaints, she has earned the nickname ‘prison Karen’ in the low-security federal prison where she’s serving a 20-year sentence. In her lastest episode, Maxwell...

The Brevard County Republican Executive Committee (BREC) has passed a resolution in a landslide vote to ban the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, deeming it and the virus a “biological and technological weapon.” The committee is now soliciting support from registered Republicans in the county, state lawmakers, Florida’s Congressional delegation, and Governor Ron DeSantis. CBS12 News obtained a copy of the letter, which was sent to hundreds of registered Republicans in Brevard County for their consideration. The committee will mail the letter to all state lawmakers representing the region, Brevard’s Congressional delegation, including Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, Florida Attorney General...

Changes to a popular 401(K) tax deduction are set to hit millions of high-earning Americans from next year. Workers over the aged of 50 are entitled to make catch-up contributions to their 401(K)s worth up to $7,500 this year. The annual cap on all contributions is $30,000. But from 2024, those earning over $145,000 will no longer be able to put these catch-up payments into a traditional 401(K). Instead, the money will be only funneled into a Roth IRA account, according to new rules passed through Congress in December. The main difference between a Roth account and a 401(K) pot...

Lia Thomas is a very disturbing — and disturbed — individual on a few levels. The most obvious one is that he was a mediocre swimmer at best until he decided to become a she and dominate in women's swimming to the detriment of actual women. William Thomas was not allowed to compete directly against women swimmers, but Lia Thomas was. And Lia has been unapologetic about not only hurting actual women with his cheating, but also by the inherently predatory nature of his presence in women's changing rooms. Then, of course, there's his deeply disturbing social media activity and...

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison last week compared Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a house slave played by Samuel L. Jackson in the 2012 film “Django Unchained.” In Quentin Tarantino’s violent black comedy about slavery in the antebellum South, Jackson portrays a character named Stephen Warren, who is loyal to the white landowner at a Mississippi plantation despite the cruelty he inflicts upon the other slaves. “Well, Clarence Thomas, anybody who’s watched the movie ‘Django,’ just watch Stephen and you see Clarence Thomas,” Ellison said in an interview last Thursday with the Detroit-based Michigan Chronicle.

Semiconductor lasers, unlike bulky gas lasers and fiber lasers, are tiny, energy efficient, and highly controllable. The one thing they can’t do is deliver their competitor’s steel-slicing brightness. In results reported last week in Nature, a group of researchers at Kyoto University, in Japan, led by IEEE Fellow Susumu Noda, has taken a big step in overcoming the limitations of semiconductor laser brightness by changing the structure of photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs). A photonic crystal is composed of a semiconductor sheet punched through with regular, nanometer-scale air-filled holes. Photonic crystal lasers are attractive candidates for high-brightness lasers, but until now...

Prior to the bombshell arrest on Thursday of Rex Heuermann over several of the Gilgo Beach murders, the case had been hampered by a series of scandals inside the police department leading the investigation. The disgraced former chief of Suffolk County Police Department, James Burke, was at the center of the storm, which culminated in his imprisonment in 2016 for 46 months for battering a thief who stole a bag from his police car which contained porn and sex toys. Shocking details emerged about Burke's alleged fondness for drugs and prostitutes. He has also been described by colleagues as a...

Australian Space Agency @AusSpaceAgency · Follow We are currently making enquiries related to this object located on a beach near Jurien Bay in Western Australia. The object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle and we are liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information. [More in comments] July 17 (UPI) -- Officials in Australia are trying to identify a mysterious cylinder that washed up on a beach, and the country's space agency said it could be from "a foreign space launch vehicle." The unidentified object washed up on a beach in Green Head, Western...

"One of the most interesting things I did was to have a private audience with President Trump. We met, just one on one, and it was, frankly, great to see him. You know, all that nonsense between us is under the bridge."

Two drivers, one high and one drunk, slammed into each other on a Virginia road, wrecking their cars while miraculously suffering no injuries themselves, police said. Stafford County deputies arrived at the 1800 block of Mountain View Road Thursday night after receiving a call of two vehicles colliding when one swerved into the wrong lane. Deputies said one car, a silver Honda Civic, crossed the center double-yellow line and struck an oncoming blue Honda Civic, which was knocked off the road. Police found that the driver of the silver Civic, an 18-year-old man, was driving while in possession of a...

The majority of Americans want even higher amounts of food aid for struggling families, according to a new poll from the Save the Children Action Network. The survey, shared exclusively to The Hill, could be a warning sign for conservatives seeking to cut payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as part of the discussion on a new farm bill this year. “It’s important to note: If anything, most people would opt to increase benefits. Only 4 percent wanted to decrease them,” said Lori Weigel, who runs the Republican polling firm New Bridge Strategy, one of the firms that...

President @JoeBiden spending virtually no money for his re-election campaign. In the second quarter of this year, according to fresh data, his campaign had only four people on the payroll, spent less than $1,500 on travel, accommodations, and airfare. In all, Biden’s campaign spent $1.1 million in the second quarter of this year. His former boss @BarackObama spent more than $11 million in the second quarter of 2011 when he was running for re-election, and he barely won re-election. So the question is, how does Biden intend to win?

Controversial NCAA swimming champion Lia Thomas is stirring the pot once again, this time by posting images to social media showing him modeling a militaristic t-shirt in support of the domestic terror group Antifa. Thomas is seen in the photo wearing dark sunglasses and the Antifa shirt, reading “Antifa Super Solder,” along with a bondage-style, military-esque leather gear. He is also holding up his hand in a mock peace sign. #Trans swimmer Lia Thomas, formerly William Thomas, has now embraced the #Trantifa branding in new photos posted on social media. Trans violent militancy is the current focus of #Antifa. They...

Stroll through the West Hackberry oil facility on the US Gulf Coast and there’s not much to see: some pipelines and other industrial equipment. But buried deep beneath the surface are storage caverns so massive they’re tall enough to house the Empire State Building with plenty of room to spare. These reserve sites are supposed to hold enough backup supply to ensure the US never runs short of oil. Right now, they’re sitting half empty. It only took about six months for the Biden administration to sell off 180 million barrels from the federal stash in the fastest withdrawal on...

The mayor of Newport, Oregon, has been forced to step down after sharing a meme on Facebook which referred to Bud Light as “tranny fluid.” Dean Sawyer, a former law enforcement officer, resigned from his position on Monday after Oregon Public Radio revealed that he had shared a number of memes that had been considered “offensive” in a private Facebook group. The memes, which were shared in a group for current and former law enforcement officers called “LEO Only,” poked fun at transgender individuals, immigration, and other hot topics. One such meme directly referenced the recent controversy with Bud Light...

Explanation: What's happening around this star? No one is sure. CW Leonis is the closest carbon star, a star that appears orange because of atmospheric carbon dispersed from interior nuclear fusion. But CW Leonis also appears engulfed in a gaseous carbon-rich nebula. What causes the nebula's complexity is unknown, but its geometry of shells and arcs are surely intriguing. The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope details this complexity. The low surface gravity of carbon stars enhances their ability to expel carbon and carbon compounds into space. Some of this carbon ends up forming dark dust that is commonly...

A tug boat sank in the Tennessee River over the weekend, dumping thousands of gallons of diesel fuel into the water and closing beaches and parks in Alabama. After the boat sank it began to release somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the river, police in the northwestern city of Florence said Sunday. Soon after, diesel fuel began washing up on the shore of the beaches at McFarland Park around 10 a.m. Sunday morning, police said. Authorities quickly began getting people out of the water, and continue to urge locals to avoid swimming and going on...