'Everything is fine with her'

'Sexual battery'

Dreams have always been a powerful force in rock music, shaping lyrics, melodies, and entire albums around the intricate web of emotions they evoke. Rock musicians and songwriters have long used dreams to explore everything from personal aspirations and haunting fears to nostalgic reflections and existential dilemmas. These songs don’t just speak to the subconscious thoughts we have when we sleep; they tap into a deeper, psychological terrain where dreams can represent hope, longing, ambition, or even despair. In rock music, the word “dream” is a versatile tool, a vehicle for conveying the full spectrum of human experience. From the The post 10 Best Rock Songs About Dreams appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Books Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: August 2024 From Le Guin to Agatha Christie, new time travel novels to terrible twee Victorian fairy tales, all of these books are interesting (if not strictly good)… By Jo Walton | Published on September 5, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share August began in Florence with friends, then we went to Worldcon in Glasgow by train via Cologne, then a week in Edinburgh at the Fringe seeing three or four plays a day, then back to Florence by train via Lyon. It was all excellent, especially sitting next to Naomi Kritzer at Worldcon when she won not one but two Hugos! My very first Worldcon was in Glasgow back in 1995, so it made it especially great to be back and seeing so many friends. So, a terrific month, but very busy. I read only ten books, but they were all very interesting, even the bad ones. Homer: The Very Idea — James I. Porter (2021) Non-fiction, and fascinating. This is about the reception of Homer through all of time—that is, how people have thought about Homer himself and the Iliad and the Odyssey in their own changing context. The most interesting part is the meditations on authorship and authenticity. But I was very surprised that Porter didn’t even consider the Iliad as an anti-war story. He seems to believe it glorifies war and is positive about it, which I find as surprising as if someone was claiming the same for Wilfred Owen. I kept thinking he must intend to consider the anti-war message and responses to it in some later chapter, and then the book ended. Apart from this bizarre omission, it really is a terrific book, and very readable. The Mysterious Mr Quin — Agatha Christie (1930) Right at the beginning of her career, Christie wrote these short stories that are mysteries but also fantasies. I keep trying to compare them to things (Dunsany, Wilkie Collins, M.R. James) but they’re not really like anything else. They’re definitely not ghost stories, or really any category of stories. If they’d proved as popular as her Poirot and Marple stories I wonder what both the fantasy and mystery genres would look like today, or whether we’d have a whole new genre that was… things like this. It’s so interesting to read them now and see what she was doing—they have the kind of characters and situations you expect in Christie, and then Mr Quin appears in their lives, sometimes very briefly and sometimes extensively. He is some kind of supernatural harlequin, drawing on a tradition I know very little about. He nudges his friend Mr Satterthwaite towards solving mysteries and preventing harm, sometimes protecting love or lovers, and sometimes speaking or acting for the dead. Most of the mysteries he solves are from many years ago, being solved, or resolved, at a satisfying moment. Each individual story stands entirely alone, but when Ada [Palmer] came across a single one of them in a Christie audiobook collection it was immediately apparent to both of us that this was a story belonging to SF/F, even though there was very little overt indication of that in the text of that one. Delightful to read and think about Agatha Christie, the fantasy writer that never was. The Word for World is Forest — Ursula K. Le Guin (1972) Re-read. I hadn’t read this in a long time because while it’s great, it’s also sad and difficult and there’s a lot of message carried by a very thin skein of story, and because a lot of the book is from the point of view of a very unpleasant character. This is a book written during the Vietnam era that is directly about colonialism, slavery, and climate change. It isn’t subtle about them, and you have to be up for reading about these things happening on another planet in the future and seeing the parallels to our own planet laid out very starkly. So this is a significant book and a powerful one, but not an enjoyable read. Definitely a needed corrective to the kind of stories about humans colonizing the galaxy—Piper and Pournelle spring to mind—but somehow with less payoff than I want. I wonder if it’s too short—it was originally published in Again, Dangerous Visions and it might have been better at greater length and with more time spent among the culture of the Athsheans. Rules: A Short History of What We Live By — Lorraine Daston (2022) An interesting analysis of the concept of rules over time, and the different ways of interacting with them. Daston introduces the concept of “thick” and “thin” rules, and of rules as examples (like precedents in a law court) and of discretion in interpretation. Well written and just flat out interesting. This made me think about everything from algorithms to the Rule of St Benedict, not to mention spelling and the way society organizes itself. There’s a really nifty section on the mechanical computations performed by human “computers” before machine calculations existed and how that was organized and how people thought about it. And modern ideas of how rules do and should work are very recent indeed. A Tangled Web — L.M. Montgomery (1931) Re-read. Also known as “the one about the jug.” I read this book as a teenager, and remembered it only vaguely. I decided to re-read it after a panel about The Blue Castle which I know too well to re-read. So, most of this book is a mildly amusing novel about two large intermarried families in Nova Scotia and a lot of people who want to inherit a jug and sort out their lives. Things happen that are not very exciting, people fall in love, and out of love, and quarrel, and reconcile, and houses are weirdly significant in a way that is one of Montgomery’s quirks. It has a lot of characters but she keeps track of them all and reminds you who they are, and it’s the kind of quiet story of everyday people with nothing happening that you don’t often see. This was all I’d say about this book except that in literally the last paragraph it commits one of the worst examples of unnecessary and blatant racism I’ve ever had shoved in my face. I read this on a train in Switzerland and my travelling companions inform me that my mouth dropped open. Also, it was meant as a joke. Gah. Horrible. Read The Blue Castle, where her racism is not on display; do not waste your time with this. The Weaver and the Witch Queen — Genevieve Gornichec (2023) Fantasy historical novel about three Norse girls whose fates are tangled. Pretty good on current research on the Vikings, definitely a feminist version, leaning strongly on both the sagas and archaeology. Excellent weaving magic well integrated into the world and the plot. Believable and memorable characters and relationships. Nifty trans character. I liked it, but maybe it suffered from being read in separated chunks while travelling and during Worldcon, because I never felt as if I warmed to it as much as it probably deserved. The Takedown — Lily Chu (2023) Excellent chick-lit novel set in Toronto. (It’s chick-lit rather than romance by my definition because there’s as much about fulfillment through career as through love.) Chu is a terrific writer, funny, clever, interesting, she reminds me of Jennifer Crusie. This is about a woman working as a diversity advisor who really loves doing online puzzles, and meets a guy who also loves the puzzles. She has work problems and family problems and so does he. Fun and readable and tackling some serious issues well. The Other Side of the Sun — Evelyn Sharp (1900) You know when Tolkien complains about the terrible pap sold as fairy stories to children? This is an example of that. The characters are all princes and princesses and have names like Princess Winsome and encounter tiny wymps and fairies who live on the other side of the sun and cause mild magical mischief. I’m sure Victorians found these charming, and hopefully they earned bright guineas for Sharp. (That term comes from Byatt’s Possession where a character is talking about selling fairy tales.) But this is a bad book in all ways, sentimental about both childhood and fairies, and lacking any edge at all. This is what Lud-in-the-Mist and Smith of Wootton Major were pushing back against. I read this so you don’t have to, and forever after I’ll be able to point to it when I need an example of how awful this kind of thing really is. The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt (2000) Re-read, I first read it in September 2020. This has nothing to do with the movie. It’s about an eccentric American woman in Oxford and London who has a son and decides to raise him like John Stuart Mill on languages and science from a very early age. She uses the movie Seven Samurai to try to provide him with positive male role models. He turns out very odd, and the second half of the book is about him trying to find himself a father. It’s funny, it’s gripping, it’s clever, and very readable. It was interesting re-reading this book knowing where it was going—though I’m not quite convinced DeWitt herself knew that. It has a wonderful voice, and wonderful observations about the world. There are no genre elements, but I feel it is a book whose audience is more likely to be found among SF readers than in the mainstream, just for the general geekiness and eccentricity of the characters. Beautifully written. Highest recommendation. Love and Other Paradoxes — Catriona Silvey (2025) This is a time travel romance novel, sent to me by the editor who correctly guessed that I would like it. I did like it. I read it in one sitting when back in Florence and wanting to sit down and just read. I have a million genre niggles, which if I set them all out would make you think I hated it—but it’s just that thing that happens when a mainstream writer takes one of the tools of SF and uses it without realizing how worldbuilding works and everything connects. (I’d like to give Silvey an Ethics of Time Travel reading list.) Meanwhile, this is a well-written, grabby book with a lovely romance and very interesting thoughts on plagiarising your future life and work, with an excellent case of a time traveller from 2044 coping with the primitive world of 2005, and the kind of worldbuilding that falls over if you frown hard at it. It comes out next March and I commend it to your attention. I’ll make a note to remember to mention it again when it’s actually available.[end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: August 2024 appeared first on Reactor.

There is never a level playing field in an American election. For example, the two major political parties have major advantages that third parties can’t muster. Another example is the major Democratic Party advantage of the home-team announcers calling the action on the playing field. Our national media set the terms and the tone of our democracy.  The pro-Democrat tilt of every election comes to mind when the pseudo-conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin gushed on ABC’s “The View” on Sept. 3 that “the momentum is on Kamala Harris‘ side right now.” The electorate is highly polarized and the polls are tight, Griffin said, but “she’s running a flawless campaign … she’s running really smart.”  In every election cycle, it is abundantly easier for Democrats to appear to have “momentum” when the media prattle on about their supposed momentum. It is easier to declare Democratic campaigns are “flawless” when the media steamroll over any flaw that emerges. It is easier to look “really smart” when journalists tell everyone you’re smart, and if voters don’t understand you have a stunning intellect, then you’re “misunderstood.”  The media act like the wind beneath Kamala’s wings, and then they praise her flying skills.  Her weaknesses are buried as Donald Trump‘s strengths are attacked. She fails to empathize with Gold Star parents whose children were killed in Afghanistan, and the media attack Trump for having the chutzpah to show up at Arlington National Cemetery at their invitation. The only scandals that aren’t fake news are the Republican scandals.  Here’s another advantage that can be maddening to Republicans. The Washington Post published a story on Labor Day headlined “Trump aims to drag down Harris as he scrambles to keep up in tight race.” The subhead underlined the spin: “The Republican nominee’s advisers and allies are clear-eyed about the unlikelihood of improving his standing. That leaves one option: damaging hers.”  Can we turn that the other way? Isn’t Harris aiming to “drag down Trump”? Isn’t her goal “damaging Trump”? Do the political editors at the Post really think the Democrats don’t criticize their opponents? Do these Posties understand that nearly everyone thinks their primary goal in journalism since 2015 has been to destroy and even imprison Trump? Any notion of their objectivity died in darkness decades ago.  On Tuesday, National Public Radio senior political editor Domenico Montanaro blared out a similar spin: “Former President Trump is ramping up attacks on Harris, trying to drag her down. So expect the race to get even uglier.”  A listener to taxpayer-funded radio might detect a bullying flavor, as in the Big Bad Wolf is aiming to ruin Little Red Riding Hood. Or if that makes Harris sound too vulnerable, she might be Wonder Woman, and Trump is imagined as Wonder Woman’s evil nemesis Doctor Poison, or maybe Doctor Psycho.  Journalists don’t see their own work as “ramping up attacks” on Republicans and making the race “even uglier.” In their egotistical dreams, they are never adding ugliness to politics. By opposing Trump, they’re opposing ugliness, and writing a flawless first draft of history.  In her convention speech, Harris called for moving “past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past.” But everything Harris and her media allies are doing is bitterly attacking Trump, dividing voters, and then cynically insisting they are not the bitter dividers.  This explains why Gallup found only 11% of Republicans and 29% of independents have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in the media’s performance. They sound like they deliver DNC advertising instead of the old-fashioned straight news.   COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM  The post Media Bias Makes It Easier to Run a ‘Flawless’ Campaign   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The US District Court for the Western District of Texas has issued an order in the case brought against the Texas SCOPE Act (House Bill 18), approving in part a preliminary injunction. The request has been granted against the provision requiring social media companies to block teens from accessing certain types of “harmful” content. However, the court decided to allow online age registration through digital ID requirements from the same act to remain in place. The law, which was to come into force on September 15, is designed to make major web services filter what minors can access on the internet, but also identify them. Other rules from the SCOPE Act prohibit large social media companies from targeted advertising of those under 18 and limit what data can be collected from them. Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton was the defendant in the case, with corporate groups Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice as the plaintiffs. These organizations, which represent the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, X, PayPal, Uber, and more, are now declaring victory “for free speech” and referring to the access restrictions envisaged by the law as a “key censorship requirement.” According to a NetChoice press release, the access-limiting measures that the court found exclusively targeted speech, and for that reason, “likely” represented First Amendment violation. In addition, the order found the SCOPE Act to be, regarding these provisions, “overbroad, overly restrictive, and underinclusive.” NetChoice is framing the ruling as yet another instance in a growing number of cases of a federal court “blocking government censorship” when it comes to lawful content and speech on the internet. The group representing massive corporations said that it has been successful in injunction requests against four more states whose laws create what NetChoice calls “an age-gate.” However, that’s not the same as age verification, which NetChoice chose not to mention in its statement regarding the ruling. Namely, the court’s decision left data collection and age verification out of the preliminary injunction. The latter rule applies to sites that are deemed to contain “large amounts of adult content” – even though they are not adult sites. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Texas Court Strikes Down Teen Content Ban While Keeping Digital ID Checks In Place appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Among the treasures discovered in the fascinating Galloway hoard, one object stands out for both its artistic and geographical significance: a vessel adorned with exotic iconography. Recent research has revealed that this vessel, part of a hoard discovered in Scotland, likely traveled farther than any other object in the collection—perhaps all the way from the ancient Sasanian Empire in Persia, modern-day Iran. A Mysterious Design At first glance, the vessel’s decoration raised questions among archaeologists. Unlike typical Viking treasure containers, this vessel displayed an unusual iconography that included leopards, tigers, and what appeared to be a fire altar topped with a crown emerging from flames. Such imagery was unfamiliar in the context of Christian Europe during the early Middle Ages, prompting further investigation into its origins. Dr Martin Goldberg explains further There are leopards and tigers on it. There’s something that looks like a fire altar with a crown emerging from the flames. And these are unusual things to find, especially in Christian Europe at this point. Connections to the Sasanian Empire The breakthrough came when scientific analysis of the vessel’s silver and yellow decorations confirmed its connection to the Sasanian Empire, a powerful civilization that flourished in Western Asia during the 6th and 7th centuries. The Sasanians, known for their intricate art and advanced metallurgy, had a far-reaching cultural influence, extending across much of the ancient world. The Sasanian Empire was a rival to the Byzantine Empire and played a crucial role in shaping the political and cultural landscape of the Middle East. The fire altar imagery, a significant motif in Zoroastrianism—the state religion of the Sasanians—provided further evidence of the vessel’s Persian origins. Goldberg goes onto explain to Helen We’ve recently had confirmation through scientific analysis of the silver and the yellow decoration, that this object is, a relic of an the Sasanian Empire, that was based in modern day Iran. A Remarkable Journey The discovery of this vessel in a Viking hoard in southwest Scotland raises intriguing questions about how it made its way across such a vast distance. The early medieval period, often referred to as the Dark Ages, has long been portrayed as a time of insularity and decline in Europe. However, discoveries like this vessel challenge that narrative, suggesting instead that the early Middle Ages were characterized by extensive travel, trade, and cultural exchange. It is remarkable to imagine how a Sasanian artifact could have journeyed halfway around the known world, from the heart of the Persian Empire to the remote shores of Scotland. Perhaps it was traded along the Silk Road, passed through the hands of Byzantine merchants, or captured during Viking raids in Eastern Europe and brought back as plunder. Whatever its exact path, the vessel’s presence in Scotland highlights the far-reaching connections of the Viking Age. Shedding Light on the Dark Ages The story of this silver gilt vessel adds to a growing body of scholarship that redefines our understanding of the early Middle Ages. Far from being a time of darkness and isolation, this period saw significant cultural interaction and exchange. The movement of people, goods, and ideas across great distances suggests that early medieval societies were far more interconnected than previously thought. As research continues, objects like this Sasanian vessel serve as tangible reminders of the global networks that existed long before the modern era. They also underscore the importance of viewing history through a broader lens—one that recognizes the complexity and dynamism of the past. The silver gilt vessel from the Sasanian Empire not only provides a glimpse into the art and culture of an ancient civilization but also offers new insights into the interconnected world of the early Middle Ages. Its journey from Persia to Viking Age Scotland is a testament to the incredible mobility and exchange that defined this fascinating period in history.

Watch Out for the Mean Streets of San Franistan

Georgia School Shooter Had Been Flagged to the FBI and Interviewed a Year Ago

The abalones of the world have some curious tricks up their shells.