'Radical green agenda'

'Grinches of the world looked down … and their hearts turned to ash'

'Circumvent the Panama Canal'

'Respect for the game'

This is totally my daughter when she gets mad

From the BBC comes the story of an intrepid and dedicated scientist who has spent decades working in China’s mountain forests in an effort to protect and understand one of the nation’s most amazing animals. The golden sub-nosed monkey is revered alongside the giant panda as “national treasures” of Chinese wildlife, yet this couldn’t protect […] The post Rarest Monkeys Now Number Close to 2,000 Thanks to One Man’s Jane Goodall-like Passion appeared first on Good News Network.

Books reading recommendations Adventures in Tourism: Five SFF Stories About Travel Oh, the joys (and perils) of visiting unfamiliar places and times… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on September 23, 2025 Photo by Andrew Neel [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Andrew Neel [via Unsplash] The world exhibiting as it does a marvellous diversity of cultures, the question arises of how best to appreciate them. Unimpeachable experts1 assure us that the answer is “in person.” Pictures in magazines and dense text in hefty tomes are fine, but neither can replace reality. Perhaps examples of the wonders awaiting travellers are in order. Here are the first five that came to mind. “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber (1950) World War III failed to destroy either the United States or their Russian rivals. The nuclear exchange only inflamed the rivalry. Both sides spare no effort preparing for the next, quite possibly final, nuclear war. Thus, Englishman Wysten Turner’s purpose for visiting what remains of New York: trading American grain for British electronics that will no doubt find their way into the proposed American moon base. Carefree hot-rodders provide Turner with an unexpected meet-cute, as he pulls an American woman out of the path of a fish-hook-festooned car. Although her name is as much a mystery as her face—no decent American woman would appear in public without her mask—Turner is enchanted. Too bad for poor Turner, who might have been better off remaining in England. There’s nothing horrific under the mask; just a perfectly normal, if unadorned, face. This isn’t one of those atomic mutant stories. It’s more of a romance… just not for Turner. “Nobody’s Home” by Joanna Russ (1972) The Kamarovs revel in utopia. Every need is a whim away, whether food, global travel or delightfully convoluted romantic lives. Even better, every member of the family is a well-adjusted genius. The Kamarovs are the sort of people with whom one might want to share utopia. Just ask the Kamarovs! Enter the stranger. Leslie is hard-working and diligent, but she isn’t as pretty, clever, or as delightfully witty as the Kamarovs. Is there a place in the Kamarov orbit for someone so relentless ordinary as Leslie… or are there limits to the Kamarov inventiveness? It’s a bit unclear how many people like Leslie share this world with the Eloi at its center, as under usual circumstances, the Kamarovs would never sully their consciousness acknowledging someone like Leslie. Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe (1978) Hassan Kerbelai quests after news of young Nadan Jaffarzadeh, who vanished during a trip to America. Of Nadan himself, no sign can be found. However, Hassan is in possession of Nadan’s journals, which document his experiences in the America of tomorrow. Perhaps these will provide a clue… Although much reduced from its golden age, backward America is not quite so impoverished as tales would have it. Or at least, the polluted wreck of a once-great nation still offers delights to wealthy visitors. But as Nadan belatedly realizes, it also offers dreadful revelation. It’s not entirely clear what Nadan discovered. What is obvious is that Nadan could teach a masterclass in stubbornly refusing to correlate all of the information at hand, because the conclusion would be unpleasant. Pillars of Salt by Barbara Paul (1979) Mid-21st-century America never invented physical time travel. They have something even better. They can project their minds as passive observers into the bodies of people in the past. This allows the travellers to experience the wonders of the past without any risk of changing history or suffering personal injury. Or so they believed. Angie Patterson witnesses Queen Elizabeth’s brush with death due to smallpox. To Angie’s surprise, Elizabeth dies… then is resurrected thanks to some as yet mysterious consequence of hosting out-of-time visitors. The past is not immune to future tampering! And as Angie will discover, the future is not immune to the past. The book doesn’t detail the full range of regulation applied to time travel. Judging by the manner in which it is used—for everything from sex education to entertainment—whatever controls these people have in place are not nearly enough…even ignoring Angie’s discoveries about causality and body-hopping. “The Feast of Saint Janis” by Michael Swanwick (1980) Post-collapse America2 may be impoverished, but its medical schools are still the finest on the planet. New Africa is wealthy and powerful, but in this one field, they lag behind the US. New Africa can offer advanced technological services if the US agrees to train African medical students. It’s Wolfgang Hans Mbikana’s task to convince uncooperative American officials to agree. Life isn’t all negotiations with pricky Americans. Wolf is drawn into the orbit of Maggie Horowitz, Janis Joplin impersonator. Or rather, he is careful guided. Maggie represents a truth about America that the American government very much wants New Africa to understand. People have been telling stories about the joys of visiting unfamiliar, far-off lands throughout all of written history. The above is a very small sample. No doubt you have your favourites—don’t everyone mention Xenophon’s Anabasis!—which you are invited to mention in comments below.[end-mark] Destination Ontario. ︎Yes, a lot of these tales are set in the US. This is because the stories were written by Americans for a primarily American audience. CBC Radio’s Nightfall radio show (no relation to the Asimov) featured as one of its recurring themes visits by Canadians to various dreadful destinations within Canada, which to the Toronto writers behind the show appeared to be defined as “anywhere outside the GTA.” Which frankly I find astonishing, as it suggests Torontonians are aware there’s a Canada outside the GTA. ︎The post Adventures in Tourism: Five SFF Stories About Travel appeared first on Reactor.

An X-Men Age Of Apocalypse retrospective. Reliving X-Men Alpha #1 Age of Apocalypse is an X-Men crossover event that ran from February 1995 to June 1995 throughout various newly named X-Men titles. The regular ongoing CONTINUE READING... The post Enter Now: The Age Of Apocalypse! Part 1 appeared first on The Retro Network.

You need to know who you can trust. This is the case whether you are in a long and slow-burning type of SHTF that we frogs currently find ourselves in, or a more dramatic one, such as what Selco lived through. The more dramatic the SHTF, the more important the trust factor is. Who knows what’s coming down the pipeline for us? So why wait to hone your trust detector skills until it’s too late? In SHTF, you’ll be too busy trying to find drinkable water to get to know that neighbor whom you always thought might be a prepper. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought over the past couple of weeks. You see, as it often happens, my own life is the inspiration for these articles. A couple of weeks ago, someone I thought I could trust….well, they turned out not to be so trustworthy after all. It was a painful lesson. To be honest, I haven’t fully processed it or figured out just what went wrong there. However, in my typical style, I am on my learning curve, seeking out information that will help me improve, if possible, for next time. I thought I would share what I have learned with you all so far. In terms of psychology, there are some basic behaviors and character traits that you can look for when considering whether you can trust someone. The key here is that all of this takes time. So, if you had been thinking about finding your prepper posse, the day to start is today, not tomorrow. Reach out and try to meet some like-minded folks in your area now, whether through preparedness/homesteading courses, online forums, or the like. (Here are more tips for making prepper friends.) Over time, you can use the list below to assess the trustworthiness of your potential community members. Trust Your Instincts I am a very intuitive person. If I have a gut feeling that someone cannot be trusted, I go with that, even if the evidence hasn’t surfaced yet. In the situation I went through a couple of weeks ago, although everything seemed great on the surface about this new friend, I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t adding up. Trusting this feeling, I was cautious about what I shared. Fast forward a couple of years, and she broke my trust: big time. How it happened doesn’t really matter. She showed that she couldn’t be trusted when the chips were down. I live in a small town, so I’ll always be polite to her, but once bitten, twice shy. Through this, I learned a valuable lesson about how a gut instinct is important to listen to, even when everything on the surface appears fine. Look for Actions, not Words Here’s what the psychologists have to say about trust. Take a close look at the person you are considering whether to trust or not: watch what they do. In your conversations, are they sharing gossip about others? What makes you think that they will not gossip about you? They may be insecure and trying to impress you with what they know. But you could be the victim of that insecurity the next time they need to impress someone else. Speaking of sharing, watch carefully what happens when you share something vulnerable with a new acquaintance. Does what you shared make it into your small town’s gossip mill? Is it used against you sarcastically at a later time? Where is the trust in that? Confronted, this person may say they were “just joking,” but you just caught sight of a real red flag. Overall, you are looking for consistency. Is what they do consistent with what they say? This can be seen in even small daily interactions. Are you always the one to pick up the tab for breakfast? Did they “forget” to bring their wallet again? Where is the respect and reciprocity in that? Do you need some honest feedback on something, but you can tell they are holding back? They may be trying to protect your feelings, but it is a sign that they aren’t comfortable with a certain level of honesty with you. Similarly, what if they made an error, like forgetting to meet you at the gym? Do they own up to the error honestly, or blame the calendar function in their phone….on the fritz again! Although these may not seem like major issues, over time, these actions that are not consistent with honesty speak much louder than words. Also, keep in mind that I’m not recommending a rigid counting of every favor in a book. Everyone has down times in their lives, or times when they may need some extra help, like an illness, personal loss, or unemployment. Look for behavior over time that shows a sense of responsibility for reciprocity. Trust someone who wants to contribute actively to the relationship, not only take. Finally, does this person do what they say they are going to do? Sure, things come up sometimes, but overall, do they keep their promises? I remember a “friend” I once had. She used to say dramatically “I’m there for you, whatever you need, just let me know.” Well, one week, after a major car accident which totalled my car, I needed a jug of water at my off-grid tiny home. Where was this “friend”? Hmmmm….nowhere to be found. You definitely want to find sh*t like this out way before SHTF! Showing Respect Trust is also closely related to respect. Someone you can trust respects your boundaries. Say one night, you were going to go out to a movie with a friend, but your spouse is ill and you need to stay home. If someone can’t respect your need to support your spouse, they might try to guilt-trip you into coming anyhow, or at least try to make you feel bad about not keeping your plans. Someone who behaves this way is not empathetic and cannot be trusted to see and respect your needs beyond their own. Similarly, as you get to know someone, keep an eye out for signs that they are not respecting you for who you are. Maybe you just meet someone and they tease you about your beater car. You brush it off, as you’re having a lot of fun hanging out. However, you continue to get ribbed and receive comments about how you should upgrade “the old jalopy.” Maybe they send you a few texts with some 0% financing offers on new vehicles. You get the drift. This is just a small example of how someone might show a lack of respect that is combined with a desire to manipulate or control your behavior. “You Can Trust Me!” Trust is earned over time by observing behaviors, not listening to words. Are you working on building a community you can trust in SHTF? Are you using any of the ideas above? Do you have one of your own you can share with us? Please tell us in the comments section. About Rowan Rowan O’Malley is a fourth-generation Irish American who loves all things green: plants (especially shamrocks), trees, herbs, and weeds! She challenges herself daily to live her best life and to be as fit, healthy, and prepared as possible. The post Who Can You Trust? Hone Your Skills Now appeared first on The Organic Prepper.

Spiders are sensitive to strong smells, which just might keep them out of your bedroom.