'Free speech belongs to every mom'

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'Look at this clip of a wine mom'

'There is nothing like this'

Hurricane Melissa made an historic landfall in Jamaica

Books Reading the Weird Mary Magdalene Strikes Back: Lucy Snyder’s Sister, Maiden, Monster (Part 5) By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on October 29, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Chapters 12-14 of Lucy Snyder’s Sister, Maiden, Monster. The book was first published in 2023. Spoilers ahead! Erin asks Dr. Shapiro to increase her prescription brain supplement. She’s having trouble with her memory, forgetting things at work. She doesn’t mention her cravings or her desire for more energy. Shapiro says there’s been a supplement shortage. If Erin wants more, she’ll have to undergo humiliating testing, again. At work she meets a new employee, Devin. While he talks about database errors, she knows he’s actually thinking about his band’s next gig—she can smell the sweet chemicals shifting in his brain, and she’s flooded with Want and Need. She makes a date with Betty. They meet at a decaying downtown hotel. No cops detain Erin as she enters. No traps await in Room 512, where Betty’s already spread a tarp over the couch and carpet. Betty looks wan and starved, but her smile is reassuring. They keep conversation short. Betty pulls off her wig, revealing the inflamed scar that circumscribes her bald scalp. Erin wonders if Betty’s seeing other Type Threes, or if the fresh irritation’s because Betty’s being treated for a pituitary tumor. They kiss. Erin’s tongue enlarges, its maws nipping. Though Betty pulls away, the tongue continues to enlarge, curling back into Erin’s own throat. They undress, and Betty settles between Erin’s legs, back to Erin’s front. Erin uses an oyster knife to reopen Betty’s scar and gently pry off the lid of her skull. Her brain’s the most beautiful thing, glistening with golden “brain honey.” In turn, Betty opens a vein in Erin’s elbow crook. She drinks Erin’s blood, while Erin’s tongue courses eel-like over Betty’s brain, its maws lapping up the “honey.” With it, she ingests Betty’s memories of being with other Type Threes and helping them murder people. Erin can’t care. She longs to plunge her tongue into the brain itself, but that would end Betty. They finish reinvigorated. But cleaning up, Erin experiences visions. She’s with Shapiro, who tells Erin that she has a fast-growing mass on her back. Next she’s in a motel room, with a body—and a bloodied Betty telling her she shouldn’t have come, they will arrive soon. Next, she’s at work, in the elevator with Devin. Her dorsal mass begins to rupture, and he moves to help. Overcome by Want, she plunges her tongue through his eye, into his brain, devouring will and memories along with flesh. When Devin’s empty, she feels membranous wings burst from her back. She’ll soon fly free. She hears her cosmic masters, knows others of her kind gather in caves outside the city. She revels in purpose: she’s an Archivist, collecting the memories of the world before bearing them to her masters “in the star shadows.” * * * Part Two: Dolore Stimulatus (Stimulated by Pain) People who knew Savannah’s father were shocked when this nice man killed his wife and children, then shot himself. Savannah wasn’t shocked. In her family, behind closed doors, “violence was always on the table.” She only survived because she was away at marching band tryouts. After two years with an uncle addicted to “Christian moralizing,” she took up the world’s oldest profession, becoming a top earner at the Pink Rose, “one of the most exclusive, expensive, progressive” brothels anywhere, and one of the first to go online after sex work was legalized. Her madam, Em, tries to ensure her workers are “happy with who and what [they’re] doing.” She allows them to keep guns or Tasers in their playrooms for self-defense and gets them immunized as soon as the FDA approves the emergency PVG vaccine. Savannah started out working freelance, mostly in BDSM. After being recruited by Em, she expanded her clientele from the usual straight cis males to lesbian, bisexual, and curious women. She’s studying psychology, because part of her job is listening to clients pour out “their black little hearts” to a nonjudgmental ear. Gregory has seen Savannah a few times. Shy and polite, he struggles with gender dysphoria, “fronting hard” to meet people’s expectations. He supposedly has a girlfriend and is terrified of being photographed going into the brothel; he uses the secret “celebrity” entrance. If the guard hadn’t been half-asleep on Gregory’s last visit, none of this would have happened… Fascinated by viruses and their ability to hijack host cell biology, Savannah has learned all about PVG. She knows that her PVG vaccination may not defend her from transmission through physical intimacy. She knows the infection control protocols, including stringent site disinfection and rapid antigen tests for customers. She didn’t know Gregory was infected until she found him in the playroom shower, moaning and swaying, a massive hump on his back. In his discarded clothing, she finds a Glock nine-millimeter pistol, fully loaded. Gregory stumbles from the shower, begging for Savannah’s help. He weeps, saying God isn’t giving him the body he wanted, that he doesn’t want the mission to which “angels” are called. She tries to calm him, but he’s obviously wracked by pain and begs her to shoot him. Something is clawing its way out of his hump. Skin splits, blood spurts, bones crunch. His facial  structure and voice alter. Bat-like wings erupt from his back. Baring anglerfish-pointy teeth, he rants about “seven powers of wrath,” about souls chosen to be “Archivists” and others chosen to cull those not worth recording, about using Earth’s blood to write praises to “our ancient lords.” Envisioning the slaughter of mankind, Savannah lunges for Gregory’s gun and empties its ten rounds into his chest. Each bullet she fires exhilarates her; as Gregory collapses lifeless, she comes so hard she loses consciousness. Libronomicon: Savannah is reading The Future Therapist’s Guide: Theory and Practice, by Garza-Fieldman, in her Psych 450 class. She is not, precisely, a therapist. Weirdbuilding: The elder gods are returning to feast and revel and “write dark, beautiful poetry across the walls of the universe” with the world’s blood. Oh, joy. Madness Takes Its Toll: Savannah is understanding of her clients’ mental illnesses and neurodiversities. But she warns that “our society tends to assume that dangerously psychotic white men are just having a bad day until they make it a bad day for the whole house, too.” Anne’s Commentary Way back in Chapter Zero of Sister, Maiden, Monster, Erin found in her apartment a pink business card bearing only the name Savannah and a local phone number. Gregory claimed Savannah was a massage therapist—before the epidemic, he was researching gifts for Erin. The truth behind that lie is Gregory’s continued client relationship with pro sex worker Savannah, about which Erin has known nothing. It would have hurt her to realize Gregory needed something she couldn’t give him, so how could she have possibly handled his gender dysphoria, and his desire to be the one penetrated instead of the penetrator? Given Erin’s openness to blood and brain play with Betty, maybe Gregory underestimated her kink capacity. In any case, welcome to the book, Savannah! You promise to thicken the plot nicely. Pragmatic Savannah can cop to a fascination with viruses, specifically with their core function of “giving an unsuspecting cell new assembly instructions.” She can look at the result as “just… new information,” even as she’s aware of how a “new assembly” can be “a complete horror show,” not only from a medical but from a social viewpoint. Savannah regards human sexuality as a highly flexible continuum of preferences, impulses and desires rather than as an assemblage of rigid categories; as a result, she swims in that fluid continuum like a champion. Similarly, she doesn’t see the classification of PVG patients into a “type taxonomy” as tablets handed down to “Dr. Moses” by a God of absolute answers. PVG Types are “descriptive, not prescriptive.” As the virus changes constantly, so do its products. The virus “doesn’t give a shit about categories,” she concludes. In addition to the “Ones, Twos and Threes,” there have emerged the Type Zeros, who are in theory “completely asymptomatic carriers.” Also a new Type are the Fours, whose infections supposedly center in the brain and may be treated with antipsychotics and antiepileptics. It sounds like Type Fours haven’t suffered the gastrointestinal manifestations of the disease, thus escaping from the drastic metabolic sequelae of the Twos and Threes. Before Gregory’s last visit, Savanna can embrace the CDC’s contention that PVG is “an incurable, complex, life-changing infection,” manageable “just like HIV.” It’s an “overall message” that she and fellow sex workers “roll with” in lieu of the chaos of conspiracy theories. PVG has followed cruelly close on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like COVID and other scourges going back to and beyond the Black Plague, it must have spawned companion infodemics. I imagine them paralleling the COVID conspiracy theories, which included strident convictions that the disease was caused by: 5G, as if biological viruses worked like digital ones. Bill Gates, in order to “vaccinate” the whole world with mind-controlling microchips. a Chinese lab, either by accident or by dastardly intention. some enemy (probably China) for biowarfare. No, it was the US military that released COVID into China! It was all because GMOs cause a genetic “pollution” that encourages viral proliferation!! It was the deep state and/or Big Pharma!!! Forget the above. COVID, like climate change etc., doesn’t exist!!!! ALIENS DID IT! (I guess that could cover either migrants or xenointelligences.) Or MIGRANT XENOINTELLIGENCES! Hold on. Given a PVG sequela like morphing into a bat-winged, needle-toothed, proselytizing monster, that last theory doesn’t sound so wacky. No sooner does Gregory achieve the final “new assembly” granted by the PVG virus than he starts quoting from the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Unlike Snyder in her epigraph to Sister, Maiden, Monster, Part Two, he leaves out the line that follows “Whence do you come, slayer of men?” That would be: “Where are you going, conqueror of space?” The “conqueror of space” line actually does appear in the Magdalene text, written by an unknown author in the 2nd century AD. Gregory completes his sermon by distilling an apocalyptic vision into Savannah’s mind. It’s the same sort of vision Erin has upon becoming a “raptor” angel Archivist. Add “conqueror of space” to “Archivist” and “old gods” who reside in the “star shadows.” The first things I think of are Lovecraft’s Yith and Mi-Go. Both are conquerors of space, the Yith via space- and time-spanning mental projection and the Mi-Go via actual bat-winged interplanetary “flight.” Both are collectors of “soul,” so to speak. The Yith collect the memories of all sapient races via the archived journals of their captives. The Mi-Go collect entire brains in canisters that keep them alive and aware, capable of communication and travel through space with the Mi-Go. Holy Mythos, Bat(Winged)Man! Plus, at the close of Chapter Twelve, an entranced Erin hears not only the whispers of the old gods but a faint murmur from the “castle manor” of her visions and dreams. Somehow she realizes that her “masters in the voids of the cosmos” would disapprove of this other voice. But it’s part of her “special secret,” and so she resolves to explore it sometime. Savannah and Erin. You two are indeed thickening the plot! Ruthanna’s Commentary Well, I guess Erin and Greg aren’t going to have that follow-up conversation after all. And the rest of us have… bigger problems. I apologize for calling the Archivists zombies. I should have called them illithids. It’s always good to pay respect to those who document mortal lives—even if the cost is higher than those mortals would prefer to pay. “Earth is ripe.” Don’t like that. This week, we end Part 1 with Erin’s revelation about her nature. For her, it’s an invitation to wonder and glory, to knowing her purpose and her gods. And to knowing… something… that her “masters in the voids of the cosmos” would rather keep hidden. There’s another power, in that dream castle, and she’d like to “see what it’s about sometime.” Cue Cozette singing “Castle on a Cloud”? Or not. We then begin Part 2 with Savannah, a.k.a. Mary Magdalene, reporting something Erin doesn’t know: what happened to Gregory. Greg’s been suffering from the combination of gender dysphoria and her fundamentalist upbringing, unable to fill the roles that her family requires and unable to fully accept that inability. Oh, and she’s been avoiding Erin so she can keep insisting that she’s “clean” of plague, despite the thing growing on her back. Which is, in fact, the same thing growing on Erin’s back. But that Erin’s wonder and glory is Greg’s “not the Becoming that God promised me”. And thus she goes to her high-end brothel with a gun, to beg death from a courtesan who really doesn’t like guns. And who has way too much experience with monsters already. And who is apparently turning into a monster as well. “Thy duty is to cull the unworthy so that those inferior souls shall not distract us from our duty.” Don’t like that, either. All these revelations make the snipers and surveillance a little more understandable—and a lot less likely to be effective. Homeland Security’s usual methods, and even their unusual ones, are not sufficient to deal with the immanent eschaton. As an expatriate policy wonk I can’t help but ask: what should the government do about the return of the elder gods? First piece of policy analysis: “keep everyone from panicking” is a tempting goal that basically never works. We know this from a million and one zombie plague stories. You have to tell people what they’re dealing with, and get them invested in solving the problem. “Avoid disruptions to the economy” is another bad one. All the CEOs lobbying you to hide the bad news are going to seriously regret it when the species goes extinct; you gotta take the long-term view. Presumably the State Department is trying to negotiate with the elder gods; presumably it’s not working. (“What exactly is your definition of ‘ripe’? Would you consider waiting until we have interstellar travel?”) So the question then becomes whether we’re dealing with zombie apocalypse rules or something more nuanced. When someone gets bit by a zombie, you kill them right away. Witness the surprisingly sensible response in Mira Grant’s Feed series: rapid blood tests every time you go through a door cut down rapidly on new infections. But could the Types, if given full knowledge of what’s going on and a high-status role in defense, be persuaded to stay on the side of humanity? “Help us fight to save the world” seems like a much more appealing pitch than “Give up your civil rights and keep going to work until we shoot you.” I’m not saying the odds are good. But it beats convincing your incipient angels that it’s them or civilization—while dumping the worst that civilization has to offer directly onto their budding wings. Next week, John Langan’s “Errata” describes a problem with his publisher. Nothing to worry about, we’re sure. You can find it in his new collection, Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions.[end-mark] The post Mary Magdalene Strikes Back: Lucy Snyder’s <i>Sister, Maiden, Monster</i> (Part 5) appeared first on Reactor.

Will and Adam dive deeper into Wizard issue 117 to discuss a Last Man Standing Battle between Darth Vader and Doctor Doom, compare Wildstorm’s Ninja Boy to Top Cow’s No Honor, explore Geoff Johns on CONTINUE READING... The post WIZARDS The Podcast Guide To Comics | Episode 117.5 appeared first on The Retro Network.

Despite prior talk of redistricting, it now appears that Maryland Democrats won’t attempt to flip the seat of the state’s sole Republican representative in Congress, Andy Harris. As an eight-term member of Congress and current chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a staunchly conservative faction of the Republican Party, Harris is an influential figure in Washington. But he‘s the sole Republican in the state’s eight-member House delegation. On Tuesday, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, confirmed that he would not be pursuing congressional redistricting. “Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Ferguson wrote his fellow state senators in a letter. Ferguson’s letter poured cold water on the push for redistricting in Maryland. Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, had previously called himself “an eager and a willing partner” with the state legislature if it proceeded with redistricting. I’m not interested in playing political games. I’m interested in doing what’s fair for Maryland.If the President is going to put his finger on the scale to try and manipulate elections, Maryland will do its part to make sure our maps are fair. pic.twitter.com/zVnqS6KS5i— Wes Moore (@iamwesmoore) October 22, 2025 In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly passed a redistricting bill that would likely have removed Harris from Congress. It was ultimately challenged by Republicans, going to the Supreme Court of Maryland, which ruled the map was overly partisan and violated the state’s constitution. Republican Maryland state Rep. Kathy Szeliga was a lead plaintiff in that case and is a member of the Maryland Freedom Caucus. She told The Daily Signal in September when asked about potential redistricting: “We’ve been down that road. Bring it on.” Harris has harshly criticized Moore’s talk of redistricting, recently telling a reporter, “The most partisan thing you could do is gerrymander a state that has had two Republican governors out of the last four, into a state that can’t send a Republican to Congress.” He has also argued that any attempt to redistrict Maryland could backfire on Democrats if it went to court. “We will take this to court, it will go as high as necessary, and in the end, a judge could draw a map that actually has two or three Republican congressmen,” Harris said. “I’d caution the Democrats: Be careful what you wish for.” The post Maryland’s Sole GOP Congressman Safe From Redistricting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrat gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey launched their campaigns with strong polling numbers suggesting inevitable success. But now, just a week away from election day, their leads have begun to shrink.   On Wednesday, the two will join a virtual rally via Zoom organized by the Democratic National Committee. According to the New York Times, the purpose of the virtual rally is to energize the party and campaign volunteers. The event will also be live streamed on YouTube for public viewership.   The rally comes just a week after the DNC funneled $500,000 into these campaigns and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections. This is in addition to the $3 million they have already spent on each state’s Democrat coordinated campaign.   DNC Chairman Ken Martin commented on the party’s involvement in the two states races in a press release: “With early voting in full swing, the DNC is leaving it all on the field to ensure Democrats up and down the ballot win in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey on November 4th,” he stated.  According to RealClear Polling, Sherrill held a 21-point lead over Republican Jack Ciattarelli in June. However, her lead has narrowed significantly, the current polling average showing her ahead by just 3.7 points. In contrast, Spanberger has maintained a steadier lead throughout the campaign, though the race has tightened. RealClear Polling shows her, on average, 7.1 points ahead of Republican Winsome Earle-Sears.  Spanberger and Sherrill were both elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 and served three terms together until Spanberger announced she would not seek reelection in 2024, instead running for Governor. Sherrill is still currently representing New Jersey’s 11th district and will have to step down if she wins. The two became close friends while serving in the House and were even roommates in Washington, D.C., during their first term.   Other party leaders are set to appear at the Zoom rally include Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Martin.   The post Virginia and New Jersey Candidates Join DNC Rally to Energize Supporters Ahead of Elections  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Heritage Action President Kevin Roberts has exposed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s attempt to “silence” those who challenge his “radical climate agenda.” Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, sent a Sept. 16 letter to Roberts in his capacity as president of The Heritage Foundation, demanding documents related to Heritage’s role in shaping the Trump administration’s recission of a key climate alarmist position. “I am concerned about the role that fossil fuel companies, certain manufacturers, trade associations, polluter-backed groups, and others with much to benefit from the repeal of the endangerment finding—including your organization—played in drafting, preparing, promoting, and lobbying on the proposal,” Whitehouse’s letter states. It requested Heritage turn over documents related to the policy change, giving a Sept. 30 deadline. Roberts responded Monday with a letter of his own, and he gave The Daily Signal an exclusive statement condemning Whitehouse’s letter. “Sen. Whitehouse’s letter reflects both a misunderstanding of his authority and an embarrassing attempt to silence those who challenge the radical climate agenda,” Roberts told The Daily Signal. “Heritage welcomes policy debate and legitimate oversight,” he explained. “But we will not stop calling out the Left’s obsession with debunked environmental hysteria or yield our internal work product—especially for a senator benefitting from his family’s fortune in railroads and gas.” “Our research stands on its merits, is published openly, defended proudly, and protected by the First Amendment,” Roberts added. “We will continue to support the Trump administration’s mission to rollback job-killing, self-destructive climate regulations.” The Policy Earlier this year, Environmental Protection Agency moved to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding—a bureaucratic ruling that six greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, providing a justification to regulate vehicle carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act of 1970. “With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in July. “In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.” “We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA’s [greenhouse gas] emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide which the finding never assessed independently, was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods,” Zeldin explained. He estimated that rescinding the finding and resulting regulations would “end $1 trillion or more in hidden taxes on American businesses and families.” The Whitehouse Letter Whitehouse’s letter framed the rescission as a rejection of science and public health, and suggested it came about as the result of corruption. “As you well know, rescinding the endangerment finding would cripple the federal government’s ability to combat climate pollution and mark an alarming retreat from decades of legal precedent, peer-reviewed science, and public health protections,” the senator wrote. “If the proposal is finalized, it would hand massive benefits to polluting industry actors and their enablers, allowing them to reap billions in profit while shifting the burdens of climate disasters onto the American families, businesses, and taxpayers.” Whitehouse noted that many industry groups praised the EPA’s move—which he characterized as a “partisan retreat from science”—and concluded, “Given the billions at stake for polluting industry interests and significant potential conflicts of interest, the public deserves a full accounting of any efforts to influence this decision behind closed doors.” The letter accuses The Heritage Foundation and others of engaging in a corrupt and partisan rejection of science and public health in pursuit of corporate interests and demands documents by a specific deadline as if it were a subpoena. Whitehouse Letter to HeritageDownload Heritage’s Response Roberts, in his capacity as head of The Heritage Foundation, responded to Whitehouse with a letter of his own, noting specifically that “my response is voluntary.” “Heritage, of course, will gladly cooperate with any valid and legally authorized oversight from the Committee on Environment and Public Works, or any other relevant committee of the United States Senate,” he wrote. “But your letter lacks any legal authority to compel the internal work product demanded, which would squarely violate Heritage’s rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Roberts notes the “basic premise” of the letter: “that any challenge to the endangerment finding, and anti-fossil fuel policies more broadly, is obviously unscientific and immoral, and corrupt; therefore, Heritage or anyone else challenging anti-fossil-fuel policies is corrupt and in need of investigation.” Yet Roberts insisted that Heritage’s position “is in fact the scientific and moral one.” “As Heritage and others have argued, anti-fossil-fuel ‘climate policy,’ including but not limited to the endangerment finding, has been poisoned by the practice of only looking for negative climate effects of fossil fuel use, while deliberately ignoring the enormous positive climate effects as well as other contributions to human health and welfare,” Roberts noted, citing a recent post from Alex Epstein. “Our view has been and remains that if you consider the full effects of fossil fuel use on climate livability, human health, and human welfare, fossil fuel use is enormously beneficial, having driven a 98% decline in climate-related disaster deaths over the past century—and broad, unprecedented improvements in human health and welfare,” he concluded. Heritage Whitehouse Response 102725Download Whitehouse’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. The post Heritage Action President Exposes Democrat Senator’s Attempt to ‘Silence’ Those Who Challenge ‘Radical Climate Agenda’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.