It seems that no one is listening

'Federal charges may or may not apply'

'You have to be well-behaved enough'

What do you think?

A wolf was caught on video playing the role of a fisherman

'Quiet'

The challenge in putting together this list is that some bands and artists were huge on one side of the Atlantic while being relatively unknown on the other. Many bands were very popular in the UK, but US fans hardly knew who they were. The same goes for major American bands that never received the credit they deserved in Europe. So we had to walk a fine line in deciding which bands to include. Of course, many bands were cult favorites with large followings but were not widely known on a global scale. And then there are bands like Thin The post 20 Forgotten 1970s Bands & Artists That Deserved More Credit appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Books book reviews The Sublime Ache and Freedom of Freya Marske’s Cinder House Ghost story, love story, and an incarnation that deeply knows its roots, Cinder House is a sweet fresh thing. By Maya Gittelman | Published on November 18, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share What makes a good fairytale reimagining? Something not dissimilar, perhaps, from what makes a good ghost story: a fresh twist on a familiar concept, atmosphere, and reverence for the source material. In a world saturated with done-to-death remakes and soulless cash-grab franchising, Freya Marske assures us that fresh and thoughtful reimaginings are far from dead. Ghost story, love story, and an incarnation that deeply knows its roots, Cinder House is a sweet fresh thing. A spell of a story, bewitching and inviting.  We meet Ella at the age of sixteen, at the moment of her death. Her stepmother had murdered her father shortly beforehand, and so Ella inherited his house just long enough for it to rightfully belong to her in death. At first, this is paltry consolation to being murdered. Her scheming stepmother and stepsisters order her about as they did when she was alive, only more so because not only can she not fight back, it turns out they can hurt her quite badly by messing with her house.  Because in Marske’s imagining, Ella’s ghost is inextricably tied to the house. She feels through it, aching through its floorboards and shuddering with its windowpanes. This means that her stepfamily breaking mirrors or scattering beads in her crevices hurts her with a wrongness that almost feels like being hit, somewhere deep inside the specter of her. Yet the connection also ends up being quite the gift—while technically confined to the house she haunts, some experimentation proves that if Ella carries, for example, a piece of roof tile with her, she can venture further into town. She can rediscover the places she took for granted when she was young and alive: the ballet, the night-market, the university—until midnight, when her ghosthood snaps her back to the house. Nothing, however, can save her from being dead: No one can see or hear her except the other inhabitants of her house, which is to say the awful company of her stepfamily.   As Ella navigates this undeath, she learns and grows as much as she can from within the confines of her ghosthood, the unwritten rules of her haunting. She even manages to track down and strike up correspondence with the foremost expert of Intangibility, the sorcerer Mazamire. The Cajarac scholar chooses to stay fairly anonymous themself, as attitudes toward magic in their homeland are less permissive than in Ella’s own realm, so they don’t pry too heavily into Ella’s intentions. Through Mazamire and a local charm-selling fairy Quaint who has no trouble seeing ghosts, Ella is almost able to have something like a life.  When word goes out that the crown prince is throwing a festival in search of a bride, Ella isn’t thinking about marriage—she knows she’s too dead for that. But when Quaint suggests a pricey bargain—access to some of the treasures within Ella’s house’s walls in exchange for three nights of solidity—Ella can’t say no. When else would she have the opportunity to be a body again—and while being one, to feel so much at once? It’s three nights of dancing, every unattached young woman vying for the prince, or at least some good fun.  It is that, so much life it hurts to press up against it. And when Ella steals away for a moment of peace, committed to enjoying her spell as deeply as she can, she finds more than she bargained for—the prince himself, stolen away for that same moment of peace in the night air.   Ella can’t let on that she’s a ghost, but it turns out, Prince Jule has a secret of his own: a blessing turned curse that happens to mean his own private passions align quite genuinely with Ella’s own. The connection that sparks between them is almost accidental and painfully true, which has no bearing on the preexisting political arrangements for Jule’s marriage, nor the conditions of Ella’s deadness. But through sheer will and the surprising involvement of Scholar Mazamire, Ella and Jule’s stories fold together in a swell of sublime and tender ache. Buy the Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget While the story beats will slot neatly in place for readers who’ve only seen the 1997 Brandy classic, the 1950 animated Cinderella, or have only vaguely heard the tale1, I also found it rewarding as a childhood fan of the Perrault and Grimm variations, which is to say this love story contains blood and wound and tragedy. Each familiar beat is adapted fittingly and creatively: the stepfamily’s motivations, the deus ex machina of a fairy godmother, the glass slippers, and what it means, at its core, to be designated cinder. Ash, remnant. It fits so well into a haunting. Ghost as self plus place, a snapshot of a person when they die yet remain, without living or leaving. Suspended, quite literally in suspense. Place and ownership do have power, and Marske makes magic out of that fact in Cinder House and beyond in subtle, tangible ways that feel immediately true.  It’s a rare thing that a book’s ache leaves me satisfied—especially one as brief as a novella—but Cinder House’s ache hits just right, leaving me feeling full rather than bereft. I am perhaps the target audience here: I love cleverly textured fairytale reimaginings, comfortable queerness and bisexuality that emerges as naturally and obviously as my own did for me. I love stories that find a way to make ache into something almost as sweet as longing, and Marske executed her premise perfectly.  Indeed, this is almost certainly my favorite iteration of The Prince ()—at the very least tied with Paolo Montalban, Filipino heartthrob, which is high praise indeed. The life Marske gives him, the depth and duty to him, the curse of his birth—I fell for him like Ella does. The romance of Cinder House is not exactly what you expect—I did mention the tragedy—but that only makes it richer and thoroughly more rewarding. Think Julie and the Phantoms in terms of tragedy, not Gothic sadness, which is to say grief shot through with true joy. Without too many spoilers, there’s queer polyamory here, and it develops as naturally as any love story, slotting within the confines of its circumstance. As always, Marske delivers fresh and original sex mixed with magic, and here there’s the added dimension of imagining sex through the lens of somebody who does not have access to a body in the same way most living, abled people do. It’s accessible, hot, original, and frankly freeing, which not only makes for a satisfying reading experience for the scene but also ties in thematically so well.  Through her Last Binding series I know I’m also simply a huge fan of Marske’s writing; it rarely doesn’t work for me. She turns a phrase like a key in a door you thought was part of the wall: neat yet surprising, a thought a moment ago you could’ve sworn you’ve had before, but hadn’t. If you’ve loved her work before, this will hit just right, and if you haven’t, this is an excellent place to start. [end-mark] Cinder House is published by Tordotcom Publishing.Read an excerpt. I can’t speak to the live actions with white leads, having never seen them. ︎The post The Sublime Ache and Freedom of Freya Marske’s <i>Cinder House</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Horror Highlights Abandoned Mines and Secret Societies: Horror Highlights for November 2025 Spooky Season doesn’t have to end with October! By Emily C. Hughes | Published on November 18, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share When you’re a year-round horror fan, the coming and going of October causes a sort of whiplash. The first day of October hits, and everyone who ignores horror for the other eleven months of the year is suddenly talking about it nonstop. Just as suddenly, Halloween is over and they’ve dropped it again in favor of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or even Edmund Fitzgerald season. I often find myself a little disoriented in early November, the calendar equivalent of the sensation you get when you step off one of those moving walkways at the airport. As much as I’d like to leave our 12 foot skeleton up year-round, the New England winters wouldn’t be kind to him, so we moved him into the barn for hibernation season. Please meet my best friend, Bone Cold Steve Austin The pumpkins have been split and left out as a buffet for for raccoons and possums. There’s woodsmoke in the air, and the trees have shed the last of their leaves. But horror doesn’t stop, and neither does publishing (as much as I wish it would pause occasionally so I can catch up). And there’s an argument to be made that November, with its steely chill, may even be a more apt month for horror reading than October. Here are six November releases I’m particularly excited about. The Great Work by Sheldon Costa (Nov 4, Quirk) It’s the late 1880s in newly-minted Washington State, and everyone’s hunting a legendary giant salamander. But Gentle Montgomery’s reason for seeking the creature is personal: his friend and mentor died in his own quest for the salamander, and Gentle suspects its blood might be able to bring him back. With his nephew, Kitt, in tow, the grief-stricken Gentle embarks on a fraught, dangerous journey across a landscape full of cults and hunters and brigands. This novel leans more toward the Weird than it does toward straight horror—think of it as a dark Western with some deliciously horrifying imagery. It’s also a strange and sensitive meditation on the staggering price of progress, and the magic we lose when there are no more frontiers left unexplored.  The Long Low Whistle by Laurel Hightower (Nov 4, Shortwave) I love extreme settings in horror: deserts, ice caps, the deep sea, outer space, and other places I will never go. Abandoned mines certainly fall under that category (when was the last time you heard about anything good happening in an abandoned mine?), and so I’m rushing to pick up Laurel Hightower’s newest novella. The day her father died, Trish heard the emergency whistle sound from the local mine. Twenty years later, she’s still seeking closure, or something like it. When a group of cryptid hunters come to town with a plan to explore the mine, Trish feels compelled to join them, especially given the video footage they have of the mine’s collapse. What follows is a claustrophobic and visceral journey into the earth, where, they quickly find, they’re not alone. Fans of The Descent or The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling will have a great time with this one. (Whistle is part of Shortwave’s wonderful Killer VHS series, standalone novellas meant to pay homage to that classic horror format, the videotape—the publisher describes them as “Goosebumps for adults.”) Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World by Cullen Bunn (Nov 11, Gallery) This is Bunn’s debut novel for adult readers; horror fans will likely already know his name from his work in comics (consider this a bonus plug for Harrow County, which rules). Set over the course of one week on an island off the coast of North Carolina, Bones starts out as a slasher and expands into something much darker and far more cosmic. Bunn puts in the work, creating a huge cast of characters in a lively community before unleashing an absolute bloodbath—fans of Salem’s Lot or Midnight Mass, this one’s for you. It’s gory, epic, and over-the-top in the best way. God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines (Nov 11, Blackstone) I’ve been a fan of Clines’ since I picked up his wildly underappreciated sci-fi horror novel The Fold years back, and I’m thrilled every time I see a new release with his name on it. In his newest, a family on a rafting trip find themselves lost in an inexplicable, impossible valley, one filled with neanderthals, dinosaurs, robots, aliens, and more. Decades later, after years of searching, the now-grown son finds a way back to the valley–but accidentally brings a small group of grad students with him. The setup is reminiscent of Sid and Marty Krofft’s 1970s cult classic TV series Land of the Lost, which is an unalloyed positive in my mind, and if you need something to scratch that Jurassic Park death-by-dino itch, look no further. I’ll Make a Spectacle of You by Beatrice Winifred Iker (Nov 18, Run For It) Iker’s atmospheric, creepy debut novel follows Zora, a grad student in Appalachian Studies at Bricksbury University, a venerable HCBU. When her studies lead her to research the history of the university, Zora finds a centuries-long trail of stories about a dangerous beast stalking the woods around campus and a secret society with murky connections to both the beast and the school. Before long, students start to go missing, and Zora is forced to confront whether the past is really past after all. This is a slow burn, full of rich character and textured details, and the payoff is worth it. Told in dual timelines (one present day, one during Bricksbury’s founding in the 1820s), I’ll Make a Spectacle of You is a Hoodoo-laced dark academia creature feature for our time. The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo (Nov 25, Erewhon) When his grandfather dies, Adrian Sepulveda brings his girlfriend Sophie home with him to the Philippines. For Adrian, it’s a chance to see family and mourn his grandfather; for Sophie, it’s an opportunity to learn about her own distant Filipino roots. But when a landslide traps the family in their remote villa, long-simmering secrets, conflicts, and curses come to a head, many of which are tied to the Sepulvedas’ involvement with the darkest parts of Filipino history. And for Sophie, the odd woman out, the trip rapidly becomes a fight for survival. What follows is dripping with Gothic atmosphere, postcolonial trauma, bad omens, demons, and more. Manibo’s newest is perfect for readers of Isabel Cañas or Trang Thanh Tran. It never gets easier choosing just a few books to highlight from the dozens released each month—to see the full list of November’s new horror books and beyond, head over to my website.[end-mark] News and Notes Call for 2026 horror titles: I’m deep in the process of compiling my horror new releases list for 2026, and you can help! Let me know about any horror/horror-adjacent books publishing next year right over here. I’m looking for adult, YA, and middle grade books, fiction or nonfiction, publishing in English in the calendar year 2026. Go nuts! ’Tis the season to give horror: Just because Halloween’s over for another three hundred forty-odd days doesn’t mean you can’t continue to peer pressure your loved ones into reading it! Prime gift-giving season approaches, and inquiring minds need to know: what’s the horror book you can’t stop giving people? For me, it’s long been The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins—let me know yours in the comments. The post Abandoned Mines and Secret Societies: Horror Highlights for November 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

As delegates at the 2025 United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil enter their final week of negotiations, the global climate regime finds itself at a crossroads: Growing rifts between developed and developing nations are colliding with a visible decline in U.S. engagement.   At the heart of discussions are ongoing conversations about regulating greenhouse gas emissions to avert climate change. One number that has long kept these policies alive is the “social cost of carbon,” or SCC. Defined as the economic damage associated with a ton of carbon dioxide emissions across 300 years, the SCC undergirded energy regulatory policy during both the Obama and Biden administrations. But any calculation is only as reliable as its underlying assumptions. At The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, we examined both the Obama and Biden administration’s SCC estimates based on their key assumptions. What we found? Minor, reasonable adjustments led to drastically different SCC values—meaning these estimates can be easily manipulated, as both administrations had done for years. Read Heritage Foundation Analysis about the Obama Administration’s SCC Modeling Read Additional Heritage Foundation Analysis about the Obama Administration’s SCC Modeling The deregulatory actions launched by @epaleezeldin and @EPA are amongst the best in modern times. They should indeed overhaul the social cost of carbon – For years at Heritage we have advocated the danger of using these models in policy. @Heritage pic.twitter.com/p3PCi9TUIT— Kevin D. Dayaratna, Ph.D. (@kdd0211) March 14, 2025 Cutting CO? emissions is essentially an investment decision, one option among many competing uses of limited resources that could improve future well-being. To judge whether emission cuts are worthwhile, policymakers should compare their expected returns to the returns from alternative investments—a comparison made possible only through proper discounting. Using an unrealistically low discount rate artificially inflates the value of climate benefits and risks diverting resources away from higher-value investments that would leave future generations better off.   The Obama administration intentionally ignored advice from the Office of Management and Budget that required a 7% discount rate to be used in its cost/benefit analysis when determining the SCC. If this intentionally ignored discount rate had been used, the estimated social cost of carbon could decrease by 70% or more, according to Heritage estimates. Another key assumption in these calculations is the number of years of projected benefits. As noted earlier, the social cost of carbon calculations sum damages over a 300-year time horizon. When George Washington took office, he couldn’t have imagined modern GPS, smartphones, or artificial intelligence. Likewise, we have no way of predicting what society will look like even 50 years from now, let alone 300. But economists relying on these calculations make such projections to skew the cost-benefit analysis towards greater benefits. Upon re-estimating the benefits of the social cost of carbon using a 150-year time horizon, which is still too long, we found that benefits decline by as much as 20%.  Indeed, the largest purported damages due to climate change reported by these models occur even further into the future, consequently ratcheting up the SCC reported by lawmakers. A third critical assumption in these models is climate sensitivity, i.e., how much the Earth’s temperature will rise in response to carbon dioxide emissions. Most agree that some warming will occur but disagree about the extent of that warming. When different warming scenarios are adjusted to align with observation-based evidence, estimates of the social cost of carbon drop by as much as 70%. That’s just according to our study of Obama-era models. The Biden administration brought additional SCC models into the picture as an attempt to ratchet up the numbers even further. We examined those models as well, and the story was nothing but the same. Read Heritage Foundation Analysis about the Biden Administration’s SCC Modeling Read Additional Heritage Foundation Analysis about the Biden Administration’s SCC Modeling Our critical analysis of the models was also published in peer-reviewed academic and industry journals and submitted in testimony before congressional committees. Read Heritage Foundation Peer-Reviewed Research on the SCC Read Additional Heritage Peer-Reviewed Research on the SCC Read Kevin Dayaratna’s Congressional Testimony on the SCC Yet another critical assumption is agricultural productivity. Although viewed by some as a pollutant, carbon dioxide is a fundamental component of photosynthesis and agricultural yield. As a result, under reasonable assumptions about agricultural productivity, the social cost of carbon can even go negative, meaning carbon dioxide emissions could yield net benefits such as longer growing seasons and increased agricultural productivity. Both the Obama and Biden administrations’ analyses acknowledged the possibility of benefit from carbon dioxide, but their reports conveniently omitted any detailed discussion of it. At its core, the regulatory regime built around the social cost of carbon restricts Americans’ access to affordable, reliable energy. President Donald Trump recognized this problem immediately, and on his first day in office issued the executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” which directed federal agencies to fully tap America’s vast energy resources and charged Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin with re-examining the SCC. Several months later, Zeldin, in consultation with Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, instructed agencies to use the SCC only when their governing statute explicitly requires doing so, and to otherwise minimize or eliminate its use. Zeldin’s guidance is an important step toward restoring regulatory discipline and preventing agencies from imposing costly, unjustified climate assumptions on the economy. Nevertheless, state and foreign policymakers may still try to lean on the social cost of carbon. They shouldn’t. The SCC’s defenders use seemingly complex and sophisticated models as cover to push their preferred energy agenda—hoping no one looks closely enough to see how flimsy the underlying assumptions really are. Although the SCC is based on an interesting class of statistical models, the assumptions used to generate it can be manipulated to give lawmakers virtually any estimate of the social cost of carbon, thereby predicting essentially anything, ranging from little warming and continued prosperity to catastrophic warming and immense disaster.  Statistical models can indeed shape public policy. But their authority is predicated entirely on the assumptions on which they are based. When those assumptions are stretched, selectively chosen, or hidden, the entire structure becomes a house of cards—appearing solid until the slightest scrutiny makes it collapse. The SCC is precisely such a construction: a sophisticated mirage built on malleable inputs that can be tuned to justify almost any outcome, including inflated claims of future harm. Policymakers who rely on it aren’t relying on science; they’re relying on a model whose outputs can be engineered to block access to the affordable, reliable energy Americans depend on. In the case of the SCC, what looks like rigor is really just a carefully crafted illusion. The post The Social Cost of Carbon: Legitimate Cost-Benefit Analysis or a Statistical Mirage? appeared first on The Daily Signal.