'A reprehensible use of Minnesota taxpayers’ money'

“We’re a tourist attraction on Google Maps now,” local Londener Polly Barker told CBS News, gesturing to her garden hedge—trimmed immaculately so as to depict Henry Moore’s famous sculpture Reclining Nude.  CBS was in Barker’s neighborhood to talk to the sculptor himself: a man named Bushe. Tim Bushe has been trimming hedges for 15 years. […] The post Hobbyist Hedgetrimmer Transforms His Street into Green Sculpture Gallery in Memory of Beloved Wife appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Short Fiction Spotlight Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: July 2024 By Alex Brown | Published on August 16, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Turns out some of my favorite stories I read last month were about characters taking revenge on the patriarchy. I can’t imagine what would be happening in the world that would make me really enjoy stories where the patriarchy finally got what’s coming to them. A mystery for sure. Also resurrection. Strange bedfellows. Anyway, here are ten great short speculative fiction stories. “Bright Lights, Dark Millenium” by E. C. Dorgan “I was a no one when I left the prairie, but stepping off the train on the cusp of the millennium, I know it’s my time to shine.” Our Métis narrator grew up in rural Canada before moving to Toronto in 1999. They get a job at a mysterious yet enticing company and have to compete with four other people—a Métis physics nerd and the rest affluent white guys—for the job. What is the job? Who knows. What does the company do? *shrug* Who are those strange gray beings in the mirror? Don’t ask. What I love about this story is that it isn’t an Eldritch being dark fantasy but also a commentary on colonialism, assimilation (particularly with regards to Indigenous identities), and the way we can eagerly participate in our own cultural destruction without necessarily realizing it. (Gamut Magazine—July 2024; issue 8) “Eternal Recurrence” by Spencer Nitkey “The deepfake is nothing like you.” If you know anything about AI or generative AI, this story will strike a chord. Our narrator keeps trying to replicate the person they lost, first through technology then through increasingly strange circumstances. Grief is a helluva thing. Sometimes it feels impossible to move on. What kind of life can you have without your center? (Diabolical Plots—July 1, 2024; issue 113) “Father Ash” by Rachel Hartman I don’t know how Rachel Hartman keeps coming up with ideas based on the fantasy world she created for the Seraphina and Tess of the Road duologies, but I’m so here for it. “Father Ash” is “adapted from a Goreddi Folktale,” Goredd being a kingdom in the Southlands where the protagonists from the aforementioned series were from. You don’t need to have read any of the books in this world in order to delight in this story. A man with no memory is on the run with a young woman trying to save his life. It’s bittersweet in the way the best traditional fairy tales are, as the pair make choices that hurt as much as they offer solace. (Sunday Morning Transport—July 21, 2024) “Melting Point” by Cass Wilkinson Saldaña I can safely say this is the first short story I’ve ever read where the narrator is a shipping container on a cargo ship. The technology managing the container gains sentience. It starts up a one-sided conversation with a stray pigeon that has unintentionally stowed away on the ship. The story is weird and fractured, yet strangely poetic. And it got me thinking about the ways we—meaning my trans, nonbinary, and queer siblings—seek connection and community. We do the unexpected and find others who are equally unexpected, and with that we create bonds that defy conventions. (Apparition Literary Magazine—July 2024; issue 27) “Schrödinger’s Bones” by André Geleynse Our protagonist in this fantasy flash fiction story decides to resurrect their dead kitten. André Geleynse describes in lurid detail the corpse and the process, but doesn’t let the story fall into horror territory. If anything, it’s hopeful. I am a rat person rather than a cat person, but each time I lose one of my babies I wish I could bring them back to life. This had me getting up off the couch to hug my boys. (Small Wonders—July 2024; issue 13) “Skinless” by Eugenia Triantafyllou A guy running a roadside tourist trap talks to some girls about monsters. The man tells them how to tame a woman out of being a monster, by hiding her animal skin, much like a selkie (although that word is never used in the story). I know the trope of an innocent-looking girl turning out to be a monster is an old one, but it’s one of my favorites. Little girls aren’t always sugar and spice; sometimes they’re sharp teeth and bloody vengeance. (Haven Speculative—July 2024; issue 16) “The Angel’s Share” by Martin Cahill “The air became heavy with all that was unsaid. At some point, he must’ve realized what Mrs. Mead had realized some time ago: After such a lifetime of trauma, what the fuck could be said, really?” Mrs. Mead’s home is haunted by angels. Mostly they feed off what’s left of her dead mother, but the longer they infest her life, the more she loses herself to their hunger. A moving story about surviving abuse, not just getting away from an abuser but the ways that trauma can latch onto you like a parasite. It can drive you to do terrible things to others and yourself, sometimes as punishment and sometimes as a twisted sort of schadenfreude glee. (Reactor—July 24, 2024) “Three Things That Happen the Night My Dad Dies” by Isabel Cañas This short piece is exactly what is on the tin: three descriptions of the life of our narrator’s father when he dies as a teen. Each experience post-death is different, and shapes the people in his life in unique ways. Isabel Cañas’ story has a YA feel to it that I loved. It’s not just the dad’s story here, but also what his child thinks about it and the impact his death (and sometimes resurrection) has on them. Death is never just an individual experience. (The Deadlands—Summer 2024; issue 35) “To Call the Lightning” by Rebecca Burton I love a good, old fashioned revenge story, and Rebecca Burton delivers with this twisted little fairy tale. When Mathilde arrives at—or, more accurately, returns to—the tower, it’s a dark and stormy night. The nobles who inhabit the tower were not expecting her, but they should have. They took everything from her, and now she’s back to return the favor. They may have forgotten about her, but now Mathilde makes sure she’s the last thing they think about. A vicious story about not so much dismantling the patriarchy as burning it down and salting the earth. (Kaleidotrope—Summer 2024) “What Is Conjured Shall Vanish” by Akis Linardos Speaking of fucking over the patriarchy, I give you “What Is Conjured Shall Vanish.” After the new emperor slaughters all the witches, a young woman tries to protect her magically-inclined mother by sacrificing herself. The daughter casts spells to create imaginary food to ease the pains of starvation while her mother bewitches her mouth into a smile so the emperor won’t know how angry they are. Many authors would want to give a story like this a happy or at least revolutionary ending, but Akis Linardos picks exactly the right resolution. (Apex—July 2024; issue 145) [end-mark] The post Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: July 2024 appeared first on Reactor.

This is how much Elon Musk spooks big media. At Monday’s White House press briefing, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if the Biden administration was going to do something to muzzle Musk ahead of the billionaire’s scheduled conversation with Donald Trump via X that evening. After mentioning the impending Musk-Trump interview, Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson Jr. offered that “misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue,” but “an America issue.” He then asked, “What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that?” Wootson specifically asked if the White House saw a role “intervening” before the interview aired because he anticipated “campaign misinformation,” but also something “wider.” Here’s the whole quote: “Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tomor… —tonight on—on X. I don’t know if the president is going to tune in. Feel free to say if he is or not. But I, I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a, you know, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of inter … intervening in that? Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but, you know, it’s a wider thing, right?” It’s a sad day when hints that the government should monitor interviews come from The Washington Post, the newspaper that cut its teeth breaking the Watergate story. Jean-Pierre showed more sense. She responded that the Biden White House is aware of the responsibilities that “social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation.” She added that X is a private company, and the Musk-Trump interview wasn’t something that she was tracking. Ditto Biden. I have another question. Since when do reporters suggest the government lean on its perceived rivals? What happened to the glorious notion that the way to fight bad speech—assuming it’s bad—is with more speech? Better speech? Too often, misinformation is the word censors use to justify their urge to silence people who don’t share their worldview. By the way, how many times have we seen stories damned as misinformation—say, on COVID-19 policies or Hunter Biden’s laptop—later turn out to be true? How do we find out if we are wrong? By listening. The White House famously is called a “bubble”—an insular environment that keeps outsiders out and insiders snugly inside the echo chamber. The role of journalists should be to pierce the bubble, but in my time in Washington, some high-profile reporters have considered themselves enforcers. When Trump was president, press briefings included many versions of this question: How can you say that? Not enough: Why did you say that? Wags have scoffed at the Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper’s motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Monday, a Post reporter harmed any pretense of fairness on a national stage. What happened Monday night? Musk, who had endorsed Trump, interviewed Trump. There were technical glitches, but democracy didn’t die. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Why Would a White House Reporter Ask About Muzzling Musk? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Can we save the dollar before central banking kills it? Yes. It’s surprisingly easy. And, as you might expect, it involves gold. As federal deficits hit 8% of gross domestic product—unprecedented in peacetime—and our national debt hits $35 trillion—unprecedented in the history of man—even the central bankers realize that this isn’t sustainable. That we are coming to the day our paper money utopia crumbles. Historically, from Song Dynasty China to Weimar Germany, when paper dies we return to hard money. Because hard money is the only way to finally kill the money printer. Happily, we can actually do this without the crash. The other day Fox Business financial journalist Charles Payne sent me a quote by 1970s Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, who wrote, paraphrasing: It is a sobering fact that central banking has led to more inflation, not less. We did better with the 19th-century gold standard, with passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with “free banking.” The power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money and, ultimately, the power to create is the power to destroy. This is a fairly striking admission of failure from—by all accounts—the best Fed chair we’ve had since 1913. A central bank is indeed an extraordinary thing: It’s a privately owned, federally licensed counterfeiter the regime can use to seize literally everything in the world by printing money. It’s why we have inflation and recessions. It’s why we have Wall Street bailouts and a colossal national debt. It’s why the government has grown to dominate our economy and our lives. In contrast, under the gold standard we had zero cumulative inflation over 124 years. We had a federal government that was seven times smaller as a percent of GDP. In 1913, we had a national debt of 8% of GDP. Today, it’s 140%—in fact, it’s rising by almost 8% per year. So how do we get back? Simple: Back the dollar with gold at today’s price—$2,500 per ounce—then mandate that if gold flows out, the Treasury has to buy it back in before the Treasury does anything else—before it pays Ukraine, before it pays interest on the national debt. Presto. Why? Because if they keep printing money it creates inflation and gold goes to, say, $2,600 an ounce. Now, people can make free money by trading $2,500 for an ounce of gold from the Federal Reserve and reselling it for $2,600 on the open market. Gold flows out, now Treasury has to buy it in at 26. In other words, they lose money on the money printer. That means the Fed and Treasury are forced to keep money creation low enough for zero percent inflation—for stable gold. This means interest rates above inflation—no more paying hedge funds to borrow. It means no more quantitative easing to buy up rich people’s assets, leaving inflation for the poor. It means no more Wall Street bailouts. And, above all, it chokes off the spending cancer of the welfare-warfare industrial complex. So what’s next? Neither the gold standard, bitcoin standard, or full reserve banking are remotely on the bingo card for the foreseeable future. And, historically, it takes a crisis to put them there. But it’s important to remember how easy it is to solve our financial catastrophe if and when we get a politician brave enough to try. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post How Gold Saves the Dollar appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Recently a German politician announced a war on right-wing extremism while using phrases as uncomfortable, not only to the German ear, as this – “Those who mock the state (will be confronted by) a strong state.” That’s exactly the kind of rhetoric Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (of the Social Democratic Party, SDP) used when she in July announced the banning of the Compact magazine. Now, the German Federal Administrative Court has decided that the ban is to be lifted pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed against the decision. (The magazine’s “overarching crime” here is that it’s sympathetic to the AfD party, and the party’s, that its growing popularity threatens to dislodge the country’s entrenched elites.) The symbolic “burning of the press” a few months ago featured all but an actual effigy: reports say that the police stormed Compact’s premises, and confiscated everything on site, including furniture, whereas the magazine’s founder Jurgen Elsasser got a knock on his home’s door by “masked special police.” About a month later, the German Federal Administrative Court decided that the ban was to be lifted until Elsasser’s lawsuit against the Interior Ministry is over, which some observers say could take years. But international outlets, which have no problem calling Compact “far-right wing,” seem to be hoping this process will take just months (and obviously, have “the preferred” outcome.) However, that same court sided with Faeser’s legal bypass that made it possible in the first place to start banning politically critical media outlets in a country that considers itself a democracy. Namely, Faeser ignored freedom of the press provisions from the German Basic Law and instead went for the Law on Associations (“Vereinsrecht”) to go after Compact. Thus a media outlet suddenly became an “assembly (…) against the constitutional order” – and, job done. Even the Federal Court agrees, saying that while the ban is temporarily lifted, it was legal of Faeser to use “Vereinsrecht” to achieve her goal. By the same decision, Compact’s video affiliate ConspectFilm remains banned, while reports say a number of the magazine’s employees had their requests for relief turned down. Even so, this quintessentially political case is getting even more political, as questions are now being raised over the legitimacy of Faeser continuing to serve as cabinet minister. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post German Federal Court Temporarily Suspends Prohibition of Compact Magazine appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Sign Up To Keep Reading This post is for Reclaim The Net supporters. Gain access to the entire archive of features and supporters-only content. Help protect free speech, freedom from surveillance, and digital civil liberties. Join Already a supporter? Login here If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Nuclear Agency’s Secret Deal Exposes Vast Government Digital Data Grab appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Hezbollah Hesitating Now Too? UPDATE: Deal Close?

This week on Break It Down: two new victims discovered at the site of Pompeii tell a vivid story, Stonehenge’s altar stone reveals a surprising point of origin, plans to terraform Mars with “glitter”, ancient environments exposed in a kilometer-long Earth sausage, we may know where the dinosaur-killing asteroid came from, and a brief history of humans’ long history of burying the dead. Available on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Amazon Music, and more.So, sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links:Pompeii victimsCorpse castsStonehenge altar stoneThe disco planetEarth sausageChicxulub’s origins storyOldest human burial The Big Questions: How will the Solar System end?Dr Alfredo Carpineti’s space scoops: Sun superflares, Bright early galaxies

Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks' wild rifle assault on former President Donald J. Trump and a Pennsylvania rally crowd July 13 was ended by a “total badass” SWAT operator who hit Crooks' rifle with a bullet from ground level 100 yards away, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said. Crooks, 20, was “fragged” in the face when a Butler County Emergency Services Unit SWAT operator fired at him from ground level and blew apart his rifle's stock, Higgins said Aug. 15. In a report to the bipartisan House task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Trump, Higgins credited the SWAT operator with ending Crooks' attack after eight shots — about 10 seconds before a police counter-sniper shot and killed Crooks. A source earlier told Blaze News the counter-sniper shot was fired from 448 yards southwest of Crooks' position. “Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up,” Higgins wrote. “The SWAT operator who took this shot was a total badass. When he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured-by-foliage moving target on the [American Glass Research] rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat, running to a clear-shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds.” Higgins said his preliminary report was based on about 20 hours of investigative work at the scene in Butler County Aug. 4-6. “As always, my investigation was focused on hard evidence and facts, specific observations guided by instinct and experience,” he wrote. “My overall mission was to personally observe and investigate the available crime scene site, along with consideration of both anticipated and unanticipated interactions with witnesses, the crime scene landscape, hard evidence, corroborative evidence, and circumstantial evidence.” Even after being identified by local police 90 minutes before the shooting as a suspicious person, Crooks was able to slip onto the roof of the sprawling AGR complex between 6:06 and 6:08 p.m. and run at least two-thirds the length of the roof to a concealed shooting perch on Building 6, bodycam footage showed. A Pennsylvania State Police trooper broadcast a warning at 6:08 p.m. that someone was on the roof, but the Secret Service apparently did not hear it. The Secret Service had no personnel in the local police command center and failed to use the special radios provided by police for communicating with the local command center, officials have said. Crooks shot Trump in the right ear at 6:11:32 p.m. during an initial burst of three rifle shots, followed by a rapid discharge of five more bullets. Killed in the gunfire was volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pa. The seriously wounded included David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pa., and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pa. In a briefing last week with U.S. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), local police officials said the U.S. Secret Service has not even acknowledged the heroic action taken by the Butler County SWAT officer in stopping the attack. “That's not being widely reported,” Johnson said Aug. 11. 'This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling.' Higgins said it is possible that the bullet from the SWAT operator disabled Crooks’ weapon and prevented him from firing a ninth or subsequent time. “On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot,” Higgins said. “He stopped Crooks, and importantly, I believe he damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR. … This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle would not fire after his eighth shot.” The buffer tube on an AR-15-style rifle houses a system to control recoil when the weapon is fired. When the SWAT bullet hit his AR-15, Crooks initially went down from his prone shooting stance, the report said, perhaps stunned by the debris striking his face and neck. After a few seconds, the Butler SWAT operator reported, Crooks “popped back up.” Video shot from the west side of Building 6 by eyewitness Jon Malis shows Crooks almost sitting up after his rifle was hit. “Then when I looked back later with my video zoomed in,” Malis said. “Sure enough, you could see him sit up and sling his weapon around and aim it right towards us right before the Secret Service shot him.” Higgins served in a variety of law enforcement roles in Louisiana before first taking office in the House in 2017. Most recently he served as deputy marshal for the city of Lafayette and previously held law enforcement positions at city, town, and parish departments. FBI releases shooter's body Higgins said he had planned to examine Crooks’ body on an investigative trip to Butler Aug. 5 but discovered the FBI had released it to the family for cremation on July 23. “Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5,” Higgins said. “The problem with me not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100% if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. We will actually never know,” Higgins wrote. “Yes, we’ll get the reports and pictures, etc., but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body.” He said the FBI released the crime scene after just three days, harming the efforts of other investigations examining the shooting. 'Cops don't do that, ever.' “I interviewed several first responders who expressed everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion regarding the fact that the FBI released the crime scene so early after J13,” he said. “It should be noted that the FBI was fully aware of the fact that Congress would be investigating J13. The FBI does not exist in a vacuum. They had to know that releasing the J13 crime scene would injure the immediate observations of any following investigation.” The FBI also scrubbed the scene before releasing it. A Beaver County Emergency Services SWAT operator and a medic enter the building from which Thomas Crooks shot former President Donald J. Trump at a rally July 13 in Butler, Pa.Butler Township Police Department via Judicial Watch “The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of,” he said. “Cops don’t do that, ever.” Higgins described the actions of the FBI as “obstruction” of congressional and other investigations that were started since the FBI opened its criminal probe of the shooting. The FBI was surely aware of the U.S. House task force appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), he said. “Why, then, by what measure would the FBI release his body to the family for cremation? This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling,” Higgins said. Blaze News has contacted the FBI for comment on the Higgins report. The Higgins report confirmed information published by Blaze News Aug. 12 that indicated Crooks took a path along the roof to his shooting perch that minimized his exposure to the counter-sniper teams. The view of the Secret Service counter-snipers was badly obscured by two large trees just southeast of the building from which Crooks fired. Crooks likely used his drone just before 4 p.m. to confirm the route he would take on the roof, a Blaze source said. “Crooks’ firing position was also several feet back from the actual peak of the AGR rooftop,” Higgins said. “By choosing this position, Crooks effectively minimized the sky-lined profile of his head and upper body.” No second shooter The report discounted widely circulated internet theories that a second gunman was located atop the blue water tower at the edge of the AGR property. Higgins said the tower was checked and cleared using a drone in the morning. The retractable ladder to access the tower was never lowered that day, and local police squads sat underneath the tower much of the day, he said. To reach the top of the tower, someone would have had to scale the first 25 feet with no ladder, then climb 75 feet to the catwalk, then make it up the “intimidating and precarious” dome vent access ladder. “I do not believe it was possible for a '2nd shooter' sniper to be on top of that water tower on J13, nor have I seen any evidence that supports the theory of a 2nd shooter. I’m not saying conclusively that there was no other shooter somewhere or that no other conspirators were involved in J13, but I’m saying that based on my investigation thus far, there were 10 shots fired on J13, and all shots are accounted for, and all shots align with their source.” Higgins also quashed the idea that a muzzle flash was seen in a first-floor window of the AGR building at the time of the shooting. He said he examined the window and determined it does not open. Higgins gave high marks to the tactical teams and other local police officers who staffed the event and responded to the shooting. “My assessment of the local law enforcement's overall performance on J13 is that the ESU was very professionally deployed and commanded,” he said. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!