Free Republic

As AI development rapidly expands, people are replicating paid-for desktop and mobile apps with free apps, potentially changing the future of legacy software. Last week, a Reddit user named Brandon Thomas shared a project called “ArtCraft” – essentially a free rebuild of the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes programmes such as Photoshop and Adobe PDF. The recreated services have been named PhotoCraft and PdfCraft. This software package usually costs individuals $779.99 per year if paid upfront or $69.99 per month on an annual contract. Earlier this week, ArtCraft also released copies of the Microsoft Office suite. As with the Adobe...

"What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the Second Amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have healthcare?" That is not a college activist. That is Abdul El-Sayed — the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Michigan — talking into his own camera, on his own channel. And it is one of many videos that he quietly made private from his channel once he decided he wanted a seat in the world’s most powerful legislative body. A U.S. Senate nominee from one of the two major national parties, who has...

A successful bodybuilder mom has died just two weeks after competing in the female division of Mr. Olympia. Marianne von Gierke, 40, died on Wednesday, Chile’s bodybuilding federation announced, without revealing the cause of death. She leaves behind an 11-year-old son. The pro bodybuilder’s death came just two weeks after she finished in 13th place in the Mr. Olympia women’s physique category. It was her second time in the top event, coming 16th in 2024. Von Gierke, who turned pro in 2021 and also worked as a trainer, was active on social media in the days before her death, with...

Mourners living in Cyprus some 3,400 years ago may have burned bouquets of whole plants during burial ceremonies, according to the Greek Reporter. Charred plant remains were found in four tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, the site of an ancient harbor city on the island's southeastern coast. Teresa Bürge of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and her colleagues detected burnt plant remains in two ceramic jugs recovered from one of the tombs. Analysis of the residues determined that one of the vessels held barley, several varieties of wheat, figs, lentils, marigold, chrysanthemum, mallow, and viola. A Mycenaean-style jar in another...

World's oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey - 14/Oct/2026 | 3:47 Mark 1333 | 62.8K subscribers | 2,989 views | October 14, 2026

Explanation: What a cosmic coincidence! In today’s image, Mars joins the Beehive cluster (M44 or Praesepe) below an auroral curtain and above a horizon of happy little trees near Lansjärv, Sweden. An eruption off the Sun reached Earth on October 10th, 2026 causing strong disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field. Energetic particles from the eruption collide with and energize the molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, which release that extra energy as the colorful aurora captured here. Auroras, or guovssahasat in North Sámi, is traditionally viewed with respect by the Sámi people indigenous to Sweden and other Arctic regions. Coincidentally, Mars appeared closest...

Two powerful earthquakes have struck in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting one expert to warn of a possible seismic 'chain reaction' that could affect the US. The US Geological Survey (USGS) detected a magnitude 6.9 earthquake along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Africa and South America at 8.23am ET. A magnitude 6.7 quake struck less than seven hours earlier at 1.44am, just 50 miles north along the same seafloor fault line where the bottom of the ocean is slowly splitting apart. However, geophysicist Stefan Burns told the Daily Mail that the double earthquake was not only historic in size, but is likely...

For more than a century, the prevailing fear, dating back to English economist Thomas Malthus who lived between 1766 to 1834, was of a booming population outrunning its food supply. Famine would ensue. But Von Foerster broke from that view. He assumed (correctly, as it turns out) that human ingenuity would keep the world mostly fed. The problem, he argued, was that the population would keep accelerating, toward “infinity.” In a now infamous quote, [University of Illinois physicist Heinz]von Foerster predicted, “Our great—great—grandchildren will not starve to death,” von Foerster and his co-authors wrote. “They will be squeezed to death.”...

Filmed inside the British Museum, this episode features renowned Assyriologist Irving Finkel, exploring the Library of Ashurbanipal -- the earliest known library in human history. Built in the 7th century BCE in Nineveh, this extraordinary library preserved thousands of clay tablets covering law, science, medicine, astronomy, religion, and literature -- including the Epic of Gilgamesh. Without Ashurbanipal’s vision, much of ancient Mesopotamian knowledge would have been lost forever. King Ashurbanipal, one of the few ancient rulers who could read and write, gathered the knowledge of the known world and created humanity’s first true archive -- laying foundations for modern civilisation....

Holly Burns and about a dozen other girls walked away from a cross-country race in Washington on Tuesday. They refused to compete against a male athlete who had started the season racing on the boys’ team. When the race began, half of the girls competing, and the male athlete, took off running. Burns and the other half of the girls slowly walked forward past the starting line, and then into the nearby tree line, sacrificing one of their high school competitions. Footage of the protest has since gone viral across social media, igniting widespread awareness for one of the trans...

We finally had our first hurricane this season in the North Atlantic region: Isaias. Isaias formed on October 7 as a tropical storm in the Gulf of America, and made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on October 10 near Destin, Florida. Paul Homewood of Not a Lot of People Know That collects the relevant data in a post from October 11. Homewood notes that Isaias represents the latest ever first hurricane for the North Atlantic, at least since the satellite era (1966) has provided full data: Isaiah was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, the latest on record....

Explanation: This stairway in Chile brings you only a little bit closer to heaven. But ooh, the sky above it makes you wonder. For example, you may wonder about the dark lane of our own Milky Way galaxy rising behind the expansive Atacama Desert in Chile, the band of zodiacal light on the upper left, the green and red airglow just above the horizon, the star Spica in the zodiacal light stripe, and, at the very top on the right, the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The Desert Staircase sculpture is in the foreground, and this image was timed to catch...

While we often picture ancient Athens as a quintessentially Greek city, it was actually a bustling, diverse hub deeply connected to the broader Mediterranean. This video explores the fascinating lives of Phoenician immigrants who lived, worked, and died in the Greek world. From the introduction of the alphabet and the Orientalizing period of Greek art to bilingual tombstones and the founding of Stoicism by Zeno of Citium, discover how the Phoenicians didn't just trade with the Greeks -- they integrated into their communities, permanently shaping the culture, religion, and philosophy of the classical world. The Hidden Phoenicians of Ancient Athens...

Did you know that the birthplace of democracy relied on foreign nomads to keep its citizens in line? In this video, we explore the fascinating and peculiar history of the Scythian archers in ancient Athens. Discover who these fierce warriors from the Eurasian steppe were, how they became the city's primary force for crowd control, and why Athens entrusted such a critical role to complete outsiders who had no political stake in the city at all. Scythians in Athens: The Steppe Archers Who Enforced Democracy | 12:32 History with Cy | 303K subscribers | 4,296 views | October 13, 2026

Science in Norway reports that a rescue excavation on southeastern Norway’s Svinesund Plateau, which was led by Carine Rosenvinge of the Museum of Cultural History Oslo, has uncovered a Neolithic gallery grave lined with stone slabs. The bottom of the grave was paved with smaller stones. The structure has been dated to about 4,000 years ago, when early farmers moved into the region. Flint daggers and arrowheads are usually found in such graves and attributed to warriors, Rosenvinge explained. This grave, however, only contained one arrowhead and no daggers. An amber bead, a pottery fragment, and evidence of burning were...

According to a statement released by the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology (LDA) Saxony-Anhalt, pieces of worked wood dated to some 10,500 years ago have been recovered from sediments in central Germany's Lake Arendsee. "The finds shed a completely new light on the Mesolithic period, for which traces of buildings in central Germany have so far only been known in the form of soil discolorations," said state archaeologist Harald Meller. The pieces of wood include a five-foot post bearing felling marks, and split boards measuring up to about four feet long. It is not yet known if the...

Luxury Brands of Ancient Rome | 10:13 toldinstone | 652K subscribers | 18,829 views | October 10, 2026

The structure was concealed just beneath the forest floor in the foothills of the eastern Taunus Mountains, on the northern outskirts of Frankfurt, according to a September 25 announcement from the Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation. The temple is rectangular and measures about 16 feet long. Inside, it appears to have contained a smaller, square chamber with just three roughly 20-inch-thick walls, Thomas Kurella reports for Hessenschau... Archaeologists unearthed this temple during ongoing excavations of the Kapersburg fort -- a Roman military fortification thought to date back to the second century... likely constructed under the reign of Emperor Trajan...

On Thursday afternoon, October 8, a guy named Oscar Belgal was shot by ICE agents in the very most northern neighborhood of Manhattan known as Marble Hill. Belgal suffered a non-life-threatening injury to his neck, and received treatment at the uptown campus of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Here is a picture of Belgal from the New York Post: The shooting immediately set off a round of protests from local activists, calling for abolition of ICE as well as various other of the usual demands. Here (again from the New York Post) is a picture of demonstrators outside the hospital...

Explanation: Scientists are melting holes in the bottom of the world. In fact, almost 100 holes melted near the South Pole are now being used as an astronomical observatory. Astronomers with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory lowered a long string knotted with basketball-sized light detectors into each vertical lake. The water in each hole soon refreezes. The detectors attached to the strings are sensitive to blue light emitted in the surrounding clear ice. Such light results from fast-moving secondary particles liberated when high-energy neutrinos emitted by powerful processes out in the universe collide with ice molecules. IceCube has now detected many...