For decades, the American financial model followed a familiar structure. Earn a wage, save consistently, invest long term, and rely on gradual growth to build security. That model still exists, but it is no longer the only framework people are willing to rely on. A combination of economic pressure, shifting job markets, and increased access […]

'It's mind boggling'

Ever since we started our sister site, rockingfoodie.com, I have wanted to do more rock songs about food. It’s just a natural thing. Even when I’m interviewing the Rockers, I find myself being guided to ask where their favorite restaurants are. It was fun asking Ted Nugent that. Don’t miss that interview. One of the funniest reactions came from Greg T Walker of Blackfoot, who told me he couldn’t find grits in New York. Nope, we have home fries here. Nonetheless, I thought this would be a fun one to do. Songs about sugar, or should I say songs with The post 10 Best Songs With The Word ‘Sugar’ In The Title appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

An Applebee’s manager whose been afraid of storms since she was a child nevertheless stepped up to rapidly lead her staff and guests to safety as a tornado was barreling towards the restaurant. It was a normal Friday at the Applebee’s in Three Rivers, Michigan, when all of a sudden Aubrey McKenzie saw the weather […] The post Applebee’s Worker Praised for Sheltering 50 People as Tornado Barreled Towards Them appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Backlist Bonanza Backlist Bonanza: 5 Books Set in Strange Houses Houses don’t have to be haunted to leave their mark on you… By Alex Brown | Published on April 9, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share As much as I love haunted houses, I also love just plain weird-ass houses. Houses with secret rooms or that shift its inhabitants around. Houses with mysteries that resist being solved or that you leave a different person than when you entered. Welcome to this list of five books set in strange houses. Don’t get too comfortable. The house won’t like it. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury, 2020) I might be a little obsessed with Piranesi. Just a little. Like Susanna Clarke’s other magnum opus, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, not a week goes by since the day I read it that I don’t think about it. Piranesi lives in an inexplicable house. The house has infinite rooms full of strange objects. Birds flock to one room, tidal creatures to another, and statues gaze down at him ominously. Storms roar through the halls and water rushes down the stairs. Piranesi doesn’t know who he was before the house or how he got there. He simply is. But he’s not alone. The Other visits him from time to time to ask him questions and send him on quests. There are also the bones of previous inhabitants that died before Piranesi arrived. And then one day a new person tumbles into the house, a woman who will shatter Piranesi’s world, for better and for worse. This is a stunning achievement of a novel. Clarke is one of those “once in a generation” authors. Each time I read this book, I peel away another layer to discover something new. Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood (Wednesday Books, 2021) This young adult remix of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre adds some magic to the gothic creepiness of the original. Suddenly without a mentor or a license to practice as a debtera—a magician that can craft charms to ward off the Evil Eye—Andi takes the only job she can get. Now she finds herself on the grand estate of the dark and mysterious Magnus Rochester. She’s ostensibly there to clear the so-called wicked walls of malevolent spirits, but something else calls to her. The more time she spends with Magnus, the more she sees through his guise of callousness, but his secrets threaten to tear them apart. Magnus inherited the house and his wealth from his father, a chocolate magnate, as well as the curse that Andi has been hired to break. The estate is dark and full of terrors, but it might just be Magnus who consumes Andi. A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui (Henry Holt and Co. Books for Young Readers, 2023) Besties Layla and Mira set out on a college road trip during spring break, excited to get away from home for a little while. Layla is working out her feelings as a closeted queer young woman secretly in love with her best friend, while Mira is consumed with grief after her brother’s sudden death. When their car breaks down in a small town in the middle of nowhere Indiana, they end up in a motel. Ellis, the son of the owner, lives there (so it’s technically a house, or at least close enough for my purposes) and tries to keep the ghosts at bay. It wouldn’t be a horror novel if there wasn’t a creepy room full of angry ghosts, and sure enough the girls end up in Room 9. What haunts that room, and what impact it has on Layla and Mira’s sanity drives the story to its intense conclusion. I’m pretty sure this is the only traditionally published YA horror book with a queer Muslim protagonists. It also features a creative use of first and third person POV and photographs taken by Metoui.  From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos (Psychopomp, 2024) Lethe and Petunia are prisoners in the endless house St. Edah’s. Every night, the mythological beings that reside in the house strip off their skin and indulge in their basest desires as skeletons. Every day, the two human women act as servants to their captors. They don’t know how they came to be in the mansion with its infinite rooms but they are desperate to escape. Although they’ve explored the house before, when one of the entities disappears, Petunia and Lethe are released into rooms they’ve never been allowed to visit. As they wander, the truth about who they were before the house tempts them away from each other. Full of sapphic longing and body horror, this novella is as good as it is unsettling. Strange Houses by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion (Strange Houses #1 — HarperVia, 2025) I couldn’t not include the first book in Uketsu’s series in a booklist about strange houses. This series is apparently very popular in Japan. The narrative style is as strange as the house our architect protagonist is investigating. The book uses floorplans to explore the house and the horrors within. Our nameless narrator is a freelance writer who becomes obsessed with a house up for sale in Tokyo. His architect friend looks over the floorplans and discovers hidden rooms with dark secrets. The more the writer digs into the history of the house and what those terrible rooms contain, the darker the mystery becomes. It’s a strange book about a strange house written in a strange way. What’s not to like?[end-mark] The post Backlist Bonanza: 5 Books Set in Strange Houses appeared first on Reactor.

Trump to Iran: Comply Or Else 'Shootin' Starts, Bigger And Better'

Europeans Have an Opinion, to Which I Say...So What?

National Public Radio regularly crosses the line separating pro-abortion bias (practically a given at elitist media outlets) to outright abortion advocacy, painting it as a useful health care procedure in two stories. Kate Wells reported Wednesday on the question dear to the heart of NPR: “As abortion access shrinks, could urgent care centers help?”,  a story by Kate Wells “produced in partnership with KFF Health News.” Providing abortions was the last thing Shawn Brown thought she'd be doing when she opened an urgent care clinic in Marquette, a small port town on the remote shores of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. But she also wasn't expecting the Planned Parenthood in Marquette to shut down last spring. Roughly 1,100 patients relied on that clinic each year for cancer screenings, IUD insertions, and medication abortions. Now the area has no other in-person resource for abortions. "It's a 500-mile stretch of no access," Brown said. Marquette is a college town, the home of Northern Michigan University. But NPR found good news!  The idea that urgent cares "could be an untapped solution to closures for abortion clinics across the country is really exciting," said Kimi Chernoby, the chief operating and legal officer at FemInEM, a national nonprofit that works to improve professional training and patient outcomes for women in emergency medicine. No ethical or moral views against abortion were raised, just utilitarian ones involving the hassle of state laws that make procuring abortion harder. As pills by mail become the next major target for abortion opponents, Chernoby said that it will be critical to offer more care in more physical locations…. "It's a wonderful idea, but it's potentially got major pitfalls," said David Cohen, a professor at the Drexel University Kline School of Law who studies abortion access. If abortion access isn't a core part of a health organization's mission, "do you want to be on that list? I don't know if you do," Cohen said…. The only hint of a negative was a revealing moment when a client at the Marquette Urgent Care clinic was adamant she didn’t want to see an ultrasound of her baby. "I just don't want to hear a heartbeat or anything like that," [the client] said. "Definitely not," [Viktoria ]Koskenoja said. Why not? But answering that would involve journalistic curiosity, not NPR’s hard stance of pro-abortion advocacy. Wells is the same abortion-celebrating journalist who aired audio of an abortion procedure at Northland Family Planning outside Detroit in 2022. NPR health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin reported on Monday for NPR’s All Things Considered, “Abortion pills would be safe even over-the-counter, a new study says." It's unsafe for the unborn. Simmons-Duffin which treated the profound decision of whether to abort a baby with all the import of stopping by a 7-11: Imagine that you're pregnant, a few weeks in, and you decide you want an abortion. You walk into a retail pharmacy, and pick up a package on the shelf that says "medication abortion kit." You buy it and walk out, and end your early pregnancy at home. "It's time that the general public understands that this could be a reality," says Dr. Daniel Grossman, part of the research team that published a study Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine exploring this issue. It was a shame to NPR and Grossman that "Over-the-counter abortion medication is not a reality currently...." "There's so much discussion about the restrictions on medication abortion that are not evidence-based," says Grossman, director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. He points to decades of research establishing the safety and efficacy of the two drugs used in medication abortion. "It's exciting to see science pointing us in another direction, where access could be expanded." The excitement-inducing “safety” of abortion drugs is certainly up for debate, considering what happens when the drugs are used correctly. The study used a hook for the story seemed awfully weak, involving patients examining “prototype packaging for what an over-the-counter medication abortion package might look like.” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a doctor, was the only dart to penetrate the pro-choice bubble: [Cassidy] added that people should "not normalize a procedure whose intent is to end a life."

Google News all but excluded right-leaning news outlets from coverage of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, with 183 left-leaning stories to just six right-leaning ones.  In March, war updates dominated Google News, with 239 stories highlighting the conflict in Iran and its proxies in neighboring countries. But the digital news gatekeeper excluded every single right-leaning news outlet, with the exception of a handful of Fox News stories. In fact, out of all the stories Google News promoted in its March morning editions (non-war-related stories included), just 2% came from AllSides-rated right-leaning sources. With 100-150 million Americans using smartphones pre-installed with Google News, the impact of Google’s one-sided editorial choice could be seismic.  MRC’s Findings of Google News’s Top 20 Morning Editions in March:  Google News presented readers with at least 239 stories about the Iran war, with 183 stories from sources rated left-leaning by AllSides, 44 from sources rated center and just six from sources rated right-leaning. The tech giant promoted 78 stories from 10 foreign-based outlets, including Al Jazeera, BBC News, Deutsche Welle (DW), Euro News, Reuters, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, WION and Ynetnews. Of the 540 total AllSides-rated stories across all topics, Google News presented 12 stories (2%) from right-leaning outlets, 146 (27%) from center-rated outlets and 382 stories (71%) from left-leaning outlets.  Google News’s promotion of 71% stories from left-leaning outlets is a 7% increase compared with the previous month. MRC President David Bozell called out Google News for its imbalanced coverage. “When a dominant platform decides which stories Americans see, it has the power to shape public opinion,” Bozell said. “Google News is using that power to promote a radical left-wing agenda.” Google News Highlights Left-Leaning Outlets for Stories on Iran War Google News showed a clear bias toward left-leaning outlets in its coverage of the ongoing Iran war.  Of the 239 stories that Google News promoted on the war, the tech giant elevated 183 stories from left-leaning sources. Meanwhile, it only promoted six stories on the war from right-leaning outlets. This massive disparity has enormous consequences as Google pushes a one-sided narrative to nearly a hundred million Americans each month. The news aggregator included headlines like: “Al Jazeera investigation: Iran girls’ school targeting likely ‘deliberate,’” from Al Jazeera “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei obituary,” from The Guardian. “Trump keeps telling America he’s winning in Iran. He’s less clear in explaining how the war ends," from The Associated Press, which did not label the story as commentary or analysis. “Trump insisted he didn’t need allies’ help in Iran. Now he’s demanding they step in,” and “Why the US and Iran are fighting two different wars,” both from CNN analysis.  “Trump Humiliated by Allied Pilot Who Downed $100 Million Worth of U.S. Jets,” from The Daily Beast. MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider noted that the lopsided coverage distorts what is really happening in the war. “We have not seen a more dominant military action since William Wallace defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, but you’d never guess it if you only read the stories pumped through your smartphone,” Schneider said. “Google News has a long history of being the conduit for left-wing propaganda. It actively drives down support for things like the Save Act, immigration enforcement and conservative candidates for office.”  Google News relied heavily on foreign-based news outlets in its promotion of stories on the Iran war (78 total stories), including 20 stories from the Qatari-based outlet Al Jazeera. MRC Free Speech America has previously reported on how Al Jazeera glossed over the atrocities committed by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while whitewashing and ignoring acts by the foreign terrorist organization Hezbollah.  Google News Favored the Left, Silencing Most Right-Leaning Outlets Throughout March While Google News promoted a handful of right-leaning stories on the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran, the digital news gatekeeper restricted the already limited space to just two right-leaning news outlets throughout the whole month of March.  While the news aggregator included Fox News and New York Post in its March coverage, Google News excluded every other top 50 right-leaning outlet, according to Press Gazette, including Daily Mail (19/50), Breitbart (ranked 36/50), The Gateway Pundit (38/50) and Newsmax (ranked 43/50). For some context, Google included left-leaning outlets that are ranked lower than most of these right-leaning outlets, including The Atlantic (39/50), Bloomberg (40/50), Al Jazeera (47/50) and The Daily Beast (48/50). What’s more, Google only doubled down on its favoring of leftist outlets between February and March. The tech giant highlighted only 2% of stories from right-leaning news outlets, while 71% came from left-leaning outlets. The increase of articles from leftist outlets was a whole 7% higher compared with the previous month, which was already heavily inundated with left-wing content. Google News’s paltry use of right-leaning content was even worse than the numbers suggest. Of the 12 stories the tech giant featured, nearly half of the stories from right-leaning outlets it promoted had nothing to do with domestic politics, foreign policy or any of the other pressing issues Americans face ahead of a looming midterm election and partial government shutdown. Instead of elevating news reporting on the war from right-leaning outlets, Google promoted stories about Chicago’s increased tourist tax, entertainment news and airport drama.  Methodology: During the time period March 1 - 31, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 stories featured on Google News each day at approximately 8:30 AM ET. MRC researchers used the AllSides media bias ratings, which categorize an outlet as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right” to determine the overall bias presented by Google News and analyzed the results. Researchers additionally identified stories related to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran by analyzing headlines with key words. Key words included: “Ayatollah” “Beirut,” “Hormuz,” “Hezbollah, “Iran,” “Iraq,”  “Kahmenei,” “Kharg,” “Lebanon,” “Middle East,” “Military,” “Oil,” “Tehran” and “War.” Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable

CBS’s Stephen Colbert reacted to the ceasefire with Iran for the first time on Wednesday’s edition of The Late Show and was ready to declare the war a failure. A sarcastic Colbert claimed the only thing the war accomplished was providing President Trump with a distraction from the Epstein files, while his cold open also attempted to throw cold water on the idea that the U.S. accomplished its goals. Colbert introduced a parody clip of John Lennon by declaring, “Finally, the war was over for a bit. Realizing John Lennon’s dream.” In the clip, a fake Lennon sang, “All we are saying is peace for two weeks.”   Stephen Colbert reacted to Trump declaring victory in Iran by saying "It's true. This war reached all of its objectives. It's been weeks since anyone mentioned the Epstein files." (1/2) pic.twitter.com/Y2ZJQSbkgT — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 9, 2026   Moving on, Colbert broke out his Trump voice when he added, “Trump announced the deal on social media, calling it a 'double-sided ceasefire.’ Okay, that is cool, but aren't all peace deals double-sided? I believe there's a word for a single-sided ceasefire, and it's 'murder.' ‘I'm done shootin' you now.’ Trump explained that he agreed to the ceasefire because, quote, ‘We have already met and exceeded all military objectives.’ It's true. This war reached all of its objectives. It's been weeks since anyone mentioned the Epstein files.” Earlier, during the cold open, the bit’s narrator made a similar point, “After announcing a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran, President Trump claimed ‘total and complete victory’ for the U.S.” After a short clip of Trump claiming “we won,” the narrator proceeded, “At the same time, none of the goals the president cited as the reason for the war have been reached. And even though Trump ran against foreign wars, MAGA overwhelmingly supports the attacks.”   Earlier, Colbert's cold open was also ready to say nothing was accomplished with the narrator saying "At the same time, none of the goals the president cited as the reason for the war have been reached." Meanwhile a parody Price Is Right announcer says all the U.S. got was "A… pic.twitter.com/I3xV1zi99Y — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 9, 2026   That led into a parody of The Price Is Right where a fake Bob Barker reacted to a joyful contestant, “Trump voter, come on down! President Trump says there's been a total and complete victory in Iran, so show her that prize!” The show’s announcer followed with, “A younger, angrier ayatollah. And a $50 billion price tag to be paid by you. But that's not all. Higher fuel prices and global instability. And there's more! Iran's nuclear stockpiles still intact. Thanks for playing. Thanks for playing.” The cold open ended with chants of “The Prez Ain't Right.” Gen. Dan Caine reported on Wednesday that Operation Epic Fury has, among other things, led to the destruction of 90 percent of Iran’s weapons factories, including every one that used to produce Shaheed drones. He also said that 90 percent of Iran’s regular navy and 50 percent of its IRGC mosquito fleet have been destroyed. Additionally, 450 ballistic missile and 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities are gone. Most importantly, roughly “80 percent of Iran's nuclear industrial base was hit, further degrading their attempts to attain a nuclear weapon.” To say distracting from Epstein was Epic Fury’s only accomplishment is simply to ignore reality. Here is a transcript for the April 8 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 4/8/2026 11:35 PM ET ANNOUNCER: After announcing a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran, President Trump claimed "total and complete victory" for the U.S. DONALD TRUMP: We won. ANNOUNCER: At the same time, none of the goals the president cited as the reason for the war have been reached. And even though Trump ran against foreign wars, MAGA overwhelmingly supports the attacks. BOB BARKER PARODY: Trump voter, come on down! President Trump says there's been a total and complete victory in Iran, so show her that prize! PRICE IS RIGHT ANNOUNCER: A younger, angrier ayatollah. And a $50 billion price tag to be paid by you. But that's not all. Higher fuel prices and global instability. And there's more! Iran's nuclear stockpiles still intact. Thanks for playing. Thanks for playing. CROWD: The Prez Ain't Right. … STEPHEN COLBERT: Finally, the war was over for a bit. Realizing John Lennon’s dream. JOHN LENNON PARODY: All we are saying is peace for two weeks. COLBERT: Trump announced—Yeah. Trump announced the deal on social media, calling it a [Trump voice] "double-sided ceasefire." Okay, that is cool, but aren't all peace deals double-sided? I believe there's a word for a single-sided ceasefire, and it's "murder." "I'm done shootin' you now." Trump explained that he agreed to the ceasefire because, quote [Trump voice], "We have already met and exceeded all military objectives." It's true. This war reached all of its objectives. It's been weeks since anyone mentioned the Epstein files.