Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Loyola’s student newspaper issues apology over Sheridan Gorman story — for correctly calling alleged killer an ‘illegal immigrant’

Loyola University Chicago’s student newspaper is facing backlash for apologizing for its coverage of freshman Sheridan Gorman’s murder — because editors labeled the alleged murderer an “illegal immigrant.”

The Loyola Phoenix originally reported — accurately — on accused killer Jose Medina-Medina‘s status as an illegal alien after he was charged on Monday with the execution of 18-year-old Gorman.

“Immigrant man charged in murder of Sheridan Gorman, DHS involved,” the student paper’s headline originally read, referring to Venezuelan national Medina-Medina, 25, as an “illegal immigrant.”

But the Phoenix later edited its story to describe Medina-Medina as a “Rogers Park Resident,” in reference to the Chicago neighborhood where Loyola’s main campus is located — and where Gorman was walking with friends when she was shot dead early Thursday.

“That headline didn’t reflect the most important elements in the story, and it was taken down minutes later to prevent any further harm to affected community members,” the newspaper said in a lengthy editor’s note on the article.

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Report Alleges Trump’s Daily Military Briefing Scrubs Out Iran War Setbacks

A fresh NBC report has alleged that President Trump is being presented with a very incomplete picture of how the Iran war is going, with the conflict now approaching its first month, and as Washington struggles to find an offramp amid global oil market disruptions.

The report says that his daily military briefing provided by the Pentagon features a roughly 2-minute long video update for President Trump that shows the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets of the prior 48 hours. Negative developments frequently get omitted or glossed over.

Anonymous US officials have voiced fears that the video briefings, which the president tends to respond positively to, fail to represent the full scope of what’s going on. Also, Trump’s aides have reportedly voiced greater approval for the briefings, which feature Iranian military equipment and bases and sites getting blown up.

The NBC report, which has been rejected by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in essence suggests Trump is not getting properly briefed on major negative developments.

Or in other words, the fear is that briefers are simply favoring information that he wants to hear, and too afraid to deliver bad news. According to NBC:

They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.

Again, Leavitt has called all of this “an absolutely false assertion” from people who aren’t in the briefing room; however NBC does offer the following example which seems consistent with its reporting:

One example came this month when five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were hit in an Iranian strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to one of the current U.S. officials. Trump wasn’t briefed about the strikes, and he learned what had happened from media reports, the official said. When Trump inquired, he was told the planes weren’t badly damaged, the official said.

The official said Trump reacted angrily behind the scenes to the news coverage. Publicly he posted on Truth Social calling coverage of the strike misleading and accusing media organizations of wanting the U.S. “to lose the War.”

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NASA Unveils Plan for First Nuclear-Powered Interplanetary Spacecraft

The first-ever nuclear-powered spacecraft built for interplanetary travel will set off on a mission to Mars in 2028.

The Space Reactor‑1 Freedom (SR-1 Freedom) project was unveiled in Washington on March 24. NASA leadership said it’s the first step toward nuclear power on the moon and for exploratory missions farther out in space, where solar panels and traditional chemical propulsion would be less and less effective.

The ship was introduced by Steve Sinacore, NASA’s Fission Surface Power program executive, who said it comes from utilizing more than 60 years of NASA’s research into fission nuclear propulsion and repurposing a power and propulsion unit already nearing completion.

It will be fueled with low-enriched uranium, producing more than 20 kilowatts of advanced electric propulsion primarily through the transfer of heat from the uranium. It will also be equipped with radiation shielding and high-rate direct-to-Earth communications with images and data.

SR-1 Freedom’s first mission will be a year-long journey to Mars for a mission called “Skyfall.” Its job will be to deliver a payload of three helicopter drones modeled after “Ingenuity,” the first helicopter to fly on Mars, to the surface. The aircraft will then take readings of and below the planet’s surface in anticipation of a crewed mission, such as searching for water as ice trapped beneath the surface, and scouting out a landing site.

NASA leaders didn’t announce where the launch would take place or disclose what kind of rocket would be used.

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Biden officials pushed COVID booster harder after surveillance found stroke increase: Sen. Johnson

The Biden administration pushed COVID-19 boosters for elderly people even harder after its vaccine safety surveillance systems discovered, as early as November 2022, “statistically significant safety signals for ischemic stroke” in that age group following uptake of the Pfizer bivalent, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy in a letter Monday, disclosed Wednesday.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chair released nearly 2,000 pages of “relevant HHS records” in conjunction with the letter, in 10 batches, documenting the stroke signal and internal communications between officials “acknowledging significant statistical limitations in their ability to detect safety signals through their data analyses.”

The Biden White House next made edits to a draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration “communications plan” to increase booster uptake, in January 2023, that “downplayed the significance of the safety signal, changing a sentence that stated that the ‘signal is moderately elevated’ to the ‘signal is slightly elevated,'” Johnson told Kennedy.

“Biden health officials posted on FDA’s website that ‘no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice,'” the same month, even as they “initiated multiple studies and statistical analyses — including a so-called ‘Stroke Project” — to investigate the validity of their assertion” through at least September 2025, Johnson’s office said.

He asked Kennedy for more information about detection of ischemic stroke following the booster because “the full extent of HHS’s awareness of the ischemic stroke safety signal remains incomplete and key records are still missing.”

Biden officials downplayed the risk of ischemic stroke they found in coadministered COVID and flu vaccines in fall 2023.

Several months earlier they approved “additional investigation” of the booster stroke signal even while emphasizing they weren’t changing vaccine recommendations, but quickly dismissed the signal after using a “different methodology.“

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Shock New Evidence Showing No Link Between CO2 and Temperature Over Last Three Million Years Stumps Net Zero Activists

The climate science world (‘settled’ division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago. Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a 20 ppm movement recorded for the following near three million-year period. In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period. Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial rises appear to have occurred without troubling ‘greenhouse’ gas levels, and this revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.

The assumed level three million years ago of CO2 was around 400 ppm, a convenient mark that has been used to explain the subsequent ice age and a drop to 250 ppm. Due to the recently published paper, this explanation has become more problematic and natural climate variation is correctly noted to have occurred with the temperature changes. Alas, similar explanations are mostly ignored in discussing today’s climate changes in the interests of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. Some cling desperately to a dominant CO2 role, including one of the authors of the findings published in Nature. The co-author states that the results suggest even greater climate sensitivity to the warming effect of CO2. In short, there is a great deal of applying the laws of physics and chemistry to one era, but failing to extend the same courtesy to another.

The title of the paper, produced by 17 America-based scientists, was enough to set alarm bells ringing in the ‘settled’ science, Net Zero-obsessed community: ‘Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past three million years.’ A related paper examining ocean heat content derived from the ice core record was also published. Carrie Lear, Professor of Past Climates and Earth System Changes at Cardiff University, claimed that the papers “don’t rewrite the role of CO2, they underline how sensitive the climate system is… that is why today’s rapid  CO2 rise is so alarming”.

Ah, yes. Even if CO2 movements are minimal, probably within a margin of potential error, they are still responsible for large variations in temperature. The laws of climate science are ‘settled’ – if the trace atmospheric gas CO2 is rising, falling or generally stable, it is almost wholly responsible for large movements in global temperature. Under this rather shaky assumption, humans must stop burning hydrocarbons and return to a neo-Malthusian pre-industrial age.

Study lead author Julia Marks-Peterson noted: “We definitely were a bit surprised. If correct, the findings may suggest that even small changes in greenhouse gas levels could trigger major shifts in climate.” That’s a little bit of a scary thought, she added, possibly with an eye on future grant funding. “May suggest” is doing a lot of the work here, and it may also be suggested that more plausible opinions are available.

Quoted in New Scientist magazine, Tim Naish, Professor of Earth Science at Victoria University in New Zealand, said it was “way too early to thrown the baby out with the bathwater”. Perish the thought that baby should be given its marching orders, ending a science-lite 40-year demonisation of CO2 and related promotion of a hard-Left Net Zero dream.

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School used AI to purge library of ‘inappropriate’ books including Orwell’s 1984 and Twilight, with librarian branded ‘safeguarding risk’

A school used artificial intelligence to censor books in its library including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, campaigners claim.

An investigation by Index on Censorship found a secondary school in Greater Manchester earmarked almost 200 books for removal from its library that were deemed ‘inappropriate’.

These also included Michelle Obama‘s autobiography, Becoming and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

The charity, which campaigns for free expression, says the school got AI to generate summaries justifying why each book was not suitable for pupils.

Incredibly, the school librarian was also put under a ‘safeguarding’ investigation – leading to her resignation – for allowing the books in the library.

Index said it would not reveal the name of the librarian or the school, due to her being vulnerable.

Although many of the books were initially removed, it is not known if all of those on the list remain banned from the library.

The case was exposed this week by the school librarian, who spoke to the organisation on condition of her anonymity.

She said the purge began in November 2025, when the headteacher demanded the removal of Laura Bates’ nonfiction title Men Who Hate Women, which is an exposé of incel culture.

The head thought the book was inappropriate due to ‘exposure of misogynistic beliefs’, even though it was kept in a special section for older pupils.

Off the back of this incident, the school then launched an ‘investigation’ into the librarian, and closed the library as a ‘temporary safeguarding measure’.

She was then asked to remove any book that was ‘not written for children’, had ‘themes that could be upsetting to children’ and those that were ‘inappropriate or constitute a safeguarding risk’.

She told Index: ‘I was absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

The school also reported her to the council as a safeguarding risk due to introducing ‘inappropriate’ books – and there was also a threat of gross misconduct proceedings.

The school shared with her a list of 193 books which it deemed might be inappropriate, seen by Index.

Index said it had seen another document in which the school admitted the reasons given for the censorship had been written by AI.

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Trump’s FTC Wages a War on Media Criticism

NewsGuard, a company that rates news outlets’ accuracy using what it calls “apolitical journalistic criteria…to identify reliable sources of information,” has filed a lawsuit to block the Federal Trade Commission’s demand for a list of all its customers.

The FTC in May 2025 launched a wide-ranging probe into NewsGuard and 16 other groups—including left-leaning watch group Media Matters for America, and the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit media ratings service. The agency alleged the groups were part of “a conspiracy to boycott conservative and independent media.”

Deadline (2/6/26) reported that FTC chair Andrew “Ferguson has targeted NewsGuard, suggesting that it violated antitrust laws and that it was biased, as NewsGuard had given a low score to Newsmax, the conservative news site.”

NewsGuard’s lawsuit accuses the FTC of “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce, but rather to censor speech simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the reliability of news sources” (AP, 3/23/26).

NewsGuard also accused the FTC of holding up a $13 billion merger of advertising heavyweights Omnicom Group and IPG unless the merged company agreed not to use NewsGuard’s services.

Media Matters filed a similar lawsuit last summer to block sweeping FTC demands for documents; a federal judge ruled in the group’s favor, calling that FTC probe “a straightforward First Amendment violation” (Bloomberg, 1/22/26). The FTC has appealed the ruling against it.

Ferguson is yet another representative of the Trump regime trying to silence any criticism of the government or its right-wing support network. For regime apologists, of course, the FTC chief is a sacred warrior against liberals, protecting conservatives from insults and disagreement.

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Mystery of five missing scientists sends chill across America. Three are dead. And one troubling link is now under scrutiny in DC

A chilling pattern has emerged after a string of US scientists died or went missing in recent months. 

Retired General William Neil McCasland, 68, and NASA aerospace engineer Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, were both major figures in the Air Force Research Laboratory. The general oversaw Reza’s work on creating a futuristic metal for rocket engines.

Within the span of eight months, both have mysteriously vanished without a trace while allegedly hiking in the Southwest United States.

McCasland’s reported ties to secret UFO programs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and Reza’s work with space-age technology used for advanced propulsion, have led many to claim without evidence that the pair are fleeing from parties that wish to silence them because of what they know.

Independent researchers and even a member of Congress fear the pattern has grown even darker after three scientists in the fields of chemical biology, nuclear fusion and astrophysics were murdered or found dead in just the last three months.

One of those renowned scientists was working on a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize science, creating an unlimited energy source that may end fossil fuel use as we know it.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail he saw a clear pattern in these seemingly unrelated deaths and disappearances, noting that the work several of them were doing has been linked to theories about extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

‘There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,’ Burchett said. ‘I think we ought to be paying attention to it.’

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Politicians Want To Ban Gambling Ads To Stop Youth Addiction. What Do the Data Say About Teens and Betting?

Are young boys everywhere on the verge of being pulled down into the abyss of online gambling? 

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you might be tempted to think so. Young men are all addicted to sports betting, and now the industry’s incessant advertising is luring in kids, so say some media outlets. If something isn’t done to limit ads for gambling apps, some argue, kids will continue to be taken advantage of. 

These dire predictions have reached Colorado lawmakers, who are now considering Senate Bill 26-131, which would place major restrictions on sports betting in the state. In addition to barring adults from making more than five separate deposits with an individual betting operator within a 24-hour period, the bill would also make it illegal to broadcast an ad “for a sports betting operation from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. or during a live broadcast of an athletic competition.” . 

The bill’s supporters defend this prohibition by saying it’s necessary to protect kids. In reality, gambling ads pose very little threat to children. Even for those who find ways around age restrictions, the data show that they make bets only occasionally (similar to most adults). While gambling can and does ruin lives for the small fraction of adults who become addicted to it, it’s a relatively harmless form of entertainment for the vast majority of users. And for those who do have a genuine gambling problem, advertisements for legitimate betting apps can help direct them toward well-regulated companies and steer them away from dangerous, illegal gambling operations. 

The moral panic over online sports betting has made some people wildly overestimate the power of TV commercials. State Sen. Matt Ball (D–Denver), one of the bill’s sponsors, compared sports betting ads to those for cigarettes. “The whole point is we try to restrict that advertising from getting to kids,” he told Denver 7, a local ABC News affiliate. “At the end of the day, gambling is an addiction. It’s like alcoholism. It’s like substance abuse.” The theory seems to be that, if kids see ads for gambling apps, they’ll start gambling themselves and immediately develop an addiction that will destroy their lives. 

A recent survey by Common Sense Media on gambling amongst minors is helping to fuel those concerns. The survey found that 36 percent of boys aged 11 to 17 said they gambled online within the past year.    

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Jury in Los Angeles finds Meta, YouTube negligent in social media addiction trial

A jury in Los Angeles determined on Wednesday that Meta and Google’s YouTube were negligent and failed to warn users of the dangers associated with using their platforms, in a case that could have repercussions across the social media and the broader technology market.

The personal injury trial commenced in late January in Los Angeles Superior Court. A young woman identified as K.G.M., or Kaley, alleged that she became addicted to apps like Instagram and YouTube as a child. Deliberations began Friday, March 13.

Jurors ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, who claimed that Meta and YouTube’s negligence played a “substantial factor” in causing mental health-related harms. Compensatory damages were assessed at $3 million, with Meta on the hook for 70% and YouTube the remaining 30%. The next phase of the trial will determine punitive damages.

“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

It’s one of several trials taking place this year that experts have characterized as the social media industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment, comparing it the 1990s, when tobacco companies were forced to pay billions of dollars for lying to the public about the safety and potential harms of their products.

On Tuesday, jurors in Santa Fe, New Mexico found that Meta willfully violated the state’s unfair practices after Attorney General Raúl Torrez alleged that the company failed to properly safeguard its apps from online predators targeting children. Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations. The company said that it would appeal the case.

The New Mexico case is separate from other social media lawsuits that state attorneys general have brought against companies including Meta and TikTok.

During the six-week trial in L.A., jury members were tasked with determining whether Meta and YouTube implemented certain design features in their apps like recommendation algorithms and auto-play that contributed to K.G.M.’s crippling, mental distress. The 20-year-old woman alleged that she suffered from severe body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts due to her near-constant use of the apps and the constant notifications that made it difficult for her to stop.

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