'Doesn't matter'

'In the face of danger'

'He is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration'

'We just never communicated'

'Out of control'

Some species of fig trees store calcium carbonate in their trunks—essentially turning themselves (partially) into stone. This ‘auto-petrification’ may offer a strange new way to reduce human carbon emissions, as the mineral created by the trees has a much longer lifespan than organic carbon absorbed and deposited in its root system. An international team of […] The post By Turning Themselves to Stone, These Remarkable Fig Trees Sequester CO2 Far Longer Than Normal appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Reading the Weird  ‘You’ Only Live Once: Hildur Knútsdóttir’s The Night Guest (Part 6) Sibling rivalry can be hell… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on July 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we’re reading Chapters 36-46 of Hildur Knútsdóttir’s The Night Guest. The English version, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal, was first published in 2024; the original was published in 2021. Spoilers ahead! Hakon, the psychologist Iðunn finally visits, can’t prescribe sleeping pills. He talks about psychosis. He wants her to go to the psychiatric ward—she can get the pills there. Iðunn is tempted to let doctors take responsibility for her, and for the other. She’s scared, though, of what the other will do to punish her. Could she get a straitjacket, she asks hopefully. Hakon, looking sad, doesn’t answer. He repeats that she should go to the hospital, immediately. He’ll call her a cab. Iðunn says she’ll think about it, but instead she goes home. * * * She stops locking her door at night. She wakes up exhausted each morning, but at least her fingers are healing. After four nights, she stops bothering to check the tracking map on her watch. She doesn’t always take the same route, but she always goes to the harbor at Grandi. What is out there? * * * Stefan keeps messaging, but Iðunn doesn’t have the energy to come up with a good response. Besides, isn’t ignoring him the better strategy? Her brain has “solidified into a ball of hard glue.” Hakon calls to check on her. Iðunn says she’s feeling better, sleeping well. She can hear that he doesn’t believe her, but after all, he can’t force her to go. Or call her mom. Right? He keeps asking if she’s sure she’s okay, as if hoping against his instincts that she’s telling the truth. The simple repetition of the question turns it into a reassuring statement. Iðunn almost feels like she’s getting better, but that feeling doesn’t last long. The human resources manager calls about her long absence on sick leave. Iðunn senses the woman thinks she has a mental illness of some kind, can’t ask outright. While silence stretches out, she thinks about how socialization has schooled women to “create a cozy atmosphere and ensure that no one is embarrassed about anything.” But she’s too tired to spare the HR manager, who settles for demanding a doctor’s note if she’ll be out longer. She forces herself to get out of bed and take a much needed shower. She’s got to shake off her “malaise.” Just because someone takes control of her body while she sleeps doesn’t mean she can’t live life, does it? She calls Mar and invites him to visit. * * * She cleans her apartment top to bottom and carefully puts on makeup. At least her black eye has faded; she can’t do anything about her two missing fingernails. For a while she wonders if her girlfriends were right: she just needed to exert herself and socialize. Too bad her problem’s not simple fatigue, but forget that. Tonight she’s going to live, and quite a lot. Mar arrives bearing burgers, fries and a bottle of good red wine (what a prince!) Like a gentleman, he praises the apartment’s view and inspects the pictures on her walls. Iðunn, on the other hand, is not feeling ladylike. Mar doesn’t protest when she steers him into the bedroom. The food’s cold when they finally get to it, but the wine is very good. They end up curled together on her sofa, watching a Netflix movie. Her head on Mar’s shoulder, Iðunn thinks it would be nice to always live such a life. * * * She wakes up in her bed, not remembering how she got there from the couch. She must have fallen asleep, which makes her heart race with apprehension. Mar lies beside her, back turned, seemingly asleep, but what if she killed him? No, not Iðunn, the other she. Then Mar rolls over and looks at her. His green eyes are beautiful. He smiles and draws her into his arms. He thanks her for last night. For the second time they made love. She was “absolutely amazing.” As Mar tightens his embrace, Iðunn clenches her fists. * * * A morning comes when she wakes up with seaweed in her hair and black sand between her toes. She doesn’t want to know what’s out there at Grandi. * * * She wakes up with blood on her right knee, clotted and brown and not her own. She needs to know what’s out on Grandi. * * * Iðunn loads the GPS coordinates onto her computer and overlays all her night trips on one map. Red lines mark all the different routes to Grandi. She always walks the same way to Orfirisey Island, then branches out in seemingly random directions. After layering her routes a second time, she sees it: “The point where all the lines overlap.” The Degenerate Dutch: Iðunn ponders how women are socialized to fill uncomfortable gaps, to laugh at offensive jokes and ignore sexual harassment rather than make trouble. But she’s too tired to play the role. Madness Takes Its Toll: Hákon would like Iðunn to go to a psychiatric ward, but won’t force her. On the other hand, he’s not going to just give her sleeping pills. Her desperation for a thing that’s already failed is understandable, but telling. Denial may be all the treatment that’s easily accessible. Anne’s Commentary In these chapters, Iðunn gets lots of calls from Real Life, warning that her nightly “guest” is getting the upper hand in their contest for control of one poor single body. Psychologist Hakon wants her to check into a psychiatric ward. Her HR manager calls about her lengthening absence and dwindling sick leave days. Preoccupation with the “guest” and exhaustion from her nocturnal rambles are leaving her unable to squash her ex-and-already-married boyfriend. Hakan throws her another lifeline via a follow-up call, but she insists she’s getting better until he (admittedly too eager to believe her) stops pushing hospitalization. Iðunn, the “good” sister, has begun to question the social rules for women as she understands them. Basically, that women are responsible for making human interactions run smoothly. Her definition of “smoothly” is keeping things “cozy” and ensuring “that no one is embarrassed about anything.” “Imperfections” must be glossed over, down to overlong silences on a phone line and up to politely ignoring routine sexual harassment. Think of others first. Thinking of oneself first, as in breaking up with Stefan, only gets one called a “bitch.” How embarrassing. You can bet that the “bad” sister, Ingunn, never cared about being embarrassed or causing embarrassment. Iðunn tells herself she’s just too tired to play the cozy-nice game, but maybe she’s adapting to her guest by adopting some of the other’s attitudes. Would the old Iðunn have concluded that losing control to someone “(or something)” else when she sleeps is shrug-offable, or that she should just go ahead and “live life” in a big way? Inviting a man over and immediately wrestling him into bed is the sort of sexual adventure big sister Ingunn used to brag about. It’s the sort of boldness Iðunn wondered if she could ever emulate. Suddenly she can. She does, and success! Her prey puts up no fight at all. Afterward, Mar’s very good wine renders tolerable their delayed meal of now-cold burgers and now-soggy fries. Iðunn’s afterglow is deepened by the impact of a fast-downed first glass, and she doesn’t seem to notice how their conversation about the weather and news soon peters into Mar’s suggestion that they watch a movie on Netflix. He cares enough about one particular foreign flick to call the friend who recommended it, which leaves Iðunn waiting alone on the sofa. When he joins her, he puts his arm not around her but along the sofa back. Iðunn rests her head on his shoulder and thinks how cozy this evening is. How nice, to live such a life. How, kinda, like the evening of a long-settled couple. Fine if the people involved are a long-settled couple. Iðunn and Mar are only on their second date. Still, Mar is a prince. And a gentleman. Maybe he paired the rather special wine he brought with a very casual meal just in case Iðunn didn’t have lust in mind but a hang-out session. A prince and a gentleman, like a well-socialized woman, doesn’t want anyone to be embarrassed. He may have escaped embarrassment by being able to cater to Iðunn’s shifts from tigress to domestic tabby, but might he not have been confused? Even a little let-down? Never mind. The tabby falls asleep to wake up double the tigress who greeted him earlier, if I’m parsing his next-morning ardor and remarks correctly. Iðunn has just been shudderingly thankful that her guest didn’t kill Mar as he slept. She has just been near tears that she can’t in fact “live life” without factoring in the possibility someone else is living life in her captive body a good chunk of the time. Now Mar is treasuring her up like the perfect lover, only to unknowingly crush Iðunn by thanking her specifically for the second time they hit the sheets, when she was “absolutely amazing.” So what was she the first time, when she was actually herself? Not “absolutely amazing,” obviously. “Absolutely amazing” belonged to the other. To Ingunn, as it always had. Sibling rivalry can be hell. Especially when one of the siblings may be coming from hell to take over the job the other sibling can never manage. Iðunn can never replace Ingunn. Only Ingunn can be Ingunn, whoever’s body she has to wear. By the way, I love the staccato poetry of the four tiny chapters that follow Ingunn’s second date with Mar. “I wake up with seaweed in my hair and black sand between my toes” is my favorite sentence in the book so far. Could the night guest be taking Iðunn’s body to some esoteric spa down on the Grandi waterfront? Sea weed is a great hair conditioner, black sand super for exfoliating rough foot skin. Somehow, I think the seaweed and sand got there another way. Ruthanna’s Commentary “Where did I go?” was tricky enough as a question. “What’s there?”—a.k.a. “Why did I go there?” promises to be more dangerous yet. The Guest isn’t just wandering the bad area of town, but doing something very specific. Something for which the oceanfront location matters badly. And as we all know, nautical locations have endless disturbing implications. We still don’t know how Ingunn died. Could she, a la last week’s selection, have drowned? Given her risk-taking tendencies, perhaps she was involved in some sort of smuggling operation—maybe she’s finally showing up in Iðunn’s life (and body) now because it took a while to crawl out of the seabed muck. Or maybe she’s posthumously making nefarious deals with water women and Deep Ones and McGuire-ish mermaids. But we definitely don’t want to think about those possibilities. Iðunn sure doesn’t. The belated psychologist offers inpatient treatment, but no guarantee of a straightjacket, and there are only so many fingernails she’s okay with losing—so exhaustion and nightly possession it is, and during the day she’ll just cope with being too exhausted to work, and perhaps appreciate being too exhausted to think. Or maybe she’ll distract herself with Mar—except that the combination of distracting “prince” and exhaustion mean that Netflix and Chill too easily becomes Netflix and Nap. And then Mar gets an unmarked, but apparently delightful, reunion. So much for distraction. The remaining chapters, short and stressed, demonstrate that failure of distraction. Seaweed, black sand, and someone else’s blood, all suggest that ignorance is not bliss. It’s not even sustainable. So back to the GPS records we go, and finding that all the lines converge on—what? A sacrificial altar, conveniently marked on Google Maps? Iðunn and Ingunn still feel like mirror universe opposites—I can’t help but recall the original Star Trek episode where Kirk gets Jekyll-Hyded by the transporter, divided into an evil version and a good-but-indecisive version. (It’s “The Enemy Within,” I haven’t forgotten my first fandom.) It’s the energy and determination of the evil side, along with the moral compass of the good side, that makes him an effective captain, and he must reclaim and re-merge both sides. Iðunn and Ingunn do legitimately appear to have been real and separate human beings during their childhoods, and yet. Iðunn defines herself as the one who never hits back, the one who doesn’t make trouble. Ingunn has the animal magnetism and the determination, along with the willingness to break nails off their shared body when thwarted. (Owwwww!) Transporter accident, mundane schismogenesis, or something deeper? No answers this week, but perhaps they’re to be found at that point where all the lines converge. In Grandi, where sooner or later even Iðunn must venture. Next week, join us for another trip into the restricted library stacks with Ben Peek’s “Edgar Addison, the Author of Dévorer (1862-1933)”.[end-mark] The post  ‘You’ Only Live Once: Hildur Knútsdóttir’s <i>The Night Guest</i> (Part 6) appeared first on Reactor.

While the Trump administration tries to rein in the political excesses that foster civil rights violations and undermine the reasons for publicly subsidizing higher education, Princeton president Chris Eisgruber has doubled down on universities’ political activism. As a leader of the “Resistance” opposing Trump’s efforts, Eisgruber believes that universities should have the autonomy to operate as they please, including by using their endowments to advance whatever political agendas they favor. In 2022, Eisgruber convinced Princeton’s Board of Trustees to adopt a “Disassociation” policy, which made companies found to have “social responsibility issues” ineligible for investment by the university’s endowment. But this disassociation went beyond divestment. These politically incorrect companies would not be allowed to sell their products on campus or even make donations. They could provide grants, but only if those grants funded projects that atoned for their corporate sins. Princeton initially identified 90 companies in the fossil fuel industry from which it would dissociate. But there’s nothing keeping it from adding other companies in other industries if they are also found to have social responsibility issues. Recently, there was a major campaign to add companies linked to Israel to Princeton’s disassociation list. Thankfully, the “Resources Committee” that advises the Board of Trustees on disassociation matters declined to recommend this step, saying that the Princeton community had not yet reached consensus, or “widespread deliberative agreement,” on the matter. But the possibility of banning companies if others can be convinced that they have social responsibility issues is an invitation for endless political acrimony and bullying. All it takes is getting a committee to affirm that there is widespread deliberative agreement—meaning every activist group has a chance to make their cause official university policy. If consensus means that everyone agrees, there obviously was no consensus at Princeton that fossil fuel companies deserved to be sanctioned. Advocates were simply loud enough to bully others into silence so that a committee could say that there was widespread deliberative agreement. It should come as no surprise that in an attempt to create the appearance of widespread deliberative agreement, advocates for dissociation from Israel actively sought to silence opposition from Jewish and other pro-Israel students. This hostile environment earned Princeton an F from the Anti-Defamation League for its handling of antisemitism. It also motivated the Trump administration to pause $210 million in federal research grants while the administration investigates civil rights violations at Princeton. Trump and others aim to restore a traditional view of higher education: one where universities seek to advance and disseminate knowledge free from the distortions of political bias and intimidation. Eisgruber’s vision is essentially the opposite. If Eisgruber and the Resistance were to succeed, universities would have license to offer official endorsement or condemnation of political causes that are considered consensus views. This would encourage radical activists to bully their peers, disrupting the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge in order to claim consensus and grab the brass ring of university endorsement—all at the expense of civil rights and honest intellectual inquiry. Thankfully, many universities are moving away from Eisgruber’s vision of higher education. To be sure, universities have facilitated ideological homogeneity and its attendant coercive policing of thought for far too long. But they are beginning to recognize their past mistakes and taking positive steps—steps like adopting institutional neutrality, refusing to use their endowments for political purposes, and reducing punishment for “wrong-thoughts.” Reforming higher education will be like turning around a fossil fuel-filled supertanker, but one can at least detect deceleration in the wrong direction. Just this week, Barnard University settled a lawsuit stemming from widespread problems with antisemitism on campus. In that settlement, it reaffirmed that it would not use its endowment for political purposes, including sanctioning Israel. And last week, the University of Pennsylvania reached an agreement with the Trump administration to cease having men compete in women’s sports or to be in women’s locker rooms. There are even reports that both Harvard and Columbia are close to reaching agreements with the Trump administration to remediate their civil rights violations and to unfreeze federal funds. Soon, Princeton will find itself standing alone in its pursuit of an increasingly politicized university. If it continues to lose public subsidy and doesn’t eventually reverse course, it may find itself reduced to nothing more than a finishing school for wealthy young radicals. Under Eisgruber, it already looks a lot like that. The post Princeton: The Politicized University appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Senate this week is considering whether to pass President Donald Trump’s rescissions package of $9.4 billion in federal funding, with a deadline looming in less than 10 days. The White House has proposed a $1.1 billion reduction to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and a $8.3 billion reduction to foreign-aid spending. The CPB funds National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, which have long been criticized by conservatives for perceived left-wing bias.  The rescissions package, which has already passed the House of Representatives, would cut only federal programs that the White House says are wasteful or go to causes not aligned with the America’s national interest. Even so, the reductions, which can be passed through the Senate with just a simple majority, are facing headwinds from some Republicans. Some senators would like to see changes to the domestic spending cuts by protecting public radio stations that service Native American reservations and in rural Alaska. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in particular, has voiced concerns over the package’s cuts to U.S. foreign aid.  “I have already made clear I don’t support the cuts to PEPFAR and child and maternal health,” Collins said Tuesday night.  PEPFAR, short for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest health program for combatting HIV/AIDS in the world. It costs American taxpayers more than $6 billion per year to fund. The U.S. has spent about $110 billion on the program since its beginning in 2003, saving an estimated 26 million lives. Collins’ opposition comes at a time when foreign-aid programs and organizations have been heavily criticized by both the Trump administration and other congressional Republicans as wasteful and supportive of left-wing priorities abroad. “[Former President Joe] Biden made it clear with guidance that was beyond a doubt that he wanted the [nongovernmental organizations], the recipients of U.S. funds, to aggressively push the sexual reproductive health and rights, the abortion issue, and other woke agendas,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus told The Daily Signal in February.  The New Jersey congressman added, “I think we see the consortium of all these NGOs in these countries … integrating [sexual and reproductive health and rights] into everything they do.” Smith’s concerns over foreign-aid malfeasance were later vindicated when PEPFAR money was illegally used to perform 21 abortions in Mozambique. Max Primorac, a former chief operating officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, characterized many of the staff at the agency and the State Department as committed to left-wing causes. “You had a one-sided uniparty apparatus here [in the State Department and USAID] funding only one side of the political equation,” Primorac said in an interview earlier this year with “The Signal Sitdown” podcast. Republican proponents of the rescissions have characterize them as reducing bad governance.  “What this package does cut is numerous instances of egregious examples of blatant government waste and abuse,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said when he testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee two weeks ago.  “[J]ust to name a few: $35 million to address vasectomy messaging frameworks and gender dynamics in Ethiopia; $3 million for Iraqi [version of] ‘Sesame Street’; half-a-million dollars for electric buses in Rwanda; $800,000 for transgender people, sex workers, and their clients and sexual networks in Nepal,” the Missouri senator noted.  Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which assists the president with his funding objectives, concurred. “Most Americans would be shocked and appalled to learn that their tax dollars—money they thought was going to medical care—was actually going to far-left activism, population control, and sex workers,” Vought explained. The deadline to pass the rescissions before they expire is July 18. The post Trump’s $9.4B Rescissions Package Facing Deadline in Senate appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Read the original post "Mexican Street Corn Recipe" on A Modern Homestead. Skip the grill and enjoy this Mexican street corn recipe in just a few minutes! Use fresh, frozen, or canned corn for the perfect side dish. With a creamy texture and bold flavors, this is a recipe you’ll make over and over again! If you’ve ever had authentic Mexican street corn (elote) at a fair... Read More The post "Mexican Street Corn Recipe" appeared first on A Modern Homestead.