The horror of the surrogacy trend reared its head again this week.

An Instagram video posted by gay musician Shane McAnally has triggered the ire of many conservatives and viewers alike.

‘The most horrifying video I’ve ever seen in my life.’

Posted earlier this week, the video shows a man, presumably either McAnally or his “husband,” Michael Baum, holding their adopted third child, Texson, whom they recently brought into the family after taking him from his mother after she gave birth.

“Who do you want, Dada or Pop?” the man asks the baby repeatedly over the course of the video.

The baby can be heard making noises that sound remarkably like “mama” and “mom” throughout the video.

RELATED: Surrogacy ‘trafficking’? Unmarried Chinese couple in the US accused of massive baby scam — 21 kids placed in foster care

Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images

The man holding the baby feigns shock when the infant cries out for his mother, saying, “No way, Jose,” to the baby.

The baby, who according to People was born in late October 2025 and immediately turned over to the homosexual couple, begins to cry at this point in the video, visibly upset.

The man in the video and the man holding the camera both begin to laugh at the baby while he cries harder and harder for his “mama.”

“There is no mama. I’m so sorry. You have Dada and Pop,” the man in the video says.

“No mama,” he repeats as the baby cries.

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles described this video as “the most horrifying video I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Instagram users seemed to have experienced the same revulsion Knowles did.

“This is why it’s important to remember that it’s a child’s right to have parents- and not a[n] adult’s right to have children,” one user said.

Another said, “That’s not funny. Someone please save this baby :(.”

“People go to therapy for the trauma that’s caused when they grow up with an absent mother. Why are adults trying to get children to meet their needs when it was always supposed to be the other way around?” a third commenter added to the post.

McAnally has repeatedly mocked his child as the “homophobic baby” in other posts on his page.

For example, a video posted in December shows a 6-week-old Texson smiling as the man holding the camera tells him about his brother, sister, and two puppies. He then says, “And two dads.” Texson stops smiling and appears to furrow his brow at this moment.

According to People, McAnally and Baum were “married’ in 2012. They have another son and a daughter, named Dash and Dylan, respectively.

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​Conservatives, Foster care, Michael baum, Michael knowles, Politics, Shane mcanally, Texson, Two dads, Homophobic baby, Surrogacy, Homosexuals, Gay dads, Child abuse 

Tune in to any late-night talk show these days, and it’s nothing but wall-to-wall clapter — the seal-like applause emitted by audiences in response to any variation of the phrase “orange man bad.”

As Robert Plant once queried, “Does anybody remember laughter?”

Those of us old enough to have watched Carson, Letterman, or O’Brien do.

Well, Jimmy Kimmel has news for you: He’s not here to entertain you. In fact, he’s offended you even expect it.

The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host unloaded on entitled TV viewers while chatting with former first lady Michelle Obama on the failing podcast she co-hosts.

And it was as cringe-inducing as you’d expect. Turns out, Kimmel takes it personally when critics say he should be funny.

“To say that, ‘Well, your job is this,’ it makes me — I bristle at that because, first of all, don’t tell me what my job is. I don’t tell you what your job is. My job is whatever I decide my job is, whatever my employer allows me to do. That’s what my job is.”

His job, apparently, is to speed up the decline of late-night TV, and in his defense, he’s doing a heckuva job …

French toast

First, the French found Jerry Lewis irresistible. Now, the country’s movie buffs have fallen for one of 2025’s biggest box office busts.

“Ella McCay” arrived with plenty of hype last year, from its starry cast (Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Woody Harrelson) to a legendary writer/director (James L. Brooks) behind the camera. The film, focusing on a flustered young woman (Emma Mackey) thrust into the political scene, earned withering reviews. The box office tally? A shockingly low $4 million domestically.

Yet the French are coming to the film’s rescue. Disney+’s French edition debuted the film after its theatrical release got benched due to that chilly U.S. reception. The French goodwill, boosted by fawning media support, built up to the point where the studio agreed to a limited theatrical release in the country.

Maybe AI can insert a digital Jerry Lewis into the Paris-set sequel …

Role reversal

Nick Offerman may be our generation’s Laurence Olivier.

The comic actor’s turn as Ron Swanson on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” remains the libertarian gold standard. His character loathed the government, hoping to shrink it to the size of Jiminy Cricket’s belt buckle.

In real life, Offerman is a raging progressive, and he can’t stop savaging both President Donald Trump and the right in general.

This week, he popped up on the far-left “Daily Show” to trash Trump’s plans for a glorious 250th birthday party for ole Uncle Sam. That includes a permanent arch to honor the historic moment.

“Can’t he play with his model replicas in the basement like a normal demented grandpa. … Can we stop with these self-aggrandizing celebrations, like you’re some Roman emperor? What’s next, gladiator fights?”

Ron Swanson might blanch at the arch as an unnecessary expenditure, but he’d forever love Trump for his DOGE-style shrinkage …

RELATED: Welcome to WokeNut Grove: Sneak peek at Netflix’s ‘Little House on the Prairie’ reboot

NBC/UCG/Education Images/Getty Images

‘Focker’ fatigue

Haven’t we suffered enough?

Some movie franchises stumble after a glorious run. Think “John Wick,” those “Fast & Furious” romps, and even the “Mission: Impossible” saga. It happens, and it’s the rare series that maintains its level of excellence.

We all agreed the 2000 comedy “Meet the Parents” was a hoot, giving stars Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller all the juicy lines they craved. But the sequel, “Meet the Fockers” was a star-studded stiff. And the less said about “Little Fockers,” the better.

But since no franchise is allowed to rest in peace, a fourth “Fockers” is coming this fall.

“Focker-in-Law” adds “Wicked” alum Ariana Grande to the saga. This time, she’s about to marry Greg and Pam’s son (Skyler Gisondo), causing tension in the Focker-verse. The trailer is hard to watch, with so many callouts from the first film and Stiller looking embarrassed to be back in the franchise.

Unlike Offerman, he’s not that good an actor.

The worst part may be De Niro, who, back in 2000, was still regarded as one of our finest actors. Now, his chronic anti-Trump rants have poisoned his box office appeal and alienated plenty of potential moviegoers.

Maybe the sequel will find his character strapped to a lie-detector machine, forced to answer if he actually believes his crazed, anti-Trump predictions.

Now that we’d pay to watch.

​Culture, Entertainment, Late night tv, Jimmy kimmel, Nick offerman, Robert de niro, Ben stiller, Movies, Toto recall 

Iran appears to have capitulated on two of the most important demands of the U.S., according to the president.

After seven weeks of joint strikes against Iran from the U.S. and Israel, President Donald Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would no longer be threatened by Iran and that the Iranians agreed to stop seeking nuclear enrichment.

The stock market surged on the news, and oil futures dropped significantly.

“Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” the president said on social media Friday.

In a phone call with a NewsNation reporter, the president was asked directly about Iran’s nuclear enrichment plans.

“They agreed to everything,” said the president, according to a post from reporter Kellie Meyer on Friday morning. “Yes, are you surprised?”

The stock market surged on the news, and oil futures dropped significantly.

Iran’s foreign minister confirmed the agreement and cited the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

“In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon,” said Seyed Abbas Araghchi in a post on social media, “the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran.”

Israel agreed to the ceasefire of its military operation targeting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, Trump announced Thursday. The Israeli-Lebanese conflict had become a sticking point between Iran and the U.S. in seeking a peace deal.

RELATED: Trump announces ceasefire agreement with Lebanon — and meeting at the White House

– YouTube

Axios reported that the U.S. was considering releasing $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds in exchange for Iran giving up its enriched uranium stockpile.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said more than 10,000 sailors, Marines, and airmen; dozens of aircraft; and over a dozen ships were involved in the U.S. operation to shut down the Strait of Hormuz via blockade to pressure Iran.

“Since commencement of the blockade, 19 ships have complied with direction from U.S. forces to turn around and return to Iran,” said U.S. Central Command on Friday.

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​Trump vs iran, Iran nuclear enrichment, Iran opens strait of hormuz, Gas prices to drop, Politics 

On April 16, BlazeTV host and independent journalist Christopher Rufo published a shocking report titled “California Provides Sex-Change Procedures to Homeless Illegal Aliens.”

“It feels like one of those stories that is like right-wing Mad Libs, where you take all of the most intense right-wing trigger words, you smash them into a sentence. But in this case, it’s not imaginary. It’s all real,” he says.

On this episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” Rufo and co-host Jonathan Keeperman break down the shocking details of the report, react to the on-the-ground footage, and discuss how California voters have become so morally submissive that they now tolerate — and fund — even the most absurd and humiliating policies.

Rufo begins by playing a video clip of his co-author and City Journal colleague Jonathan Choe interviewing a homeless illegal immigrant from Mexico who identifies as a transgender woman and calls himself Jacqueline.

The man confirms that he received both hormones and breast implants for free in California via Medi-Cal.

“Even though you’re undocumented, you can get it,” he said, adding that he’s “waiting” for bottom surgery.

According to Rufo’s reporting, Jacqueline is one of many homeless illegal aliens living in San Francisco’s publicly funded shelters who have received such procedures at the expense of the California taxpayer. On-the-ground interviews and video also confirmed that word is spreading south of the border, encouraging trans-identifying migrants to come for these free procedures.

“[Choe] actually went to a number of homeless shelters in San Francisco, and at each homeless shelter, he found transgender illegal migrants who told him very directly, ‘We’re here to get hormones, breast implants,’ and, as Jacqueline says, ‘bottom surgery,”’ says Rufo.

He then plays a second video featuring another transgender-identifying illegal alien named Lyca — a biological male from Honduras who says he came to the United States explicitly to take advantage of the taxpayer-funded benefits that will pay for his transition. He candidly admitted that Medi-Cal is currently paying for his hormone therapy.

Both Rufo and Keeperman agree that California voters have become so afraid of moral backlash that they’re now greenlighting policies that are abjectly insane.

“The California taxpayer is in a findom relationship with the state,” says Keeperman.

A financial domination relationship is a BDSM kink in which a submissive person gives money or gifts to a dominant person without expecting sexual favors in return. Like other related kinks, the submissive party seeks gratification through humiliation.

Keeperman argues that this same twisted dynamic is at play between the California government and its constituents.

“If you live in California and you’re, like, a good secular cosmopolitan lib … the moral decision-making is incredibly difficult. … Every decision, every behavior, every utterance is freighted with meaning and the potential for sort of catastrophic loss, or you’ll be accused of being immoral,” he explains.

“They’ve reached total fatigue, and the state just makes these demands of them — like you have to support on tax day the surgeries for transgender illegals — and they’re comforted by this because it’s like this relief,” Keeperman adds.

Rufo agrees. “The California voter is in a completely submissive moral position. It will accept any moral demand, any moral imposition, any moral cost.”

“California voters have essentially given a blanket yes, and then the layer of activists, administrators, and fanatics within the California state government processes the paperwork, so that in the end, trans illegals are getting free castration surgeries in San Francisco,” he continues.

Keeperman counters, “But the thing is, it’s not just that it’s yes to anything; it’s yes to things that are the most humiliating and the most extractive and the least practically or pragmatically productive.”

“So it’s not like they’re pining for, you know, efficient infrastructure and public transportation. I mean, I’m sure they say they want that, but that’s not what gets done,” he continues. “What gets done instead is this kind of stuff, which is just facially absurd.”

Rufo says the reason genuinely beneficial initiatives, like improved public transportation, never actually happen is because “building train tracks is hard,” while “cutting the penises off of illegal migrants” isn’t.

“As I discovered in a previous story in Oregon — I imagine the same is happening now in San Francisco — they’ve actually developed surgical castration robots, and they can castrate,” he says, “and in a single operating room, they can do two of these castrations per day now using these castration robots.”

To learn more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze media, Blazetv, Bottom surgery, Chris rufo, Gavin newsom, Homeless illegal aliens, Jonathan keeperman, Lomez, Rufo, Rufo & lomez, San francisco, Trans surgeries, Trans surgeries for illegals, Transgender agenda, Transgender migrants, Morally submissive, Medi cal, Rufo and lomez 

A Massachusetts city in the Greater Boston area commissioned a pair of 10-foot-tall bronze statues heavy with cultural and historical significance to honor police and firefighters outside their new public safety headquarters.

Upon learning that the city of Quincy’s new statues — one depicting Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman Christian, and the other depicting the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon — also carried religious significance, the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of secularizing activist groups joined a few locals in suing last May to block the installation.

‘The ACLU has pitted itself against the very heroes who keep our communities safe.’

The city, which will make its case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with the help of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on May 6, has received an outpouring of support from first responders’ groups and unions, religious groups, and others keen to defend free speech found intolerable by thin-skinned critics.

The International Association of Fire Fighters and its Bay State affiliate, among the groups that submitted court filings in support of the city, noted that “for the firefighting community, there is perhaps no better image for this project than St. Florian.”

Norfolk Superior Court Judge William Sullivan, the Democratic appointee who blocked the planned installation in October, previously argued that the statues “serve no discernable secular purpose.”

The IAFF flatly rejected that argument.

RELATED: Whose past predicts your future?

Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

“Florian, to be sure, is venerated as a Catholic saint. But that isn’t why the City of Quincy is putting him on its public safety building,” the IAFF’s court filing reads. “Rather, that choice reflects a centuries-old tradition that honors Florian — entirely apart from his significance in the Catholic Church — as a symbol of the courage, selflessness, and sacrifice of firefighters around the world.”

Moreover, the association underscored that Florian’s legend is now “part of the cultural fabric of firefighting.”

The National Association of Police Organizations similarly said of the St. Michael statue, “Although Michael’s origins are religious, his significance extends far beyond that context. He is the archetype of core law-enforcement virtues: justice, courage, leadership, and defense of the innocent.”

The National Fraternal Order of Police echoed this understanding and drove the point home:

The erection of these statues shows no semblance of religious subordination or favoritism. For this Court to prohibit these statues would not only run contrary to the text and purpose of the Religion Clauses of the Massachusetts Constitution but would also rob the people of Quincy of a special opportunity to honor their firefighters and police officers.

While the Knights of Columbus highlighted America’s and Massachusetts’ rich histories of acknowledging religion in public art, the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team and the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty discussed the likely fallout of the ACLU prevailing in this case and how that result might disproportionately impact minority faiths.

They noted, for example, that a ruling against Quincy might set a precedent for denying practicing Jews the ability to build an eruv in public — a demarcated area, created by placing nearly invisible wires on existing utility poles, that permits Jews to carry essential items on the Sabbath.

The American Legion said in its filing that giving the secularists a win here “would put the Massachusetts Constitution on a collision court with the federal one.” The Legion noted further that while a state may not favor a religion, it “also may not favor nonreligion by adopting a posture of hostility towards faith.”

Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for Quincy, stated, “By picking this fight, the ACLU has pitted itself against the very heroes who keep our communities safe.”

“This broad coalition of firefighters and police — along with diverse faith communities, public policy experts, and legal scholars — proves just how out of touch the ACLU has become,” Davis continued. “We’re hopeful the court will see through this attack and side with Quincy.”

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​American civil liberties union, American legion, Becket, City of quincy, First responders, Heroes, Knights of columbus, Lawsuit, Public art, Religious groups, Saint, Saints, Statues, Free speech, First amendment, Statue, Politics 

An idea born out of a four-hour session at a Chick-fil-A may have the ability to both cheapen energy costs and solve data center production solutions.

With land-grabs and land offers from Big Tech routinely popping up in the news cycle, citizens are concerned with how America’s heartland could fall into the hands of tech companies that replace farming plots with gigantic rooms of computers.

One company is asking why it can’t just put those in the ocean.

‘Our goal is to make terawatts.’

Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa, said that he has been operating his ocean nodes in semi-secret for about 10 years.

At about 66 feet wide and 260 feet tall, his company’s floating nodes bob up and down with the ocean waves and create energy from the water that flows through them. The water is funneled through channels inside the nodes to create a pressurized system that spins turbines that connect to a generator and produce electricity.

The object can move and steer on its own once in the water and is capable of traveling about 30 miles per day to ideal spots where the winds are most intense and thus create the most waves.

Sheldon-Coulson told the Core Memory Podcast that each unit has an approximate cost of about $1 million and that while it is expensive now, the path to scaling could come in a couple of different ways.

First, the energy production could be stored and brought back to shore, likely packaged as cheaper, cleaner energy. Panthalassa said it can produce electricity at about 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, which is allegedly below the cost of solar energy and even natural gas in some jurisdictions.

However, a faster track to success may be through the combination of floating data centers and satellite internet.

RELATED: The crazy reason some AI obsessives love it when their chatbot talks like a caveman

– YouTube

The CEO said that his company is looking at the idea of putting processing units aboard its nodes, using the generated electricity to power them and of course the ocean water to cool them. Cooling is currently an expensive and integral process of shored AI data centers.

The data processed in the ocean would then be digitally shipped off via satellite services like Starlink. Impressively, Panthalassa was founded before Starlink, meaning the company put at least some of its eggs into a basket that didn’t quite exist yet.

When asked about the AI data transfer and the speed at which it could actually travel by satellite (as opposed to fiber optics), Sheldon-Coulson noted that the speed of the input and output comes in very small quantities — text that is the size of kilobytes. It is actually the processing that takes up the time — which would theoretically take place aboard his ocean nodes — not the question taken in or the answer provided by a chatbot, for example.

RELATED: The divisive issue that could decide the midterms now has $200 million on the line

– YouTube

“Our goal is to make terawatts,” states the Panthalassa company’s video. “The entire global electricity supply right now is about three and a half terawatts. We think we can do a significant fraction of that.”

The company has raised over $78 million in investment to date and has pointed to areas in the Southern Hemisphere as ideal spots for the nodes due to high wind speeds.

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​Clean energy, Data center production, Data centers, Energy costs, Fiber optics, Panthalassa, Return, Turbines, Tech 

Sugar has had a terrible few decades in public relations. Which is rich, considering sugar never hired a publicist or lobbied for its inclusion in 37 varieties of salad dressing.

Sugar was simply sitting there, being a carbohydrate, when an entire industry decided it made a more convenient villain than portion size, impulse control, or the more uncomfortable question of why a gas station sells a beverage the size of a toddler.

Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell’s cookies and ate them by the sleeve.

Somewhere between the obesity panic of the 2000s and the clean-eating obsession of the 2010s, sucrose transformed from a pantry staple into a health and wellness villain on par with cigarettes and sloth.

Sugar, sugar

The human body runs on glucose. Your brain needs it. Your muscles prefer it. Sugarcane has been sweetening drinks in South Asia since roughly 350 A.D., and somehow humanity survived long enough to argue about it on social media.

The problem was never the molecule but the amount — 22 teaspoons a day, the American average, poured mostly into beverages people didn’t even register as meals. A single large fountain soda contains 17. A flavored coffee drink from any chain you can name contains more than that and comes with a cheerful barista who will spell your name wrong on the cup while handing you what is essentially a dessert with a lid.

That is a dosage problem. It got rebranded as a chemistry problem, and that rebranding sold a lot of diet soda.

Gut check

I learned this the hard way, via my own stomach. For about two years I swapped sugar for artificial sweeteners with the confidence of someone who had done exactly one Google search. Sucralose (commonly sold as Splenda) in my coffee. Stevia in everything else. The occasional sugar-free chocolate that tasted like sweetened cardboard, which I ate anyway, because suffering voluntarily is how adults signal virtue.

I was, by all the metrics I had invented for myself, being responsible. Then I started feeling bloated roughly 40 minutes after every meal — a persistent, uncomfortable fullness that no amount of walking around the block seemed to fix. And then came a specific, percussive kind of digestive discomfort that I will describe only as “audible.” My fiancée noticed. I blamed the dog.

I cut the sweeteners on a Friday. By Sunday, the situation had resolved itself completely. The bowel-induced thunder had passed, the barometric pressure had normalized, and my fiancée stopped sleeping with the window open.

Metabolic mayhem

It turns out that I was ahead of the research for once in my life. A recent study examining the biological effects of common artificial sweeteners — sucralose and stevia, specifically — found that even quantities comparable to everyday human consumption altered gut microbiome composition in measurable ways.

The gut houses roughly 39 trillion microorganisms, meaning it contains more bacterial cells than human cells, a fact that raises serious questions about who, exactly, is running things. It regulates metabolism, modulates immune response, produces neurotransmitters, and sends chemical signals to the brain, influencing mood and appetite. The body is less a person than a committee, and the committee has opinions about your sweetener choices.

Disrupt the ecosystem, and you get disrupted systems downstream. The researchers found that beneficial compounds helping maintain metabolic health declined in subjects exposed to these sweeteners. In plain terms, the body became measurably worse at handling sugar, and it had not consumed any sugar to arrive there. The sweetener had taught the body a new dysfunction without any of the calories required to earn it.

RELATED: Save your brain: Eat more meat

Bettman/Getty Images

Sweet surrender

The findings on sucralose were particularly persistent. Researchers observed that its effects on gut bacteria and gene activity carried across multiple generations in animal studies. Offspring who had never consumed sucralose showed early signs of impaired glucose regulation — their bodies struggling with sugar metabolism as an inherited consequence of a parent’s diet.

This is epigeneticism: the transmission of acquired biological traits through changes in gene expression rather than DNA sequence. Stevia’s impacts were detectable but short-lived, fading rather than compounding. Neither result fits the marketing promise of a neutral, calorie-free pleasure. Both suggest that the quest to outsmart biology with chemistry has, predictably, run into biology itself.

Americans consume artificial sweeteners at scale. They are in diet drinks, protein bars, flavored yogurts, chewing gum, children’s vitamins, and roughly half the products shelved in the “healthy” aisle of any grocery store. Meanwhile, rates of obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic disorders remain stubbornly high — exactly the conditions these products were engineered to help prevent. The sweeteners are not the sole explanation. But the idea that they carry zero metabolic consequences is no longer a position the evidence supports, and it was probably never as solid as the packaging implied.

The M-word

None of this requires burning your Splenda packets in the back yard, but the broader pattern is familiar enough to be dispiriting. Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell’s cookies — fat-free, proudly labeled, stuffed with sugar — and ate them by the sleeve because the math seemed to check out. Sugar became the villain in 2010. Americans loaded up on artificially sweetened alternatives and called it progress.

The villain rotates on a roughly 20-year cycle. The processed food industry introduces the replacement, funds the science that endorses it, and collects the revenue while researchers spend the next decade figuring out what went wrong. Then a new villain is identified, a new replacement is launched, and somewhere a marketing team opens a bottle of champagne that probably contains aspartame.

The answer to every panic in that cycle was always moderation, a word so aggressively boring that it apparently requires a global dietary crisis every 10 years to get anyone’s attention. It also means reframing what sugar actually is: not a poison to be eliminated but a pleasure to be savored, like good whiskey or compliments from your father. Save it for a nice piece of cake, a well-made dessert, the occasional spoon of honey stirred into morning tea with the uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who has stopped reading the label.

​Maha, Sugar, Sugar-free, Lifestyle, Artificial sweeteners, Sucrose, Sucralose, Splenda, Stevia, Nutrition, Health and wellness, Make america healthy again 

Less than a week after the Artemis II astronauts returned to Earth from their orbit of the moon, the crew members reflected on the profound wonders they saw on their mission — and upon their return.

On Thursday, Artemis II astronauts answered questions about their mission, and Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission, described a profound moment he experienced on the Navy ship shortly after their return.

‘I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears.’

“I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything. So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute.”

He went on to describe the inexplicable moment of their meeting.

RELATED: PHOTOS: See the first up-close images from Artemis II’s flyby of the moon

NASA/Getty Images

“When that man walked in, I had never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears,” Wiseman explained.

Victor Glover, one of Wiseman’s crewmates, said he was present when they met with the chaplain.

“The only thing I would add is I am a religious person, but everything else is the same.”

Both Wiseman and Glover indicated they need more time to process all that they saw, since they have been remarkably busy in the days since they returned to the Earth’s surface.

“We have not had that decompression. We have not had that reflection time,” Wiseman said.

“There is something in there, and as we start to process, I’ll have to tell you next week, but haven’t had a chance to really unpack it all yet,” Glover added.

Over the span of the clip, the two crewmembers also described an amazing moment of the mission: the eclipse of the moon and the sun.

“When the sun eclipsed behind the moon … I turned to Victor, and I said, ‘I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we’re looking at right now.’ Because it was otherworldly. It was amazing,” Wiseman said.

One of the two craters on the far side of the moon, not normally visible from Earth, now bears the name of Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll. Carroll Wiseman passed away from cancer in 2020.

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​Artemis ii, Astronauts, Chaplain, Earth, Eclipse, Humanity, Moon, Navy ship, Politics, Religious person, Sun, Otherworldly, Nasa, Christianity, Crucifix, Cross, Navy chaplain 

Because Hollywood has been unable to create anything new for at least 20 years, Netflix is “rebooting” “Little House on the Prairie.” That almost certainly means trouble.

No stories have been more important to me than the fictionalized autobiographical series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. As a poor child in a single-mother broken home, we didn’t have luxuries growing up. Some kind soul donated a boxed set of the “Little House” books to an “angel tree” Christmas drive where poor families could choose a gift for their children.

The Ingalls family leave their cabin in Wisconsin to make way for an indigenous family violently displaced by pioneer gentrification.

I opened my present to find this set of books. I read and re-read them so many times they were in tatters when I reluctantly threw them away a few years ago. I’m lucky to have a good friend who bought me a new hardback set for Christmas.

‘House’ away from home

The values of independence, self-sufficiency, owning your mistakes, repentance, and forgiveness inside a loving family and community was everything I wanted life to be. It taught me values and gave me hope for something better than the frightening home in which I was raised.

The long-running television series based on the books was my favorite show. We watched it when it was new, and we watched it in reruns. Viewing the original “Little House” series today, one is struck at first by how sentimental it seems. But on second thought, it probably reads that way not because the original was truly that sappy, but because our society and our selves have been so coarsened in the 40 years since the show aired.

Look at where we are today as the release of the new Netflix version approaches. It used to be that when new movies or TV shows came out, prospective viewers would ask questions like: Will the cast be good? Will the premise hold up for more than one season? How are they going to pull off the special effects that the premise demands?

‘Middle’ mangled

What we weren’t talking about was whether the show was going to beat us over the head with painfully au courant political and social dogma. The thought didn’t even occur to us before about 2014. Now, it’s the only thing any aware adult can think about when they see yet another “reimagining” of a book or TV series.

Reimagining? A better word is “profanation.” These reboots often explicitly insult the original version in order to signal how superior the current show runners are to their “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” and otherwise unenlightened forbears.

Look what Hulu has done to the 2000s-era sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.” The original show — that is to say, the real show — was about an “eccentric” family that drove middle child and IQ genius Malcolm nuts. The reboot, titled “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” brings back most of the original cast with some 2020s-style mandatory identity insertions.

Malcolm’s best friend Stevie has gay-married a man and adopted a boy child. But wait, there’s more! Malcolm and his brothers have a new “sibling” named Kelly who’s not a girl. She … sorry, they is … sorry, are “non-binary.”

The piano-music-special-moment-interlude is like getting teeth drilled without anesthetic. The very obviously female Kelly tells her … darn it, tells they’s parents, “I was like 5 when I started feeling wrong.”

Take an antacid before you watch the clip.

RELATED: The ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ reboot is so woke even Hollywood hates it

Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Back to the Future Prairie

I know that I don’t have to watch the new “Little House on the Prairie,” but I do have to. Won’t be able to stop myself, even though I know it’s probably going to make me mad. I know the original books still exist, and I know that I can watch the original show. But irrational though it may be, just the possibility that Netflix is going to inject modern-day narcissistic depravity into something so pure — well, it feels like it’s going to contaminate my memories of something wholesome.

So let’s rip the Band-Aid off and get the hard feelings out of the way before the show comes out. Here are my predictions for the first season of the new and undoubtedly to-be-improved “Little House on the Prairie.”

Episode 1: ‘Decolonizing the Big Woods’

The Ingalls family leave their cabin in Wisconsin to make way for an indigenous family violently displaced by pioneer gentrification. We see the covered wagon pull away from the cabin as Chief Whining Shrew refits the log house with dreamcatchers, essential oils, and a slot machine by the side of the road.

They set out across the prairie headed for a town where they can make a new, sustainable life. In the closing scene, a sign ahead reads Welcome to WokeNut Grove. A young indigenous woman in traditional garb halts the wagon and warns Pa, “Bruh — do not EVEN call me squaw.”

Episode 2: ‘School’s Out’

Mary and Laura’s first day of school teaches them a lesson more valuable than the three Rs: empathy. The one-room schoolhouse is presided over by Mx. Beadle, a spinster — sorry, a non-binary educator — who keeps breast binders in her desk for the children who can’t afford affirming clothing.

When Laura wrinkles her nose at the proffered tube top, Mx. Beadle makes Laura write, “NON-MEN AND NON-WOMEN ARE VALID” 50 times on the blackboard.

Episode 3: ‘Farmer Boi’

We’re introduced to the spoiled rich kid bully, Nelson Oleson. Nelson was assigned female at birth, but with the help of his domineering mother, Harriet, Nelson discovers he was actually a boy inside all along. In a surprising twist, it turns out Nelson’s little brother is also actually his little sister, Wilhelmina. Everyone accepts this statistical improbability, AND YOU’D BETTER TOO.

With his golden ringlets peeking out from under a newsboy cap, Nelson taunts Laura on the way to school, shouting, “Sissy! Sissy! Sissy!” until Laura pushes him into Plum Creek. Nelson’s binder pops off during the scuffle, revealing his gender assigned at birth. Laura has to work after school at the Oleson Mercantile sewing Nelson new binders by hand while Wilhelmina gets to make doll clothes on the newfangled sewing machine.

Episode 4: ‘No One Is Free Until We’re All Free’

With the crops failing, Pa goes to the town sawmill to look for work. He’s about to join the crew when he notices that all the working hands are white men. Pa calls for the immediate shutdown of the mill until the diversity-in-work committee can get to the bottom of why so many white men have been allowed paying jobs.

The mill stays shuttered throughout the summer under a banner proclaiming “NO JUSTICE, NO PIECE (OF LUMBER).” Meanwhile, the town’s white men are conscripted into a chain gang to build a wheelchair hoist so that Hester Sue Terhune, the town’s wise black paraplegic, can wheel over to the cutting blade and take her rightful place as foreman. Three white families in tents die from exposure that winter, and the town celebrates with an ice cream social.

Episode 5: ‘Horizontal Work Is Work’

When a family of gypsies — sorry, travelers — rolls into town, they are met with prejudice and bigotry as they try to open an honest business for Roma sex workers. Realizing the violent oppression woven into WokeNut Grove’s founding documents, the town council repeals the ban on bawdy houses. The Pekrul family opens the Galatea Galerie, where rooms are let by the half-hour.

Mary goes to work at the Galerie but comes home with a severe case of harlot fever. Bedridden for weeks, when Mary tries to get up, she realizes something is terribly wrong. The camera zooms in on her vacant eyes as she cries, “Pa! Pa! I can’t see my gender identity!” Ma, Laura, Pa, and Carrie take on extra jobs to save up so Mary can afford to go to the Iowa School for the Trans.

The season ends with Ma applying homemade dye to Mary’s hair made from crushed lavender. Credits roll as a train whistle approaches town.

Stay tuned for Season 2.

​Hollywood, Netflix, Little house on the prairie, Lgbtq, Malcolm in the middle, Woke, Culture, Entertainment, Laura ingalls wilder, Books, Intervention 

A 16-year-old Michigan girl was waiting for a bus in Hamtramck around 7:05 a.m. Monday when a male allegedly approached her, put a handgun to her back, and forced her into a van, WJBK-TV reported. Hamtramck is about 10 minutes north of Detroit.

The girl is a student at Frontier International Academy, the station said, and a fellow student witnessed the incident and reported it.

‘I see the police outside. I point to him. I go, “That’s the guy.”‘

The victim allegedly was sexually assaulted inside the suspect’s vehicle, WJBK said.

Police went to the victim’s school and met with students who were tracking her cell phone location, WJBK said, adding that officers used the data to track the victim to a Detroit gas station.

Around 7:30 a.m., the suspect brought the girl into the Sunoco gas station, asked for cigarettes — and told the girl to pay for them, WXYZ-TV reported

Store clerk Abdulrahman Abohatem told WXYZ that struck him as odd: “When he ask her to pay for the cigarettes, I said … ‘There’s something wrong.'”

The girl then sent him a silent, desperate signal.

“She mouth-talked to me, like, with no sound,” Abohatem told WXYZ.

He said her message was one word: “Help.”

RELATED: Female slashes face of 3-year-old boy she kidnapped at Walmart — and officers open fire: Police

With that, Abohatem came out from behind the protective glass and confronted the suspect, WXYZ said: “I go out, I kick him out, I ask the girl, ‘Go behind me.'”

As Abohatem was escorting the male out of the store, police pulled into the parking lot, WXYZ said.

“I see the police outside. I point to him. I go, ‘That’s the guy,'” Abohatem added to WXYZ.

The suspect was quickly taken into custody, WXYZ reported.

City of Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi told WXYZ the suspect is “a criminal who had a history of rape charges, and we will make sure that he gets what he deserves.”

The girl’s family said she is safe at home processing the incident and is thankful the community stepped up, WXYZ reported.

Hamtramck Police Department Chief Hussein Farhat told WXYZ the incident was random and the suspect and victim didn’t know each other: “This suspect could have driven anywhere, saw the opportunity, and took advantage of it.”

Hamtramck Police said 48-year-old Donald J. Fields of Detroit was arraigned Thursday.

RELATED: Transgender sex offender accused of trying to kidnap boy at elementary school gets good news from DA

Police said Fields was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault, one count of kidnapping, one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, one count of felonious assault, and five counts of felony firearm. He also was charged as a habitual offender — third offense, police said.

Fields was taken to the Wayne County Jail and ordered held without bond, police said.

In a separate story, WXYZ reported that Fields is a registered sex offender, and that Judge Alexis Krot — who denied his bond — stated that “despite me saying one minute before that he’s a habitual offender, Mr. Fields has the audacity to say he has no criminal history.”

WXYZ said Fields previously spent time in prison in connection with a home invasion and assault with intent to commit sexual contact.

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​Crime thwarted, Kidnapping, Sexual assault, Teen girl victim, Gas station worker, Suspect arrested, Michigan, Hamtramck, Police, Arraignment, Jailed, Wayne county, Donald j. fields, Crime