Former President Donald Trump hammered President Joe Biden over the topic of illegal immigration during Thursday night’s presidential debate, arguably the issue that Biden is weakest on following the border crisis that developed when he came into office. CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Biden why voters should trust him to solve the problems stemming from 10 million illegal aliens that have entered the U.S. under his administration. Biden claimed he had a “bipartisan agreement” that would have fixed the crisis. “Significantly – by the way, the Border Patrol men endorsed me, endorsed my position,” Biden then claimed. The Border Patrol Union took to social media to refute Biden’s claim, posting: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.” To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden. — Border Patrol Union – NBPC (@BPUnion) June 28, 2024 Biden claimed that he “changed the law” in “a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally”. “And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the – the total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,” Biden rambled. When asked to respond to Biden’s remarks, Trump said: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” DJT: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence — I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” pic.twitter.com/YoeyJT4753 — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 28, 2024 Trump proceeded to hit Biden for undoing his border policies after he took office. “All he had to do was leave it. All he had to do was leave it,” Trump said. “He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists.” “We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now,” Trump continued. “All terrorists all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world. They come from the Middle East, everywhere, all over the world. They’re pouring in. And this guy just left it open.” Biden responded by again making incoherent statements, including: “The only terrorist who has done anything crossing the border is one who came along and killed three under his administration, killed – an al-Qaeda person in his administration, killed three American soldiers – killed three American soldiers. That’s the only terrorist that’s there.” It was unclear what Biden was referring to with his statement. Just this week, NBC News reported that federal law enforcement officials uncovered a massive ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network that has smuggled more than 400 illegal aliens into the U.S. Earlier this month, eight foreign nationals with suspected ties to ISIS were arrested in multiple U.S. cities after they illegally entered the country. This is far from the first time that terrorists from around the world have entered the southern border under Biden’s watch. Examples include an ISIS terrorist from Uzbekistan, a Hezb-e-Islami (HIG) terrorist, and an Al-Shabaab terrorist. The terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland has worsened as a direct result of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Since then, Islamic terrorists from around have gathered in Afghanistan and started rebuilding their organizations, and the U.S. has very limited options to surveil and disrupt their networks.

There’s so much joy that comes along with finding out you’re going to be a parent. Part of the initial fun includes finding clever ways to tell your loved ones the great news! Seeing the looks on their faces is always priceless, but this is especially true when someone shares they’re pregnant with multiples. That was the case for Kierst Marie who was pregnant with triplets! Everyone in her family had an amazing reaction, but Grandma’s has to be one of the best. The reveal starts off like many do: Grandma is handed something that hints at the pregnancy. In this case, it’s an adorable onesie that reads “hi!” — but there’s more. Along with the clothing are ultrasound pictures. Although it’s usually not very easy to decipher these images, it doesn’t take this grandma long at all to think, “Wait a second, there’s THREE babies!?” Check out her incredibly wholesome reaction in the video below! @kierstb1024 Her reaction My twin sister and my little brother were also due with their babies, so 5 new great grandkids within a month of each other #fy #fypage #babyannouncement #pregnancyannouncement #triplets #grandma ♬ original sound – Kierst Marie As you can tell from that video, there’s an adorable mixture of both excitement and overwhelm in Grandma’s voice — and understandably so! But, at the end of the day, there’s far more joy than fear. What makes this reveal especially exciting, however, is that Grandma is about to get more than three great grandkids… Woman Pregnant With Triplets Tells Her Grandma in the Best Way Turns out, Kierst wasn’t the only one in her family pregnant at the time. Her twin sister and little brother also had babies on the way. That meant Grandma was going to get five new great grandkids within the span of a month! “Grandma saw her bank account flash before her eyes lolol,” one person jokes in the comments, with another adding, “You can tell she’s gonna love all those grand babies though. Hope your family has an amazing life together.” You can find the source of this story’s featured image here! The post POV: Telling Your Grandma You’re Pregnant With Triplets appeared first on InspireMore.

At a famous Buddhist temple in Japan, pots of lotus flowers augment the already breathtaking scenery of the temple—but they’re more than what they seem. The lotus is a foundational part of Buddhist iconography, but the plants sitting in front of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Byōdō-in Temple in Uji were grown from seeds […] The post Lotus Grown from 200-year-old Seed in Full Bloom at Kyoto’s Byōdō-in Temple – (LOOK) appeared first on Good News Network.

The CEO of an animal charity shares the incredible transformation of Cindy Crawford – the morbidly obese dog he found in the streets of Thailand on September 2023.

Surprises Lurk Beneath Humble Exteriors

A 90-Minute 'Cheap Fake'

In news that’s likely to be awkward for whoever decided that the nine-banded armadillo should be the state small animal of Texas, scientists have discovered that it’s actually four different species – and the only one that’s kept the name doesn’t even live in the state.At least until now, nine-banded armadillos were considered to be the most widespread of all the armadillo species, with a range that saw them all the way from Argentina up into the center of the US.That’s a pretty impressive range – but one that had doubt cast upon it when some scientists began to propose that the nine-banded armadillo was in fact a complex of species. One of those scientists was Frédéric Delsuc, a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who started to suspect a split within the nine-banded species back in the late 1990s, but didn’t have enough evidence from specimens across the armadillo’s range to back it up.Now, Delsuc is the senior author of a study that appears to confirm his earlier suspicions.The research involved a branch of science called museomics, a smooshing together of the terms “museum” and “genomics” because it involves sequencing the DNA of specimens from museum collections. Out of the 80 armadillo tissue samples used in the study, 38 were from museum specimens.One of the museum specimens used in the study.Image credit: Kate Golembiewski, Field MuseumThis allowed the team to expand the geographical range of armadillos sampled. By analyzing the animals’ DNA, as well as their physical characteristics, the researchers were able to determine how they changed across it.As a result, they concluded that what was thought to be the nine-banded armadillo was indeed a complex of four different species: the original name Dasypus novemcinctus, found only in South America (sorry Texas); Dasypus mexicanus, found in Mexico and the US; Dasypus fenestratus, found in the central part of the range; and Dasypus guianensis, found in the Guiana Shield region of South America.As D. mexicanus and D. fenestratus were formerly considered subspecies of the nine-banded, D. guianensis – dubbed the Guianan long-nosed armadillio – marks the first truly new species of armadillo identified in the last 30 years.DNA analysis definitely made the difference in reaching this conclusion – according to the study authors, they’re almost indistinguishable from one another by appearance alone.So what’s the point in splitting them up into different species? Again, it’s in part down to their genes – they’re different at a molecular level, and that means they may well have different needs.“Sometimes, biologists bring individuals from one area to another to repopulate,” said study co-author Anderson Feijó in a statement. “Since they're different species, with potentially different needs, they will not be able to integrate.”There’s also the matter of their conservation status – the nine-banded armadillo wasn’t considered endangered, but that might change now the species are separated. “[T]his discovery totally shifts the way we think about conservation for these species and the way we think about how threatened they are,” Feijó concluded.The study is published in the journal Systematic Biology.

Fifty years ago, scientists discovered a nearly complete fossilized skull and hundreds of pieces of bone of a 3.2-million-year-old female specimen of the genus Australopithecus afarensis, often described as “the mother of us all.” During a celebration following her discovery, she was named “Lucy,” after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”Though Lucy has solved some evolutionary riddles, her appearance remains an ancestral secret.Popular renderings dress her in thick, reddish-brown fur, with her face, hands, feet and breasts peeking out of denser thickets.This hairy picture of Lucy, it turns out, might be wrong.Technological advancements in genetic analysis suggest that Lucy may have been naked, or at least much more thinly veiled.According to the coevolutionary tale of humans and their lice, our immediate ancestors lost most of their body fur 3 to 4 million years ago and did not don clothing until 83,000 to 170,000 years ago.That means that for over 2.5 million years, early humans and their ancestors were simply naked.As a philosopher, I’m interested in how modern culture influences representations of the past. And the way Lucy has been depicted in newspapers, textbooks and museums may reveal more about us than it says about her.From nudity to shameThe loss of body hair in early humans was likely influenced by a combination of factors, including thermoregulation, delayed physiological development, attracting sexual partners and warding off parasites. Environmental, social and cultural factors may have encouraged the eventual adoption of clothing.Both areas of research – of when and why hominins shed their body hair and when and why they eventually got dressed – emphasize the sheer size of the brain, which takes years to nurture and requires a disproportionate amount of energy to sustain relative to other parts of the body.Because human babies require a long period of care before they can survive on their own, evolutionary interdisciplinary researchers have theorized that early humans adopted the strategy of pair bonding – a man and a woman partnering after forming a strong affinity for one another. By working together, the two can more easily manage years of parental care.Pair bonding, however, comes with risks.Because humans are social and live in large groups, they are bound to be tempted to break the pact of monogamy, which would make it harder to raise children.Some mechanism was needed to secure the social-sexual pact. That mechanism was likely shame.In the documentary “What’s the Problem with Nudity?” evolutionary anthropologist Daniel M.T. Fessler explains the evolution of shame: “The human body is a supreme sexual advertisement… Nudity is a threat to the basic social contract, because it is an invitation to defection… Shame encourages us to stay faithful to our partners and share the responsibility of bringing up our children.”Boundaries between body and worldHumans, aptly described as “naked apes,” are unique for their lack of fur and systematic adoption of clothing. Only by banning nudity did “nakedness” become a reality.As human civilization developed, measures must have been put in place to enforce the social contract – punitive penalties, laws, social dictates – especially with respect to women.That’s how shame’s relationship to human nudity was born. To be naked is to break social norms and regulations. Therefore, you’re prone to feeling ashamed.What counts as naked in one context, however, may not in another.Bare ankles in Victorian England, for example, excited scandal. Today, bare tops on a French Mediterranean beach are ordinary.When it comes to nudity, art doesn’t necessarily imitate life.In his critique of the European oil painting tradition, art critic John Berger distinguishes between nakedness – “being oneself” without clothes – and “the nude,” an art form that transforms the naked body of a woman into a pleasurable spectacle for men.Feminist critics such as Ruth Barcan complicated Berger’s distinction between nakedness and the nude, insisting that nakedness is already shaped by idealized representations.In “Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy,” Barcan demonstrates how nakedness is not a neutral state but is laden with meaning and expectations. She describes “feeling naked” as “the heightened perception of temperature and air movement, the loss of the familiar boundary between body and world, as well as the effects of the actual gaze of others” or “the internalized gaze of an imagined other.”Nakedness can elicit a spectrum of feelings – from eroticism and intimacy to vulnerability, fear and shame. But there is no such thing as nakedness outside of social norms and cultural practices.Lucy’s veilsRegardless of her fur’s density, then, Lucy was not naked.But just as the nude is a kind of dress, Lucy, since her discovery, has been presented in ways that reflect historical assumptions about motherhood and the nuclear family. For example, Lucy is depicted alone with a male companion or with a male companion and children. Her facial expressions are warm and content or protective, reflecting idealized images of motherhood.The modern quest to visualize our distant ancestors has been critiqued as a sort of “erotic fantasy science,” in which scientists attempt to fill in the blanks of the past based on their own assumptions about women, men and their relationships to one another.In their 2021 article “Visual Depictions of Our Evolutionary Past,” an interdisciplinary team of researchers tried a different approach. They detail their own reconstruction of the Lucy fossil, bringing into relief their methods, the relationship between art and science, and decisions made to supplement gaps in scientific knowledge.Their process is contrasted with other hominin reconstructions, which often lack strong empirical justifications and perpetuate misogynistic and racialized misconceptions about human evolution. Historically, illustrations of the stages of human evolution have tended to culminate in a white European male. And many reconstructions of female hominins exaggerate features offensively associated with Black women.One of the co-authors of “Visual Depictions,” sculptor Gabriel Vinas, offers a visual elucidation of Lucy’s reconstruction in “Santa Lucia” – a marble sculpture of Lucy as a nude figure draped in translucent cloth, representing the artist’s own uncertainties and Lucy’s mysterious appearance. IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.The veiled Lucy speaks to the complex relationships among nudity, covering, sex and shame. But it also casts Lucy as a veiled virgin, a figure revered for sexual “purity.”And yet I can’t help but imagine Lucy beyond the cloth, a Lucy neither in the sky with diamonds nor frozen in maternal idealization – a Lucy going “Apeshit” over the veils thrown over her, a Lucy who might find herself compelled to wear a Guerrilla Girls mask, if anything at all.Stacy Keltner, Professor of Philosophy, Kennesaw State UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Survivors in the throes of survival ordeals sometimes report the presence of a second, third or fourth person who appears and gives encouragement and direction in times of dire need. The post Third Man Syndrome appeared first on Survivopedia.

Many terrible things happened in 1917, and one man caused most of them: Woodrow Wilson. Wilson laid the groundwork for today's Big Tech surveillance. He did it through centralization and bureaucracy, a collectivism that America had never seen before. On April 2, 1917, Wilson urged Congress to declare war on Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy,” and, “We desire no conquest, no dominion.” Woodrow Wilson transformed 'intellectuals' into militants of the state.Wilson had a habit of manipulating people through fear. He won the 1916 election on a non-interventionist platform, insisting that Republicans would lead America to war if they won the election. However, within a year, he had changed his mind. It became clear to him that America would need to enter the war. But he couldn’t let the country know that he’d changed his mind — no, that would be too straightforward. Instead, he would have to convince them that going to war was his own brilliant idea. So, he did what any of us would have done (right?): He unleashed a vicious propaganda campaign. It began with the creation of the Committee on Public Information, which is as 1984-esque as it sounds. The Committee on Public Information was the first — and only — time that America had a ministry of propaganda, and it set the standard for modern-day propaganda. It had 47 divisions, including the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the Four Minute Men Division, the News Division, and the Censorship Board.To manage the CPI, he would need a sneaky ally. That man was George Creel. Guess what he did for a living. He was a journalist. Well, “journalist” is a bit of a stretch. Creel described the Committee on Public Information as a “vast enterprise in salesmanship.”Wilson’s manipulation of the media is part of what made this new propaganda so powerful. Control the media, and you can control public opinion. Control public opinion, and you can control the minds — and the actions — of the people. After all, anything the guard dogs and truth-tellers of society say must be true.An army of snitchesThis propaganda campaign was also very ... personal. It took place on the streets. Within a couple months, Creel had recruited 100,000 men. This squadron of bullies stormed movie theaters across the country, giving fiery speeches to captive moviegoers during the four minutes where projectionists changed the movie reel.Creel used prominent members within the communities to spread this propaganda to every corner of America. Specifically, they wanted to sway the opinion of Southerners, who saw no reason to enter a European war at the behest of a president they didn’t vote for.Soon, the four-minute men delivered their heated rants anywhere there was a gathering of people, including churches, lodges, fraternal organizations, labor unions, and even logging camps.Preachers, actors, lawyers, teachers, superintendents, athletes, magicians, aviators, titans of industry, and even a few KKK leaders, like DeForest Henry Perkins and the grand wizard — middle-aged men who were too old to fight — used their public speaking skills to spread fear and advertise war. They also used their public speaking skills to convince people to support progressive ideas, the draft, food rationing, and support for the Red Cross. They gave speeches in many different languages. And historians estimate that, in New York City, these speeches reached 500,000 weekly. The trick was to make the speeches look like patriotic outbursts from passionate members of the community. In reality, every message was scripted by the state.Creel once said that the speeches “were no haphazard talks by nondescripts, but the careful, studied, and rehearsed efforts of the best men in each community, each speech aimed as a rifle is aimed, and driving to its mark with the precision of a bullet.”Several hundred thousand Americans volunteered for neighborhood watch. Americans betraying their fellow Americans, the people they shared their community with. Hollywood played a crucial role, too. The most famous actors of the time, people like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, did the same thing the famous actors today do now: berate ordinary people into subservience to the elites. Before long, it was impossible for anyone to speak out against the war. His goal was to censor and crush anyone who tried to stop him by labeling them “seditious,” anti-American villains pushing for an insurrection. Hm, sounds a bit like a more recent “insurrection” campaign, doesn’t it? They claimed that Germany was engaged in "nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States." Wilson even offered “Fourteen Points” as a way to maintain his image as a peacemaker. But behind the scenes, he was just sneaking progressivism into a Trojan horse of foreign policy.He transformed “intellectuals” into militants of the state. In an editorial, Teddy Roosevelt wrote: "If the League of Nations is built on a document as high-sounding and as meaningless as the speech in which Mr. Wilson laid down his fourteen points, it will simply add one more scrap to the diplomatic waste paper basket. Most of these fourteen points ... would be interpreted ... to mean anything or nothing."The Germans, likewise, saw it for what it was: propaganda. Meanwhile, back home, the four-minute men continued this propaganda campaign until the war ended in 1918. By the end of the over year-and-a-half-long operation, the propaganda had reached every single American. It laid the groundwork for the Wilson war state, which marched four million Americans off to war, 116,708 of whom died in the fight.Wilson destroyed an America that we’ll never know. He transformed it from a small town, quaint and local, to a global war machine that could be controlled by an all-powerful executive. In June 1917, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act through Congress, and in May 1918, he pushed the Overman Act through, giving him total control. He even made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”A few years later, in 1924, the FBI became the first federal police force in America.