4/3/2023

Wrote for the fortean website and I had a lot of fun with it considering I was able to shoehorn in many science fiction references. I'm going to repost those write-ups here.

Could Aliens Be Investigating Us? It's More Likely Than You Think
The Jerusalem Post

class="write"Looks like someone at the Pentagon's been reading Cixin Liu's Dark Forest Trilogy to consider the possibility of Earth being observed by "dandelion-seed probes". Understand it's only a theory and the military-industrial shadow complex has no hard evidence, notes "Walla! Tech" at The Jerusalem Post, but it's neat to see how the Pentagon justifies the theory beyond simple plagiarism. Science fiction continues to inform real-world science and Bryan Sentes takes a look back on when aliens were truly green, like money. With SF being full of superior Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, consider when Capitalist Realists Imagined Capitalist Aliens and shamelessly embrace profit. There are equal parts of terror and a sensawunda here with Bryan's synthesis of The Economist's Ideas For Finding ET Are Getting More Inventive and Ill Will's UFOs And The Longing For The Unidentified. (CS)

So It Turns Out Plants Have Had Voices This Whole Time
Popular Mechanics

Roald Dahl was right, plants are capable of... uh... vocalization. Just not how we know it. With the help of artificial intelligence Lilach Hadany and pals at Tel Aviv University were able to eavesdrop on the conversations of chrysanthemums, dandelion discussions, and tamarisk TED talks But who exactly are the plants talking to in the first place? Jackie Appel has a few ideas. Also for that Roald Dahl namecheck, read and enjoy. Same with Ursula K. LeGuin's The Author Of The Acacia Seeds. And Other Extracts From The Journal Of The Association Of Therolinguistics. Yet what about the possibility of Planta Sapians (sic). The notorious Rich Reynolds takes a few moments from his busy schedule to contemplate creative consciousness in plants as an ET possibility. Hopefully they're more like Zhaan from Farscape than John Wyndham's triffids or H.P. Lovecraft's elder things. Rather than scouring god's green internet, Rich presents actual books to peruse in order to establish a factual basis for phytointelligences yet he curiously omits The "Root-Brain" Hypothesis Of Charles And Francis Darwin. As always, Rich remains a treasure. (CS)

Ghost Hunt Request Rebuffed By Government Officials In Ireland
Coast2Coast AM

If you're a paranormal investigator in County Antrim, you'd be best served going elsewhere with your EMF detectors as the local council doesn't want you lot knocking about in their historical buildings. Fortunately they have no beef with Tim Binnall covering the story and providing analysis as to why the request was turned down. Rhyming with that Irish dispatch, after a fashion, Tim has quite a scoop with a Trail Cam Photographing Ghostly Figure Following A Pair Of Hunters In New York last Thursday. Jesi Grandall, wife and mother of the two living subjects in the photo, pinged Coast2Coast AM directly with the snap. If the third man, pun intended, is a phantom then this has to be the clearest shot of one seen by this Anomalist editor ever. Click on over for the rest of Jesi's debrief with Mr. Binnall! Rounding out a spooky Sunday, this item is less scary but more weird as 'nderstandablyscared' shares video of Car Radar Near A Cemetery on le reddit. (CS)

I volunteered at the cat rescue. Got bit yet again by one of the black cats who was being extra spicy. Wound up staying longer than I volunteered for because the woman in charge of the rescue on Sundays was preoccupied by an unexpected visitor. Someone dropped off a guinea pig and left despite her telling the guy, "We're a cat rescue." So I had to be in charge of the main room, watch over the potential adopters, and protect the cats should anything happen while she was calling the ASPCA to pick up the guinea pig.

IMO, calling the ASPCA on an animal is akin to giving the animal a death sentence. I'm still haunted by that dog I met back in Colorado. Not the chocolate pit bull with ringworm scars who looked like she had a litter of puppies. Rather the old, australian shepherd-looking dog who was dragging a clothesline around his neck.

an old dream from 4/3/2015

Sparse recollections from a dream. I was staying in a Sydney hotel, and it was very foggy outside. Broke away from my travelling company for a balcony to watch the silhouettes of buildings shift like tiger stripes through the mist. The dream's plot picked up when an unseen colleague reminded me I was in Sydney for a court date. Spent the rest of my time riding up and down random elevators, like the tumblers of a lock, in hopes of being on-time.