The Brooks Mine was first conceived by Reese Brooks in 1900 as a showpiece for anthracite mining during the development of Nay Aug Park. Brooks opened this drift mine publicly in 1902 as an exhibition while he was the operator of the Greenwood Mine in Moosic. While not a large mine, there is a sizable coal deposit inside, and under Nay Aug Park. The mine is driven into the outcrop of the Dunmore No.2 and No.3 Veins of coal as they come together in a fault under the park. The mine was closed temporarily in 1938. In 1953 it was retimbered by the Moffat Coal Company, the lighting was upgraded by the Scranton Police Traffic Repair Squad, and mannequins installed simulating miners working at the face. In 1975 the mine was closed for good and with the opening of the Lackawanna 190 Slope Mine Tour in the Keyser valley in the 1980s, it would be deemed un-necessary to reopen. //

In April of 2022, experienced coal miners, timber men, and laborers within our group began volunteer weekend work spending over 3000 man hours to reopen the 120-year-old Historic Brooks Drift Mine. This included cleaning debris from the mine and retimbering the place using standard anthracite mining practices. Since the mine only had one way in and out, we had to drive a second opening outside as an escapeway and for proper ventilation through the Dunmore No.2 Vein. Track work would then be completed laying all new rail through the mine, installing a new electrical and lighting system, and finally a grand re-opening ceremony on August 11, 2023. The mine is inspected and approved for tours by the Pennsylvania State Mine Inspectors and it is examined daily prior to any tours by our Anthracite Mine Foreman. This entire project could not have been completed without the generosity of the community! It has been completely funded by donations from local individuals and businesses who want to see this succeed.

500 Arthur Ave, Scranton, PA 18510

Researchers warn that misclassification could deprive women of the emergent care they need for the serious adverse events linked to abortion. //

Researchers interested in how hospitals handle treatment for women who experience complications after abortions examined nearly 29,000 anonymized ER Medicaid claims ranging from 2016 to 2021 among women who had chemically or surgically ended a pregnancy in the last 30 days. They determined that 83.5 percent of the abortion drug-induced ER visits during that period were miscoded, often as miscarriage.

That figure not only represented a steep increase in miscodes from the 2004 to 2015 data, but also confirmed that “visits following chemical abortion are significantly more likely to be incorrectly coded as following spontaneous abortion than are visits following surgical abortion.”

Those post-mifepristone ER visits that were miscoded were also 50 percent more likely to be severe than vists that were coded properly. //

While the reason for miscodes is not explicitly clear, the researchers noted that “women are often advised to misrepresent their recent abortion as a miscarriage when seeking treatment for complications in the emergency department.”

“Consequently, the ED doctor is likely to misattribute the complication (e.g., heavy bleeding) to a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage,” the study noted.

The guidelines in this article can help you successfully send and deliver email to personal Gmail accounts. Starting in 2024, email senders must meet the requirements described here to send email to Gmail personal accounts. A personal Gmail account is an account that ends in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com.

For the latest updates about sender requirements, visit the Email sender guidelines FAQ. //

When increasing sending volume, keep in mind:

• Increasing the sending volume too quickly can result in delivery problems. As you gradually increase your sending email volume, use Postmaster Tools to monitor email delivery.

SPF helps prevent your outgoing email from being marked as spam by receiving email servers. Set up SPF by adding an SPF DNS TXT record (SPF record) to your domain.

An SPF record is a line of text that you add to your domain, following your domain provider’s instructions. The line of text uses special syntax and lists all the servers that send email for your domain. Here’s an example SPF record:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

When receiving servers get email messages from your domain, they check the SPF record to verify that the messages came from authorized servers.

DMARC tells receiving email servers what action to take on messages from you that don't pass SPF or DKIM authentication. The action options are reject, quarantine, or deliver the message. You can also get reports that help you identify possible authentication issues and malicious activity for messages sent from your domain. Set up DMARC by adding a DMARC DNS TXT record (DMARC record) to your domain.

Important: Starting February 2024, Gmail requires the following for senders who send 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail accounts: Authenticate outgoing email, avoid sending unwanted or unsolicited email, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. Learn more about requirements for sending 5,000 or more emails per day.

Read and study God's Word with Bible study software that has in-depth resources such as commentaries, Greek and Hebrew word tools, concordances, and more. //

Searchable Online Bible with Study Resources

Blue Letter Bible is a free, searchable online Bible program providing access to many different Bible translations including: KJV, NKJV, NLT, ESV, NASB20, NASB95 and many others. In addition, in-depth study tools are provided on the site with access to commentaries, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other theological resources. Browse the site to see all of the Bible study tools available.

The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian Church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority.

Our statement of faith, mission, and resources are grounded in the historical, conservative Christian faith.

1. We affirm the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, and the only infallible and authoritative Word of God. We affirm the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

2. We affirm that there is one God, eternally existent in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

3. We affirm the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His miracles, His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, His bodily resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and His personal return in power and glory.

4. We affirm that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.

5. We affirm the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.

6. We affirm the resurrection of both the saved and the lost: they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.

7. We affirm the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Two dogs arguing

Why Rome Collapsed - Barry Strauss

Watch the full interview now, right here on X.

Encrypted chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp are one of the best ways to keep your digital conversations as private as possible. But if you’re not careful with how those conversations are backed up, you can accidentally undermine your privacy.

When a conversation is properly encrypted end-to-end, it means that the contents of those messages are only viewable by the sender and the recipient. The organization that runs the messaging platform—such as Meta or Signal—does not have access to the contents of the messages. But it does have access to some metadata, like the who, where, and when of a message. Companies have different retention policies around whether they hold onto that information after the message is sent.

What happens after the messages are sent and received is entirely up to the sender and receiver. If you’re having a conversation with someone, you may choose to screenshot that conversation and save that screenshot to your computer’s desktop or phone’s camera roll. You might choose to back up your chat history, either to your personal computer or maybe even to cloud storage (services like Google Drive or iCloud, or to servers run by the application developer).

Those backups do not necessarily have the same type of encryption protections as the chats themselves, and may make those conversations—which were sent with strong, privacy-protecting end-to-end encryption—available to read by whoever runs the cloud storage platform you’re backing up to, which also means they could hand them at the request of law enforcement.

But the real scandal here isn’t Trump’s temporary jet or Qatar’s diplomatic overture. The buried lede is that an elite American defense contractor can no longer deliver a presidential plane in a timely fashion. It reflects a deeper rot in the U.S. military-industrial complex — one that used to win world wars in less time than it now takes to build a new plane.

Boeing’s delivery of the new Air Force One fleet is a part of the VC-25B program (begun under the Obama administration), which “will replace the United States Air Force Presidential VC-25A fleet.” The government awarded Boeign the contract in 2018 with a target delivery date for 2024. But that date has since been pushed to 2027, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

As CNN previously reported, “Boeing’s $3.9 billion contract to replace the two Air Force One jets has become an expensive and embarrassing albatross. Boeing has reported losses totaling $2.5 billion already on the program … since it agreed to be responsible for what has become soaring cost overruns.”

The District of Columbia court system is an unconstitutional mess. The idea that the president can only nominate candidates to the bench from a preselected list provided by a commission over which he has no control clearly violates the Constitution’s appointments clause.

But somehow the process of reappointment in the District of Columbia is even worse. There, a similarly bizarre committee (the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure) evaluates judges whose terms have expired, after which it can usurp the president’s nomination and appointment powers as well as short-circuit the advice and consent function of the Senate.

In other words, this commission — and this commission alone — can decide whether judges will continue to serve despite what the president, the Senate, or the people the president and Senate serve want.

President Trump and Attorney General Bondi should consider taking action to remedy this constitutional abomination. //

Because both the nomination and appointment of judges are core Article II powers, having that power exercised by an independent body wholly outside the president’s control is constitutionally untenable. In many ways this is even worse than the unconstitutional judicial-nomination system in D.C. //

So what is to be done? In the case of the Judicial Nominating Commission, the remedy is easy enough: President Trump should nominate whomever he wants and appoint him subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

For those judges already on the bench and subject to reappointment, he might need to be more creative because the paper authorizing the reappointment does not traverse the White House at all.

One option in the case of a reappointed judge is for the attorney general to seek a writ of quo warranto. One of the ancient prerogative writs, it literally means “by what warrant” and is a way for a court to determine whether or not a holder of public office is legitimate. Rarely used — and almost always pursuant to state law — it is contemplated in the All Writs Act at the federal level. The limited precedent on the subject seems to indicate that the attorney general has the power to seek the writ. //

Law and order in the District of Columbia is a disgrace, in no small part because of its activist local judges chosen and reappointed through an unconstitutional process. As President Trump seeks to “make D.C. safe again,” he should act where he has the authority to do so and fix the broken reappointment process for the D.C. courts.

children need to be nourished by three socio/emotional staples as they grow: Mother’s love, Father’s love, and stability. //

We are raising a generation of children who are experiencing family breakdown on a mass scale, not due to tragedy but because of adult intentionality. Adult desire, identity, feelings, and romantic pursuits have been elevated above the fundamental right of children to be known and loved by their own mother and father. Some of these kids will recognize that brokenness and work to reverse it. Many will be so damaged they will perpetuate the cycle in their personal lives … or their professional lives.

"Over 20 years, the percentage of seniors getting flu shots increased sharply from 15% to 65%. It stands to reason that flu deaths among the elderly should have taken a dramatic dip."

“The User Interface for Reality”

IYKYK

North Korea is infiltrating the West digitally. We must respond with vigilance, not wishful thinking. //

Pro tip for companies: ask prospective employees if they think Kim Jong-un is fat. Seriously. Multiple companies have caught North Korean operatives this way. They won’t criticize the regime—because they don’t want to die. And they’ll walk away from the job if you ask.

Lastly, a moment of reflection.

Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. President John Tyler, has passed away at age 96.

Yes, you heard that right: the grandson of a man born in 1790 lived into the third decade of the 21st century. That’s not just trivia—it’s a powerful reminder of how young our republic truly is.

John Tyler served before the Civil War—before Lincoln. And now his grandson, a man who lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the Space Race, and the internet age—is gone.

In a culture obsessed with the now, we forget how close the past really is. We are not far removed from the Founders—we’re their grandchildren. Literally.

Harrison Tyler preserved Sherwood Forest, his family’s historic estate. He protected Virginia’s architectural legacy. But perhaps his greatest legacy was just living—living proof that America’s past is not distant. Our institutions, our Congress, our civic inheritance—they’re real. They’re tangible. And they’re fragile.

His passing reminds us to cherish what we’ve inherited. To study it. To defend it. And to pass it on.

The line between the Founders’ America and our own isn’t theoretical—it’s family.

On April 14, Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced that the United Arab Emirates would begin using artificial intelligence to help write its laws. A new Regulatory Intelligence Office would use the technology to “regularly suggest updates” to the law and “accelerate the issuance of legislation by up to 70%.” AI would create a “comprehensive legislative plan” spanning local and federal law and would be connected to public administration, the courts, and global policy trends. //

AI, and technology generally, is often invoked by politicians to give their project a patina of objectivity and rationality, but it doesn’t really do any such thing. As proposed, AI would simply give the UAE’s hereditary rulers new tools to express, enact, and enforce their preferred policies.

Mohammed’s emphasis that a primary benefit of AI will be to make law faster is also misguided. The machine may write the text, but humans will still propose, debate, and vote on the legislation. Drafting is rarely the bottleneck in passing new law. What takes much longer is for humans to amend, horse-trade, and ultimately come to agreement on the content of that legislation—even when that politicking is happening among a small group of monarchic elites.

Rather than expeditiousness, the more important capability offered by AI is sophistication. AI has the potential to make law more complex, tailoring it to a multitude of different scenarios. The combination of AI’s research and drafting speed makes it possible for it to outline legislation governing dozens, even thousands, of special cases for each proposed rule.

But here again, this capability of AI opens the door for the powerful to have their way. AI’s capacity to write complex law would allow the humans directing it to dictate their exacting policy preference for every special case. It could even embed those preferences surreptitiously.

Since time immemorial, legislators have carved out legal loopholes to narrowly cater to special interests. AI will be a powerful tool for authoritarians, lobbyists, and other empowered interests to do this at a greater scale. AI can help automatically produce what political scientist Amy McKay has termed “microlegislation“: loopholes that may be imperceptible to human readers on the page—until their impact is realized in the real world.

But AI can be constrained and directed to distribute power rather than concentrate it. For Emirati residents, the most intriguing possibility of the AI plan is the promise to introduce AI “interactive platforms” where the public can provide input to legislation. In experiments across locales as diverse as Kentucky, Massachusetts, France, Scotland, Taiwan, and many others, civil society within democracies are innovating and experimenting with ways to leverage AI to help listen to constituents and construct public policy in a way that best serves diverse stakeholders.

If the UAE is going to build an AI-native government, it should do so for the purpose of empowering people and not machines. AI has real potential to improve deliberation and pluralism in policymaking, and Emirati residents should hold their government accountable to delivering on this promise.

In response to a FOIA request, the NSA released “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937-1987),” by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions.

Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less redactions. And nothing that was provided in 2019 was redacted here.