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1000 results for “lost_in_chaos”
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Finally I found a paper that hypotheses the concept of the underlying problem of #science with financing of #academia, #PublicationMetrics and the H-Index: We are all lost in the #ProxyGaming rather than finding the truth by good scientific praxis! This poses a risk for big topics like #climatechange, #cancerresearch or #neuroscience
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And for today's background music I will present you some electric guitars, drums and - if you like - headbanging of your own intensity. Let's drop it.
LANDMVRKS - Lost In A Wave
https://invidious.13ad.de/watch?v=uHSl0Zpw2pw -
Here another example of Kalipo's style. I party this song hard right now.
Kalipo - Lost In Vienna
https://invidio.us/watch?v=mP19ghRc27c -
CW: Winds of War
Hey, i found the foto of Victor Henry, the protagonist of Winds of War.
»Standing well back in the rank of King’s staff officers, this short unknown Navy captain, whose face would be lost in the photographs, (…)«
#ospalhReads #WindsOfWar #Wouk #AtlanticCharta #FDR #Roosevelt #Churchill -
Christopher Nehring ist Intelligence Director des cyberintelligence institute und meint, wir benötigen dringend Aktive Cyberabwehr aka #Hackback:
"Es braucht Kapazitäten, Fähigkeiten, eine klare Zielstrategie – und vor allem rechtliche Grundlagen sowie politischen Willen."
Und wir alle haben übrigens keine Ahnung: "Schon der Begriff „offensive Cybermaßnahmen“ löst in Deutschland reflexhaft Kritik, Angst und Missverständnisse aus."
...#ProfessionellAngepisst 🔥🔥🔥
https://background.tagesspiegel.de/it-und-cybersicherheit/briefing/kein-weiter-so-bei-den-abwehrmassnahmen -
Chaos in Kenya! Protests explode over tax hikes—parliament burned, lives lost. Will Ruto’s retreat calm the storm? Dive in at Ongoing Now 24! #KenyaProtests #TaxHikeFury #NairobiChaos #GenZRevolt #OngoingNow24
https://ongoingnow24.com/kenya-protests-erupt-chaos-over-tax-hike-bill-unleashed/
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"For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Ortega y Gasset pre-empting Sartrean bad faith?
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"For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Ortega y Gasset pre-empting Sartrean bad faith?
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"For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Ortega y Gasset pre-empting Sartrean bad faith?
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"For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Ortega y Gasset pre-empting Sartrean bad faith?
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"For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality."
Ortega y Gasset pre-empting Sartrean bad faith?
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A list of notes on the chaos in the NOAA from the Live Chat by Weather West (Dr. Daniel Swain):
Staff in the Sacramento NWS office is critically understaffed. Monterey office has lost people and are understaffed. Weather balloons to gather vital info twice a day are not being launched due to understaffing, which will degrade weather forecasting. In Canduca (sp?) Kentucky the building of the weather office cannot pay for backed up toilets and all maintenance has been fired. Plus, it forced staff to use an outside porta potty in an active hurricane warning. Hazardous wastes trained staff have been fired and now offices have been shut down due to no one being able to safely dispose of the waste. Some staff have been fired 3x with the firings and rehiring. US global change research program on observed and expected impact of climate change report--the company doing the report were fired, even though it was congressionally mandated.
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CW: Shitpost, Trump, uspol
#TruthOrFake: after #Trump had to scroll down in the country list, he has demanded that the alphabet be reordered to put USA at the top.
What would you guess – true or not? To be honest, in the chaos of the last weeks I kinda lost track of his statements. But given the track record of the current US government, you've got to ask yourself: do I feel lucky?
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In the penultimate session of our #TheEnemyWithin #WFRP4E campaign our heroes risk the dangers of the corrupted Caves of Chaos in search of Sigmar's lost hammer Ghal Maraz:
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In the penultimate session of our #TheEnemyWithin #WFRP4E campaign our heroes risk the dangers of the corrupted Caves of Chaos in search of Sigmar's lost hammer Ghal Maraz:
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In the penultimate session of our #TheEnemyWithin #WFRP4E campaign our heroes risk the dangers of the corrupted Caves of Chaos in search of Sigmar's lost hammer Ghal Maraz:
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In the penultimate session of our #TheEnemyWithin #WFRP4E campaign our heroes risk the dangers of the corrupted Caves of Chaos in search of Sigmar's lost hammer Ghal Maraz:
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In the penultimate session of our #TheEnemyWithin #WFRP4E campaign our heroes risk the dangers of the corrupted Caves of Chaos in search of Sigmar's lost hammer Ghal Maraz:
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"The purge China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has inflicted on the military elite was plain to see. He had lost faith in the military leadership that he had spent a decade remolding":
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/world/asia/china-military-generals.html
"A military court sentenced two former defense ministers to death."
#China #military #chaos -
CW: The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were sparks that reignited smoldering fury against authorities across the globe. One of the most watched locations has been Seattle, where protestors barricaded off a cop-free zone, drawing outsize attention and, in the process, forming a new case study in the uses of technology both to […]
♲ @[email protected]:For Seattle’s cop-free protest zone, tech is both a revolutionary asset and disastrous liability
The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were sparks that reignited smoldering fury against authorities across the globe. One of the most watched locations has been Seattle, where protestors barricaded off a cop-free zone, drawing outsize attention and, in the process, forming a new case study in the uses of technology both to advance a cause and to drown it in disinformation.
From the actual recording of Floyd’s killing and the protests and riots that followed, to documenting the police’s brutal response and sudden withdrawal, to the establishment of and widespread commentary on an improvised community, technology has played a crucial role throughout. But to center things properly, it is how people are using technology, not the technology itself, that has become more important.
More than ever before, information truly is power, and imbalances in who holds that power have been both reinforced and challenged in the course of events here. It’s heartening to see live streaming and instant distribution of video lead to accountability, but it’s also sickening to see deliberate campaigns to manipulate and subvert reality — and I say reality because it’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes. As a brief preamble, I should disclose some things.
First, I support the causes being advanced by protestors in Seattle. It would be useless to deny that I have taken sides here — partly because claims of objectivity are little more than a fig leaf for editorial decisions in matters of grave injustice and obvious abuses of power; but my presence at the protests has unavoidably been documented whether I like it or not, so there’s no sense in denying it.
Because second, I live on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the zone. I’ve been eyewitness to important events, (with a built-in tech angle at that) and it would be irresponsible for me not to use the privilege of this platform to share aspects of them that have been only sporadically covered.
And third, these protests have been organized and led by people of color, and I am a white guy who, comparatively, has only barely taken part. On issues of race, policing, and inclusion I will defer to others better equipped to educate: writers like Ijeoma Oluo (whom we recently interviewed), researchers like Joy Buolamwini, and publications like Blavity.
With that out of the way, this article will focus on three topics: The collection and use of digital media on both sides of police clashes; the use of social media and battle of information versus disinformation in the cop-free zone; and the emergence of live streaming as an indispensable medium for this and future movements.A matter of perspective
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Image Credits: JASON REDMOND/AFP / Getty Images
The initial protests in Seattle in late May, which devolved in some locations into riots involving the despoliation and destruction of police cruisers (somehow left unattended and filled with weapons), are difficult to track because they were full of movement and chaos. But they were thoroughly, if haphazardly, documented by attendees with the presence of mind to record what they were seeing.
It’s telling that there has been little or no attempt at a counter-narrative from Seattle authorities when their officers were repeatedly (and continually as of this writing) filmed employing plainly excessive force against unarmed, often unresisting protestors, or indiscriminately firing tear gas, pepper spray, and flashbangs into crowds. One woman’s heart stopped three times after being struck by a blast ball that appeared to be deliberately aimed at her, while thousands watched.
Where, one wonders, is the exonerating footage from the police side showing the protestors being described as aggressive, or non-compliant, or whatever key words officers use to justify brutality during a melee of their own creation? And yet the police are at a loss. Presented with innumerable examples of bad behavior, the force seems to have decided day after day to stand fast and let it blow over.
But it’s hard to do that when you have something like a video going viral of a child who’s been maced:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/uKdqmBN744U?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
This image, which came to represent the Seattle PD’s inhumane treatment of protestors (they stand by wielding batons as the crying kid is treated), was taken by a local named Evan Hreha. It’s hard to erase such a powerful image — so they arrested him.
Hreha was arrested a week later by a dozen officers and booked into jail for, supposedly, pointing a laser at police. It hardly needs to be said that this account strains credibility. For one thing, Hreha says he was running a hot dog stand with friends at the time of the alleged offense. But it is absurd that police would or could identify one person in a crowd at a distance, then investigate and arrest them — for anything, let alone a fleeting non-violent laser use. And it just happens to be the man behind a viral video that makes the cops look bad.
This seems to be plainly a case of retaliation, but the police have made themselves unaccountable by controlling the information available. I contacted the records department to ask for anything related to the investigation and arrest of Hreha (among others), but it will be months before the police will release anything, if indeed they ever do.
Hreha was released two days later with no charges filed. But the chilling effect of intimidating someone who caught police in an act of brutality on camera had been accomplished. The officer who maced the kid, incidentally, has yet to be officially identified or disciplined.Does tech have the guts to deploy its resources against police brutality?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/09/does-tech-have-the-guts-to-deploy-its-resources-against-police-brutality/embed/#?secret=gdf5qC5tCH
This is exemplary of the power imbalance in conflicts of this type: On one side, voluminous documentation from people on the ground that is disorganized and difficult to bring to bear; on the other, documentation that is carefully organized and tightly controlled, allowing the exertion of authority using that control as leverage. Police have also begun the process of repurposing news and protestor footage for their own purposes.
But this story doesn’t always play out the way the cops would prefer.
In the first week of June, protestors were marching up Pine to confront the police for this and other acts, after which they would have, like many similar protests, moved on to rally in Volunteer Park and then gone home, to do it again another day. But police blocked them at 11th and Pine with a barricade and line of police in riot gear.
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SEATTLE, WA – JUNE 08: A person holds flowers as demonstrators clash with police near the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct shortly after midnight on June 8, 2020 in Seattle, Washington.
The group did not disperse as ordered, saying they would stay and protest peacefully until the police moved out of the way. Predictably, when curfew came, the police were liberal in their deployment of tear gas and flashbangs, causing serious harm to some protestors and terror across the entire neighborhood. This continued and grew in intensity for several days and nights. (In many cities these clashes are ongoing.)
The justification for using their “less lethal” tools with such gusto was predictable: The crowd was violent, throwing bricks and even improvised explosives at officers. But these claims were repeatedly and firmly dismantled, because these encounters were filmed in high definition from multiple angles, practically from start to finish.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/D5sQt_bQS4A?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
One particularly revealing video was shot by a person on a roof directly over the barriers. It quite clearly shows a peaceful crowd chanting and definitely not throwing rocks and bottles. Anyone can review it and see that there was not only no violence on the part of protestors, but that the flashpoint moment occurred (documented in other videos as well) when a cop tore a now-famous pink umbrella from the grip of a person, who in offering any resistance provided the excuse for the police to retaliate — indiscriminately and utterly disproportionately.
Huge volumes of evidence of police brutality have resulted almost solely from the oft-mocked habit of young people to always have their phone in hand. (We’re not far from the always-recording situation I posited nearly 10 years ago.)
“They picked the wrong generation to pull this shit on,” said TK, a protest organizer I spoke with. “Because governments didn’t create this power — this was created by normal, regular-smegular people just like all of us. The only people that can stop it is the people that created it.”
Rarely have the police released images or footage of their own, and when they do it is often a brutal self-own. They posted images of the aforementioned “improvised explosive” on Twitter shortly after one group assault on protestors, and within seconds people had pointed out it was a prayer candle, probably from a nearby memorial smashed during the melee. The police revised their reference to it as an “incendiary device,” which, while technically true, exposes the type of willful obscuration of the truth that was frequently to be found in the department’s communications.
Following another incident, body cam footage was released to support the narrative that a “violent crowd” had prevented the police from reaching a shooting victim in the protest zone and were therefore culpable in his death. People soon pointed out that timestamps visible in the video show that the cops arrived 20 minutes after the shooting, and after the victim had been taken to the hospital in a private car — because EMTs (for good reason) would not enter the scene before police secured it.We now know that the public statement put out by Seattle Police following the shooting at CHOP on Friday night, was mostly fictitious, as revealed by their own bodycam footage. They showed up 10 minutes later than they claim, after the victim had been transported to Harborview. pic.twitter.com/wN62gQxX8c
— Spek the Lawless (@spekulation) June 22, 2020
When the police chief made claims of rape and violence in the protest zone, it was pointed out that the SPD’s own crime reports system showed no such thing. Then her claim that armed gangs were extorting local businesses was quickly put down as well, by the businesses themselves — embarrassingly, the source of that claim was a totally invented account on a right-wing blog. (Ironically, once the police retook the zone, businesses quickly complained that their presence had forced them to close.)
And of course there are the innumerable videos, here as elsewhere, of extreme force being used on unresisting protestors, frequently with the apparently now requisite knee on the neck. These will hopefully prove useful later as counterbalance to police claims, and while officers still obscure their badges and refuse to identify themselves, the quality of the video makes identifying them by other means trivial.Cops attack peaceful protestors at Broadway and Pine. 5:30pm July 2nd. Dive tackled the kid next to me, put a knee on his neck. Can’t stress enough he did nothing.
Please share.#SeattleProtests #SeattleProtestComm #Seattle pic.twitter.com/mI5DTASEI4
— eli (@sre_li) July 3, 2020
The digital record has resulted in officers, the department and the chief being caught in lie after lie after lie. These are not misunderstandings or honest mistakes but misrepresentations deliberately crafted to discredit protestors and shield the department. It’s clear that if others were not carefully documenting every encounter, and critically investigating police statements and evidence, the lies would have shortly become the only, and therefore the true, record of what happened.
What I’ve described took place in Seattle, but others have compiled abuses in L.A., New York, Portland, and Chicago — where cops have just been caught in another type of large-scale manipulation of the record.
Now in many cities these departments are facing cuts or total defunding, as much as the result of their failure to successfully falsify the narrative as their more fundamental failures as institutions.
“This generation is not dumb, as much as they want to believe that. ‘You guys are just a bunch of dumb kids.’ Okay, well, this bunch of dumb kids is about to get the city to take half of your budget,” said TK. “So we ain’t that dumb, apparently.”
A last example of the power of social media in the pursuit of problematic police came late in the writing of this piece. After two protestors were struck and one killed on a closed highway after a driver circumvented police barriers, a detective from the King county Sheriff’s office made several brutally offensive posts on Facebook — public ones.
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These were spotted by concerned citizens, who took screenshots not just of the content but also the list of people who had liked or commented positively on the posts, looking them up, as well. This proved to be a shrewd tactic, for when the posts began to make waves online, Brown’s entire Facebook page was deleted.
Turns out Detective Brown is not only Governor Jay Inslee’s cousin, but reportedly also the head of county executive Dow Constantine’s security detail and his sometime driver; a 40-year veteran of the force who has been accused of abusive behavior before. Within 48 hours Detective Brown was on leave and being investigated. One hopes that the officers and public officials who publicly endorsed Brown’s behavior will soon be confronted, as well. But how quickly this avenue of recourse would have disappeared had they been tipped off.
Keeping the cops honest is a welcome application of what might be termed citizen forensics, but social media would soon provide a counter-example of technology being deployed to discredit the protestors and mislead millions.In the Zone
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A rally at the cop-free zone on Capitol Hill on June 10.
Believe it or not, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone wasn’t anyone’s idea.
The now infamous cop-free area barricaded off by protestors has been profiled frequently and, almost without exception, incompletely and inaccurately, in mainstream news and on social media. It’s an instructive but deeply frustrating example of how, as the old saying goes, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
A very brief origin story is as follows: On June 8, following a particularly violent yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to purge the area of protestors the previous night, the police abruptly announced they would be leaving the East Precinct building, taking all valuables, weapons, and sensitive documents with them.
Protestors were astonished. They had not asked for this and had no reason to — their demands were about defunding the police, investing in the community, and releasing jailed protestors. Incredibly, even now no one has taken responsibility for ordering the abandonment; the mayor and police chief have both denied doing so. But abandon it, they did.
Protestors immediately continued marching, some continuing to Volunteer Park and others remaining behind, citing the need to protect the precinct from anyone who might want to damage it, for days on end if necessary and at all hours. If you’re skeptical, remember: This is all on video. People learned early on that many people only believe what they have seen, and even then only sometimes.
Since a car had nearly plowed through protestors the previous day and the driver actually shot someone (before being gently taken into custody by police), and hearing reports of right-wing agitators in the area, the protestors redeployed the barriers to make a safe zone at the ends of nearby streets. Someone spray painted “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” on one, inadvertently branding the whole movement.‘Welcome to Free Capitol Hill’ — Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone forms around emptied East Precinct — UPDATE
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/welcome-to-free-capitol-hill-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-forms-around-emptied-east-precinct/embed/#?secret=qUJTj18w53
What followed in the CHAZ (later the CHOP) was several days and nights of compelling events, speakers and tributes to lost lives, attended by thousands, including myself.
But what followed online was a nonstop deluge of wild exaggerations, manipulated media, racist vitriol and, of course, innumerable death threats. It would be impossible to list even a fraction of the information online that I could contradict with what I saw with my own eyes, but here are a few examples.
The most glaring one has to be, of course, Fox News photoshopping a gunman into multiple unrelated scenes of destruction and dishonestly using those as evidence of chaos in the zone. This was done so poorly it would be comical if it were not part of a larger, continuing narrative seeking to discredit the protests and zone as an antifa-run separatist state.
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One of the images run by Fox News, a combination of one by David Ryder (whose photos for Getty illustrate this piece) with two by Karen Ducey.
The separatist narrative, which persists even today, was invented and amplified by lazy or traffic-hungry outlets and pundits with little evidence besides the tongue-in-cheek name.
There was not always the need to invent controversial imagery (indeed, the gunman Fox used really existed). Video of one person handing out rifles to his crew quickly made the rounds and, combined with the police chief’s irresponsible rumor-mongering, word of a “warlord” emerged.
Without getting into the complex and largely improvisational politics of the zone, this character and his heavily armed presence were generally not approved of. But for the weeks following this event I saw the image, his name and the warlord trope posted thousands of times, coming up every single day.
It’s tempting to say it’s hard to misconstrue a guy distributing assault rifles from the back of his car. But it is testament to the fractured narrative presented online that crucial context was almost always left out or substituted by falsehoods. Not only had a gunman actually shot a protestor after driving his car into the crowd the previous day, but at the very moment of the video, the police were suspected to have been engaged in a disinformation campaign intended to provoke conflict.
Public police scanner frequencies that night (which it was known protestors were monitoring) were full of reports of a group of 20-30 armed “Proud Boys” (a far-right group) moving toward the protest zone. Bike police on scanners said they followed the group for blocks, asked where they were headed (the CHAZ), tried to dissuade them from going there, and eventually reported that they spontaneously dispersed before reaching their destination.
Now, a large group of armed men working their way up from Downtown to Capitol Hill would be a rather conspicuous sight even in those days when record numbers of armed men walked the streets. Yet none of the thousands of protestors and allies spread throughout the city watching for them saw anything matching that description during or after. No communications from known Proud Boys (some of whom would in fact show up later to attack a protestor on video) indicated a presence. More directly, police descriptions of the group crossing certain intersections were contradicted by live traffic cameras showing those intersections, which showed no such thing.
But once again the apparent police intention of provocation via misinformation had been achieved. People at the CHAZ, already justifiably worried about violence, were put on high alert and armed themselves, producing a spectacle that even now persists on social media as a way to paint the entire protest with one brush.
The repeated amplification of individual images had some troubling commonalities, in particular the barely veiled parlance of racism. People in the protest zone and especially Black men, images of whom frequently accompanied these tweets and other posts, were invariably described as “thugs,” “savages,” “animals,” “feral,” and all the rest. Tellingly, those employing this vile lexicon were seldom Seattle or Capitol Hill residents; Twitter is very efficient at importing hate.
Indeed it did not take long for the CHAZ, having achieved the dubious distinction of attracting what is called national interest, to become the target of coordinated interference, harassment and disinformation campaigns by people all over the country. The resulting mess is a concise illustration of the incredible promise and complete inadequacy of online platforms in times like these.
The number of people and groups involved in these protests had made Twitter, with its accessibility and relative permanence, an invaluable tool for the dissemination of important information. While private groups on Signal, WhatsApp and Discord were also used, it was clearly better for things like police positioning, march updates, attacks on protestors and other crucial live communications to make the information as prominent and public as possible.“There was a lot of momentum being built up, people learning and educating themselves. So this was the chance to finally put everything we’d learned into action.”
TK and her fellow organizer Tatii explained that social media was at the heart of their work, though the end result of taking to the streets was always the ultimate goal.
“Social media is a huge part because without it, we can’t do shit,” Tatii said bluntly. “When it comes to finding the information that we need and finding resources to help Black people, all of that is through technology. That’s how we network with people, that’s how people reach out to us. That’s how we get people telling us about police scanners. There are a lot of group chats, like with our medics, our car brigade, our bike brigade. It’s all through social media.”
“Scouts let us know if like there’s 30 bike cops coming down Broadway. It’s crucial when you are trying to strategically plan around that type of stuff, to keep from being cornered and boxed in,” said TK.
“At least on the Black side of social media, it’s constantly been talked about, Black Lives Matter,” added Tatii. “There was a lot of momentum being built up, people learning and educating themselves. So this was the chance to finally put everything we’d learned into action.”
It’s easy to take Twitter for granted, so we should be sure to give the platform due credit for the fundamental capability it provides. Many I’ve spoken to here emphasized that they trusted what they read from accounts with a verifiable track record more than what they saw in the perennially out-of-date local news. In fact, as Tatii and TK noted, many of their fellow organizers came to Seattle specifically to learn for themselves the truth behind mainstream reports that didn’t pass a gut test.
But the choice to publicly organize via hashtag, for all that it made important information available quickly to as many people as possible, had two major consequences.
First, it fragmented that information almost to the point of usability: One never knew whether it was #seattleprotest or #seattleprotests, #seattleprotestcomms, #seatleprotest (yes), plain old #seattle, #defundSPD, or a handful of others. This was only exacerbated with the creation of the CHAZ, which birthed a dozen new hashtags of varying quality and population. Instagram provided powerful amplification effects but little verification or network building.
Twitter also exposed this stream of important information to eager antagonists across the country, who flooded those hashtags with abuse and misinformation. Posts with images from other or past protests were used to mislead or misrepresent the present ones, and pictures of police around the area from other times were used in an attempt to spook those who had learned to be wary of SPD’s presence. Fake names and events were publicized, fake demands issued and met, and fake accounts claiming to represent protestors or the zone.
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This post, though seen by many, was heeded by few.
The ownership of one particular account was hotly contested, and confused by such tantalizing hints as it following Huawei leadership (you can imagine the theories this spawned), and for an “official” statement ending with what appeared to be a few stray pixels from a Biden presidential campaign graphic.
Later, when attempting to provoke a “mission accomplished”-style early exit from the zone after the Mayor cut million from the police budget, the account exhorted its readers to vote for Biden. Needless to say this was not among the commonly agreed-upon demands or positions of the protests. Unless whoever was behind this strange yet prominent account exposes themselves, we may never know if it was a government plant, an agent provocateur or a practical joker, or what their intentions really are.
The enduring, chaotogenic myth that the CHAZ was an attempt to secede and form a socialist, anarchist utopia led to rebranding efforts. The misconception had become so widespread that it was decided to “officially” (as far as that concept existed in the space) change the name to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest — then, noting the fact that Seattle itself is an “occupation” of native land, change the O to Organized.
This led to a further fragmentation of information channels: No one on the ground wanted to use #CHAZ and its relatives because it was no longer what organizers wanted to call it. But the name had entered the common parlance. So posts now needed to be #CHAZ, #CHOP, #CHOPCHAZ, and others like #CHAZSeattle and so on. It became very difficult to track an event — be it positive, like a march or speaker, or negative, like a fight or shooting — never knowing where to look or how to parse the information there.
It’s hard to overstate how effective the fractured narrative and opposing efforts were at shaping the national and global understanding of events surrounding these protests.
As they say you can never step into the same river twice, so it was on social media around the protest and the zone. The ever-shifting flow of Twitter sometimes produced absolutely vital data unavailable anywhere else, but always polluted with incomplete or premature judgments, ignorance, racism and false reports.
When I asked what digital tools were needed to better organize and avoid interference, protestors I spoke with generally said some sort of centralization and interoperability. Being able to colocate multiple feeds, authors, videos, images and static links in a dynamic, accessible way would save them huge amounts of time and effort. Certainly it would have helped to alleviate some of the problems noted above.Stream of conscience
“Live streaming and having our phones out every single day is our best form of self defense.”
Despite the shortcomings of social media at large, one digital medium that has proven itself truly indispensable to this protest and others to come is live streaming.
Although the technology has risen to mainstream popularity as a new form of passive entertainment on Twitch and other live platforms, it quickly became clear that it was the technology of choice for documenting these and other protests and social movements.
As TK put it: “People are visual learners; until they see it for themselves they don’t really believe it. And when it’s live, it’s live. You’re not seeing the cut, clipped and edited version. You can’t dispute what you see in raw live footage. You can’t ignore it.”
In Seattle, two people have become familiar faces, or voices, as they have doggedly documented every step of the protests this way, from before the CHOP to well after: Omari Salisbury and Joey Wieser.
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Image Credits: Jake Gravbot
Salisbury runs Converge Media, an independent web-distributed news organization. He comes from a broadcast and networking background, and when the CHOP emerged literally outside his doorstep — the studio door opened onto the police line before officers left — he took the opportunity to share the story, as objectively as possible. To him, the only tool that fit the bill was live streaming.
“The viewer needs to be able to see the context, because if the viewer can’t see the context, then it becomes something else,” he said. “People appreciate us because the stream is long, we keep the camera there and we let people make their own decisions.”
He was there not just for the controversial or terrifying moments, like clashes between provocateurs and protestors, or the shootings that occurred later on, but for the huge number of peaceful hours when people would share their own experiences at Salisbury’s prompting. The result is an incredibly valuable archive of hundreds of hours of live footage, ground truth from inside the zone that has been watched by millions.
Joey Wieser has no media background, but rather just a passing familiarity with the systems and social media methods that can grab people’s attention. Yet his stream came to be relied on by many, and the events he captured also racked up millions of views, simply because he decided to take advantage of the tools at his disposal.“It's not that we don't have umbrellas. We just never met a storm worthy of one.
Until this week.” -Seattle pic.twitter.com/STGnwIc3sZ
— Joey Wieser (@itsjosephryan) June 8, 2020
“Live streaming and having our phones out every single day is our best form of self defense. Every day that I walk out my doorstep, I hold my phone as if it is my ultimate shield, my ultimate weapon,” he said. “Without it, I feel like I don’t have a role in this movement. It’s not like I’m some prolific live streamer, or that I know what Black communities need best. I’m just some white guy and I happen to work in tech. Having an understanding of what social media best practices look like, understanding analytics and social amplification — that combined with my community activism allowed me to come out here and do this.”
For Wieser, having the right connections or network was less important than being in the right place at the right time, even if it put him in danger. (He and Omari were both tear gassed multiple times and near shootings and other altercations.)
“I think it really puts the viewer at home in the driver’s seat,” he said. “Because they’re able to not only watch an uninterrupted stream, but to engage and have a real live conversation with somebody that’s there on the ground. You know, they can say, hey, turn to the left. What was that? It’s a participatory experience in a way watching the news doesn’t allow.”
One such incident I saw play out almost defies belief. Wieser was streaming the protest when a truck blasted through, nearly hitting several people. Minutes later, a person watching the stream was surprised when that very truck pulled up outside their apartment — it was their DoorDash driver, who announced proudly that they had just run down some protestors. (The driver’s plates and info were quickly sent through the proper channels.)THE PLOT THICKENS: The man in this truck is a driver for @DoorDash and was making a delivery. The customer was literally watching the livestream as the silver truck pulled up outside their home. pic.twitter.com/di1eI9bQjE
— Joey Wieser (@itsjosephryan) July 1, 2020
Being a two-way medium, it provides new opportunities for interference as well as engagement. Both Salisbury and Wieser experienced repeated attempts to pollute their comment sections or attack them personally.
“It’s not lost on me that this amplification can be used against us, but I think one of the important things about live streaming is that you can inject your own narrative, rather than let it be to the whim of, you know, Fox News or Sinclair,” said Wieser. “Regardless of whether or not the trolls take it over in the comment sections or in the hashtags, if you’re actually listening to the content, and if you’ve got someone out here who has the right heart and the right passion and the right analysis, you can reclaim that narrative.”“The citizen journalist has always existed. They just never had the tools to be on equal footing with national news.”
Salisbury, for his part, expressed that it is not always sufficient to simply document — one has to report, and that’s what he does.
“People rock with me because just turning on the camera and streaming, it’s not enough. Knowing the history of Seattle, the history of the neighborhood, understanding political positions… and you got to put paint where it ain’t, you know what I’m saying? The citizen journalist has always existed. They just never had the tools to be on equal footing with national news,” he said.
“People underestimate the tech that’s out there, especially the free stuff,” he continued. “I know people have their views about platforms and privacy. And I think that’s a different discussion. But I will say that what’s going on here allows for citizen journalists to touch the world. I used to build OTT and streaming platforms in Europe and across Africa. So understanding the actual technology that goes into this, man, I really don’t take no stream for granted. I’ve got people in Australia who’ve been on since day one. What if I had to cultivate that through my own contacts, do my own server, do my own everything? How would I reach them? It doesn’t work that way.”
He credits live streaming with putting pressure on local and national outlets to up their game, as well — being showed up by one person with a phone doesn’t look good for a major news organization.
“Citizen journalists and streamers came out here and forced the local media to change their whole game,” he said. “I mean, a guy with a cell phone didn’t get no respect back in the day. But I had my interviews with the mayor before anybody, my interviews with Chief Best before anybody. You see what I’m saying? I’m just a guy with a phone. Now the Seattle Times has a streamer out here. This situation has made the media adapt new technology.”
While live broadcasts have been part of local and national news for decades, it was in truth a totally different medium. But it’s now difficult to imagine coverage of events like these without modern live streaming, and legacy media have begun to recognize that. Technology has always been a double-edged sword. The events in Seattle and across the country have illustrated this powerfully, and it seems unarguable that whatever happens in terms of policy and politics, the nature of protesting and the power dynamic that has defined it for decades has begun to change.
Ultimately, though, the power does not belong to the tech, but to the people.
“Technology plays a big part in all this, but I’m gonna be real with you, what you need is more old fashioned beating your feet to the streets,” concluded TK. “It’s not that the technology is insufficient, but that people are choosing not to use technology to understand.
“We’ve proven it time and time again that the only ones that really got our back is us.”
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BRIDGEND CHAOS: Three of Reform’s six Pen-y-bont Senedd candidates have quit — and nobody knows who’ll replace them
Reform UK is facing a crisis in Bridgend after three of its six candidates for the area’s Senedd constituency quit in rapid succession — leaving the party without its top two names just weeks before polling day and with no replacements yet announced.
The triple resignation in Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg — the new Senedd constituency covering Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan — means it is currently unclear who will represent the party on election day. Nominations close on April 9, and Reform has told the BBC it intends to present a full list.
The first to go was Corey Edwards, who had been placed first on the list and therefore had the best chance of winning a seat for the party. He resigned after a photograph emerged appearing to show him performing a Nazi salute. Nigel Farage initially defended Edwards, claiming he had been impersonating Basil Fawlty. Edwards stood down the following day.
The second resignation came from Derek Roberts, who had been placed second on the list. A Reform source confirmed he had stepped back for “personal reasons” that have not been made public, describing him as an ex-military figure who “remains an active champion for veterans in his community.”
As first and second on a six-seat proportional list, both Edwards and Roberts had a realistic chance of being elected in May. Their departures have stripped the party of its most likely winners in the constituency.
The third candidate to leave was Owain Clatworthy, placed sixth. As Swansea Bay News reported, Clatworthy made history last year when he won the Pyle, Kenfig Hill and Cefn Cribwr by-election by just 30 votes, becoming Bridgend County Borough Council’s youngest ever councillor at 20 years old. He has now resigned from Reform entirely, saying he will continue to serve his ward as an independent.
In a public statement, Clatworthy cited “poor internal decision making, a lack of discipline and serious concerns around candidate selection,” accusing the party of selecting candidates “with little or no connection to the communities they seek to represent.” Speaking to BBC Wales, he said the Edwards photograph “really did it for me. I can’t support a party that would be happy to back something like that.”
He added: “The country is in a mess and it’s easy to complain and I thought Reform were the answer. From day one, up until now, the way I have been treated, and members and other councillors have been treated by the leadership team, is not good.”
The Pen-y-bont situation is the sharpest expression of a wider problem that has engulfed Reform’s Welsh campaign in recent days. In total, the party has lost four candidates across Wales in a single week — with a further two having withdrawn before the official lists were even published. Patrick Benham-Crosswell, Reform’s fourth-placed candidate in Gŵyr Abertawe, was among those to go — his furious departure, which Swansea Bay News was first to report, saw him accuse the party of taking members and candidates “for granted.” Andrew Barry resigned from the Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr slate and from Reform itself, saying candidates were being “parachuted in” to areas with no connection to them.
The scale of the problem has been confirmed by sources inside the party. A separate source told the BBC that local Reform branches “were in turmoil.” A whistleblower described the vetting process as “expensive, flawed and unprofessional,” and said the system “favours insiders, parachuted candidates and personal connections over local knowledge and competence.”
Even one of the party’s own candidates who survived the process has spoken critically of it. Torfaen Reform councillor Jason O’Connell, who is standing as Reform’s number one candidate in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, told BBC Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement that the vetting had been “brutal” and “intrusive,” saying the party had rejected “genuinely good people” over old social media posts. “We’ve lost that ability to bring them in because, as I said, digital is forever,” he said.
There is also a practical consequence to the resignations beyond the reputational damage. Under the new Welsh voting system, parties are required to put forward full lists of candidates in each constituency. Having fewer than six candidates not only affects a party’s chances of winning seats — it limits how much they are legally allowed to spend on their campaign. Reform has said it will field a full list, but with nominations closing on April 9 and no replacements announced, the clock is ticking.
The turmoil in Bridgend comes as Reform holds significant polling support in the constituency. The party has been targeting working-class communities across south Wales valleys and coastal towns, and polling has projected it as competitive across the region. The question now is whether the chaos in its candidate selection damages that support — or whether, as has happened elsewhere in the UK, voters back the party regardless of the turbulence at the top.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
Reform beat Labour by 30 votes in council by-election
Owain Clatworthy’s narrow by-election win that made him Bridgend’s youngest ever councillor — and set him on the path to now quitting Reform.Swansea Reform UK candidate quits in furious ‘betrayal’ rant – ‘Party has sunk into the sewer!’
The Gŵyr Abertawe resignation Swansea Bay News broke first — one of four Reform departures across Wales in a week.Reform Senedd hopeful quits party over claims of ‘rigged’ selection process in Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion
The selection row that has been spreading across Wales ahead of the May 7 vote.Plaid Cymru storms ahead as shock Senedd poll predicts political earthquake in Wales
#BridgendCounty #candidates #CefnCribwr #KenfigHill #OwenClatworthy #Pyle #ReformUK #SeneddElection #SeneddElection2026
The polling context — and whether Reform’s chaos is showing up in the numbers. -
And who will work in the fields? Children?Folks who have just lost #FoodAssistance and #Medicare?#Protestors who piss off Trump?
#Trump’s Immigration #Crackdown Hits #CaliforniaFarms
#Farmworkers hid in fields on Tuesday as word spread that ICE agents were conducting raids in California’s breadbasket, an activist said.
By Bernard Mokam and Pooja Salhotra
June 11, 2025, 9:08 p.m. ETExcerpt: " 'The #Trump administration is ramping up its immigration crackdown, with a focus on workplaces with undocumented #laborers, such as #farms, #restaurants and #construction sites. Estimates show more than eight million undocumented #immigrants work in the United States.
"Last Friday, federal immigration agents swept through the garment district of Los Angeles, setting off protests that have rattled sections of downtown L.A. and have spread to a number of cities across the country.
"For #farmworkers — about 42 percent of whom are undocumented, according to the Agriculture Department — the escalation in arrests has created widespread fear." 'Children are terrified,' Ms. Romero said. 'They don’t want to go to school because they don’t know if their parents will be home when they come back.'
"Local leaders have rebuked the escalation, which could bring hardship to one of California’s agricultural corridors. The #CentralValley — which grows #almonds, #grapes, #walnuts and #cherries, among other crops — produces a quarter of the nation’s food, worth an estimated $17 billion a year, according to federal data.
" 'These actions are completely unjustified and harmful,' said Mayor Luis McArthur of Oxnard. 'They create chaos in our city without contributing much to public safety. Furthermore these actions undermine the very principles of #DueProcess.'
"The raids this week represent the first organized immigration enforcement from the new Trump administration to hit California’s agricultural region, which covers about 40 percent of the state, Ms. Romero said. A handful of federal operations have been conducted in other rural communities in recent weeks. Last month, federal agents pulled over a bus in #AlbionN., and detained 14 immigrants who worked at a nearby farm. In April, three children and their mother were detained at an upstate New York dairy.
"Rural migrants are particularly vulnerable to immigration enforcement because they stand out in towns that are often racially homogenous, said Will Lambek of Migrant Justice, an advocacy organization for farmworkers in #Vermont, where eight dairy workers were detained in April.
"In California, Ms. Davalos said the agents could have made more arrests had the community been less prepared. Once a volunteer spotted officers in the area, an alert was sent through a network of support.
"Federal agents were denied entry to at least nine farms in the Central Coast, Ms. Davalos said. Some growers parked their vehicles in front of their gates. Employees also obscured their cars.
'We demonstrated the power of brave, nonviolent #resistance to #ICE’s tactics of #terror,' Ms. Davalos said, lamenting what she described as politically driven attempts to reach a deportation quota. 'At the end of the day, they’re seizing our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.'"If federal immigration enforcement activities continue, #FoodProduction will become increasingly difficult, and food prices could rise, warned Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy at the California Farm Bureau."
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/trump-ice-raids-california-farms.htmlArchived version:
https://archive.ph/NFWuO#ResistICE #Authoritarianism #ImmigrationCrackdown #ICERaids #TrumpIsANazi #AuthoritarianRule #ImmigrantsFeedUs #NoHumanIsIllegalOnStolenLand #HungerGames #EatTheRich #ThisIsFascism #Project2025
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Technical Excellence: Lost. Like Atlantis. But with more AI JavaScript.
Once upon a time, engineers knew things. Not Googled things. Crafted things. We automated builds, wrote real tests, treated code like it could explode if mishandled, which it did, and we were proud when it didn't. It was elegant. Precise. Shameful if the customer found a bug. Now? It's fashionable to push broken features into production and call it MVP.
Nowadays, we want to engineer. But we don't get the space for applying our knowledge. Every training is useless when you can't apply it.
"Senior Developers" parade around with 10 years of experience by repeating the same year 10 times. They chant Clean Architecture but build everything in main(). They talk about TDD, then mock their way into oblivion. They don’t refactor, as it's not in the ticket. They don’t simplify, they just make it work. They wait for ticket assignments like robots awaiting firmware updates.
Worse: nobody creates anymore. They consume tools. No one understands the layers. No one asks why.Agility? Without engineering excellence, it's just theatre. You can't move fast if you don't know how your engine works.
Want to be agile? Build engineers who:
* Understand architecture beyond drawing hexagons.
* Write tests that assert behaviour, not just lines executed.
* Know the cost of a dependency.
* Automate not for fun, but for resilience.
* Take responsibility before being told to.
* Stop chasing tools & Start understanding systems.
* Build things that work, not just compile.Technical excellence is not a luxury. It's the foundation. And without it, you're not building software. You're just decorating the Titanic.
Agility without engineering is chaos in a hoodie.
#TechnicalExcellence #SoftwareCraftsmanship #AgileNotFragile #DevRantWithLove #coding #programming #developing
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@bitcodavid
Actually, I believe there are plenty of Democratic organizations who have plans drawn up "just in case" the worst happens ready to go the moment she lost.The #TreasonWeasel didn't come close to Reagan's 84 mandate (winning the pop vote by only 3.5M), and the #GOP is SO dysfunctional, we are going to see chaos in Congress as the "sane" #Republicans" do battle with the #QAnon nuts.
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An interesting case study in recent #Russia disinformation campaign in chronological order:
- 21 Nov - #Ukraine army group “South” warns about a fake circulating about 225. OShP “barrier troops” that Ukraine allegedly directed against 102. TDF Brigade in #Huliaipole
- 22 Nov - Russian channels spin a “video of Ukrainian soldier” who talks about the “barrier troops”. Note: this was the first video I’ve spotted on Russian channels I personally subscribe, but it likely appeared elsewhere before 21 Nov.
- 22-25 Nov - mass appearance of Facebook posts and comments about the “barrier troops”, including on many Ukrainian profiles.
- 26 Nov - another army group “South” statement warning about the “barrier troops” fake, also shared by the very 102. TDF Brigade who was allegedly “forced” by the 225. OShP
- 27 Nov - DeepState publishes an extended analysis that explains what has actually happened:
When the enemy pushed through the neighbours on the left of the 102nd, they encountered infiltrated enemy groups on the flank and in the rear. At the same time, one of the battalions of the 102nd Brigade lost control and the men were left to fend for themselves.
What was happening right at the same time:
Realising the prospects, the command sent additional forces from the 225th Separate Mechanised Brigade and one of the mechanised brigades, which quickly began to establish a new line of defence directly in front of Huliaipole.
Unfortunately, some of the 102nd Brigade already lost combat capability:
The soldiers, not knowing what to do, decided to leave en masse. Almost two companies began to leave the Zelenyi Hai and Vysokyi areas in groups.
Which had tragic consequences:
Due to unauthorised departures and chaos, there have been cases of friendly fire. After assessing the situation, cover groups were sent in for support. Unfortunately, five fighters from this group were captured by the enemy yesterday west of Zelenyi Hai and shot.
All that is described above was likely preventable, but just like preventable car accidents happen all the time at time of peace, such preventable yet tragic incidents happen at war time. Final assessment of the situation from DeepState:
As of now, thanks to the successful cooperation between the command of the Southern Operational Command, the 225th Separate Mechanised Brigade and other units, the situation has been stabilised — the chaos in the battle lines has almost completely disappeared, the enemy has significantly slowed down in the direction of Huliaipole itself, and a new line of defence has been established.
To summarise: Chaos and friendly fire do happen - but the stories about “barrier troops” are entirely different thing. If a profile on FB writes in Ukrainian and poses to be an Ukrainian soldier, it doesn’t guarantee its authenticity. Even if it is, this specific person may be simply wrong and influenced by disinformation.
DeepState article: https://t.me/DeepStateUA/22806
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January 2026 Media Round-Up
Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.
As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.
There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.
Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ
As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!
On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.
Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts
These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.
(I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)
Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.
You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.
When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?
Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.
Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.
Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.
With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?
I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.
When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.
Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.
Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.
When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.
Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.
Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.
When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.
As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…
The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.
I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.
“An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive
After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.
And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.
Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.
Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.
“Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa
Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?
Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.
Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.
I have not finished this one yet.
The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.
Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.“Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)
“The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)
“The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)
“The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)
“The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)
“A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)
“Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)
“Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)
“The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)
“The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)
“The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)
“The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)
“The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)
“Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)
“The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.
“A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)
“Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)
“The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)
“An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)
“Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)
“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)TV Shows & Mini Series
I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.
Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
and Graham Wagner, which I loved.Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.
Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”
Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”
Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.
Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.
A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.
West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.
This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.
I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.
The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.
White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.
The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.
The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.
Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?
With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.
To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.
Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.
In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.
Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.
When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.
Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)
These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.
- Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
- Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.
*I am British, this is not a compliment
- Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) dir. Roy Boulting, dramatised by Julia Jones. I do enjoy this one because of the romantic subplots and who gets with whom. These definitely make me want to read Christie’s romance novels, published under her pen name Mary Westmacott. This was a 2-parter, which is now available as a single feature.
- Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
- Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
- Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
- Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
- The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
- The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
- Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
- A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
- Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
- Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
- Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
- Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.
Films
My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.
Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.
Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.
I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.
A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.
The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.
This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.
This Christmas, raise a little hell.
Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.
Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.
Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.
He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.
Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.
Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou
I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.
Family requires sacrifices.
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.
Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.
Are you a friend of Frendo?
Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.
Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.
A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.
Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.
If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.
A New Wave of Horror
After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.
O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.
LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.
As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.
The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.
I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.
Time is a prison.
Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.
This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.
From nothing comes a King
When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.
Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.
Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.
7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened
After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.
Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.
A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.
A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.
Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.
A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.
I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.
Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.
The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.
This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.
The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.
Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.
A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.
An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.
A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.
“The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”
This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.
Other Films Watched
Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)- Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
- It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
- The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
- The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
- Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
- 東海道お化け道中 / Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts (1969) dirs. Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Yoshiyuki Kuroda. New to me, a good background one. Atmospheric, and with really fun 1960s effects! I think I’d rewatch this, I liked the little girl and the plot was entertaining enough. Available on YouTube.
- The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
- The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
- The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
- Il mulino delle donne di pietra/Mill of the Stone Women (1960) dir. Giorgio Ferroni. Not as fun as I hoped, but pretty good. A bit of Mad Science and Italian Gothic. Available on YouTube. I actually think this might be a rewatch but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me the first time.
- The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
- Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
- Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
- Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
- A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
- The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
- Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
- The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
- The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.
DID YOU MISS ANY?
CLICK THE CATEGORY TAG (“Media Round Up”) TO SEE ALL THE POSTS, BEGINNING WITH NOVEMBER 2025.
A SELECTION OF THE MOST RECENT ROUND-UPS IS BELOW:My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.
by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!
by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! First name Last name Email #BookReview #filmReview #mediaRoundUp #tvReview -
🤣 New Arma Reforger clip is live — and I think MemnokTheDevil2 completely lost it in this one. Absolute chaos and a funny moment you don’t want to miss!
Watch it here:
👉 YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/SkkzLnqNd4Q
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dazza_gonegaming/video/7548559846090591520
Arma always delivers the unexpected… and this time it had us in stitches.
#Gaming #ArmaReforger #FunnyMoments #YouTube #TikTok -
‘Too little, too late’: UK’s Covid response
Remember the chaos in March 2020? Other European countries were in lockdown but Johnson said the #UK should take it on the chin. Advisers like Whitty, Edmunds & Vallance initially advocated herd immunity & nudge theory. 20,00 lives could have been saved if lockdown had happened a week earlier. Lockdown took place again because warnings were not heeded & kids lost out on school
