Free Republic

They’re running up the bill. Bronx residents in state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s district decried spiking utility bills Monday — as the state Legislature pushes back on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s cost-saving bid to delay New York’s controversial climate law mandates. The complaints come as lawmakers, led by Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, are poised to split with Hochul over her push to delay the climate law, as well as to reform car insurance — two major sticking points in state budget talks. “Anything that you pay less is better for everybody,” said Francisco Perez, 36, a Baychester resident...

New data from drilling in the ice cores proves the exact opposite of what climate alarmists have been saying. There are many historical examples of scientific evidence being uncovered, but not fully recognized for its significance. Gregor Mendel published his work on inheritance in 1866, showing clear numerical patterns in how traits passed from one generation to the next. The paper largely sat unnoticed for decades before being rediscovered around 1900, when it became foundational to genetics. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected persistent microwave noise in 1964, and initially treated it as an annoying background signal. It turned out...

Explanation: What's happened to the center of this galaxy? Dramatic dust lanes run across the center of unusual elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. These dust lanes are so thick they almost completely obscure the galaxy's center in visible light. This is particularly unusual as Cen A's older stars and oval shape are characteristic of a giant elliptical galaxy, a galaxy type typically low in dark dust. Pictured in this deep image is a complex network of foreground gas and dust, as well as shells of dim stars and a jet projecting to the upper right. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen...

Science in Poland reports that a medieval document has been recovered at a large residential structure at the site of Old Dongola in Sudan by a team of researchers from the University of Warsaw. The text, written in Arabic on paper, is an order issued by King Qashqash, a ruler thought by some to be a legendary figure known only from mention in a nineteenth-century work. The building where the document was found also contained textiles made of cotton, linen, and silk; objects made of ivory and rhino horn; amulets; and more than 20 letters and administrative and legal documents....

La Brújula Verde reports that work along the route of a passenger train uncovered an altar, or momoztli, in central Mexico near the site of Tula, the ancient Toltec capital. The momoztli has been dated to between A.D. 900 and 1150. Archaeologist Víctor Francisco Heredia Guillén of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said that the structure had at least three tiers. The first tier is a stone base thought to be made of andesite, a type of volcanic rock. These blocks are each about four inches long. The next tier consists of slabs made of the same material,...

Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:The Inca quipu was a complex system of knotted cords, encoded numerical records and possibly even a full logosyllabic language.New research demonstrates that the quipu's hierarchical structure can function as a versatile modern computer data structure.The researchers built working spreadsheets, file systems, and encryption tools powered by quipu data, rivaling conventional computing methods.

A series of fireballs — very bright meteors — were spotted across North America from March 17-23, 2026. People in Ohio reported one on March 17. The next sightings were in California on March 19, Michigan and Georgia on March 20, and Texas on March 21, where a fragment crashed through a house roof. It's happening beyond the U.S. Vancouver saw a fireball on March 3. France and Germany reported sightings on March 8 and 11. Many fireballs lasted a long time and were seen across wide areas. Some caused pressure waves and sonic booms. ... The emerging picture is...

Explanation: What are these Earthlings trying to tell us? The featured message was broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. During the dedication of an upgrade to the Arecibo Observatory - then the largest single radio telescope in the world - a string of 1's and 0's representing the diagram was sent. This attempt at extraterrestrial communication was mostly ceremonial - humanity regularly broadcasts radio and television signals out into space accidentally. Even were this message received, M13 is so far away we would have to wait almost 50,000 years to hear an answer. The featured...

According to a ZME Science report, three oak barrels were discovered during a water and sewage system project in the center of the city of Skien in southeastern Norway. The seventeenth-century barrels were surrounded by lime deposits, which helped to preserve them, and a large wooden rammer used by builders. Compacted lime was found in the bottom of the barrels and demolition debris was found on top of them. Slaked lime, an ingredient in mortar, was probably stored here. Workers may have buried the barrels to keep the lime chemically stable and prevent it from freezing during the winter. "The...

Ancient Egyptians may have left behind a cryptic clue to a hidden second Sphinx, carved directly into stone more than 3,000 years ago.The Dream Stele, positioned between the paws of the Great Sphinx, appears to depict two sphinx figures, hinting that the legendary monument may once have had a twin.Now, Italian researchers who, in 2025, claimed to have uncovered massive underground structures beneath the Giza Plateau believe they have identified the second guardian buried deep beneath the sands.Filippo Biondi revealed the discovery on Thursday while speaking on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast, explaining that lines drawn from the pyramids to...

One study by Texas A&M in the late 1980s suggests the masses are from shipwrecks or piles of ballast stones from Spanish or French vessels. Man says he's found evidence of ancient civilization in St. Bernard | 4:35WWLTV | 631K subscribers | 30,266 views | March 2, 2022

According to a statement released by the University of Oxford, domesticated dogs were spread across Europe and Anatolia and living with hunter-gatherers by 14,000 years ago. Researchers led by Lachie Scarsbrook and Greger Larson of the University of Oxford analyzed genomes taken from dog remains recovered at Upper Paleolithic sites, including Pınarbaşı in Turkey and Gough's Cave in England, and two Mesolithic sites in Serbia. These dog genomes were then compared with the genomes of more than 1,000 ancient and modern dogs and wolves from around the world. "Not only has this discovery pushed back the earliest direct evidence of...

Explanation: Robert H. Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of space flight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and flown the world's first liquid fuel rocket. Launched 100 years ago on March 16, 1926 from his aunt Effie's farm in Auburn Massachusetts, the rocket, dubbed "Nell," rose to an altitude of 41 feet in a flight that lasted about 2 1/2 seconds. In this posed photo, Goddard stands next to the 10 foot tall...

"Activist and trial lawyer attacks on herbicides imperil US and global health and nutrition" President Trump recently signed an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure increased domestic supplies of elemental phosphorus – a critical component of glyphosate-based herbicides that are vital for America’s non-organic crop productivity and thus national security. The EO has rekindled anti-pesticide activism and public concern about glyphosate, which used to be the primary ingredient in Roundup for home use but was changed following numerous class-action lawsuits. It’s also created internal conflicts within the “Make America Healthy Again” movement because the President and HHS...

The bow and arrow were first used in western North America some 1,400 years ago, according to a statement released by PNAS Nexus. Briggs Buchanan of the University of Tulsa and his colleagues radiocarbon dated 136 weapons made of organic materials, which were recovered from glacial ice patches, dry caves, and rock shelters where they had been preserved. The researchers determined that the bow appeared in a single place, then spread rapidly across North America through cultural transmission networks. In northern British Columbia and Alberta, people adopted the bow and arrow, but continued to use the atlatl to throw darts...

Three children grew up in the same household, raised by the same parents, exposed to the same environment. Yet their lives unfolded in dramatically different ways—all because of a single gene. The older brother met all of his early developmental milestones and could read at the age of 5. He had an excellent memory for car license plates and could make rapid mental calculations. His social deficits, however, came to light once he started school. He was socially awkward, had few friends, couldn’t understand social cues, and was prone to mood swings. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which is...

Apparently, we can finally talk about it in the mainstream media. For years, we were censored, called names, and polls were done asking people whether we belonged in concentration camps. Half of Democrats believed it should be a criminal offense to question the efficacy of the vaccine. Seriously. Almost half of Democrats once believed that if you were a vaccine skeptic, you belonged in a camp and should have your children taken away. One of my own family members believed that. Other findings from the poll:Other punitive measures in the same pollFrom the same survey, with Democrat shares described in...

Below is the transcript of a speech I gave at a Net Zero Watch event in Edinburgh on 9 March 2026: . Good evening, and thank you for inviting me to speak today. Scotland is often described as an electricity superpower. Not only is that not true, the Scottish grid is actually extremely vulnerable, being held together by just two power stations: Peterhead and Torness. So critical is this dependence that the National Energy System Operator, NESO, will not allow both to go on maintenance at the same time. Yet within the next 5-6 years both could close. Today I’m...

A married mom who vanished last year may be tied to a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances of US scientists and military officials with access to potentially sensitive information, according to a report. Melissa Casias, who worked with her husband as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] — famous for developing nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project — has not been seen since she dropped lunch off for her daughter in New Mexico last summer. She is one of four high-clearance people who have died or gone missing since June 2025 with connections to UFO-linked retired...

Explanation: Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44. The Hickson 44 galaxy group is about 100 million light-years distant, far beyond the foreground Milky Way stars, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 (left) they are also known...