Free Republic

For a few years now, it has been blindingly obvious that New York had over-promised and over-committed on impossible “climate” goals that could not be achieved. In various posts I have referred to this as an approaching “cliff,” or perhaps as the “green energy wall.” It has been entertaining to ponder what the final disaster might look like. This week has had a lot of developments. Most interesting is the growing split among the governing Democrats between, on the one hand, those who see disaster coming and are looking for some kind of graceful exit and, on the other hand,...

A daily cup of coffee or tea may do more than wake you up—it could also help keep your brain sharp as you age. New research tracking hundreds of thousands of people over decades suggests that moderate caffeine consumption is linked to a lower risk of developing dementia.“Caffeine increases the brain’s activity and can accelerate the speed of messages between the brain and the body,” Jolene Knight, psychiatric nurse practitioner at Stony Brook Medicine’s Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s disease, and not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times. Caffeine Linked to 20 Percent Risk ReductionThe study, recently published...

Explanation: Yes, but can your tree do this? Pictured is a visual coincidence between the dark branches of a nearby tree and bright glow of a distant aurora. The beauty of the aurora -- combined with how it seemed to mimic a tree right nearby -- mesmerized the photographer to such a degree that he momentarily forgot to take pictures. When viewed at the right angle, it seemed that this tree had aurora for leaves. Fortunately, before the aurora morphed into a different overall shape, he came to his senses and captured the awe-inspiring momentary coincidence. Typically triggered by solar...

The Trump administration has turned Venezuela into a significant U.S. oil supplier, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday, arguing the shift will help offset Middle East disruptions and ease pressure from the global shipping crisis. "[Venezuela] was a sanctioned adversary, and now they're a strategic ally with the largest reserves with no threat of the chokehold like we have in the Strait of Hormuz," Burgum told "The Sunday Briefing." "Venezuelan oil can flow to America freely and is starting to flow, will continue to flow, and these are the kinds of things that are going to bring gas prices down...

The Catacombs and Ruins of Alexandria | 10:46Scenic Routes to the Past | 57.8K subscribers | 177,574 views | November 7, 2025 Travels in Egypt | Playlist | 7 videos | 798 views

...a coffin crashed down from a cliff near the Baltic Sea near the village of Bagicz, Poland, in 1899... Made from the hollowed trunk of an oak tree and exceptionally preserved, it protected the bones of a young woman from the ancient Wielbark culture who was thought at the time to have likely been a member of the social elite. She was buried with a bronze fibula, a necklace of glass and amber beads, a brooch, and bronze bar bracelets; was laying on a cowhide; and had a wooden stool at her feet....almost forgotten until the 1980s, when archaeologists rediscovered...

After Jill Gottlieb finished filling up her car at a Chevron station in downtown Los Angeles, the final tally on the gas pump read $107. “This is crazy,” the social worker for the LA County Department of Health told The Post of the staggering amount she paid to top off her 2017 Mercedes. “I’ve never filled up my tank for this much before.” As gas prices surge across the state, the Chevron station at 901 N. Alameda St. has become a stark symbol of the worsening pain at the pump plaguing Californians. A regular gallon of unleaded gas at the...

Researchers at Australian start-up Cortical Labs have taught human neurons grown on a chip to play the classic Doom game. In 2021, they had already used 800,000 neurons to play Pong. Now, with four times fewer brain cells, they can play a much more complicated game. … The technology making this possible is the CL-1, a “biological computer” chip. The biological component of the CL-1 system consists of human neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells, typically repurposed from adult skin or blood samples, are differentiated in a lab into functional cortical neurons. Once matured, approximately 200,000...

Explanation: Centered on maximum eclipse, these two total lunar eclipse sequences look almost identical. Yet the one shown on top is composed of images recorded in February 2008, while at the bottom is the recent March 2026 total eclipse of the Moon. Why are they so similar? Because these two total lunar eclipses are from the same Saros cycle. The Saros cycle was discovered historically from observations of the Moon's orbit. With a period of 18 years, 11 and 1/3 days, the cycle predicts when the Sun, Earth, and Moon all return to the same relative geometry for a lunar...

The traditional understanding is that the center of our galaxy is dominated by a supermassive black hole...Instead of a black hole, there could be...a colossal clump of dark matter, the substance thought to account for 85 percent of all mass in the cosmos.

Former President Joe Biden told mourners at Rev. Jesse Jackson’s memorial service Friday that he is “a hell of a lot smarter than most of you,” a pointed remark that stood out during his tribute to the late civil rights leader. Biden made the comment while recounting how he was mocked as a child for his stutter and how speech impediments are often mistaken for a lack of intelligence. “If I told you I had a cleft palate or clubfoot, none of you would have laughed,” Biden said. “But it’s OK to laugh at stuttering. … It’s the one place...

Obama uses Jackson eulogy to slam Trump's America By Emily Goodin President Barack Obama used his eulogy for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson to rail at President Trump’s administration, decrying the state of country under his leadership. “Each day we wake up to some new assault on our Democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law, an offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to, to things you just didn't think were possible,” he said. Obama didn’t say Trump’s name but his meaning was clear. And the crowd at the Chicago’s House of Hope...

Explanation: Do young stars blow bubbles? The larger view shows a stellar field observed with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the inset highlights HD 61005, a star like our Sun, only 120 light-years away. Much younger than the Sun, at just about 100 million years old, it blows a fast and dense stellar wind that pushes out the cooler dust and gas that surrounds it, forming a bubble called an astrosphere. The star-blown bubble was detected with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and it has a diameter roughly 200 times the Earth-Sun distance. Our Sun has a bubble...

Could bacteria replace your eye drops? Mice study says maybeIn A Nutshell -Researchers engineered a naturally occurring eye bacterium to secrete an anti-inflammatory healing protein directly on the eye’s surface -In mice, a single course of three bacterial applications kept the microbes active for 12 weeks and sped corneal wound healing -The bacteria preserved the eye’s normal immune defenses and did not increase susceptibility to infection -A human version of the therapy showed early promise in lab tests, but clinical use in people is still years away Forget the eye drops. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have engineered a...

For the first time in history, an international team of scientists and divers explores the depths of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake. This documentary follows a high-stakes archaeological mission into a world of legends, uncovering pre-Columbian artifacts submerged for millennia. Join us as we reveal the hidden history of an underwater heritage and rewrite the story of ancient South American civilizations. Lake Titicaca's Sunken Civilization: The First Archeological Mission | 52:33 Show Me the World and History & Civilisations | 11,601 views | February 18, 2026

Lucy Biggers was once a devoted acolyte of the climate cult, affiliated with “activists” like AOC and Greta Thunberg. Then Covid happened, and, to give credit where it’s due, Biggers saw through the lunacy, wondering how in the world the people were expected to get to zero carbon emissions—the stated goal of the climate cult—if the oppressive lockdowns and forced quarantines only resulted in a (roughly) 5% decrease over the year? (That 5% number was offered by Biggers, though don’t take it as fact because I actually don’t know myself what the numbers are.) Like many others, Biggers was depressed,...

Explanation: Earlier this week, Earth’s shadow swept across the full Moon in the year’s only total lunar eclipse. This stunning sequence combines images showing the Moon’s path across the night sky. Each lunar image captures our planet’s shadow gradually engulfing the Moon, culminating in its red glow. Sunlight scatters and refracts as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere toward the Moon. Shorter wavelength light (blue and green) scatters more efficiently, leaving red, orange, and yellow hues to paint the lunar surface. Tsé Bit'a'í (”rock with wings”, also known as Shiprock), located in Navajo Nation, provides a powerful volcanic foreground central to...

Dramatic footage has captured the moment an Israeli stealth fighter shot down an Iranian jet in a first-of-its-kind combat strike on Wednesday. Footage released by the Israeli Defense Forces on Thursday showed the Israeli F-35 jet focusing in on its target – a Russian-made Iranian Yak-130 – over Tehran before the air-to-air kill. A streak of light can be seen blazing across the screen as the enemy plane comes down. “Target down. The target is down. Continue for strike,” Israeli forces say in the video, which is played to the “Star Wars” theme tune. It was the first shootdown in...

According to a statement released by Leiden University, a groundbreaking ancient DNA study has provided new information about a pivotal transitional period in prehistoric Europe. The research underscored the remarkable genetic stability in the Low Countries and shed new light on the mysterious origins of the so-called Bell Beaker culture. A team of geneticists and archaeologists analyzed the genomes of 112 individuals who lived in the Rhine–Meuse region of the Low Countries -- today's Netherlands, Belgium, and northwestern Germany -- between 8500 and 1700 b.c. The data revealed that when Europe's first farmers arrived from Anatolia around 4,500 years ago,...

ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) — Fisherman Helgi Áargil no longer knows what to expect on Greenland ‘s fjords, where he spends up to five days at a time on his boat with his dog, Molly, and the ever-changing northern lights in the sky as company. Last year, his boat got stuck in ice that broke off the nearby glacier. This year, it’s been very wet instead. His income is just as unpredictable. An outing could bring him around 100,000 Danish kroner (about $15,700), or nothing at all. The Arctic’s rapidly changing climate is bringing more questions for Greenland, the semiautonomous territory...