A post shared on Threads claims 2024 Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump is purportedly offering “free lodging” to his supporters amid Hurricane Milton.   Post by @ted.roach View on Threads   Verdict: False The claim is not referenced on Trump’s official website, his verified social media accounts, or his TRUTH Social account, and […]

‘It was obviously devastating’

It just seems as though her heart isn't really in it to win

A piece of human flesh was reportedly cut off and grilled

The Cam Newton media empire continues to grow

News Star Trek: Lower Decks Final Season Trailer for Star Trek: Lower Decks Gives Us a Lotta Kims It’s space pothole duty for the crew of the Cerritos By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 10, 2024 Credit: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount+ The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is almost upon us. We’ve already gotten a sneak peek of what’s to come with a clip centered on Tendi’s pirating ways, and today, Paramount+ released a trailer that suggests the Lower Deckers are still being, well, Lower Deckers. Here’s the official synopsis for the upcoming episodes: In Season Five of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes”—subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Junior Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford… If they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations. This upcoming season on Paramount+ is a celebration of this underdog crew who are dangerously close to being promoted out of the lower decks and into strange new Starfleet roles. The trailer also gives us some fun Easter eggs, including several Ensign Kims in what I assume is a multiverse situation, with the only promoted Kim of the bunch calling his doppelgangers out. “You’re all still ensigns?” he says. “That’s f***ed up!” The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere on Paramount+ with two episodes on Thursday, October 24, with new installments of the ten-episode season dropping every Thursday until the series finale on December 19, 2024. Check out the trailer for that final season below.[end-mark] The post Final Season Trailer for <i>Star Trek: Lower Decks</i> Gives Us a Lotta Kims appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review It’s No Surprise Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass is Incredible A review of Nghi Vo’s new fantasy novel By Alex Brown | Published on October 10, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share If you are already a fan of Nghi Vo, I’m not about to tell you anything new in this review of her latest book. The City in Glass is incredible, which is par for the course for her. If you haven’t had the pleasure yet of experiencing her writing then consider this the textual equivalent of me throwing this book at you. Either way, as soon as you’re done reading this, go to your nearest library or bookstore and pick up a copy. The city of Azril belonged to the demon Vitrine, and the demon Vitrine belonged to the city of Azril. Even if Azril didn’t know it. Centuries ago, Vitrine washed up on the shores of the city that would become Azril along with other refugees who sought safety within her borders. With careful pruning, boundless energy, and a penchant for capricious violence, Vitrine shaped and grew her new home into a thriving metropolis. Azril was a mecca for trade and artistry, a place where scoundrels, merchants, mercenaries, families, and immigrants could live in relative harmony. Those to whom Vitrine took a liking would find themselves blessed or cursed, often both at the same time. She whispered lies in their ears and opened their eyes to great truths. She patronized those who needed her support and tested those who needed toughening up. And their stories, with all their passions and tragedies, were recorded in the little book she kept in a glass cabinet inside her chest. Until the day the angels came and destroyed everything. Like titans from the sky, the angels spread across Azril and razed her to the ground with holy fire. Nothing lived, nothing survived, nothing was left standing. A whole city full of dreams and stories and lives only just begun gone in a single night. Unable to stop them, Vitrine used what little power she had and condemned one of the destroyers with a poisonous curse. It nearly cost her her life, but if she were to die, at least it would be in defense of the city she loved. Buy the Book The City in Glass Nghi Vo Buy Book The City in Glass Nghi Vo Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The City in Glass begins with an ending and ends with a beginning. We witness Azril’s destruction and Vitrine’s grief, then both of their gradual recoveries. As Vitrine mourns her loss, the readers get glimpses into the lives of some of the names recorded in her book. We learn how Azril was nothing but a pirate-ravaged port town before our demon showed up and the victories and failures she and her city endured over the years. We see their growing pains and their over-exertions. We learn why she loved her city so much and why it broke her so badly when it was taken from her. She was no benevolent god or kindly fairy godmother but she did want the best for her city, even if sometimes that meant blood and pain.  We also see her relationship with the angel she cursed evolve alongside what is born from Azril’s ashes. What surprised me by the end was how The City in Glass was a love story in all definitions and expressions of “love.” Familial, romantic, sexual, platonic, queerplatonic, the love between a parent and child, the love between people bonded by terrible trauma, the love experienced by someone eating a favorite food prepared by a beloved companion, the love between a pet and their person, the love that blooms in a found family, and on and on. The relationship between the demon and her angel is tempestuous and mercurial. Neither are ever quite sure where they stand with each other, but eventually they realize that doesn’t matter.  Vo has that rare talent of not only coming up with thoroughly unique stories but structuring them with prose so beautiful it almost reads like poetry or a song: Vitrine hit the ground like a star, sending up a wave of dust and grime, sinking into what had been Murrine Square before the angels came. It was where the glassblowers had set up their outdoor stands, puffing out globes of red and green and yellow for perfume bottles, witch’s balls, and amphitres of poison. Sunk a good few feet below the surface of the street, Vitrine could smell decades of copper for blue and garnet-gold for ruby, almost as it was before. In many ways, it reminds me of other speculative stories: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse, Witch King by Martha Wells, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark. Yet it is also wholly itself.  Despite its short length, this novel is packed to the brim with details. Vo offers peeks at other lands and cultures and how they influence the new and old Azril. Human characters come and go, sometimes making only brief appearances and sometimes living their whole lives in a few pages, but no matter what, they all feel fully realized and realistically complicated. I won’t spoil the story of Alex, the trans mercenary, but his is my favorite of the bunch. I want a whole novel from Nghi Vo about his adventures, but if I can’t have that, at least I have The City in Glass.[end-mark] The City in Glass is available from Tordotcom Publishing. The post It’s No Surprise Nghi Vo’s <i>The City in Glass</i> is Incredible appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A German court has found CJ Hopkins, an American writer living in that country, guilty of hate speech, which is treated as an unconstitutional activity. This overturned a previous acquittal by the Tiergarten District Court. “Hate speech” in the case amounts to Hopkins using Nazi imagery to express his protest about Germany’s Covid-era policies, including what he called “New Normal Germany” – a satirical take on how that compares to Nazi Germany. The imagery that caught the authorities’ attention was posted on X, including an illustration showing a white face mask with a white swastika superimposed on it. Even though a lower court in January found this did not represent “hate speech,” on the last day of September, the Berlin Appellate Court disagreed. In a blog post, Hopkins, who has been residing in Germany since 2004, says that “the New Normal German authorities (…) were determined to punish me.” To highlight the absurdity of the situation, Hopkins told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that the second trial went with anti-terrorism measures in the courtroom. This meant a small number of people were allowed to attend, behind a glass panel, while journalists could not bring in laptops or even notebooks and pens. Now, the case is back at the Tiergarten Court which is supposed to sentence him – the author is looking at up to three years in prison. And while the Berlin court’s decision itself can’t be appealed, Hopkins told FIRE he would go to the highest legal instance in Germany – the Federal Constitutional Court (ostensibly after the district court rules again). The case has already been ongoing for several years, and that move would mean more time and money wasted because Hopkins, whose writing genre is said to be specifically satire, had posted satirical images on the internet. To make matters look even worse (for Germany’s authorities), Hopkins notes in his blog post that a mere few months ago, major magazines Stern and Spiegel had swastikas as part of illustrations on their covers – but this was a way to discredit (“warn against”) the rising popularity of the opposition AdF party. That, it seems, is an acceptable form of expression in today’s Germany, as there is no word that either magazine is about to be dragged through the courts for their covers. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post American Author Could Face Prison in Germany Over Satirical Swastika appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

The Blue Wall is Showing Some Cracks

It took two and one-half months for Kamala Harris to agree to an interview with a national journalist. She was interviewed on "60 Minutes" by Bill Whitaker, but her answers are not likely to help her with the few voters who say they are still “undecided.” Asked by Whitaker to explain her economic plan and how it would be paid for, Harris’ response bordered on the meaningless: “My plan is about saying when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy.” Whitaker: “The question was how are you going to pay for it?” Harris: “I am going to make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers, nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations. And I plan on making that fair.” “Fair” must be a poll-tested word, but it has no meaning unless it is defined. Democrats have been invoking it for years, but they never say what they mean. In some states the successful are paying more than half their income to federal, state and local governments. Is it fair when governments penalize success and subsidize its opposite? And who will define affordable? Whitaker should have asked Harris what she would do to cut spending, the main driver of debt, and how would she reform Social Security and Medicare, which will run out of money in the 2030s. Whitaker asked Harris how she would get her plan through Congress. Harris gave her usual nonsensical answer: “You know when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about ‘cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about. Those constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses…” I don’t know what she is talking about. In reporting on some of the same claims that President Joe Biden made in his last State of the Union address, Reuters reported: “The average American worker paid about a 25% tax rate in 2022, the OECD reported. White House research found the wealthiest individuals paid about 8% from 2010 to 2018.” White House “research”? According to The Cato Institute: “The 8 percent is a concoction by Biden political appointees at odds with data from the U.S. Treasury, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Internal Revenue Service and Joint Committee on Taxation. All these official sources find that tax rates on high earners are much higher than tax rates on lower- and middle-income folks.” On another topic, Harris was asked about Israel and the attacks by Iran and its proxies. Harris defaulted to the familiar position that Israel “has a right to defend itself,” but seemed to separate the Jewish state from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Whitaker: “Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?” Harris: “With all due respect, I think the more important question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.” The Biden-Harris administration, like the Obama-Biden and Clinton-Gore administrations, have repeatedly tried to impose their will on Israel to get the Jewish state to act in ways that would put it in greater peril. For Harris to try and separate Israel from its duly elected leader is to give aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies, who are also our enemies. The question still waiting to be asked is why Harris and every Democrat who met with Biden engaged in what looks like a cover-up of his mental state that lead to his withdrawal from the race. After the “60 Minutes” interview, Harris decamped to more friendly territory, appearing on “The View” and Howard Stern’s radio program. It is unlikely any of these interviews will change the minds of entrenched voters.