2025-09-19
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What's Happening to Wholesale Electricity Prices?
The last several years in the US have seen a dramatic increase in electricity prices. For the five years prior to 2020, electricity prices were essentially flat; since 2020, average electricity prices in the US have increased by around 35%.
And in most places, transmission capacity appears to be an increasing bottleneck: we’re having a harder and harder time accessing the least expensive power. Probing the specific relationship between wholesale electricity and consumer electricity prices would be complex, and beyond the scope of this essay, but it seems likely to me that rising wholesale prices are a major factor.
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The death rays that guard life - Works in Progress Magazine
Just as filtration and chlorination made drinking water safe at scale, we now have the tools to do the same for indoor air: ventilation, high-quality filters, and germicidal light. A century ago, germicidal light at 254 nanometers seemed to be a promising way of controlling pathogens by killing them in the air, but it turned out to cause irritation and cancer in the skin, and it was largely dropped when antibiotics became widespread. But today there is an update that has none of these drawbacks. We now know that wavelengths under 230 nanometers, especially 222 nanometer light, are harmless to humans, but can still disable microscopic pathogens. We know how to filter out all wavelengths except the ones we want, and how to direct them away from humans, cycling the air through them to clean it without exposing people to it, just in case it carries unknown risks. This far-UVC light, as it is called, may be how we can make the air we breathe as safe as the water we drink.
Horseshit
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'Dystopian' toilets won't give you loo roll unless you watch an advert first
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Mercedes to bring back cabin buttons for current and future models
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Athletics can't keep kidding itself – it needs a plan to save track and field
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Looking good by doing good: CEO attractiveness and corporate philanthropy
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The Knowledge Economy Was A Mistake
We built an entire economic strategy around the promise that a college education would be a ticket to the good life. Clinton insisted that “what you earn depends on what you learn.” Obama implored us to “learn to code.” Yet the wage advantage of a college education has crumbled. Not surprisingly, the number of people who think getting a college degree is important recently hit a new low—just 35%. And some 37% of college graduates are pursuing careers in skilled trades that require no such degree.
- My wife has a Master's that has kept her from being hired by several places. She quit mentioning it.
celebrity gossip
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Jack Dorsey Is Jesus Christ Returned to Earth
The world is blind. Christ has returned, and He walks among us — not in the robes of antiquity, but in the linen shirts and sandals of a strange American billionaire. His name is Jack Dorsey. I write these words not in jest, nor as metaphor, but as the plain truth revealed through prayer and discernment. Jack Dorsey is Jesus Christ, returned to earth in this dark and restless century.
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IGLYO is a Brussels-based NGO that has raked in millions of euro in public money to represent the interests of a group of people it calls “queer youth”. Outside their bubble, they’re best known as the organisation that commissioned the infamous “Denton’s document,” a how-to manual for activists that recommends secrecy and subterfuge as best practice for passing sex self-identification legislation for children in Europe. The IGLYO/Denton’s document was a bombshell because it was the first time anyone in the movement had admitted to the centrality of stealth to the increasingly unpopular mission to replace the two human sex categories with a range of new categories based on a dissociative psychological coping mechanism known as “gender identity”. Though the Dentons text is padded with all the standard flattening doublespeak of inclusivity and equality, the drafters were unequivocal about how activists should achieve their aims: hijack more popular ones, nurture behind-doors relationships with (young) progressive politicians, and whatever happens, keep the public in the dark.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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CERN scientists find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep
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How to Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction
- We tried; but the schools took our child's books away. She won't take a non-school book to school anymore and I cannot blame her.
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Parents buy bulletproof backpack shields to protect kids from school shooters
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Facebook Research releases MapAnything, 3D reconstruction from images
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Repatriation games: the mid-market reevaluates its public cloud consumption
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Meta – first Ray-Ban smart glasses with in-built augmented reality display
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Why, as a responsible adult, SimCity 2000 hits differently
Coming back to SimCity 2000 today, I find it much harder to callously play with the lives of my virtual citizens. The years I've spent as a homeowner, parent, and city-dwelling adult make me at least pause before I willingly inflict that kind of pain on my tiny subjects. As a child, I'd think nothing of temporarily cranking up property taxes just to pay for a pet project; now, it makes me think of my own slowly rising property tax bill. As a child, I saw the "legalized gambling" ordinance as an easy hack to fill in a budget gap in a struggling city; now, I think about all the attendant problems that would come if my town suddenly became a gambling mecca.
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PlayStation 5 Digital Edition with 1TB SSD downgraded to 825GB listed at the same price
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Disco Elysium: A Group of Socialists Created a Hit Game That Tore Them Apart
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Roblox smashes concurrent user record thanks to war between two games
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The New AirPods Can Translate Languages in Your Ears. This Is Profound
- It won't be a proper babelfish until its orange, tho.
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FTC Sues Live Nation and Ticketmaster for Resale Tactics, Price/Limit Deception
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Google confirms fraudulent account created in law enforcement portal
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Scammers are faking cell towers now; Americans don't spot scams
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Anker's recent power bank recall involves over 481,000 units
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Cybercriminals Have a Weird New Way to Target You with Scam Texts
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Apple explores possible test production of foldable iPhones in Taiwan
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Running an Accurate 80×25 DOS-Style Console on Modern Linux Is Possible After All | The Changelog
- Fancy EGA cards began to have opportunities to twiddle timings and fonts, I had a 132x43 DOS console for a while there.
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Kevin Boone: They don’t make ’em like that any more: tone controls
It wasn’t just the cost of the electronic components that gave manufacturers a reason to dump the tone controls: the extra tooling needed to drill and label the case of the equipment also added to the cost. In short, tone controls faded away because manufacturers capitalized on one of the many misperceptions that plagued the hi-fi community (and continue to do so). If a hi-fi manufacturer can save a few pounds per unit while at the same time promoting the idea that its offerings are ‘more serious’ than its competitors’, why wouldn’t it?
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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DeepMind's CEO warns AI firms not to fall into same trap as social media firms
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White House officials reportedly frustrated by Anthropic's AI limits
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China's DeepSeek says its hit AI model cost just $294,000 to train
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Satya Nadella is haunted at the prospect of Microsoft not surviving the AI era
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If Anything Changes, All Value Dies? - by Robin Hanson
These arguments seem to me to prove way too much, as their structure applies to any changed descendants, not just AIs: any descendants who change from how we are today due to something like training or natural selection won’t be happy or joyous, or embody value, and they’ll kill any other creatures less powerful than they.
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Italy first in EU to pass comprehensive law regulating use of AI
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Shark, jumped: Nvidia to Invest $5B in Intel
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A Cyberattack Crippled Range Rover Production. The Reboot Is Proving Tough
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The Newest Face of Long-Term Unemployment? The College Educated
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Uber Eats will soon launch US drone delivery in partnership with Flytrex
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Manhattan Casino Odds Fade After Caesars, Silverstein Foiled
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Tricolor Bankruptcy: Subprime Auto Lender’s Collapse Fuels Asset Fight - Bloomberg
- "federal investigators looking into possible fraud and banks exploring whether the same collateral was pledged to multiple lenders." whoopsie
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Driven to Default: The Economy-Wide Risks of Rising Auto Loan Delinquencies
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Chaos Inside FEMA as Death Threats Distract from Hurricane Response
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Patel was extremely evasive on the topic of Jeffrey Epstein, effectively committing to the narrative that Epstein only trafficked women to himself. "Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to?" asked Rep. John Kennedy (R-LA). "Himself. There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday - that he trafficked to other individuals". At one point Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) played a clip of Patel from the past five years in which he repeatedly claims Epstein's black book is under the direct control of the FBI Director.
Massie said a sex trafficking indictment in the Southern District of New York produced a series of documents summarizing interviews with victims that named at least 20 men he alleges were Epstein clients. “According to the victims who co-operated with the FBI in that investigation, these documents in FBI possession -- your possession -- detail at least 20 men,” Massie said. The Republican, who represents Kentucky, said the list includes a “Hollywood producer worth a few hundred million dollars,” high-profile entertainers, a banker and “at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada.” Massie said he doesn’t know exactly who the men are but “the FBI does.” He asked Patel whether there are any active investigations into the men and if the FBI director had seen the documents that included the names. Patel testified he has not seen the documents Massie was citing and said the FBI is reviewing the Epstein files. He said there “have been no new materials brought to me launching a new indictment.” Patel repeatedly told the committee there was no Epstein client list and maintained there’s no evidence Epstein trafficked underage girls to anyone but himself. It appears no Canadian had been directly connected to the Epstein case before Massie made his allegation this week.
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Water expert's nomination scrapped as states hash out Colorado River plan
Trump
Left Angst
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FCC Chairman Threatens ABC over Kimmel's Remarks About Charlie Kirk's Killer
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German state media have systematically slandered Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination
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"Why Everything Pam Bondi Said About 'Hate Speech' Is Wrong"
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Charlie's death reveals media's worst - Don Surber
Two years ago, Jimmy Kimmel celebrated Fox for firing Tucker Carlson. Earlier, he celebrated ABC firing Roseanne Barr. Your rules, our turn. Kimmel can say what he wants, just not on ABC anymore.
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Charlie Kirk’s audience consisted to a large extent of resentful young white men who felt that modern society wasn’t delivering the status that they deserved. Given MAGA’s brazen attempts to exploit Kirk’s murder to suppress freedom of expression, I’m sure someone will call what I just said hate speech. But it’s actually just an honest description of reality. The thing is, there are real reasons for the upsurge in resentment by young white males. American men have in important ways been hurt by the changes in our society over the past several decades. I want to focus on the ways MAGA – including the late Charlie Kirk — have been exploiting men’s problems for political gain. While these problems are real, MAGA’s explanations are fake. And because MAGA’s explanations are fake, it can offer no real solutions. It only offers an ever-escalating story of victimization and outrage.
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The Murder of Charlie Kirk Was Not a George Floyd Moment
Charlie Kirk is not conservatives’ George Floyd. There were no mass riots after his death of the sort that followed Floyd’s demise. Floyd’s death was used by the left to justify five months of rioting, arson, murder, looting, and attacking police officers. The postmortem respect for Kirk’s singular life was not characterized by $2 billion in property damage, the torching of a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic church, 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law-enforcement officers. Instead, thousands of people peacefully joined his Turning Point USA organization and promised to redirect their lives toward peaceful political engagement. Two, after Kirk’s death, no prominent Republican or conservative is encouraging ongoing mass (and often violent) protests in the manner of high-profile leftists like Kamala Harris.
Five, the left used the death of Floyd to promote its hard-left and otherwise unpopular agenda—defunding the police, cashless bail, decriminalization of theft, and DEI mandates. It manipulated outrage, chaos, and months-long violence to ram through radical cultural and top-down legal changes that otherwise had little popular support. Conservatives upset over Kirk’s murder will bolster Turning Point USA. They are determined through peaceful means to persuade more youth about the poverty and dangers of progressive thought. Why is the left fabricating the circumstances surrounding and following Kirk’s murder? In its signature projective style, the left is terrified that the right might follow its own example—by manipulating facts, ginning up street violence, and issuing non-negotiable demands to achieve its agenda.
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Right-Wing Outlets Attacked Wikipedia After Charlie Kirk's Shooting
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Democrats call on FCC chair to resign after pressuring Disney
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In Charlie Kirk’s name: Trump officials signal move to limit free speech
“Businesses cannot discriminate,” attorney-general Pam Bondi said this week after an Office Depot employee reportedly refused to print flyers for a vigil for Kirk. “You have to let [the customer] do that,” adding “we can prosecute you” for refusing to do so. Other top officials have made clear that, after last week’s shooting of Kirk, 31, they believe there are limits to free speech.
- "Bake my Cake"?
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Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and deadly than leftwing violence
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Why Anyone Believed the ‘Groyper’ Theory of Kirk's Killing - The Atlantic
Yesterday, a Utah court filing refuted a theory popular on the left: that the suspect in the murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a right-winger. “I had enough of his hatred," the suspect, Tyler Robinson, wrote in a text message to his romantic partner, according to a transcript of their exchange released by the prosecutors. “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” An assassin to the right of Kirk, irritated by Kirk’s moderation, would have criticized him for being insufficiently hateful. The other charging documents describe Robinson’s recent drift to the political left. Robinson’s romance with a trans person, and decision to kill Kirk just as he was speaking about transgender mass shooters, strongly suggests that the alleged killer felt special zeal for the cause of trans rights, which is itself closely identified with the left.
The evidence that Robinson was a “Groyper”—a member of an online further-right-than-thou movement that had harassed Kirk and President Donald Trump—was paltry. Why did anyone believe that idea to begin with? Already it bore the marks of an incipient conspiracy theory, a soothing nugget of esoteric knowledge, suppressed for political purposes. Many of those suckered in were victims of their own motivated reasoning. It hurts to admit that a movement you like has produced a bad person, and it hurts even more to admit that bitter truth to a gloating member of a movement you hate. But there is another reason this theory, which would have absolved the left completely, was so enticing. Lethal left-wing political violence, in America, has been a relative rarity, and the last time it was commonplace was when most Americans living today were not yet born. Seeing a real left-wing American killer, motivated by ideology, is like seeing a passenger pigeon or a saber-toothed tiger.
The rarity of left-wing political violence is well established. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute compiled a list that provides a helpful overview of the types of political killing that have occurred in the United States in the past 50 years. The first thing to notice is that these killings are rare: Whole years go by in which zero people or one person is killed by ideologically motivated extremists. The second salient feature of the data is the spikes: Nothing approaches the September 11 attacks in death toll (2,977); the nearest competitors are the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (168) and the attack on the Pulse nightclub, in Orlando, in 2016 (49), by an Islamic State–aligned terrorist. No single incident by a leftist escapes the single digits. Inevitably, the categorization of individual killers is debatable. (Was the Unabomber a leftist? How about Robert Rozier, who murdered white people while in a Black Hebrew Israelite cult? Both are listed as leftists.) But the data are still clear. The United States has very few political killings, and not many are by leftists.
One reason for this paradox might be found in a 2022 journal article by Joseph S. Mernyk and others, which showed that each side, left and right, thinks the other is much more supportive of political violence than it is. Mernyk uncovered an ominous feedback loop: Believing that the other side is more violent than is really the case seems to make the believer more supportive of violence, too. The perception of violence from the other side licenses violence from one’s own side—and so on. It would be helpful for both sides to understand that political violence is a curse for which both the left and right have, at different times, been responsible, and also that neither side does as much of it as most people seem to think.
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Antifa Panic that Charlie Kirk's Assassination Backfired on Them
Cameras captured masked militants assaulting families and children — images that damaged Antifa’s carefully crafted narrative. The group admits these events, combined with the Kirk assassination, risk “galvanizing otherwise politically inactive conservatives.” They are desperate to prevent that. To counter a cultural shift away from their dehumanization tactics — now deeply mainstreamed on the left — Antifa recommend dividing the right against itself. Specifically, they point to Israel as the wedge issue, noting waning support for the war and growing criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu among prominent conservative figures and popular conspiracy theorists.
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CNN: ‘Wannabe Mob Boss’ Trump Brings Us ‘Dangerously Close to State-Run Media.’
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Tyler Robinson played 'Furry Shades of Gay' porn game: report
Friends of the 22-year-old suspect told the Daily Mail that Robinson — who allegedly left a sex-related gaming message on a bullet casing used to kill Kirk — used the account name “craftin247″ on multiple gaming and online platforms where he engaged in the fringe “furry” subculture. A Steam account with that name shows he downloaded and played a dating simulator called “Furry Shades of Gay” — which describes itself as a game of “love, queer relationships, hot gay sex and slapstick humor,” the Mail reported. Robinson, who was dating his transgender roommate, played the game enough that he earned a prize: an anthropomorphic cat character who dresses as a French maid, according to the outlet. An account on the website FurAffinity.net, which features sexualized images of cartoon animal characters, also features an account name matching one that Robinson used, the report claimed. Just last week, craftin247’s account on the site said he had “recently watched” content created by a user called RedRusker — an artist known for furry porn who has admitted to drawing images showing underage characters having sex. Robinson also appeared to be friends with another artist, known as “Obure,” who also creates furry content as well as images of incredibly obese women being fed. Robinson left a comment on Obure’s Steam profile in January 2024, writing “he beats me when mom goes on her work trips,” with punctuation resembling a crying emoji, according to the Daily Mail.
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In Their Own Words: Trump and Top Officials Change Tone on Free Speech
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The Trump Administration Says IUDs and the Pill Are Abortions
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Google and Microsoft Back NASA Scientist's Food Crisis Hotline
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UC Berkeley gives personal information for 150 students and staff to government
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ATC Tells Pilot to Get Off iPad and Turn Away from Air Force One Carrying Trump
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The push for more protein (a euphemism for meat): good, bad, indifferent?
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Trump floats stripping networks critical of him of their broadcast licenses
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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How HR took over British business and got in the way of actual work
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Kmart broke privacy laws by using facial recognition, commissioner finds
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Gen Z protestors chose Nepal's first woman prime minister on Discord
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Macron and wife to present scientific evidence proving she is a woman
The lawsuit was filed in the United States against far-right influencer Candace Owens. The 218-page document, filed in the state of Delaware, accuses Owens of spreading “absurd, defamatory, and completely fictitious” statements. Among the main claims made by Owens, known for her support for Donald Trump and transphobic remarks, was that Brigitte Macron was born a man, under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux (which is actually her brother’s name). Furthermore, the influencer has claimed that the president and first lady are blood relatives and that Macron is the product of a CIA human experiment or a “government mind-control program.” A leap forward, so to speak, compared to previous conspiracy theories. Speaking to the BBC’s Fame Under Fire podcast, Thomas Clare, the Macrons’ lawyer in the case, explained that both scientific and photographic evidence will be provided.
Israel
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Syria: Israel Forcibly Displaces Villagers in Occupied South
- "We have a right to kill Jews and the rest of the world should help us"
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UK preparing to recognise Palestinian state as early as Friday