A shy kitten was found sitting at a McDonald's drive-thru. Once inside, her demeanor completely changed. Apple the kittenClare at Saving StevieLast Friday, Clare, who volunteers for Saving Stevie (a cat rescue), received a text message about a stray kitten found at a local McDonald's."The kitty had been there since Monday. She was teeny and seemed to want help. She would come up to the car and cry but would bolt when the door was opened," Saving Stevie shared.When Clare saw the pictures of the kitten at the drive-thru, she immediately picked up her rescue supplies and hit the road. She was found sitting at a McDonald's drive-thruClare at Saving Stevie"I got right in the car and headed over to get her," Clare told Love Meow.Upon arrival, Clare spotted the stray standing directly underneath the speaker where customers order at the drive-thru. Though scared, the kitten remained there, as if waiting for some food to fill her belly. She was very timid but seemed to want helpClare at Saving StevieShe had been alone and hungry for days, darting away from people who tried to help her. "She was skittish and ran away when I approached her."Clare set up a humane trap with food inside, and within five minutes, the starving kitten walked in. Clare at Saving StevieWith the kitten safely secured, Clare brought her home, gave her a quiet room to decompress, and lovingly named her Apple.At first, Apple was scared and lost and scanned the room with a worried gaze, but soon, her fear gave way to curiosity as she explored her new space. Apple was finally rescuedClare at Saving StevieWith plenty of food and a cozy bed, she came out of her shell and began to seek attention from her rescuer. "She was scared of me for all of three minutes before she realized she was safe and started loving on me."Apple discovered the sink in the bathroom and swiftly claimed it as her throne. She came out of her shell when she realized she was safeClare at Saving StevieThe second she heard Clare's voice, she turned to her, eagerly asking for head scratches. She made sure Clare was near, rubbing against her, basking in the love."She is so affectionate, purrs so loud, and just loves to rub her face all over me. It's clear she was always meant to be inside." She rubbed her face all over her rescuerClare at Saving StevieApple let her rescuer clean her up and wrap her in a towel for cuddles. Before long, she jumped on Clare's shoulders to survey the room and eventually curled up in her arms, completely content.When she's not tucked in with Clare, she stays by her side, making up for those lonely days outside. Clare at Saving StevieHer purr motor is constantly running, filling the room as she snuggles close. It's been almost a week since Apple moved indoors, and she's transformed into a snuggly love bug."Her favorite thing to do right now is cuddle." She has blossomed into a snuggly love bugClare at Saving StevieShe seems so content with a roof over her head and the assurance that she'll never have to worry about where her next meal will come from.Apple waited at the drive-thru, hoping for a hero. Now, she's thriving in foster care, savoring every second with her people. Clare at Saving StevieShare this story with your friends. More on Apple the kitten and Saving Stevie on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks to Clare @claremadams.Related story: Kitten Found Outside Using Only Front Paws to Walk, Immediately Wants Play and Affection from Everyone

He Might Wear a Barn Jacket But Rural Types and Farmers Not Really Diggin' Tampon Tim

A fossil hunter has been honored with the most coveted of rewards among nature enthusiasts: getting a shiny new-to-science species in his name. Steve Edwards is also a safari guide in northern Zimbabwe, where he found a fossil of a curious fish that lived when the dinosaurs were just getting started around 210 million years ago.The fossil is of a new species and has been named Ferganoceratodus edwardsi to commemorate the efforts of Edwards, who also has a phytosaur and a new dinosaur in his fossil finds portfolio. It’s a type of lungfish, a group of animals that has endured for 420 million years – you can still see them alive today.Lungfish, as the name suggests, are notable for the strange ways in which they breathe. Like many fish, they have a swim bladder. Unusually, this develops into a kind of adapted lung as they get older, allowing them to breathe out of water.That skill came in handy when these fish decided to drag themselves up on land, eventually becoming tetrapods: the four-footed animals that encompass all vertebrates higher than fishes. This means they hold a lot of secrets when it comes to understanding the innovations associated with terrestrialization, which is why scientists were so excited to sequence their massive genome back in 2021.Those early innovations include the lungfish’s unusual talent for sleeping through the heat by hiding out in a burrow wrapped in a mucus cocoon. They leave just enough space for the mouth to breathe while they go without food and water for up to four years.It’s an awesome behavior and one of many quirks of lungfish scientists are eager to learn more about. So, the discovery of a new species of lungfish is always a remarkable fossil find to be added to the ichthyological collections.In the case of Ferganoceratodus edwardsi, it’s a reminder that you don’t have to be a full-time paleontologist to make a discovery that changes natural history.“Steve is an important force for palaeontology, having discovered several Late Triassic sites in southern Africa,” explained co-author of the research Prof Paul Barrett to the Natural History Museum, London, where he is Merit Researcher for Earth Sciences.“This is a time in history when the rise of the dinosaurs was starting, and bony fish were diversifying. By sharing his discoveries, Steve is helping us to better understand this important moment in evolution.”The study is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

When thinking of a place to put a telescope, the ocean bed is probably the last place on your mind, following the age-old "sky = up" principle. But it really depends what you're looking for. The partially built Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT), is looking for high energy neutrinos, in an attempt to study them and to find what astrophysical source sent them flying across the cosmos. To do so it uses the ocean as a sort of detector, and exploits an effect that happens when subatomic particles travel through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium.        The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute speed limit of the universe. Nothing will go faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second), according to Einstein's work, as it would require an infinite amount of energy to do so. However, that doesn't mean that light can't be beaten in terms of speed under the right set of circumstances, and when that happens something strange called the "Cherenkov effect" can take place. In water, for example, light is slowed down to a sluggish 200,000 kilometers per second (124,274 miles per second). Ok, we will grudgingly admit that that's still pretty fast, and any particle wishing to break that speed would require 175 kiloelectron volts of energy behind it.This does sometimes happen. In 1934, Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov witnessed what happens when it does, after bombarding water with radiation. A blue light, now known as Cherenkov light or Cherenkov radiation, was emitted from the water.         He and colleagues Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm figured out what was causing the strange glow: charged subatomic particles moving faster than the speed of light (in water) producing an effect similar to a sonic boom, which occurs when (for example) a plane travels faster than the speed of sound. For their work, they were awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics.It is Cherenkov light in the ocean that KM3NeT is aiming to detect, produced by neutrino interactions within the ocean. The Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss (ARCA) observatory forms the largest part of KM3NeT. The detectors are attached to long strings, with the bottom detectors placed around 3,500 meters (11,482 feet) under the sea. More detectors helps them filter out ocean "noise", such as the decay of potassium 40.Excitingly, ARCA appears to have detected what Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Nature News was "a fantastic event". The bright event seen by ARCA has so far only been teased with neutrino physicist João Coelho reportedly telling the Neutrino 2024 conference in Milan, Italy, but revealing little other than it “really stands out, very far away from anything else."For now, researchers are staying tight-lipped about the direction and time of the detection, in case other teams could use this information to track down the cosmological source, Nature News reports. We will have to wait and learn more of the exciting detection.[H/T: Popular Mechanics]

Viral TikTok sensation Apollo has proved he’s not a bird brain by breaking the world record of the most items identified by a parrot in 3 minutes. The 4-year-old African grey parrot broke the Guinness World Record after successfully identifying 12 items on December 18, 2023. Based in Florida, USA, Apollo belongs to Dalton and Victoria Mason, who are both content creators. Apollo’s TikTok profile boasts 2.8 million followers and many of his videos rack up millions of views. Similarly, his YouTube account has over 1.3 million subscribers. Breaking the record included naming things such as “bug”, “book”, and “sock” – but his owners believe he could be capable of more. “There’s no knowing what Apollo will learn, or what records he could break next,” the couple told Guinness World Records.             Apollo first came to live with them in 2020 after they found him in a pet shop. He also shares the house with two white-bellied caiques named Soleil and Ophelia, who also sometimes feature in the videos. Since his arrival, the couple have been training him with Dr Irene Pepperberg's methods and his favorite reward: pistachios. Dr Pepperberg is famous among animal behaviorists for her work with a gray parrot called Alex. Alex was extraordinarily intelligent and among his many accomplishments could count to six, and knew words for all kinds of objects and colors. He was trained in the model/rival method that Apollo’s owners also used to teach him. This involves being taught by one person, with another learning alongside him and modeling the correct responses. However, there is no strict routine to his learning and Apollo is free to pick his own subjects. “We teach him as much as we can naturally in day-to-day life and focus on the things Apollo wants to focus on. We believe he will learn things faster that way,” they explain.Most of all, Victoria and Dalton want to spread awareness about the “natural intelligence found in animals”. Despite one dog recently setting a house on fire by chewing on a power bank, baboons, giraffes, and fish have all been found to possess levels of intelligence previously thought only to belong to humans. 

The Coral Sea could soon be misnamed, scientists suggest, after reconstructing annual temperatures over the last four centuries. Recent record-breaking temperatures are so far outside the experience of even the oldest shallow water corals that the scientists are denouncing a recent decision to not list the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as "in danger".Coral reefs thrive in a relatively narrow temperature range; after particularly hot summers reefs show extensive bleaching, which if maintained leads to coral death. This has been a major contributor to coral decline worldwide, including the GBR, the Earth’s largest living structure. Although these facts are agreed, some doubt remains as to how well corals can adapt to higher temperatures.To help resolve this question, Dr Benjamin Henley of the University of Wollongong and colleagues drew on the fact that corals produce layers as they grow, like the rings of trees, which keep a record of seasonal conditions. These provide evidence of temperature and salinity, particularly in summer. With some shallow-water corals being 400 years old, this provides an opportunity to determine annual temperatures for every year back to the early 17th century.There are no direct temperature measurements for the GBR’s waters before the late 19th century, allowing those who minimize the scale of the threat to the reef to suggest it may have faced such temperatures before and survived. Studies based on coral cores from two locations in the central GBR lent some support to this idea, but temperatures and bleaching have become worse since. Moreover, Henley and colleagues note that those studies averaged temperatures over five-year periods for a limited area.The authors examined coral cores taken since 1900 and correlated them against instrumental records for those years. They used this and older coral samples to reconstruct summer water temperatures back to 1618. New techniques and larger sample sizes allow them to do this on an annual basis.      Although the authors find a pattern of warming and cooling cycles lasting decades, the data makes it very unlikely any summer in 400 years got close to the summer of 2016, which triggered widespread bleaching. There have been three hotter summers since then, and the authors consider these “extremely likely” to be hotter than any summer from 1618-1899.Notably, the cores were collected not only from the GBR, but from reefs across the Coral Sea and some locations beyond. Not only are the average temperatures throughout the region higher than those of previous centuries, but records are being set at almost all the individual locations sampled. Attempts to model the causes show such a pattern is almost impossible without human influence on the global climate.Cores of old boulder corals can reveal the annual growth patterns going back to the individual coral's birth.Image credit: Anne Hoggett, Lizard Island Research Station; copyright holder: Tom DeCarlo, tdecarlo@tulane.eduFive of the years between 2004 and 2022 stand out well clear of any previous summer, and 2024 is far above even these. “When I plotted the 2024 data point, I had to triple check my calculations – it was off the charts – far above the previous record high in 2017. I could almost not believe it. Tragically, mass coral bleaching has occurred yet again this year,” Henley said in a statement. When more than 400 summer temperatures for the Coral Sea are plotted six stand out, all this century, and 2024 is different again.Image credit: Henley et al, Nature 2024 (CC BY 4.0)The authors point to previous evidence that even if the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep the world under 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial temperatures are met, 70-90 percent of corals on the region’s reefs will die. Replacement of more heat-adapted corals from elsewhere may help, they argue, but is no cure-all.In this context, the authors are scathing about a decision last week by the UNESCO Heritage Committee to not list the GBR as in danger, despite those words being in the draft. “When you compile all of the evidence we have, it’s the inevitability of the impacts on the reef in the coming years that really gets to me,” Henley said.Co-author Professor Helen McGregor agreed. “There is no ‘if, but or maybe’ – the ocean temperatures during these bleaching events are unprecedented in the past four centuries,” she said. “The Great Barrier Reef is facing catastrophe if anthropogenic climate change is not immediately addressed. The very corals that have lived for hundreds of years and that gave us the data for our study are themselves under serious threat.”Henley does not want his work to be used to justify despair. “We can never lose hope. Every fraction of a degree of warming we avoid will lead to a better future for the human and natural systems of our planet,” he said. “We hope that our study equips policymakers with more evidence to pursue deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions internationally.”The study is published open access in Nature.

Joy Reid broke out the insulting terms about white people on a recent TikTok rant celebrating Kamala Harris picking Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Within seconds, Reid said this in otherwise positive language about Sen. Mark Kelly: “He, to me, would’ve been the safest, most conventionally safe pick,” Reid said on TikTok. “White, super white. Like, you know, mayonnaise sandwich on Wonder Bread white, from a border state.” She goes on to say Josh Shapiro would have been the "riskiest pick," and gushes over Tim Walz, as in "Walz are closing in." But if a Fox News host said someone black was comparable to [insert food product here]? Career ender.  Joy Reid refers to Sen Mark Kelly as a “mayonnaise sandwhich” because he’s White. Joy Reid is incredibly racist. Any comment @MSNBC? pic.twitter.com/5ui9iD31ie — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 7, 2024 As our intern Michael Wnek has chronicled, this tracks with Joy Reid from about a month ago, where she ripped into Charles Gasparino for writing in the New York Post about Kamala Harris being a DEI pick: Exactly who are you, Charles Gasparino? Like, literally who are you? And what qualifies you to write an editorial about the presidency, even in the dollar-store New York Times, other than you being a white guy?...Now, go off and write about golf, or dancing off-beat, or whatever your actual skillset is, ‘cause you’re not qualified to discuss the vice president. She's doing her black job and has no time for you. I, however, did have time tonight. So, there you go. Reid loves this kind of swaggering talk about Kamala Harris, and she laughed along as former CNN analyst Roland Martin mocked Erick Erickson as the "king of mayonnaise" who is "unseasoned chicken."  MARTIN: And Erick–and Erick, come on. Erick, you the king of mayonnaise, so please, let's not talk about seasoned chicken when you are unseasoned chicken. REID: (Laughs). MARTIN: Please. This sister grew up in the Bay area. She know black folks. After the GOP convention, Reid took to her TikTok and said it would be to vote against Kamala if you were black, or even if you were associated with black culture. The New York Post reported:  “The door needs to close behind Amber [Rose], and she looked crazy over there. But shut the door behind her,” Reid said, reigniting her feud with Rose, whom she criticized after she spoke at the Republican National Convention last week. “She’s racially ambiguous. I don’t want to say she’s black because she has said she’s not, so I don’t want to say ‘this black woman,'” Reid said following Rose’s speech. “This woman who is of whatever race that she has claimed, she’s said she’s not black, but [the RNC] brought somebody whose whole career is based in black culture.”

Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) lit a fire that had only grown larger after he called out his vice presidential opponent Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) for “stolen valor” after he ditched his Army National Guard artillery unit shortly before they deployed to Iraq in 2005. The morning newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC sprang into action Thursday morning as they openly lied about the sequence of events and what Walz had said on camera. ABC’s Good Morning America was arguably the worst as an indignant Selina Wang, their senior White House correspondent, framed the serious criticism and just a desperate attack from a team that was behind. “While Vance is on the road chasing Harris and Walz, Trump is at home…sending Vance to be his attack dog,” she declared. Wang did the ‘Republicans pounce’ meme as she huffed about the Trump/Vance campaign using the Harris-Walz campaign’s own words against them: WANG: Vance accusing his new opponent of lying about his military service, seizing on this moment. WALZ: We can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at. VANCE: What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? [Transition] Do not pretend to be something you are not. Keep an eye on the soundbite they used of Vance there, they edited out a critical point which we’ll address shortly. Despite just playing a soundbite of Walz claiming he carried a weapon in war, Wang told viewers not to trust their lying ears. “Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years and has never claimed to have seen active combat,” she declared, parroting campaign talking points: “The Harris campaign not addressing Walz’s comments that he carried a gun in war saying only that he ‘carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerous times…’” “Walz ignoring Vance attacks on the trail. Instead, firing up the crowd,” Wang boasted.     Over on CBS Mornings, chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes framed Vance’s criticism as just the campaign “trying to blunt the Democratic ticket's momentum as enormous crowds turn out for Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz at every stop.” Cordes didn’t do any investigative reporting, just regurgitated what the Harris/Walz campaign fed her. “Walz retired from the Army National Guard in 2005 and in a statement, the Harris campaign said, ‘In his 24 years of service, the governor carried, fired, and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,’” she said. But, she did play a more complete version of Vance’s comments, she ABC chopped up (as noted above): “He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not.” Note the part about stolen valor inexplicably missing. For NBC’s Today, senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson tried to defend Walz’s suspiciously timed exit from the National Guard as just a pivot in his method of public service: Walz filed paperwork for his congressional run in February 2005, about a month before reports of a deployment. Harris/Walz campaign officials not clarifying the timing, but framing his decision to pursue politics as a new way to help service members and veterans, the campaign calling him “a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform.”     None of them did an examination of the timeline of Walz’s retirement. Yes, he filed to run for Congress in February, but his retirement wasn’t until May 17. But nearly two months before that date, Walz’s campaign released a statement (pictured above) addressing questions about a possible deployment the Minnesota National Guard knew was happening. At any point, Walz could have suspended his campaign and called off retirement. He didn’t. The transcripts are below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s Good Morning America August 8, 2024 7:07:18 a.m. Eastern (…) SELINA WANG: While Vance is on the road chasing Harris and Walz, Trump is at home; only holding one rally later this week in Montana. Instead, sending Vance to be his attack dog. Vance accusing his new opponent of lying about his military service, seizing on this moment. GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): We can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at. SEN. J.D. Vance (R-OH): What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? [Transition] Do not pretend to be something you are not. WANG: Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years and has never claimed to have seen active combat. The Harris campaign not addressing Walz’s comments that he carried a gun in war saying only that he “carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerous times,” adding that Walz “would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country. In fact, he thanked Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country.” Walz ignoring Vance attacks on the trail. Instead, firing up the crowd. WALZ: I haven't slept in 24 hours. You know why? We'll sleep when we're dead. We'll sleep when we're dead. (…) CBS Mornings 8/8/2024 7:04:05 AM (…) NANCY CORDES: Vance has also been going after Walz's military record, and this comment in particular. GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): He can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at. SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH): He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not. CORDES: Walz retired from the Army National Guard in 2005 and in a statement, the Harris campaign said, "In his 24 years of service, the governor carried, fired, and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times." The Trump campaign is trying to blunt the democratic ticket's momentum as enormous crowds turn out for Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz at every stop. WALZ: I don't know what it -- how I can explain to you walking into that arena in Philly or that field out in Wisconsin or right here to what I have been told is the largest rally of the campaign. (...) NBC’s Today 8/8/2024 07:15:10 a.m. Eastern (…) JACKSON: Vance attacking Walz, who served 24 years in the National Guard, before retiring in 2005. With Vance accusing him of abandoning his Guard unit before they were deployed to Iraq. SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH): It's shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq [Transition] and then to drop out right before you actually have to go. JACKSON: Walz filed paperwork for his congressional run in February 2005, about a month before reports of a deployment. Harris/Walz campaign officials not clarifying the timing, but framing his decision to pursue politics as a new way to help service members and veterans, the campaign calling him “a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform.” Former President Trump is now hinting he'll face off with Harris soon. DONALD TRUMP: I'll be debating her, I guess, in the pretty near future. (…)

NFL safety Damar Hamlin has spoken out about his near-death experience, when he collapsed on the field in early 2023.Hamlin collapsed on the field in cardiac arrest during a Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals after he took a hit to his chest while tackling Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins.After being hospitalized for days, he had his breathing tubes removed and began speaking to family members. Three months later, he was cleared to play again and eventually played five games for the Buffalo Bills in the 2023 season."My mind is free. My spirit is free. My soul is free," Hamlin said as he finally opened up about the incident. "I'm able to think clearly. I'm not hindered by second thoughts of what could maybe happen again."The official diagnosis for the defensive player was a heart stoppage due to commotio cordis, which is caused by a direct blow at a specific point in a heartbeat that then causes cardiac arrest.Hamlin has been assured by specialists that the chance of the scary occurrence happening again is slim, with the player admitting he is trying to push any worries to the back of his mind."Time heals all. That's everything, you know, relationships, life, growth from cardiac arrest," Hamlin told the Associated Press. "It's trauma. It's time that heals all if you allow it to."Hamlin added that he wanted to "grow and let go of the past."Staff said the young player has come back "hungry," with general manager Brandon Beane saying Hamlin's focus has been on winning a job on the team and proving he can make plays.Coach Sean McDermott said the safety has been consistently practicing at a high level, as well."It's fun watching him have fun out there," the coach said. "And you can tell he means business."Hamlin had to endure many theories about his health during his time off — including that he had a vaccine injury — and was even criticized for his attire when he made an appearance at the Super Bowl."Someone was talking about letting go of what was to become what is," Hamlin added. "That's a big part of my mental process as far as progressing into this season."The 26-year-old is currently pushing legislation that would require states to mandate external defibrillators in schools and recreational venues. Ohio recently passed a similar bill."I'm on a mission to get all 50 states to pass that bill as well, and I won't stop until I do," Hamlin concluded. "In the same way that I'm chasing my goals on the field, that's me chasing my goals off the field and always prioritizing my blessings of still having a life. Still being here."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The U.K. established a spy agency in 2019 called the Counter Disinformation Unit. Its stated purpose is "to understand disinformation narratives and attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment to ensure that the government understands the scope and reach of harmful mis and disinformation and can take appropriate action." Like the Harris-Biden administration and the Stanford Internet Observatory across the Atlantic, the CDU has leaned on social media companies in recent years to flag and censor supposed disinformation. During the pandemic, for instance, it monitored lockdown and vaccine critics and targeted critics of government policy. Amid calls for review and controversy over its censorious practices, the CDU was rebranded as the National Security Online Information Team. Notwithstanding ongoing concerns over its apparent attempt to replicate the Chinese communists' surveillance regime, the British government has found yet another narrative it would like the NSOIT to cure. 'Keyboard warriors also cannot hide.' Axel Rudakubana, the 18-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants, apparently stormed into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, on July 29 and butchered three girls — Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice da Silva Aguiar, and Bebe King. Rudakubana also grievously wounded five other children and two adults. The initial refusal of authorities to indicate the attacker's nationality or release his name upon his arrest — apparently customary when dealing with minors who are suspects — prompted many to suspect that he was an asylum seeker captive to a radical ideology. Protests and riots, fueled further by longstanding frustrations with unchecked migration, British Islamicization, coverups, and a failure of assimilation, soon began to sweep the country. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News Monday, "There has to be a reckoning." "Those individuals who are involved in the disorder need to know that they will pay a price," said Cooper. "There have already been hundreds of arrests, and we have made very clear to the police they have our full support in pursuing the full range of prosecutions and penalties, including serious prison sentences, long-term tagging, travel bans, and more." While hundreds of rioters have reportedly been arrested, authorities are also going after those whose related posts and comments online are supposedly false or inflammatory. Cooper further emphasized that "keyboard warriors also cannot hide" and will be "liable for prosecution and strong penalties too," reported the BBC. According to the Telegraph, the NSOIT is now being used to monitor social media posts regarding the riots. Peter Kyle, the new leftist government's technology secretary, has asked the NSOIT to track online activity regarding the discussion of the butchered Southport girls and the protests. Silkie Carlo, the director of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, told the Telegraph, "There are serious questions as to whether NSOIT is fit for this task, given its chilling track record of monitoring the lawful and accurate speech of journalists, scientists, parliamentarians, human rights advocates and members of the public during the pandemic when they rightly questioned the government’s pandemic management." 'This is '1984' in practice.' "It's worrying to see NSOIT brought into action shortly after its controversial activities were exposed, and before it has been subject to the important independent review the culture committee called for," added Carlo. Carlo subsequently wrote in an op-ed: The explanation of 'internet lies' is a neat way to package the long-term break down in law and order, disintegrating social fabric and simmering racism in our country – and it comes with the very neat response of online censorship that benefits elites who have never really trusted us with free and open access to information online. A government spokesman downplayed the online surveillance and information clampdowns, telling the Telegraph, "We have been abundantly clear — what is illegal offline is illegal online, and it’s right that any thugs stoking violence on the streets meet the full force of the law." "We make no apology for monitoring publicly available content that threatens public safety. The information is flagged up to social media firms when it is likely to have breached their terms of service, and the police when it meets a criminal threshold," added the spokesman. Apparently the NSOIT is not alone in making sure that Britons are sharing only government-approved information online. Stephen Parkinson, director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales, recently told Sky News, "We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media. Their job is to look for [racially inflammatory] material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth." "People might think they're not doing anything harmful. They are," added Parkinson. "And the consequences will be visited upon them." Fr. Calvin Robinson responded to Parkinson's comments, telling "Blaze News Tonight," "This is '1984' in practice." Regardless of how they've framed such efforts, Robinson indicated further that the police and the government are working to stop information from spreading that "they don't see as true; that we may see as true but they don't." In addition to the British government working harder to control the flow of information online, leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised a "wider deployment of facial recognition technology." Carlo responded, saying, "This AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the UK." Big Brother Watch indicated that the vast majority of police live facial recognition matches in the U.K. are false positives, meaning "they have wrongly flagged innocent members of the public as people of interest." Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, told the Guardian, "There is a clear danger that in responding to a tragedy and public unrest we expand and entrench police surveillance without appropriate scrutiny. Given that the police have responded to disorder and riots for decades, why is facial recognition needed now?" Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!