Free Republic

Do odd perfect numbers exist?...A massive thank you to Prof. Pace Nielsen for all his time and help with this video.A big thank you to Dr. Asaf Karagila, Pascal Ochem, Prof. Tianxin Cai, and Prof. William Dunham for their expertise and help. The Oldest Unsolved Problem in Math | 31:32Veritasium | 15.2M subscribers | 6,120,035 views | March 7, 2024

How much energy AI really needs. And why that's not its main problem. | 8:05Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.19M subscribers | 171,326 views | March 25, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his government on Sunday that international leaders who are pushing for elections in the midst of the war are trying to “paralyze the country,” forcing Israel to stop fighting and lose the war. Netanyahu did not name President Joe Biden explicitly, but spoke in the wake of Biden’s endorsement Friday of an alarming speech Thursday by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanding new elections in Israel to oust Netanyahu.

The White House is going on the offensive with a new talking point to convince House members they need to pass the national security supplemental: failing to greenlight the bill means helping Iran.According to a talking points memo and messaging memo obtained by POLITICO, the administration is arguing that Iran has sided with Russia in its war on Ukraine and has long supported Hamas. To not pass the legislation that gives aid to both Ukraine and Israel, then, would be to make life easier for Tehran.

Western powers will not censure Iran over its lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog at its Board of Governors meeting from Monday for fear of aggravating geopolitical tensions, diplomats said. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in confidential quarterly reports seen by AFP that Tehran’s cooperation with the agency remained poor on several outstanding nuclear issues. These include expanding its nuclear work, deactivating agency surveillance devices for monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme, and barring senior inspectors. The so-called E3 group — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — initially planned to censure Iran for its lack...

A joint Egyptian-U.S. archaeological mission has uncovered the upper part of a huge statue of King Ramses II during excavations south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt's tourism and antiquities ministry said on Monday.The limestone block is about 3.8 metres (12.5 feet) high and depicts a seated Ramses wearing a double crown and a headdress topped with a royal cobra, Bassem Jihad, head of the mission's Egyptian team, said in a statement.The upper part of the statue's back column shows hieroglyphic writings that glorify the king, one of ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaohs, he said.Also known as Ramses the...

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) suggested Sunday that President Biden “do something bold” and call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza as support from his base appears to be wavering. CBS News “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan presented polling showing nearly twice as many Democrats rate Biden’s presidency as fair or poor compared with Republicans who say the same about former President Trump and claimed the president is “having a problem with his base.” “And that’s why I think he needs to do something bold … this is a problem,” Khanna said Sunday. “But if he can turn it...

A video has been going viral on social media wherein a man in yellow attire can be seen vandalising a worship place. The video is reportedly from the Tarumi Ward in Japan’s Kobe City where the accused identified as Mamadou Balde had vandalised the Mizuoka Hachiman shrine in the area. Balde is a Muslim native of the Republic of Gambia in West Africa, who migrated to Japan and now lives in Tarumi Ward, where the incident took place. The accused, who was later arrested by the Japanese police, reportedly broke an offering box kept in the shrine. He also, reportedly,...

Purchased cheaply at auction as a second edition with extensive Latin "marginalia" by an unknown hand, this copy of "De humani corporis fabrica" was found to have been Andreas Vesalius' personal copy, and the thousands of autograph notes were his revisions for a third edition that never saw publication, offering rare insight into the mind of one of history's most important scientists and teachers.Purchased cheaply at auction as a second edition with extensive Latin "marginalia" by an unknown hand, this copy of "De humani corporis fabrica" was found to have been Andreas Vesalius' personal copy, and the thousands of autograph...

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, were all invited to the meeting in Russia. Russia has extended invitations to various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, for discussions on the Israel-Hamas conflict and broader issues in the Middle East. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov announced the initiative on Friday, highlighting Moscow's desire to engage with all major players in the region amid heightened tensions. The invitation included a dozen Palestinian groups and is slated for "inter-Palestinian" talks scheduled to commence on February 29. Bogdanov, serving as President Vladimir Putin's special envoy for the Middle East,...

Kremlin threatens to unleash Armageddon on the West if it loses in Ukraine: Moscow warns it will fire nuclear missiles on London, Washington, Berlin and Kyiv if Russia is forced to give up territory READ MORE: Putin snarls Ukraine war is a 'matter of life and death' for Russia The Kremlin today threatened to fire nuclear missiles on London, Washington, Berlin and Kyiv if Russia is forced to give up the Ukrainian territory it has invaded. Dmitry Medvedev - a close Putin ally who served as president from 2008 to 2012 - said if a military defeat led to a...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized hormonal birth control and was met with stories from women about their personal experiences on the pill. "Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it," Musk wrote Friday on X, formerly Twitter, citing a 2017 news article from Time about studies on hormonal birth control. The Time article discussed how an American Journal of Psychiatry study indicated women who take hormonal contraceptives have a three times higher risk of suicide than those who never...

Whether it was right for America to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy in Moscow and Beijing, the way we went about it was abominably stupid. “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared,” Machiavelli advised. Washington has wounded Russia and China but not disabled them, setting in motion a tragic sequence of responses that in the worst case will lead to war, but more likely will leave the United States with vastly diminished strategic standing. The rise of China and the resilience of Russia have...

My new essay is here: https://nautil.us/what-physicists-hav...We've seen a lot of headlines in the past year about how dangerous AI is and how overblown these fears are . I've found it hard to make sense of this discussion. If only someone could systematically interview experts and figure out what they're worried about. Well, a group of researchers from the UK has done exactly that and just published their results. What they have found is, not very reassuring. Let's have a look.The paper is here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/...AI experts make predictions for 2040. I was a little surprised. | 6:57Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.13M subscribers...

American soldiers could be next in line to combat the Russian military if the House does not approve a supplemental package that includes aid to Ukraine, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Friday. “In the next front against Russia, it will be Americans on the front lines,” Coons told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on Friday in an interview from the Munich Security Conference. “We are best off investing in the Ukrainians who are fighting bravely for their own freedom than allowing Putin the opportunity to spread further chaos and violence across Europe,” Coons said. The Senate approved a $95 billion foreign aid...

Democrat Senator Chris Coons of Delaware recently said that unless we send more aid to Ukraine, American troops will end up on the front lines in Russia. This sounds like a threat. It’s a blatant example of fear-mongering that Democrats and even some Republicans have resorted to in the case of funding for Ukraine. When did liberals become so pro-war and prone to the politics of fear? CNBC reports: U.S. troops will be on the front lines against Russia without further Ukraine aid, Senator Coons says The U.S. faces the prospect of direct combat with Russia if it fails to...

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde report the discovery of an ancient, 10,000-year-old massive stone wall that has remained submerged beneath the Baltic Sea for millennia.At nearly a kilometer in length, the Stone Age megastructure hidden beneath the waters of the Bay of Mecklenburg in Germany is not only one of the oldest man-made hunting structures in Europe but likely one of the oldest pieces of construction in the entire world."It was likely constructed by hunter–gatherer groups more than 10000 y ago and ultimately drowned during the Littorina transgression at 8500 y B.P.," the researchers...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Tuesday morning that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) was “pushing Russian propaganda” by criticizing Cornyn’s support for the long-delayed Ukraine funding bill that passed the Senate overnight. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Cornyn took aim at Paxton, a close ally of former President Trump who was acquitted last year of corruption charges in a historic impeachment led by members of his own party. Paxton is scheduled to head to trial on securities fraud charges in April in Houston, a case that began in 2015. He also remains under FBI investigation...

Five of the six countries invited to join the BRICS bloc of developing nations from Jan. 1 have confirmed they are joining, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran and Egypt, South African foreign minister Naledi Pandor said on Wednesday.

The US Navy is lowering requirements to ridiculous levels, now accepting literal retards who flunked out of high school. The rush to get white males (as well as anyone else they can find) into the military as quickly as possible has led many to suggest we are headed for some kind of major and serious war. However, if they want to fight a serious war with China and/or Russia, they would need a draft. And it would be a much more serious draft than Vietnam. It would be a World War II style draft.