Free Republic

How did U.S. exercise trends go from reinforcing white supremacy to celebrating Richard Simmons? That evolution is explored in a new book by a historian of exercise, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, author of the book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, out Jan. 2023. Nowadays, at the beginning of every New Year, many Americans hit the gym to work off their holiday feasts. This momentum usually starts to fade in mid-January, according to a 2019 analysis of data on fitness tracking apps by Bloomberg. But such new year’s resolutions are pretty new—as is the concept of exercise...

Fitness influencers and Twitter users blasted a TIME interview for portraying exercise as an activity with roots in White supremacy. "How did U.S. exercise trends go from reinforcing white supremacy to celebrating Richard Simmons?" the TIME article, titled "The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts about the History of U.S. Physical Fitness" asked. The article was heavily mocked on Twitter, with critics saying it was destroying the media's credibility. "Honestly, I want them to keep pumping articles like this out to eviscerate every remaining shred of their credibility and perceived legitimacy," British rapper Zuby tweeted. "It...

JUST IN - Ukraine's Zelensky named TIME Person of the Year.

Time Magazine has announced the names of the people on their shortlist for this year’s Time “Person of the Year.”They name people for good and sometimes bad reasons, but the idea is supposed to be the significance of what that person has done.But when you peruse the shortlist that The Hill has, for some of the people, you have to wonder about what Time was thinking..@TIME releases its 2022 Person of the Year shortlist pic.twitter.com/8rTCTIJUCY— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 5, 2022I’ll start with the ridiculous — “we need to fill out the list” — inclusions.If you don’t know what the...

As the United States rolled back the clocks one hour this month to observe the end of Daylight Saving Time, many people got a bit more sleep than usual – but some not as much as others. Growing evidence shows that lack of sleep and sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, remain more prevalent in Black, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino communities, and these inequities can have long-term detrimental implications for physical health, even raising the risk of certain chronic diseases.*** Now, some sleep researchers worry about the potential effects that continuing to change standard time twice each year...

Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech “A Time For Choosing” a week before Election Day 1964. Nearly six decades later, the speech remains relevant, and the parallels to the circumstances we face today are striking. The battles against big government and Marxist do-gooders have changed only in the sense that they have intensified. Americans are still debating our role in the world—even as war rages in Europe. We are uncertain of our future, as we were then. Reagan decried a bloated welfare state, a militant tax-and-spending regime in Washington, and the blatant bribing of Americans with their own tax dollars...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On the heels of President Biden announcing the release of those imprisoned for non-violent marijuana offenses, Kamala Harris is demanding answers on who locked all those people up in the first place. "The community is the community, and that's real," she said in a statement. "And in the community, if a racist Attorney General, say in California, locks up the community, there won't be a community anymore. I need answers on who's responsible for this miscarriage of justice in our community. A community is a group of people who live together." According to sources, Harris's two remaining...

Love it or hate it, it's coming: The end of Daylight saving time. Yes, you'll need to get ready to "fall back." At 2 a.m. Pacific time on Sunday, Nov. 6, California residents will have to set their clocks back by one hour. That's happening again, even though in 2018, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 7, a ballot initiative that opened the door to permanently adopting daylight saving time. Prop. 7 gave state lawmakers the power to pass legislation making daylight saving time permanent. Less than a month later, Assemblyman Kansen Chu introduced AB 7, the Daylight Saving Time law...

It’s Climate Week in New York City — happening alongside the UN General Assembly — and it comes on the heels of a record-smashing hot summer in the northern hemisphere and ahead of what could be a dangerously under-heated winter in Europe. It’s a moment when China has seen its most severe heatwave on record, the war in Ukraine reinforced Western Europe’s over-dependence on natural gas and flooding in Pakistan was labeled a “climate catastrophe” requiring “massive support.” And all of this just months after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised an alarm bell on the inadequacy...

Vice President Kamala Harris has spent more time at the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard than inspecting the southern border invasion. While Harris was charged by President Joe Biden to end illegal immigration, she has refused to visit the border. Instead, she has spent her time in Martha’s Vineyard, an elite island where the rich and famous vacation.

Former first lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday took an apparent dig at former President Trump, highlighting the significance of a peaceful transition of power once a presidency comes to an end. “You see, the people that make their voices heard with their vote. We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power,” she said at the official portrait unveiling ceremony at the White House for her and former President Obama.

TIME Washington Correspondent Philip Elliott compared the Republican Party to the Soviets Wednesday, saying the GOP “disappeared” Liz Cheney, to the mockery of Twitter users. “It’s not just the Soviets who are masters of disappearing someone,” Elliott warned in a piece titled The GOP Just Borrowed a Soviet Skill and Disappeared Liz Cheney. “Just look at Wyoming, where voters this week drubbed a former senior member of the Republican establishment out of office on orders from former President Donald Trump,” he said. The writer suggested in the article that Cheney, after losing by a massive margin in the Wyoming Republican...

Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon launched a public effort Monday to scrap the leap second, an occasional extra tick that keeps clocks in sync with the Earth's actual rotation. US and French timekeeping authorities concur.Since 1972, the world's timekeeping authorities have added a leap second 27 times to the global clock known as the International Atomic Time (TAI). Instead of 23:59:59 changing to 0:0:0 at midnight, an extra 23:59:60 is tucked in. That causes a lot of indigestion for computers, which rely on a network of precise timekeeping servers to schedule events and to record the exact sequence of activities...

CNN is holding a town-hall meeting on Thursday amid a turbulent two months at the cable news network, which is promising a new direction one month into the tenure of its new President Chris Licht. Licht and the leadership at CNN’s new corporate owner, WarnerBros Discovery, have signaled they’d like to make a shift in the company’s direction from former chief Jeff Zucker, who left his post amid controversy.

In a viral video, a TikToker shares her frustration with her workplace culture after they repeatedly ask her to stay back when her shift ends. As a cashier, Julia (@jvliabee) says she’s had to deal with constant teasing from co-workers and her bosses about leaving “right on the dot.” “Why are bosses and even some other co-workers so offended when you try to leave on time?” Julia says in the video. “God forbid I work my scheduled work hours and leave on time.” She explains she’s baffled that her colleagues don’t seem to understand her life does not revolve around...

On Friday, HBO’s Bill Maher made clear the Uvalde school attacker’s advantage was not the type of gun he used but the amount of time he had to use it. Maher said, “I mean, this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of gun he had. Any kind of gun could do any amount of damage in that time.”

I’ve always been fascinated by the imagery of the phoenix as it is found in various ancient mythologies. Though most typically associated with Greek mythology, the phoenix, under various names, could be found in mythological systems ranging from the Egyptian to the Chinese to the Arabian to the Armenian and beyond. The phoenix represents an older, Traditional way of looking at time, and therefore the world around us. This more Traditional view of time, as expressed across many different cultures for thousands of years, also found expression in conceptually related mythologies such as that of the ouroborus, the self-devouring worm...

...But “free speech” in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation. In a culture that places a premium on achieving the impossible, some tech titans may also see the liberal consensus on acceptable speech as yet another boundary to break....

As Elon Musk attempts to purchase Twitter, many journalists and political commentators have viewed the Tesla CEO's plans to take over the social media giant as detrimental, and have slammed the idea of billionaire ownership, yet several liberal media organizations are themselves owned by billionaires. The Washington Post Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2016 for $250 million. The Atlantic Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, became the majority owner of The Atlantic in 2017. TIME Marc Beinoff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce, and his wife Lynne, purchased TIME in 2018 for $190...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Friday that aims to regulate how schools and businesses address race and gender, the state’s latest effort to restrict education about those topics. The law, which has become known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” prohibits workplace training or school instruction that teaches that individuals are “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”; that people are privileged or oppressed based on race, gender, or national origin; or that a person “bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” over actions committed in the past by...