'Many of them are fake'

'It's terrible'

The frantic caller described the bloody scene as she tried to save his life

Is hope just “a thing with feathers” as Dickenson wrote, or is it Aristotle’s “waking dream?” Or instead. is it “a promise we live” rather than a “promise we give” as Amanda Gorman wrote in 2021. According to new research examining the impact of hope as a positive emotion on long-term economic and social outcomes, […] The post Hope Is the Most Impactful Emotion in Determining Long-Term Economic, Social Outcomes appeared first on Good News Network.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: There’s Nothing Scarier Than the Modern Internet Plus: A new Nia DaCosta movie, knights of legend, and returning spider monkeys. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 31, 2025 Photo: Wikimedia Commons Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Wikimedia Commons Some wishes for Halloween weekend: I hope kids get piles and piles of all the best Halloween candy and no toothbrushes; I hope parents have to deal with a minimum of sugar-induced meltdowns; I hope every adult Halloween partygoer has the best time and no hangover. (I was going to make a joke about hanging up your costumes come November 1st, but they do turn out to have other uses.) I hope everybody who has an election to vote in on Tuesday can exercise their right to vote with ease. I hope people continue to find ways to support their neighbors in this rough, rough time. And now for some suggestions about how to spend your surely copious free time this weekend! The Everlasting: Bring on the Lady Knights and Powerful Stories I have been hearing about Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting for so long that I genuinely thought it came out months ago and I’d just missed it. But no: it came out this week! Which means we can all finally read this highly praised novel about a knight so beloved her tale has become legend, and the scholar who follows her story. “Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs,” says the description. I am not entirely clear what this means, but the book’s first chapter begins with a series of terse and amusing telegrams, and I am hopeless in the face of anything epistolary. Olivie Blake said this book is “pure magic,” so there you go. We could all use some magic these days. Tessa Thompson and Nia DaCosta Tackle a Classic Play Hedda is a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, adapted and directed by Nia DaCosta (28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) and starring Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarok, Sorry to Bother You) as the title character. According to The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, “It’s not essential to bone up on Henrik Ibsen’s drama Hedda Gabler before seeing Hedda, because the movie meets the crucial standard of adaptation: it’s a formidable cinematic experience independent of its source.” It sounds like a deliciously fraught tangle of schemes and heartbreak and betrayals, with Thompson at the center of it, in what Brody calls “an imposing, screen-filling performance.” The critic is shocked that Thompson has never been nominated for an Oscar. Maybe this is her time? Hedda is on Prime Video now.  It’s Not That Everything Was Better, But the Internet Used to Be Different Perhaps this is a me problem, but sometimes it’s hard not to think about how being online used to be a very different experience—in part because it was simply not so commercialized, and your attention span wasn’t for sale in the same way; in part because the internet used to be a place you had to make an effort to go, and so a certain kind of weirdo spent a lot of time there (as opposed to everyone having it in their pocket); in part for a million different reasons that are a little bit different for everyone. But Elizabeth Spiers takes a pretty good crack at a general overview of one difference in her Talking Points Memo piece “What Made Blogging Different.” There’s a lot to like here, if you were online in the pre-dominant-social-media era, but this one line especially struck me: “I think of this now as the difference between living in a house you built that requires some effort to visit and going into a town square where there are not particularly rigorous laws about whether or not someone can punch you in the face.” Does this make you miss blogs? It makes me miss blogs. At least a little bit. Tricks, Treats, Aliens, Vampires: It’s a Good Weekend for Movies If your Halloween plans are being rained out, you could make a waterproof costume—or you could just go to the movies. This weekend brings the latest from the powerfully weird (complimentary) filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, whose film Dogtooth remains one of my favorite movies that I am incapable of explaining to everyone. (You will never look at airplanes overhead in the same way after seeing it.) His new film, Bugonia, is not exactly a remake of the Korean film Save the Green Planet! but it is inspired by that movie. In both, a couple of dudes kidnap a CEO who they are convinced is an alien. In Lanthimos’ film, said CEO is played by the director’s frequent collaborator Emma Stone, who “spends much of Bugonia bald and lathered in bone-white antihistamine cream, resembling Klaus Kinski’s Dracula but less plagued by centuries of loneliness.” (Thank you for that line, Portland Mercury!) The trailer is great. My hopes are high. But speaking of vampires, the Twilight films are all enjoying a quickie theatrical run this weekend. Those talking wolves are terrifying, though perhaps not in the way the filmmakers intended. ParaNorman and Back to the Future are also briefly back in theaters. Nostalgia or Greek weirdness! That’s something for everyone, right?[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: There’s Nothing Scarier Than the Modern Internet appeared first on Reactor.

Books Spooky Season Spooky Stories Set on Halloween Strange rituals, haunted houses, famous monsters, scary nuns… these Halloween-themed stories have it all! By Lorna Wallace | Published on October 31, 2025 Photo by Szabó János [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Szabó János [via Unsplash] It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, Christmas hasn’t come early, it’s Halloween! If you’re looking to maximize the fun and frights of Halloween this year, I suggest immersing yourself into a few horror stories that are set on that very special night… The Halloween Tree (1972) by Ray Bradbury If it’s a nostalgic Halloween atmosphere you’re after, you can’t go wrong with The Halloween Tree. The novella starts with a group of nine friends getting ready to go trick-or-treating. But then Pipkin is stolen away by a supernatural entity—to get him back, his friends have to venture though Halloween celebrations from different historical eras and cultures. The Halloween Tree can be read as the Halloween version of a true-meaning-of-Christmas story, à la Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843). The boys think the holiday is all about candy and scary costumes, but on their mission to rescue Pipkin, they realize that Halloween lore runs far deeper than that. This spooky, whimsical, and wholesome story captures the essence of the Halloween spirit, perfectly distilled through Bradbury’s lyrically flowing prose. It should also be noted that the 1993 animated adaptation of the story (starring Leonard Nimoy) is a Halloween delight and a classic in its own right. Dark Harvest (2006) by Norman Partridge Each Halloween in a small unnamed Midwestern town, a strange ritual called the Run takes place. All of the town’s teenage boys are locked up without food for a few days before the 31st and when they’re unleashed (and incredibly hangry!) they’re tasked with hunting down and killing the October Boy. This creature has a jack-o’-lantern head and a candy-stuffed body made of vines. Dark Harvest requires a higher than usual suspension of disbelief. The story behind this bizarre ritual is drip fed to the reader through gossip and rumor, and even when some answers are revealed, there are still question marks over certain plot points. But those who are happy to leave their questions at the town’s outer limits will be rewarded with an action-packed and gore-soaked story. The novella is very different to the 2023 film adaptation. Not only do the two plots massively diverge, but the October Boy’s design in the movie doesn’t hold a candle to the description in the book. “The October Game” (1948) by Ray Bradbury “The October Game” is only a few pages long, but it’s one of Bradbury’s darkest tales. It’s told from the POV of a man who absolutely despises his wife, Louise, and feels nothing towards their eight-year-old daughter, Marion. The family are hosting a Halloween party—there are jack-o’-lanterns in the windows, guests in scary costumes, and the apple bobbing is in full swing—when the disturbed narrator comes up with a horrific idea for how he can make his wife suffer as much as possible. Many readers will be familiar with Bradbury’s science fiction and even his works of dark fantasy, but “The October Game” may come as a surprise, grounded as it is in the evil of humanity. Bradbury doesn’t actually describe anything horrifying; the story simply ends with the implication of something horrific, and the reader is then left sitting with that inescapable implication as it grows dark wings and takes flight through their mind. Originally published in a 1948 edition of Weird Tales, readers can find this short story in the collections Long After Midnight (1976) and The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980). “Bone Fire” (2018) by Storm Constantine Storm Constantine’s “Bone Fire” is inspired by the Celtic origins of Halloween (called Samhain), which I personally adore as a Scot who grew up learning about those origins and always said “guising” instead of “trick-or-treating.” The short story follows two fourteen-year-old girls, Emlie and Jenna, who have donned their guises to confuse the spirits on All Hallows’ Eve. As they go from house to house collecting edible offerings for the ghosts, they encounter a mysterious skeleton-clad boy who changes the course of their night—and their lives. This spooky folklore tale was first printed in The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories (2018), but can also be found in Constantine’s collection Mythotenebrae (2020). “The Folding Man” (2010) by Joe R. Lansdale William, Jim, and drunken Harold are driving home from a Halloween party when they see a strange-looking black car full of nuns. Jim decides to moon them as they pass by, but instead of his bare butt evoking the expected mildly annoyed reaction, the nuns—who maybe aren’t regular nuns after all—are so furious that they speed up in hot pursuit. The rest of the story is a wild ride that is teeth-clenchingly tense and goes to some horrifyingly weird places. The story was first printed in 2010 in the Haunted Legends anthology, but it can be read for free on Nightmare Magazine’s site. “With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfsbane Seeds” (2017) by Seanan McGuire The centerpiece of “With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfsbane Seeds” is the creepy Holston house—a grand mansion that has been sitting empty and abandoned for years. Strangely though, the house has never fallen into disrepair, and its imperviousness to the elements has added to its unsettling aura. Of course, such a house has inspired a ghost story, a local legend featuring a young girl called Mary Holston, who is apparently doomed to wander the house forever. Too old for trick-or-treating, but too young for alcohol-fueled parties, a small group of bored teens decide to investigate (i.e. break into) the Holston house on Halloween night. Although they’re looking for some suitably Halloween-y scares, they definitely get more than they bargained for. First published in the Haunted Nights (2017) collection, this story is also available for free on Nightmare Magazine. “Universal Horror” (2015) by Stephen Graham Jones “Universal Horror” is about a group of friends—whose ranks have gradually thinned over the years—who play the same Halloween game every year. Each person gets a costume category—animals, superheroes, age-inappropriate, etc.—and they have to do a shot for every trick-or-treater at the door who fits the description. Rachel gets Universal Monsters, horror staples such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Invisible Man. But as well as getting progressively drunker as the night goes on, she also finds herself getting progressively more freaked out by a kid in a mummy costume who keeps coming to the door. The story first appeared in October Dreams II: A Celebration of Halloween (2015), but it’s another one that’s been published for free on Nightmare Magazine. I hope you treat this list like a spooky fiction pick-n-mix! Please feel free to recommend your own delectably dark Halloween-set stories in the comments below.[end-mark] Originally published October 21, 2024. The post Spooky Stories Set on Halloween appeared first on Reactor.

When air traffic control is held hostage by federal budget fights, American travelers lose. The shutdown-induced mess at U.S. airports demonstrates yet another consequence of leaving our skies in the hands of a politically driven, budget-dependent, and inefficient government bureaucracy.    The most recent bout of massive flight delays and cancellations is the result of the government shutdown, which has caused an indefinite delay in the paychecks of government-employed air traffic controllers—prompting many of them to decide not to show up to work. But even before that, America’s antiquated air traffic control systems were costing Americans thousands of years of lost time due to flight delays and cancellations. Those ordinary delays and cancellations amount to billions of dollars in costs annually. On top of that, inefficiencies limit the supply of flights, resulting in higher overall prices. Meanwhile, failing U.S. air traffic control infrastructure is causing communication outages, risking passenger safety. It doesn’t have to be this way. Most other industrialized countries have lower-cost, more efficient air traffic control systems that are insulated from government spending battles. That’s because they are commercialized instead of bureaucratized. Take Canada, for example. It commercialized its air traffic control system in 1996 and now has far more advanced capabilities with just two-thirds the cost of the U.S. Similarly, Switzerland’s commercialized Skyguide air traffic control system boasts 95% on-time flights—as compared to only about 75% under the U.S. system.   In an open letter to DOGE, transportation expert Robert Pool described U.S. Air Traffic Control as “a would-be high-tech service business trapped in a cautious bureaucracy.” He explained that the Air Traffic Control and Federal Aviation Administration’s reliance on annual funding means that “new systems get produced in small batches over a decade or more, with the last recipients not getting equipped before the system’s technology may already be obsolete.” Government shutdown or not, it’s time for policymakers to free American passengers and businesses from bureaucratic inefficiencies and costs by commercializing America’s air traffic control. Converting America’s air traffic control into a user-funded system has longstanding bipartisan support dating back to the Clinton administration. In 2018, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted in favor of legislation that would have converted the Air Traffic Organization into a user-funded nonprofit corporation. President Donald Trump supported that legislation along with even further reforms.  So long as the federal government insists on being in the business of air travel, delays, cancellations, cost, and safety will all remain in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. The post Grounded by Bureaucracy: Another Wake Up Call To Privatize Air Traffic Control appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger supports a climate project that actually increased the carbon emissions Virginia caused—and cost residents more money—according to the commonwealth’s Department of Energy. That project, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “was supposed to decrease emissions, but it actually increased emissions,” Glenn Davis, director of the Virginia Department of Energy, told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday. He called it a “bait and switch.” The department told The Daily Signal that Virginia’s consumption of energy from the company Dominion Energy caused approximately 2.145 billion more pounds of CO2 emissions in 2022 and 2023, the years that Virginia had been part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. While Spanberger’s campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, a climate activist group that sent her more than $1 million accused Davis of lying. Why the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Backfired The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an interstate agreement, charges power plants for their emissions and uses the money to prop up renewable energy or other projects. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, attempted to exit the initiative, calling it a “hidden tax” on electricity. Virginia’s withdrawal remains in limbo after a judge blocked it. The administration got a court to grant a stay, allowing Virginia to remain out of it for now. Spanberger has pledged to rejoin it. Davis previously told The Daily Signal that the initiative cost Virginians $828 million, “every dollar of which was passed on to Virginians in their energy bills.” He said other states use the initiative’s funds to offset ratepayers’ energy bills, since the program increases costs for consumers, but Virginia Democrats used the money to fund other projects, such as flood preparation projects. So, how did the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program aimed at decreasing carbon emissions, actually increase them? “RGGI penalized utilities for emissions generated by in-state generation facilities, but it did not address any out-of-state generation facilities, so Dominion [Energy] decreased their power generation on their natural gas facilities in Virginia and supplemented it with their coal-burning facilities in West Virginia,” Davis explained. According to the Energy Information Administration, coal generation produced 2,257 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity in 2019, while natural gas generation produced less than half that amount, at 976 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. Just How Much More Carbon Emissions? Virginia joined the initiative in January 2021 and left in January 2024. Energy demand decreased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, so in order to determine the impacts of the initiative, the Department of Energy focused on data from two time periods: the percentage of energy Dominion Energy purchased for Virginia customers from other states in 2018 and 2019, and the out-of-state imports and energy demand for the years 2022 and 2023. (Complete data for 2024 remains unavailable.) In 2018 and 2019, Dominion imported an average of 15.49% of Virginia customers’ energy from other states in the PJM Interconnection electric grid (a multi-state electric grid that Virginia is part of that includes portions of 13 states). The energy bought from the PJM grid emits proportionately more CO2 than energy produced in Virginia. That percentage of imported energy increased to 22.5% in 2022 and 2023. The Department of Energy estimated that while the energy Virginians purchased from Dominion required the emission of 118.86 billion pounds of CO2 in 2022 and 2023 under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, it would only have required the emission of 116.71 billion pounds had it remained outside of the initiative. While this increase only amounts to about 1.84% of the emissions for those two years, it still illustrates a climate policy leading to more emissions, not less. That means this “climate” policy led to 2,145,510,874 more pounds of CO2 getting emitted into the atmosphere. While that may represent a small number in the grand scheme of things, it demonstrates the way these policies can backfire. The department also noted a PJM study predicting what would happen if Pennsylvania joined the initiative. While carbon emissions from Pennsylvania would decrease (because Pennsylvania would produce less energy), emissions in the PJM system would remain largely unchanged, while prices would increase for consumers within and outside the Keystone State. An Environmental Group’s Response The Virginia League of Conservation Voters—which gave Spanberger for Governor $1.38 million, according to the Virginia Public Access Project—called foul. “When Glenn Davis blames RGGI for increasing energy costs, he’s lying,” Lee Francis, a spokesman for the league, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “There are many reasons why natural gas is expensive, and will continue to be well into the future, and none of them are because of programs like RGGI.” “The cheapest way to keep the lights on right now is with clean energy, and RGGI incentivizes utilities like Dominion when they bring clean, renewable energy sources online, lowering energy costs while cutting pollution,” Francis added. “Davis must be trying to distract Virginians from the fact that he’s been working with Gov. Youngkin to make sure we all pay more for dirtier energy so that Republican mega-donors and the fossil fuel industry continue to profit at our expense.” Dominion Energy declined to address the Department of Energy’s claim that the initiative led to an increase in emissions. Appalachian Power Company, Virginia’s other major supplier of electricity, did not directly address the claim either. “RGGI is currently suspended in Virginia due to ongoing legal challenges,” Appalachian Power communications consultant Karen Wissing told The Daily Signal. “As such, it is not affecting Appalachian Power’s operations at this time. If RGGI were in effect, we would expect to see significant operational adjustments aimed at reducing emissions.” The post BACKFIRED: Spanberger’s Preferred Climate Policy Caused 2.1B More Pounds of CO2 Emissions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Candy We Want Back!

Trump to Senate GOP: Get Rid Of the Filibuster; UPDATE: Thune Rejects