Tuesday night’s State of The Union address was one for the history books, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempting to steal the spotlight from President Trump at the event’s conclusion.

With the rip heard ’round the world, Pelosi fomented her place in the pantheon of the progressive “resistance”, tearing a gifted copy of the President’s address in half while the rest of the chamber politely applauded the achievements outlined by Trump in the speech.  The moment immediately went viral, with predictably divided opinions as to how the gesture fits into the national narrative.

Many saw the act as a show of disrespect for those whom the President lauded during the State of The Union address itself, including a member of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen.

Now, an edited video that made it appear as though the ripping stunt was in direct relation to the celebration of the brave service member is making the rounds online, and the left is helpless to stop its spread.

Within hours, the speaker’s office was demanding both social media companies remove the video, arguing it was unfair to Pelosi, who actually stood and applauded the airman during the speech.

Both Facebook and Twitter decided against removing the Trump video, although the companies cited different reasons for their decisions.

The dispute became public Friday when Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, posted a link to a criticism of the video Friday afternoon, writing “The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests.”

The argument turned fierce in a hurry.

A New York high school student shocked the scientific establishment by identifying a never before seen planet only three days into his internship.

Wolf Cukier, 17, was interning at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland last year when he uncovered what became known as TOI 1338 b — a planet orbiting two stars instead of one, Yahoo News reports.

The teen caught the telltale signs of a planet while reviewing data captured by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), NASA said.

“I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit,” Cukier said. “About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338.”

“At first, I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet,” he added.

The teen chalked up some scientific firsts with his identification:

TOI 1338 b is the first circumbinary planet discovered by TESS, according to NASA. The planet is around 6.9 times larger than Earth — nearly the size of Saturn — and lies in a system 1,300 light-years away in the constellation of Pictor.

The world orbits the two stars every 95 days, the agency said. One star is about 10 percent bigger than our sun, while the other is a cooler and dimmer M dwarf that is only a third of our sun’s mass.

Cukier likened his discovery to the Star Wars planet, Tatooine.

“I discovered a planet, which has two stars that orbit around. So, if you think to Luke’s homeworld, Tatooine, from Star Wars, it’s like that. Every sunset, there’s going to be two stars setting,” Cukier said.

The high schooler joked that the rest of his internship didn’t live up to its first 72 hours.

“Funny thing is, I didn’t find anything else for the rest of the internship, even though I found one on like day three,” he said.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

If we’re being honest, Black Friday might be one of the most disturbing pop culture events in the United States.

It’s consumerism run rampant, and it reeks of excess in ways that few other materialistic machinations do.  It’s a declaration to the rest of the world that Americans are so focused on what they have, that they are willing eschew their own morality to get more for less.

Witnessing the inevitable violence and chaos of these Black Friday events can be more than a little bit disheartening, and there are certainly dangers to be had for those foolish enough to brave the doorbuster madness.

But what if it were the items themselves that you need to be wary of, and not the lesser inclinations of your rival shoppers?

The FBI’s Portland, Oregon, field office shared some tips this week for anyone who needs to secure a smart TV.

Some models of smart TVs include built-in cameras. They can be used for video chatting with friends and family, and some can let the TV recognize who is watching and suggest programming based on their past preferences.

To prevent being a victim of hackers via your new television, the FBI has a few tips for would-be buyers.

• Because each smart TV is different, owners should search for the exact model number online and words like “microphone,” “camera” and “privacy” to learn how to control those features.

• Don’t leave security settings on the default option and chance passwords if possible. It’s also a good idea to check how to turn off microphones, cameras and personal data collection ahead of making a purchase, and considering a different model if they can’t be turned off.

• A piece of black tape can help when a camera can’t be turned off.

• Check whether the manufacturer can and whether it does update the device with security patches.

• Also check the privacy policy for the manufacturer and any streaming services, including what data they collect, how they store it and what they do with it.

The FBI is also concerned that some smart TV’s could be used as a sort of backchannel into accessing your home router and wifi, which could lead to any number of issues more devastating than unwanted camera access.

Elon Musk is a bit of a character, that’s for sure.

He’s a man who, at every turn, seems to channel his inner-Nikola Tesla – quite blatantly in the naming of his car company – but also a bit more subtly through his enthusiasm for conjuring his own mythos.  Tesla, the man, was eccentric and odd, and so Musk puts on that mask when he can, attempting to glean something from the behavior that might help him to truly unlock the Nikola narrative.

But it doesn’t work that way.  Tesla’s eccentricities were a product of his genius, not the other way around, and Musk’s frantic character development just feels forced.

Today, Tesla, (the car company), released their Cybertruck – a futurist utility vehicle that was equal parts Delorean and Lamborghini, with perhaps a dash of Tonka Truck thrown in for the sake of Musk’s manufactured mania.

Also, as has become a staple of Elon’s eccentricity, the truck was over-built – including what was advertised as “bulletproof glass”.

Turns out that this was perhaps a feature to be added after launch.

how'd the unveil go? smashingly! pic.twitter.com/vXyCZuOBkn

— Lora Kolodny (@lorakolodny) November 22, 2019

You see those wholes in the “bulletproof” windows?  A metal ball thrown with the gusto of a pre-teen little leaguer created them.

Tesla's demo of its first electric pickup didn't go quite according to plan. The "Tesla armor glass" windows shattered when hit with a metallic ball #CyberTruck pic.twitter.com/rRrrs2E0Jy

— Bloomberg TicToc (@tictoc) November 22, 2019

I’ve seen more heat in tee ball.

Surely, Musk will get the window issued fixed before these angular activity pods hit the streets, but will he do anything to repair how they look?

Throughout the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency, there have been concerns regarding the tilt of the mainstream media, but also a shift in tactics being deployed by the leviathans of the social media scene as well.

It has been patently obvious that companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are being helmed by figures who find themselves on the left side of the political aisle, and, given the heightened state of agitation among the Democratic Party in the days following Trump’s electoral victory, these figures seemed unafraid of pursuing their political goals throughout their platforms.

This, quite simply put, is a violation of the First Amendment rights of many Americans, both constitutionally and ethically.

Now, as President Trump looks to turn the tide back into the favor of freedom its very self, Senator and presidential candidate Liz Warren is raising an objection.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tore into Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for attending a previously undisclosed meeting with President Trump at the White House in October, accusing the tech billionaire of intentionally cozying up to the administration as his company faces increased scrutiny from regulators and Democratic lawmakers.

“Amid antitrust scrutiny, Facebook is going on a charm offensive with Republican lawmakers,” Warren wrote in a series of tweets on Thursday. “And now, Mark Zuckerberg and one of Facebook’s board members—a major Trump donor—had a secret dinner with Trump. This is corruption, plain and simple.”

If elected next year, Warren said she “won’t cozy up to Facebook.”

“It’s time to root out corruption in Washington,” she said.

Warren is essentially telling the nation that the limits put on free speech by Facebook over the course of the last three years, particularly as it pertains to domestic American politics, should be the new norm despite the very obvious conflict that this creates with the constitution.

Google is secretly blacklisting conservative sites to prevent them from appearing in search results, despite public denials of doing so.

The tech giant has claimed that it does not manipulate its search results to exclude conservative sites and also denies manipulating results to benefit certain big corporations. But a new report finds that the search giant has lied. It absolutely manipulates the results in those ways.

The report at the Wall Street Journal claims that Google blacklists certain sites going back as far as the early 2000s, including sites that continually break copyright laws and sites that contain certain types of pornography.

But Google also blacklists conservative sites so that they do not appear in searches for news.

Explaining the results of the report, Google claims that sites that do not adhere to its “inclusion policies” are “not eligible to appear on news surfaces or in information boxes in Search.”

Even though it appears that mostly conservative sites are blacklisted, Google maintains that it does not employ “political bias” to exclude sites from search results.

Indeed, just last year Google said it doesn’t blacklist conservatives at all. In a public statement, Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice president of public policy, said, “We don’t use blacklists/whitelists to influence our search results.”

Google also slammed the Journal’s story. In a statement this week, Google said:

This article contains a number of old, incomplete anecdotes, many of which not only predated our current processes and policies but also give a very inaccurate impression of how we approach building and improving Search.

Google adds that it only works to quash sites that are “actively deceptive.” By that they mean sites that hide true identities of owners, writers, and participants of the site, or sites that actively push false stories.

The Journal also found that Google pushes sites of big corporations over other small companies, especially big corporations that are Google advertisers.

Finally, the Journal report found that Google screens negative searches from its autocomplete results for Democrats to help maintain the left’s positive veneer.

The paper noted that if you type in “Joe Biden” in a number of search engines, one of the autocomplete choices is always “creepy” except when you use Google. “Creepy” is never associated with Biden in a Google search because, the paper says, Google purposefully prevents such results for Democrats.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

Tech giant Google has been caught red-handed secretly collecting the medical data about millions of Americans without telling the doctors or patients involved.

The spy program even had a slick little name: “Project Nightingale.”

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Google began Project Nightingale in secret last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, a Catholic chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors’ offices and other facilities, with the data sharing accelerating since summer.

The data involved in the initiative encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.

“Neither patients nor doctors have been notified,” the paper added. “At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and the documents.”

Google’s program was launched last year in cooperation with Ascension, a Catholic chain of 2,600 hospitals spread out over 21 states and in Washington D.C., along with other doctors.

According to Forbes, Google’s program “involves Ascension moving patient records onto Google’s cloud servers and includes a search product that allows Ascension healthcare providers to see an ‘overview page’ about their patients. The page includes complete patient information as well as notes about patient medical issues, test results and medications, including information from scanned documents, according to presentations viewed by Forbes.”

The financial magazine added, “A source familiar with the project said that patients are not aware of Google’s access to their data, though patient privacy laws generally allow the sharing of patient data with third parties without notification if it is for purposes that ‘help it carry out its health care activities and functions. Ascension employees have raised concerns internally, according to documents, about patient data privacy.”

Despite the secrecy of the program and the fact that patients were not told, both news sources claim that Google’s actions were not in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

Google claims that the goal of ‘Project Nightingale’ was to collect patient data to create a better system of diagnosis. Google claimed that the program could spot things that a doctor or hospital missed.

Google is already being sued or a similar agreement with the University of Chicago Medical Center.

The New York Times recently reported that a lawsuit argues that Google violated patient privacy with its program with the Chicago medical center.

Big tech companies such as Apple and Google are making huge strides in taking over America’s medical sector.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.