Free Republic

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is partnering with Jony Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone, to create wearable AI devices that can be “fully aware” of a user’s surroundings and life. According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman has directed his team to produce 100 million of these secretive “AI companion” gadgets. The unnamed device, still in development, will be compact—small enough for a pocket or desk—and designed to reduce screen time. Unlike an Apple Watch, it won’t have phone features. The collaboration between Altman and Ive sounds like a Silicon Valley dream, but skepticism remains. After the Humane AI...

America's most popular shoe is coming back to Amazon. After a five-year hiatus, Nike shoes, clothing, and accessories are returning to the e-commerce giant. The athletic brand swiped its products from the platform in 2019, as part of a push to sell more directly to consumers. Consumer interest has slumped, with sales dropping a staggering 9 percent in March, amid increased running shoe competition. Hoka, Brooks, and Saucony are all gaining sales in the athletic sneaker industry after spending millions of dollars on branding deals with running clubs and community events. Nike, which has cut back on small-scale sponsorships, has...

House Republicans are sending a clear and early warning to their Senate allies as the bill encompassing President Trump’s domestic priorities heads to the upper chamber: Don’t water it down. House GOP leaders spent weeks in delicate talks with Republican holdouts before cobbling together a fragile agreement that could thread the needle between conservatives’ demands for more spending cuts and moderates’ insistence on a controversial tax break. As the massive package heads to the Senate, the critical voices of the House debate — blue-state Republicans, hardliners and party leaders — are cautioning their upper-chamber counterparts not to alter their design...

A decade and a half before Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971, Billy Graham was in Boston to deliver a memorial address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The year was 1955, and he had just finished visiting many U.S. military installations in Europe. Below is an excerpt from our archives of his timeless message, which still rings true this Memorial Day as we remember with gratitude the sacrifices of so many for our nation.

There is no single answer to this puzzle. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for around 179 million years and during that time, evolved into an enormous array of different shapes and sizes. Some were tiny, like the diminutive Albinykus, which weighed under a kilogram (2.2lbs) and was probably less than 2ft (60cm) long. Others were among the biggest animals to have ever lived on land, such as the titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum, which may have weighed up to 72 tonnes. They ran on two legs, or plodded on four. And along with these diverse body shapes, they would have produced an equally...

3 in 4 parents of college-age students also oppose men in women’s spaces A majority of parents with college-age students want universities to stop prioritizing race in hiring and scholarship decisions ... The results showed a majority of parents “are at odds with our country’s higher education institutions on several contentious issues that are consistently in today’s political dialogue,” according to a news release. Defending Education works to rid education of ideological agendas. In the poll, which involved parents of 15- to 21-year-old students, 54 percent said universities should not prioritize a student’s race when awarding scholarships, and 57 percent...

Federal charge card reform demanded as audit reveals nearly 2 cards per employee and $40B in annual spending

Vladimir Putin's forces are massing next to Russia's border with Ukraine's Sumy oblast, it has been reported, following evacuations from the region and a threat that Moscow has identified further territorial targets in its full-scale invasion. Sumy governor Oleh Hryhorov said thousands had been evacuated from the region on Ukraine's northeast border and next to the Kharkiv oblast, according to the Kyiv Independent. On the other side of the frontier Russian troops numbers are said to be increasing. It comes Putin is trying to justify the renewal of Russian plans to seize Sumy City—16 miles from the border—and illegally annex...

Daily Readings from the USCCBJesus said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.” John 15:18–19This is a sobering thought: “the world hates you.” That is, if you are among those who have been taken by our Lord out of the world. In that case, Jesus says that the world will hate you. No one wants to be hated. No...

This proposal is the most realistic means for keeping the peace after an armistice. Bloomberg cited unnamed “people with knowledge of Kremlin thinking” to report that Russia will only demand that Ukraine restore its constitutional neutrality, “drastically cut back military ties with the NATO alliance”, limit its army, and freeze the front lines, albeit with some territorial swaps. Also, “The Kremlin’s position is that while individual NATO members may continue to send arms to Ukraine under bilateral security agreements, any such weapons should not be used against Russia or to recapture territory.” To be sure, Bloomberg might have either invented...

A PJ Media post alleges that there is an Evangelical Fellowship of Canada “brochure” from 2024, still circulating, that is in opposition to that nation’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program. That sounds right on its face, but there’s more. The brochure reportedly states: A special committee of MPs and senators studying MAiD has recommended allowing MAiD for mature minors. A mature minor is a child or teen who is deemed capable of making a decision for MAiD. This would essentially remove the minimum age of eligibility.Not shocked and appalled enough? Read on: The committee also suggested parents may not...

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch axed the hardbody cop who was once suspended from the NYPD for interfering with a probe into her alleged drug dealer boyfriend, The Post has learned. Tisch dismissed Alisa Bajraktarevic — who has an active lawsuit against the department over a topless photo of her that circulated among cops — on May 2, according to internal personnel orders obtained by The Post. Bajraktarevic, 34, of Yonkers, worked in the Robbery Squad and was suspended for 30 days after a 2023 incident in which she tried to stop cops from searching the car of her alleged drug...

Calling the trade talks a stalemate, US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 50% tariff on the EU on June 1. European markets took an immediate tumble following Trump's social media post. US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is recommending a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union, citing a stalemate in trade talks. "Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025," he wrote on social media. In a post on Truth Social, Trump reiterated his criticism of...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Give the Borg-Wiener Trophy at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the Wienermobile affectionately known as Slaw Dog. In a down-to-the-wire race among the six iconic Wienermobiles that serve as goodwill ambassadors for Oscar Mayer, the hot dog-on-wheels representing the Southeast proved to be the big dog on Carb Day ahead of Sunday’s running of the Indianapolis 500. It made a dramatic pass of the Wienermobile repping Chicago at the finish line to win the inaugural Wienie 500 on Friday. The margin was about a half a bun. “You are standing in a moment in hot dog history right...

A 62-year-old Mexican national, deported from the United States in 2017 but allegedly gained illegal re-entry, was taken into custody this week after being suspected of embezzling $7 million from his employer, authorities said. Alexander G. Ramos of Newport Beach was charged on Thursday, May 22, with fraud, a felony that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Ramos was being held without bail. According to an affidavit filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ramos was employed in the victim company’s risk-management department from 2017 until his termination...

Special Dispatch to the New-York Times. WASHINGTON, Tuesday, May 23, 1865. The Army of the Potomac has passed in review. The first day's pageant is over, and to the correspondent falls the duty of depicting a scene almost devoid of incident, save in its grand aspiration. Every circumstance has combined to make it a complete success. The weather has been magnificent; the air, delightfully tempered by the rains of the past week, is cool and fragrant, and dust is for the time subdued. Washington has been filled as it never was filled before; the hotel-keepers assert that the pressure upon...

The nation of the Franks are well known today as the progenitors of modern France, as well as the barbarian nation that most readily and ardently embraced Catholicism. As Saint Avitus of Vienne shows in his letter to King Clovis upon the latter’s baptism in AD 496, the subject Christian Romans placed great hopes in the conversion of the Frankish king and his court, and the event was an occasion of great joy. This was particularly true given Clovis’s previous history as a ruthless conqueror who defeated and dissolved the last remnant of Western Roman power in Gaul, the so-called...

The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose? That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest....

If chutzpah could take human form, it would strongly resemble CNN’s Jake Tapper. The recent spectacle of Tapper making the rounds on the interview circuit to promote his latest book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” co-authored with Alex Thompson, has such a wolf-in-the-henhouse feel to it that both the interview tour and the five-years-too-late investigation into former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline simply must involve sinister, ulterior motives. Sure enough, in an interview posted to the social media platform X Friday, Tapper revealed those motives. ... “This applies to Donald Trump,...

Antisemitism is increasing on university campuses — and throughout the world. But let’s be clear: Donald Trump and the right wing are not fighting antisemitism. They are exploiting it. And they are deliberately doing so, using Jewish people as pawns in a broader war on education.