Uncover the untold story of three wise women whose faith shaped the Christmas narrative.

A post shared on social media purportedly shows a headline published by the Associated Press about literacy that misspelled Mississippi. Verdict: False There is no evidence of this article being published by the Associated Press. Fact Check: Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. has been charged with the murder Jimmy “Jay” Lee, who was last seen in 2022 […]

What a clown

An image shared on Facebook claims to show a cover from The Economist of President-elect Donald Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Verdict: False The Economist did not publish any such cover. Fact Check: Social media users are claiming to show a published cover of The Economist that warns of “Apocalypse” with Putin and Trump in […]

'Federal employees are on the beach and in bubble baths'

Formed in Los Angeles in 1964, The Byrds are one of the most influential bands in rock history, blending folk music with rock and achieving massive commercial and critical success. Over their career, The Byrds released 12 studio albums, with hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High.” The group underwent numerous lineup changes, with more than a dozen musicians joining and leaving the band over the years. Despite their disbandment in 1973, their legacy endures, with the band being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and leaving a profound The post Complete List Of The Byrds Band Members appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

A pregnant motorist was recently saved from plunging into a lake when her brakes failed. Shortly after 2 a.m. on Monday, 911 received a call from a distressed woman saying her car would not stop. Moving at approximately 30 miles an hour, Williamson County Sheriff’s Office deputies eventually reached her on Old Route 13 near […] The post Missouri Deputies Save Pregnant Driver Whose Runaway Car Was Heading Straight for a Lake appeared first on Good News Network.

Books post-apocalyptic fiction Five SF Stories About Rebuilding After a Cataclysmic Event Rising from the ashes of civilization, determined to build a new world. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on December 5, 2024 Image Credit: NASA/Don Davis Comment 1 Share New Share Image Credit: NASA/Don Davis Tiring for a brief moment of science fiction and fantasy’s endless calamities, averted and otherwise, I recently turned for solace to non-fiction. Specifically, the text I fished out of my teetering Mount Tsundoku1 was Riley Black’s 2022 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. I see some skeptical faces out there. How can a book about a global-scale apocalypse be in any sense heartening2? The answer is simple. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs’ subtitle reads “An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World.” The cataclysmic end of the Mesozoic is only the beginning. Having documented the demise of the old order, Black leads the reader through the early stages of the recovery, from the very early days when opportunistic survivors dominated, to the era a million years after impact, when the ecologies that dominate our world began to take shape. The clear moral here is that a chapter ended, but the story itself continued. Of course, I could just as well have turned to science fiction for that moral. Exploring the worlds that rise out of the ruins of the previous order is a popular pastime in science fiction. Consider these five works. “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét (1937) (Collected in Cities of Wonder) The lands to the north, the west, and the south are treasured hunting grounds to John’s people. To the east, the Great Burning left only the Dead Places, which are taboo to all save the priests who retrieve metal from the cursed lands. The demon-haunted Place of the Gods is forbidden to all, even priests. The son of a priest and a future priest himself, John is well aware of the law. Nevertheless, something draws John towards the Place of the Gods. There he discovers the true nature of the Place of the Gods, and perhaps, just perhaps, takes the first step back towards civilization3. This short tale may seem entirely conventional save for two details related to the date it was published. First, this story helped establish the conventions of the after-the-end narrative. Second, while many details might lead readers to the conclusion that the Great Burning was a nuclear war, the story pre-dates the first atom bomb by eight years. Second Ending by James White (1961) World War Three killed nine out of ten people, but enough infrastructure survived to support reliable hibernation. This is good news for terminally ill Ross. He can be placed into suspended animation until a cure is found for his disease. The results are a mixed success. Ross wakes, now healthy, to discover that humans have, during his long slumber, not only annihilated themselves but almost all life on Earth. Fortune smiles on Ross. First, life may be (mostly) dead but there is an army of robots to carry out his orders. Second, thanks to the upturned cuffs of the clothes he wore on his way to cold sleep, a few seeds survived the apocalypse. Third, thanks to suspended animation, Ross has all the time he needs to oversee Earth’s terraforming… although he might be surprised to learn how long that will take. For the most part, this short novel is a tribute to what one human can accomplish, given only determination, knowledge, and a vast army of relentlessly obedient, highly advanced robots. That said, Second Ending may feature the longest timescale needed for terraforming ever featured in a science fiction novel. As the Curtain Falls by Rob Chilson (1974) Humanity triumphed during the Dawn Age, conquering the stars themselves. That was a very long time ago, longer than any person living on Earth can imagine. A billion years is long enough for uncounted civilizations to rise and fall, for the oceans to vanish, for history to become myth and then forgotten. Nevertheless, time has not erased everything. Humans survive, if in fewer numbers than in the past. Nor is the Dawn Age entirely erased. Trebor of Amballa hopes that among its relics is one that will let him bend a dying Earth to his will. A cynic might speculate that the course Trebor takes towards his destiny is less driven by pragmatism and more by Chilson’s desire to show off his vivid worldbuilding. Earth in a billion years is a very alien world, where materials like plastic and fiberglass have been incorporated into everyday biochemistry. The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O. Williams (1981) A thousand years before, the Great Fire erased civilization. Only a few widely scattered survivors were spared. After ten centuries, a few communities, Pelbar being one, have clawed their way back to town-sized city-states. Between them, pugnacious nomads make travel ill-advised. Jestak was the only survivor to return from an ill-fated exploratory mission. His silence about what befell his companions is suspicious. Jestak is silent because he believes conservative Pelbar does not want to hear what he learned. Once, a single great nation dominated continent. Perhaps it can be united again! And just perhaps, Jestak is the person to set that process in motion… This novel and the series of which it is a part are a celebration of E Pluribus Unum. It’s also an exploration of the consequences of founders being drawn from tiny groups. Pelbar seems to have been founded by a particular sort of academic, while one of the nomad tribes is almost certainly descended from feral boy scouts. Fallen by Melissa Scott (2023) Artificial Intelligences were supposed to provide the Ancestors with boundless leisure and wealth. Instead, the AIs rebelled. The AI were ultimately defeated, the survivors exiled to another dimension known as the “possible.” This victory did not come soon enough to save civilization. The Successors believe salvaged Ancestor relics can supercharge progress. The Newfounders believe the inherent risks outweigh any possible benefits. Starfarer Nic’s successful use of an ancient artifact to ply her trade makes her proof of the Successor creed. Her upcoming attempt to save a doomed city may be evidence that the Newfounders are right. Generally speaking, in science fiction, yay progress people are correct while technophobes are wrong. In Fallen’s case, readers familiar with Finders, the other book in the Firstborn, Lastborn space opera series, may not be confident that this rule of thumb is correct this time. Although published first, Finders is set later, after someone crashes civilization again. Is Nic that someone? Read and find out. SF authors love writing stories about people crawling from the ruins almost as much as they love writing stories about people creating those ruins in the first place. Such up-from-disaster works abound. No doubt I missed some of your favorites. Feel free to tell us about them in comments below.[end-mark] Yes, I do think about Ascendance of a Bookworm every time I look at a well-stocked and (I hope) solidly built bookcase. ︎Leaving aside people who really hate dinosaurs for some reason, such as resenting the way archosaurs displaced therapsids following the End Permian. ︎Whether that’s a good thing depends on how optimistic you are about humans not repeating the mistakes of the past. ︎The post Five SF Stories About Rebuilding After a Cataclysmic Event appeared first on Reactor.

The dean of the nation’s political analysts, Michael Barone, sat down with The Wall Street Journal to discuss the 2024 election. The headline that emerged from that discussion was “Donald Trump’s Rainbow Coalition,” noting that the monopoly of the Democratic Party over the nation’s black vote seems to be over. If this is true, and it indeed seems to be, the implications for the political dynamics of our nation’s future are profound. In 2024, Trump picked up 13% of the black vote compared with 8% in 2016, and 21% of black men voted for Trump. Also, among black voters, as in all voting groups, young voters moved more to the Republican candidate. Among black voters ages 18-29, 16% voted for Trump, compared with 6% of black voters 65 and up. In 1956, Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower won 39% of the black vote. In 1960, Republican Richard Nixon captured 32%. Then the world changed in 1964, when Republican candidate Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act. Goldwater picked up 6% of the black vote in that election, and the Republican Party never recovered with black voters. In all presidential elections since, the Democrat-Republican ratio has hovered around what Barone calls the 90%-10% ratio. The election results this year point to change. But why should we conclude that this is not a one-off move? Despite the ongoing and persistence of race as a political topic, it is capturing the interest of young blacks less and less. They see themselves more as individuals than belonging to a black voting bloc. In a survey done by the NAACP last September, 26% of black men under 50 said they would support Trump. Of those, 82% said their most important issue was the economy. Barone also points out, correctly, that the central role of the black church as a platform for political unity is weakening. The PRRI American Values Survey released in September showed 13% support for Trump among blacks saying they attend church weekly or more, 15% among those saying they attend church monthly or a few times a year, and 23% among those saying they seldom or never go to church. Per The New York Times, black church attendance over the last 20 years is down 20 percentage points. Among young black millennials and Gen Z, 50% of those who say they do attend church say they attend a black church compared with two-thirds of older-generation blacks. There is meaning both to more blacks not attending church and to the movement of those attending church to non-black churches. Politics are far more likely to be the topic of discussion and sermons in black churches. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign pitch to the American people was about big government: More spending, more subsidies, more social engineering. More young blacks, certainly young black men, see the path to prosperity as taking personal responsibility, and that means an economy that is kept free—less government spending and lower taxes. The data is there to see that blacks can get ahead in America. Per the Federal Reserve, median black household wealth stood at 5.6% that of white households in 1989. By 2022, that was up to 15.7%. In 1972, median black household income stood at 57.5% of white households. By 2022, that increased to 62%. Is this enough progress? Clearly, no. But it is increasingly clear to a new generation of black Americans that what they need to get ahead is freedom. Data abounds showing countries that are more economically free have far greater wealth and opportunity. The ideological divide between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—more or less government, more or less freedom—is more pronounced than ever. Black Americans, particularly young blacks and black men, want a future, and they see the future in freedom. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats’ Monopoly on Black Vote Is Over appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fauci Pardon Next? Biden Plans Pardons for All the Evildoers