Thirteen-year-old Ali gets a chance to spend the summer with her aunt Dulcie and five-year-old cousin Emma at the family's long-abandoned lakefront property - over the strong objections of Ali's mother, who hates the lake. Ali is delighted to babysit Emma and get out from under her mom's over-protective thumb. But why do both her mother and Dulcie act so weird about the lake and their past there? Who's the mysterious girl who was ripped out of old family photos? And what's up with Sissy, the strange girl who hangs out at the lake and encourages Emma to behave badly and blame it on Ali?
Sissy's real identity won't come as a surprise to any readers over the age of 10, but there are some genuinely chilling moments and Hahn's trademark realistic family dynamics and exploration of guilty secrets and how parents' childhood trauma gets passed down to their children. I actually got stressed out reading about Ali trying to protect Emma while Dulcie blames Ali for all the weird stuff going on and accuses Ali of refusing to take responsibility for anything. (In fact, Dulcie and Ali's mom are the ones who are failing to take responsibility and projecting it on the kids.)
A good solid middle-grade ghost story with unusually complex family dynamics.
A “high and far reaching” number of papers and books by Hans Eysenck could be “unsafe,” according to an updated statement from King’s College London, where the psychologist was a professor emeritus when he died in 1997.
A 2019 investigation launched by the U.K. institution found 26 papers coauthored by Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek, a social scientist in Germany, were based on questionable data and contained findings that were “incompatible with modern clinical science and the understanding of disease processes.”
For example, the two researchers’ data showed people with a “cancer-prone” personality were more than 120 times as likely to die from the disease as were those with a “healthy” personality, Anthony Pelosi, a longtime Eysenck critic, pointed out in an article preceding the university probe.
Based on its review, the investigation committee recommended King’s inform journal editors that it considered the results and conclusions of the 26 papers “unsafe.” Several retractions, and dozens of expressions of concern, quickly followed, as we reported at the time.
However, some observers, including Eysenck’s biographer Rod Buchanan, criticized the university for leaving out publications written solely by Eysenck, but based on the same suspect data Grossarth-Maticek had collected. Grossarth-Maticek died on November 16.
In November 2019, Buchanan and then-editor of the Journal of Health Psychology David Marks compileda list of more than 80 “suspect” papers and books they believed should be retracted.
“In this case we are up against the seductive allure of claims we’d like to believe are true but aren’t – that tobacco is really not that harmful, at least not by itself, or that we can prevent and cure cancer with some kind of ‘mind work,’ and so on,” Buchanan told us. “This dubious research needs to be flagged with sufficient prominence and transparency wherever it appears to prevent researchers taking it in good faith.”
A 1991 book by Eysenck, for instance, claimed psychosocial factors like stress and personality type were six times as predictive of cancer and heart disease as smoking, cholesterol levels or blood pressure. Pelosi told us the book summarized Eysenck’s work with Grossarth-Maticek and a draft had been sent to tobacco giant Philip Morris International, which helped fund the two researchers’ work.
“It is utterly irresponsible in its presentation of Eysenck and Grossarth-Maticek’s ridiculous claims and in its undermining of public health,” Pelosi said.
In October, six years later after its initial investigation, King’s stated that, “because the number of potentially relevant publications is high and far reaching, including journal articles and books, we cannot with certainty locate and review all relevant sources which are of potential concern. However, based on enquiries to date we can confirm that any publication which relies on the data from those co-authored publications which King’s has already deemed to be unsafe, should also be considered unsafe.”
The university continued:
Any journal or publisher which hosts any publications either sole authored by Professor Hans Eysenck or co-authored by Professor Hans Eysenck with Professor Ronald Grossarth Maticek which rely on data from any of the papers listed in the 2019 Enquiry, is advised to provide a link to this public statement to alert those accessing to these concerns.
“I think this is the minimum that could be done,” Buchanan said. “The introduction to the recommended link ought to specify the nature of these concerns where possible and be displayed prominently for maximum effect.”
Buchanan said he would also have liked to see a link in King’s statement to the list of “suspect” publications he compiled with Marks, which “would also provide guidance if and when publishers don’t take this appropriate action.”
Pelosi welcomed the update from the university and noted its earlier statement about the papers Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek authored together “has led to over 20 retractions from the scientific literature. Almost all the journals that were contacted followed their recommendations.” A few did not, however, including Personality and Individual Differences, which Eysenck founded in 1980, as we reported at the time.
Springer Nature did not respond to a request for comment on the new statement and which action, if any, the publisher planned to take on Eysenck’s book.
So it’s after The Stork Job and they’re just back from Belgrade and Hardison finds Eliot in the kitchen at the office, and he knew Eliot could cook, is reminded of it now by the rich smell of an entire vat of bolognese on the stove, but he didn’t know he baked.
And he’s also just now learning that Eliot has at some point lost his mind, because there’s an industrial quantity of cookie dough rolled into balls on a tray on the counter, along with a cooling pan of brownies and a batch of cupcakes that Eliot is furiously decorating.
‘Are we… hosting someone?’ Hardison asks, hovering in the doorway.
Eliot doesn’t answer the question but rather informs him, nodding at the cookie dough, ‘I’m gonna freeze those. Same with the sauce; gonna freeze it in portions so people just gotta heat it and boil some pasta.’ He holds up a box of freezer bags. ‘You wanna be helpful, you can divide this up for me.’
‘Hey, I never said anything about wanting to be helpful,’ Hardison objects, but comes and takes the box from him. ‘Seriously, what’s the occasion?’
‘You all eat like damn teenagers,’ Eliot says, ‘and I can’t cook after every job.’
That’s… fair. The bakery’s-worth of treats feels like it’s encouraging rather than staving off the teenage diet, but Hardison’s very much not inclined to ask further questions.
So really, Eliot chooses to give himself away. ‘You hear what Parker was saying?’ he asks, intensely focused on creating a perfect spiral on the cupcake in front of him.
Hardison ladles sauce into a freezer bag and ties it, then reaches out to snag a ball of cookie dough. ‘When?’
Eliot yanks the tray out of his reach, glaring. ‘I said they’re for freezing!’
‘Oh no,’ Hardison says, biting into the dough. ‘We may not have enough to see out the decade. What’d Parker say?’
‘About, uh.’ Eliot pauses, piping a delicate flower onto the next cupcake. ‘In the briefing. About knowing that kid was orphaned.’
‘Yeah, man, I think this one kinda hit close to home,’ Hardison says, though exactly how close, he isn’t about to share. ‘We might wanna—’
And then he breaks off, taking in the spread—feast, really—in front of them, as he remembers exactly what Parker said.
He’s hoarding food.
Right.
‘Oh, I get it,’ Hardison says, smile spreading across his face, warm, warm feeling spreading through his chest. ‘You’re a softie.’
Eliot’s murderous look is only slightly undercut by the piping bag full of pink frosting in his hands, but he doesn’t deny the obvious: as long as he has any say in it, Parker’s never going to feel so much as a little snacky without having food immediately available to her.
And Hardison already likes Eliot, might even be crushing on him a little. But right then he thinks, yeah. I could fall in love with you.
‘Hey,’ he says, pointing at the cupcake. ‘Will you teach me how to do those flower things?’
‘Fine,’ Eliot says.
‘And Parker likes sprinkles,’ Hardison adds.
Eliot ducks his head, but not in time for Hardison to miss his smile. ‘Top right cupboard,’ Eliot says, and moves over to make space next to him at the counter.
fun fact: these are actual vocal warm ups he would do, and used this as a way to interact with the audience while being able to stretch while performing .
also he was a witch and he used it as a spell like look at that power
This performance at Live Aid literally was unlike anything anyone had seen. No one, and I mean, NO ONE has ever owned a crowd like this.
Other performers have literally said since, “Freddy basically changed live performance forever and left us NOTHING.” (affectionate)
I am convinced he was blessed by the gods. He was a fucking herald for said gods or something. Hell, there’s that vid of the Green Day fans waiting for the concert to begin and fucking singing in perfect fucking harmony to Bohemian Rhapsody! Freddy isn’t even alive and he still fucking commands a crowd!
“What’s new in Gutenberg…” posts (labeled with the #gutenberg-new tag) are posted following every Gutenberg release on a biweekly basis, showcasing new features included in each release. As a reminder, here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg and the Editor.
A total of 161 PRs were merged in Gutenberg 22.2, with 4 first-time contributors! With WordPress 6.9 released this week, many contributors were focused on bug fixes, performance, block editor polish, and a series of accessibility and developer experience improvements. There are still some great features and enhancements in this release, highlighted below.
Table of contents
Cover block video embeds
A big feature in this release is the ability to use embedded videos (like YouTube or Vimeo) as background videos in the Cover block, rather than being restricted to locally uploaded files. This is a major quality-of-life improvement for those who want to offload video hosting and bandwidth. (73023)
Breadcrumbs block enhancements
There’s further development on the experimental Breadcrumbs block. It now includes better handling for homepages, last item attributes, 404/search/archive pages, archive links, post type archive links, as well as support for paginated content. All of these additions are aimed at making breadcrumb navigation more robust and context-aware. (72832)(73249) (73283)(73435) (72905)
Styling options for the Math block.
Gutenberg 22.2 adds style options to the Math block in Gutenberg, addressing the inconsistency where inline math inherits paragraph styling but display math blocks previously lacked their own styling controls (73544).
Other Notable Highlights
Button Block Pseudo-state Styling
Theme designers and developers can now style button states (hover, focus, active, and focus visible) directly within the theme.json, making it much easier to keep all design controls centralized and consistent. This reduces the reliance on custom CSS for things like button hover states. (71418)
Data Views received several improvements, including:
A new “activity layout” brings a timeline-like view, perfect for things like revision history, logs, or any content that benefits from a chronological display. This layout handles interactions—like keyboard navigation—in a way that fits the timeline format. (72780)
The table column header now lets you add columns to the left or right for better customization (72929).
Changelog
List of all the changes
Block Library
Breadcrumbs: Add archive link if enabled in posts. (72832)
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