'Beyond the pale'

Dylan Housman argued the Trump administration is trying to end overseas conflicts

Tony Allen was placed under arrest for drug charges Wednesday

30 previously unknown deep-sea species, including the carnivorous “death-ball” sponge, have been confirmed from one of the most remote parts of the planet. The animals were collected during a pair of 2025 research cruises to the waters around Antarctica which yielded stunning discoveries in their own right. But the honor of the discovery and the […] The post Bizarre Deep-Sea Creature Named ‘Death Ball’ Sponge Discovered in Remote Corner of the Planet appeared first on Good News Network.

Following Republicans’ sweeping defeats this week in off-year elections, President Donald Trump says Republicans need to focus on affordability. “As Republicans, you have to talk about it,” he told Bret Baier of Fox News. “Because if you don’t talk about it, you know, I saw that they kept talking about affordability. Well, Biden was a disaster with affordability. He had the highest inflation rate in the history of our country, but you have to talk about it. It’s no good if we do a great job, and you don’t talk about it. And I don’t think they talk about it enough.” Trump called it the party’s “biggest problem.” “I think the biggest problem is Republicans don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the word affordability. And the Democrats lie about it.” “You know, [Republicans] have this new word called affordability and they don’t talk about it enough, the Democrats did,” he continued. “And the Democrats make it up because we took over a mess. Think of energy. Energy was so expensive, and now I have it down to half what it was.” Trump boasted that energy, gas, and grocery prices are down. “Groceries are way down, other than beef,” he said. “Now, beef is going to come down. You know, we have to do that.” “You remember when I started, eggs were up by four times what they were previously,” he said. “I was two days in the office, and they tell me about eggs. I solved that.” Trump said “we’ve got to” continue to get prices “way down.” “Look, when I took over, and I said this, inflation was so bad under Biden, remember, he had the Inflation Reduction Act. It was a scam. And he tried to lower inflation. But he caused the inflation, then he tried to lower the inflation,” he said. “He took over my economy where inflation was at 1%, which is perfect, 1%. He drove it nine or 10 times higher than that in a short period of time. When I took over it was a mess. I have inflation way down. I have it down to a normal number right now, lower than a normal number, in my opinion, I think.” The post Trump Reveals Key for Republicans to Win Elections appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Wisconsin legislators have found a new villain in their quest to save people from themselves: the Virtual Private Network. The state’s latest moral technology initiative, split into Assembly Bill 105 and Senate Bill 130, would force adult websites to verify user ages and ban anyone connecting through a VPN. It passed the Assembly in March and now waits in the Senate, where someone will have to pretend this is enforceable. Supporters are selling the plan as a way to “protect minors from explicit material.” The bill’s machinery reads like a privacy demolition project written by people who still call tech support to reset passwords. The law would apply to any site that “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors.” It then defines that material as anything lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.” The wording is broad enough to rope in half the internet, yet somehow manages to exclude “bona fide news” (as to be determined by the state) and cloud platforms that don’t create the content themselves. Whether that covers social media depends on who you ask: lawyers, lobbyists, or whichever intern wrote the definitions section. The bill instructs websites to delete verification data after access is granted or denied. That sounds good until you recall how the tech industry handles deletion promises. Au10tix left user records exposed for a year after pledging to delete them within 30 days. Tea suffered multiple breaches despite assurances of immediate deletion. In the real world, “deleted” often means “archived on an unsecured server until a hacker finds it.” The headline feature is a rule penalizing anyone who uses a VPN to access restricted material. VPNs encrypt internet traffic and disguise user locations, which lawmakers apparently see as a threat to order. The logic is that if people can hide their IP addresses, the state can’t check their ID to ensure they’re old enough to view certain content. That’s technically true and philosophically disturbing. Officials in other places are already cheering this idea. Michigan introduced a proposal requiring internet providers to detect and block VPN traffic. If Wisconsin adopts the rule, VPN users would become collateral damage. Journalists, activists, and everyday users who rely on encryption for safety would be swept up in the ban. The bill’s VPN clause is built on a fantasy of control that ignores how the internet works. VPNs use encryption and obfuscation to hide their traffic, making it nearly impossible for websites to detect them if the VPN provider implements enough measures. To comply, adult sites would have to block every VPN connection worldwide or collect biometric data from users to prove identity. Either approach would create new privacy risks while pretending to solve an old one. As always, lawmakers insist they’re protecting children. But the bill’s real achievement is to turn privacy itself into something suspicious. By targeting VPNs and forcing ID checks, the legislation pushes the internet toward a future where every click is tagged with your real name and birthdate, waiting for the next data breach to make it public. Wisconsin’s plan imagines a digital world policed by filters, IDs, and trust in the very corporations that keep leaking personal data. If this is what child safety looks like, it’s hard to tell where protection ends and surveillance begins. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Wisconsin Lawmakers Propose VPN Ban and ID Checks on Adult Sites appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Few objects connect us so directly to the birth of England as the Alfred Jewel. Found buried in a Somerset field over three centuries ago, this dazzling piece of gold, enamel, and rock crystal is more than just an artefact – it’s a rare, tangible link to King Alfred the Great, the King of Wessex who famously turned back the Viking advance in the late 9th century. In The Ashmolean Up Close: King Alfred’s Jewel, historian Dan Snow explores what he calls “one of the greatest treasures of the Ashmolean Museum.” Guided by the museum’s Director, Dr Xa Sturgis, Dan gets exclusive access to the meticulous craftsmanship and revolutionary clues contained within the jewel and other spectacular finds that are rewriting the history of Anglo-Saxon England. Sign up to watch The enigma of the Alfred Jewel The Alfred Jewel is renowned for its intricate beauty, but also for its mystery. The original Alfred Jewel is too precious to be removed from its case, but Dan is allowed to handle a replica of the jewel, which features a tear-shaped rock crystal and a stylised enamelled figure set beneath it. Crucially, around the edge, a gold inscription mentions “Alfred” by name – an extraordinary link, as it makes the jewel one of the only objects besides coins that can be directly attributed to the King, even though the writing doesn’t specifically state the word ‘king’. However, the identity of the figure remains debated: Is it Christ? Is it Alfred himself? Dr Sturgis explains that the lack of a crown or halo suggests it could be a personification of the sense of sight. Even the jewel’s purpose is a puzzle. Given a creature carved at the base has a hole for a rivet, the most accepted theory is that the jewel functioned as an “aestel” – a valuable pointer used by priests to keep their place while reading or copying precious manuscripts and to prevent damage to pages. This theory aligns perfectly with a statement Alfred wrote in a book he sent to all his bishops, commanding that “in each book there is an aestel of gold, and I command in God’s name that no man take the pointer from the book.” The Alfred JewelImage Credit: History Hit / Ashmolean Museum Athelney and the turning point The location where the jewel was found – near the Somerset bogs of Athelney – is “very suggestive indeed,” according to Dr Sturgis. Athelney is famously associated with the nadir of Alfred’s reign: the low point when he was driven out by the Vikings and forced to hold out on the marshy isle (giving rise to the legend of the burnt cakes). Ten years later, following his spectacular victory at the Battle of Edington in 878 AD, Alfred founded an Abbey near Athelney. It makes historical sense that if Alfred were to send an aestel to the Abbey, it would be a particularly magnificent one, linking the grand object directly to the most critical turning point of his life and reign. Anglo-Saxon broken sword handle and coins found in the Watlington Hoard The secret life of a kingdom Dan also examines other objects from the Ashmolean that reveal the complex power politics of Alfred’s time, a period when England was divided between Alfred’s Kingdom of Wessex, the Danes, and the independent Duchy of Mercia. The key to rewriting this history lies in the Watlington Hoard, a recent discovery of coins and silver found by a metal detectorist in 2015. The hoard, believed to have been buried by a Viking around 880 AD due to the hack-silver (used as currency by weight), contained Anglo-Saxon coins that are a unique record of the shifting political balance. Dr Sturgis points out that most coins in the hoard are a combination of King Alfred’s coinage and coins of Ceolwulf of Mercia. The coins feature images of Alfred and Ceolwulf side-by-side, strongly suggesting that at some point they were co-equals, cooperating on coinage and perhaps even military payments. This detail shatters the long-held historical view that Mercia was simply a powerless “zombie kingdom” controlled by the Vikings, which Alfred simply absorbed. Instead, the coin evidence suggests Alfred was happy, at least briefly, to accept another great English ruler as almost co-equal. As Dr Sturgis points out, “this idea that a metal detectorist in a field near Watlington can rewrite a period of Anglo-Saxon history just from 200 things found in the ground is extraordinary and gives a sense of the fragility of our knowledge of this period”.  Producer Fiona Turnock and Bill Locke (Head of Programming) film some of the objects featured in the programme with Dr Xa Sturgis.Image Credit: History Hit / Ashmolean Museum The legacy of conflict The tumultuous era is also revealed as Dan examines a broken sword handle found in a river – a common way Anglo-Saxons decommissioned weapons after a warrior’s death. The intricate silver decorations prove it belonged to a high-status individual, likely dating from the same critical period of the late 870s. The handle is not only Anglo-Saxon in style, but a Christian object, bearing the symbols of the Four Evangelists. This powerful artefact could have been present at the pivotal Battle of Edington, connecting the ultimate victory to faith and elite warfare. The objects in the Ashmolean Museum clearly show that the late 9th century was a period of intense conflict and change. From the artistry of the Alfred Jewel to the political secrets held in a handful of coins, these treasures are not just relics of the past. They are a bridge to understanding the minds and motivations of the people who lived, fought, and died while England was born. Join Dan Snow and Dr Xa Sturgis to uncover the historical secrets of this turbulent era in The Ashmolean Up Close: King Alfred’s Jewel. Sign up to watch

So It Begins: Mamdani Man Can!

They are not the first to be stuck in space, and, if space junk has anything to do with it, they won't be the last.

It might be among the oldest living organisms on Earth, too.