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.

Yale scientists restore cellular function in 32 dead pig brains

The image of an undead brain coming back to live again is the stuff of science fiction. Not just any science fiction, specifically B-grade sci fi. What instantly springs to mind is the black-and-white horrors of films like Fiend Without a Face. Bad acting. Plastic monstrosities. Visible strings. And a spinal cord that, for some reason, is also a tentacle?

But like any good science fiction, it’s only a matter of time before some manner of it seeps into our reality. This week’s Naturepublished the findings of researchers who managed to restore function to pigs’ brains that were clinically dead. At least, what we once thought of as dead.

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Mike Pence Comes Out Against Marijuana Banking Bill That Would Actually Save Taxpayers Money

Vice President Mike Pence took to Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox News earlier this week to gripe that Democrats were attempting to include legislation related to marijuana and banking in the latest coronavirus relief bill.

“I heard the other day the bill mentions marijuana more than it mentions jobs,” Pence said to Dobbs. “The American people don’t want some pork-barrel bill coming out of the Congress when we’ve got real needs for working-class families.”

Maybe he’s trying to remind everybody that Joe Biden isn’t the only vice president who’s still resisting marijuana legalization?

There are two ironies here. First, the bill Pence is complaining about makes it possible for cannabis businesses to safely engage in banking in states where cannabis is legal, which helps those “working-class families” who rely on the cannabis industry. Second, the bill he’s referring to will actually save taxpayers money, unlike much of the rest of this relief legislation.

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3 Ways Human Psychology is Being Exploited to Create an Obedient, Self-Policing Society

Things are changing. Rapidly. So, get used to it, and don’t look back, because as we march into this brave new world together, the pressure and stress of the situation is going to affect people’s mental health and personalities in more dramatic ways.

The human psyche is built to withstand only a certain amount of pressure, and in our over-connected world, during a global crisis, the stressful stimuli we’re soaking up in a single day is astronomical. The mind has a few coping mechanisms, like fight or flight, cognitive dissonance, denial, Stockholm syndrome, etc.; but in a time like this, you’re likely to experience it all.

As the chronic stress grinds on, with no end in sight, it wears us down emotionally, physically, and mentally, and in this state we regress into more habitual, subconsciously driven behaviors, and the mind becomes very easy to manipulate. To the interrogator or torturer, sustained stress is the key to unlocking the mind and the key to creating obedience and conformity.

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Rocker Nick Cave: Cancel Culture Is ‘Bad Religion Run Amuck’

Earlier this year, the highly regarded Australian rocker and “Goth heartthrob” Nick Cave criticized “perpetually pissed-off…pearl-clutchers” who demand that old songs, novels, and other works of creative expression be censored or changed when they offend contemporary sensibilities. Writing in his monthly newsletter The Red Hand Files, he averred

I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.

In the most recent edition of The Red Hand Files, Cave again takes aims against “cancel culture,” especially what he sees as its “refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas” and “asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society.” Cancel culture, he writes, “is mercy’s antithesis,” an impulse that combines the worst aspects of religious fervor and ideological certitude.

Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck.

Cancel culture’s refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society. Compassion is the primary experience — the heart event — out of which emerges the genius and generosity of the imagination. Creativity is an act of love that can knock up against our most foundational beliefs, and in doing so brings forth fresh ways of seeing the world. This is both the function and glory of art and ideas. A force that finds its meaning in the cancellation of these difficult ideas hampers the creative spirit of a society and strikes at the complex and diverse nature of its culture.

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