Free Republic

This scene from the movie Valkyrie captures where I think we're headed in this country. People are being asked, or will be asked, are you a good party member or Trump hater or whatever.

The Lavo home hydrogen battery is not a battery, it's an electrolysis system, hydrogen storage array and fuel cell power system rolled into one attractive cabinetLavo VIEW 3 IMAGES To get off the grid with home solar, you need to be able to generate energy when the Sun's out, and store it for when it's not. Normally, people do this with lithium battery systems – Tesla's Powerwall 2 is an example. But Australian company Lavo has built a rather spunky (if chunky) cabinet that can sit on the side of your house and store your excess energy as hydrogen. The...

Myotis nimbaensis, shown here, is a new species of bat named for the mountain range in which it is found, the Nimba Mountains in West Africa. Credit: © Bat Conservation International ====================================================== A group of scientists led by the American Museum of Natural History and Bat Conservation International have discovered a new species of a striking orange and black bat in a mountain range in West Africa. The species, which the researchers expect is likely critically endangered, underscores the importance of sub-Saharan “sky islands” to bat diversity. The species is described today in the journal American Museum Novitates. “In an...

The Russian Grand Duke George Romanov has announced his engagement to his long term girlfriend Rebecca Bettarini after a Christmas proposal. The 39-year-old son of Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia proposed to Italian lobbyist and writer Rebecca, 35, in December, after asking her parents for their blessing. Rebecca, who is the daughter of Italian Ambassador Roberto Bettarini, went on to share the news on her own Instagram page, writing: 'A new chapter of our life book together is starting. As a writer I hope that the journey ahead will be full of love, suspense and adventure as the first...

The small town of Nuoro, on Italy’s Sardinia island, is home to what many are calling the world’s rarest pasta, an intricate, hand-made treat that only a handful of people can make. Known as su filindeu (in Sardinia’s Sardo dialect), or Fili di Dio (in Italian), and translated as threads of God, this traditional pasta had been linked to La Festa di San Francesco, an ancient religious ritual celebrated every year, in May. For the past two hundred years, the only way to try threads of god pasta was to complete a 33km pilgrimage on foot or horseback from Nuoro...

Mark Levin reveals by audio, that Ken Cucinelli, #2 at Homeland Security. reports that Nancy Pelosi, when requesting National Guard troops for inauguration had requested via the Capitol Police that crew served machine guns be present on Capital Hill during inauguration of Joe Biden. The National Guard refused. Machine Gun Nancy!

...There will be many postmortems of this era written in the coming months, from people on all sides of the political spectrum, and you will be sick to death of reading them before very long. So I will keep mine brief. In the end, Donald Trump made the classic error of many brash reformers who arrived in a stagnant, corrupt capital promising to take on the system, and who ended up getting chewed up and spit out by it. He forgot that the proper sequence of events is: first you consolidate power, and then you implement your agenda. It seems...

All Brooklyn was thrown into a feverish state of excitement last evening, by a current rumor that the Navy-yard and appurtenances were to be seized by the sympathizers in this vicinity with the Secessionists. Last night, according to Madam Rumor, was the time at which the descent was to have been made. Just how much foundation there was for the rumor could not be definitely ascertained; but it appears that Capt. FOOTE, who is in command of the Yard during the temporary absence of Commander BREESE, at Philadelphia, deemed the information he had sufficiently reliable and of sufficient importance to...

If I were hurtling down a rabbit-hole and a genie offered me one wish, I would likely request a tour guide. Now tell me that the past ten months haven’t taken us all on a dizzying Ozian spin. Look out the window of your space capsule and you’ll find you’ve entered an insanely adversarial universe, one in which the major preoccupation of far too many people is ”Who’s on my side and who’s against me?” Problem is, the adversarial universe is swiftly heading for cosmic implosion. It’s eating up civilization as we know it before our very eyes. Tell me...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is reviewing a request from Republicans to put off the start of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial until mid-February, a Schumer spokesman said Thursday. **SNIP** Trump is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice, and his trial in the Senate will be the only one ever to have taken place after a president has left office. A source familiar with the planning told Reuters the House could transmit the article of impeachment as early as Friday, and No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin said he expected it "in...

The most significant find is the Roman-era shipwreck, which carried amphorae (Dressel 20) containing oil constructed in Spain in the area of Guadalquivir (1st to 3rd century AD), as well as Africana I amphorae made at the ceramic workshops of Africa Proconsularis and specifically in the region of present-day Tunisia, dating between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.The underwater discovery also found another three shipwrecks:one carrying amphorae made in the North Aegean in the Hellenistic era (1st century B.C.)another carrying amphorae made in ancient Mendi during the Classical era (5th century B.C.)a third that dates to more modern times

An archaeological mission from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has discovered the remains of a Roman fort at the Shiha archaeological site in Aswan.A press release from the council stated that the remains include a church from the early Coptic era, and the remains of a temple from the Ptolemaic period.Mustafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the council, explained that the mission discovered inside the fort a group of architectural elements from the temple of Ptolemy, and an incomplete sandstone panel, on which was depicted a model of the entrance to the temple and a man who appears to be a Roman...

...archeologist Ruth Shady, who discovered the Caral site in Peru, has been threatened with death if she doesn't abandon investigating its treasures..."There are people who come and invade this site, which is state property, and they use it to plant," archeologist Daniel Mayta told AFP."It's hugely harmful because they're destroying 5,000-year-old cultural evidence." ...Developed between 3,000 and 1,800 BC in an arid desert, Caral is the cradle of civilization in the Americas.Its people were contemporaries of Pharaonic Egypt and the great Mesopotamian civilizations.It pre-dates the far better known Inca empire by 45 centuries.None of that mattered to the squatters, though,...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dismissed critics who say that moving forward with impeachment will undercut the Biden administration’s message of unity. “I don’t think it’s very unifying to say oh, let’s just forget it and move on. That’s not how you unify,” Pelosi said.

SEATTLE - Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant says she's received multiple threatening emails from a Seattle Fire Department's city email address. In a letter sent to city officials, the socialist and often controversial councilwoman says the emails began in December 2020 with a message telling her to leave town. From there, the messages became more sinister, Sawant says, with the "most ominous" message sent Jan. 18. A Seattle Fire Department spokeperson says they are investigating and police have been notified. An administrator reportedly told Sawant in late December that the employee in question denies sending the emails, but Sawant...

I'm still very new to this site and do hope that I've posted this properly. A friend sent me this link to Orwell's final interview. I hadn't ever seen it. Orwell's words resonate with our contemporary experience now, more than ever.

Dear comrades and friends, citizens of Bucharest, capital of socialist Romania. First let me send my sincere revolutionary wishes to those of you participating in this great demonstration and to all the inhabitants of the city. I wish you success in all your fields of activity. I also wish to thank the initiators and organizers of this great demonstration in Bucharest. Who is shooting? Someone is shooting. They are entering the building. An earthquake? What? Keep calm! Keep calm! Keep calm! Stop that! At the very last his lunatic wife yells: Securitate- stop them. Stop that now! arrest! Dear comrades,...

How did a tiny tribe of desert nomads become so important to history? Of all the tribes of people, why is it that a group of pastoral tribal nomads, who were minorities then and minorities now, seem to have such an enduring presence in our world? Why is the Judeo-Christian god chosen by more people on the planet than any other? Because ideas and the details matter. Their ideas have stood the test of time and ended up shaping many assumptions we take today to be self-evident in Western civilization.

A friend from high school sent me a link to the above video. I've never heard of any of these people and haven't found much on the interwebs. They sound, in the parlance of Texas "nuckin' futs", but my friend is level-headed and reasonable. Conspiracy theories including that the inauguration yesterday was taped in advance (Ward says he received it at 0100 yesterday but it was purportedly "live" when shown on broadcast. Military in control of the government, Insurrection Act implemented secretly, etc. Anybody?

The inscription, “Christ born of Mary.” Photo: Tzachi Lang, Israel Antiquities Authority ======================================================= JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli authorities excavating in the Jezreel Valley have unearthed a 1,500-year-old inscription dedicated to Jesus. Excavators found the Greek inscription while digging in the village of et-Taiyiba. The inscription was engraved in stone in what is believed by researchers to be the remains of a Byzantine-era church. The inscription reads: “Christ, born of Mary. This work of the most God-fearing and pious bishop [Theodo]sius and the miserable Th[omas] was built from the foundation...Whoever enters should pray for them.” According to Dr. Leah Di-Segni, a...