Free Republic

"There is no other city one can know as completely from the movies and television as New York," wrote film location scout Nick Carr in 2015. "Even if you've never set foot in Manhattan, there's a good chance you can instantly picture a multitude of its neighbourhoods: Carrie Bradshaw's favourite cupcake spot (the Village); the Ghostbusters' firehouse (TriBeCa); the deli where Harry met Sally (Lower East Side)." Or, if you're a movie fan with a particular taste in New York cinema, your mind's eye can easily recall the setting of the conclave of New York gangs in TheWarriors (Riverside Park...

How did we get to a place in this country where we’ve decided that the humane approach to severe mental illness is to just leave people alone and let them fend for themselves? If someone is living on a sidewalk, talking to invisible people, wandering through traffic, or spiraling deeper into psychosis, government intervention is now treated like the “evil” thing to do. Activists, disability-rights groups, and this massive network of NGOs have spent decades arguing mental institutions should be used only in the rarest circumstances. And the results of that disastrous agenda speak for themselves. Cities all over America...

Maybe the She-Wolf of Wall Street has been de-fanged. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suffered an rare, $8 million dip in her net worth last year — dropping to $249 million from $257 million in 2024, according to research platform Quiver Quantitative. The value of the former House speaker’s stake in Russell Ranch — an upscale housing development just outside Sacramento known for its hilltop views — plummeted to a range of $1 million to $5 million — down from and estimated value of $5 million to $25 million in 2024, according to Pelosi’s newly released annual disclosure report. The 11,000-home...

The Barack Obama Presidential Center is finally open to the public. The Obamas threw themselves an invite-only launch part..... Here are six things we learned: 1) It really is that ugly. The primary edifice, sometimes called the Obamalisk, is a hulking gray tower that appears to have been based on a model that just won third prize in a middle-school architecture competition for gifted nerds..... 2) It was built on stolen land. Former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who makes $740,000 as CEO of the Obama Foundation, kicked things off by recognizing the "original inhabitants" of the stolen land on which...

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed the colorful secret of the Pink Planet, the coldest object of its type ever directly observed. A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University has revealed their findings in a recent paper published in The Astronomical Journal, finally describing the rose-colored haze covering the planetary-mass companion GJ504b, thanks to JWST data. For over a decade, researchers have speculated that atmospheric salt clouds may create the pink planet’s strange hue, but this is the first concrete evidence for the hypothesis. The Pink Planet Since its discovery in 2013,...

The Cyprus Mail reports that an ancient ceramic vessel has been reclaimed from an online auction and returned to Cyprus after a year-long investigation. Cypriot officials who monitor online activity determined that the vase was in the hands of a collector in Canada, who eventually agreed to repatriate it. Researchers from Cyprus' Department of Antiquities determined that the engraved, black-polished hemispherical bowl dates to about 1900 B.C. For more on the archaeology of Cyprus, go to "In the Time of the Copper Kings."

Via NBC, we're about to see a whole lot more of outer space than we've ever witnessed before: After nearly two decades of development, $4.3 billion and the labor of hundreds of scientists and engineers, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is less than three months from launch. From a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth, the telescope is expected to survey the cosmos, capturing panoramas of hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies. With this observatory, NASA hopes to unravel the secrets of dark matter and dark energy and discover thousands of planets beyond our solar...

Haaretz reports that two 1,700-year-old marble busts have been discovered in a wine-collection pit at a winepress dated to the Roman and Byzantine periods in northern Israel. One of the busts is inscribed in Greek with the name "Lycurgus," perhaps referring to the legendary founder of Sparta, or a statesman and orator who lived in Athens in the fourth century B.C. Archaeologists Eliran Oren and Michael Solotskin of the Israel Antiquities Authority said that sculptures may have been buried in the pit to hide them during an invasion. "In the Roman period, statues of this kind were displayed both in...

Throughout the early Cold War, conservatives in Congress—including Republicans—opposed American entanglements in the Middle East, drawing on an earlier noninterventionist consensus that valued restraint overseas and fiscal prudence at home. Conservative Republicans presented a vocal bloc of opposition to the Eisenhower Doctrine, which expanded American influence in the Middle East, ostensibly to counter Soviet influence and fill the vacuum left by the departure of the European colonial powers. One such dissenter was Iowan Representative H.R. Gross, one of the most fiscally conservative congressional members in history. Dissenting Republicans voiced similar critiques during the American response to the 1973 Yom Kippur...

Yes, Elon Musk is richer than Mansa Musa by modern measurable standards. Current Wealth Figures Elon Musk (as of mid-2026): His net worth is estimated at around $1.2 trillion (Bloomberg, Forbes), driven largely by stakes in Tesla and SpaceX (which went public via IPO, pushing him past the trillion-dollar mark). This makes him the first confirmed trillionaire in modern records. Mansa Musa (r. ~1312–1337): Popular estimates put his wealth at roughly $400 billion (sometimes $300–500 billion) in today's dollars, based on his empire's control of gold and salt trade, and accounts of his lavish 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca that caused...

Archaeologists uncovered the earliest known evidence of cereal harvesting in the Canary Islands, according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The discovery was made at the C008 cave complex at the Roque Bentayga rock formation on Gran Canaria. The site was likely used as a granary, for plant processing, and, later, as a burial ground by the ancient Canarians, a people of Amazigh, or Berber, origin, between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. Excavations within the caves yielded over 200 lithic artifacts. Microscopic analyses of wear patterns on some of the objects, particularly a small basalt knife, determined that...

During his life, Franklin had many careers... In his later years he became vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. The Society was originally formed in Philadelphia, as The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage... As a young man he owned slaves, and he carried advertisements for the sale of slaves in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. At the same time, however, he published numerous Quaker pamphlets against slavery and condemned the practice of slavery in his private correspondence. It...

Some of the highest-paying jobs in the Roman world mirrored modern careers: doctor, lawyer, famous actor. Others - like charioteer and exhibition gladiator - were a bit less familiar. The Best-Paying Jobs in Ancient Rome | 6:41 toldinstone | 633K subscribers | 286,466 views | January 21, 2022 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:36 Laborers 1:05 Craftsmen 1:31 Soldiers 2:13 Lawyers 2:49 Doctors 3:33 Teachers 3:59 Actors 4:26 Gladiators 4:48 Charioteers 5:12 Landed Aristocrats 6:07 Conclusion

As if the Southern Poverty Law Center wasn’t already looking like a menace instead of a respected civil-rights outfit, now comes evidence that one of its top execs was sending donor cash to the white supremacist she was shacked up with. To be fair, it’s long been obvious that the SPLC is a racket exploiting liberals (especially in the media) desperate for right-wing threats to condemn; the nonprofit raked in billions over the decades to support its (shoddy) research, including a “hate map” and database on supposed hate groups. Now it stands charged with funneling funds to members of the...

Bits of the history of Paris are emerging from the ground beneath Notre Dame cathedral, along with pieces of a medieval mystery. The project began when Notre Dame was struck by fire in 2019, and French media are calling it the “dig of the century.” “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to make a difference to the history of Paris,” Lucie Altenburg, a conservator with the Paris archaeology unit, said, per the Associated Press. A 1,700-year-old Roman coin stamped with the face of Emperor Constantine has been found, as have fragments of medieval...

The wreck of a Japanese prison ship that was sunk by U.S. warplanes and went down with more than 1,000 Allied prisoners of war in 1944 has been discovered in the Philippines. The vessel was one of the notorious "hellships" used by the Japanese to ferry POWs between work camps. Many of the prisoners who died when the ship sank had worked on the infamous Burma-Thailand "Death Railway." "Sadly, a lot of these prisoner transport ships were sunk by the Allies," expedition leader and American TV show host Josh Gates told Live Science. "The ships were painted to just look...

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced a crackdown on open-air drug dealing Wednesday, declaring the city will "no longer tolerate" public drug sales, public drug use and the sale of stolen goods in two neighborhoods that residents and business owners say have been plagued by crime and disorder for years. "We will no longer tolerate open-air drug sale and use and vending stolen goods," Wilson said in a press release Wednesday. "We are expanding police personnel in the area to engage directly with individuals participating in these activities, explain that the behavior is no longer tolerated and help ensure that the...

A wave of investigators descended on comedian Carlos Mencia’s Encino mansion Thursday as officers moved methodically through the property, hauling out boxes, sealed cases, and bags of materials tied to a sweeping tax fraud investigation. Photos from the scene show a heavy presence from the California Franchise Tax Board enforcement team, with officers posted across the driveway and front entrance as they carried evidence containers from inside the home to waiting vehicles. Multiple images capture officers actively removing stacked banker-style boxes and hard cases from the residence, staging them outside the property in organized piles. Black duffel bags and additional...

I nearly failed out of grad school, defending Chomsky's theory of syntax. Half a decade later, I'm done pretending it was worth it. Chomskyan generative grammar -- X-bar theory, Government and Binding, the Minimalist Program -- was taught to me at the University of Pennsylvania as the only legitimate science of language. It was the gatekeeper, the screener, the thing students were washed out of linguistics PhD programs over. As I've come to discover, decades of work in dependency grammar and construction grammar -- frameworks I was told didn't exist, didn't matter, or had been "subsumed" -- were doing better...

Many Americans will have the day off on Friday, June 19, to celebrate Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. While most stores will remain open, some services will be unavailable. The stock market and most banks will be closed on Friday. While many stores will remain open, make sure to check local store hours as they may vary by location. Also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved people that the Civil War had ended and they were free. Read on...