Free Republic

Between 2013 and 2023, Americans’ spending on home appliances jumped 53 percent. Adjusted for inflation, that’s an annual increase of $390 to $558. But the cost of appliances decreased by 12 percent during that same time. How is that possible? Well, as the Wall Street Journal explains, one “reason for the discrepancy between [higher] spending and [lower] prices is a higher rate of replacement[.]” Over a mere two years, “Yelp users … requested 58% more quotes from thousands of appliance repair businesses last month than they did in January 2022.” “We’re making things more complicated, they’re harder to fix and...

Police in Upper Macungie Township, Pennsylvania said an officer shot a man's pet snake after it wrapped itself around his neck and would not let go. Police said they asked the dispatcher to repeat the call because it was so unusual. Nickischer said the snake did not die right away. "It wasn't like it just died. It started to slither away, luckily away from the officers, away from the direction that they were trying to pull this gentleman." Lt. Nickischer said. "They realized it was a matter of life and death with seconds to make that decision. Praise the officers....

Urgent legislation has been passed. All protests of morethan 6 people are now illegal. Not a single MP opposed it.#AllProtestsMatter https://twitter.com/MrMasonMills/status/1272619292715028482  

The Second Amendment covers magazines holding more than 10 rounds, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez says, because they are commonly used for lawful purposes. On Friday evening, a federal judge in San Diego blocked enforcement of California's ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, deeming it inconsistent with the Second Amendment right to keep arms for self-defense. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez concluded that "California's law prohibiting acquisition and possession of magazines able to hold any more than 10 rounds places a severe restriction on the core right of self-defense of the home such that it amounts to...

1,060-hour image of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) captured by Amateur Astronomers Guillaume Doyen 12 avril 2019 label Astrophotographie / Astrophotography label English 1060 is the number of hours needed to capture this highly-resolved image (204 Megapixels) of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It might be the world's longest exposure image within the amateur astronomers community. In astrophotography, the amount of time you spend imaging a celestial object is inherently fundamental. The longer your camera's shutter is open, the more light you get, so that the darkest regions of the sky start to get clearer. Usually, amateur astronomers are familiar with...

The Large Hadron Collider suffered a power outage last night, after a luckless weasel decided to chew on a 66-kilovolt power cable. It’s not the first time the LHC, a 17-mile superconductor that smashes atoms together at close to the speed of light, has run into trouble because of something small and cute. In 2009, the power went down after a bird dropped a baguette onto a critical electrical system. Although the incident was widely reported and confirmed at the time by sources at the LHC, CERN is apparently now telling folks it may be apocryphal. “This was a story...

Israel Navy commando forces carried out their largest drill in a decade last week. Soldiers of the elite Shayetet 13 and the 916 Detachment, together with the Snapir port security unit and the Israel Air Force, practiced "operational scenarios that could arise at any moment," reported Yohanan Levin in the Israel Navy Website. The senior leadership of the Detachment attended the exercise, in which soldiers simulated a number of scenarios. These included neutralization of an enemy force at sea, ship malfunctions, and evacuation of an injured soldier by helicopter – all carried out within severe time restraints. The exercise was...

(AP) DAMASCUS, Syria - Two strong explosions shook the Syrian capital Thursday, sending a plume of thick black smoke into the sky. The explosions were in the Qazaz neighborhood, where a Syrian intelligence agency has its headquarters. The explosions happened just before 8 a.m., when employees are usually arriving at work. CBS News' George Baghdadi, reporting from the scene, says about 40 burned-out cars and possibly dozens of badly burned bodies were scattered in front of the intelligence office.

According to 20 Minuten (Swiss), there is a large scal attack underway against the Parlament buildings in Kabul. The Russian Embassy has reportedly taken rocket hits. Headline only .....

AGADEZ, Niger — A large military convoy from Libya arrived in the northern Niger city of Agadez late Monday, a military source told AFP. "I saw an exceptionally large and rare convoy of several dozen vehicles enter Agadez from Arlit... and go towards Niamey," the source said, amid speculation that toppled leader Moamer Kadhafi may be in it. "There are persistent rumours that Kadhafi or one of his sons are travelling in the convoy," the source said. A journalist from a private radio station in Agadez said he saw "a convoy of several dozen vehicles crossing the city and heading...

Israel's army chief told a US Congress delegation in late 2009 he was preparing for a large war in the Middle East, probably against Hamas or Hezbollah, leaked US diplomatic cables showed on Sunday. "I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite," Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying in a cable from the US embassy in Tel Aviv. The document, dated November 15, 2009, was quoted Sunday in Norwegian by Oslo-based daily Aftenposten, which said it had obtained WikiLeaks'...

WGN Brothers denied flight due to size Southwest Airlines kicks Chicago teens off flight because one was too big Lourdes Duarte WGN News 9:41 PM CST, November 29, 2010 Two Chicago brothers say Southwest Airlines made things too difficult for them when it required one of them to buy a second ticket. The twin brothers were headed to Minnesota to visit their aunt on Thanksgiving night when one of them was told he was too big to fit in a seat and needed a second ticket. The 18-year-old brothers had no cash or credit cards on them so they called...

The guys at Hyundai come up with the mother of all vuvuzelas

Initial results from high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier.In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account...

You're paying to check your belongings, so why should other people's excess baggage get a free ride? That's the question being asked by a growing number of travelers. As airlines look for new ways to boost revenue, fees for checked bags are on the rise; so is scrutiny of overweight customers whose baggage is built in. It's a touchy subject, Airfarewatchdog.com has found, and one that airlines have been happy to avoid discussing, where possible. As late as 2008, United Airlines wouldn't even address the matter with us. But an outcry among passengers, tired of their seatmates taking up more...

12/31/2009 - CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan (AFNS) -- A team of Airmen handles thousands of passengers, pallets and vehicles flying into Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. The 'Port Dawgs,' as they liked to be called, proudly proclaim that they move as much cargo here as their unit does back home. But they have approximately 15 people instead of 200 handling the thousands of passengers and tons of cargo arriving monthly at the air field. The team is comprised of aerial porters, vehicle maintainers and leadership primarily deployed from Pope Air Force Base, N.C. They work loading and unloading cargo coming to the U.S....

Can we calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light? Franklin Felber (Starmark Inc) believes he can, with implications for propulsion. Back in 2006 we looked briefly at Felber’s work, describing what the physicist believes to be a repulsive gravitational field that emerges from his results. Felber discussed the matter at the Space Technology and Applications International meeting that year, where he presented his calculations of the ‘relativistically exact motion of a payload in the gravitational field of a source moving with constant velocity.’ Above a certain critical velocity, Felber believes, any mass...

It took Gregory Dunham 3 years to build, and it cost him 300.000$. But then he’s also got a 3.429 m (11 ft and 3 inch) tall behemoth of a contraption sporting 500hp and a whooping top speed of 65 mph. World's largest arcade machine. The machine is 13 feet tall, has about a 70-inch screen.

A £2 billion project to answer some of the biggest mysteries of the universe has been delayed by months after scientists building it made basic errors in their mathematical calculations. The mistakes led to an explosion deep in the tunnel at the Cern particle accelerator complex near Geneva in Switzerland. It lifted a 20-ton magnet off its mountings, filling a tunnel with helium gas and forcing an evacuation. It means that 24 magnets located all around the 17-mile circular accelerator must now be stripped down and repaired or upgraded. The failure is a huge embarrassment for Fermilab, the American national...

HUACHUCA CITY — Unusually large purchases of cellular phones at a Huachuca City store on April 21 and a Tucson area store last weekend may be part of the growing trend in the United States. The Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center on Tuesday issued a statement that said recent information shows a possible increase in suspicious pre-paid cell phone purchases nationwide. “There has been speculation in the national and international media of cell phones being used to detonate explosives by members of terrorist, extremist and separatist groups around the world,” the agency said in its statement. “It is also possible for...