Free Republic

Some statistics are not just illuminating, they are downright shocking. Here’s one. At the University of Texas at Austin, one of America’s top universities, only 300 students graduated with a major in the humanities. That would be a big number if UT graduated 1,200 students, but it actually graduates about 12,000. The percentage of humanities major is 0.025 percent. It rounds to zero. That dismal statistic is replicated at universities across the country. While Texas certainly likes to think of itself as unique, in this case, it’s not. At every university, big and small, fewer and fewer students are studying...

A 2026 survey from Accredited Debt Relief and Money.com found that 78% of Americans with debt blame inflation and rising prices for at least part of their financial difficulties. Meanwhile, 68% pointed to housing costs, and the same percentage acknowledged that their own spending or borrowing decisions contributed to their debt. The findings suggest that while Americans across generations are struggling with debt, their financial pressures differ considerably depending on their age. America’s Debt Problem Is GrowingAccording to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, total U.S. household debt reached $18.77 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, an increase...

The American economy is showing remarkable resilience despite persistent inflation, high interest rates, and geopolitical uncertainty. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that the economy grew at a 3.5% annualized rate during the third quarter of 2026, well above what many economists once considered sustainable. Yet there is a growing disconnect between the economy’s impressive performance and the financial reality facing everyday Americans. Economic Growth Continues to Beat ExpectationsEconomists had expected the U.S. economy to slow as higher energy prices, tariffs, and rising borrowing costs weighed on consumers and businesses. Instead, consumer spending has remained resilient, companies have continued...

[snip] This is an illustrative historical reconstruction: architectural details, scales and historical urban extents are approximate, and population figures are estimates. This one took a very long time to make. The scene was far too big for my own computer, so I spent several hundred dollars renting GPUs to render it. Thank you so much for watching! If you enjoyed it, a like and a subscribe would mean a lot to me. [/snip] Constantinople - 3D Timelapse - 680 BC to AD 1453 | 8:34 How Cities Grew | 2.21K subscribers | 521,011 views | October 15, 2026

Seattle is winning...20-3...I expected KC to win easily...KC will lose for first time this season...

Let’s talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher. He’s got a Low Rated Show on equally Low Rated HBO, which was once, long ago, a Network of Quality and Excitement — But that’s all gone. It’s not “HOT” anymore! Maher’s friend and business associate, Chuck LaBella, was also a friend of mine, worked on The Top Hit Show, The Apprentice, as a “gofer” and, because of the success of that show, Number One and Top Rated on many weeks, with the Finale’ being among the Top Shows of the Year, he was automatically and quickly brought up through...

Disgraced ex-con and Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Sunday urged voters to cast ballots for Republicans, griping that socialists such as Zohran Mamdani have “hijacked’’ the Dem Party. Blagojevich — who was convicted of selling to the highest bidder the Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated after his 2008 presidential election — seethed to the “Cats Roundtable” radio program, “It’s not the Democratic Party anymore. “It’s a socialist party,” said the ex-gov, now a self-described “Trump-O-Crat,” while discussing his new book, “Framed, F*cked, and Freed: A Governor’s Odyssey” on the 770 WABC program. “The Democratic Party has been...

NEW: Robert Reich calls for the "defunding" of Elon Musk, calls for Democrats to go after Musk's companies."Democrats ought to [start] laying the groundwork for nationalizing Starlink & SpaceX... It should be a public corporation."Does he want Musk to drop another $50M on the Midterms? pic.twitter.com/0jiljf0CtG— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 25, 2026

Science Norway reports that a stone with a groove running all the way around it was discovered near an islet off the coast of western Norway that is the site of Hespriniholmen, a greenstone quarry estimated to be between 5,000 and 9,000 years old. Greenstone was used to make axes that have been unearthed in western and eastern Norway. Arild Skjæveland Vivås of the Stavanger Maritime Museum said that the team of researchers found the stone, which weighs more than 60 pounds, on an underwater pile of quarry waste. They fastened a rope around the groove and pulled it up...

Additional ring ditches have been discovered at the Hunn burial ground in eastern Norway with ground-penetrating radar, according to a Science Norway report. Standing stone circles are known to have stood in the South Field some 2,000 years ago. The newly uncovered circles were found in the West Field, where traces of large burial mounds remain. "They may have made the circle first in order to plan the construction of the burial monument, or it may have formed because people walked in a circle around it," said Anne Lene Melheim of Norway's Museum of Cultural History. Several possible graves have...

Analysis of more than 190 bones from people who were buried in Scandinavia between about 500 B.C. and A.D. 1050 suggests that violent encounters increased over time, Live Science reports. The remains were interred in domestic areas, but it is not known if the violence occurred during domestic disputes, or as a result of warfare or some form of punishment. "The fact is that not all bodies ended up in monumental burial mounds in the Iron and Viking Ages, or even in more modest urnfields and cemeteries," said Marianne Hem Eriksen of the National Museum of Denmark. Eriksen and her...

LIV Golf paid $15.6 million in retention payments to executives before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to court documents. The largest payment went to CEO Scott O'Neil, who received a $6.375 million retention bonus on June 24, less than three months before the league's bankruptcy filing. Just months before, O'Neil received a bonus of about $2.7 million in February. From Sept. 12, 2025, to Aug. 28, 2026, he was paid more than $13.6 million in payroll, bonuses, benefits, retention payments and expense reimbursements ... O'Neil was far from the only beneficiary. Chief financial officer David Phillips was paid...

Rapper Nicki Minaj joined President Trump in Michigan for a rally on Sunday, decked out in head-to-toe Gucci — as one of Trump’s top aides joked she could fill a very high-profile vacancy in the White House. The “Super Bass” hitmaker was spotted walking alongside Trump as they stepped off Air Force One at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, marking another high-profile appearance alongside the president. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who is known for trolling people on social media, shared a video of Minaj arriving with Trump and playfully suggesting she could be headed to the briefing room....

U.S. President Donald Trump declared Representative Ilhan Omar’s seat “conceded” by Democrats over federal court filings referring to her as Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a name Omar has denied is hers. Prosecutors referred to the Democrat running for reelection in Minnesota as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” in a federal court filing submitted Wednesday that was obtained by Newsweek. Omar pushed back the next day, saying in a post on X: “Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine. So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar.” On...

A UC Berkeley professor has stopped grading students’ homework for correctness after noticing artificial intelligence tools were helping them rack up top marks. Richard Borcherds, a renowned mathematician who received the prestigious Fields Medal in 1998, said widespread student use of AI has undermined the value of traditional homework grading. “Student use of AI for homework is now widespread,” Borcherds told The California Post. “Grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework instead of doing it themselves, and penalizes students for honesty.” Paying graders to evaluate AI generated answers is also a waste...

When Chase Minnema, 26, first began questioning his gender identity as a teenager, he wasn't sure what the future would look like. While he always dreamed of becoming a parent, he never expected he would one day carry and give birth to his own child. Now, the Virginia-based video processor and his partner, James Brewer, 29, are settling into life with their 6-week-old son, whom they describe as happy, healthy and deeply loved. "Being parents is the best experience of our lives," they told Newsweek. Minnema, started to question his identity when he was 14, initially he wondered if he...

A major labor union has launched an ad blitz ripping Dem Gov. Kathy Hochul as so “radioactive” and “toxic” that midterm candidates from her own party want nothing to do with her. The Transport Workers Union of America, whose local members include roughly 40,000 city subway and bus workers toiling under an MTA contract that lapsed in May, began airing the scathing spots Friday, a day before early voting opened. “Governor Kathy Hochul is so radioactive, even Democratic candidates are running away from her,” the ad kicks off, referring to the state’s top Democrat who effectively controls the MTA through...

Cuba’s government has spent decades recruiting Americans to betray their country. It objects to Secretary of State Marco Rubio inviting Cubans to cooperate with the CIA. Havana apparently believes espionage should remain a privilege of the dictatorship. The Trump administration is right to disagree. Rubio is challenging a comfortable assumption in Washington: that Cuba is too broke to matter. A regime unable to keep the lights on can still penetrate a government, compromise an intelligence officer, and help America’s adversaries. Poverty has never disqualified a country from espionage. It can make espionage one of its more valuable exports. I am...

This will blow your mind. A team of physicists recently trapped a single antimatter particle for months — a delicate feat where one wrong move could’ve blown up their lab, according to new research. Antimatter, which explodes when it comes into contact with the ordinary matter, was captured by researchers at Northwestern University and stored in a cold box where they used incredibly cold temps and magnets to suspend the particle in midair, according to findings published in the Physical Review Letters. “We actually coaxed this very fast positron to sit there and behave for months at a time,” lead...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) appeared to take a shot at President Donald Trump in the video she posted Friday that depicted her strolling along a serene Minnesota lakeside with her current husband. The video was set to a violence-hued hip-hop diss track by a Somali musical duo who rap about how they will “subjugate and humiliate” their enemies, leaving them to “suffer and cry in seething,” according to a certified translation commissioned by the Washington Free Beacon. To anyone who doesn’t speak Somali, Omar’s 27-second video—which currently has 2.5 million views on X—gives an impression that the Minnesota Democrat...