An image shared on Facebook claims 2024 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s daughter Hope received $82,000 in student loan forgiveness. Verdict: False The claim is false. A similar iteration of the claim was shared by America’s Last Line of Defense, a website that is known for posting satirical and parody content, […]

'His sound will forever live'

'They’re not concerned'

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. After a four-year absence following its ban from the iOS App Store, Fortnite has made a triumphant return to iOS devices, exclusively in the European Union. This relaunch coincides with the debut of the new iPhone variant of the Epic Games Store and a presence on AltStore PAL, another third-party app store. The Epic Games Store also celebrated its launch for Android users worldwide today, introducing a major challenger to the app stores offered by Apple and Google – which have been considered to be monopolistic. The reintroduction of Fortnite on iOS is the product of prolonged legal battles between Epic Games and Apple, influenced heavily by recent mandates from the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which compels Apple to permit alternative app stores. This marks a significant loosening of Apple’s tightly controlled ecosystem. “The tide is turning and the mobile ecosystem is finally opening up to competition. We are grateful to the European Commission for making it possible to launch the Epic Games Store and offer our games to iOS users in the European Union. Now European iOS users and all Android users can access our store and games, as they’ve always been able to do on open platforms like PC and Mac,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. “The fight is far from over, but this is tangible progress for developers and consumers who can begin to benefit from competition and choice.” In addition to Fortnite, the Epic Games Store has made other games available, like Rocket League Sideswipe and the first mobile iteration of Fall Guys, which are accessible to European iPhone users and Android users globally. The launch has not been without friction. Earlier in the year, Apple suspended an Epic developer account and labeled the firm “verifiably untrustworthy,” a criticism likely rooted in previous disagreements over Fortnite’s in-app payment system. Despite only having a trio of first-party games currently, Epic’s mobile store plans are ambitious, aiming for a curated assortment of third-party games by December and introducing self-publishing options by early 2025, which are already available on PC. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Fortnite Returns to iOS in the EU as Epic’s Mobile Store Takes Aim at Apple and Google appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Even the Media Isn't Buying Kamalanomics, But the Democrats Are

Did Masked Bandit and Lone Newsroom Survivor Taylor Lorenz Finally - FINALLY - Step In It?

There are many sites across the world that have been called “gates of hell”. Some of these strange subterranean places were believed to be actual doorways to the underworld, while others have earned their name due to their impressive geology, volcanic activity, sheer inaccessibility, or other features. Here are some examples of famous so-called gates of hell.Pluto’s Gate, TurkeyThe first on the list is the famous Pluto’s Gate, in the town of Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey. This site is an example of a ploutonion, a religious temple dedicated to the Chthonic god Pluto (Hades). The site was rediscovered and excavated in 2013, though hints about its existence were recorded in various historical sources.Pluto's Gate is located in the ruins of the Greco-Roman city of Hierapolis, which is in modern Turkey. The gases that issue from its interior are still deadly today.Image credit: TheRunoman/Shutterstock.comThe temple was originally built with a gateway and surrounding arena that led into a cave. This cave was off-limits to visitors; only the priests were allowed to enter it. However, people could sit on raised seats and observe the priests conducting their ceremonies. These events took place at sunrise, when bulls would be led through the area towards the cave. Spectators could watch as the large animals started to struggle before they dropped dead, all while the priests remained unharmed.It is now known that the cave is filled with gases that issue into the space from a fissure. Recent research indicates that the gas is volcanic carbon dioxide (CO2). The concentration of this gas varies depending on how close you are to the entrance and the ground, which may explain why Roman observers saw the bulls mysteriously die while the priests appeared unscathed.Hell’s Gate, KenyaIn Kenya, Africa, there is the Hell’s Gate National Park, located in Nakuru County. It is situated between Lake Naivasha and the Longonot and Suswa volcanoes. The whole national park is famous for its breathtaking scenery, diverse wildlife – and, of course, its gate to hell. This is the name given to the Ol Jorowa Gorge which runs through the middle of the park.The gorge was formed through a mix of volcanic processes and tectonic activity that has shaped the whole region over millions of years. Over time, water erosion has further carved out the gorge. Although it is unclear how it gained its evocative name, it is possibly due to the intense geothermal activity in the area. The gorge still has geysers and hot springs that issue hot volcanic water, which runs through the giant channel, providing sustenance to vegetation that can survive at high temperatures.Darvaza crater, TurkmenistanThis is a modern and very much man-made gate to hell. In 1971, the Soviets were looking for oil fields in the Karakum Desert, in Turkmenistan. Although they initially thought they had struck liquid gold, they had actually tapped into something more unstable. Instead of drilling into oil, the Soviets had come across an enormous pocket of natural gas. The rigging station they had set up to extract oil eventually collapsed, and created a giant hole - 70.1 meters (230 feet) across and 20.1 meters (66 feet) deep - that has become known as the Darvaza crater.A photo taken at night of the Darvaza crater.Image credit: Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock.comOnce the crater formed, it led to a cascading event whereby other craters appeared across the landscape. Worse still, all the craters issued methane, which was considered a hazard to local wildlife and communities. So in a misjudged effort to save the environment, a decision was made to set fire to the gas in the hope that it would quickly burn off. Unfortunately, this was not the case, as the fires have been blazing ever since, which has earned it the title of a "gate to hell".Batagaika slump, Siberia The final example of a gate to hell is the Batagaika Crater, in Russia’s Far East. Like the Darvaza crater, this massive land feature is relatively new compared to other gates to hell. During the 1960s, scientists first reported what they called a “megaslump” when prolific deforestation in the Sakha Republic, Russia, disturbed the ground’s permafrost. This weakened it to the point where it collapsed.          IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Locals call the area the “Gateway to the Underworld”, and it's evident why when you see the enormous 100-meter (328-foot) deep and around 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) long gash in the landscape. However, the Batagaika slump is not done with its hellish activity. Every year, the mega slump gets bigger. Some researchers have even suggested it may be expanding at a rate of 10 to 30 meters (33 to 98 feet) per year.This expansion is attributed to climate change in the area, which is leading to warmer summers and shorter winters. Such conditions are unsustainable for the permafrost which continues to melt despite holding the ground together.

Jellyfish-like spurts of electricity recently lit up the sky over Puerto Rico in a rare natural event scarcely ever caught on camera. Known as “gigantic jets” or "giant sprites", the electrical discharges are similar to so-called "red sprites" – although they are even more intense and rise upwards into the atmosphere, rather than zapping down towards the ground.Footage of the light show was captured in the early hours of Sunday, August 4, during a barrage of thunderstorms in Puerto Rico and shared by the Caribbean Astronomy Society.While reviewing images of meteors seen from the island, the organization’s astronomers realized their cameras had captured at least three gigantic jets, as well as some red sprites."The images we obtained suggest that these discharges that were seen from the Island must have had a longer duration than usual. So much so that probably some people could have seen them," the Caribbean Astronomy Society said in a Facebook post.           IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.After they shared the news with their followers on Facebook, several people came forward and confirmed that they managed to see the spectacle with their naked eyes.Gigantic jets are the rarest form of lightning, occurring just 1,000 times a year. They are around 10-50 times more intense than regular lightning and last for less than a second. They tend to be associated with thunderstorms and occur high above the clouds. The light they produce appears red due to a reaction with nitrogen in the mesosphere, about 50 to 85 kilometers (31 to 52 miles) above the Earth’s surface.Remarkably, they were not caught on camera until 1989, confirming the anecdotal reports of people seeing strange red flashes of lights during thunderstorms (many of whom must have thought their eyes were playing tricks on them). As NASA has previously explained, the cause of gigantic jets isn’t yet clear, although it will likely have something to do with an imbalance between different parts of Earth's atmosphere, just like more "traditional" forms of lightning.

As the Sun spits out more and bigger storms, videos of flares emerging from its surface help us see its power. Watching these, it usually looks like they peter out a few solar diameters away, but the truth is very different. Although the particles that accompany smaller flares can fall back as the powerful solar gravity overcomes the speed with which they are moving, some flares can travel far beyond the Earth and even the outer planets.Solar flares are localized bursts of radiation produced when energy trapped by twisted magnetic fields gets released suddenly. This accelerates charged particles from the Sun’s plasma.How far can solar flares travel?As powerful as the Sun’s gravitational field is, flares can provide so much energy that particles within them can start with velocities a large fraction of the speed of light. A combination of the Sun’s gravity and encounters with the thin material in the not-quite vacuum of space slow these particles down, but cannot stop them. Consequently, flares can travel all the way to the heliopause, the boundary where the solar wind expires, finally lacking the strength to push aside the interstellar medium.The heliopause, as we learned recently, is far from spherical. So, to answer the second question first, solar flares can travel substantially different distances depending on which direction they are fired in. We haven’t fully mapped the boundaries of the heliopause, but we know it’s about 100-120 Astronomical Units (Earth-Sun distances) at minimum.Some flares, which happen to be fired off in just the right direction, can probably reach distances of 350 AU or more. A powerful enough flare might even push the boundary out a little further for a while, like a rhinoceros running into a rubber wall.On the other hand, a few flares will run into the magnetic field around the Earth or another planet that has one, and be stopped a great deal earlier.In fact, the most obvious part of a flare is the light it emits, and that will travel forever, unless it runs into something. We can see flares from other stars, indicating that in one sense the flare has crossed many light years to reach us. The Sun’s flares are not as big as those of many other stars, but that could still be seen from hundreds of light years away with the right telescope.Flares may fade in brightness so that we can’t see them long before they reach such distances but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still going.How big can solar flares get?If, when asking about a flare’s size, you mean the question literally, then multiply the length, as described above, by the area of the flare. This area varies of course, and can be hard to measure, but flares can leap from areas on the Sun’s surface many times larger than the Earth, and they don’t get smaller as they travel.References to flares being big, however, are usually about their power. The most powerful flare to be precisely measured was in 2001. This was an X28.6 using the scale on which flares are measured, meaning it carried 2.9 x 10-3 Watts per square meter. That might not sound like much, but spread over an area far larger than the Earth, it sums to an astonishing amount of power.However, two years later another flare saturated the detectors on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. It has been estimated to have been an X40 or 45.    But, we know flares can get much larger than this. The Carrington Event in the 19th Century occurred well before we had the capacity to measure flares’ power. However, the effects it triggered, including electrocuting telegraph operators, make clear that this was on a much larger scale than anything we have seen in the space age.Radiation bursts captured in tree rings may indicate flares orders of magnitude larger still, although this interpretation is disputed.Either way, it looks as though to find out how powerful flares can get, we can only wait and see.

Interest in cosmetics, supplements, and diet plans that seek to stay the inevitable hand of time has arguably never been greater – but if you’re planning to try and slow down the aging process, it’s useful to know what baseline you’re starting from. There’s a tool that promises to help you do just that, providing a measure of how fast your body is aging relative to your chronological age. It has hit headlines thanks to a recent appearance on The Kardashians – but does it really work?Biological age: what is the tool measuring?The DunedinPACE tool is an algorithm developed by an international team of scientists as part of the Dunedin Study, a long-running study of human health and development following a cohort born in the early 1970s in Dunedin, New Zealand.How people are aging, and whether the biological age of their bodies’ systems is outpacing their chronological age, is one question that’s of great interest to the researchers. “People who are aging faster than their same-age peers may need more support in their lives to ensure that they maintain good health as they get older,” explained Dunedin Study Director Professor Moana Theodore in a statement.But somehow, you need to identify those people.Previous research has shown that one useful marker of biological aging is DNA methylation. This is an epigenetic marker, which means it alters how a gene is expressed in a cell without actually changing the fundamental DNA sequence. Methylation involves the attachment of methyl groups, composed of one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms, to the DNA, which has the effect of silencing its expression.Methylation changes form the basis of the so-called “epigenetic clock”, considered to be “one of the most accurate metrics of biological age” according to a 2022 study. A 2020 review of the topic said, “It is currently well established that DNA methylation biomarkers can determine biological age of any tissue across the entire human lifespan, even during development.”One age-related disease in which methylation can play a key role is cancer. Over time, genes that play a tumor-suppressing role can become methylated and consequently silenced, which increases the risk of cancer beginning to develop. Another example is neurodegenerative disease, with some research showing a link between epigenetic changes – including methylation – and the pathology of diseases like Alzheimer’s.While there’s debate over whether aging is primarily a biological or psychological phenomenon – which will no doubt rage on – there’s no denying the fact that the passage of the years wreaks all sorts of changes inside our bodies, and that these are of scientific importance. To get the best idea of how aging may impact someone’s health, it makes sense to assess how their biological age is stacking up against their chronological age.How does the tool work?The team behind DunedinPace used this established science around DNA methylation as the basis for creating an algorithm that they said in their paper “represents a novel measure of aging that is conceptually and empirically distinct from the DNA methylation clocks,” and is more advanced than previous metrics they had developed.As modeled admirably by members of the Kardashian family on their show, someone interested in using the tool need only give a simple blood sample – in fact, the test is already available to the public in New Zealand, online and in some chemists.The blood samples are analyzed by Kentucky-based TruDiagnostic and the result, according to the team, is a bit like a speedometer readout. Assuming that on average people’s biological age increases by one year for each year of chronological aging, the tool can tell you whether you are aging faster or slower than that.Kim Kardashian’s score came out at 0.82, meaning she is aging 18 percent slower than most people of her age. Khloe Kardashian’s score was an even more impressive 0.72, putting her rate of aging at 28 percent slower than average.“Our internationally renowned scientific findings on aging, including the DunedinPACE algorithm, are used by studies all around the world to examine the causes of premature aging and whether it is associated with poorer health outcomes in later life,” said Professor Theodore.“That said, we never imagined that it would reach the Kardashians, who we recognise as leading global influencers and highly successful businesspeople.”So… does it work?We’ve established that biological aging is a real and important factor in determining someone’s risk of age-related health complications. When the researchers first published DunedinPACE, the editor commented that their tool “shows improved performance” when compared to a previous algorithm they had developed and that it could “be used to complement previously generated DNA methylation-based biomarkers.”DunedinPace is not designed to spit out a number that denotes how many “biological years old” someone is (although there are other tests that purport to do that, some of which appeared in the episode of The Kardashians). What it could do is alert the user to the possibility that they are aging prematurely compared with an average person, which could prompt them to look at lifestyle factors that could help them increase their “healthspan” – it’s not about living longer, but about living with good health for as long as possible.“Our pace of aging tool actually measures ‘whole-of-body’ aging,” Professor Theodore told the Otago Daily Times. “It’s a measure that looks at a range of body systems – your teeth, your lungs, your cardiovascular system. So it’s not just about your appearance, it’s about what’s happening internally as well.”Professor Theodore argues that too much emphasis is currently placed on chronological age, without considering biological age as well. Tests like this provide another piece of the puzzle, allowing us to peek under the hood at how our bodies are reacting to the march of time.The original 2022 study on DunedinPACE is published in eLife.