Free Republic

When you are accused, criticized, or attacked, what is your first instinct? To defend yourself. To explain your intentions. To set the record straight. But Niccolò Machiavelli, the master strategist of power, would tell you this is a fatal error. Every word you spend on defense is a word that solidifies your position as the weak one, the one on trial. You are playing their game, on their terms, and you have already lost. In this brutally effective video, “NEVER Defend Yourself - Machiavelli’s Trick to Flip the Power Instantly,” we break down one of the most potent psychological tactics...

The 30-employee operation in Foxborough is pursuing a Moneyball approach to one of society’s oldest problems FOXBOROUGH, Mass.—A day after an attacker in Boulder, Colo., aimed Molotov cocktails into a crowd of people advocating for Israel, Adam Katz watched the nation’s real-time reaction roll across a giant monitor in his office. Floor-to-ceiling screens distilled patterns from social-media posts worldwide that flooded into computers at the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, where Katz is president. One graph caught his eye. It showed a rise in messages calling the attack a “false flag” operation orchestrated by Jews to manipulate public opinion. “The concern...

2024, prices jumped 800% at PJM Interconnection, a “traffic controller” part of the grid that provides service in 13 states as well as D.C. .. PJM operates the largest power grid in the U.S., with around 67 million customers—that’s more than 20% of the American population. ... amid a dwindling supply and an increase in demand, “Prices for power plants landed at $269.92 per megawatt-day, compared to $28.92 per megawatt-day” in 2023. ... prices are set to spike again, and the projection for this year is around 20%. If you live in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey,...

Joe Rogan used his latest podcast episode to weigh in on the Epstein files controversy amid public uproar over the Department of Justice’s probe into the late pedophile and his associates. The podcast giant lambasted the Trump administration’s announcement that there was never a list or footage revealing clients of the high-flying sex pest. “They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan, 57, said on the latest episode of his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released Tuesday. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is...

Thousands of businesses and households are waiting to connect to the Dutch grid, forcing network operators to ration power in an early indicator of what other European countries are likely to suffer as the speed of electrification increases. . . . The Netherlands is among the countries in Europe to have moved fastest to electrify critical parts of the economy after it in 2023 ended production at its giant onshore gasfield, Groningen.

I keep reading how big batteries are all it takes to make wind and solar reliable as the sole grid electricity source. The reality is that making wind and solar work at all requires a fantastic amount of battery backup, far more than is possible. Below is an example using the PJM grid. PJM is America’s biggest grid operator, with a territory covering the Mid-Atlantic and points west. Their territory includes the Washington, DC metro area, where all the federal bigwigs live, making it a good place to start. I also live there. We are quantifying a fantasy, so let’s...

The dam, which will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, could generate three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world's largest hydropower plant. ... The Three Gorges hydropower dam required the resettlement of 1.4 million people. Reports indicate that the colossal development would require at least four 20km-long tunnels to be drilled through the Namcha Barwa mountain, diverting the flow of the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet's longest river. ... Shortly after China announced its plans for the Yarlung Tsangpo dam project in 2020, a senior Indian government official told Reuters that India's...

A software group that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help automate processes said it was joining with a nuclear power deployment company on an AI-driven system to accelerate construction of nuclear reactors. Palantir Technologies on June 26 said it will work with The Nuclear Company, a nuclear power startup, to jointly create a nuclear operating system (NOS) to simplify reactor builds. The companies on Thursday said the software system would allow for faster construction of new reactors, and provide lower costs. The deal comes as the U.S. government has said it will support nuclear power and other baseload power generation...

Data analytics giants Palantir Technologies Inc. announced a partnership with The Nuclear Company on Thursday to develop NOS, an AI-driven software system designed specifically for nuclear construction projects. The investment comes at a time where the nuclear sector has seen rapid growth in interest from investors and corporations. The software platform’s main aim is to simplify he construction process by enabling faster and cost-efficient deployment of nuclear plants. Palantir will receive approximately $100 million over a five-year period to build the software platform, according to the sources. Alignment with government policiesThe agreement is well aligned with the four executive orders...

President Donald Trump celebrated after the Supreme Court moved to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, something that had impacted his executive orders. The president held a news conference just over an hour after the ruling was issued and said the Supreme Court had stopped a "colossal abuse of power." "I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers," Trump said on Friday....

Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposed repeal of the Biden-era’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, which ruled that coal-fired and many new natural gas power plants must capture and store over 90% of their carbon emissions by the 2030s—or shut down by 2040. It’s a costly mandate, resting on shaky legal and technical foundations. Americans would be fortunate to have it repealed. President Biden issued his Clean Power Plan 2.0 after the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that President Obama’s Clean Power Plan 1.0 exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statutory authority. The Court’s...

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Arena,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, he “has other considerations, just like President Trump, who may want to distract from other developments.” And “it’s not unknown, either here in the United States or in the Middle East, for political figures to try and change the subject or to take bold or decisive action that may or may not be in their nation’s best interests, merely to change the subject from politically inconvenient developments.” Host Kasie Hunt asked, “Sir, there, of course,...

New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter. New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet. A so-called...

President Donald Trump is lashing out on social media. Jerome Powell is on the receiving end of today's ire. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair who is slowly cutting back interest rates to minimize the risk of continued inflation, is caught in the President's crosshairs after a paltry jobs report. US private payrolls increased far less than expected in May, the ADP National Employment Report showed on Wednesday. Private payrolls increased by only 37,000 jobs last month, a far cry from analyst projections and the worst private job hiring slump since March 2023. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private employment...

Across Spain and Portugal, more than 50 million people recently experienced the largest blackout in modern European history. Thousands of commuters stood stranded on the concourses of Spain's transit system. In the span of five seconds, 60 percent of the country's electricity supply vanished. This wasn't caused by a storm or a cyberattack—just bad policy and the most underappreciated force in modern engineering giving way: inertia. When a power plant trips offline or demand suddenly spikes, the power grid has no cushion; it must respond instantly or it unravels. That's where inertia comes in. In coal, gas, and nuclear plants,...

London has been thrown into chaos after a massive power outage crippled the city’s subway system. Commuters were left stranded as multiple Underground lines shut down, forcing thousands to seek alternative routes. The disruption, attributed to a failure in the National Grid, caused widespread delays and station closures, with Waterloo, Tottenham Court Road, and Holborn among the worst affected. The outage struck during the afternoon rush hour, bringing the city’s transport network to a standstill. Transport for London confirmed that the Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines were completely suspended, while the Elizabeth, Jubilee, and Northern lines suffered severe delays....

President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is warning that the United States is at risk of major widespread blackouts similar to the power cuts that recently shut down most of Spain and Portugal.. Burgum said the blackouts in Europe were caused by over-subsidizing intermittent renewable energy sources. However, he warns that America is now “dangerously close” to suffering from similar “rolling blackouts and grid failure.” Speaking to David Freeberg on “The All-In Podcast,” Burgum admitted that the artificial intelligence (AI) “arms race” with China keeps him “awake at night” due to the amount of electricity that the technology requires....

Spain’s electricity supply went down last month due to cascading failures traced to faults in two solar plants in Spain’s southwest region, causing a blackout on the Iberian Peninsula. Americans should not be complacent because the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit international regulatory authority, has warned that it might happen in the United States. On April 28, the day of the Spanish meltdown, solar provided 59% of electricity, wind about 12%, and nuclear and gas approximately 22%. When the two solar plants went down, insufficient backup, or inertia, was available to keep the system going. The sun shines...

Last Monday, the Iberian grid suffered a disturbance in the south-west at 12:33. In 3.5 seconds this worsened and the interconnection to France disconnected. All renewable generation then went off-line, followed by disconnection of all rotating generation plant. The Iberian blackout was complete within a few seconds. At the time the grid was producing 28.4 GW of power, of which 79 per cent was solar and wind. This was a problematic situation as solar and wind plants have another, not widely known, downside – one quite apart from their intermittency and expense.This is the fact that they do not supply...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Early vote counting in Australia’s general election Saturday suggested the government was likely to be returned for a second term. The Australian Electoral Commission’s early projections gave the ruling center-left Labor Party 70 seats and the conservative opposition coalition 24 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, the lower chamber where parties need a majority to form governments. Unaligned minor parties and independent candidates appeared likely to win 13 seats. Senior government minister Jim Chalmers said the early results pointed to volatility and different contests across the nation. Opposition Sen. James McGrath expected the result would...