Free Republic

Sweden is putting books, handwriting, and human attention back at the center of education—and reminding the rest of us that technology should serve children, not master them. For years, parents were told the future of education was digital. Out went textbooks. In came tablets. Out went handwriting. In came keyboards. Children barely old enough to tie their shoes were handed screens and told this was progress. Sweden embraced that revolution more enthusiastically than most countries. Now Sweden is hitting the brakes.Not, as some viral posts claim, by “banning digital classrooms.” The truth is actually more interesting. Sweden is deliberately...

Growing up on a small farm in Missouri, five miles outside of a town of 350 people, Glenn Jacobs viewed sports as his way out. He became a WWE star, and then, Knox County mayor. After eight years of leading Tennessee’s third-largest county, Jacobs is reflecting on his time in office. “My family didn’t really have a whole lot,” said Jacobs. “And if an unexpected expense came along, a car broke down, or something like that. Things get real tight. For my family, I always saw professional sports as my way out to a better life.” The son of a...

A GHOST WRITER is haunting the English language. The linguistic spectre can turn its hand to prose, poetry, journalese and corporate jargon. It is frightfully versatile: you can get it to mimic Shakespeare’s sonnets or a schlocky beach read; Ernest Hemingway’s taut prose or the office-printer manual. It is frightfully fast, churning out thousands of words a minute. (Hemingway rarely produced as many in a day, and required much more booze.) Wordsmiths are spooked. AI writing is everywhere. It is in your inbox and on your LinkedIn feed. It is all over the internet, drafting more than a third of...

Dolly Parton died Tuesday of cancer at the age of 80, surrounded by loved ones. She was loved like few other entertainers in American history. The story of how her most famous song, “I Will Always Love You,” came to be—and how Whitney Houston came to record it—may be the best of all the Parton stories you’ll hear as the nation grieves her loss. And celebrates her life. Parton was born dirt poor in 1946 to a loving family in the mountains of Tennessee. Her father couldn’t read or write, and often worked two jobs to make ends meet, but...

A Fremont resident who fought with armed home invaders on Friday grabbed a suspect’s firearm and used it to fatally shoot the burglar, according to police. Officers responded to the shooting around 12:12 p.m. at an apartment on San Pedro Drive. Fremont Police Department investigators said two teenagers forced their way into the home and assaulted two residents. “During a struggle, one occupant gained control of the suspect’s firearm and fired it towards them, fatally wounding one of the suspects,” Fremont PD wrote. The suspect who was shot succumbed to his injuries at a local trauma center. Suspect at large...

SpaceX is targeting Sunday, August 30 for Falcon Heavy’s launch of NASA’s Roman Space Telescope mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for 7:26 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity available on Monday, August 31 at 7:22 a.m. ET. A live webcast of this mission will begin about one hour prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. This is the first and third flight for the two first stage side boosters supporting this mission, which previously launched the GOES-U and Viasat-3 F3 missions. Following stage separation,...

Florida Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar did a quick about-face on President Trump’s massive Venezuela oil deal Saturday — deleting a social media post blasting the pact before returning to declare it was “a great deal” for America and the Venezuelan people Salazar, who has been outspoken of communist Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, took to X to declare that the pact would come to an end once President Trump’s term ends. “Any oil “deal” with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House,” Salazar wrote on the site. She later deleted the English...

The spur of St.Erasmo, looming above the village of Cesi... represents the best preserved example of a fortified high ground site in the Umbria region and, in general, one of the main sites of this type in central-southern Italy. This point was fortified, encircling an area of about 7000 sq.m with massive masonry in polygonal work, with a wall of about 400 linear metres, which alternates various types of polygonal work, from the more regular and well- smoothed that distinguishes the northern side, to more cursive ones, with not well-worked blocks, attested in several points, perhaps less visible on the...

CIA Director John Ratcliffe proposed a trilateral meeting between President Trump, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky during his covert trip to Moscow earlier this week in an effort to end the war, two sources briefed on the matter told Axios.

Professor Edmund Whitmore takes the stage to make an argument most scientists won't say out loud: that we are probably alone in the universe. Not "we haven't found anyone yet." Actually alone. The only technological civilization that exists, or has ever existed, within any distance that matters.

"Challenging." "Criticizing." "Questioning."All the above words would have accurately categorized the attitude of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. towards the lack of transparency by Governor Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) following his claim that lack of vaccinations caused the death from measles of two residents of his state. Instead, Politico chose once again to put its biases on display with its choice of describing Kennedy's reaction as "exploiting," as you can see in Thursday's story by health reporter Carmen Paun in "Shapiro won’t say who died of measles. RFK Jr. is exploiting it."

New polling last weekend put Marine Le Pen in a very favorable position to win the Presidential Election next spring. The National Rally (RN) candidate well ahead in a first round of voting at 35-38 percent of the vote. Her closet rival leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon of La France Insoumise (LFI) at 16-17 percent. If the two moved into a second-round Marine Le Pen would easily defeat Mr. Melenchon 64-36 percent... New polling out this weekend done for BFM-TV confirming the strength of Marine Le Pen. She beats all potential second round opponents including the best-positioned centrist Edouard Philippe... Seven presidential...

Police using Flock Safety’s artificial intelligence tools can now track a vehicle based only on its location and movements. Flock’s OS Investigate, formerly known as Nightshift, is an AI tool that identifies vehicles and ranks drivers’ “associates” based on how frequently they appear together at the same Flock camera, WIRED reported. Flock website code reviewed by WIRED listed 45 functions available to OS Investigate, including plate scans, camera metadata, arrest records, case files and 911 dispatch logs to identify potential suspects. “[T]his [Flock tool] really crosses a line from a tool that’s used to investigate suspicious people to deciding who...

A B-24D Liberator bomber called “Suzy Q” went down in flames near Capo Stilo, Italy, on August 16, 1943, and for 83 years nobody could say for certain what happened to its pilot. That changed this week, when the remains of 1st Lt. Walter R. Bateman, a 22-year-old Maryland native, arrived home at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday for a dignified transfer ceremony followed by a police-escorted procession to Bel Air. Bateman piloted the bomber, assigned to the 67th Bombardment Squadron of the 44th Bombardment Group, on a mission targeting enemy airfields in Foggia, Italy, when his aircraft...

FBI agents also didn't tell the Al Qaeda leader he could call a lawyer. Using the Article III system to try Al Qaeda terrorists was a reasonable solution, the trouble is that military tribunal personnel in this century look nothing like the guys who took a smoke break and sentenced Nazi saboteurs to death during WWII. Their ideal is A Few Good Men, they’re liberals if not outright leftists, and they’re far more likely to be on the side of the terrorists than to be on our side. The few Islamic terrorists whom Obama and Biden didn’t free from Gitmo...

China has censored footage of the floods in Nepal and Tibet. Beijing authorities removed footage of the moment people fled before a wall of mud swept through the Gyirong border crossing. Only a still from the footage appeared in Chinese state media coverage. The Chinese public has been largely reliant on state media for information, with official reports focusing on rescue efforts while providing little detail about the extent of the destruction. On Saturday, state media said 554 people were missing on the Chinese side of the border and seven had been confirmed dead.

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Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority: in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. And this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His Will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, We know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him - I John 5: 14-15"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." - Ephesians 5:11 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; Who put...

[Catholic Caucus] Leo XIV Appoints Archbishop Who Offered to Pachamama Today, Leo XIV appointed Auxiliary Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera O.S.A., 52, of Cuzco, Peru, as the Coadjutor Archbishop of the same Archdiocese. He will thus be the successor to Archbishop Richard Daniel Alarcón Urrutia, 74.Just two weeks ago, the new Archbishop offered to the idol Pachamama.Leo XIV Personally Formed EstradaBorn in Cotabambas in 1973, Monsignor Estrada joined the Augustinians and was ordained a priest in 2005. Pope Francis appointed Estrada auxiliary bishop of Cuzco in January 2021.In May 2025, Bishop Estrada told VaticanNews.va, that Leo XIV was already his professor,...

GESTURES OF LOVE Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love . . . and weep with them who weep. —Romans 12:10,15 Cards...hundreds and hundreds of cards. Our mail carrier must have thought we were going for a world record. They came by the stack—day after day after day. It was just one of the many ways we knew that people cared for us as our family endured the painful first weeks after our teenage daughter Melissa died in a car accident. But it wasn't just the cards that provided assurance of loving support...food came in so fast...