In the past dozen years, judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands. Nine of 10 kept their jobs, Reuters found

Revivalism in art is not a new phenomenon, and nor is it always bad — indeed it would be possible to write a history of the progress of European art since the Renaissance entirely in terms of revivalism — but its merits depend on its motives. So as a broad but concerted endeavour to revive “traditional” painting is now quietly gaining momentum, it is time to ask about the origins and the direction of the movement. Is revivalist painting now driven more by artistic or by political concerns? The answer can never be as simple as one or the other; yet it is crucial to ascertain the balance. A troubling case in point is provided by the work of Giovanni Gasparro who, at still just 36, has been heralded as the movement’s saviour in Italy. He has had considerable success. Far from lurking in the shadows, his paintings have been exhibited widely, and alongside other paintings by some of the most illustrious masters in the history of Italian art; they have even been hung in the Casino dell’Aurora of the Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi, in Rome, beneath Guido Reni’s Aurora fresco (perhaps the most celebrated image of the Italian baroque). In 2011 Gasparro also had the rare opportunity to confront the mainstream contemporary art world when his traditionalist paintings were chosen, by the celebrity art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, to feature in the Venice Biennale. By now Gasparro has been collected by national museums; and he has repeatedly received patronage from the Catholic Church.

Minimally invasive procedure is to ‘minimize the risk of future bleeding’ after no complications from first surgery

But the scheme has sparked alarm among the islanders who fear the loss of their land, culture, and way of life, with the project threatening to push them to the brink of extinction.

Today I’m delighted to announce Willow, our latest quantum chip. Willow has state-of-the-art performance across a number of metrics, enabling two major achievements. The first is that Willow can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits. This cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years. Second, Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe. [...] Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch. [last sentence belongs in Horseshit]

CEO Alexandr Wang is named in the suit, which cites emotional distress for contractors who worked on a self-harm-prevention project for Meta.

Portugal, Morocco and Spain will combine to host the 2030 tournament.

Since the Affordable Care Act’s passage, the top five health insurers’ annual profits have jumped 230 percent, with much of that going to UnitedHealthcare.

Younger House Democrats, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and newer members, like Angie Craig, are taking on senior members for key committee jobs in the next Congress.

Scapegoat politics is a tempting—but harmful—distraction from the real work of solidarity-building.

Days after Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to pull funding from Texas Children’s Hospital after a Houston doctor went viral for telling patients they don’t have to answer questions about their citizenship status, the TikTok video was taken down. Dr. Tony Pastor, a cardiologist with Texas Children's Hospital and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, posted a video on TikTok on Nov. 11, responding to Abbott's recent executive order requiring Texas public hospitals that accept Medicaid or Medicare to report on health care for undocumented immigrants. The order went into effect Nov. 1. It is not clear if either Texas Children’s Hospital or Baylor College of Medicine forced Pastor to remove the video or if Pastor took it down on his own. Chron reached out to Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine on Tuesday to ask if either medical institution requested Pastor take the post down and if any disciplinary actions were taken against the physician.

On paper, it sounds simple – the more you learn, the more you earn, but with your life taken up by work and family, finding time to read just one book can be nearly impossible. Luckily, there’s a solution — here’s how Blinkist can help you read as much as a billionaire and fill your daily life with learning: Blinkist Helps You Read As Much As A Billionaire With the Blinkist app, in just 15 minutes, you can grasp the same core ideas from a non-fiction book that takes Bill Gates a week to read. By reading Blinkist’s insights into non-fiction books, you can vastly increase your reading capacity, getting you closer to matching the reading habits of successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates.

The McDonald's restaurant employee who helped police trace a suspect in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO could be shortchanged out of the hefty $60,000 reward.

Pornhub just released its year in review report for 2024, and the themes that showed the most growth in popularity this year were related to modesty, being someone’s wife, and “respectful” sex. Seeing them appear in Pornhub’s top trending spots shows how the “traditional” lifestyle influencers have made popular is, and always has been, a sexual fantasy. Pornhub reports: “Searches for ‘demure’ rose +133%. The term ‘mindful pleasure’ was up +112% and ‘mindful JOI’ (JOI is an acronym for jerk off instructions) was up +87%. Searches related to modesty also increased. The term ‘modesty’ increased +77% and the term ‘modest milf’ was up +45%.” Terms like “simple sex,” “authentic sex,” and “respectful sex” also saw a boost in popularity this year. They attribute this to the “very demure, very mindful” TikTok trend that went viral earlier this year. The platform also said in its report that wives are way up—and attributes it to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. “While wives are already hot on Pornhub, the show, in addition to the interest of traditional aspects like authentic couples and authentic sex, seemed to ignite a spark into a flame,” the report says. “In general, the interest in ‘wife’ and marital searches spiked, with ‘amateur wife’ up +21%, ‘traditional wife’ up +34% and ‘tradwife’ up +72%.” Searches for “mormon wife,” “mormon sex,” “mormon missionary,” and “mormon threesome” were also way up. The rest of the trends were much of the same old stuff that’s been popular for years: MILFs, hentai, anal, etcetera. But these first two trending themes gave me pause. After all, this has been a year of discussion about our reproductive and sexual rights being further chipped away instead of expanded. The influencer who started the “demure” trend is trans and was talking about blending in at her workplace; women historically have made themselves “mindful” and “cutesy” to survive. And after Donald Trump spent his campaign swearing he has nothing to do with Project 2025—a manifesto that includes banning porn, removing federal anti-discrimination policies that protect LGBTQ+ people, and rolling back rights around gender equity and sexual and reproductive health—the president-elect is bringing many of its authors into his administration. Seeing a huge jump in themes of modesty and being a demure wife raised my eyebrows—a lot more than any animated stepmom creampie threesome ever could. I asked a few experts in porn and the art of jerking off if they felt the same chill at these results. Adult performer Siri Dahl told me she’s “not at all surprised” to see these trends crop up this year. “I've been seeing a similar trend within my own fan base when it comes to requests for custom content,” she said. “I've noticed I receive more requests for girlfriend or wife roleplay videos than ever before, and while that could be attributable to a number of factors, my hunch is that it's coming from a place of fans and viewers seeking a sense of intimacy from my videos, which may not be accessible to them elsewhere in their lives.” Dahl started an Instagram account in 2023 that parodied tradwife content creators, after her own account was banned by the platform multiple times. Tradwife content (short for “traditional wife) is fetish content, even if the “wife” isn’t showing skin. It’s a fantasy, and always has been, even when it was used to sell ovens to 1960s homemakers. “I believe that most trends in society work through ebbs and flows and swing like a pendulum back-and-forth between opposite ideals,” Lotus Lain, performer and industry relations advocate at the Free Speech Coalition, told me. We entered a moment of “slut revelry,” she said, where open relationships and exploring kink were popular, which coincided with the pandemic and more people turning to independent creator work. During that time, OnlyFans took off, with users spending $2.4 billion on the site in 2020, and became shorthand for getting into porn to make ends meet. But then there was a backlash to the “OnlyFans girl,” Lain said. “Many men were turned off by women monetizing their sexuality for themselves. Many men, I also believe, would prefer women not being in charge of their sexuality. I started noticing in a lot of comments or posts online that men wanted ‘good girls’ or what is now known as ‘trad wives.’ They talk about sex workers, sexually liberated women, sluts as ‘used up.’ The idea that the trad wife or good girl is ‘clean, pure, untouched’ and therefore more of a turn on in this current moment of slut revelry that we’re experiencing.” Dahl theorized that a lot of adult content creators are capitalizing on the safe-for-work trends made popular by trad-life influencers like Nara Smith, and giving them a pornographic twist. “One thing that is always going to be true about the porn industry and adult content creators is that we love any opportunity to put a creative spin on a cultural trend. I don't know if creators started uploading tradwife content to Pornhub first, or if fans started searching for it and asking for it first, but to me, those specifics don't really matter,” Dahl said. “There's obviously a market for that content, and that's what I find most interesting.” Dr. Eric Sprankle, a professor of clinical psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato and author of DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation, speculated that there are three kinds of men—assuming it’s men driving these trends—who are searching for tradwife porn. “The smallest segment, I’d imagine, would be those excited by the current reactionary political climate and are seeking porn that reflects their idealized homesteading lifestyle. This group would hold the least favorable attitudes toward porn and masturbation, though, so I would expect atonement prayers would commence after they climax from a video of a woman baking a pie,” he said. “The largest segment of guys driving this trend, I’d guess, would be those who have seen the tradwife viral videos on TikTok or Instagram and thought to themselves, ‘She’s pretty hot; I wonder if she sells feet pics.’ Simple curiosity drives their PornHub search, and it’s probably a one-and-done adventure.” In between, he said, there’s likely a group who is already aroused by women presenting as “modest,” or as Lain said, the “clean, pure, untouched” fantasy, who became aware of the tradewife label from social media trends. Tapping a trending word into the Pornhub search bar is probably more efficient than trying to describe one’s turn-ons at length. “These guys are aroused by women displaying modesty, chastity, or virginity who are being tempted, teased, degraded, or ‘spoiled’ by pleasures of the flesh,” Sprankle said. “It’s really no different than porn that has been around for decades that has sexualized the Amish and Catholic nuns.” As I’ve said in many ways across many articles attempting to unpack kink and fetish, art imitates life, and porn is an art. The trad influencers are responding to something people currently crave—authenticity, simplicity, a fantasy of being provided for and providing for someone you love (or at least want to see naked) — and pornographers, being eternally savvy, follow suit. “If anything, the fact that ‘tradwife’ is a trending porn search term reminds me that the entire concept of the tradwife is just influencer marketing in the first place,” Dahl said. “Most tradwife influencers are actually business owners and the primary breadwinners in their homes, so the term itself is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it. Maybe seeing a bunch of porn labeled "tradwife" will help other people to realize that whether it's an Instagram influencer or a Pornhub creator, tradwifery is just a fantasy after all.”

U.S. wildlife officials have decided to extend federal protections to monarch butterflies. Fish and Wildlife Service officials on Tuesday announced plans to list monarchs as threatened.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said that he is taking unidentified drone flights in his state “deadly seriously.” “These are apparently … as I understand it, very sophisticated,” Murphy told a group of reporters in a clip posted to the social platform X Monday. “The minute you get eyes on them, they go dark. And, you know, we’re obviously most concerned about sensitive targets and sensitive, critical infrastructure. We’ve got military assets, we’ve got utility assets, we’ve got the president-elect’s, one of his homes, here. This is something we’re taking deadly seriously,” he added. Last week, in a post on X, Murphy said he “convened a briefing” featuring Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as well as other important figures in the Department of Homeland Security, New Jersey government “and members of our congressional delegation to discuss reported drone activity over parts of North and Central New Jersey.”

The Justice Department during Donald Trump’s first term failed to comply with its own procedures when it sought journalists’ phone and email records in leak investigations, according to a DOJ watchdog report released Tuesday. And the department never conducted any high-level review as it swept up the records of 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic House members, the report found. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said he also found no evidence that federal prosecutors got express approval from then-Attorney General Bill Barr or told federal courts that the subpoenas were for records of lawmakers and their aides, despite the potential for the probes to intrude on legitimate oversight efforts by Congress.

The forgotten victims of America’s opioid crisis [From 2018]

Donald Trump and Republicans may try to ban funding to companies that perform trans health care. Some fear Democrats won't stop them.

A new Texas lawsuit against Character.ai, alleging its chatbots poisoned a son against his family, is part of a push to increase oversight of AI companions.