For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even. Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East […] The post In East Africa, Rats Have Prevented 400,000 New Cases of Deadliest Infection Using Their Super Sense of Smell appeared first on Good News Network.

News Black Mirror A New Trailer Introduces Black Mirror’s Latest Techno-Miseries To “Into Infinity” and beyond! By Molly Templeton | Published on March 31, 2025 Image: Parisa Tag/Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Parisa Tag/Netflix Six new episodes of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror are coming next month—and they look like six different ways to be deeply unhappy (or possibly murdered?) via technology. Perhaps someone else might control your emotions? Perhaps your memories might not be a comfort? Perhaps the AI characters in a virtual movie turn against you? With a new trailer, Netflix has announced the summaries and specific casting for each episode. There’s one direct sequel, with “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” and one episode, “Plaything,” which ties directly to Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the show’s “interactive odyssey” from 2018. Here are the episode details: “Common People”Synopsis: When a medical emergency leaves schoolteacher Amanda fighting for her life, desperate husband Mike signs her up for Rivermind, a high-tech system that will keep her alive — but at a cost. Starring: Chris O’Dowd as Mike, Rashida Jones as Amanda, and Tracee Ellis Ross as Gaynor. “Bête Noire”Synopsis: Maria is a high-flying development executive at a chocolate company. Everything is going well for her until someone she hasn’t seen since school — a woman named Verity — shows up for a focus group tasting session. It could be the chance for a heartfelt reunion, except there’s something very odd about Verity, and Maria seems to be the only person who notices. Starring: Siena Kelly as Maria, Rosy McEwen as Verity, Michael Workéyè as Kae, Ben Bailey Smith as Gabe, Amber Grappy as Yudy, Ravi Aujla as Mr. Ditta, Elena Sanz as Camille, and Hanna Griffiths as Luisa. “Hotel Reverie”Synopsis: Hollywood A-list actor Brandy Friday is thrown into an unusually immersive high-tech remake of a vintage romantic movie. She’s got to stick to the script if she ever wants to make it home. Starring Emma Corrin as Dorothy, Issa Rae as Brandy, Awkwafina as Kimmy, and Harriet Walter as Judith Keyworth. “Plaything”Synopsis: An eccentric loner named Cameron, who harbors an obsession with a mysterious 1990s video game, is arrested in connection with a grisly cold case — and his interrogation soon goes to places the police weren’t expecting. Starring: Peter Capaldi as older Cameron Walker, Lewis Gribben as younger Cameron Walker, James Nelson Joyce as DCI Kano, Michele Austin as Jen, Will Poulter as Colin Ritman, and Asim Chaudhry as Mohan Thakur. “Eulogy”Synopsis: An innovative system that enables users to literally step into photographic memories of the past leads a lonely man to re-examine a heartbreaking period in his past. Starring: Paul Giamatti as Phillip and Patsy Ferran as The Guide. “USS Callister: Into Infinity”Synopsis: Robert Daly is dead, but the crew of the USS Callister — led by Captain Nanette Cole — find that their problems are just beginning. Starring: Cristin Milioti as Nanette, Jimmi Simpson as Walton, Billy Magnussen as Karl, Milanka Brooks as Elena Tulaska, Osy Ikhile as Nate Packer, and Paul G. Raymond as Kabir Dudani. The seventh season of Black Mirror arrives on Netflix April 10th.[end-mark] The post A New Trailer Introduces <i>Black Mirror</i>’s Latest Techno-Miseries appeared first on Reactor.

Books aliens Five SF Stories About Aliens Posing as Humans Aliens living among us… and vice versa. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on March 31, 2025 Credit: British Lion Films Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: British Lion Films Humans on the whole tend to be xenophobic, alas. It’s not just differences in language or culture that we stigmatize; those are superficial. Can be tolerated, or changed if necessary. What we seem to hate extravagantly and irrationally are small differences in appearance; the wrong skin color, the wrong facial features… It’s as if anyone different from us is an alien, to be ostracized, subjugated, expelled, or drummed out of existence. This would go double for any visitors from other star systems, as many science fiction authors have predicted. It follows that any interstellar visitors not lucky enough to look human might elect to adopt a form indistinguishable from human, the better to blend in on Earth. Perhaps examples would help—here are five: The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis (1963) Anthea has highly developed technology but (thanks to some very poor decisions) almost no resources. Its population has dwindled until there are only three hundred surviving Antheans. Earth, on the contrary, has an abundance of resources. Not that this would do Anthea any good, because: Earth lacks the ability to export its resources. Earth doesn’t know that Anthea exists at all. Anthea is doomed, unless some ingenious way can be found to put Terrestrial resources at Anthean disposal. The meager Anthean resources are sufficient to deliver one Anthean disguised as a human to Earth. Adopting the name Thomas Jerome Newton, his task is to parlay Anthean technological innovations into a fortune, which can then be used to finance Anthea’s salvation, quite possibly bringing global peace and prosperity to Earth as a side-effect. A worthy plan with only two flaws: Newton’s weakness for American vices and America’s profoundly paranoid security state. As you know, The Man Who Fell to Earth was adapted to film, as were Tevis’ The Hustler and The Color of Money, while The Queen’s Gambit was adapted to television. The Hustler and The Color of Money are explicitly connected, while nothing in The Queen’s Gambit rules out it being in the same narrative universe. Do all four adaptations share the same continuity? Nobody in Hustler, Color, or Queen’s Gambit says they are Anthean, which is exactly what we would expect if they were undercover aliens… The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Louise Engdahl (1971) Planetary civilizations that develop space flight survive and thrive. Those that do not perish. The Federation is curious as to why some planets choose one path while others choose the other. The planet Toris, poised on the brink of choosing between maturity or doom, is a rare chance to observe the so-called critical stage. Rather conveniently for the Federation, Toris’ natives are sufficiently humanoid that it’s trivial to disguise field agents Elana and Randil as locals before planting them as observers amongst the unsuspecting Torisians. Less conveniently for both Toris and the Federation, Randil is convinced that he can save Toris from itself—a direct contravention of Federation rules. In fact, Randil may be the catalyst for planetary doom. What the heck is it about science fictional Federations and rogue field agents? This is something of an inversion of the aliens-among-us trope. Technically, this is humans amongst aliens. Engdahl’s universe appears to produce a curious abundance of essentially human aliens, while Toris is suspiciously similar to Cold War-era Earth, as seen from an American perspective. Ingathering by Zenna Henderson (1995) Forced to flee their doomed home world, a shipload of People reached the Earth in the late 19th century. The catastrophic landing scattered survivors across the American Southwest. Enough People survived to ensure the continuation of the People…at least for the moment. Visually indistinguishable from Terrestrials, the People differ in very important respects. Humans developed technology. The People have psionic powers. Humans are often violent. The People are not. Therefore, when possible, the People live apart, in isolated communities. That this is not always possible, that the charade may someday fail, is a concern for the People, because on Earth “different is dead.” Despite the gloomy tone of the above, the People stories often have happy endings. However, reaching them requires a lot of work. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa (2003) Young Haruhi had a horrifying revelation. She is only one insignificant human among billions of insignificant humans. Outraged at the injustice, Haruhi set out to pursue wonders. If time-travelers, sliders (people from alternate universes), psychic adepts, or aliens are on Earth, Haruhi’s SOS Brigade1 will find them. Haruhi would be astonished to learn that of the SOS’s members (Mikuru Asahina, Itsuki Koizumi, Yuki Nagato, Kyon, and Haruhi herself), only Kyon is a mundane human. Mikuru is a time-traveler, Itsuki is an esper, and Yuki is the humanoid manifestation of the incomprehensibly alien Data Integration Thought Entity. As for Haruhi? She may well be a god whose whimsy could imperil existence, a being who warrants close monitoring. A good part of the series’ arc involves Haruhi learning to be a better or at least less-bad person (or a better whatever the hell she is, something for which Mikuru, Itsuki, and Yuki lack consensus beyond “extremely dangerous”). This is the first novel in a series, which means that base-state Haruhi is comprehensively lacking in basic virtues such as kindness and empathy. She learns to be better as the series proceeds… albeit from a very low starting point. Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! by Manta Aisora and illustrated by Koin (2009) Earth! The universe’s only source of thionite delectable humans and delectable human products such as anime! Purloining humans and human creations for sale elsewhere in the galaxy is forbidden (or at least, regulated). Humans being unable to defend themselves, stalwart officers like Nyaruko must protect them. More specifically, Nyaruko must protect Japanese student Mahiro Yasaka. Better known on Earth as Nyarlothotep, Nyaruko’s default form is an eldritch abomination, the smallest glimpse of which would surely drive all humans within eyeshot insane. Not ideal for undercover work. Happily, among her available forms is that of a silver-haired high-school girl—a perfect choice for infiltrating Earth before inadvertently unleashing chaos. Readers may be surprised that there is a light novel series (and various adaptations thereof) in which a major character is a sympathetically portrayed Lovecraftian horror. These readers may be interested to learn that the Lovecraftian horror tabletop roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu is wildly popular in Japan… and also that there is at least one other work featuring a sympathetically portrayed Lovecraftian horror: Pochi Iida’s The Elder Sister-like One, in which Shub-Niggurath embraces the role of doting older sister to a forsaken orphan. There are many tales in which aliens pass themselves off as human (or humans as alien)2. These are but a very few. This is usually where I encourage readers to mention other examples below: Please do! However, I also would appreciate it if some reader could identify a book I bought from Scholastic in Grade 5 (so 1971–1972), which featured an alien boy able to pass as human because human minds refused to accept his manifest alienness and saw him as a normal boy. It isn’t Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, because that wasn’t published until 1979. Any idea what it was?[end-mark] In the English translation, SOS stands for “Spreading excitement all Over the world with Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade”. Acronyms do not appear to be one of Haruhi’s strong points. ︎Especially on television and in movies, because hiring actors whose natural form causes viewers to perish in raving madness negatively impacts audience size. ︎The post Five SF Stories About Aliens Posing as Humans appeared first on Reactor.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Kristen Clarke, who headed up the Justice Department office that prosecuted pro-lifers for protesting abortion clinics, met with leaders at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which compares mainstream conservative and Christian groups to the Ku Klux Klan, documents suggest. The meeting may shed light on the animus that Clarke—then the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for civil rights—harbored against conservatives. According to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by America First Legal and provided to The Daily Signal, Clarke planned to meet with SPLC leadership on Monday, March 6, 2023. “As you know on Sunday/Monday, Kristen will be in Selma and Montgomery,” Jonathan Smith, deputy assistant attorney general at Clarke’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in a March 2 email to Karen Stevens, a senior policy council at the division. Stevens asked Kevin Jenkins, the division’s public engagement and outreach advisor, for Clarke’s itinerary. Jenkins shared that Clarke planned to “meet with the leadership of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Equal Justice Initiative. The meeting with the SPLC and EJI are with leadership only.” FOIA document obtained by America First Legal The Daily Signal reached out to the Justice Department, the SPLC, EJI, and the organization Clarke once ran, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, for confirmation that the meeting took place and for details about it. This article will be updated with any response. What Is the SPLC? The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s, but by the 2000s, it had weaponized this history against conservatives. The SPLC publishes a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside Klan chapters, suggesting that the same kind of hatred and potential for terrorism drives conservatives. The “hate map” includes parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty; religious freedom law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom; conservative Christian think tanks like the Family Research Council; pro-enforcement immigration groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform; organizations that warn about the threat of radical Islamist terrorism like the Center for Security Policy; and more. The most recent version added groups of doctors who oppose the experimental interventions euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.” It also added the lesbian, gay, and bisexual organization Gays Against Groomers to the “hate map” as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.” The SPLC has faced numerous scandals over the years. In 2012, a terrorist used the “hate map” to target the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. The SPLC condemned the attack, but kept FRC on the map. In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. Amid that scandal, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” In the wake of that scandal, SPLC staff unionized. Last year, the SPLC Union accused the center of “union-busting” for a rash of layoffs that included unionized staff. The SPLC has paid millions in defamation settlements, and it currently faces a defamation lawsuit for branding a pro-enforcement immigration group in Georgia an “anti-immigrant hate group.” As I wrote in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” these scandals did not prevent the Biden administration from welcoming the SPLC with open arms. President JOe Biden nominated an SPLC attorney to a top federal judgeship. The Biden White House welcomed SPLC leaders and staff at least 18 times. The Justice Department received a briefing from the SPLC shortly after it added Moms for Liberty to the “hate map” in June 2023. The March 2023 meeting raises important questions about Clarke’s animus against the conservatives and Christians the SPLC demonizes, and about whether Clarke may have influenced the SPLC. Kristen Clarke Clarke’s bias against Christians should not come as a surprise. After all, she cited the SPLC in condemning Alliance Defending Freedom—a conservative Christian law firm that has won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court—as a “hate group.” As head of the Office of Civil Rights, Clarke led the disproportionate charges against pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics. Following the leak of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association opinion overturning the abortion precedent Roe v. Wade, vandals have attacked at least 96 pro-life pregnancy centers and 326 Catholic churches. Yet in all of 2022, the Justice Department did not charge a single person with any attacks, and it only charged four people with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for such vandalism in 2023. According to the Justice Department, the FACE Act protects access to both abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers, but the Civil Rights Division charged 26 pro-lifers with FACE Act violations in 2022. By contrast, the DOJ only charged four people with FACE Act violations in 2021 and even fewer in the years before that. Clarke, as assistant attorney general for civil rights since May 2021, leads the division in charge of FACE Act prosecutions. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who held Clarke’s job during the Obama administration, said in December 2022 that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work, including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.” A former DOJ official told The Daily Signal that the department appears to be “using the FACE Act to intimidate the pro-life population of the country.” Clarke served as president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a left-wing activist group. She also worked for five years at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a leftist group that ties abortion to “racial justice.” Both groups have frequently accessed the Biden White House and received large cash infusions from the Left’s dark money network. As my former colleague Mary Margaret Olohan exclusively reported for The Daily Signal, Clarke had been arrested for attacking her then-husband, Reginald Avery, with a knife, deeply slicing his finger to the bone in 2006. The pair finalized their divorce in 2009. Clarke had the arrest expunged from her record, and during her Senate confirmation, she denied ever having been arrested or having been accused of committing a violent crime. Clarke admitted to her failure to disclose this arrest, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, called for her to resign. As the Trump administration takes control of the federal bureaucracy, Americans can expect more secrets like this March 2023 meeting to become public. Groups like the SPLC enjoyed tremendous access and influence in the previous administration, and that helps explain why bureaucrats weaponized law enforcement against conservatives. The post EXCLUSIVE: Kristen Clarke Met With Far-Left Group Comparing Conservative Christians to the KKK appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration received some good news when the Senate confirmed Dr. Marty Makary as head of the Food and Drug Administration. This is a critical nomination to get through because the FDA will play an integral role in executing the president’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Without a doubt, we need him at his post now more than ever! To advance the MAHA agenda, one focus area for the FDA must be to stop the onslaught of unregulated, illicit electronic cigarettes coming in from our most dangerous foreign adversary—China. The issue was even specifically brought up during Makary’s recent confirmation hearing. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., posed a critical question: “What is going on with the FDA and its refusal to address … Chinese vapes that are flooding [U.S.] markets?” Moody noted that two-thirds of the e-cigarettes, or vapes, sold in the U.S. are smuggled in from China. Even more concerning, these products not only exceed FDA nicotine limits but also come in flavors like “strawberry blowpop” and “sour berry”—furthering the notion that these are clearly designed to appeal to children. They are also mislabeled in an attempt to avoid U.S. customs enforcement. Unfortunately, Moody couldn’t be more correct! In his first term, President Donald Trump called illegal Chinese e-cigarettes “poison” and subsequently took action to ban them. Ironically, China also banned these products for its own citizens! So, what did Chinese e-cigarette makers do? They found ways to smuggle their products into the U.S. These unregulated e-cigarettes have accounted for nearly $17 billion in annual U.S. retail sales since the end of the first Trump administration, when illicit sales were minimal—exposing millions of American consumers to unknown chemicals and toxins. But how did this happen? In short, regulatory incompetence. President Joe Biden’s FDA’s failure to issue a definitive list of approved products for sale in the U.S. substantially contributed to the surge of illicit e-cigarettes. The administration’s inaction left the market in chaos, allowing Chinese manufacturers to establish dominance and control a sophisticated supply chain of importers, distributors, and retailers. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last summer, both Republicans and Democrats admonished Biden’s FDA and Department of Justice for their failure to mitigate this growing epidemic. In no uncertain terms, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stated, “These illegal products, clearly designed for children by their flavors, are being sold in the shadow of FDA’s building.” Even so, how do these Chinese companies penetrate our borders? These manufacturers have expanded their presence in the U.S., acting as importers to bypass our Border Patrol and FDA regulations by misrepresenting flavored e-cigarettes as toys, chargers, lights, shoes, and other items, making it even more challenging for authorities to track and regulate these unauthorized products. Once in, the products are then warehoused and distributed to domestic wholesalers—all the while the companies are marketing their goods to young Americans. This vertical integration has enabled Chinese companies to streamline operations, maintain a competitive edge, and further complicate enforcement efforts. To be clear, the acute malignancy here is not the practice of vaping as a whole but rather the unregulated Chinese e-cigarettes pouring into our neighborhoods. Indeed, authorities who study vaping report that e-cigarettes, if properly regulated, are a less dangerous alternative to traditional cigarettes for adults who smoke. As the United Kingdom’s National Health Service stated, “Nicotine vaping is less harmful than smoking.” Better yet, it is “one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking.” However, ingesting harmful unknown chemicals from unregulated Chinese e-cigarettes undercuts all of that entirely. To his great credit, Makary has pledged to crack down on illegal e-cigarettes. As he told Moody in response to her question at the hearing, “We are being flooded with Chinese products; we have no idea what’s in these products.” While Makary reexamines the agency’s approach to regulating e-cigarettes, the administration must address this foreign exploitation of Americans by strengthening border enforcement to stop the flood of this Chinese “poison.” Trump should also pressure the Chinese government to halt exports of these illegal products. In addition, America’s law enforcement agencies must crack down on the foreign manufacturers circumventing our laws. The FDA—in tandem with the DOJ—should leverage every remedy possible under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and other relevant statutes, like Section 301 of the Tobacco Control Act, to open up full-scale investigations into these companies and remove these extremely dangerous products off our streets once and for all. These incremental measures alone will put us one step closer in making Americans healthy again and send a message to China that its days of undermining U.S. laws are over. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post MAHA: FDA Must Address Influx of Dangerous Illicit Chinese Electronic Cigarettes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Germany may soon tighten its grip on digital speech even further, as internal documents obtained by BILD from the ongoing coalition talks between the center-right CDU (led by Friedrich Merz) and the center-left SPD (headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz) point to an unsettling agenda: expanding the state’s authority to police so-called “disinformation.” Behind closed doors, the prospective coalition appears to be crafting policies that would significantly broaden state influence over what can and cannot be said online — particularly on social media platforms. These proposals, originating from the coalition’s “Culture and Media” working group, show a clear intent to escalate pressure on platforms like X and intensify efforts to suppress content labeled as “fake news.” The push is rooted in the belief, echoed in the coalition’s exploratory paper, that “disinformation and fake news” pose a danger to democracy. But the negotiating paper goes even further, declaring: “The deliberate dissemination of false factual allegations is not covered by freedom of expression.” This phrase, quoted by BILD, lays the groundwork for potentially sweeping restrictions on speech, raising serious alarms among legal experts and free speech advocates. The document argues that a supposedly independent media regulatory body must be empowered to crack down on so-called “information manipulation,” as well as “hatred and incitement” — all under the vague condition that it adheres to “clear legal requirements.” But when the government or its proxies begin defining what qualifies as misinformation, the door swings wide open for politically motivated censorship. Many will see this as a dangerous step toward criminalizing dissent. Legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler of the University of Oldenburg told BILD, “Lies are only prohibited if they are punishable, for example in the case of incitement to hatred. Otherwise, you can lie.” He also stressed that the boundary between fact and opinion is often blurry and contested: “It is not a simple question of what is a statement of fact and what is an expression of opinion. In most cases, courts interpret freedom of expression very broadly.” The move mirrors broader concerns raised internationally. US Vice President JD Vance previously slammed Germany’s trajectory on both mass migration and censorship, warning that Berlin’s crackdown on dissent risks becoming self-destructive. With political speech increasingly vulnerable to arbitrary classification as misinformation, critics worry that these new policies represent not a defense of democracy, but an erosion of one of its most fundamental pillars: the right to free and open debate. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Germany’s CDU-SPD Coalition Eyes Stricter Online Speech Controls appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Better safe than sorry, ey?

It's planet Earth, but not as we know it.

Access is heavily restricted to protect both humans and the island’s critically endangered residents.

This achievement could revolutionize the way we secure data.