'Keep dangerous people out'

'Halt the state's investigation'

Books Mark as Read A Modest Request for a Little More Genre Chaos Gleefully mixing genres can create something magical and powerful, and sometimes it’s a hot mess. Either way, I want MORE. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 24, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share I am here today to advocate for a certain amount of chaos. A certain kind of chaos. I have been reading, accidentally, some rather stodgy post-apocalyptic books, and they are making me crave one thing and one thing only: genre fuckery. In modern times, with our plethora of genres and subgenres, there is a lot of fun, a lot of wire-crossing and bridge-building among bookstore sections. There is so very much of what I think of as “1 + 1 = 4,” which is to say mashups in which two genres (inasmuch as any genre is solidified or certain) make a very pretty Venn diagram with one another and find that the overlap in the middle is, as the man says, bigger on the inside.  SF and cozy mysteries. SF and horror. Fantasy and procedurals. And, of course, the biggest of them all: fantasy and romance. It would be absurd for me to ask, at this moment in time, that the world cough up more genre mash-ups for me; what is romantasy if not the juggernaut of mash-ups? It may not be my personal cup of tea, but I am genuinely quite delighted for everyone standing in front of the monster-fucking display at their local bookstore in a state of absolute bliss.  I love a mashup. I love Malka Older’s cozy, tea-drenched, sharp-as-a-tack space mysteries. I love Catherynne Valente putting Douglas Adams and Eurovision in a blender with a whole Michael’s worth of glitter and satin.  But I can love something and still want more.  I have a loosely sketched out periodic table of messing about with genre, and it has four categories. (There are more. You could probably come up with five more off the top of your head. These are just mine, in this moment.) There are the mash-ups, as discussed. There is genre indifference, when writers—often those shelved in the literature section, sometimes not—are unconcerned with what genre is or does or believes in. There is genre playfulness, a sort of “what if?” kind of messing around. Can an orc run a coffee shop? Turns out the answer is yes!  And then there’s fuckery. I am using this word—fully aware someone will turn up their nose at my coarse language—for all that it implies: Intention. Irreverence. Maybe even a hint of aggression. Not hatred, not scorn; that veers off into its own category, and one in which I’m not as interested. (There is a special place on shelves I don’t visit for authors who think they can reinvent a genre without reading any of the books in it.) But a sort of gonzo appreciation that turns into its own series of questions: Why does this genre tend toward this sort of behavior? What does X trope say about the genre as a whole? What if you turn it all on its head? What if you cut off its head? What can we find in the wreckage of all these ships (literal, not fandom) and carriages and planets? It is hard to say exactly what I mean by genre fuckery because, like so many other things in this world, it’s a matter of knowing it when you see it. It’s a little bit brazen. Sometimes it’s something magical and powerful, and sometimes it’s a hot mess. (Genre creativity is by no means a perfect indicator of a great book.) It requires a big swing; sometimes the results are more admirable than enjoyable.  I started thinking more about genre fuckery when I read Rakesfall, which resists any genre label you might try to put on it. I kept thinking about it when I read Olga Tokarczuk’s 2018 Nobel Prize lecture, which is about a lot of things, bigger and more grand than I can really get my head around. But she thinks there is more that books and stories can do—more ways to tell them, more ways to fit the whole world into them. She is not a fan of genres at all: “The division into genres is the result of the commercialization of literature as a whole and an effect of treating it as a product for sale with the whole philosophy of branding and targeting and other, similar inventions of contemporary capitalism.” I think this is true, and I also think that some readers like genres the same way we like tags and other classifications: ease of finding. A genre label can help and harm, a fact well known to anyone who’s ever read about an author insisting that their book about robots is not science fiction. Genre is a tool, and tools can be misused. But as Tokarczuk goes deeper into this space, in this artfully meandering discussion about narrative and story and books and the modern world, she nears a question: She wonders if there is another kind of narrator possible, one with “a point of view, a perspective from where everything can be seen.” If you have read The Spear Cuts Through Water, you know where I’m going with this. In that book—an epic fantasy, full of battles and magical tortoises, and yet also the story of a family and a history, and also so much more—Simon Jimenez gives voice to an incredible panoply of characters, of creatures and things. Voices intrude on the main narrative in italics, butting in to say their pieces, short and to the point, heartbreaking and strange. It is a kind of genre fuckery, I think, to insist on the power and possibility of those voices. It is a kind of genre fuckery to say things that a genre does not often say.  I love the tropes and trappings of SFF; I grew up on the most well-worn of stories, the low-born boys growing to save the world, to come into their power, to marry the princesses. And I love watching writers twist and turn those tropes and trappings, translating them, reshaping them, making them sing in new voices and registers. But I feel like we’re on the verge of a next step, maybe. Another shift in what this whole big, sprawling, multiversal kind of storytelling can be. I see it in Rakesfall; I see it, in ways I can’t explain, in Kerstin Hall’s Asunder; I see it in The Archive Undying and Out of the Drowning Deep and Radiance and Archangels of Funk and In Universes, and I think all the time about how I saw it in Midnight Robber and having been chasing that same reading experience ever since. I see it in every book that finds magic among the stars. (I feel like Clarke’s law should have given us a lot more space magic by now.) There have always been writers fucking with genre. There have always been writers using genre to say things that its most successful books were not saying. Maybe what’s really happening is the doors to visibility, to bigger readerships, are finally cracking open. I hope we can shove them open wide.[end-mark] The post A Modest Request for a Little More Genre Chaos appeared first on Reactor.

Why Is 'The Atlantic' Hoax Central?

The role of mRNA vaccines in promoting mucosal immunity is proving a tricky customer for scientists.

It doesn't get much worse than what happened to diver number four.

Pigs who had their brains connected to a life support system assisted by a healthy liver had revived brain activity up to an hour after their deaths.

Sarah Kollat: Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we waited in line, anticipating deeper frights to come once we were inside. I’m not the only one who loves a good scare. Halloween attractions company America Haunts estimates Americans are spending upward of US$500 million annually on haunted house entrance fees simply for the privilege of being frightened. And lots of fright fans don’t limit their horror entertainment to spooky season, gorging horror movies, shows and books all year long. To some people, this preoccupation with horror can seem tone deaf. School shootings, child abuse, war – the list of real-life horrors is endless. Why seek manufactured fear for entertainment when the world offers real terror in such large quantities? As a developmental psychologist who writes dark thrillers on the side, I find the intersection of psychology and fear intriguing. To explain what drives this fascination with fear, I point to the theory that emotions evolved as a universal experience in humans because they help us survive. Creating fear in otherwise safe lives can be enjoyable – and is a way for people to practice and prepare for real-life dangers. Fear can feel good Controlled fear experiences – where you can click your remote, close the book, or walk out of the haunted house whenever you want – offer the physiological high that fear triggers, without any real risk. When you perceive yourself under threat, adrenaline surges in your body and the evolutionary fight-or-flight response is activated. Your heart rate increases, you breathe deeper and faster, and your blood pressure goes up. Your body is preparing to defend itself against the danger or get away as fast as possible. This physical reaction is crucial when facing a real threat. When experiencing controlled fear – like jump scares in a zombie TV show – you get to enjoy this energized sensation, similar to a runner’s high, without any risks. And then, once the threat is dealt with, your body releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which provides sensations of pleasure and relief. In one study, researchers found that people who visited a high-intensity haunted house as a controlled fear experience displayed less brain activity in response to stimuli and less anxiety post-exposure. This finding suggests that exposing yourself to horror films, scary stories or suspenseful video games can actually calm you afterward. The effect might also explain why my husband and I choose to relax by watching zombie shows after a busy day at work. The ties that bind An essential motivation for human beings is the sense of belonging to a social group. According to the surgeon general, Americans who miss those connections are caught up in an epidemic of loneliness, which leaves people at risk for mental and physical health issues. Going through intense fear experiences together strengthens the bonds between individuals. Good examples include veterans who served together in combat, survivors of natural disasters, and the “families” created in groups of first responders. I’m a volunteer firefighter, and the unique connection created through sharing intense threats, such as entering a burning building together, manifests in deep emotional bonds with my colleagues. After a significant fire call, we often note the improved morale and camaraderie of the firehouse. I feel a flood of positive emotions anytime I think of my firefighting partners, even when the events occurred months or years ago. Controlled fear experiences artificially create similar opportunities for bonding. Exposure to stress triggers not only the fight-or-flight response, but in many situations it also initiates what psychologists call the “tend-and-befriend” system. A perceived threat prompts humans to tend to offspring and create social-emotional bonds for protection and comfort. This system is largely regulated by the so-called “love hormone” oxytocin. The tend-and-befriend reaction is particularly likely when you experience stress around others with whom you have already established positive social connections. When you encounter stressors within your social network, your oxytocin levels rise to initiate social coping strategies. As a result, when you navigate a recreational fear experience like a haunted house with friends, you are setting the emotional stage to feel bonded with the people beside you. Sitting in the dark with friends while you watch a scary movie or navigating a haunted corn maze with a date is good for your health, in that it helps you strengthen those social connections. An ounce of prevention = a pound of cure Controlled fear experiences can also be a way for you to prepare for the worst. Think of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the films “Contagion” and “Outbreak” trended on streaming platforms as people around the world sheltered at home. By watching threat scenarios play out in controlled ways through media, you can learn about your fears and emotionally prepare for future threats. For example, researchers at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab in Denmark demonstrated in one study that people who regularly consumed horror media were more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic than nonhorror fans. The scientists suggest that this resilience might be a result of a kind of training these fans went through – they practiced coping with the fear and anxiety provoked by their preferred form of entertainment. As a result, they were better prepared to manage the real fear triggered by the pandemic. When I’m not teaching, I’m an avid reader of crime fiction. I also write psychological thrillers under the pen name Sarah K. Stephens. As both a reader and writer, I notice similar themes in the books I am drawn to, all of which tie into my own deep-rooted fears: mothers who fail their children somehow, women manipulated into subservience, lots of misogynist antagonists. I enjoy writing and reading about my fears – and seeing the bad guys get their just desserts in the end – because it offers a way for me to control the story. Consuming these narratives lets me mentally rehearse how I would handle these kinds of circumstances if any were to manifest in my real life. Survive and thrive In the case of controlled fear experiences, scaring yourself is a pivotal technique to help you survive and adapt in a frightening world. By eliciting powerful, positive emotions, strengthening social networks and preparing you for your worst fears, you’re better able to embrace each day to its fullest. So the next time you’re choosing between an upbeat comedy and a creepy thriller for your movie night, pick the dark side – it’s good for your health. Sarah Kollat, Teaching Professor of Psychology, Penn State This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post Why People Love to Scare Themselves in an Already Scary World appeared first on Anomalien.com.

“Our final MRC Free Speech Awards for 2024 are for Top Thought Leaders on Free Speech,” lauded MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell. For our first annual Free Speech Awards, the Media Research Center (MRC) is honoring 35 champions of the First Amendment, including five members of the U.S. Senate, 10 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 10 additional public officials and 10 outstanding advocates of free speech in non-governmental organizations. Today we are honoring 10 free thinkers who have championed free speech and spoken out against censorship through their advocacy and organizations. These recipients of the MRC’s 2024 Free Speech Awards include prominent names like Rachel Bovard, Mike Davis, The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, Seth Dillon, Kara Frederick, Elon Musk, Terry Schilling, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Jonathan Turley.  Bozell specifically noted the work of X owner Elon Musk. “Elon Musk is now the chief advocate of free speech, stepping in to buy Twitter and make it into X, the new home for free speech. This platform became especially crucial during this year’s presidential election, with many people only finding out about stories like Joe Biden’s diminished mental faculties to Kamala Harris’s plagiarism thanks to Musk’s efforts.” He added, “From leaders like Kara Frederick at The Heritage Foundation working to reform section 230 to Seth Dillon’s noble stand for satire to Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger’s honest investigative reporting, we have quite the group of honorees this year. A hardy congratulations are in order.”  Eight of the 10 honorees have had their content censored by Big Tech platforms as documented by MRC Free Speech America’s exclusive CensorTrack database.   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: Vice President of Programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, Rachel Bovard Bovard is the Vice President of Programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute. She worked on Capitol Hill for over a decade including as Sen. Rand Paul’s legislative director and was recently the Executive Director of the Senate Steering Committee. In 2021, The American Conservative awarded Bovard the Conservative Mind Award. Last year, she also made The Hill’s list of the 25 Staffers Who Make Capitol Hill Run. In 2013, she was named one of the National Journal’s 2013 Most Influential Women in Washington under 35.  Bovard has been a pioneer in the free speech movement. Her extensive writing and advocacy have outlined a better approach for how conservatives should understand the government’s role in protecting free speech rights from abuses perpetrated by Big Tech platforms. For example, when she appeared on the MRC uncensored podcast, she aptly explained why  Her insights have been published by The New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, New York Post and The Federalist, among others. It's not just about who can speak, it is also about who can hear. And now you can't even use an alternative because should that alternative run afoul of whatever narratives Google and Apple are enforcing, they too will be yanked not only from the . The gust of capitolism   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: Diana Davis Spencer Foundation The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, named after its current executive chairwoman, was founded in 1962 and named after Spencer’s father Shelby Cullom Davis and later her mother Kathryn W. Davis. The foundation works to bolster the American founding principles of “freedom and individual responsibility” and the foundation’s mission to preserve the ideals of Shelby and Katherine Davis.  “[W]e learned and really have tried to replicate what my parents believed in, which was a strong America, which meant self-reliance, entrepreneurialism, free speech,” Diana Davis Spencer told the Independent Women’s Forum in 2022.  The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation has been a leading champion in the fight to protect free speech rights and to hold Big Tech accountable. Davis Spencer’s dedication is evidenced by the foundation’s support for schools in the U.S. that uphold the freedom of speech. Wheatley College even honored her for her dedication to the First Amendment when it named one of its buildings: “The Diana Davis Spencer Discovery Center Dedicated to Free Speech and Innovation.” The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation also supported local station MPT PBS’s programming “A More or Less Perfect Union,” a show that explored and educated the public on the U.S. Constitution and freedom of speech.    ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: CEO of the Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon As the “Bee Chief” of satire news site The Babylon Bee, Dillon has stuck to his guns when it comes to free speech even when it came at a high cost. Dillon’s Babylon Bee has become a “Trusted Source for Christian News Satire” through its memes, videos, articles and podcasts that mock absurd woke culture. As CEO of The Babylon Bee, Dillon fought against legislation to suppress free speech and has shown an eagerness to educate the public about the importance of political speech and satire.  Never was this more clear than when Dillon appeared on the Not Noise show by Just The News and said that Big Tech censorship is “the issue for our time.” He added that, “the control that’s being exerted over what you’re allowed to say and how you’re allowed to say it, even who you’re allowed to make fun of or what types of jokes you’re allowed to make, it’s really detrimental to society to have one side allowed to voice their opinions and to make assertions and claims and the other side to be, to be silenced and marginalized and ostracized for what they think and what they believe.”  Dillon and The Babylon Bee have also made an unparalleled effort to expose Big Tech censorship while facing it firsthand. Dillon, The Babylon Bee, its sister site Not the Bee, and a few people affiliated with the sites have been censored no fewer than 30 times, as recorded in CensorTrack. Most notably, in 2022, Dillon and his team refused to delete a tweet naming “transgender” U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine its “man of the year.” The Babylon Bee account remained locked until Musk bought the platform. The Babylon Bee is also a member of the MRC-led Free Speech Alliance.   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: Director of Tech Policy at The Heritage Foundation, Kara Frederick Fredrick has been to the belly of the beast. She previously led Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program and has worked as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for a U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command, a Counterterrorism Analyst at the Department of Defense and a liaison to the National Security Agency (NSA). Now the Director of the Tech Policy Center for The Heritage Foundation, Fredrick knows what’s at stake when censorship advocates argue to silence free speech in favor of safety. Yet, she has led The Heritage Foundation’s effort to reform Section 230 so as to prevent Big Tech platforms from censoring constitutionally-protected free speech. During a 2021 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Frederick argued that “Holding Big Tech accountable should result in less censorship, not more. The First Amendment should also be the standard from which all Section 230 reforms flow.” She also put the issue into perspective showing how dangerous censorship truly is. “We cannot let tech totalitarians shape a digital world where one set of thinkers are second-class citizens,” she said. Frederick has written numerous articles, shared testimony before Congress and made countless TV appearances in which she has advocated for freedom of speech and spoken out publicly against pernicious censorship.  ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: X Owner, Elon Musk X owner Musk thrust himself into the free speech advocacy spotlight when he bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter in April 2022 and put a major dent in the armor of the government-Big Tech collusion. He would go on to buy the entire company for $44 billion allegedly in part to free The Babylon Bee from Twitter jail. Since acquiring Twitter (now X), Musk has been the chief industry advocate for free speech rights among the Big Tech platforms and has used his moral authority to preserve constitutionally-protected speech for all Americans.  Just over a month after purchasing Twitter, he released internal Twitter documents to independent journalists including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang and others. The documents, known as The Twitter Files unveiled pervasive collusion between Big Tech, so-called misinformation researchers and government officials to censor Americans.  Moreover, Musk has made changes that have significantly increased free speech on the platform, including overturning numerous lifetime account bans, including former President Donald Trump. Musk has also repeatedly called free speech “the bedrock of democracy,” and earlier this month he spoke to the further importance of Free Speech at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. “ If people don’t know the truth, if you don’t know what’s going on, how can you make an informed vote?” he said. “You must have free speech in order to have a democracy. that’s why it’s the first amendment!”   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: Independent Journalist, Michael Shellenberger Author, journalist and a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Michael Shellenberger has done incredible investigative reporting regarding The Twitter Files, exposing the Biden-Harris censorship regime. He has written on the growing drug and crime crisis and homelessness in San Francisco among other things and now runs the Substack newsletter Public. Shellenberger has become more well-known for his strong defense of free speech in recent years. Shellenberger was also awarded one of the first annual Dao Prizes for excellence in investigative journalism for his extensive work on The Twitter Files. Many of the stories uncovered the pressure campaign perpetrated by the federal government and the Biden-Harris campaign to encourage Big Tech to censor Americans.  Shelleberger particularly uncovered how the FBI primed Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth to censor the Hunter Biden laptop scandal for months. Shellenberger has been publicly outspoken about the need to protect free speech and has even testified before Congress about his findings.  Last year, during a hearing before the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government he asked Congress to zero out funding for federal censorship programs and stressed the seriousness of the issue. “All of this is profoundly un-American,” Shellenberger insisted. “One’s commitment to free speech means nothing if it does not extend to your political enemies.”   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: American Principles Project President, Terry Schilling Schilling stands at the helm of the American Principles Project (APP), a group devoted to the preservation of the family and conservative values, including freedom of speech. He has led the organization’s efforts to reform Section 230 so as to prevent Big Tech platforms from censoring constitutionally-protected free speech. In 2022, the organization published a report exposing how Big Tech companies used censorship to aid President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential win. In 2020, APP proposed a framework for how to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in such a way that protects and incentivizes free speech online.  In a 2021 Newsweek op-ed, Schilling noted how the problem of censorship was intensifying. “In what began as a slow purge of fringe voices by certain online platforms has intensified in recent months into a full-blown attack on certain ideas,” he wote. “Prominent voices in the media, Big Tech and even the halls of Congress call for proponents of views they deem "misinformation" to be completely de-platformed.” APP is also an active member of the MRC-led Free Speech Alliance. ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: Independent Journalist, Matt Taibbi Taibbi is an acclaimed journalist who has done incredible investigative reporting on regarding The Twitter Files, exposing the Biden-Harris censorship regime.  Taibbi worked as an editor and journalist for Rolling Stone for 17 years. He has written 10 books, received the National Magazine Award in 2008, and the Izzy Award for “outstanding achievement in independent media” in 2020.  Like Shellenberger, Taibbi was one of the recipients of the inaugural 2023 Dao Prize for excellence in investigative journalism for his groundbreaking work on The Twitter Files. He wrote the first of a litany of damning reports unveiling the ubiquitous government-Big Tech censorship machine perpetuated by the Biden-Harris administration. He also offered great insights into the FBI’s role in pushing censorship. Taibbi publishes his work on his Substack newsletter Racket News. During a hearing with the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, he summarized his most important takeaway from writing The Twitter Files. “If there's anything that The Twitter Files show, it's that we are in danger of losing this Democratic right [free speech] without which all Democratic rights are impossible.”   ♦ 2024 MRC Free Speech Award Winner: George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley Turley, an author, constitutional scholar and a law professor at George Washington University, has been a crucial thought leader in the pro-free speech movement. He has produced unparalleled scholarship to hold Big Tech accountable and to preserve constitutionally-protected speech. Turley has written extensively on the topic of freedom of expression both on his blog, Res ipsa loquitur, and in his new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. In this book, Turley explored the importance of freedom of expression and the threats historically posed to the First Amendment. In his blogs, Turley expounds upon current events that have serious implications for freedom of speech.