She says she is unable to continue handling the 'chaos' and 'abuse'

Books Reading the Weird Death Takes a Busman’s Holiday: Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Gray Man” Horror has a surprising overlap with descriptions of gorgeous landscapes… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on August 14, 2024 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 Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Gray Man,” first published in Jewett’s A White Heron and Other Stories in 1886. Spoilers ahead! High on the southern slope of Maine’s Mount Agamenticus stands an abandoned farm. Frost-shaken stone walls and a rubble-filling cellar are all that remain of the house, and the forest is quickly reclaiming its plot. At twilight an owl hoots from the hemlock, but few humans ever pass by. Most that do are repulsed by the farm’s loneliness. They shake their heads to think someone chose to live so far  “from neighbors and from schools—yes, even from gossip and petty care of self or knowledge of the trivial fashions of a narrow life.” But those who appreciate the view of “the shining foreheads of the mountains” can understand and share a sense of “rest and benediction.” Everywhere the place holds “a token of remembrance, of silence and secrecy.” Here “the stories of strange lives have been whispered to the earth,” and the earth awaits the return of the strong nature that once ruled it. The farm’s first owner was a seafaring Scotsman who came ashore in his later years. When he died, the state took his unclaimed property, sold the one forest parcel worth anything, and left the rest to sun, rain and birds. The more the place decayed, the more people believed that an “uncanny existence” dwelt there. According, they shunned the farm. Once, a Coastal Survey officer was curious enough to enter the house. He saw nothing alarming, but the voices of his companions outside seemed to fade away, and he sensed that an invisible inhabitant dogged him. He escaped to tell his tale, which over the years accrued greater terror as the townspeople passed it on. The supposedly revenant Scotsman was considered “accountable for deep offense” for having settled in “a place that escaped the properties and restraints of life upon lower levels.” Stray swamp lights frightened away any who ventured close, even as the world at large began to understand such phenomena. The townspeople might grow more familiar with the “visible world,” but “they grew more shy of the unseen and more sensitive to unexplained foreboding.” One day a stranger passed through town on his way to settle at the haunted farm. He was tall and strongly built, but his face had a strange pallor and grayness, “as if he had been startled by bad news.” Even his eyes were faded. His clothing of homespun wool was of a gray little darker than his hair and skin. Yet for all his odd appearance and his suspicious choice of habitation, he was no hermit. There was “a sober cheerfulness about the man, as if he had known trouble and perplexity, and was fulfilling some mission that gave him pain; yet he saw some gain and reward beyond.” He befriended the farmers and their wives, proving himself a man of no common erudition by the advice he gave them. To promising children, he was an affectionate playmate; moreover, he taught their guardians “to recognize and further the true directions and purposes of existence” and pass them on to the young ones. At first he was welcomed. It could be that some envious soul spoke against him, reminding his neighbors they knew nothing of his past, which if not exactly criminal must yet have been shocking. The real reason the people would eventually ostracize the gray man was that—he never smiled. For all his gentleness and good fellowship, once this peculiarity was noticed, who could joke around a fellow of such immovable sobriety? The children who at first would “prattle and play with him” would in time look into his face and then creep away. The breaking point came when the gray man attended a wedding and, as ever unsmiling, filled the other guests with such forebodings of sorrow for the newlyweds that the groom sent him out into the winter night “like a hunted creature.” The gray man remained alone on his mountainside farm. Rare visitors told how he had beautified the place and how he had tamed the wild birds to come at his call. He remained ever ready to help his neighbors, but rumors of inhuman strength and knowledge widened the rift between them. Once, storm-beleaguered hunters spent a night in the gray man’s house. They said he never slept but sat reading one of his worn books by the fire. And in the dead of night, an empty chair glided over to him as he turned the pages. When the “war of the rebellion” began, the gray man left his key with a neighbor as if going on a short journey. He never returned. Nearby villagers saw him striding off on the same road he’d come on, but another person saw him last. A farmer’s boy, wounded in one of the war’s first battles, glimpsed the gray man riding by on a tall horse. In his fear and pain, the boy thought “that Death himself rode by in the gray man’s likeness; unsmiling Death who tries to teach and serve mankind so that he may at the last win welcome as a faithful friend!” What’s Cyclopean: “A strayaway blossom, some half-savage, slender grandchild of the old flower-plots”. Who says flowers have to be delicate? Libronomicon: The Gray Man has three or four books, but we have no idea which ones. He’s so disturbing that no one has the guts to peruse his bookshelves. Weirdbuilding: Stephen King isn’t the only author to find Maine inspiring. Ruthanna’s Commentary One of my favorite sub-sub-genres: Scary Thoreau! Horror has a surprising overlap with descriptions of gorgeous landscapes. “The Dunwich Horror” starts with my favorite Lovecraft line: “West of Arkham the hills rise wild”, and gorgeous birdsong. What birdwatcher doesn’t love a soul-hunting whippoorwill? “The Willows” brings readers deep into the lush flood of the Danube before anything even slightly supernatural occurs. My notes from That One Time Sam Talked Me Into Reading Twilight include a lot of questions about why Stephenie Meyer couldn’t just stick to describing the beauty of the Pacific rainforest. Or maybe it’s not so surprising. Horror, after all, is a genre of mood and setting, much like nature writing. Their successes and failure modes are both dependent on close observation, and how well detail is linked to emotion. And shading from one into the other is an excellent way to have the supernatural creep into the natural. “The Gray Man” is a study in such transitions. Jewett moves easily from describing the Maine Hill Country to a particular ruin, from the ruin to the birth of urban legends around it, from legends to specific visitor, and from visitor back to urban legend again. And for all that, it’s not clear that anything unusual has actually occurred. There’s a Scotsman who may or may not have buried ill-gotten treasure, the ruin of his house that may or may not be haunted, the unsmiling squatter who may or may not be Death Incarnate. Facts are short on the ground, but mood makes up for their lack entirely. If a creepy pub tale makes you shiver, do you really care whether there was a ghost, or an alien fungus, or a guy in a mask behind it? Jewett’s Agementicus bears a subtler breed of disturbance than Lovecraft’s Arkham hills—largely because Jewett, while acknowledging the repulsion of a lonely ruin, also admits that a reasonable person might be drawn to such places as an alternative to “the trivial fashions of a narrow life”. The possibilities are broader where the people are fewer—in all sorts of directions. What about the Gray Man himself? Let’s go with the idea that Death wanders the world providing much-needed guidance to farmers and cooks and parents—and hangs out unsmiling at weddings and feasts, a memento mori providing the least-desired insight to all present. Ought one refuse to invite him in, knowing that ultimately he won’t need an invitation? This seems suspiciously like failing to invite the wicked fairy to a christening. Then again, death probably has less ego in the game than your average fairy. He doesn’t exactly fade from existence, Tinkerbell-like, if you doubt his reality. There might be value in breaking bread with him, if only so that, when the time comes, you can remind him that a few more years would mean a few more loaves of that perfect sourdough. Even the descriptions of the Gray Man are contradictory, legend-like. He might have strange powers, or not. He has a sober cheerfulness, and his eyes flash rage—but the expression on his face is “changeless.” The time period over which he goes from welcome to rejection is unclear, and might be weeks or months or even years. Only the Slaveholder’s Rebellion provides a clear marker, and that by itself isn’t enough to nail down his timeline in Maine—only to connect him to a larger set of stories. Is Death drawn to the abandoned house because of its history? Is there a link between the “stronger nature” that once ruled the property, and the scar-like nature of the fallen foundations, and the guy who knows he’s not welcome closer to town? I can imagine Death wanting to live(?) in haunted places, comfortable among the ghosts and echoes. I can also imagine Death wanting to live(?) in places whose discomfiting stories match his own, even if there’s nothing to them other than the reality that humans make up patterns to try and make sense of him. Anne’s Commentary Jewett opens “The Gray Man” with three fulsome paragraphs describing her mountainside farm. Some might find this much detail about the setting excessive in a story so short; after all, isn’t it supposed to be about some gray guy? He doesn’t appear until paragraph six, when the 13-paragraph tale is practically half-over. And this is after two paragraphs about a mysterious Scottish seaman who turns out not to be the titular character. There are good reasons for the relative weightiness of Jewett’s setting. I see specificity of place in fiction as a big plus. Not only does it firmly ground the reader, it can establish tone and atmosphere and even carry thematic significance. We know from sentence one exactly where the farm stands. A fictional setting (like King’s Jerusalem’s Lot or Lovecraft’s Dunwich) can achieve the density and color of an actual place, and why not, when it must to some extent stem from the author’s own memories and observations. But however she may adapt it to suit her story, Jewett’s setting is a real one. Mt. Agamenticus is an elevation in the town of York, at the very southern tip of Maine. Being only 692 feet high, it’s really more of a hill. The technical term for a rise only notable because it juts out of comparatively flat terrain is a monadnock or inselberg. The first term derives from the Abenaki for an isolated hill, the second from the German for an “island mountain.” Agamenticus, now a nature park, was once an important landmark for sailors, and it’s supposed that the alleged Christian convert and martyr Mi’kmaq Chief Sachem Aspinquid was buried near its summit during a funeral attended by hundreds or even thousands of Native Americans and featuring the sacrifice of over 6700 animals. That’s if Aspinquid is not a legend. Anyway, he has a memorial cairn on Agamenticus. It’s an interesting coincidence that in our current longread (Pet Sematary), Stephen King places a Mi’kmaq burial ground on a suddenish rise in the northeastern Maine woods. He uses the spelling Micmac, however. In the 1980s, scholarly publications and the media began using the spelling preferred by the Mi’kmaq nation, which considered “Micmac” to have a “colonial” taint. Back to “The Gray Man.” How appropriate is it that Agamenticus hosted Aspinquid’s funeral? Particularly if there really were so many animals sacrificed—added to murdered Aspinquid, that’s death on a large enough scale to sanctify the place for Death His Own Self, I’d say. Which is the big question “The Gray Man” poses. Is Gray (as I’ll call him henceforth) supposed to be the Big D? Two tropes occurred to me concerning his true nature. The first trope is “Death Takes a Holiday,” which supposes that Death wearies of His endless task of keeping down the world’s population and goes on leave. Generally, this means that everyone stops dying, though they don’t necessarily stop aging or reproducing or suffering from illness or accident, some highly undesirable consequences. It doesn’t seem that deaths are suspended while Gray occupies the Agamenticus farm, so he probably isn’t a vacationing Death per se. The second trope is “Subbing for Death,” in which the Big D taps some poor slob to fill in while He’s on holiday. A subtrope could have Death deciding to teach a human lessons about mortality and/or the balance of nature and/or carpe diem and all that jazz by putting them in charge of the scythe for a while. This subtrope may apply to Gray in that he has certainly amassed enough knowledge about life and death to be both perpetually sobered yet eager to share his wisdom with less far-sighted mortals. Another subtrope is “How Can There Be Only One Grim Reaper When There’s So Much Reaping to Do?” Say the Big D recruits a whole civil service of Reapers from among mortals, maybe with the lure of personal immortality. Reaping could quickly wear on a person. Reaping forever? That’d likely turn a person, however immortal, every possible shade of gray. Sometimes, when there are fewer sheaves to cut, the Big-D might give His subordinates a break. A vacationing Reaper might gravitate toward a solitary retreat, given their repulsive effects on neighbors. At the same time, a Reaper grown compassionate toward their “crop” might want folks around to teach that in the end “unsmiling Death” is “a faithful friend.” From the way the farm thrives under Gray, this is a lesson birds and plants and the earth itself are quicker to accept than humans. But he perseveres even after he gets kicked out of the wedding feast (shades of the Ancient Mariner!) and subsequently out of the Agamenticus community. It’s a good thing he has that ghostly Scotsman to draw up a chair to his lonely fireside. Gray’s vacation must end eventually, because there are always new wars and epidemics and natural disasters to call all Reapers to active duty. As the Civil War commences, Gray disappears from Agamenticus. Later a wounded soldier sees Gray ride by on a tall horse and believes him to be Death Himself. No. Death Himself gets the pale horse. His underlings must take whatever apocalyptic nags are left over. Next week, Jud explains things (some of them) in Chapter 26 of Pet Sematary.[end-mark] The post Death Takes a Busman’s Holiday: Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Gray Man” appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Apple is again cracking the whip in its much-criticized App Store, this time affecting Patreon creators and their subscribers. Patreon was faced with the choice of either switching to Apple’s iOS in-app billing system for all iOS transactions, removing all other, third-party billing systems from the Patreon iOS app – or having the app removed from the store. Patreon creators also must not turn off transactions on iOS. This demand, which has a deadline of November to start getting implemented, resulted in the platform deciding to comply. The change comes after many years of Patreon being able to avoid fees on the App Store, which is considered by some observers as a case of Apple’s arbitrary treatment of different apps. In a blog post, those behind Patreon said they felt “forced” into making a move that is not best for creators, who use the platform to earn money for their content. And that is because of the exorbitant cuts Apple takes from the transactions: 30% from all new memberships bought in the Patreon app from November. This applies to the first year, and will then amount to 15% during each subsequent year. Apple’s new requirement first emerged last year, and Patreon said that only new memberships bought through the iOS app will be affected. Now the question remains – who will Apple be taking this money from, creators or their subscribers? That, Patreon said, is up to creators. The default, however, is to automatically increase prices for subscribers (in the iOS app) – but creators can still choose to part with 30% of their earnings instead. Patreon made sure to stress that prices on Android and the web will not be affected and implicitly encouraged creators to steer their customers towards these other platforms. Either way, Patreon said that the process of migrating all creators to the new billing system in Apple’s store is going to take 16 months, warning that this migration will favor Apple’s “timeline” rather than put what benefits creators first. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Patreon Feels the Squeeze as Apple Demands a Cut appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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Ever wondered where baby tarantulas come from? It all starts with a big walk and it’s about to begin in parts of the United States. Around this time of year, males begin marching about in search of mates, sometimes in large groups and traveling significant distances. Who said romance was dead?The movement of so many tarantulas at once has earned the phenomenon the name "the tarantula migration", but there’s a more lustful motivator driving their adventures.“The truth is male tarantulas are moving around this time of year in the quest for a mate,” Andrine Shufran, Oklahoma State University (OSU) Extension specialist and director of OSU’s Insect Adventure in a release ahead of the 2023 season. “Mating season is determined by temperature and microclimates. It can be earlier or later because the males are waiting on the right situation and cues to get on the move, but typically mating season is from late August through October.”Female tarantulas tend to stick to their burrows so when it’s time for making sweet, sweet tarantula eggs, they send out a signal. This involves releasing a pheromone to draw in lustful males, and they’ll travel a heck of a long way to find a fitting mate.        One such amorous tarantula species is the Texas brown tarantula, Aphonopelma hentzi. They tend to wander west of the Mississippi River to Colorado and New Mexico, across Louisiana, and – of course – Texas.If you’re reading this from the region right now and don’t fancy a swarm of softball-sized visitors, the good news is that the Texas brown tarantula isn’t as mean as the media would have you believe. According to the Missouri Department Of Conservation, these tarantulas aren’t aggressive and their venom is comparable to that of a bee sting. Furthermore, a recent study discovered that they’ll even hang out with toads in just one of several examples of tarantulas being pals with other animals.Elsewhere, the California black tarantula (Aphonopelma eutylenum) and the San Diego bronze tarantula (Aphonopelmus reversum) are also on the move. Rural areas such as El Cajon, Ramona, and Poway can see particularly heavy eight-legged footfall as they march through in their thousands."Around this time, it’s like clockwork – right around the middle of August,” said Cypress Hansen, Science Communications Manager at the San Diego Natural History Museum, in a statement in CBS8 in 2022. “There are two species of tarantulas in San Diego, and both start their mating season. Right around this time is when the males are leaving their burrows and they’re starting to look for females.”So, if you see a squad of tarantulas marching across the road, why not give them an encouraging wave? Dating is rough, even for tarantulas.

The Forsa Ring (Forsaringen in Swedish) is the oldest surviving legal text from Scandinavia, dating to around the 9th or 10th century CE. However, the information is not inscribed on paper, nor rock or wood, but on an iron ring.The legal document consists of a metal hoop around 43 centimeters (nearly 17 inches) in diameter that was likely used as a door handle, inscribed with almost 250 runes. The runic inscription on the ring describes fines for a specific offense which must be paid up in oxen and silver – or at least that's what we previously thought.In a new study, an economic historian at Stockholm University has taken a closer look at the inscription’s meaning and uncovered new insights into the legal document. “The Forsaringen inscription ‘uksa … auk aura tua’ was previously interpreted to mean that fines had to be paid with both an ox and two ore of silver. This would imply that the guilty party had to pay with two different types of goods, which would have been both impractical and time-consuming,“ Rodney Edvinsson, study author and Professor of Economic History at Stockholm University, said in a statement.According to his analysis, the "auk" should be interpreted as “also” as opposed to "and,” meaning the fines could be paid either with an ox or with two ore of silver. “This indicates a much more flexible system, where both oxen and silver could be used as units of payment. If a person had easier access to oxen than to silver, they could pay their fines with an ox. Conversely, if someone had silver but no oxen, they could pay with two ore of silver,“ Edvinsson explained.The mention of both “payment types” perhaps reflects the shifting economy of Scandinavia at the time. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the region saw an influx of silver that boosted the economy. The newfound wealth led to the minting of the first domestic coins in Sweden around 995 CE. However, just a few decades later in the 1030s CE, coin minting ceased and the economy shifted back to using non-metallic goods, like livestock, as standard trade units. It’s likely that the Forsa Ring captures this brief transitory period when Vikings were using both rare metals and livestock to exchange value. As a non-literate culture, the Vikings aren’t known for their record-keeping and are often depicted as wild marauders. However, it is evident they created complexly organized societies and documented the everyday realities of their world in a truly unique style.They did this using runestones, a system of symbols often carved into rock to commemorate the dead, record significant events, or celebrate achievements. Among the most amazing are the Jelling stones in Denmark, a pair of 10th-century royal gravestones. The oldest was created on behalf of King Gorm the Old to honor his wife Thyra, while the second stone was raised by his son, Harald Bluetooth (the namesake of the wireless technology ).The new study is published in the journal Scandinavian Economic History Review.

Ever went caving as a child and were told all about the wonderful structures that form within these epic caverns, only to promptly forget everything the second you saw the sign for the gift shop? Well, wonder no more, as we break down the differences between those pesky cave structures.Stalactites and stalagmitesThe bread and butter of the mineral formations are undoubtedly stalactites and stalagmites. Formed by mineral deposits building up from precipitation within the cave, stalactites are the icicle-shaped formations that hang from the ceilings. Stalagmites are their upward growing partners that form as water is dripped from the roof onto the floor, creating mineral deposits that form from the ground up, explains NOAA.There are many fun ways to remember which one is which; some suggest that (stalag)mites crawl up your legs and (stalac)tites fall down, or use the “g” in stalagmites to refer to them growing up from the ground, and the “t” in stalactites as the top of the cave.Speleothem formationBoth stalactites and stalagmites are types of speleothems, derived from the Greek words spelaion meaning "cave" and thema meaning "deposit", explains the National Park Service. Rainwater lands on the ground before seeping into caves via cracks in the rock. Along the way the water picks up carbon dioxide gas, making the water more acidic. This then passes over limestone rocks (sometimes dolomite) dissolving some on the way past. When the water reaches the cave the gas is released, and the calcite is deposited in various forms across the cave drip by drip.These cave formations take a long time to build up, sometimes several thousand years.Image credit: zombiu26/Shutterstock.comOther formationsWhile stalactites and stalagmites are referred to as dripstones, because they are formed by dripping water, many other types of cave formations also occur. Columns are created when stalactites and stalagmites join up together, while the bizarre “cave popcorn” is formed when water comes through pores in the rocks, forming rounded bumps that resemble popcorn and in some cases trapping skeletons inside forever. In the Eastern United States, a vast expanse of stalactites and stalagmites have formed the world's biggest musical instrument.Funky flowstones can also occur when the water travels over the walls in sheets, creating longer layers. These can contain different colored mineral deposits, earning the nickname “cave bacon” due to their streaky appearance. Don't eat the forbidden cave bacon!Image credit: Winning Image Photography/Shutterstock.comThese cave formations take a long time to form, sometimes over millions of years, while others have been painted by Neanderthals and can even help trace ancient wildfires. 

It’s not every day you find a 2-meter (7 foot) tusk from a member of the same order as elephants, so finding one sticking out of a steep embankment in Madison County, Mississippi was a big event for amateur collector Eddie Templeton. When he alerted the Mississippi State Geological Survey, he learned he had found something more significant – the state’s first mammoth tusk, rather than the legacy of a mastodon as he first imagined.North America supported an impressive array of Proboscideans until the party was ruined by humans or climate change, depending on who you believe. Woolly mammoths are the most famous of these, thanks to their presence across much of Eurasia as well, and their relatively late survival. However, even at the peak of the Ice Age no woolly mammoth would have ventured as far south as Mississippi, they were woolly for a reason. Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), and Jefferson’s mammoth (which may or may not be distinct species) ventured into territory as warm as Florida and Mexico, however. Nevertheless, mammoth tusks were unknown in Mississippi before because at the time the state was mostly forests, and mammoths of any sort preferred open grasslands.Mississippi and similarly forested areas were left to mastodons, which were browsers on tree leaves more adaptable in their territory. Gomphothere, a few of whose teeth have been found along the river that gives the state its name, also had a presence.     Irrespective of the species, Templeton knew this was a find worth preserving, and to do so he needed to contact the Survey. Tusks may seem tough, but even exposure to the summer sunlight can destroy them.Fortunately, the tusk was largely underwater, and a team was able to dig it out in a day. Extraction revealed its shape to be that of a mammoth’s and that it weighed 270 kilograms (600 pounds). "When I learned it was a mammoth and not a mastodon, I got even more excited. I've never found any part of a mammoth. I always hoped to find a part of a mammoth, but that's pretty rare down here," Templeton told the Clarion Ledger, of nearby Jackson.A State Geological Survey employee with the tusk while it was being covered in aluminum foil and covered in burlap strips soaked in plaster to protect it.Image Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Environmental QualityScientists from the Survey concluded its former owner had died in or near a stream and been washed onto a sandbar in a flood, where its body got covered, preserving the tusk.Templeton has found the area a happy hunting ground for Ice Age fossils. He recently came upon a well-preserved toe-bone of Smilodon fatalis or saber-toothed cat (more often known as a saber-toothed tiger, but their tiger relationships is remote) in neighboring Yazoo County.The Survey’s James Starnes told the Clarion Ledger this was the largest animal whose remains had ever been found in the state.  "This was a big, big animal. This would have dwarfed a woolly mammoth."So what was a mammoth doing in Mississippi in the first place? Ice Age animals did not respect future state boundaries, and while most of Mississippi was forested, there was some grassland that would have appealed to Columbian mammoths, including Madison County. Although this is the first mammoth tusk found in the state, a few teeth had previously established their presence.As the size of the tusk hints, Columbian mammoths were bigger than woolly mammoths, or modern elephants for that matter, reaching 4.5 meters (15 feet) at the shoulder and weighing as much as 10 tons. The project to bring back the woolly mammoth might even be said to be under-ambitious.

A new study has put astrologers to the test, ultimately determining that they are confident in what they are saying, but no better at it than random chance.Astrology mentions the planets and stars a lot, so can sound sort of science-y to laypeople, until you start looking into it. In fact,  Gallup and YouGov surveys found that about 25 percent of Americans believe that the movements of stars and planets can affect people's lives through some unknown mechanism.There have been many scientific tests of astrology, and yet zero evidence has been produced in its favor.    One team, earlier this year, attempted yet another study to see if there was any validity to it, though of course not expecting to find any. They looked at a number of characteristics of 308 people (from religiosity to political persuasion) and various life outcomes (such as their mental wellbeing, achievements, and how busy their social lives were). Using zodiac signs, they found no connection. However, they were criticized by astrologers for using Sun signs, whereas astrologers say they use "entire astrological charts". The team decided to work with six astrologers to create a better test, to see whether astrologers could match people to their astrological charts.The test, which is still available to take if you think you have astrological skills, was then put to 152 astrologers to see if they could perform better than random. The team found that more experienced astrologers were more confident about how many of the 12 people they had correctly assigned to their star sign. However, this added confidence did not translate to better performance, and they all performed in line with what you would expect from picking an astrological chart out of a hat. Those who considered themselves a "world-class expert" guessed 2.2 out of 12 correctly on average."If astrologers as a group had been able to do meaningfully better than chance, this study design would have supported the conclusion that astrology works," the authors explained in a blog post. "But, as it turned out, astrologers in the study performed in a manner statistically indistinguishable from random guessing."The team was able to look at how astrologers from different schools of astrology (e.g. Chinese, Western, Mayan, and Renaissance) performed. They found that Hellenistic astrologers got the most right, 2.9 out of a possible 12, but this was still statistically in line with guessing. The team attempted to find out whether, though they were wrong in their assessments, astrologers at least agreed with each other. For instance, did they all pick the same incorrect answer."The agreement rates among astrologers are very low, ranging from about 21 percent to 28 percent depending on experience level," the team explained. "This suggests there is little consensus among astrologers when interpreting the same charts, even among those with high levels of experience."The team identified a number of limitations of the study, which has not been peer reviewed, including that the astrologers' experience level was self-reported, and that no single study is definitive."An individual study can only provide strong evidence related to a claim, not definitive proof," the team concluded. "Every study, including this one, should be interpreted in the context of other evidence."Unfortunately for astrologers, all the evidence (including far larger studies) so far points to no validity to their claims.The study's results are posted to Clearer Thinking.