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In this week's science news, I talk about a new candidate for a cosmic string, the mysterious shrinking of planet Mercury, a nuclear clock, the first quantum engine, a simulator for human diseases, whether we can find new physics with spinning black holes, AI that wants to help find aliens, how to compute with photons, and of course, the telephone will ring.Could this be the first evidence for string theory? | 18:21Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.03M subscribers | 310,893 views | October 10, 2023

Jazmine Hughes, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, resigned this week after a conflict with her editors over signing of an anti-Israeli letter. New York Times Magazine Editor Jake Silverstein said Hughes violated the company’s policy on public protest. The incident exposes the inherent conflicts — and hypocrisy — in the shift away from neutrality in reporting in media companies and graduate programs. I have long been a critic of what I called “advocacy journalism” as it began to emerge in journalism schools. These schools encourage students to use their “lived expertise” and to “leave[] neutrality behind.” Instead,...

The Clintons, Qatar, and the Israel MassacreIt’s not easy to understand the Middle East, but one facet can be found in following the money. One open-wallet nation, Qatar, has been chummy with both Hamas terrorists and U.S. politicians. Our chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison provides the details in our Investigative Bulletin about Qatar’s connections with a former U.S. president and a secretary of state. Shortly after the world began learning the details of the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, Hillary Clinton published a note of support on X for “everyone affected by the horrific attacks by Hamas” and...

A new report provides fresh evidence that infamous January 6 provocateur Ray Epps may have been an FBI plant. In the first of a two-part series, “Truth in Media” host Lara Logan spoke with Anthime Gionet, also known as “Baked Alaska,” a right-wing influencer formerly associated with the “alt right.” Video footage from January 5, 2021 and earlier indicate that Epps appeared to be particularly interested in Gionet, who was later sentenced to two months in prison for his participation in the riot at the US Capitol. Gionet (Baked Alaska) was one of several people who filmed Epps on the...

The Federal Government throws out inflation numbers that don't even have a glancing interaction with reality. Every since they stopped including fuel, housing, and food in the CPI, it in no way reflects day to day existence here on the ground. Remember as a youth, you'd buy a big bag of Doritos for your party and you'd spend 99 cents? Well, I bought a much smaller bag for $4.69. Funions? $5.69. The bagels I'd but at Aldies went from $1.69 for 6 to $3.19 for 5. A bag of navel Oranges now costs $3.69 for 5. Things like Doritos have...

A very brief video because I want to tell you about this story I learned from William Jason Morgan's obituary. It's a lovely story about how the process of scientific discovery sometimes takes unexpected turns.He looked for gravitational waves, but discovered something entirely different | 3:39Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.03M subscribers | 232,486 views | October 19, 2023her YouTube channel

Former President Barack Obama backtracked Friday on his early support for Israel against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, telling an audience at the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum in Chicago that they had pushed him to modify his position. “I had a conversation with a group of you around this issue, and you were passionate and pushed me around some of the public statements I’d made,” Obama told a group of activists and supporters. He said that all agreed on the desired outcome — ” an end to the killing, peaceful coexistence between two sovereign and free peoples” — but that...

The Toronto-based writer and activist, who started taking testosterone earlier this week, follows in the footsteps of his husband-turned-wife and son-turned-daughter. Knox's wife Zoe was previously known as Mark but came out as transgender in July 2015, after 19 years of marriage.

Let’s face it; there are a lot more BB guns and air rifles available than when we were kids. In fact, most options available these days are designed and marketed to fully-grown up kids. However, there is still one model that stands apart from the rest. The best BB gun for your kids to learn on is still the Red Ryder…

Since returning to power in 2021, Taliban authorities have vowed to end illegal drug production in Afghanistan and in April 2022 banned the cultivation of the poppy plant, from which opium and heroin are made. The report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that poppy cultivation has collapsed by an estimated 95 percent -- from 233,000 hectares (575,755 acres) at the end of 2022 to 10,800 in 2023. Opium production has followed suit, plummeting from 6,200 tons to 333 tons in 2023. This year's estimated harvest amounts to 24-38 tons of exportable heroin, compared with...

Ballot initiatives are an essential evolution of American democracy. Created over a century ago, they give millions of Americans a direct means to shape the laws that govern their lives and a check on legislative power when it’s not responsive to the people. In recent months, though, conservative politicians’ efforts to undermine the ballot process have taken a disturbing shift. Beyond their continued attempts to impose supermajority voter thresholds to make passing such initiatives nearly impossible, they have also resorted to manipulating ballot titles to deliberately confuse voters. The 2023 elections are a testing ground for this insidious tactic. Unless...

A new paper from Tsinghua University, China, describes the development and operation of an ultra-fast and highly efficient AI processing chip specialized in computer vision tasks. The All-analog Chip Combining Electronic and Light Computing (ACCEL), as the chip is called, leverages photonic and analog computing in a specialized architecture that’s capable of delivering over 3,000 times the performance of an Nvidia A100 at an energy consumption that’s four million times lower. Yes, it’s a specialized chip – but instead of seeing it as market fragmentation, we can see it as another step towards the future of heterogeneous computing, where semiconductors...

Yesterday in Oakland, Pro-Palestinian protesters advocating for a cease-fire in Gaza illegally entered port facilities in an attempt to halt the U.S. military supply ship, M/V Cape Orlando. This vessel, owned by Secretary Pete’s Department of Transportation and manned by a U.S. Merchant Marine crew, was the target of protesters who locked themselves to the ship, causing a significant delay in its scheduled departur

This country isn't going to make it to its 250th birthday. We cannot continue like this; we have to have a government that's accountable to the Constitution, to the Rule of Law, and to Legacy Americans only.

This week, the left-wing organization Swords into Plowshares began the process of melting down the statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in Charlottesville, Virginia. The images from the ordeal contain deep spiritual significance. A profound sense of foreboding washed over my heart when I saw the bronze face of the Southern hero, glowing red hot moments before annihilation. What the Leftists did to the statue of Lee is a vision of what they want to do to the rest of the country. The destruction of a nation’s symbols, the elimination of the reminders of its past, is a key...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected claims that the war with Russia has reached a stalemate in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ "Meet the Press" on Sunday, as his military’s struggling counteroffensive and the war in the Middle East threaten to sap Western support. "They thought they would checkmate us, but this didn’t happen," Zelenskyy said, rebuffing recent suggestions from U.S. military officials, other allies and even the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s own armed forces that the war had entered an impasse after 20 months of fierce fighting

Movie ticket sales dropped to $58.3 million this weekend, according to Deadline, as “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” “​​Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” — which all debuted last month — struggled to keep sales afloat in what would have been the release weekend for the Zendaya andTimothee Chalamet-led “Dune: Part Two,” which was delayed to 2024 amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. The $58.3 million sales is the third lowest of 2023’s weekend box office numbers, Deadline reported, noting Denis Villenueve’s “Dune: Part Two” could have supplied the box office with at least $50 million had it...

It's something millions of Americans will wrestle with at some point in their lives. Parents and grandparents get older and eventually, the family has to make a tough call. Is grandpa safe to live on his own, or is it best if he's around people his own age in the United States Senate?

“The global forces are just too big and powerful. There’s no way to stop them. We are locked out of the process. Our elected officials just won’t listen to us!” This is what I hear every day from activists who truly want to stand up for freedom – but, instead, are looking down in defeat. STOP IT!!! We have just won a major victory in Iowa as the Navigator Heartland Greenway has announced they are pulling their request from the Iowa Utilities Board to build the carbon capture pipeline. This is a direct result of dedicated grassroots activists standing up...

The biggest problem confronting Israel in its war on Hamas is how to destroy the Gaza tunnel networks and the terrorist operations therein. Bombing works—mostly—but there’s a better way. Not only would it dramatically reduce Israeli military and Gazan civilian casualties, but it would effectively destroy the tunnel systems for the long term. That solution is to flood the tunnels with seawater from the adjacent Mediterranean. I worked on the Gaza Strip back in the 1990s. The U.S. government was pouring tens of millions of tax dollars into development assistance there on engineering infrastructure, housing, and related projects. Part of...