Extraordinary events are almost always catalysts for conspiracy theories – often providing more “acceptable” explanations for something that wasn’t “supposed to happen.” And what could be more unexpected than the sudden and stunning collapse of the Assad regime in Syria? Rebel forces undid well over 40 years of rule in an offensive that took less […]
Democrats will spend the next four years debating why the party suffered a sweeping defeat last week. Maybe it was inflation, or the culture wars, or Joe Biden’s hubris, or podcasts, that drove voters in every swing state to the Republican presidential nominee. At least one theory, however, can already be put to rest: Elon […]
In the minutes and hours after a 20-year-old repeatedly shot at former president Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, social media platforms, message boards, and encrypted chat groups lit up with conspiracies about the shooting. From wild claims that the incident was a “deep state plot” devised by President Joe Biden […]
For 14 hours over the weekend, Sydney university student Ben Cohen was one of the most reviled men on the internet after he was falsely accused of being the knifeman who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre, killing six people. The ABC has pieced together how anti-semitic and pro-Kremlin accounts turned […]
Jackson Hinkle has cultivated an online persona so incendiary that he has been kicked off YouTube, Twitch and Instagram. He rages on undaunted, even energized. He produces a regular podcast on Rumble, a website popular with many prominent conservatives. He writes dozens of posts a day on X, where his following has surged to 2.5 […]
On Wednesday, the House passed a bill with large bipartisan support that could potentially result in the popular social media app TikTok being banned from use in the United States. Former President Donald Trump, who has previously supported banning TikTok, seemingly reversed his position on the issue after meeting with a Republican donor invested in […]
We’ve all seen those white streaks trailing behind jets, creating stripes against the blue sky. The lines are called contrails, short for condensation trails, and they appear when water vapor condenses and freezes around the exhaust from an aircraft, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. At least that’s what science says. In recent […]
Fear of the deep. It is, at once, a very modern form of horror and a very ancient one. In this case it begins more than six miles high in the sky and ends more than three miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Ten years ago, early in the evening of March 8, 2014, Malaysian […]
