In a Louisiana state penitentiary, incarcerated men were able to dance with their daughters for one special night: many of whom had not seen each other for years. The tear-jerking occasion was organized by the brilliant God Behind Bars, a nonprofit that partners with churches and ministries on behalf of jailed men and women, in […] The post Daddy-Daughter Dance in Notorious Prison Turns ‘Worst of the Worst’ into Loving Fathers Again appeared first on Good News Network.

Books reading recommendations Five SFF Narratives That Start With Characters Waking Up With Amnesia “Who am I?” is always a great way to kick off a story… By Lorna Wallace | Published on December 3, 2025 Photo: David Matos [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: David Matos [via Unsplash] The idea of waking up without memories is terrifying to me, but I can’t help but be captivated when it happens to the main character at the start of a story. Whether they don’t know anything at all about who and where they are, or whether it’s more specific information that they can’t remember, I love the mystery element that this introduces into the story from the very start. Here are five sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books and stories that follow characters experiencing temporary memory loss. Pines by Blake Crouch (2012) Pines is a fast-paced thriller that starts with a man waking up next a river in a small town surrounded by mountains. He can only remember a few specific things, such as the name of the current president and the fact that he’s 37 years old. He’s also in a lot of pain; not only does he have a raging headache, but he’s suffered some kind of blunt force trauma to his left side. He stumbles into town, which he learns is Wayward Pines, Idaho, with two hopes: that something will trigger his memory and that he’ll find a hospital. It’s not long before he passes out again, but this time when he wakes up (in hospital, thankfully) he has a bit more information. His name is Ethan Burke and he’s a Secret Service agent who came to Wayward Pines in search of two missing colleagues. But Ethan still has a lingering feeling that something is very wrong—is it his faulty memory, is it the strange town itself, or is it both? These big questions are answered by the end of the book, but there’s still more story to tell in the next two installments of the Wayward Pines trilogy. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (2018) Technically, the protagonist of The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle doesn’t wake up with amnesia, he simply snaps into his current consciousness while he’s standing in the middle of the woods and yelling out “Anna!” But now he doesn’t remember who Anna is or even who he is. Even worse, he doesn’t feel a single twinge of familiarity when looking down at his body. It turns out that there’s a good reason for that: he’s not in his own body. Our main character soon finds out that his name is Aiden Bishop and that he’s trapped in a time loop murder mystery. Aiden is tasked with solving the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, who is due to be murdered at a party thrown at the manor house next to the woods later that night. He’s forced to relive the day eight times in a row, but each time he inhabits the body of a different party guest. And it’s not just the identity of the killer that’s a mystery, with the details of Aiden’s previous life and how he ended up in this situation also remaining unknown. I found the constant body-hopping and time-looping to be a little confusing to begin with, but it’s worth getting to grips with these mechanics in the first few chapters so that the reader can be rewarded with the satisfaction of the mystery gradually unravelling. “How Alike Are We” by Kim Bo-young (2019) (Translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar) HUN-1029—usually simply called HUN—is the Crisis Management AI of a spaceship who has just been transferred into a prosthetic body. Unfortunately, the transfer didn’t go totally smoothly, so when they wake up there are some gaps in their short-term memory that the ship’s human crew have to fill in. HUN learns that they wanted to be treated like a human, complete with a human body, and went on strike until this demand was met—all of which comes as a surprise. Although seemingly not as pressing, HUN is also aware that something important—yet not mentioned by the crew—is missing. This lost piece of programming subtly haunts HUN in the background of the story, but at the forefront is the crisis that the crew are currently facing—one that they desperately need their Crisis Management AI to solve. HUN does their best to be helpful, but the human crew is cracking under the pressure. Of all of the places to suffer memory loss, this novella makes a compelling case for deep space being the worst, which leads me onto the next book… Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021) A man wakes up from a coma covered in medical tubes and wires, with no idea of what his own name is. He thinks he must be in some sort of high-tech hospital—there are robot arms in the ceiling trying to look after him—but then he sees that his two roommates have been reduced to desiccated corpses. After further exploration, but still not knowing his name, he realizes that he’s aboard a spaceship. Flashes of his life slowly start coming back to him while he tries to figure out why he’s in space. He learns his name (Ryland Grace), his job (high school science teacher), and what his mission is (humanity’s last hope of saving Earth). Feeling entirely unequipped—in no small part thanks to some remaining gaps in his memory—he gets to work trying to figure out the science to save everyone back home. Project Hail Mary (perfectly balances all of its various elements. The science feels grounded without being overcomplicated, there’s a substantial sprinkling of humor to lighten the tense situation, and the novel’s portrayal of both isolation and connection tugs at the heartstrings. (And of course, the movie adaptation will be out in March next year, though the latest trailer reveals quite a lot, edging into what some readers might consider spoiler territory). The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson (2025) Space might be the worst place to be when dealing with amnesia, but there’s an even worse location to suddenly wake up in (with or without memories): a coffin. That’s where a woman finds herself at the start of The Burial Tide. Understandably panicked, she kicks and claws her way out of the grave and stumbles to the first house she can find to try and get help. She can’t remember anything about herself, but the doctor she sees finds it far more surprising that she’s alive at all. She’s told that she’s called Mara Fitch and that she was the first casualty of an Ebola-like outbreak on the Irish island of Inishbannock. How she survived what was seemingly her death is unknown, but she’s assured that her memory will return as she settles back into her old life. And yet Mara can’t help but feel that something is amiss. The Burial Tide goes to some creatively weird places with its style of horror, which is rooted in Celtic mythology, but you won’t have to wait long to figure out what’s happening on this strange and eerie island because the short chapters ensure things move along at a rapid pace. Have I missed out any notable stories or books that start with the main character experiencing amnesia? Feel free to recommend your own favorite works of fiction involving memory loss in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five SFF Narratives That Start With Characters Waking Up With Amnesia appeared first on Reactor.

We need to rethink how, and how quickly, galaxies come to be.

From cyber crime to the placebo effect and mind-reading robots, turns out there’s a lot of science in magic.

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow traveled over to CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday for a three-segment interview that concluded with her hyping her new podcast about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which she and Colbert suggested is analogous to the present day. Colbert set Maddow up by asking, “You have a new podcast. All right. Burn Order. It's about the Japanese internment in the U.S. in the 1940s. You’ve said that history is here to help in times of crisis. What is the story of Burn Order, and how does that history help us now?”     Maddow began her reply with a history lesson, “So, when we went to war with Japan in World War II, there were zero Japanese Americans who worked as spies for Japan. There were zero Japanese Americans who participated in any sabotage or helped Japan in the war against us in any way. There were some people in this country who were spying for Japan, but they were generally white, homegrown American fascists who liked Japan for the same reason they like Germany and Italy. Like there really—Japanese Americans were not implicated in any bad stuff at all, and military intelligence knew it, and the DOJ knew it, and the FBI knew it.” In other interviews, Maddow has more explicitly compared internment with the Trump Administration’s deportations efforts. However, unlike Japanese Americans during the war, illegal immigrants have, by definition, done something wrong by being in the country illegally. As for this interview, following more history, Colbert wondered, “Was anyone held—brought to justice?” Maddow answered, “The bad guys spent their entire lives denying they had anything to do [with] it, lying about it, and pretending like they were not involved. And their families have since spent the multiple generations since pretending like those people are not members of their family. So, history has remembered them in the appropriate way.” Moving on to the applications for today’s America, she continued, “But for me this is really useful because we have had really racist, terrible, awful, pointless policies in the past, and fighting it is worthy. You don't know when you're necessarily going to win. It may take a long time, but if you stick with it, ultimately history will reward the people who are righteous in these moments, and they will chase the bad guys to the ends of their days.” Colbert concluded by declaring, “I certainly hope you are right. Thank you, Rachel.” For all the talk about the “bad guys” from the 1940s and how it allegedly correlates to today, liberal hero Franklin Roosevelt was noticeably absent from this discussion. Here is a transcript for the December 2-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 12/3/2025 12:26 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: You have a new podcast. RACHEL MADDOW: I do. COLBERT: All right. Burn Order. It's about the Japanese internment in the U.S. in the 1940s. You’ve said that history is here to help— MADDOW: Yeah. COLBERT: —in times of crisis. What is the story of Burn Order, and how does that history help us now? MADDOW: So, when we went to war with Japan in World War II, there were zero Japanese Americans who worked as spies for Japan. There were zero Japanese Americans who participated in any sabotage or helped Japan in the war against us in any way. There were some people in this country who were spying for Japan, but they were generally white, homegrown American fascists who liked Japan for the same reason they like Germany and Italy. Like there really—Japanese Americans were not implicated in any bad stuff at all, and military intelligence knew it, and the DOJ knew it, and the FBI knew it. And nevertheless we locked up 120,000 Americans. I mean, elderly people, men, women, children. They went and got babies out of orphanages if they thought those babies might have some Japanese blood. They went and got kids out of foster homes because they thought they might have some Japanese lineage and we had internal domestic prison camps and locked people up for years for no reason. And it turns out that the people who did it, it wasn't inevitable. The people who got this done knew it was wrong when they were doing it. And so they covered it up. They covered up the reason why they were doing it and they covered up how they got it done and that story is kind of a thriller because they ordered all the evidence of what they did literally burned. They ordered all the evidence incinerated. And it was these intrepid Japanese Americans when nobody else was standing up for them, they had to do it themselves, who uncovered what really happened, exposed it all, made the U.S. Government apologize, overturned all of the court cases that made possible and ultimately got reparations for what they did. The bad guys— COLBERT: Was anyone held—brought to justice? MADDOW: The bad guys spent their entire lives denying they had anything to do it, lying about it and pretending like they were not involved. And their families have since spent the multiple generations since pretending like those people are not members of their family. So, history has remembered them in the appropriate way. But for me this is really useful because we have had really racist, terrible, awful, pointless policies in the past, and fighting it is worthy. You don't know when you're necessarily going to win. It may take a long time, but if you stick with it, ultimately history will reward the people who are righteous in these moments, and they will chase the bad guys to the ends of their days. COLBERT: I certainly hope you are right. Thank you, Rachel.

Texas just sent a blunt message to Silicon Valley: You don’t get to censor Texans and then run home to California.In a world where Big Tech routinely decides who may speak and who must be silenced, Defense Distributed v. YouTube, Google, and Alphabet has become a defining moment in the national fight over digital free expression. The shock isn’t the censorship at issue; it’s the fact that Big Tech — for once — lost.In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like.Defense Distributed, a Texas company, committed the unpardonable offense of promoting the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.Our videos and ads — some of them simply announcing court victories — were throttled, suppressed, or removed by YouTube and Google. None of this surprised us. These platforms built vast empires on controlling information and burying viewpoints that fall outside their ideology.Texas prepared for this fightThe surprise is that Texas saw this coming and armed itself for the conflict. HB 20 — now Chapter 143A of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code — directly prohibits viewpoint-based censorship by major platforms. The law doesn’t hint, suggest, or politely advise. It states outright: Social media companies may not censor Texans for their viewpoints, and lawsuits brought under this chapter stay in Texas courts no matter what boilerplate corporate contracts say.So when Defense Distributed filed suit, YouTube and Google reached for their favorite escape route: forum-selection clauses that force nearly every challenger into California courts, where Big Tech enjoys home-field advantage. It’s a delay tactic, a cost-inflation tactic, a shield against accountability — and it almost always works.But Texas slammed that door shut before they reached it.No escapeHB 20 doesn’t merely frown on these clauses; it voids them. The statute declares that any attempt to waive its protections violates Texas public policy — public policy the law describes as “of the highest importance.” The legislature anticipated Big Tech’s usual playbook and locked the gates years in advance.The federal court recognized this. Judge Alan Albright ruled that transferring the case to California would directly undermine Texas’ strong public policy. Under federal law, courts cannot enforce a forum-selection clause that contradicts a state’s deeply rooted interests — especially when the legislature spells those interests out with the clarity found in HB 20.Silicon Valley does not hear the word “no” very often. Big Tech’s money, influence, and political allies usually clear the path. But in a federal courtroom in the Lone Star State, Texas’ commitment to protecting its citizens from ideological censorship outweighed Silicon Valley’s customary dominance. The court refused to let YouTube and Google drag the case back to California.The fight stayed in Texas — exactly where the legislature intended.A national shift and a model for statesThe timing matters. Americans now understand that Big Tech can shape elections, suppress dissent, and curate truth itself. HB 20 was mocked by the press, attacked by activists, and targeted by corporate lobbyists from the moment it passed. Yet today, it stands as one of the most potent legal tools in the country’s fight against digital censorship.HB 20 is no longer just a statute; it is proof that a state with conviction can push back and win.RELATED: Big Tech CEOs should leave policy to the politicians Photo by Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThis victory is more than a procedural ruling. It affirms that Big Tech’s era of unchallenged authority is not inevitable. Defense Distributed didn’t merely keep our lawsuit in Texas; we preserved the principle that powerful corporations cannot hide their censorship behind “terms of service” fine print.Texas drew a line in the sand, and — for once — Silicon Valley stopped.In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like. This ruling promises that citizens still have a fighting chance, that speech still matters, and that even the world’s largest corporations remain subject to the laws of a state determined to defend its people.

A new 5-CD boxed set sorts out some of the New Zealand band's earliest material. The post Before There Was Crowded House, There Was Split Enz: Box Set Review appeared first on Best Classic Bands.

Morning Minute: What Will the Day Bring?

From Trump to Vance: Musk Maps Out Epic New 12-Year Efficiency Era