Author: nick

It was remarkably easy for a shooter to charge toward a ballroom where President Trump-along with his cabinet members and the reporters who cover his administration-were dining Saturday night. Source link

It’s an iconic image – a giant cephalopod with its tentacles wrapped around a sailing ship, tearing it apart as the crew panic. Eventually it drags the splintered remains down into the deep. Meanwhile, the largest living octopus is the Giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), averaging about 16 feet long, however an exceptionally large specimen about 30 feet long weighing 600 pounds was found. The largest squid is the Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), reaching roughly 1,500 pounds (490–500 kg) and lengths up to 46 feet (14 m). That’s huge – but it’s no Kraken. What about in the past? Everything…

The Southern Poverty Law Center helped stoke hate by funneling millions of dollars to the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other extremists and engaged in criminal activity to cover it up. Source link

From Manhattan trial judge Judy Kim in Rodney’s Comedy Club v. Omari, decided April 17 but just posted on Westlaw a few days ago: [P]laintiff’s motion for an order enjoining defendant from “any further social media posts naming, inferring or addressing Plaintiff or Plaintiff’s employees in any way or posts related to Plaintiff” and ordering her to “delete any and all posts on social media naming, inferring or addressing Plaintiff or Plaintiff’s employees in any way” is denied. “Prior restraints on speech are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights, and any imposition of prior…

April 27, 2026 Laura Flanders In New York City, some of the most vulnerable incarcerated people will now have dedicated hospital beds and access to medical care like never before. Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the opening of the city’s first Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit for incarcerated people at Rikers Island, with two more clinical facilities on the way. It’s part of a larger plan to shut down the infamous Rikers, and another win for the national movement against the prison industrial complex. Mamdani and the activists and advocates involved are asking the important question: What happens after…

In case anyone missed it, higher education in America is in crisis. In 2010, according to Gallup, 75 percent of Americans believed college was "very important." That number tumbled to 35 percent by last September. Source link

Plaintiff Bear and Defendant Bear, from plaintiff’s TRO filings. From Judge Arun Subramanian (S.D.N.Y.) Wednesday in Those Characters from Cleveland, LLC v. Schedule A Defendants: [P]laintiff has failed to sufficiently address the potential fair use and First Amendment claims related to the products in question that use “Don’t Care Bears” (or a variation) along with marijuana imagery. Plaintiff relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision in Jack Daniel’s Props., Inc. v. VIP Prods. LLC (2023). There, the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment defense to a dog toy that had the same shape and design as a bottle of Jack…

In his lecture “On Freedom,” famous Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski said: You can, and even, I think, should, believe in the freedom of choice and the creation of new ones; freedom is our elementary experience, the experience of everyone—it is so elementary that it cannot be broken down into parts that can be analyzed separately, which is why freedom may seem to be an unprovable reality. … We are truly the perpetrators of actions, not just the tools of various forces that clash in the world, although, of course, we are subject to the laws of nature. … This freedom…

Enshrining age verification laws nationwide presents a series of perilous privacy concerns. (Liam Dawe) We’ve covered here before on individual US states setting up their own age verification laws, and now a new US Congress bill has been proposed for it. If passed, this would then potentially set it all up to be nation-wide across the entirety of the US. The bill was introduced on April 13th and has been referred to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It’s being sponsored by the Democratic party’s Josh Gottheimer, with it being co-sponsored by Republican Elise M. Stefanik so it has bipartisan support. The…

Being a skeptic can be hard on one’s soul. That’s always been true, ever since the invention of skepticism as a philosophy of life back in the times of Pyrrho of Elis (365–275 BCE) (Bett 2019). It’s hard not just because it requires rigorous intellectual self-discipline but because—let’s face it—much of the world ain’t skeptical at all. Indeed, skeptics such as Socrates of Athens (470–399 BCE) have historically been deemed dangerous enough to occasionally be condemned to death on charge of “corrupting the youth,” that is, teaching critical thinking. If you, like me, have ever felt a bit dispirited and…