Source: Freedom’s Phoenix
“Dr Mary Ruwart (Chair of Liberty International and Secretary of the Foundation for a Free Society) on The Philosophy of Liberty, activism, young people and freedom, the desire for liberty is worldwide, etc.” (12/10/25)
Source: Serious Trouble
“You Can Take the Girl Out of New Jersey.” (12/10/25)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/you-can-take-the-girl-out-of-new
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Katharine Trendacosta
“The state of streaming is… bad. It’s very bad. The first step in wanting to watch anything is a web search: ‘Where can I stream X?’ Then you have to scroll past an AI summary with no answers, and then scroll past the sponsored links. After that, you find out that the thing you want to watch was made by a studio that doesn’t exist anymore or doesn’t have a streaming service. So, even though you subscribe to more streaming services than you could actually name, you will have to buy a digital copy to watch. A copy that, despite paying for it specifically, you do not actually own and might vanish in a few years. … It’s important to recognize this as we see more and more media mergers. These mergers are not about quality, they’re about control.” (12/10/25)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/best-big-media-merger-no-merger-all
Source: Associated Press
“Mexico’s Congress approved Wednesday most of the tariff increases proposed by the government on more than 1,400 products imported from China and other countries that do not have free trade agreements with Mexico. … The governing Morena party of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who said the tariffs were necessary to spur domestic production, controls both chambers. … Analysts say the real motivation is ongoing negotiations with Washington, Mexico’s most important trading partner. Sheinbaum has been trying to find relief from remaining tariffs imposed on Mexican imports by the Trump administration, which has accused China of using Mexico as a backdoor into the U.S. market.” (12/10/25)
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-china-tariffs-fa89b687e6fc61996b67083b3f789243
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“Supreme Court considers vastly expanding the president’s powers.” (12/10/25)
Source: Niskanen Center
“How media incentives stoked the culture war.” (12/10/25)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-media-incentives-stoked-the-culture-war
Source: The UnPopulist
by Eric K Ward
“Every era has its witch. Every empire, its scapegoat. The person painted green so the rest of us can pretend we’re clean. That’s the real story of Wicked, the celebrated Broadway musical adapted into two feature films in 2024 and 2025 that are part origin narrative and part reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. … We are living through our own Emerald City moment. Propaganda repeats on loop; scapegoats fill the headlines; teachers are called indoctrinators; artists are called subversives; journalists are labeled enemies; officeholders from the opposition party are deemed America-haters. Entire communities are remixed into villains so authoritarians can stay in charge. Same playbook, new costumes.” (12/10/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/wicked-shows-us-the-moral-strategies
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Forty-four million views later, the University of Oklahoma has advised student Samantha Fulnecky that the zero her paper received won’t be factored into her final course grade. While it’s good that the school won’t hold that zero against her, she deserves a grade — an honest, objective grade — for her work. Fulnecky did submit a paper, contrary to what is implied by the zero. She did indeed turn in an essay on the topic of ‘gender, peer relations and mental health’ that her class was assigned. Perhaps the word ‘gender’ has given you the clue. You guessed it: she took the wrong view.” (12/10/25)
Source: Orange County Register
“NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade. Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend. NASA said this week that it was working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. Launched in 2013, Maven began studying the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind once reaching the red planet the following year. Scientists ended up blaming the sun for Mars losing most of its atmosphere to space over the eons, turning it from wet and warm to the dry and cold world it is today.
Maven also has served as a communication relay for NASA’s two Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance.” (12/10/25)
Source: The Bulwark
“The Clock Is Ticking — DOJ Can’t Keep Hiding Epstein Records.” (12/10/25)