'Self-defense'

'That's one of the ironies of this thing'

Feminine patterns of behavior

'You bet I would'

With a catalog as extensive as Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s, there’s bound to be a vast collection of sad songs. We could have easily compiled a much larger list of Elton John’s saddest songs, but we decided to keep it to just ten. It’s tough enough to write about these 10 songs while listening to them and not tearing up. I don’t think I could do 20 even though I love these songs dearly. Elton John is probably the one artist that we’ve written about the most on this site because we just can’t get enough of his music. The post 10 Saddest Elton John Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

A gorgeous 20th century painting has been donated to Polish cultural authorities following its reappearance after 70 years. Recorded as being housed in a girl’s school in the city that would become Wroclaw after World War II, it never resurfaced following the end of the conflict until last year when it appeared at auction in […] The post Poland Secures Return of Gorgeous Artwork from Danish Auction Stolen During World War II appeared first on Good News Network.

Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo A dark history is unearthed amid crumbling façades in this gothic tale of family, homecoming, and postcolonial vengeance… By Victor Manibo | Published on November 5, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Villa, Once Beloved, a new gothic horror novel by Victor Manibo, publishing with Erewhon Books on November 25th. Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.Sophie soon learns that there is more to the Sepulvedas than a grand tradition of political and entrepreneurial success. Adrian’s relatives clash viciously amid grief, confusion, and questions about the family curse that their matriarch refuses to answer. When a landslide traps them all in the villa, secrets begin to emerge, revealing sins both intimately personal and unthinkably public.Sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction, Sophie finds herself at the center of a reckoning. Did a mythical demon really kill Adrian’s grandfather? How complicit are the Sepulvedas in the country’s oppressive history? As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge… April 7Monday The walls of the stone manor gleamed full under the moonlight. The masonry, weathered by what now had been a century and a half, finally seemed to show its age. What once was the pride of the Sepulveda clan—no, the pride of the entire province, the jewel of Leyte—looked as though it was built with chalk, under threat of collapse from the faintest breeze. This was how Don Raul Sepulveda saw his ancestral home as he looked upon it from the driveway, barefoot in his night­clothes. The stiff wind and the cloud-laden sky told him typhoon season had arrived much earlier than expected. He worried about the coconut plantation, tallying in his mind the acreage he might lose, but more than that, he worried about Villa Sepulveda, fixed in the firm yet absurd belief that the manor would dissolve in the rainfall. The old man fastened his robe, which did little to prevent the chill from seeping. Arms wrapped around himself, he made his way through the garage and into the silong and its maze-like walls. He felt his way through the dark, guided by the mahogany posts of the manor’s foundations, until he found the room where the groundskeeper stored the tools that, for weeks, had been waiting to be used. He took the shovel and the pickaxe down from their hooks. He felt their heft in his hands before placing them into a wheelbarrow. He took an electric lantern too, the only one that had some charge left. Bags of cement languished next to stacks of marble tile. He felt his blood pressure rise. Raul had unfinished business, and he didn’t have a lot of time. He carted his implements back the way he came, then around to the back of the manor. Past the veranda, he tra­versed the large expanse of lawn, stopping as he reached an overgrown depression close to the stone fence that bounded the villa from the plantation’s groves. Under his instructions, the groundskeeper had erected bamboo stakes to demarcate the plot for the don’s project. Raul squinted to find them and thanked his stars that Tiago had tied a tattered shred of red cloth at the end of each stake. This should not take too long. He set the lantern down by the wheelbarrow. Shovel in hand, the old man began to clear the soil. His eyesight had not left him in his dotage, and he found little difficulty in spotting the rocks that needed to be sifted. The difficulty came in getting them off the ground and haul­ing them back onto the cart. He didn’t mind the roughness under his bare feet, or the chill wind that turned his skin into gooseflesh, but the strain on his back and the tightness on his forearms worsened with each load. At length, Raul began to slow down, both to give himself a respite and to make as little noise as possible as he placed the rocks into the cart. The crickets’ chorus was not loud enough to drown the clang of rock on metal, and he didn’t want to stir his wife from sleep. Catching him at work in the dead of night wouldn’t surprise her; she knew of his plans, and she knew of his bullheadedness. Still, he was not inclined to get into an­other argument, to be mocked for his folly. Oh, how he longed for those days when she never gave him back talk. Once the wheelbarrow’s load was heavy enough to support him, the old man sat on its lip for a rest. He gazed upon the manor once again. His papa, and his before him, had boasted that Villa Sepulveda had been built from stone dug from the very land they owned. They boasted too that the men of the family built the place with their own hands, with calluses to show for it. Raul easily dismissed that claim. His forebears had laborers, retinues of able-bodied peasants. He saw them himself, and when his time came, he too had his own army of workers. They would have been doing the backbreaking work instead of him, if he hadn’t fired the architect and the contrac­tors, if he hadn’t berated every single mason, one after another, until they all quit, until no one in the entire town was left to take the job. No matter. He had exacting standards, and if no one could meet them, then he would do what his father and his grandfather had only claimed to do. He would build some­thing with his own two hands. He would erect the mausoleum himself. All the Sepulveda patriarchs were laid to rest in a graveyard on the west of the property, on a hill far enough away from the groves and where the trees had long been cut down. The family had a special dispensation from the bishop that let them eschew the Catholic cemetery by San Isidro Church. And when Raul broke ground to build his mausoleum, he did so without obtaining a special permit from the municipio. “This is our land,” he’d said, “and we’ve been here even before the diocese was established.” Raul resumed his work with more vigor, out of spite for the lesser men who’d left him to toil on his own. He imagined the laborers laughing at him as they did when they walked away from the job, shaking their heads at the crazy old man. He imagined his late papa too, and his lolo, both looking down at him, their arms crossed in smug expectation. “I’ll show you,” Raul spat between heaving breaths. With each load, he imagined his great-grandfather who’d built the stone house, his grandfather who’d replaced the quarry and planted the coconut groves, his father who’d bought the neighboring par­cels and expanded the plantation to cover an entire face of the mountain. Raul wouldn’t just restore Villa Sepulveda to its former glory—though he knew such revival was only needed because of his own neglect—he would preserve the family’s legacy, more than any other Sepulveda before him did. The mausoleum, strong and grand, would stand on this spot for centuries, protecting them all. His vision for the project was influenced by mausoleums of antiquity and great monuments he’d seen in his travels. It had to be sizable, as he planned not only to house himself and his wife in it; he wanted to move all the other bodies from the family graveyard. He planned on exhuming the noble Bartolome, the enterprising Oscar, and Raul’s own father Claudio, the fierce general, plus their wives who’d been laid right next to them. The family had only ever considered the patrilineal heirs to be entitled to a plot. The long series of first­born males and their wives. Not even the second-born sons, nor the daughters, were on the hill. They were in the town cemetery, side by side with other members of the extended Sepulveda clan, both the ones who were legally acknowledged and those who were not. And, boy, were there a lot of those. A gust whistled through the palms of the coconut trees. Raul heard a rustle in the overgrown grass beyond the bamboo stakes. He stilled to listen. His lands didn’t have wild animals, Tiago and the farmhands made sure of that, but just the same he lowered the rock he was holding. The rustling grew louder, this time from another corner of the plot. The scrap of tattered cloth danced in the breeze. Raul squinted at the gaps beyond the tall grass. It was probably Tiago’s cur, Askal. “Haaaaa—” the old man half yelled, hoping it would scurry away. The rustling stopped. In measured steps he made his way back to the silong to get a bolo, just in case. He found one with a worn leather scab­bard and slung it around his waist. He returned, setting the lantern closer before swiftly resuming his work. If he were an honest man, he’d admit that his haste was out of fear, but he told himself that it was out of annoyance with all these inter­ruptions. He had a plan, and it needed to be done now, before the torrents came. Before death came for him. Buy the Book The Villa Once Beloved Victor Manibo Buy Book The Villa Once Beloved Victor Manibo Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget He had seen its omens and heard the cries of its herald. His time was coming. The mausoleum needed to be built soon— for himself, for every Sepulveda buried on the hill beyond the stone fence, and for the sake of the few Sepulvedas still living. He wasn’t crazy; he just happened to be the only one who could see all the signs. The mausoleum hadn’t always been the plan. At first, Raul only wanted to spruce up the graveyard, update the markers, and most critical of all, build some sort of enclosure. Tiago had told him that wasn’t necessary—the site had been unmolested for decades—but he’d be happy to maintain it more often, es­pecially after the don and doña’s return from the States. Yet Raul insisted. He contracted a builder to erect a stone fence around the plots. In the last few weeks, however, Raul grew to believe that a fence was not going to be enough. His ances­tors had to be locked up in marble. When the contractor said the section of the hill was neither large nor stable enough for the structure, the old man was only too happy to have it built much closer to the manor. They would be better protected that way, he said. At first, he never spoke of what these long-dead bodies needed protection from, but in those moments when he lost control of his tongue, he would say it. The balbal was lurking, eager to come dig up the corpses and devour them. It didn’t matter if they were bones and dust at this point. The monster wanted them, and Raul wouldn’t let it have them. The electric lantern dimmed. He gave its case a couple of hard taps, which only caused it to flicker and then die. The tall grass shook violently. The rustle was all he could hear now; the crickets had grown silent. The old man placed a hand on the bolo’s hilt. In the corner of his eye, he saw the dog’s hindquarters dive into the brush. He called out to it. “Hoy! Kadna ngadi!” Askal turned toward the call but then disappeared into the shadow of the trees that lined the stone fence. Raul followed the dog, shambling on the uneven ground. It was easy to miss the rotting head of coconut in his path. The pain came first, then the fall, flat on his face, having failed to brace himself in time. Groaning, the old man lifted his head. Inches away, a smooth, white stone stuck out of the soil. It gleamed even in the dark. He lifted it with his fingers, brushing the dirt off. It was a bone, the joint of some small limb. Raul flung it away and hurried to get himself upright. As he did, more bones caught his eye. Underneath the dislodged soil were the ends of long, narrow tapers: five human fingers, still held by a knot of wristbones. He knelt up, legs quaking in pain and dread. Then, a shadow came before him, darkening the unearthed bones. Raul raised his head at the hem of a flowing gray skirt. The figure floated above the ground, its soiled feet and blackened toenails peeking from underneath tattered cloth. A low murmur issued from above him, repetitive and pressing. The words sat on the edge of comprehensibility. He stumbled onto his rear and found himself beholding a pale, faceless woman. Raul froze, every part of him paralyzed. His joints locked in place, and no sound came out of his open mouth. Even his eyelids couldn’t blink to shield him from seeing. The specter raised an emaciated finger, its veins pulsing blue beneath the paper-thin skin. She hovered closer, pointing at him. He began to hear the woman’s words as though they were whispered right into his ear. Tears streamed down his face. He recognized her now. Then, the icy tip of her finger touched his forehead. With impossible force, the old man fell back as though pushed into an abyss so dark and vast it seemed to consume all of him, and the villa and the land it stood on, the coconut trees, the bones, all those bones, the whole island, the oceans, the planets, all light and all life and the very universe itself. An eternity seemed to pass as his consciousness screamed, trapped in a leaden, unmoving body, calling for his wife, for God, calling for mercy, begging, begging, begging until his fall was finally arrested. Yet instead of landing on the dirt among the weeds and the carabao grass, his body found a soft landing. Everything re­mained dark, but in due course, his sight was again aided by the moonlight streaming through embroidered lace curtains. Above him he saw the drapery that hung over his four-post bed. A nightmare, he told himself. That was all it was. He’d had another one. Raul wiped the sweat off his brow. His robe had been soaked with sweat, and worse, his pant legs were drenched with piss. “Putang ina!” he cursed as he sat up. The incident brought him back to the worst nights of his Alzheimer’s, before the treatment worked. He may have regained his faculties and his memories, but he’d also gotten night terrors alongside them. Part of him still felt the price was not worth it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had half a mind to call for help, but he wouldn’t stand for the shame of having soiled himself. Then, a great figure overcame him, pinning him back onto the mattress. It fell on him with the force of the Almighty’s fist. The wooden bed frame cried from the impact, its creaks join­ing the old man’s bones as they cracked. He screamed in pain. A massive hand, or hands, he could never quite tell, held down his head. His vision adjusted to the dark and he saw a naked gargantuan straddling him, crushing his torso and pin­ning his limbs. A giant, he thought, but no—it had too many parts. What he thought were thick folds of fat turned out to be several bodies. Arms and thighs, heads and backs, bellies and breasts and buttocks, all writhing against each other, piled on top of him, on top of each other, growing and expanding into a living monument, a pyramid of flesh. Starving mouths, agape with yellowed teeth, moaned with the old man’s muf­fled groans, and their frantic breaths matched his own as the monstrosity grew to reach the canopy, tearing the sheet that hung above the bed. Raul felt his rib cage collapse, his insides pierced by his own brittle bones. He coughed up blood and his mouth became a fountain of red spray that rained on the sheets and the undulating bodies that kept growing and crush­ing and forcing him to take his last gasp, choking in his own blood. * * * In the morning, after Doña Olympia arose from her own four-post bed, and after she made her way across the hall into her husband’s bedchamber, the first thing she noticed was the window. Odd that Raul would leave it open. Did he want to be feasted on by mosquitoes? As she went to shut it, she noticed her husband’s face. He was drained of all color, and his hands clutched his chest. His mouth was agape and so were his eyes, which stared fixedly, almost maniacally, at the canopy above his bed. The doña screamed, throwing herself onto her husband’s cold body. The caretaker, Remedios, tried to shield her away from the master’s corpse, but Olympia refused. She tearfully held onto his arm, her body half collapsed onto the floor by his bedside. She reached for his hands and enclosed them in hers. She wailed. Fifty years. Who was she without him? Had there been life before Raul? She didn’t remember anymore. She wailed and wailed, her eyes an unstoppered dam. Half a century’s worth of sorrow was only interrupted by a feeling of roughness on her skin. Olympia unclasped her hands around the rigor mortis of Raul’s fists. With effort, she opened his petrified fingers. Then she found, to her utter confusion, enough to stem the flow of tears, that her husband’s palms were completely covered in dirt. Excerpted from The Villa, Once Beloved, copyright © 2025 by Victor Manibo. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Villa, Once Beloved</i> by Victor Manibo appeared first on Reactor.

Last week, President Donald Trump concluded a trip to East Asia, meeting with several allies, including new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The Trump administration may have found a critical ally in the region. Policymakers in Washington, D.C., should welcome the ascension of Japan’s “Iron Lady” and assist her efforts to strengthen her country’s security. Hailed as Japan’s Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi shares some similarities with the late British prime minister. Like Thatcher, Takaichi comes from humble beginnings as the daughter of a police officer and an automotive worker. Also, like Thatcher, she takes the reins of a country that is in the midst of stagnation and faces threats on the foreign policy front. Thatcher faced the Soviet Union, while Takaichi faces the threat of China. Takaichi’s willingness to up Japan’s role in countering China makes her a critical ally for the United States in East Asia. China has been more belligerent in recent years, bullying neighbors all over East Asia. Most pertinent to the global economy is China’s threat to Taiwan. Taiwan is the manufacturing hub for advanced microchips, critical to much of the technology we use every day. Everything from cellphones to fighter jets relies on microchips. To show Taiwan’s dominance, it produces 90% of the world’s advanced microchips. The reason this poses a security risk, in addition to an economic one, is Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China. The Chinese Communist Party defeated the Chinese Nationalist Party in a civil war that forced it to flee to Taiwan. The CCP views Taiwan as a renegade province that must reunite with the mainland, by force, if necessary. Should the CCP conquer Taiwan, that would place the entire world’s microchip access in danger. For decades, the United States has defended Taiwan’s independence. However, the U.S. cannot do this alone. For one thing, isolationist sentiment is on the rise in the U.S. If China attacks Taiwan, there is no guarantee the U.S. would come to its aid. On the other hand, China has a huge advantage in a war over Taiwan. The U.S. is thousands of miles away, while China is just over 100 miles away. Approximately the distance between Philadelphia and New York. That is where Japan and its new prime minister come in. Unlike the U.S., Taiwan is right in Japan’s backyard. A strengthened and emboldened Japan can help serve as a counterweight to China. Fortunately for Taiwan, Takaichi has publicly expressed support for Taiwan in the past. The fact that a public supporter now leads Japan bodes well for policymakers in Taipei. Additionally, Japan faces direct threats from China in the form of the Senkaku Islands, which China claims as its territory, though Japan administers them. China regularly has naval confrontations over disputed territory, including the Senkakus. If Japan wants to protect its territory, it needs to invest in its self-defense forces. A strengthened Japan could make a difference in other areas as well. Chinese naval and coast guard forces threaten the territory of the Philippines and Vietnam. China has been illegally fortifying islands in the South China Sea. Chinese vessels are frequently involved in collisions with the navies of other countries. Southeast Asian countries are much smaller than China, but support from a larger nation like Japan could go a long way in checking Chinese aggression. So, what can Japan do to strengthen its national security? For starters, it needs to follow through on its commitment to increase defense spending. The Japanese government is already committed to increasing defense spending from 1% of gross domestic product to 2% by 2027. Takaichi aims to move up that timeline to March of the current fiscal year. Increasing spending beyond that will go a long way in defending Japan’s security interests. Another way Japan can enhance its security is to strengthen its ties with the United States. Takaichi needs a strong relationship with Trump to keep the U.S.-Japan alliance robust. Increasing defense spending will show Trump that Japan is heavily invested in its own defense and is not free-riding on the U.S. The rare earths agreement is a good start to loosening China’s stranglehold over our defense supply chain. The new prime minister faces internal obstacles to her national security goals. Notably, Japan’s pacifist constitution severely limits reforms. If Japan wants to adapt its security policy to defend the country and its interests, it needs to amend Article 9 of its constitution, which prohibits proactive military action. If it doesn’t, Japan may be legally prohibited from intervening in defense of Taiwan or others. Some in Japan may be hesitant to take such a drastic step, as their constitution has never been amended. Moreover, some may be afraid that amending Article 9 hits a little too close to home when it comes to Japan’s conduct during World War II. Indeed, the far-right Sanseito party has made revisionist history a staple of its identity. While their rise is a concern, they are, for now, a vocal minority. China IS a threat now, not a possible one. The election of Sanae Takaichi is a huge opportunity for American foreign policy. Takaichi’s success could set Japan up to counter China. If the Trump administration wants to box in China and spread the burden for defending Taiwan, it should do all it can to help Takaichi succeed. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The New Japanese PM Gives US a Chance to Strengthen the Anti-China Alliance appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It’s a sad day for the de facto capital of the world, New York City. The epicenter of American finance, media, and dynamism now enters a self-imposed trajectory of decline. But those of us on the populist right should not merely shake our heads and bemoan the extremism of Mamdani, frightening though it is. Instead, we must understand his appeal, so that we may most effectively counter his un-American ideas and continue to build on our 2024 triumph—to earn further big gains nationally among young voters for patriotic populism. Polling shows the pathway to that success. First, the great news. Young voters have swung massively to the right over the last three presidential election cycles. President Trump won young men in 2024, and overall, voters aged 35 and younger shifted materially from a +37% preference for the Democrats in 2016 to only a +13% preference in 2024. Cutting the young adult margin by two-thirds in just over eight years, it represents a massive macro shift. In addition, a new national poll of 2,100 voters aged 18-25 shows a substantial rejection of Democrats’ radicalism on key social issues, especially transgenderism and free speech. Simultaneously, young voters express extreme frustration with the economy right now, creating a clear opening that Mamdani drove a campaign truck right through. So, backed by data, here are the three lanes of success that Mamdani exploited: Affordability Even though all of his Marxist answers are wrong and immoral, Zohran laser focused on the issue that matters most to voters, especially to younger ones. Most young citizens have not benefited from the huge run-up in asset prices in recent years. Without substantial holdings of equities or real estate, they struggle to deal with sky-high costs for the staples of life. Even worse, the job market gets substantially tougher for young adults, adding even more angst. These voters correctly blamed the Democrats for the pain of Bidenomics, but that anger has now shifted over to Republicans, fair or not. Right now, per TIPP Insights polling, only 24% of young adults rate Trump’s performance on the economy as “good” or “excellent,” while 54% rate it as “poor” or “unacceptable.” On inflation, using letter grades, among young independents, only 6% give the president an A, while 44% deliver an F. Mamdani smartly dove into this issue. All his alleged solutions will only make inflation worse, of course, from “free” public transit to lavish benefits for illegal aliens. But regardless, he fixated on what matters to voters, especially young ones. Media Skills After watching Mamdani closely during the campaign, I think it is fair to say that he truly hates the founding and history of the United States. He is, in reality, Exhibit A of why we are failing regarding immigration, including lawful migration to our land. That said, as a media professional, I can only respect his acumen in front of the cameras. In this new digital age, which President Trump helped create, successful politicians must be able to perform effectively. Mamdani exudes charisma and likability. His youth and enthusiasm captivated voters, especially those in the streaming/TikTok spaces. Media savvy combined with lots of ludicrous promises of freebies forms a pretty powerful approach in this populist age. Young people are especially receptive to the heavy use of new/alternative media. TIPP Insights shows that only 31% of independent young adults have positive sentiment for legacy media, and only 34% of young women. Focus on Home Perhaps the most compelling moment of the campaign for Mamdani was during the July debate, when all candidates were asked where their first foreign visit would be as mayor of New York. All of them said Israel, with Ukraine thrown in as well. But Mamdani gave a truly “New York First” answer instead, one that might well have been uttered by a MAGA partisan. He said, “I would stay in New York City.” That answer clearly appeals to young voters, who are decidedly non-interventionist abroad. For example, a whopping 69% of young men think we “intervene too much in foreign conflicts.” Only 26% of all young adults think that the United States should stay involved in Ukraine if Putin and Zelensky cannot reach a settlement soon. That non-interventionism seeps over into a very negative view of Israel among young voters. Survey results found that only 25% of them have a positive view of Israel, vs. 52% negative. Among young independents, only 18% have a positive view of Israel. Therefore, Mamdani probably did not generate the blowback he deserved for extremist postures, such as embracing a pro-terror Jihadi who was implicated, but unindicted, for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.   In conclusion, there is a lot to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism, because their default is always “cut taxes for the wealthy and go to war.” The MAGA movement has a very different vision, one that can appeal to reasonable young people in increasing numbers, to continue this patriotic populist surge for decades to come. Originally published by Real Clear Wire The post Explaining Mamdani’s Appeal to the Young, With Polling appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The enormous site was built by an egalitarian society with no kings or rulers.