For years, conservatives warned that America’s most powerful corporations were colluding with the government to muzzle free speech, cut off financial services, and marginalize half the country. We were…

Smoke still hangs over the streets of Goma, where shattered homes and abandoned marketplaces tell the story of a city under siege. Millions have fled the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of…

The elderly victim died just over two weeks after the attack

Feel the rhythm. The post The Queen song that can scientifically boost your mood this winter first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The UK government will consult on whether children aged between 13 and 16-years-old should have digital ID cards under plans to expand the role of the state in people’s lives Critics have lashed out at [...] The post UK Government Want Digital ID Cards For Children As Young As 13 appeared first on The People's Voice.

While visiting Koza Cave Hotel, Cappadocia, Turkey, Emily Billings received an odd “order” from hotel staff. They instructed her to walk up the stairs directly outside her room at 5 a.m. Not sure where they were leading her, Emily climbed the winding, spiral staircase. At the top, she found herself on a small veranda. The view was incredible, enhanced by the sight of several dozen hot air balloons floating at the edge of the horizon. @isaidwoahhhhh Odds I go in one of those hot air balloons for tomorrow’s sunrise…Koza Cave Hotel, Cappadocia Turkey @kozacavehotel #cappadocia #cappadociaturkey #hotairballoons #cappadociarooftop #cappadociaturkiye #kozacavehotel ♬ original sound – LyricVibes – LyricVibes The hot air balloons floating in the air against the backdrop of the sunrise were surreal. People familiar with the location would say, “That’s a normal morning in Cappadocia.” Emily woke up in the balloon capital of the world. Many people travel there just to see the balloons. Cappadocia boasts a “fairy landscape,” creating a perfect balloon flying experience among valleys, rock formations, and ancient cave dwellings. The hot air balloons take off daily at sunrise, weather permitting. Image from Wikimedia Commons. When Emily got to the top of the stairs, she saw the parade of hot air balloons against the skyline. The caption she added to the short clip is, “Odds I go in one of those hot air balloons for tomorrow’s sunrise…” With hundreds of balloons launching daily, she should be able to fulfill that wish. The view of the sunrise from a balloon is said to be spectacular. Cappadocia is home to an annual balloon festival from August 11 through 13. Although balloon rides are available year-round, the festival is a special time. Balloonists and adventurers come from around the world to attend the three-day festival. If you want to see if Emily took her hot air balloon ride, you’ll need to follow her on TikTok or Instagram. Please share. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post “The Hotel Staff Tells You To Walk Up The Stairs Next To Your Room At 5 AM” appeared first on InspireMore.

I used to listen to George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM on the radio during middle-of-the-night commutes. I was amused by his guests as they talked about UFOs, ghosts, and chupacabras. Along with regular swigs of coffee, they kept me awake. At the time, I thought I was laughing along with opportunists pretending to be flat-earthers to shock a global audience. I was wrong. Around 80 percent of Gen Z and young millennials report belief in astrology. What was once fodder for tabloids and midnight radio is now mainstream practice. Charles Taylor and others have argued we live in a disenchanted world. The scientific materialism of modernity stripped the transcendent from the world, leaving us with a longing that culture can’t fulfill. Yet despite persistent calls to imagine there’s no hell below us and above us only sky, awareness of the supernatural is the normal state of humanity. The heavens don’t point to their own self-existence, as Carl Sagan asserted, but to something greater beyond the material world. There’s a God-shaped hole in the human heart that begs to be filled. It’s no wonder our increasingly post-Christian society is drawn to paganism and the paranormal. In some ways, the general openness to supernaturalism makes Christianity seem less weird. We less often need to start our apologetic discussions by arguing for God’s existence. It’s helpful to recognize the contours of the spiritualism thriving in our culture as we evangelize. Yet it’s more important that Christians are well versed in the gospel and orthodox doctrine. Paganism Without Pillars Modern paganism isn’t usually the temple-bound variety we associate with ancient civilizations. C. S. Lewis expressed tongue-in-cheek hope in 1952 that Paganism would return to Britain with “Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords.” That’s the Paganism Paul confronted in Lystra and Athens. Moving into the second quarter of the 21st century, we’re wrestling with paganism with a small p. Unlike sacrifices to Molech, where kids were burned in public to assuage a regional deity’s wrath (2 Kings 23:10), contemporary paganism is generally privatized. Its horrors are often shrouded by medical jargon and lab coats. The benefits sought are primarily personal. Yet spirituality goes beyond the search for personal gods; it extends into the paranormal. Bigfoot visited my small city this year; this Sasquatch sighting was officially rated as credible. That cryptid’s alleged appearance spawned a surge in satirical ads from local businesses and a flood of amateur cryptozoologists who displaced fishermen this summer in local Airbnb rentals. Discussion of UFOs has moved from a punchline to sober questioning in the halls of Congress. As trust in traditional institutions collapses, roughly three-quarters of Americans hold some paranormal beliefs. People want personally curated truth, and the buffet is open. Enchanted Individualism The growth of “spiritual but not religious” is a reincarnation of the ancient shift from temple-bound worship of the god-king to personalized cults mediated by shamans and sages, who, Michael Horton argues, embodied “the rise of the autonomous individual” centuries before Christ was born. It affected most ancient cultures, at least as far back as 600 BC. People want personally curated truth, and the buffet is open. We even see individualistic spiritual practice in the pages of the Bible. Ancient Israel’s perpetual cycles of individuals doing whatever was “right in [their] own eyes” continue through the life of Christ (Judg. 21:25). Historically, the church hasn’t escaped the quest for autonomy. Even during the supposed theological hegemony of the Roman Empire’s Christianity, alternative spiritualities—like Neoplatonism, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism—ever lurked in the cathedral’s shadow. As one historian observes, the rising frequency and severity of warnings by the medieval church against practicing magic reflect the widespread practice of personal spiritualism. The scientific revolution wasn’t disenchanted either. Lewis rightly described the magician and scientist as twins: both seek mastery over the created world. For centuries, alchemists used magic to try to turn lead into gold; physicists did it this year through science. In truth, as Ferdinand Mount argues, the rise of scientific rationalism energized “a new sort of pantheism which sheds an equal radiance over the whole earth and every creature on it.” The result is what Horton calls “natural supernaturalism.” It’s a worldview that rejects an active, personal, creator god, while affirming the transcendent wonder of nature that can provide an individual experience of the divine. It describes the way many people see the world in our age of science and spirituality. How Should Church Leaders Respond? The popularity of spiritualism makes it more likely we’ll encounter people willing to accept Christianity’s supernatural claims without objection. Yet the individualistic nature of contemporary spiritualism, where people often adopt contradictory ideas they’ve acquired from internet influencers, means differentiating Christianity from other forms of spirituality is more important than ever. There’s some value in trying to learn about alternative spiritualities. Books like James Sire’s The Universe Next Door are still valuable for highlighting big themes in diverse worldviews. But it’s more important to be able to articulate the truthfulness and exclusivity of Christianity. Differentiating Christianity from other forms of spirituality is more important than ever. The deficiencies of a counterfeit are most evident in the distinguishing marks of the authentic. That’s why the U.S. government’s training program to help bank tellers recognize fake money focuses on what real currency looks like rather than common counterfeit techniques. That’s instructive for Christian discipleship. Our primary need is for counter-catechesis that highlights what distinguishes Christianity from false spiritualities—attributes like salvation by grace through faith, God’s perfect holiness, and the unchanging nature of the Trinity. Knowing what true Christianity looks like in contrast to cultural narratives helps us point people toward the gospel by showing the deficiencies of enchanted individualism. I haven’t listened to late-night radio in years. Yet some of the strange theories that used to entertain me in the wee hours of the morning pop up in conversations between ordinary people at the YMCA. Now is the perfect time to talk about Christ’s bodily resurrection. It’s probably not the weirdest thing our neighbors have heard this week.

The task of equipping every believer for Christian apologetics has never been more urgent. As an elder and Sunday school teacher, I frequently get asked questions that come from influencers online who argue for the superiority of Mormonism, Hebrew Roots, Protestant liberalism, Roman Catholicism, or agnosticism. There are so many objections to the gospel that, once the algorithm starts serving up skepticism, the flood of challenges can seem overwhelming. Yet the challenge also brings an evangelistic opportunity, if we’re equipped to seize it. Wes Huff’s hours-long appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience is exploding interest in textual criticism among everyday Christians. Ongoing digitization projects like The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and the opening of the Museum of the Bible in 2017 have made the evidence for the accuracy of the biblical text publicly accessible. So many good resources for apologetics are available that choosing where to begin can be difficult. Amid this flood of solid resources, these six recently published books on apologetics can help renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel. 1. Collin Hansen, Skyler Flowers, and Ivan Mesa, eds., The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics (Zondervan Reflective, 2025) (TGC Store | Amazon) When Tim Keller published The Reason for God in 2008, he taught many Christians how to counter our culture’s common defeater beliefs. These often seem inherently obvious to our neighbors because they’re buttressed by cultural narratives that surround us, often undetected. The Gospel After Christendom brings together fellows from The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics to equip readers to identify cultural narratives and to point to their subversive fulfillment in Christianity. That method is cultural apologetics. This book is a vital resource for Christians as they work to understand the discontinuities between our culture and the Scripture. It offers an accessible introduction to an important evangelistic approach meant to accompany standard apologetic arguments rather than displace them. Though the voices in each chapter are diverse, the conversation in this multiauthored volume is organically seamless. The terminology may be new to many people, but this book makes clear the continuity of cultural apologetics with historical Christian evangelism. The Gospel After Christendom will help every believer have better evangelistic conversations with his or her friends, family, and neighbors. 2. Mark Farnham, Every Believer Confident: Apologetics for the Ordinary Christian (P&R, 2025) (TGC Store | Amazon) As the person who runs the bookshelf ministry in my local church, I frequently get asked for resources to help with evangelistic conversations. In a culture flooded with information, so that both skeptical and faithful arguments about Christianity are only a click away, it’s hard for believers to feel confident. Someone may have just watched a video arguing that there was no historical Jesus or that other versions of the Bible debunk Christianity. It’s hard to be confident. Farnham’s short book helps reframe the apologetic task for ordinary Christians. We can’t all be Huff, who can rattle off strong answers to hard questions on the fly. And yet we’re all called to be faithful evangelists. Every Believer Confident reminds us that apologetics should be about listening, answering where possible, but ultimately pointing people toward hope in Christ. This is a helpful resource for churches as they equip their members to fulfill the Great Commission. 3. Gavin Ortlund, The Art of Disagreeing: How to Keep Calm and Stay Friends in Hard Conversations (TGBC, 2025) (TGC Store | Amazon) This short volume isn’t about the content of apologetics but about one of the most important skills for apologists: disagreeing without being disagreeable. A combination of algorithmic isolation and polarization sometimes makes it difficult for people with different viewpoints to have conversations about important topics. Ortlund’s book can help. He argues that we need to begin with both courage and kindness as we listen and seek to persuade people. It’s an approach he has demonstrated repeatedly on his podcast, Truth Unites. I’ve met people who’ve changed their views because of Ortlund’s confidently orthodox apologetic approach. Most importantly, Ortlund wishes that the overarching theme of our debates should be love that seeks to “win the person more than the argument.” The Art of Disagreeing is a helpful resource for churches to prepare members for evangelistic conversations in a contentious world. 4. T. C. Schmidt, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford University Press, 2025) (Amazon) One of the most controversial passages in Josephus’s Antiquities is a powerful, extrabiblical confirmation of the events recorded in the Gospels. In the passage in question, which is often referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus (who wasn’t a Christian) states that Jesus did miraculous deeds and that he was the Christ. If it’s accurate, Josephus’s late first-century passage also confirms the basic historical facts about Jesus’s death and early Christian belief in his bodily resurrection. Much ink has been spilled over the authenticity of this apparent confirmation of the Gospel accounts. Skeptics argue that the Testimonium Flavianum was added by later Christian scholars to support their false narrative about Christ and early Christian doctrine. Christian apologists hold the passage out as likely support for the historicity of the New Testament accounts. The argument has seemed unresolvable—until now. Schmidt’s book is a detailed textual analysis of the passage in question. He uses manuscripts from multiple languages to argue that what we read in Antiquities is “essentially authentic,” though it was meant to be a critique of Christians. His argument is dense but compelling. Josephus and Jesus may be the most important apologetic book published this decade. Because of its significance, a donor has made a PDF copy freely available online. 5. Gary Habermas, On the Resurrection, Vol. 3: Scholarly Perspectives (B&H Academic, 2025) (Amazon) Imagine that someone spent 50 years researching the debates about the resurrection’s historicity. That’s what Habermas has done since his 1976 dissertation on Jesus’s resurrection. Nobody alive has read or written more on the historical fact that all of Christianity depends on. This third of four volumes is essentially a topically organized annotated bibliography on the resurrection debate, especially as it’s been waged in the modern era. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone doing academic research on the resurrection. Volume 1, which focuses on evidences for the resurrection, and volume 2, which highlights refutations of the resurrection, are more helpful for nontechnical audiences, but the project as a whole is a masterpiece. This work, once completed with volume 4 in August 2026, will be an essential reference for the next generation of apologists. 6. Leonardo De Chirico, Tell Your Catholic Friend: How to Have Gospel Conversations with Love (B&H, 2025) (Amazon) Roman Catholicism claims to be the universal church. Against the multiplicity of the Protestant stream of Western Christianity, they’ll argue that the administrative unity of Roman Catholicism best reflects God’s intention for his church. In an increasingly divided world, the supposed continuity of the Roman church through history is highly attractive for younger seekers. De Chirico, a former Catholic turned evangelical pastor and professor, tackles this question with verve in this apologetic book. There’s a polemical edge to De Chirico’s argument. He pastors in Rome and was converted to faith in Christ out of a cultural Catholicism. So he understands the ways the Roman Catholic faith and practice often mask the gospel. In a time where alignment between conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics on social issues makes close partnership attractive, De Chirico reminds readers that the Reformation’s principles still matter. As a result, this isn’t a book best handed to your Roman Catholic neighbor as a tract; it’s a short volume that will benefit Christians who want to learn to articulate the key distinctions between Roman Catholic dogma and the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). Once we know what the differences are, it’s easier to point our neighbors toward justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

Many Americans likely had no idea who Katie Porter was until a clip of the California gubernatorial candidate went viral this week.   Porter served as a member of Congress representing the Golden State from 2019 to 2025, when she launched her bid for governor. California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited, and Porter has been leading in early polling ahead of the 2026 election.   Searches for Porter’s name rose sharply on Google this week after a roughly three-minute clip of her interview with CBS California reporter Julie Watts went viral.   Porter was asked if she thinks she needs to win over any of President Donald Trump’s supporters in order win the election. When asked follow-up questions regarding that, Porter became visibly agitated and called the interview “unnecessarily argumentative,” adding that she would like to end the interview.   Democrats are so used to media being their propagandists that they totally lose it when asked basic questions. Here’s California’s Katie Porter losing it during an interview. pic.twitter.com/relSS2Ajpa— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 8, 2025 Janiyah Thomas, who served as the director for black media for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, says Porter’s campaign team has its work cut out for it after the media appearance.   Thomas joins “Problematic Women” to discuss Porter’s campaign. Thomas also discusses how Trump was able to make significant inroads with black voters in the last election.   Also on today’s show, we discuss this week’s White House roundtable discussion on the far-left militant group Antifa and the peace deal between Hamas and Israel. Plus, in pop culture news, we break down the best and worst of Taylor Swift’s new album.   The post Campaign Professional Reacts to Katie Porter’s Press Meltdown   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Hi, I'm Lauren Fix, longtime automotive journalist and a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers. Welcome back to "Quick Fix," where I answer car-related questions you submit to me. Today's question comes from Paul in Pennsylvania.Hi Lauren:What is the deal with flood-damaged cars?Should I take a chance? The deals sound great, but am I buying a nightmare?Great question, Paul, and I think this is something a lot of people get confused about. Remember Hurricanes Rita and Katrina? Combined, they resulted in some 500,000 flood-damaged cars, many of which ended up on the used market.I'll say now the same thing I said then: Don't buy a car with flood damage. It's not worth the risk.Why?Number one, there is no warranty. I don't care if the car is brand new, you lose your warranty right out of the box. No manufacturer is going to stand behind it. And they can tell if the car is flood-damaged; even if it's not obvious upon inspection, the insurance companies will report it.Secondly, water can do unseen damage to a car's passive safety features. This includes airbags, forward collision warning, even seat belts.If the water got into the base of the car, like where your feet go onto the carpet, that could rot out everything underneath — including the various computerized sensors that keep these safety features working.Even worse, corrosion from water could actually cause an airbag not to deploy or deploy with no reason. Not good. The third thing that people often fail to consider is the health hazards a flood-damaged car can present. If its in the ductwork, you're breathing it: anything from mold to mildew to E. coli. Think about it: You don't know where the car was. It was underwater, yes, but was it salt water? Sewer water? Now — if you suspect a car you're looking at is flood-damaged, the best thing to do is take it to an ASE-certified technician. If he confirms the damage, walk away. No matter how good the deal may seem, you do not want that car. Even without a mechanic, there are a few tell-tale signs to look for.Excessive air freshener: If they've doused the car with perfume in the interior ... yeah, that's a clue they're covering something up. Rust in weird places: Rust is never good, of course, but in some places on a car it's understandable. In other places — on the hood hinges, for example — it's a very bad sign. Moisture in the fuse box: If you see any signs that water's gotten under that plastic cover, that means it's been in a flood. Finally, watch out for "washed" titles. Unscrupulous sellers will move a title from state to state to try to hide flood damage or a car's totaled status. Don't rely on the title alone; companies like Carfax can help protect. Ultimately, its better to trust your gut than to snap up a too-good-to-be-true deal. Flood-damaged cars are nothing to play around with, and they can be very dangerous. Got a car-related question? Email me at getquickfix@pm.me.