Free Republic

Blue Note From crypto-focused site Blockworks: With bitcoin nearing its all-time high, eye watering nonfungible token sales appear to be cropping back up. A CryptoPunk just sold for 4,500 ether, worth over $16 million at current prices. That’s the second largest sale ever for the blue-chip NFT collection, trailing only a $23.7 million CryptoPunk purchase made in Feb. 2022. CryptoPunk 3100, the one that sold Monday morning, sold for $2,127 in 2017 before changing hands again for $7.58 million in 2021. There are 10,000 unique CryptoPunks. Each punk has randomly generated attributes, like differing glasses or hairstyles. Punk 3100 is...

Today my long-awaited energy storage paper was officially published on the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Here is a link. The paper is 22 pages long in the form in which they have published it plus another few pages for an Executive Summary and table of contents. They have given it the title “The Energy Storage Conundrum.” Most of the points made in the paper have been made previously on this blog in one form or another. However, there is a good amount of additional detail in the paper that has never appeared here. I’ll provide one example...

Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding ‘mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the chains of ‘group-think’), but,...

Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding ‘mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the chains of ‘group-think’), but,...

When the Truth becomes inappropriate, the end of civilization nears. What a tangled web we weave when first we seek to deceive. Consider the mess the World is in. How has that happened? War is the result of dishonest behavior, isn't it? The failure to honestly, openly & effectively communicate with each other results in violent confrontations. Rational objective discussion & debate must rule for there to be peace. At this point, the opposition to the Trump leadership has offered no rational argument with a complicent contolled media propping their idiotic nonsense. It is a sad moment in the history...

Perception is everything. Wars are often won or lost based on how the actors perceive one another’s strengths and weaknesses, not so much how strong or weak they are in reality. So it goes with any agenda item. When people sense a shift in public opinion on an issue, a fair number will shift right along with what they perceive. Thus, power elites can shape behaviors and attitudes by applying various techniques of crowd psychology, focused on propaganda and silencing dissent. ... Effective propaganda also keeps you in the dark about the fact that you are being manipulated. You Can’t...

Nearly 100 years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote about “the manufacture of consent” in his classic work, “Public Opinion.” On the heels of that book, Edward Bernays penned a little volume called “Propaganda,” in which he stated that an elite would always be responsible for making the public aware of “new ideas” which the public would then act upon as the elite nudged them into it. Related, but more in-depth is Jacques Ellul’s 1962 book, “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.”

History is filled with surprising anomalies that catch us up in contradictions. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his poem Marmion about the Battle of Flodden Field: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave / when first we practise to deceive!” The battle took place in 1513 while Henry VIII was in France fighting as a member of the Catholic League. His queen, Catherine, eventually to be divorced, organized the battle with success. Meanwhile, Pope Julius II styled Henry of England “The Most Christian King of France” and, although Henry would prove a disappointment in church matters, in 1521 the next...

If this is what the left needs to tell itself to come to terms with the prospect of defeat, so be it. We all find our own paths through the Kubler-Ross model, my friends. Don’t mock someone just because they’re momentarily stuck on stage one. Bill Clinton allegedly thinks O’s “incompetent” and an “amateur,” but I guess this theory works too: As devotees of Barack Obama know all too well, qualities that made him so attractive as a candidate — an affinity for subtle arguments, a tendency to carefully weigh his options — have at times proved less useful in...

CHARLOTTE, VT. — Dave Matthews Band announced today that it has arranged for NativeEnergy and Clean Air-Cool Planet to offset 100 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from all of its touring activities since 1991. By offsetting the CO2 pollution that touring activities, such as transporting gear, powering stages and air travel generate, Dave Matthews Band is taking a proactive role in fighting global warming and helping Native America begin to restore sustainable homeland economies in balance with the Earth. This announcement comes at the beginning of Dave Matthews Band 2006 summer tour, which kicked off on May 30th...

WHEN THE Massachusetts Legislature meets in joint session as a constitutional convention this week, the most notable item on its agenda will be a proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage. A record-breaking 170,000 registered voters have signed petitions to put such an amendment on the state ballot. But the Massachusetts Constitution mandates a detour: The measure must first win the support of at least 50 lawmakers in two consecutive legislative terms. Only then can it be submitted to the people. If the amendment gets past every hurdle, it will reach the ballot in November 2008. It is a deliberately long...

<p>To certain critics of U.S. policy in Iraq, the only thing worse than going to war with Saddam Hussein is the fact that we won. This they can never forgive -- which is why they are now trying to make a war crime out of the fact that the allies haven't yet found caches of weapons of mass destruction.</p>

3,000 SARS HERE? 'Unprecedented' emergency as T.O. officials fear mass exposure By ROB GRANATSTEIN AND GEORGE CHRISTOPOULOS, TORONTO SUN Top officials in Toronto's medical staff believe up to 3,000 people may have been exposed -- directly or indirectly -- to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, according to Toronto Sun sources. "It's out of control," the source said. An "unprecedented" quarantine of thousands of Torontonians has been ordered to stop the deadly spread of SARS, which has also been declared a provincial emergency. 10-DAY ISOLATION Anyone who has even visited the Scarborough Grace hospital since March 16 has been asked to voluntarily...