Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Kristi Noem’s husband and the dark secret of trans

What guy hasn’t wanted to wear pink spandex and a mammoth pair of prosthetic boobs? I only ask because that’s what the husband of Kristi Noem, former US secretary of homeland security, was wearing in pictures that appeared in the Daily Mail on 31 March. Had the paper delayed publication for another day, the story might have been dismissed as an April Fool’s.

Bryon Noem – a successful crop-insurance salesman – racked up, it is alleged, bills of $25,000 from paying women to talk to him online, while he was wearing huge rubber breasts and pouting with all the feminine allure he could muster (despite forgetting to shave).

It sometimes seems as if nothing can shock us about adults’ consenting sexual behaviour, but the universal bafflement that greeted the images of Mr Noem was understandable. It has echoed the stunned reaction to the revelation in HBO’s The White Lotus, that Sam Rockwell’s character likes dressing up as a woman and getting ‘railed’ by four or five men at a time. In their different ways, Noem and Rockwell have helped lift the veil on a subject the trans lobby and their insanely uncritical allies have long refused to acknowledge. Whisper it gently: the vast majority of cross-dressing men get a sexual thrill from doing so.

Trans activists have relentlessly suppressed this fact. And who can blame them? The public would never for a moment have entertained allowing men in dresses access to women’s single-sex spaces if they knew the truth – namely, that many of these men are sexually aroused by forcing other people to treat them as if they’re women.

This is not to say that autogynephilia, the technical name for men getting off on imagining themselves as female, comes in only one style, the fetish equivalent of the little black dress. There’s a whole walk-in wardrobe of different cross-dressing fashions. Each more spicy than the next.

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Israel Is Conducting a Campaign to Ethnically Cleanse Southern Lebanon of Shia Residents

On March 28, George Saeed, 62, and his 24-year-old son Elie were driving back to their home in Debel, a Christian village in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel. It was a route Saeed knew well. He ran a small laundromat beneath his house, where he washed uniforms for a Polish unit in the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed in the nearby village of Tiri. The trip from Tiri used to take a few minutes, but after the main road was bombed by the invading Israeli military he had begun taking a longer route through the neighboring village of Rmeich.

That afternoon, villagers saw George’s car pass through Rmeich and enter Debel, disappearing along the village’s steep, winding roads. When they were roughly 60 meters from their house, the crackle of gunfire rang out, followed by the blare of a stuck car horn.

Elie Louqa, Saeed’s nephew and the former mayor of Debel, was in Beirut when he got a call from his brother describing what had happened. He began contacting UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL), the Lebanese Army, and the Red Cross, asking them to reach the car. Both the Red Cross unit in Rmeich and the nearby UNIFIL contingent told Louqa they could not secure permission from their superiors to move.

After about 90 minutes, a group of young men from the village decided to go themselves. Carrying white blankets and mattresses to signal they were civilians, they reached the site of the attack and found the father and son dead inside their bullet-ridden car. They pulled the bodies out and carried them to the village cemetery for burial.

“You won’t find a man with cleaner hands. He was generous to a fault,” Louqa told Drop Site News. “Go and ask the people of our villages who George Saeed was.”

The killings were just one in a series of attacks on residents of several villages along the southern border who have chosen to remain in their homes despite repeated sweeping displacement orders by the Israeli military covering all of southern Lebanon.

Earlier this week, the Lebanese army announced its forces had withdrawn from southern border villages, leaving residents without even the semblance of protection. At least six Lebanese soldiers have been killed by Israel over the past month. The army said its troops had to “reposition” as they were being encircled and cut off from their supply lines but claimed it continued to “stand by residents” by “maintaining a group of military personnel” in the villages. What this meant in practice, according to residents, was that soldiers from the area could stay in their homes provided they did not wear army uniforms or carry arms.

“We don’t know why the army made this decision,” said Boutros al-Rai, a local farmer and civilian administrator. “For us, its presence made us feel protected.”

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Technate, Ohio: How Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein Built The Silicon Heartland

Early last year, shortly after Donald Trump took office for his second term, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced he was departing the recently-formed Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) after reports of conflict with the department’s co-head, Elon Musk. Ramaswamy joined Fox News to clarify these rumors, and to tease his next endeavor –– holding public office. Ramaswamy noted Musk’s approach was “a technology approach,” whereas his was “focused more on a constitutional law, legislative-based approach.” He furthered, “when you’re talking about a constitutional revival, it’s not just done through the federal government, it’s done through federalism, where states also lead the way.” Despite their differences, Ramaswamy importantly remarked that they were both “on the same page” and that their attempts “in saving the country” required them to “divide and conquer.”

Towards the end of the interview, Ramaswamy mentioned he was flying back to Ohio that week, with an announcement regarding his expressed intention of pushing for reform at the state level coming shortly. The former presidential hopeful explained that when “we look at the country over the last 20 years, Silicon Valley was at the bleeding edge of the American economy. I think the Ohio River Valley can be at the bleeding edge of the American economy for the next 20 years.” A few weeks later, Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign for Ohio was announced and the former D.O.G.E. co-head was promptly endorsed by President Trump. Over the course of that campaign, Vivek’s fortunes have quite literally soared. Since launching his campaign, he has not only come to command a massive campaign war chest filled by deep-pocketed donors, but his own net worth has doubled.

While many once labeled this campaign as a clear demotion for Ramaswamy, the reality of an emerging Ohio –– specifically as it relates to the technocratic goals of the Trump administration and its donors –– paints a vastly different picture. As noted in Iain Davis’ book The Technocratic Dark State, D.O.G.E. –– the agency Ramaswamy co-led –– is part of a larger effort led largely by a small group of the ultra-wealthy to completely privatize the public sector in the name of greater “efficiency” and have it ruled by “techno-kings” or dictator “CEOs.” Davis frames this as a modern iteration of technocracy, bolstered by tech billionaires with close ties to the Trump administration, such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Thiel is the long-time benefactor of former Ohio Congressmen and current Vice President J.D. Vance. Notably, Ohio’s richest man Leslie Wexner, along with help from the infamous Jeffrey Epstein (a Thiel associate), has spent decades creating “partnerships” where private interests, including those he directly controls, dominate its state and local governments. In some cases, such as the Columbus suburb of New Albany, they have completely replaced them.

Quietly over the last decade, Ohio has become a state of incredible national importance, as it continues to attract data centers from American “royalty” and Big Tech stalwarts into its friendly regulatory borders. But long before Amazon, Meta, Anduril, Microsoft and others took their power-hungry –– literally and figuratively –– refuge in the Buckeye State, the most well-known financier of Jeffrey Epstein, Leslie Wexner, and his extensive crime-linked network were laying the foundation for the new Silicon Valley, now known as the Silicon Heartland, along the Ohio River.

Wexner’s own statements last year underscore Ohio’s coming importance in the age of ascendant, AI-powered technocracy. Last May, he stated that Columbus in particular would soon become an international AI destination. He also asserted that “probably the largest AI investment in the world will happen in Columbus.” Wexner would know, as he’s personally responsible for Ohio’s –– specifically Columbus’ –– rise as one of the most important AI hubs in the country.

Yet, Wexner, with Epstein’s help, has done much more than attract massive AI data centers to the state. As this investigation will show, Wexner and his closest allies, Epstein among them, worked to create a model for the takeover of local governments via public-private partnership, starting first in New Albany beginning in the late 1980s. It has since spread to cover the entire state of Ohio via a network of public-private partnerships Wexner helped create. This system has allowed Wexner to use billions of dollars of Ohio taxpayer money, with little to no public scrutiny, to finance what can only be described as a massive welfare system for corporations. Among that system’s current biggest beneficiaries are Wexner’s New Albany Company as well as massive Big Tech corporations with important ties to Jeffrey Epstein (e.g. Amazon and Google). Meanwhile, regular Ohioans are seeing their power bills jump, provoking an affordability crisis in the state, while funding for public schools, libraries and healthcare is cut dramatically –– all to keep the corporate welfare engine designed by Wexner running full tilt.

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Houthis Confirm Coordination With Iran, Hezbollah In Several Attack Waves On Israel

Amid several waves of missile strikes out of Yemen onto Israel from Tuesday into Wednesday, the Iran-aligned Houthis have made it clear they are coordinating with both Tehran and Hezbollah.

Yemeni Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the Houthis have carried out several missile launch operations on “sensitive targets” in “southern occupied Palestine”. The statement underscored this was conducted “in continuation of supporting and backing the fronts of Resistance” and as part of a “religious, moral, and humanitarian duty” toward allied forces in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine – specifically saying there was coordination with Iran.

The Houthis first announced last week they would be joining the war, but it has been the last 24 to 48 hours that Israel has really been subject of some of the biggest inbound rocket attacks in weeks.

This is because not only have Houthi forces stepped up attacks alongside Iran, but Hezbollah is increasing them too:

Four people were lightly injured as Hezbollah fired around 130 rockets at northern Israel on Wednesday and Thursday, the start of the Passover holiday, as the military struck dozens of sites in Lebanon belonging to the Iran-backed terror group.

The bombardment as Israelis celebrated the first two days of the Passover festival sent hundreds of thousands of people into shelters, as Iran continued to also launch missiles at the country, including the north.

The Houthis have very powerful, and longer-range rockets (compared to Hezbollah, apparently) – which were supplied (or assisted in terms of development) by Iran.

The Houthis are warning of more missile waves to come so long as Iran is attacked, saying the US-Israeli strikes “will only push free Yemen toward further escalation.“

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Statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands is removed from the National Mall

U.S. Park Police said Wednesday they’ve removed statues from the National Mall that depicted President Donald Trump and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and skipping.

The artwork, entitled “Best Friends Forever,” was installed near the Capitol on Tuesday morning and quickly became a tourist attraction.

“In honor of friendship month, we celebrate the long-standing bond between President Donald J. Trump and his closest friend Jeffrey Epstein,” a plaque between the two statues read.

Other plaques under the figures made reference to the text of a racy 50th birthday note that was sent to Epstein using Trump’s name in 2003. Trump has denied sending or being involved with such a card, and filed a $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal for reporting on its existence.

A note matching the Journal’s description was turned over to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, and the paper’s publisher argued in a court filing this week the suit should be dismissed because the article is accurate.

A group calling itself “The Secret Handshake” claimed credit for the artwork in a statement to the Independent, and said it had a permit for the statues.

Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, said in a statement, “The statue was removed because it was not compliant with the permit issued.”

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British Law Enforcement No Longer Policing Social Media Posts Looking for ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’, as Commissioner Celebrates Increased Ability To Investigate Real Criminals

British police are back to investigating crime, not hurt feelings.

The United Kingdom is the leading country in incarcerating citizens for social media posts, and – what’s worse – police wasted time and resources with something called ‘non-crime hate incidents’.

You read it right: perfectly legal posts.

But now, the police are no longer involved in these internet arguments, and that has enabled officers to ‘solve more real crimes’.

The Telegraph reported:

“Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said the force had doubled the number of real hate crimes that it had solved since he announced in December last year that his force would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).

In an exclusive article for The Telegraph, he said this change had already saved officers ‘thousands of hours’, enabling them to devote more time to ‘preventing and solving crime, protecting vulnerable people, and responding to real risks of harm’.”

It’s been two days since Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the abolition of NCHIs nationally.

“Sir Mark, whose force pre-empted the national move, said NCHIs had ‘eroded’ the public’s trust in the police because of ‘unclear guidance’ from policing bodies and the Government on how to apply them.

Officers had been knocking on people’s doors to deal with ‘online squabbles and everyday disagreements that never met the threshold of criminality’, he said.”

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Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once

What do plants, toads, and mushrooms have in common? They can all produce psychedelic substances – and now their powers have been combined in one plant, like a trippier Captain Planet.

In a wild first, scientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant (Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously.

As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes.

“[Our] strategy established a heterologous plant system for the production of five prominent therapeutically valuable compounds, their derivatives, and nonnatural plant analogs, providing a starting point for their production in plants,” writes a team led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Tryptamine psychedelics are a class of compounds that includes psilocin, psilocybin, and a number of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) compounds. The ability to produce these substances has emerged in diverse organisms across the tree of life – plants, fungi, and animals.

In recent years, a number of studies have shown that tryptamine psychedelics may represent an untapped resource when it comes to mental health treatments.

However, progress in this field remains limited, in part due to regulatory restrictions, underscoring the need for more research. This creates practical challenges for scientists.

“Traditionally, the supply of psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad,” the researchers write.

“Harvesting these organisms for their psychoactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation.”

In an effort to tackle this, plant scientists Paula Berman and Janka Höfer and their team set out to map and rebuild the biochemical pathways behind these compounds.

They identified the key genes used by two plants – Psychotria viridis and Acacia acuminata – to make DMT, and the step-by-step chemical pathways involved in producing the compound.

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Christian Nationalists in US Government Push Attacks on Iran as Holy War

How Christian clergy talk about Jesus this Easter Sunday will tell you a lot about their politics. While parishioners in the U.S. are likely to be greeted by the traditional refrain, “He is risen,” at their April 5 Easter service, they’re just as likely to be met with the phrase, “Christ is King.” This rhetoric replaces the traditional understanding of Easter as a celebration of Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection with a more aggressive vision of a warrior Jesus that resonates strongly with Donald Trump-aligned white Christian nationalists.

The phrase “Christ is King” isn’t new — it’s sometimes used by Christians to refer to the belief that Jesus’s divine rule goes beyond that of earthly leaders. But the phrase has recently become “a kind of rallying cry for Christian supremacy,” historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, told Truthout.

Over the last few years, the slogan has spread from far right provocateurs like Nick Fuentes to Trump’s cabinet and the military. In February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth used the phrase at a convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, galvanizing Christian nationalists’ thirst for authoritarian rulers whose Jesus is defined by militant masculinity — more like a crusader or cowboy than the peace-loving, “sacrificial lamb” celebrated on Easter, who was executed for challenging the hierarchies of empire.

Along the way, the phrase has become a dog whistle for antisemitism, and it’s often combined with other Christian nationalist “holy war” rhetoric that has been spiking since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

Popular Christian Zionist preachers like John Hagee came out of the gate praising Operation Epic Fury in a sermon from March 10. On March 23, Rep. Andy Ogles posted an AI-generated video of himself, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio dressed as crusaders with the caption: “This is a battle of good vs evil. We must reaffirm that our nation was built on Christian principles.” Their language and iconography distract from the fact that the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran were launched without congressional approval, are unpopular, and have killed more than 1,500 people.

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Kratom is now legal in RI, making it the first state to overturn ban

Businesses can now start applying for licenses to sell and distribute kratom in Rhode Island.

According to the Rhode Island Department of Health, the psychoactive plant is used to self-treat things like pain, opioid withdrawal and anxiety, but the FDA has not yet approved any kratom products.

The new law will allow people 21 and older to purchase kratom from licensed businesses. But with applications opening Wednesday, it could be a while before kratom goes up on the shelves.

“The average kratom consumer is someone like me … OK, maybe a little younger,” said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the American Kratom Association. “It really deals with the normal stresses of daily life and the aches and pains related to it.”

Haddow is part of a national organization that has been advocating for the legalization of kratom in Rhode Island.

The state has a lengthy legislative history with the substance and was one of a few states to ban it in 2017. But after a few years of debate on Smith Hill, Rhode Island has now become the first state in the country to overturn that ban.

A spokesperson for the R.I. Department of Health said retailers will have to go through training similar to what’s already in place for tobacco products.

The law in Rhode Island does ban a synthetic form of kratom known as 7-OH, which federal health officials warn is addictive like opioids and more dangerous than morphine.

Some have pushed back on the legalization of kratom, including Portsmouth state Rep. Michelle McGaw.

“Without clean scientific trials, without going through a drug approval process, I’m not comfortable having a drug that works directly on the opioid receptors,” she said.

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Trapped by His Own Image: Trump’s Iran War and the Politics of Ego

The judgment on the Trump administration’s war on Iran is already largely settled across mainstream media, public opinion, and much of the analytical sphere.

What remains supportive of the war is limited to two predictable camps: official government discourse and the president’s most loyal supporters, along with entrenched pro-Israel constituencies.

Beyond these circles, the war is widely understood as reckless, unjustified, and strategically incoherent.

Among the wider American public, this conclusion is not abstract. It is shaped by growing unease, economic anxiety, and a mounting sense that the war lacks both purpose and direction.

Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, 2026, polling has consistently pointed in one direction. A Pew Research poll in late March found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict.

Another AP-NORC survey showed that six in ten Americans believe US military action against Iran has already “gone too far,” while even Fox News polling found 58 percent opposition.

These numbers confirm a broader trend that began early in the war and has only intensified. Reuters reported on March 19 that just 7 percent of Americans support a full-scale ground invasion.

In that same reporting, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe Trump is likely to pursue one anyway, highlighting a growing disconnect between policy and public will.

Days later, Reuters noted that Trump’s approval rating had dropped to 36 percent, with rising fuel prices and economic instability cited as key drivers.

The longer the war continues, the more its consequences are internalized by ordinary Americans, turning distant conflict into immediate economic pressure.

Among the American intelligentsia, opposition is no longer confined to traditional anti-war circles. It now spans ideological boundaries, including segments of Trump’s own political base.

Reporting from the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference, The Guardian observed that many MAGA supporters warned the war risks becoming another “forever war.”

This convergence is significant, reflecting not a passing disagreement but a deeper structural shift in public perception.

Yet mainstream media – from CNN to Fox News – has largely avoided confronting what many Americans already recognize: that the war aligns closely with the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Within Washington itself, unease is also becoming more explicit. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that lawmakers from both parties are increasingly skeptical of the administration’s approach.

At the strategic level, the war’s foundational assumptions have already begun to unravel. Israel’s early calculations that escalation might trigger internal collapse in Iran have failed to materialize.

Iran’s political system remains intact, its leadership stable, and its military cohesion unbroken under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

At the same time, Tehran has demonstrated its ability to retaliate across multiple fronts, targeting Israeli territory and US military assets in the region.

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