Free Republic

It seems like terrible public relations for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to publicly refer to himself as the Dark Lord of Mordor while running one of the internet’s largest censorship operations. Zuckerberg joined The Tim Ferriss Show on March 24 to discuss his management style. After praising Zuckerberg as having “a lot of founder-driven control,” Ferris asked Zuckerberg about his “15-year roadmap for metaverse.” Ferriss asked Zuckerberg how he manages his personal psychology and his employees as they work toward near-term and intermediate-term steps to develop the metaverse. Then came the cringe moment for Zuckerberg: “I do think managing energy...

Each day, the Chula Vista police respond to as many as 15 emergency calls with a drone, launching more than 4,100 flights since the program began two years ago. But the latest drone technology...has the power to transform everyday policing... Rather than spending tens of millions of dollars on large helicopters and pilots, even small police forces could operate tiny autonomous drones for a relative pittance. Government regulations require that a certified pilot remain on the roof of the Police Department, overseeing the launch and, together with a police officer at a command station inside the building, handling most of...

Top advisers to Pope Francis said on Monday that the Vatican is preparing an official response to accusations that the pope helped cover up an American cardinal’s sexual misconduct. The statement from the “C-9,” the nine cardinals who advise Francis on Church matters, came on the first day of a three-day meeting with the pope, one of several throughout the year. The Holy See’s planned response will address accusations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — former Vatican ambassador to the United States — that Pope Francis covered up sexual abuse by now-disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Viganò roiled the Church...

Explanation: Sometimes, a total eclipse is a good time to eye the Sun. Taking advantage of an unusual juxtaposition of Earth, Moon and Sun, the featured image depicts the total solar eclipse that occurred last month as it appeared -- nearly simultaneously -- from both Earth and space. The innermost image shows the total eclipse from the ground, with the central pupil created by the bright Sun covered by a comparatively dark Moon. Surrounding the blocked solar disk is the tenuous corona of Sun imaged in white light, easily visible from the ground only during an eclipse. Normally, this corona...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - A 27-year-old man was sentenced to three life terms in prison for sexually abusing a child, Colin D. Stolle, Commonwealth's Attorney for the city of Virginia Beach, said Wednesday. Sauron Sou was sentenced Wednesday on three counts of forcible sodomy. Circuit Court Judge Glenn R. Croshaw, who handed out Sou's sentence, described the crimes as "vile, despicable and disgusting acts." Sou had pleaded guilty on March 16. The Commonwealth's evidence would have proven that, between January and August of 2014, Sou sexually assaulted a young child on multiple occasions had the case gone to trial....

We are semi-officially a lawless, soft (but hardening) tyranny. How else does one explain Lois Lerner not being charged with the numerous crimes she has most certainly committed? As many others have noted, the fix was in as surely as the fix is in on the countless crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and her grubby Clinton Foundation that sells influence at very high prices. Like Lerner, Clinton likely will be deemed above the law. General Petraeus and several others were charged, jailed and/or fined for crimes so minimal compared to Hillary's because they did not toe the Obama line: no...

Explanation: The sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected - its core becoming a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one above. Here, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the hourglass. The unprecedented sharpness of the HST images has revealed surprising details of...

“I think the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” said Obama. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” While the president’s remarks were mostly overlooked by the U.S. and Western media, the comments received headline coverage in news outlets run by Iran and by the Hezbollah jihadist organization. Obama sat down Saturday with Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who asked about “protecting our Sunni Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia.” Obama explained he thinks “that our friends in the region, our traditional Sunni states, have some very real external threats, but they...

Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year’s elections to disclose their donors. McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress’s leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years. He raised the ire of many Republicans a decade ago for pushing comprehensive reform, and many Republicans still held it against him during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Another project that the Patrick Cleburne Camp is heavily engaged is the annual memorial to the great General himself: Patrick R. Cleburne. This 25th annual memorial service for the Irish-born Confederate General will be held on March 13 in the Helena, Arkansas Confederate Cemetery. The memorial will begin at noon with key-note speaker Glen Dedmondt, author of The Flags of Civil War Arkansas, which Mr. Dedmondt dedicated to General Cleburne. Many spectators will meet at 10am at the McDonald’s in Helena prior to the memorial for breakfast. The public is invited to attend and all living historians are invited to...

.....Meanwhile the work of other foreign-funded NGOs in the interest of terrorist organizations warrants urgent attention. Take the Peruvian "human-rights" group Aprodeh, which labored in Europe to get the MRTA off the terrorist list there, even though Peru still considers it a grave threat to its security. In 2007, according to government records, Aprodeh received funding from Oxfam America, George Soros's Open Society, the John Merck Foundation, the city of Barcelona, the Dutch embassy and a U.S. government agency called the Inter-American Foundation, among others. On Friday, the Peruvian government asked Aprodeh to explain how its NGO status allows it...

CNN's Eye of Sauron. CNN Airport Network is available in 42 of the busiest U.S. airports and is seen in more than 1,880+ gates and other viewing areas.

NASA Hubble Space Telescope's most detailed visible-light image ever taken of a narrow, dusty ring around the nearby star Fomalhaut (HD 216956), offers the strongest evidence yet that an unruly and unseen planet may be gravitationally tugging on the ring. Hubble unequivocally shows that the center of the ring is a whopping 1.4 billion miles (15 astronomical units) away from the star. This is a distance equal to nearly halfway across our solar system. The most plausible explanation, astronomers said, is that an unseen planet moving in an elliptical orbit is reshaping the ring with its gravitational pull. The geometrically...

As war with Mordor looms on the edge of the horizon, peace protestors gathered today before the Black Gate in a demonstration against the actions of Gandalf the Wizard and the Fellowship of the Willing. “We’re here because we believe that war is wrong,” said Eldohil, president of Elves for Peace. Pointing to the Dagorlad before him, he said, “This very place is a testimony to the uselessness and destruction of war.” Protestors carried signs that said “Peace for Middle-Earth” and “Who would Iluvatar kill?” Elsewhere Gondorians paraded through the streets of Minas Tirith in opposition to the Lord Denethor’s...

A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 1[ Part three is the source notes as annotated in the article.  The appropriate source notes have instead been added to the end of the other two parts for consolidation]In 1996 the editor of the journal Arda asked me to contribute some of my research to a twelfth volume which has, to my knowledge, never been published. I chose the war of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men as my topic because no one had really ever done a full treatment of the subject.It remains, to my knowledge,...

Count, count, weigh, divide It took a miracle to overthrow Sauron, and Iluvatar's intervention in the War of the Ring may have come on the heels of successive pre-emptive moments which served as warnings to Sauron that his time in Middle-earth was about to come to an end.  Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Count, count, weigh, divide. Those words are familiar to anyone who has studied the Biblical book of Daniel. Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, was having a party when a mysterious finger appeared and traced those words on the wall. When the drunken Babylonians could not decipher...

How could Sauron have returned to life and established himself on Dol Guldur without someone noticing? Even if his resurrection occurred in secret, Greenwood the Great could not have become Mirkwood overnight. So, what happened? Something wicked this way comesThe sudden migration of the Halfling clans living in the upper Vales of Anduin across the Misty Mountains, starting in the year T.A. 1050, signaled the arising of the great shadow in southern Greenwood the Great. The Wise could not be sure of whom or what had settled in the forest, but they understood that something which had not previously dwelt...