July14 , 2026

Money Talks: Trump’s TikTok Triumph

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Buried Circle in Scotland Rewrites Violence Before Rome

Scotland's Buried Circle Rewrites Violence Before Rome Keywords: Neolithic Scotland, Machrie Moor, conflict, stone circles, archaeology, Roman Britain Brief: Standing stones in moorland mist; a bronze blade laid beside excavated earth.New discoveries at Machrie Moor and a major Edinburgh exhibition are pushing Scotland's prehistory away from pastoral myth and closer to a landscape of ritual, memory and organised violence.Scotland's ancient past is often imagined in stone, fog and silence. The newest archaeology suggests something noisier. Historic Environment Scotland this week announced the detection of a possible new prehistoric ring beneath the peat on the Isle of Arran: a circle of 12 pit-like anomalies forming a feature approximately 28 metres across, with space for two additional settings that may bring the original total to 14 posts or stones. Led by Dr Nick Hannon, the survey team used geophysical scanning equipment that detects underground disturbances without lifting a single turf. "The discovery of a new circle completely surpassed our expectations," Dr Hannon said. The find arrives at the same moment as the National Museum of Scotland opens Scotland's First Warriors, an exhibition tracing 4,000 years of conflict from the Neolithic to the Romans, covering more than 200 objects and asking how and why people fought, what weapons they used and what early conflict did to communities. Taken together, the two stories complicate the old image of early Scotland as a remote edge of prehistory waiting passively for civilisation to arrive. Ritual and Conflict Shared the Same Landscape It is tempting to separate ceremonial monuments from warfare, as if one belonged to religion and the other to politics. The new exhibition suggests prehistoric Scotland did not organise life so neatly. Machrie Moor's circles date from between roughly 3500 and 1500 BCE, and excavations have shown that several were preceded by timber circles in the same positions. The timber circle at Machrie Moor 1 has been radiocarbon-dated to 2030 ± 180 BCE, before the wooden posts were replaced with stone around 2000 BCE. The circles align with a prominent notch at the head of Machrie Glen, where the midsummer sunrise would have been visible, and later served as burial grounds for cremations and inhumations. The Edinburgh exhibition changes the emotional map of prehistoric Scotland. Stone circles were not necessarily built by peaceful mystics untouched by danger. They belonged to societies capable of both ceremony and force, burial and battle, symbolic order and lethal dispute. As the exhibition makes clear, interpersonal violence, fortification and organised conflict were real parts of Scotland's deep past, not marginal episodes but structural features of life on the moor. The landscape was never only sacred space. It was lived space. Before Rome, There Was Already History The most useful thing about these discoveries is that they pull Scottish prehistory out of the shadow of Rome. Too often, Britain's northern story begins when classical writers notice it. The Arran circle and the "first warriors" frame both insist that Scotland already had long, structured histories of monument-building, territorial meaning and conflict before Roman contact ever entered the picture. The Arran cursus, a ceremonial enclosure approximately 1.1 kilometres long sitting adjacent to the stone circles, underlines the landscape's sustained importance as a gathering place across millennia. The new ring at Machrie Moor has not yet been excavated, and the evidence for prehistoric violence remains open to interpretation. But the direction of travel is clear. Early Scotland looks less like an empty northern fringe and more like a dense world of ritual landscapes, armed communities and social memory stretching back 5,000 years. The stones were never mute. We are only getting better at hearing what kind of world they belonged to.Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates! Read also: The Outlander Effect: How the Show Put Scotland on the Map Rural Europe Pushes Back Against Megafarms Homer in a Mummy Rewrites Cultural Borders

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TikTok returned to American screens on Sunday after a brief blackout, as Donald Trump promised the app a 90-day lifeline. The social media platform’s shutdown and revival spotlights growing rifts between U.S. and Chinese tech spheres.

Breaking the Ban

The U.S. Congress passed the ban through its Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. business. Traffic to TikTok domains dropped 85% after the shutdown began on 19 January at 03:30 UTC. ByteDance’s network traffic in the US fell by 95%, while users encountered shutdown messages on their screens.

Donald Trump’s change of heart proved decisive. Despite backing a ban in 2020, Trump pledged to grant TikTok breathing room through an executive order on his first day in office. His proposal envisions joint U.S.-Chinese ownership, with America holding 50% stake in a new venture.

House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back, saying Republicans read Trump’s stance as support for “true divestiture” rather than continued Chinese control. Johnson stressed concerns about Chinese Communist Party manipulation of algorithms and harmful content targeting American youth.

Money Talks: New Players Enter the Game

As TikTok wobbled, Perplexity AI moved to catch it. The Jeff Bezos-backed company offered to merge with TikTok’s U.S. operations, bringing artificial intelligence prowess to the video platform. The deal would let ByteDance’s investors keep their stakes while adding new capital partners.

Facebook parent Meta played rougher. Meta paid Republican firm Targeted Victory to paint TikTok as a threat to American children through planted news stories and opinion pieces. The campaign placed op-eds in major regional outlets and promoted stories about dangerous TikTok trends that actually started on Facebook.

Other tech rivals rushed to fill the gap. X launched a video tab, while Elon Musk teased bringing back Vine. Instagram unveiled “Edits,” copying TikTok’s CapCut video editor. Snapchat boosted creator features and allowed longer videos to match TikTok’s 10-minute limit.

But topping app charts was RedNote. The Chinese platform now faces similar legal hurdles under the new law. Rep. Mich McCormick told reporters: “We will legislate against them. We have to.”

The law blocks apps from “foreign adversaries” in American app stores. RedNote, owned by Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology, matches this criteria. Rep. Beth Van Duyne warned that if apps like RedNote become TikTok alternatives, Congress will close that “loophole.”

Users Fight Back as Apps Adapt

The TikTok ban sparked some protest. A Wisconsin teen set fire to Rep. Glenn Grothman’s office building over the shutdown. Grothman had called TikTok a national security threat that exposed American data to “Communist China.”

British officials took a different path to object. Cabinet minister Darren Jones defended allowing TikTok to operate, saying users posting cat videos pose no security threat. The UK banned TikTok only on government devices.

Historically, during periods of prohibition or restriction, individuals find ways to circumvent bans, often viewing restricted items as forbidden fruit. Many users may resort to VPNs or other means to access TikTok despite official restrictions.

Alternatively, users might migrate to other platforms that could evolve into their own versions of TikTok. The appetite for short-form video content is unlikely to diminish.

For now, TikTok’s return offers temporary relief, but questions linger about Chinese apps in American cyberspace. Trump’s promised executive order may chart a new course for social media’s borders.

Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates!

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