#Michael Crick

[insidecroydon]

MPs told decision 'imminent' over Croydon's rigged selection

EXCLUSIVE: Who would choose between the Archangel Gabriel and Harold Shipman? That could be the kind of no-choice ‘choice’ imposed on Labour’s grassroots members in Croydon after a suspiciously lengthy ‘investigation’ into allegations of vote rigging. By STEVEN DOWNES Bodged: Joel Bodmer (third from right with sign) was a favoured candidate in Labour’s botched Croydon East parliamentary…

[operationslipperypuppet]

in honor of its anniversary, an edit to highlight how the distress signal changed everything for Hardwon in an instant.

Transcript:

an edit mashing If the World Was Ending by JP Saxe ft. Julia Michaels with various clips from campaign 3 of NADDPod - from (in order) episodes 30, 32, 39, and 41. all clips after the third are from episode 41. the lyrics are in bold. ah, it's been a year now, think I figured out how, how to think about you without it ripping my heart out Hardwon (Jake): I am... enjoying my golden years. [cast laughs] and I know, you know, we know, you weren't down for forever, and it's fine Hardwon: They're gonna stay as strong and heroic as we all once were and... I'm going to fade away. I know, you know, we know, we weren't meant for each other, and it's fine Hardwon: But... Beverly and Moonshine? They don't need me. And- and I have to be okay with that. but if the world was ending, you'd come over, right? Moonshine (Emily): [static overlaying audio, speaking breathlessly and almost in tears] Hardwon? I don't know if you're - I don't know if you're out there but [draws breath] Gruumsh, he's gettin' stronger than ever and, and we're doing the best we can in Isgard, but they've got us backed into Kord's Great Hall. And Kord - Hardwon - Kord has been wounded [draws another breath]. you'd come over and you'd stay the night Moonshine: [still with static] So, I think if - I don't know where you went to but if, if you can come back? Things - things are bad. I think we've only got maybe another week. Oh, I, oh, I gotta go - Hardwon please? would you love me for the hell of it? Hardwon: [static cuts out] Uh, h-h-hello? Hello? Hello? I'm coming. Moonshine? [cast laughs] Moonshine? Hello? all our fears would be irrelevant Hardwon: They need me, um, that, yeah, they need me. They need me in the Astral Plane. Moonshine needs me, Beverly needs me. if the world was ending, you'd come over, right? Callie (Emily): How did you get here from the Astral Plane? Because you can use that to get back, right? Sol (Caldwell): Uh huh. Hardwon: We're, we're, we're days, days, weeks away from The Crick. I, they don't have, they don't have that kind of time. Callie: So you need an arcane battery? Hardwon: We need this machine working, yes. sky'd be falling while I hold you tight Hardwon: Okay, um, Moonshine, um... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I - I'm sorry I left. But that's - that's not important. I'm - I hear you. I'm coming, girl. Tell Beverly that I'll be there soon. no, there wouldn't be a reason why we would even have to say goodbye Hardwon: You guys - you can hold your own. And, and I won't think of myself as a liability ever again. Ciao. Or bye. Or later. Whatever. See you soon. if the world was ending, you'd come over, right? Moonshine: Hardwon, it's damn good to hear your voice. you'd come over, right? Moonshine: And it'll be even better to see your face. you'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over, right? Moonshine: Get here.

[slasherhoe87]

Peepaw Michael's s/o thinking he passed in his sleep 😭😭

So this happened to me with my s/o this morning. I'm still shaken but all is well... felt writing would help me.

SFW / Fem!reader / Angst, fluff, emotional

The sun's warmth and light greeted you when you awoke. Sighing, you felt like if you closed your eyes you could easily fall back asleep.

You turned your head to your left and smiled fondly. Michael was fast asleep. He seemed to sleep longer and more often these days.

Its been five years since he barged into your life and for the first three years of knowing him he did not sleep often nor for so long as he does now.

His age is catching up to him. Though still a deadly powerhouse you notice he comes home earlier than he used to after a night of hunting. When he returns you spy the subtle stiffness in his gait, the crick in his right knee, the weary sigh behind the beat up old mask.

He doesn't protest and fuss like he used to when you offer to draw him a warm bath with your favourite horror themed bath bombs. He sinks into the tub with a blissful groan while you soap your beloved up and massage his taut, knotted shoulders.

You find he seems more content now to sit by your side on the sofa, watching movies or tv - his large calloused hand holding your own, his thumb rubbing small circles on its back. Before this, he lurked alot in the shadows and corners of your small home. Always alert, always hovering, standing, watching. Now he just wants to be close to you at all times.

In the beginning of your relationship, touch was something he was not comfortable with. He had reminded you of a feral cat - aggressive, aloof, skittish. Half the time he ignored you unless he wanted food or sex.

But now, he sought out your touches, your hugs, your cuddles, like a man starved. And sex was no longer just sex - it was love making. It was no more just animalistic rough rutting - now Michael sought your hands to intertwine his fingers through your own. No more does the mask stay on. Now you are gifted with warm, loving soft kisses to your jaw, neck, chest, forehead and mouth.

Sighing softly, you rolled over to face Michael's back and gently ran your fingers up his bare arm. You leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his neck and then to the side of his handsome, matured face.

You frowned slightly when you received no response. Michael was typically a fairly light sleeper and by now he would'e felt your touches and responded as he always does.

You tried again, this time running the palm of your hand up and down his toned bicep while murmuring a soft good morning in his ear.

Nothing.

Worry slowly bubbled up within you as you still received no response from your lover.

"Michael?" You tentatively call out.

Nothing.

Another call of his name and a firm shake of his bicep this time.

Nothing.

"Michael?"

You place your hand in front of his nose and barely feel any air leaving his nostrils.

You shake his arm harder this time. "Michael!?"

Nothing.

Your bottom lip starts to tremble, your eyes blur with unshed tears, your heart thrums wildly inside your chest all the while shaking his arm again and again.

Just as you let out a choked sob thinking the worst, he jerks awake and immediately turns to look at you, bleary eyed and slightly confused, still in a sleepy haze.

You break down and start crying in full force. Your body feels shaky, your heart is still pounding in your chest.

Michael swiftly sits up and wraps you in his strong embrace. He doesn't know what the hell is going on or why you are so panicked. His first thought is perhaps you had a terrible nightmare and simply need some consoling. If that's the case then he's happy to oblige for the only person he gives a damn about in this world.

Your hold on Michael is like iron - like if you grip him any softer he'll disappear from you like sand falling through your fingers.

Eventually your heartbeat evens out and you feel like you can breath again, think again, feel anything other than dread and sorrow.

Your rest your forehead against Michael's for a moment before you begrudgingly pull away from him.

When you look into his good eye you see worry and confusion. He tilts his head in question as to what had you so spooked.

You look down at your lap, wipe your teary eyes and tear stained cheeks before looking up at him again.

"Y-you wouldn't wake up... I touched you, shook you, called and shouted your name but you continued to lay motionless. I even felt for your breath on my fingers and felt nothing"

You took in another deep breath. Michael had begun to gently rub soothing circles on your intertwined hands.

"I... thought you died in your sleep"

Your lip trembled once more and sobs came out in full force again. You didn't know what you would do in a world without Michael.

Before Michael, you had felt like you were living your life on auto-pilot, just going through the motions of a mediocre life.

Then on halloween night, five years ago, Michael barged into the back door of your small home, injured, bleeding. After getting over the initial shock of the Shape in your home, you tended to his wounds as best you could and Michael seemed to have decided that he wanted to stick around after that.

Now, five years later you truly felt Michael was your soulmate. You only wished that the two of you could've met sooner... that you could've had more time with Michael.

After hearing your answer Michael was taken aback. He certainly didn't expect to hear that of all things. Did he really sleep so deeply last night? It seems so. Though thinking on it now, he has noticed that for a while now he has been waking up more groggily, his eye taking longer to open, his mind taking longer to clear from sleep, him sleeping in well after y/n has gone to work.

He nodded his head and gave a soft sigh. Before he would've scoffed and glared at you but now he could understand where you were coming from - he was entering his winter years and the chance of passing in one's sleep would increase with each month and year to come.

Cupping his large, warm hand to your soft cheek he leaned in giving you a firm, passionate kiss. Within it was the message that he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. You spent the morning making love with one another - the morning's ordeal forgotten.

[eusuntgratie]

come back inside

the morning after the airstream scene, michael and maria convince alex to stay

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62252583

E, 3600 words

Maria wakes up with a crick in her neck. One of her arms is asleep and she’s got a pleasant ache in her thighs. She's warm, and the bone-deep fear that's been trying to suffocate her for weeks has abated. She takes a deep breath and keeps her eyes squeezed shut when she remembers why. With no visual input, her brain helpfully provides her with a vivid reminder. Alex pushing Michael down on top of her, eyes hungry in a way she’s never seen them. Michael fucking her like he could keep her safe underneath his body, like he could erase everything that happened that night with his touch. Alex behind him, lips on his neck and hands roaming all over his body, possessive and claiming. Passing Michael back and forth between herself and Alex, how he went blissfully boneless under their touch, needy and sweet and eager to give them anything, everything. She opens her eyes. She can’t think about that if she wants to be able to think about anything else.

read on ao3

[thoughtportal]

"A diary is not only a text: it is a behaviour, a way of life, of which the text is a by-product", says the French theorist Philipe Lejeune. From ancient Babylon to journalling today, politicians' jottings and the notes made by eighteenth century writers like Mary Hamilton and Fanny Burney. Matthew Sweet discusses diaries with curator Irving Finkel, literary historian Sophie Coulombeau, political commentator Michael Crick and writer Oliver Burkeman, whose latest book is Meditation For Mortals, plus the philosopher Maximillian De Gaynesford.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James B. Meigs

Published: Spring 2024

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth. Shermer’s role models included two twentieth-century thinkers who, like him, relished explaining science to the public: Carl Sagan, the ebullient astronomer and TV commentator; and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a popular monthly column in Natural History magazine for 25 years. Shermer hoped someday to match Gould’s record of producing 300 consecutive columns. That goal would elude him.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned.

“I started to see the writing on the wall toward the end of my run there,” Shermer told me. “I saw I was being slowly nudged away from certain topics.” One month, he submitted a column about the “fallacy of excluded exceptions,” a common logical error in which people perceive a pattern of causal links between factors but ignore counterexamples that don’t fit the pattern. In the story, Shermer debunked the myth of the “horror-film curse,” which asserts that bad luck tends to haunt actors who appear in scary movies. (The actors in most horror films survive unscathed, he noted, while bad luck sometimes strikes the casts of non-scary movies as well.) Shermer also wanted to include a serious example: the common belief that sexually abused children grow up to become abusers in turn. He cited evidence that “most sexually abused children do not grow up to abuse their own children” and that “most abusive parents were not abused as children.” And he observed how damaging this stereotype could be to abuse survivors; statistical clarity is all the more vital in such delicate cases, he argued. But Shermer’s editor at the magazine wasn’t having it. To the editor, Shermer’s effort to correct a common misconception might be read as downplaying the seriousness of abuse. Even raising the topic might be too traumatic for victims.

The following month, Shermer submitted a column discussing ways that discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished (while acknowledging the need for continued progress). Here, Shermer ran into the same wall that Better Angels of Our Nature author Steven Pinker and other scientific optimists have faced. For progressives, admitting that any problem—racism, pollution, poverty—has improved means surrendering the rhetorical high ground. “They are committed to the idea that there is no cumulative progress,” Shermer says, and they angrily resist efforts to track the true prevalence, or the “base rate,” of a problem. Saying that “everything is wonderful and everyone should stop whining doesn’t really work,” his editor objected.

Shermer dug his grave deeper by quoting Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald and The Coddling of the American Mind authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, who argue that the rise of identity-group politics undermines the goal of equal rights for all. Shermer wrote that intersectional theory, which lumps individuals into aggregate identity groups based on race, sex, and other immutable characteristics, “is a perverse inversion” of Martin Luther King’s dream of a color-blind society. For Shermer’s editors, apparently, this was the last straw. The column was killed and Shermer’s contract terminated. Apparently, SciAm no longer had the ideological bandwidth to publish such a heterodox thinker.

American journalism has never been very good at covering science. In fact, the mainstream press is generally a cheap date when it comes to stories about alternative medicine, UFO sightings, pop psychology, or various forms of junk science. For many years, that was one factor that made Scientific American’s rigorous reporting so vital. The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and a few other mainstream publications also produced top-notch science coverage. Peer-reviewed academic journals aimed at specialists met a higher standard still. But over the past decade or so, the quality of science journalism—even at the top publications—has declined in a new and alarming way. Today’s journalistic failings don’t owe simply to lazy reporting or a weakness for sensationalism but to a sweeping and increasingly pervasive worldview.

It is hard to put a single name on this sprawling ideology. It has its roots both in radical 1960s critiques of capitalism and in the late-twentieth-century postmodern movement that sought to “problematize” notions of objective truth. Critical race theory, which sees structural racism as the grand organizing principle of our society, is one branch. Queer studies, which seeks to “deconstruct” traditional norms of family, sex, and gender, is another. Critics of this worldview sometimes call it “identity politics”; supporters prefer the term “intersectionality.” In managerial settings, the doctrine lives under the label of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI: a set of policies that sound anodyne—but in practice, are anything but.

This dogma sees Western values, and the United States in particular, as uniquely pernicious forces in world history. And, as exemplified by the anticapitalist tirades of climate activist Greta Thunberg, the movement features a deep eco-pessimism buoyed only by the distant hope of a collectivist green utopia.

The DEI worldview took over our institutions slowly, then all at once. Many on the left, especially journalists, saw Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as an existential threat that necessitated dropping the guardrails of balance and objectivity. Then, in early 2020, Covid lockdowns put American society under unbearable pressure. Finally, in May 2020, George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer provided the spark. Protesters exploded onto the streets. Every institution, from coffeehouses to Fortune 500 companies, felt compelled to demonstrate its commitment to the new “antiracist” ethos. In an already polarized environment, most media outlets lunged further left. Centrists—including New York Times opinion editor James Bennet and science writer Donald G. McNeil, Jr.—were forced out, while radical progressive voices were elevated.

This was the national climate when Laura Helmuth took the helm of Scientific American in April 2020. Helmuth boasted a sterling résumé: a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California–Berkeley and a string of impressive editorial jobs at outlets including Science, National Geographic, and the Washington Post. Taking over a large print and online media operation during the early weeks of the Covid pandemic couldn’t have been easy. On the other hand, those difficult times represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an ambitious science editor. Rarely in the magazine’s history had so many Americans urgently needed timely, sensible science reporting: Where did Covid come from? How is it transmitted? Was shutting down schools and businesses scientifically justified? What do we know about vaccines?

Scientific American did examine Covid from various angles, including an informative July 2020 cover story diagramming how the SARS-CoV-2 virus “sneaks inside human cells.” But the publication didn’t break much new ground in covering the pandemic. When it came to assessing growing evidence that Covid might have escaped from a laboratory, for example, SciAm got scooped by New York and Vanity Fair, publications known more for their coverage of politics and entertainment than of science.

At the same time, SciAm dramatically ramped up its social-justice coverage. The magazine would soon publish a flurry of articles with titles such as “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past” and “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.” The death of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed biologist was the hook for “The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson,” an opinion piece arguing that Wilson’s work was “based on racist ideas,” without quoting a single line from his large published canon. At least those pieces had some connection to scientific topics, though. In 2021, SciAm published an opinion essay, “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” The article’s five authors took issue with the effort by some social-justice advocates to create a cute new label while expanding the DEI acronym to include “Justice.” The Jedi knights of the Star Wars movies are “inappropriate mascots for social justice,” the authors argued, because they are “prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic light sabers, gaslighting by means of ‘Jedi mind tricks,’ etc.).” What all this had to do with science was anyone’s guess.

Several prominent scientists took note of SciAm’s shift. “Scientific American is changing from a popular-science magazine into a social-justice-in-science magazine,” Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago emeritus professor of ecology and evolution, wrote on his popular blog, “Why Evolution Is True.” He asked why the magazine had “changed its mission from publishing decent science pieces to flawed bits of ideology.”

“The old Scientific American that I subscribed to in college was all about the science,” University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller told me. “It was factual reporting on new ideas and findings from physics to psychology, with a clear writing style, excellent illustrations, and no obvious political agenda.” Miller says that he noticed a gradual change about 15 years ago, and then a “woke political bias that got more flagrant and irrational” over recent years. The leading U.S. science journals, Nature and Science, and the U.K.-based New Scientist made a similar pivot, he says. By the time Trump was elected in 2016, he says, “the Scientific American editors seem to have decided that fighting conservatives was more important than reporting on science.”

Scientific American’s increasing engagement in politics drew national attention in late 2020, when the magazine, for the first time in its 175-year history, endorsed a presidential candidate. “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people,” the editors wrote. “That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden.” In an e-mail exchange, Scientific American editor-in-chief Helmuth said that the decision to endorse Biden was made unanimously by the magazine’s staff. “Overall, the response was very positive,” she said. Helmuth also pushed back on the idea that getting involved in political battles represented a new direction for SciAm. “We have a long and proud history of covering the social and political angles of science,” she said, noting that the magazine “has advocated for teaching evolution and not creationism since we covered the Scopes Monkey Trial.”

Scientific American wasn’t alone in endorsing a presidential candidate in 2020. Nature also endorsed Biden in that election cycle. The New England Journal of Medicine indirectly did the same, writing that “our current leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent” and should not “keep their jobs.” Vinay Prasad, the prominent oncologist and public-health expert, recently lampooned the endorsement trend on his Substack, asking whether science journals will tell him who to vote for again in 2024. “Here is an idea! Call it crazy,” he wrote: “Why don’t scientists focus on science, and let politics decide the election?” When scientists insert themselves into politics, he added, “the only result is we are forfeiting our credibility.”

But what does it mean to “focus on science”? Many of us learned the standard model of the scientific method in high school. We understand that science attempts—not always perfectly—to shield the search for truth from political interference, religious dogmas, or personal emotions and biases. But that model of science has been under attack for half a century. The French theorist Michel Foucault argued that scientific objectivity is an illusion produced and shaped by society’s “systems of power.” Today’s woke activists challenge the legitimacy of science on various grounds: the predominance of white males in its history, the racist attitudes held by some of its pioneers, its inferiority to indigenous “ways of knowing,” and so on. Ironically, as Christopher Rufo points out in his book America’s Cultural Revolution, this postmodern ideology—which began as a critique of oppressive power structures—today empowers the most illiberal, repressive voices within academic and other institutions.

Shermer believes that the new style of science journalism “is being defined by this postmodern worldview, the idea that all facts are relative or culturally determined.” Of course, if scientific facts are just products of a particular cultural milieu, he says, “then everything is a narrative that has to reflect some political side.” Without an agreed-upon framework to separate valid from invalid claims—without science, in other words—people fall back on their hunches and in-group biases, the “my-side bias.”

Traditionally, science reporting was mostly descriptive—writers strove to explain new discoveries in a particular field. The new style of science journalism takes the form of advocacy—writers seek to nudge readers toward a politically approved opinion.

“Lately journalists have been behaving more like lawyers,” Shermer says, “marshaling evidence in favor of their own view and ignoring anything that doesn’t help their argument.” This isn’t just the case in science journalism, of course. Even before the Trump era, the mainstream press boosted stories that support left-leaning viewpoints and carefully avoided topics that might offer ammunition to the Right. Most readers understand, of course, that stories about politics are likely to be shaped by a media outlet’s ideological slant. But science is theoretically supposed to be insulated from political influence. Sadly, the new woke style of science journalism reframes factual scientific debates as ideological battles, with one side presumed to be morally superior. Not surprisingly, the crisis in science journalism is most obvious in the fields where public opinion is most polarized.

The Covid pandemic was a crisis not just for public health but for the public’s trust in our leading institutions. From Anthony Fauci on down, key public-health officials issued unsupported policy prescriptions, fudged facts, and suppressed awkward questions about the origin of the virus. A skeptical, vigorous science press could have done a lot to keep these officials honest—and the public informed. Instead, even elite science publications mostly ran cover for the establishment consensus. For example, when Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and two other public-health experts proposed an alternative to lockdowns in their Great Barrington Declaration, media outlets joined in Fauci’s effort to discredit and silence them.

Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, is a longtime critic of gain-of-function research, which can make naturally occurring viruses deadlier. From the early weeks of the pandemic, he suspected that the virus had leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Evidence increasingly suggests that he was correct. I asked Ebright how he thought that the media had handled the lab-leak debate. He responded:

Science writers at most major news outlets and science news outlets have spent the last four years obfuscating and misrepresenting facts about the origin of the pandemic. They have done this to protect the scientists, science administrators, and the field of science—gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens—that likely caused the pandemic. They have done this in part because those scientists and science administrators are their sources, . . . in part because they believe that public trust in science would be damaged by reporting the facts, and in part because the origin of the pandemic acquired a partisan political valance after early public statements by Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, and Donald Trump.

During the first two years of the pandemic, most mainstream media outlets barely mentioned the lab-leak debate. And when they did, they generally savaged both the idea and anyone who took it seriously. In March 2021, long after credible evidence emerged hinting at a laboratory origin for the virus, Scientific American published an article, “Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth.” The piece compared the theory to the KGB’s disinformation campaign about the origin of HIV/AIDS and blamed lab-leak advocates for creating a poisonous climate around the issue: “The proliferation of xenophobic rhetoric has been linked to a striking increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. It has also led to a vilification of the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and some of its Western collaborators, as well as partisan attempts to defund certain types of research (such as ‘gain of function’ research).” Today we know that the poisonous atmosphere around the lab-leak question was deliberately created by Anthony Fauci and a handful of scientists involved in dangerous research at the Wuhan lab. And the case for banning gain-of-function research has never been stronger.

One of the few science journalists who did take the lab-leak question seriously was Donald McNeil, Jr., the veteran New York Times reporter forced out of the paper in an absurd DEI panic. After leaving the Times—and like several other writers pursuing the lab-leak question—McNeil published his reporting on his own Medium blog. It is telling that, at a time when leading science publications were averse to exploring the greatest scientific mystery of our time, some of the most honest reporting on the topic was published in independent, reader-funded outlets. It’s also instructive to note that the journalist who replaced McNeil on the Covid beat at the Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, showed open hostility to investigating Covid’s origins. In 2021, she famously tweeted: “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.” It would be hard to compose a better epitaph to the credibility of mainstream science journalism.

As Shermer observed, many science journalists see their role not as neutral reporters but as advocates for noble causes. This is especially true in reporting about the climate. Many publications now have reporters on a permanent “climate beat,” and several nonprofit organizations offer grants to help fund climate coverage. Climate science is an important field, worthy of thoughtful, balanced coverage. Unfortunately, too many climate reporters seem especially prone to common fallacies, including base-rate neglect, and to hyping tenuous data.

The mainstream science press never misses an opportunity to ratchet up climate angst. No hurricane passes without articles warning of “climate disasters.” And every major wildfire seemingly generates a “climate apocalypse” headline. For example, when a cluster of Quebec wildfires smothered the eastern U.S. in smoke last summer, the New York Times called it “a season of climate extremes.” It’s likely that a warming planet will result in more wildfires and stronger hurricanes. But eager to convince the public that climate-linked disasters are rapidly trending upward, journalists tend to neglect the base rate. In the case of Quebec wildfires, for example, 2023 was a fluky outlier. During the previous eight years, Quebec wildfires burned fewer acres than average; then, there was no upward trend—and no articles discussing the paucity of fires. By the same token, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, a lower-than-average number of major hurricanes struck the U.S. between 2011 and 2020. But there were no headlines suggesting, say, “Calm Hurricane Seasons Cast Doubt on Climate Predictions.”

Most climate journalists wouldn’t dream of drawing attention to data that challenge the climate consensus. They see their role as alerting the public to an urgent problem that will be solved only through political change.

Similar logic applies to social issues. The social-justice paradigm rests on the notion that racism, sexism, transphobia, and other biases are so deeply embedded in our society that they can be eradicated only through constant focus on the problem. Any people or institutions that don’t participate in this process need to be singled out for criticism. In such an atmosphere, it takes a particularly brave journalist to note exceptions to the reigning orthodoxy.

This dynamic is especially intense in the debates over transgender medicine. The last decade has seen a huge surge in children claiming dissatisfaction with their gender. According to one survey, the number of children aged six to 17 diagnosed with gender dysphoria surged from roughly 15,000 to 42,000 in the years between 2017 and 2021 alone. The number of kids prescribed hormones to block puberty more than doubled. Puberty blockers and other treatments for gender dysphoria have enormous potential lifelong consequences, including sterility, sexual dysfunction, and interference with brain development. Families facing treatment decisions for youth gender dysphoria desperately need clear, objective guidance. They’re not getting it.

Instead, medical organizations and media outlets typically describe experimental hormone treatments and surgeries as routine, and even “lifesaving,” when, in fact, their benefits remain contested, while their risks are enormous. In a series of articles, the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir has documented how trans advocates enforce this appearance of consensus among U.S. scientists, medical experts, and many journalists. Through social-media campaigns and other tools, these activists have forced conferences to drop leading scientists, gotten journals to withdraw scientific papers after publication, and interfered with the distribution of Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book Irreversible Damage, which challenges the wisdom of “gender-affirming care” for adolescent girls. While skeptics are cowed into silence, Sapir concludes, those who advocate fast-tracking children for radical gender therapy “will go down in history as responsible for one of the worst medical scandals in U.S. history.”

In such an overheated environment, it would be helpful to have a journalistic outlet advocating a sober, evidence-based approach. In an earlier era, Scientific American might have been that voice. Unfortunately, SciAm today downplays messy debates about gender therapies, while offering sunny platitudes about the “safety and efficacy” of hormone treatments for prepubescent patients. For example, in a 2023 article, “What Are Puberty Blockers, and How Do They Work?,” the magazine repeats the unsubstantiated claim that such treatments are crucial to preventing suicide among gender-dysphoric children. “These medications are well studied and have been used safely since the late 1980s to pause puberty in adolescents with gender dysphoria,” SciAm states.

The independent journalist Jesse Singal, a longtime critic of slipshod science reporting, demolishes these misleading claims in a Substack post. In fact, the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria is a new and barely researched phenomenon, he notes: “[W]e have close to zero studies that have tracked gender dysphoric kids who went on blockers over significant lengths of time to see how they have fared.” Singal finds it especially alarming to see a leading science magazine obscure the uncertainty surrounding these treatments. “I believe that this will go down as a major journalistic blunder that will be looked back upon with embarrassment and regret,” he writes.

Fortunately, glimmers of light are shining through on the gender-care controversy. The New York Times has lately begun publishing more balanced articles on the matter, much to the anger of activists. And various European countries have started reassessing and limiting youth hormone treatments. England’s National Health Service recently commissioned the respected pediatrician Hilary Cass to conduct a sweeping review of the evidence supporting youth gender medicine. Her nearly 400-page report is a bombshell, finding that evidence supporting hormone interventions for children is “weak,” while the long-term risks of such treatments have been inadequately studied. “For most young people,” the report concludes, “a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” In April, the NHS announced that it will no longer routinely prescribe puberty blocking drugs to children.

Scientific American has yet to offer an even-handed review of the new scientific skepticism toward aggressive gender medicine. Instead, in February, the magazine published an opinion column, “Pseudoscience Has Long Been Used to Oppress Transgender People.” Shockingly, it argues for even less medical caution in dispensing radical treatments. The authors approvingly note that “many trans activists today call for diminishing the role of medical authority altogether in gatekeeping access to trans health care,” arguing that patients should have “access to hormones and surgery on demand.” And, in an implicit warning to anyone who might question these claims and goals, the article compares today’s skeptics of aggressive gender medicine to Nazi eugenicists and book burners. Shortly after the Cass report’s release, SciAm published an interview with two activists who argue that scientists questioning trans orthodoxy are conducting “epistemological violence.”

There’s nothing wrong with vigorous debate over scientific questions. In fact, in both science and journalism, adversarial argumentation is a vital tool in testing claims and getting to the truth. “A bad idea can hover in the ether of a culture if there is no norm for speaking out,” Shermer says. Where some trans activists cross the line is in trying to derail debate by shaming and excluding anyone who challenges the activists’ manufactured consensus.

Such intimidation has helped enforce other scientific taboos. Anthony Fauci called the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration “fringe epidemiologists” and successfully lobbied to censor their arguments on social media. Climate scientists who diverge from the mainstream consensus struggle to get their research funded or published. The claim that implicit racial bias unconsciously influences our minds has been debunked time and again—but leading science magazines keep asserting it.

Scientists and journalists aren’t known for being shrinking violets. What makes them tolerate this enforced conformity? The intimidation described above is one factor. Academia and journalism are both notoriously insecure fields; a single accusation of racism or anti-trans bias can be a career ender. In many organizations, this gives the youngest, most radical members of the community disproportionate power to set ideological agendas.

“Scientists, science publishers, and science journalists simply haven’t learned how to say no to emotionally unhinged activists,” evolutionary psychologist Miller says. “They’re prone to emotional blackmail, and they tend to be very naive about the political goals of activists who claim that scientific finding X or Y will ‘impose harm’ on some group.”

But scientists may also have what they perceive to be positive motives to self-censor. A fascinating recent paper concludes: “Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists.” The authors include a who’s who of heterodox thinkers, including Miller, Manhattan Institute fellow Glenn Loury, Pamela Paresky, John McWhorter, Steven Pinker, and Wilfred Reilly. “Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups,” they write.

Whether motivated by good intentions, conformity, or fear of ostracization, scientific censorship undermines both the scientific process and public trust. The authors of the “prosocial motives” paper point to “at least one obvious cost of scientific censorship: the suppression of accurate information.” When scientists claim to represent a consensus about ideas that remain in dispute—or avoid certain topics entirely—those decisions filter down through the journalistic food chain. Findings that support the social-justice worldview get amplified in the media, while disapproved topics are excoriated as disinformation. Not only do scientists lose the opportunity to form a clearer picture of the world; the public does, too. At the same time, the public notices when claims made by health officials and other experts prove to be based more on politics than on science. A new Pew Research poll��finds that the percentage of Americans who say that they have a “great deal” of trust in scientists has fallen from 39 percent in 2020 to 23 percent today.

“Whenever research can help inform policy decisions, it’s important for scientists and science publications to share what we know and how we know it,” Scientific American editor Helmuth says. “This is especially true as misinformation and disinformation are spreading so widely.” That would be an excellent mission statement for a serious science publication. We live in an era when scientific claims underpin huge swaths of public policy, from Covid to climate to health care for vulnerable youths. It has never been more vital to subject those claims to rigorous debate.

Unfortunately, progressive activists today begin with their preferred policy outcomes or ideological conclusions and then try to force scientists and journalists to fall in line. Their worldview insists that, rather than challenging the progressive orthodoxy, science must serve as its handmaiden. This pre-Enlightenment style of thinking used to hold sway only in radical political subcultures and arcane corners of academia. Today it is reflected even in our leading institutions and science publications. Without a return to the core principles of science—and the broader tradition of fact-based discourse and debate—our society risks drifting onto the rocks of irrationality.

[ Via: https://archive.today/j03w3 ]

==

Scientific American now embodies the worst of far-left anti-science nonsense.

[tsarinatorment]

Truth Comes Out of His Well (Chapter 25)

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Lee Fletcher, Kronos, Apollo, Apollo Cabin (and many more) RL has delayed this week’s podfic as well, unfortunately. I’ll update this and the previous affected chapters when they’re out! << Chapter 24

The chariot was crowded by Apollo kids the moment it touched down, and Lee didn’t know if his siblings were just that eager to see him and Michael arrive safely, or if they were intentionally making a wall between him and the rest of the campers, but he couldn’t say he minded, either way.

Chris pulled him to his feet and helped him stumble out, into the waiting hands of his siblings, who almost all seemed eager to latch onto him again.  Kayla stayed separate, glaring daggers at Clarisse as the daughter of Ares once again picked up Michael and carried him out.

“Where’s the infirmary?” she demanded, and excited chatter in Lee’s ears faded into a shocked disbelief as his siblings realised exactly who she was carrying.  A collective bristle made it obvious that it wasn’t popular, but Clarisse made no move to acknowledge the cabin’s opinion on who was carrying their head counsellor.

“This way!” Tris chirped, the only one that didn’t seem to care, and he tugged on Lee’s arm, making it clear that he expected Lee to go, too.  Given Will was out of sight, there was only one place that particular little brother would be, so Lee went willingly, and Clarisse followed on right behind.

Nathan was the first occupant Lee spotted as they walked into the room that had clearly been set aside for medical treatment.  While the population of the city weren’t all asleep where they’d stood, it was clearly a lounge area for the residents.  There were still a few dozing mortals, but they were all clustered in one corner, either as a group or because the demigods had moved them over there so they could take over the rest of the space for the war effort.

Lee suspected the latter.

His blond brother was still unconscious, and Robyn was sat on a chair next to the couch they’d laid Nathan on, looking tired.  Lee didn’t blame her.

Will was curled up in another chair, pale and ashen and eyelids drooping.  He looked absolutely exhausted, and like he should’ve fallen asleep ages ago, but as Chris had mentioned, he was stubbornly refusing to.

It was to Will that Lee went first, kneeling on the floor in front of his little brother and pulling him into a hug.  Will blinked blearily, taking a few moments to register him, before wrapping his arms around him tightly in return, burying his face into Lee’s shoulder.  Like Tris, he’d had a growth spurt since Lee had last been at camp, but he was still comfortably shorter than Lee.

Lee didn’t have anything to say to Will, not right then when his little brother was barely awake.  It was easier to just hold him in silence, feeling Will shaking in his arms and a tell-tale dampening in the fabric by his shoulder.  Will wasn’t even fourteen yet, far too young for war.

All of them were too young for war, Lee included.

It wasn’t long before he felt Will go slack, and ran his fingers through messy blond waves a few times as the arms around him slowly slipped down, falling victim to gravity.  The chair probably wasn’t the best place for Will to sleep, but Lee didn’t trust himself to carry any of his siblings, not with weakened wrists and ankles that were starting to demand a rest.  It was easier to ease Will back into the chair, putting a cushion between his shoulder and his head to try and stop him getting a crick in his neck, before pulling away again.

Clarisse had put Michael down on a couch under Robyn’s direction, he saw as he turned back around, his younger sister clearly still not happy with Clarisse but not willing to risk Michael’s health with another argument.  The daughter of Ares had situated herself on the other side of the room, afterwards – not a retreat, because Clarisse didn’t do retreats, but a concession that continuing whatever the argument was between her and Lee’s siblings wouldn’t help the war.  Instead, she appeared to have tracked down Annabeth, and was having a hushed debate with her.

Lee wasn’t quite sure if it was a debate or an argument, especially when he heard Manhattan and army.  Either way, he didn’t want to get involved with that.  When they worked together, Clarisse and Annabeth were quite the force to be reckoned with.  When they argued��  Lee wasn’t technically responsible for either of them, and knew when to pick his battles.  On a good day, he might try to mediate, but today was not a good day.

Well, it was a good day compared to the past year, but it still wasn’t a good enough day to deal with two headstrong teenage girls getting into an argument with each other, especially when they weren’t actually related to him, technically.  Not in a way that anyone counted.

He turned his attention to the rest of his siblings, instead.  Most of them had found themselves a corner to curl up in, finally letting themselves rest and recharge.  Tris had been pulled into the bundle, which Lee was glad to see.  He didn’t mind Tris clinging to him – he actually preferred it, a lot of the time, because that meant Tris was there and safe – but seeing the rest of their cabin doing everything in their power to help him reminded him why he loved his siblings so much.

Kayla, apparently predictably, had curled herself up on the floor by Michael’s couch, and despite clearly being as tired as the rest of them was attempting to keep some sort of guard, although her eyelids were drooping and Lee suspected it wouldn’t be long before she crashed out, like the others.

Outside of his own siblings, there were scattered bodies from other cabins laying around, too, with bandages and other signs of injury.  Just because Kronos had gone for Williamsburg Bridge clearly didn’t mean he hadn’t also sent his army on a multi-headed attack, hitting all of the cabins.  Lee hoped no-one had died.

Some of them were awake, and looking at him.  Lee was trying to ignore that, because acknowledging it meant having to interact, and he was not ready for that.

Unfortunately, not everyone had the same thought process, and just because he could avoid the injured by not going near them didn’t mean he could avoid the still-mobile campers.

The Stolls walked in, bickering good-naturedly with each other the way they always seemed to do.  In their arms were piles of bandages and painkillers, clearly liberated from the nearest pharmacies.  Lee doubted they’d paid for them, but payment was probably the least of their worries right then.

They could sort that out later, once the war was over.

The two sons of Hermes looked around, clearly taking in the increase in bodies in the room since they’d left on their foraging mission, and from the way their eyes settled on the sleeping Will, Lee was pretty sure he knew who had sent them out to get supplies.  Will was young, but he was already good at organising triage.

Then they spotted Lee, and froze in tandem, supplies spilling from their arms to the ground.  They didn’t seem to care, even when Robyn groaned and swore at them from her seat, reluctantly dragging herself out of it to rescue them before they became unusable.

It was Travis who stepped forwards first, squinting at Lee like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“When did you rise from the dead?” he demanded, stalking around Lee at a distance.  Lee felt a little like he was being stalked by a prowling lion, and did not like the feeling.

“I never died,” Lee said, and both brothers snorted.

“Clearly,” Travis drawled.  “But that then begs the question – where have you been?”

They were glaring at him, both of them, and Lee got the sinking feeling that neither of them were going to take any explanation he had for them kindly.  They weren’t even acknowledging Chris, who was in their line of sight as well, or Clarisse, but it was less ignorance and more a deliberate action.  They’d never really got on with Clarisse, but they used to get on with Chris, before he left.

Apparently, they hadn’t forgiven him even though he’d returned to camp.

“It’s a long story,” Lee hedged, as the pair of them circled closer.

“Oi, assholes!” Robyn interrupted, popping up between Lee and the Stolls with her arms full of the discarded medical supplies.  “No bothering the injured.  Thanks for the supplies, now get out of my infirmary.”

Lee appreciated her efforts, he really did, but the Stolls didn’t look like they were going to give in so easily, and Robyn really needed her own rest.

“It’s okay,” he said, nudging her out of the way.  “I’ll talk to them.  You get some rest.”

Staying in the infirmary was only going to make it worse, because his siblings were going to keep interrupting, and the more of them that got woken up, the worse it was going to get.  He gestured to the door with his head.

“Head counsellor meeting?” he suggested, because he knew he was tired and needed the rest – and yes, was technically injured and in need of at least a dose of ambrosia, and possibly something more for the soles of his feet – but there was no point leaving the confrontation hanging over him.

At least if it was a head counsellor meeting, he would only have to tell it once more, then he could go and rest and not have to think about it again – wishful thinking, he knew, but he clung to it anyway.

They eyed him suspiciously, but the words seemed to have caught the attention of both Annabeth and Clarisse, interrupting their argument.

“I agree,” the daughter of Athena said, even though she still looked a bit pale from whatever had happened to her on the bridge that Will had been so desperately recruited for.  “I want answers, too.”

“Who’s representing cabin seven?” Connor asked, and that hurt a little.  “It’s not Michael.  Who’s next?  Will?”

“Wake Will at your peril,” Robyn growled.  “Lee is-”

“Lee hasn’t been head counsellor for over a year,” Travis overrode her.  “He doesn’t count.”

Robyn didn’t like that at all, bristling into a scowl.  Lee caught her shoulder and shook his head; it wasn’t worth the fight.  It would also be nice to have another sibling in there with him, even if it couldn’t be Michael.  Her scowl didn’t relent any, but when she shrugged his grip off, it was in surrender.  “I’ll wake Joy,” she said, and stalked over to their sister to do exactly that.

“Silena isn’t here right now,” Annabeth said suddenly, as if only just remembering.  “We should wait-”

“Drew can stand in, if she hasn’t broken a nail or suffered some other terrible injury,” Clarisse snarled, saving Lee from having to react to that .  “This isn’t that fucking important.”  She strode towards the door, putting her hand on Lee’s shoulder to guide him out as she did so.  He let her, glad to know that he at least had one friend still amongst the other head counsellors.  Joy caught up quickly, blinking sleep out of her eyes, and bracketed him on the other side as Travis barged past them to lead them into another, smaller room.  Connor split off, presumably to call in the others.

The room Travis showed them to was fancy, a private room for high class functions.  It hadn’t been in use when the city had fallen asleep, leaving it devoid of sleeping mortals, but there was a small bar at one end, and Travis didn’t waste any time grabbing himself a glass and pouring himself a drink of coke, full sugar and all.

He offered one to Annabeth, who declined, and another to Joy, who accepted.  Neither Clarisse nor Lee were offered anything.

One by one, the other head counsellors, or most senior conscious campers, filed in.  Most of them were familiar, even if it hurt to only see one blond head of hair and violet eyes, when there had always been two of them before.  Katie had a bandage wrapped around her head, dried blood flaking off from her skin.  Lee hoped it was just a scratch, and not a concussion.  She didn’t look concussed at a glance.  Drew, as always, looked like she had inspected the world and found it wanting, standing with crossed arms and scowling at the entire room, although her eyes widened when they landed on Lee.

Jake was next to appear, and he looked sooty but mostly uninjured.  Seeing him was still a stab to the gut, because Lee hadn’t let himself think about who would’ve replaced Beckendorf, but of course it would’ve been Jake.  He looked a little hollow, and Lee didn’t dare guess if that was because of Beckendorf’s death, or if he’d lost more siblings in the first night of fighting.

Percy was last to barrel in, from wherever he had been, immediately slipping into the seat next to Annabeth like a fish reeled in on a line.  Thalia entered with him, looking exactly the same as Lee remembered her from about a year and a half ago, except for the new silver circlet in her hair, and flanked Annabeth on the other side.

She also eyed Lee consideringly, and Lee wondered how much the Hunters knew that the campers might not.

In total, there were eleven demigods there, aside from him, and only two of them had heard the full story – or as much as Lee could bring himself to tell.  He didn’t know what Kronos had said to Percy about him, hadn’t been listening when he’d had a little brother to save instead.  Annabeth hadn’t liked how easily she’d thought Michael had trusted him, not knowing that Michael had tested him.

No-one else had known he was back at all, and all of them were looking at Lee.

Travis broke the silence.  “Well, you called this,” he said, waving his glass of coke around almost carelessly.  If he hadn’t already chugged half of it, the drink probably would’ve been at risk of spilling with the movement.  “So, explain.  Where have you been, Lee?  If it’s really you at all.”

“It’s him,” Joy and Clarisse immediately said, his sister using her voice as well as exaggerated and frustrated movements to sign as well, while Clarisse simply snapped the words out.

“Michael did some sort of test when he arrived,” Annabeth did say, although she sounded begrudging.  “I don’t know what he tested, but he seemed convinced, too.”

“Kronos called him Lee,” Percy said, and Lee had really, really hoped Percy wasn’t going to bring up the titan, but of course he had.  Unfortunately, the son of Poseidon wasn’t done, fixing Lee with his deep, sea-green eyes, and continuing.  “It sounded like you’ve been with him.”

That got a reaction, several demigods rushing to their feet, weapons leaping into their hands.

Joy jumped up, too, moving to stand in front of Lee.  Clarisse stayed where she was, leaning back in a chair nonchalantly and not making a single movement for her spear, which she’d propped up against the arm of her seat.  Thalia also stayed still, watching him with her bright eyes.

Lee sighed.  Their reactions made sense, even if he hated them.  Of course Kronos would sow just enough doubt in Percy to make Lee’s return awkward, and possibly rejected entirely.  He expected nothing less from the titan, even if he hated it.

He nudged Joy aside, appreciating her defence but knowing that he needed to make his own case if he was going to get anywhere.

“Not by choice,” he said.  “I know it doesn’t look good for me.  I get that.  But I promise, it really wasn’t by choice.”

He didn’t like showing his injured wrists, but they were pretty solid evidence that he hadn’t been in Kronos’ company willingly, so he held both up, offering them to the others to look at and hoping it was enough.

tbc...

[misterrogers22]

0:00 - Introduction

Welcome to the Juras-Sick Park-Cast podcast, the Jurassic Park podcast about Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park, and also not about that, too.  Find the episode webpage at: Episode 38 - Tim. www.jurassickparkcast.blogspot.com/2022/11/episode-38-tim.html

07:25 - Interview with terrific guest Dr. Roger Lederer

In this episode, my terrific guest Dr. Roger J. Lederer joins the show to chat with me about:

16:03 - Lederer's "Role of Rictal Bristles" paper

37:30 - Paleontological papers referencing Lederer's paper on rictal bristles

47:43 - the names of birds and dinosaurs

turkeys, Thanksgiving, turkey vultures, disposing of carcasses, registering domain names, the fastest birds, ostriches, the bustard, the elephant bird, rictal bristles, flycatchers, studying birds, DNA, Watson and Crick, cloning extinct animals, Loy's procedure, reverse breeding aurochs, birds are dinosaurs!, archaeopteryx, the evolution of feathers, the feather-colour of microraptors, enantiornithines, Dr. Richard Prum and the evolution of feathers, theories on the evolution of feathered flight, herons hunting, Crichton using Lederer's name in the text!, the Hoatzin, A Reappraisal of Azhdarchid Pterosaur Functional Morphology and Paleoecology; Bristles before down: A new perspective on the functional origin of feathers; A review of the Taxonomy and Paleoecology of the Anuro-gnathidae, strange feather uses, ubirajara jubatus, "raptor" nomenclature, tyrannidae, birds being territorial and mean, cassowaries, The Gobbler!, and much more!

You can find way more neat bird data on Dr. Lederer's website www.ornithology.com.

Plus dinosaur news about:

02:14 - A new ‘duck-billed’ dinosaur(Ornithischia: Hadrosauridae) from the upper Campanian of Texas points to agreater diversity of early hadrosaurid offshoots

04:21 - The role of Avian Rictal Bristles 

00:36 - Featuring the music of Snale https://snalerock.bandcamp.com/releases 

Intro: Grow Old Or Don't. 

Outro: Centipede.

The Text: This week’s text is Tim, spanning from pages 204 – 210.

57:58 - Synopsis of the chapter Tim, from Jurassic Park

A concussed Tim Murphy awakes from the tyrannosaur attack to find himself trapped in a car, atop a tree. He climbs out of the tree, as the Land Cruiser crashes down above him. 

01:02:54 - Analyzing the literary and stylistic techniques in the chapter Tim

01:13:27 - Discussions surround Show Don't Tell, Storytelling and Tension

Corrections:

Side effects:  May cause you to totally miss the point. 

Find it on iTunes, on Spotify (click here!) or on Podbean (click here). Thank you! The Jura-Sick Park-cast is a part of the Spring Chickens banner of amateur intellectual properties including the Spring Chickens funny pages, Tomb of the Undead graphic novel, the Second Lapse graphic novelettes, The Infantry, and the worst of it all, the King St. Capers. You can find links to all that baggage in the show notes, or by visiting the schickens.blogpost.com or finding us on Facebook, at Facebook.com/SpringChickenCapers or me, I’m on twitter at @RogersRyan22 or email me at ryansrogers-at-gmail.com.  Thank you, dearly, for tuning in to the Juras-Sick Park-Cast, the Jurassic Park podcast where we talk about the novel Jurassic Park, and also not that, too. Until next time! 

[deaths-accountant]

Anyone planning to vote Labour in the upcoming general election should watch this interview with Michael Crick (prominent Blairite journalist) with Novara Media where he says he can't stomach voting Labour because of Starmer's corruption.

[cast-you-dxwn]

@deathinfeathers from here

Michael smiles softly down at the fledgling, a pair of his wings stretching out to their own full, magnificent length in response. As if to say , ‘Look, you are like me. I am like you.’

She struggles to keep her balance and look him in the eye, and he lowers himself, his knees meeting the soft ground so that the little one would not have to crick her neck to see his face. He still towers over her, and the grass would surely stain his robes, but he does not care, if it is for her comfort.

“Oh! You have something for me?” His silver eyes sparkle with joy, and he holds out an open hand that dwarfs her tiny fist, offering it out to the child. “Why, I thank you. My name is Michael. What is yours?”

[probablyasocialecologist]

Driven by both ideology and resentment at having their political careers disrupted, the current Labour leadership and party machinery are taking pains to ensure that the next set of MPs are selected from the same professional-managerial backgrounds that most of the PLP come from. Prospective candidates are those which are unlikely to rock the boat and demand substantial reform, with swathes of London-based councillors in comms jobs now returning to the ‘red wall’ seats they left decades ago, lured by the promise of a £80k a year job (plus expenses). The leadership has engaged in what must be one of the largest membership purges ever seen in a nominally democratic political party.

The liberal press have supported this project with an astonishing omertà. From 2015-19, the pages of the Daily Mirror, the Guardian and the Huffington Post were packed to the brim with stories about internal Labour Party processes and detailed analysis of the Facebook posts liked by local branch officers. Today, similar stories are largely ignored by the same outlets, with seemingly only Michael Crick taking an interest in how future members of the legislature are selected. Even when an independent report, led by Martin Forde KC, identified deliberate electoral sabotage attempts committed by the party and its officials, as well as a deeply racist party culture, the findings barely generated a day’s worth of coverage. MPs who claim to be anti-racists and feminists have suddenly lost their voices, as exemplified by the deathly silence over the treatment of Apsana Begum MP, who is being deliberately targeted by her former abuser through the internal procedures of the Labour Party.

Internally then, the last three years have seen the inheritors to the New Labour project re-establish their positions within the party. These MPs and officials were the people who fought a bitter internal war within the party under Corbyn’s leadership, and the entrenching of these factional positions has allowed them to avoid any reflection on the popularity or viability of their own deeply neoliberal ideological positions. Their years in the wilderness were not spent developing any new ideas. Far from it. When you listen to Rachel Reeves or Wes Streeting speak, they explicitly recycle the terms and logics from the era when they cut their political teeth: ‘magic money tree’, ‘tough on the causes of crime’, etc. Their policy programme, to the extent that we know what it is, picks up where New Labour left off: re-regulating energy, expanding home ownership, increasing private involvement in healthcare, reviving Mandelson’s ‘partnership with business’, and attempting to roll out a corporate-friendly industrial strategy focused on doing, at most, the bare minimum required by the ecological crisis, which they failed to do last time they were in office. Labour’s pitch is that they are best placed to revive the comatose neoliberal patient, to improve economic growth and professionalism in government. Positioning themselves in such a way has won them support from the sections of the professional-managerial class which deserted Labour in 2019. What remains to be seen is if their approach can cohere popular support, or even just sufficient votes from a beleaguered working-age public to get them over the line in the next election.

Gareth Fearn, Neoliberalism in a Coma

[insidecroydon]

'Appalling' and 'a disgrace': Crick's verdict on Labour selection

The Labour Party’s parliamentary candidate selection process as conducted in Croydon East has been “appalling” and “a disgrace”. That’s according to veteran political journalist Michael Crick, the person behind the @TomorrowsMPs Twitter account that has been keeping a close track on the “secret primaries” that have been taking place around the country, as the political parties get ready for the…

[thecollectionsof]

wip peer pressure game (aka a sampling board of my wips <3)

(i'm putting most of them under the cut so this post doesn't get too long <3)

hanahaki au: 3 votes “Hey,” she hears from above her, making her jump. Gigi’s standing there, just out of reach and hovering, looking like she doesn’t know if she should sit down or not. It sends another pang of guilt through Crystal, as if she hadn’t already been feeling bad enough, to know that Gigi was this uncomfortable around her after she was so mean to her. She knew she deserved it, but still. Proof of just how much she fucked up stings and she scrambles to her feet, not knowing if it would help Gigi feel more at ease but desperate to get rid of the unfamiliar and demanding tension between them that seems to press in from all sides.

soulmate au: 1 vote They need a break.

They don’t get a break, not really. Not between the way their thoughts seem to revolve around Gigi at every slow moment or the glimpses of the coffee cup that only make it worse. Not when the bells at the front jingle merrily and Crystal sees a flash of ginger hair enter the store, almost making them drop the book of dad jokes they’d been idly flipping through.

postcards: 2 votes A friend.  She drops the postcard, feeling something bitter and acidic bubbling in her, something she’s not used to feeling, not when she used to feel so secure with Michael.  Ugh, jealousy, she greets caustically, disgusted at herself and just barely fighting off the ache at the thought. A friend. Clara. She’s never been one to be jealous, but she’d have also never thought that Michael would run from her like this, so what does she know? This friend could be a friend, or she could be Michael’s fuck buddy, or maybe she was her replacement. 

the girl in the library: 2 votes “I’m Jaida. What’d you do?” “I don’t know! I didn’t realize that it was her room when I went in but I needed to get some work done so I stayed, and then after a while she woke up, and she’s so pretty, also, nobody told me that,” Gigi rambles, running a hand through her hair. “And we talked for a second and then she smiled and turned over and I left. And I’m Gigi by the way.” Jaida nods in acknowledgment, but raises one eyebrow, “So why’d you run outta there like a bat out of hell?”  “I don’t know!” Gigi whines. Something about Jaida makes her feel like she was talking to a close friend, despite just meeting her. She doesn’t hesitate to slump down in the chair, acting petulant. “She’s really pretty.” “Oh bitch, you think she’s pretty pretty.” Gigi nods, playing with the strap of her bag. “Yeah, she’s… she’s pretty pretty. Like, she’s ‘I almost want to go back in there and pretend to do work so I'm in the same room as her’ pretty.”

enemies to lovers: 1 vote She wakes up the next day with her headphones askew, just barely perched on her head, and a crick in her neck that she can’t seem to work out. She doesn’t think about Gigi. (She does.)

leave the light on part 5: 3 votes Crystal’s hair is beautiful in the morning. Streaks of gold lace through the warm brown locks, messy from a night of turning over. Gigi always flips over and watches her in the mornings that she wakes up earlier than her—which was most mornings, given that Crystal tended to be a night owl when they both knew that Gigi would get grumpy if she stayed up too late.  But now, in the morning, admiring Crystal and waiting for her to wake up, then gently cuddling as they put off getting out of bed? This is her favorite time, her favorite moments. Seeing Crystal’s golden streaked hair and hearing her even breaths and feeling her warmth, all of it. 

[theam-cjsw]

AM Gold 2023: Part Two

AM Gold Part 2: Looking back at the best (or at least most AM-appropriate) music of 2023. From ambient and jazz to shoegaze revivalists and hushed bedroom folk, it's an eclectic mix, but one worth diving into.See the full list of AM Gold at wanderlines.ca.

Stream on CJSW

Listen on Soundcloud

Hour One

Soak Hynta • Hyperobjects

An Almost Echo Veryan • Reflections in a Wilderness

Terms of Desertion Michael Peter Olsen • Narrative Of A Nervous System

Last Traces of Infrastructure Josh Semans • To Will a Space Into Being

Cloud Boat Masahiro Takahashi • Humid Sun

Fountain, Growth Khotin, featuring Tess Roby • Release Spirit

For a Burning World Lord of the Isles, Ellen Renton • My Noise Is Nothing

If You Could Be Doing Anything Contagious Yawns • Intramental

In a Moment Divine Freak Heat Waves, featuring Cindy Lee • Mondo Tempo

Hour Two

Vithatten Golden Ivy • Kammarn

Bloom Blue Lake • Sun Arcs

River Turns Woodley (for Frogman) M. Sage • Paradise Crick

Arbonought Skyphone • Oscilla

Jojoni 5 Ensemble 0 • Jojoni (Made to Measure, Vol. 49)

Ways of Losing Ora Cogan, featuring Y La Bamba • Formless

Pass Back Through L.T. Leif • Come Back to Me, but Lightly

I Can’t See You Bry Webb • Run With Me

River Wax Machine • The Sky Unfurls, the Dance Goes On

Kayak au Crépuscule YouYourself&i • L'Amour des Anoures

Hour Three

Forgetting Another Year Valiska • Wolf Moon EP

Mass Lossless Interbeing Eluvium • (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality

High Touch Spencer Zahn • Statues II

Forst Edena Gardens • Agar

Raisins Under the Sun Yussef Dayes • Black Classical Music

Cycles Blume • Inner Vision

Happier Holy Wave, featuring Estrella del Sol • Five of Cups

Bang Melenas • Ahora

As If Chasing Mice The Organizing Committee • Communication in the Presence of Noise

Chained to a Cloud Slowdive • Everything Is Alive

[eusuntgratie]

wip wednesday on thursday bc i do what i want 😘

haven't shared in a while bc i haven't had time to write but i appreciate all the tags so i'm gonna share a few little snippets of a few things i'm working on. tags below the cut!

guess who tripped and fell into a new fandom? oops. y'all gotta scroll past some 🏳️‍🌈👽 before you get to any rwrb-adjacent words 😏

malex bartender au (roswell new mexico) - hopefully posting soon!

Alex is covering the bar for Maria when he gets stuck, bottle of tequila hovering in between the bar and the glass he’s supposed to be pouring it in. He works hard not to notice people, notice men, but the most beautiful man he’s ever seen is walking into the bar and it's impossible to look away.

malexa 2x06 canon divergence, starting with maria waking up the next morning

Maria wakes up with a crick in her neck. One of her arms is asleep and she’s got a pleasant ache in her thighs.  She's warm, and the bone-deep fear that's been trying to suffocate her for weeks has abated. She takes a deep breath and keeps her eyes squeezed shut when she remembers why.

me? already writing rpf from my new fandom? GASP! please pretend to be shocked - vlamburn + a third i can't decide if i want to keep mysterious or not bc everyone who reads them would know who she is anyway i think?

“Kiss him,” she tells Michael, who finally tears his gaze from Tyler’s face to ask, “why?”.  “Because I wanna see.”  She nods and smiles when Tyler searches her face, looking a little panicked. But then Michael is leaning in close, wrapping his big hand around Tyler’s pretty neck and pulling him in and kissing him like he’s starving for it. Tyler moans and she’s so fucking wet she could shove Tyler out of the way and sit on Michael’s dick right here in front of him, but she keeps still, and watches. The way Michael pulls him closer, the way Tyler’s fingers twitch near his waist.

a little cuck fic update (sensing a pattern? don't worry about it) - taynick, disaster verse

Nick catches himself leaning forward, trying to chase Taylor’s mouth and his touch. He hears a sharp, “stay,” that rocks all the way through him and he slams himself back in the chair. He gets a barely perceptible nod for his efforts. He tries not to think about what he could do to elicit a bigger reaction. He drags in a breath and refocuses on Taylor. At a small gesture Nick barely notices, Taylor bends over the bed again. He is so fucking beautiful. Nick’s not sure he’s ever had the chance to just take him in like this. He’s always so desperate to get his hands on him when they’re alone.

alright that's enough snippets... hopefully i'll be able to get some things finished in the next few months! i miss writing! let me know what you think; i need all the motivation i can get.

thank you for the tags sunday and wednesday!

@catdadacd @firstprincehornyramblings @thesleepyskipper @basil-bird @sparklepocalypse

@thinkof-england @taste-thewaste

tagging @lostcol @bigassbowlingballhead @onward--upward for alien reasons 😘🛸

[stmichaeldeorleans]

2 Stories: Michael Dean Duerksen age 2 was named Mara Silo Parmiese Devereaux by adopted parent surgeon Dr William or Walter Silo Parmiese Devereaux whom is believed to have performed comprehensive sex change surgery and other sex change methods on Michael, and taken to Devereaux Hastings New Orlean's Children's Home.  ....next:   Olympia Genetic Analysis company, Hollywood, California report on Mike D. Duerksen and done 1959 to 1967 and 1972, and the 1967 Crane, Tx..report value shows deviant twisting of his genes using inoriginate genes by Dean F. Duerksen using a gene sauce of non-Salicylic genes acid, which is detrimental to the target, then orange staple gun genes that provide a gunned like effect to genes, then green tea leaf genetic structure to damage or recleuse original genes by showing in part, Rothchild-Duerksen...and Fraley Duerksen Rothchild is an inserted value.  This report went to LAPD officer Gerald Shrimpton, also officer Gene Taylor Talasco ( and other Talascos: Jim, Susan ) and the conclusion was that Dean F. Duerksen was involved in criminal usage of Gene science on Michael Duerksen to alter behavior, murderous use of Gene science to murder personality or to cause the death of Michael Duerksen, then to get Dean past investigators whom are looking into his genetic tampering to hide normal genetic family values of Folgers- Rothchild -Degeneres. Dean used First Amendment Services, but was found guilty and judged by Charles Colman Halderman (?) and one year in Crane county Detention center which has extension services that allows inmates to go home once per week or so.    Next: 25 to 29 individual Illuminati members adopted Michael Dean Duerksen by McCall.  13 individual members of the Dallas Hilton family adopted Michael Duerksen.  3 to 4 we're Illuminati members. Some were part Italian and part Spanish. In Crane County, Crane, Tx between 1964 June and 1967 June, Crane authorities used disciplinary actions against Roman Polanski and V. Frykowski due to their decisions to do as they pleased since they had the money and didn't think it would matter in that small town of 3,000 or so.  Mike Dean F. Duerksen was not subjected to any disciplinary actions due to his status as a child abuse victim. Polanski using Harrison and Frykowski, using Sorrills, both from Poland and held to be worth a 20 to 40  billion dollars and understood to have made oil company purchases of a total of100 million and various real estate purchases due to the rich nature of the oil and gas discoveries in that county as part of the Permian Basin.  Purchases and investments appear to have included Dennis and Mildred Fisher Oil Company Ltd..   Polanski and Frykowski made a legal effort to adopt Mike Dean Duerksen which proved successful until both men were observed to be fooling around with locals including their daughters of which 20 or so were impregnated including girls of the Mitchell, Morgan and Hanson families.   Other adopters of Mike Dean Duerksen appear to include T. D. Eason, a US Magistrate and county judge, giving him the name of Jim Roy Bean Duerksen Eason and Jim Bo Gordon Mangrove Rothchild Eason.  Also Dr. Paul Maynard M.D. a family physician, father of Tim, was an adopter whom was known to target Dean Duerksen with suspicions regarding Maynard's observations of his son Mike as a patient whom appeared to be a victim of Dean's abuse. Then Ken Spencer, attorney and overseer.  A Julia Crane Gantry Nelson was a county attorney.  Harrison and Sorrills had an unsuccessful adoption effort or relationship to Paul Dean Duerksen since they appear to have viewed Paul as a crick in the neck and a ratfink whom followed them around town and reported anything he saw.