SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS NUMEROLOGY DECODE

Since we all know exactly who and what Spongebob is, I am going to do a Numerology decode.
When it comes to Numerology, there are many different things you can look into. I am going to look into the letters, patterns, and Numerology personality numbers.
SPONGEBOB has a personality #6. 6 is the number of compassion, work ethic, criticism, cleanliness, and productivity. In the funny show, we see that Spongebob is a workaholic. He has a 5 destiny number which shapes who you are overall. 5 is connected to youthfulness which explains the silliness of the Spongebob character. He is always laughing and doing things funny. The 5 energy indicates this. 5 also points to people, places, and things that are unique. He has an 8 soul urge which explains his undying ambition and creativity.
We can see that SPONGEBOB has 2 O's which has the numeric energy of 15 and numeric value of 6. 15 is the creative use of energy for productivity. Again, 6 is the number of routine, work ethic and productivity goes with this. This energy is not only his personality number, but also it is within his name. It's really in him.
SPONGEBOB HAS DOUBLE NUMERIC VALUES IN HIS NAME WHICH ARE, 7,6,5, AND 2. This explains why he is able to show his emotions and have moments of sensitivity(2). Very compassionate(2) but also childish and silly(5) and able to come up with plans that work(7). Since these #s has double influence, we must considered what they equal. 7 twice equals 14/5 which shows how he is responsible and can make work fun even though it is a duty(6). 6 twice equals 12/3 which shows his social skills, life, and creativity. Another youthful energy as well. 5 twice equals 10/1 which points to his bravery and capability to take action. 2 twice equals 4 which is home,family,responsibility, and structure on the home front and he would make everyone feel comfortable for the most part.
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https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Backlash%2c+parental+alienation+syndrome+and+co-construction.-a0179570828
Work on the issue of sexual abuse in children and adolescents lays bare the power relations between genders, generations and social classes. The issue of gender is seen in statistics from UN agencies that report that "one in four girls and one in nine boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of 18."(1) Generational power relations are clear because the perpetrators are adults, and the power relations of class are evident in the backlash generated by powerful sectors that have attempted to prop up the myth that child abuse is only a problem among the poor and working classes.
Webster's Dictionary defines "backlash" as "a strong adverse reaction to a political or social movement." More plainly, backlash is a negative reaction to a positive and constructive step forward. Professor of law John Myers identifies the positive step as the progress made in the past two decades with regard to child abuse and the backlash as the escalation of criticism against professionals involved in child protection.(2)
David Finkelhor was responsible for pioneering work on the sexual abuse of children in the United States. In his 1979 book, Sexually Victimized Children, Finkelhor recognizes the important contributions of the women's movement and professionals involved in child protection lobbying in drawing attention to the realities of sexual violence against minors: "If the sexual abuse of children has risen to prominence as a social problem rather quickly, it is because it has been championed by an alliance of two constituencies by now rather experienced in the promotion of social problems."(3)
In the United States, a backlash began in the 1980s under the Reagan Administration's return to stale and reactionary values following the struggles of the women's movement and the children's rights movement the 1960s and 70s.
What was once secret was now openly debated, and controversy wracked the most idealized institutions, including church, family and school. Socially consecrated myths of long-standing were crumbling: "The home is the seat of love, support and safety for children"; "Good families don't talk about sexuality"; "Churches reflect the highest moral standard with regard to sexuality"; "Children are safe in school."
By drawing attention to the realities of child sexual abuse, a solid blow was dealt to the "powers that be"; hypocrisy was uncovered; and unquestioned assumptions were challenged. This frontal attack was met with denial by means of a range of strategies developed by the fundamentalisms of faith and the market.
One of these backlash strategists was prominent forensics expert Richard Gardner, who coined the term "parental alienation syndrome" in 1985 to describe a supposed psychological disorder that he had observed in lengthy and bitter custody battles. His original paper on the subject uses the following description:

"The term I prefer to use is parental alienation syndrome. I have introduced this term to refer to a disturbance in which children are obsessed with deprecation and criticism of a parent—denigration that is unjustified and/or exaggerated. The notion that such children are merely 'brainwashed' is narrow."(4)

However, supposedly citing his original work several years later, Gardner re-describes this phenomena somewhat differently.

"[t]he parental alienation syndrome (PAS) is a childhood disorder that arises almost exclusively in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the target parent. When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child's animosity may be justified, and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation for the child's hostility is not applicable."(5)

The two different definitions demonstrate the changes in this argument over time with the goal of developing a different strategy for discrediting the hard research work and harder-won social gains of the women's movement and the professionals lobbying for child protection.
Maria Jose Blanco Barea has studied the many works that Gardner published up to his death by suicide in 2003, and she suggests that "perhaps the psychological causes that led to his suicide should be taken into consideration." With regard to Gardner's professional career, Blanco Barea recounts that "Gardner dedicated the first part of his professional life to working as a forensics expert in cases of sexual abuse brought by children against their parents, students against professors, members of the faithful against representatives of organized religions and within military families. Gardner often stressed that he was a former captain [in the U.S. Army Medical Corps] and as a psychologist treated members of the armed forces who had served in Korea. He specialized in techniques to 'deprogram' U.S. soldiers who had been prisoners of war. His methodologies and expert testimony were used to question the credibility of sexual abuse victims, to prove that the accused were innocent and that the accusers were guilty of perjury. Gardner testified in cases of sexual abuse in the context of hearings to determine custody, visitation and guardianship, and he himself explains that he developed his research over the course of his career. In other words, he directly applied the scientific method of trial and error in real-life court cases that were settled while he was still carrying out his research. When he decided to publish his theories in 1985, Garner failed to provide the scientific community with the necessary data to scientifically analyze his conclusions."(6)
Richard Gardner's books were published by Creative Therapeutics, which he himself owned. Some of his articles were published in Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, a publication of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, which is directed by Dr. Ralph Underwager who is well known for an interview in the Dutch journal Paidika […](7)
In the 1970s and 80s and prior to his publication of the parental alienation syndrome, Gardner developed the "Sex-Abuse Legitimacy Scale" (SAL Scale), which he used in his own courtroom testimony. Nonetheless, Gardner's ideological stance clearly shows that he did not view child sexual abuse as a problem, except when it is denounced.

"It is of interest that of all the ancient peoples it may very well be that the Jews were the only ones who were punitive toward [adults who had sex with children]. Early Christian proscriptions against [adult-child sex] appear to have been derived from the earlier teachings of the Jews, and our present overreaction to [adult-child sex] represents an exaggeration of Judeo-Christian principles and is a significant factor operative in Western society's atypicality with regard to such activities."(8)
"The child might be helped to appreciate the wisdom of Shakespeare's Hamlet, who said, 'Nothing's either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'"(9)
"And her [the mother's] increased sexuality may lessen the need for her husband to return to their daughter for sexual gratification."(10)
"… except for a certain amount of sexual frustration that was not gratified, the four-year-old had not been significantly traumatized by these encounters."(11)

Elsewhere Gardner had the following to say about child sexual abuse: "The sexually abused child is generally considered to be the victim, though the child may initiate sexual encounters by 'seducing' the adult."(12) Gardner even proposes that [child sexual abuse] serves procreative purposes; he maintains that although the child cannot become pregnant, a child who is drawn into sexual encounters at an early age is likely to become highly sexualized and thus will crave sexual experiences during the prepubertal years. Such a "charged up child" is more likely to transmit his or her genes through his or her progeny at an early age. Gardner states: "The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity, and the greater the likelihood the individual will create more survival machines in the next generation."(13) He also recommended that the incestuous father "has to be helped to appreciate that, even today, it [adult-child sex] is a widespread and accepted practice among literally billions of people. He has to appreciate that in our Western society especially we take a very punitive and moralistic attitude toward such inclinations.… He has also had back [sic] luck with regard to the place and time he was born with regard to social attitudes toward [adult-child esx]."(14)
The two definitions of parental alienation syndrome are interesting because the first reveals that the intention of the original strategy was to minimize the devastating effects that child abuse has in the victims. However, the 2002 definition added: "When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child's animosity may be justified, and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation for the child's hostility is not applicable."(15) But curiously, the indicators of parental alienation syndrome also coincide with the indicators of sexual abuse that have been established by international studies on this problem.
At the time of the revised definition, the international study of child abuse and the movement to prevent the victimization of children was much further advanced. Some examples are the five European seminars "Secrets that Destroy" held in 1998 by the Save the Children Alliance; the 1999 "Vision and Reality" reports that address women's and children's rights; and a series of later publications by experts in the matter.
Although the SAL scale has been widely disregarded as a tool for diagnosing sexual abuse, Gardner's real thoughts are evident in the above citations from his works. Both the SAL scale and parental alienation syndrome represent a scandalous violation of the human rights of women, adolescents and children.
In numerous publications, Gardner uses supposedly scientific but paradoxical arguments to rationalize his denial of violence against women, defined in the Belem do Para Convention as "a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between women and men."(16) Making use of children, he creates a new and sophisticated form of violence against women that involves complicity of the justice system.
Gardner proposed a series of symptoms that reveal three types of parental alienation syndrome (severe, moderate and mild) and specific treatment for each type. The treatment that he proposes for parental alienation syndrome involves both legal and health-care professionals, who Gardner says should have the power to administer the appropriate treatment based on the coercion, threat, change in living arrangements and, as a last resort, the internment and "deprogramming" of the child. As Blanco Barea observes, "Parental alienation syndrome makes a fraud of the law. It makes use of the declarations against discriminations against women and of the rights of the child to protect the parent and escape the application of the Conference of Vienna that protects against torture and degrading treatment, especially in the case of women and girls, and to escape the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child."(17)
As law professor John Myers explains, "Gardner is an outspoken critic of certain aspects of the child protection system. Apparently, Gardner believes America is in the throes of mass hysteria over child sexual abuse. He writes that 'sex-abuse hysteria is omnipresent' (True and False Accusations of Child Sex Abuse, 1992, p. xxv). In his 1991 book titled Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited, Gardner is harshly critical of an unspecified portion of the mental health professionals, investigators, and prosecutors trying to protect children. For example, Gardner accuses some prosecutors of gratifying their own sexual urges and sadistic tendencies through involvement in sexual abuse cases. […] It seems clear that Richard Gardner cannot claim to be balanced or objective when it comes to allegations of child sexual abuse."(18)
Although Gardner and his theories can be questioned for their misogynist and perverse ideology, in Argentina former family court judge Eduardo Cardenas published "El abuso de las denuncias de abuso" (The Abuse of Claims of Abuse) in La Ley, on September 15, 2000. Cardenas's article supported Gardner's theories and sparked backlash in our country, which has provoked widespread reaction among well-known professionals.
Perhaps the best summary of what occurred in Argentina after 2000 is found in the book Maltrato infantil: Riesgos del compromiso profesional (Child Abuse: The Risks of Professional Commitment), a collection of essays by known specialists on the issue, edited by Silvio Lamberti. As the introduction to this book describes:

"As long as the problem was associated with the lower classes, more and more cases were reported. When it began to be suspected that family violence affected all social classes and the middle and upper classes were scrutinized, a reactionary movement used the guise of good intentions to put limits on professionals that supposedly 'abused the reports of child sexual abuse.'
"This was the reaction of:

1. Fathers who were engaged in custody battles or other legal disputes regarding visitation rights.
2. Lawyers who preached equanimity and warned against the feminist bias that they claimed had affected the reports.
3. Experts who tried to pass off the backlash literature from the U.S. as scientific evidence to support their own conclusions.

"This brutal attack tends to carry into an ideological realm a debate that crosses legal and psychosocial discourses, ethics and society as a whole and tries to undo the advances already gained, discouraging those who have worked to achieve these gains. In short, they intend to:

1. Discredit reports of child abuse.
2. Turn anyone who denounces abuse into a suspect.
3. Blur the boundaries between victim and victimizer.
4. Confuse the matter by citing the rare cases of violence against boys or adult men committed by women.
5. Discredit the specialized treatment services even though the law recognizes the value of their diagnosis.
6. Ignore constitutional norms from the Convention on Rights of the Child.

"Thus, the meaning of abusive conduct is inverted, with abuse being attributed to the person who reports the abuse and requests the fulfillment of the law.
"This reactionary backlash supports the persistence of family violence and condemns all girls and/or victims of the perpetuation of incest and abuse while attempting to stymie the legal system and the work of other professionals who until now have born the heavy burden of this process."(19)

This scientific alert went out over three years ago; nonetheless, today there are increasing obstacles to working on this issue. The notion of false reports of abuse is now firmly rooted in the courts. Sexual abuse trials are tremendous ordeals that seriously damage the children and the adults who report the crime and place a heavy burden on the professionals who take the children's part and who often face accusations of malpractice, libel or slander.
The discrediting of psychological experts is of serious concern. What started with Gardner has continued with followers who have discredited indicators, treatments, techniques and prevention campaigns. Brandishing the concept of co-construction on the part of the family members of the victims or the professionals, the testimony of the children is discredited, accused of being childhood fantasy and tale-telling.
The efforts of Gardner and his followers have been echoed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, an institution that claims to represent the social sexual moral but which has promoted a policy of smoke-screening sexual abuse.
The Red Latinoamericana de Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Latin American Network of Catholics for the Right to Decide) has undertaken a study on the secret system of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.(20) The ecclesiastical hierarchy always has been aware of these crimes and has implemented a policy of covering up the abuses committed by priests. This policy is summarized in the following ten points adapted from the studies carried out by the Spanish journalist Pepe Rodriguez(21) and corroborated in the studies of the Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir:

1. Discreet investigation of the incident. The prelates of the diocese often have ecclesiastical informants, people who desire to rise in the esteem of the hierarchy through their reports. They keep the bishops abreast of the transgressions of the priests under their authority. These reports are given orally.
2. Initiation of actions to dissuade the aggressor and/or the victim(s). Once the prelate recognizes the situation of sexual abuse in which the image of the Church could be tarnished, the aggressor is rebuked. Then the bishops dedicate themselves to convincing the victims and their families, assuring them that the aggressor will be punished and that he has repented. They persuade the families to not report the crime so that no one in the Church or the family will suffer the consequences.
3. Covering up the incident and the identity of the aggressor so the case never becomes public. In this effort, acts are undertaken to confuse the matter, including transferral of the priest to another parish, bribery of the victim and their family members or the use of threats and suspension of benefits (for example, expulsion from school).
4. Measures to reinforce the cover up. When the case escapes the closed doors of the Church, the hierarch opens an internal investigation against the aggressor to defend against eventual accusations of passivity in case there is external pressure from the media or society or a civil suit. Generally, the investigation is paralyzed indefinitely. At this stage, the priest usually is transferred to another parish, another diocese or another country, depending on the situation.
5. Denial of the incident when the case becomes public, under the argument that the priest is a man of virtue heeding God's call, a holy figure who could never commit a crime of this nature. When denial is no longer possible, the matter is treated as an exception to this rule.
6. Public defense of the aggressor, stressing his good service to the Church and his personal merits. If he did do anything wrong, he is profoundly repentant and was not conscious of his acts. An appeal is made to the Christian sentiments of pardoning a repentant sinner.
7. Public discrediting of the victim(s). Rodriguez uses the metaphor of ants defending an anthill to describe the corporativist attitude of the clergy when one of its members is accused. The guilt is reversed; the victim(s) and/or their family members are blamed.
8. Paranoiac accusations of the denunciation being linked to campaigns orchestrated by "enemies of the Church." When the number of accusations is so high that discrediting the victims is not enough, the hierarchy complains that there are national or international powers or cults conspiring against the Church.
9. Possibility of negotiation with the victim. This negotiation frequently occurs before the case is made public when the intention of the Church is to buy the victim's silence to preserve the image of the institution. When there is a public scandal, the hierarchy tries to minimize the damage by trying to negotiate the withdrawal of the accusations against the aggressor.
10. Protection of the priest/aggressor. When the accused is found to be guilty, the hierarchy stands by him and in some cases even pays him homage or praises him, doing everything possible to erase the incident from the public memory.(22)

As the Church silences and covers up the abuses committed within its institutions, it resembles Gardner and his followers in that it denies the realities of domestic violence and the sexual abuse of children and adolescents and hampers investigation of these matters. Alliances with key judicial figures lead to perverse and scandalous rulings, such as the Melo Pacheco case in Mar del Plata, the Storni case Santa Fe or the stalling in the Grassi trial, to name the most notorious cases. Many others remain anonymous, which demonstrates the existence of a model that favors the impunity of the abusers, the suffering of the victims and the punishment of those who are working within the framework of human rights.
A sturdy thread connects those who deny, discredit, silence, minimize, distort and negotiate the rights of children: the perversity that has subordinated their ethics to systems of belief that are authoritarian, patriarchal and/or favor the domination of adults.
This ideological combination stacks the deck against victims who, for the most part, are children, adolescents and women. Women are the most discredited. In the cases in which priests are accused of sexual abuse, most people take their side, doubt the word of the victim(s) and even blame them or imply that the priests were victims of a conspiracy. Girl victims are not considered credible because they are presented as easily influenced, prone to fantasy or liars. If they are adolescents, their morals are questioned: it is argued that they already had had sexual relations before the abuse or are guilty of seducing their abuser.
In the case of domestic abuse, especially in cases of father-child incest, the mother is accused of maliciously attempting to distance the child from the father, inventing the abuse out of revenge or because she is hysterical or any other argument that serves to safeguard the figure of the father of the family or the Father of the parish. In both cases, the common sensibilities of the population are exploited: tolerance of male sexual behavior fed by the dominate sexual morality, which makes the argument of false reports even more credible than the martyrdom and accusations of the victims.
To compare the consequences that a child may suffer with the separation of his or her parents, even in a messy divorce, with the short- and long-term consequences of father-child abuse is a perverse strategy that denies the serious and profound attack on the victim's subjective integrity, which Jorge Barudy calls "attempted moral murder."
Parental alienation syndrome, the "malicious mother" and co-construction are non-scientific theories, and when used in the context of a trial, they violate the victim's constitutional rights as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, CEDAW and other agreements incorporated into our constitution in 1994.
We must remember that Richard Gardner's theories were developed in the United States through a method of trial and error that was applied directly in the courtroom in bitter divorce cases, which were ruled upon as Gardner was undertaking his research. In addition, the U.S. is one of the few countries that has neither ratified nor incorporated into its constitution the Convention on the Rights of the Child or CEDAW.
As Blanco Barea explains, in legal contexts based on human rights, those professionals who can carry out the therapy or treatment recommended by Gardner or his followers (such as "aversion therapy" plus the vicarious treatment of deprogramming and, as a precaution, the guarantee of visitation rights or the reversal of custody and/or total separation of the "alienating" parent and the "alienated" child) "are committing crimes of torture, obstruction of justice and legal fraud, and if they are related to the minors in question, they are also guilty of domestic violence."(23)
Child abuse, especially sexual abuse, is an alarming, universal problem. Increased attention and effective protection skills and prevention measures are necessary at family, local, national and international levels.
After a long tradition of silence, sexual abuse of children is being denounced more frequently and is becoming a topic for public and political discussion.
To alert governments and civil society organizations to the need to play a more active role in the promotion of and respect for the rights of the child (as put forth in article 19 and 34* of the Convention on the Rights of the Child) and to contribute to the prevention of child abuse, the Women's World Summit Foundation, WWSF, launched the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse in 2000. The Day is commemorated every November 19 together with the anniversary of the International Day for the Rights of the Child (November 20). The objective of the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse is to rally around the issue of child abuse and the urgent need for effective prevention programs.
To consolidate the global call for action, in 2001 WWSF launched an international NGO coalition that marks the World Day with appropriate events and activities to focus on and increase prevention education.
* For more information, visit the website of the Women's World Summit Foundation, https://www.woman.ch/children/1introduction.php.
* Art. 19 - States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.
* Art. 34 - States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent:
(a) the inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
(b) the exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;
(c) the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.
The author is a psychologist, a founder of the Casa de la Mujer in Rosario, Argentina, and a longtime defender of the rights of women and children.
Notes
(1.) Selected facts and figures from various UN documents, part of the 2006 Open Letter from the Women's World Summit Foundation on the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse, 19 November. Available online at http://www.woman.ch/children/1-openletter.php.
(2.) Alicia Ganduglia (2003) "El backlash: un nuevo factor de riesgo," in Maltrato Infantil. Riesgos del compromiso profesional, Silvio Lamberti, ed., Buenos Aires: Editorial Universidad, p. 75.
(3.) David Finkelhor (1979) Sexually Victimized Children. New York: The Free Press, p. 2.
(4.) Richard A. Gardner (1985) "Recent Trends in Divorce and Custody Litigation." Academy Forum 29:2, Summer, pp. 3-7.
(5.) Richard A. Gardner (2002) "Does DSM-IV Have Equivalents for the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) Diagnosis?" American Journal of Family Therapy, 31(1):1-21. See also Richard A. Gardner (2003) "The Parental Alienation Syndrome: Past, Present, and Future," in The Parental Alienation Syndrome: An Interdisciplinary Challenge for Professionals Involved in Divorce. W. von BochGallhau, U. Kodjoe, W Andritsky and P. Koeppel, eds. Berlin, Germany: VWB-Verlag fur Wissenshaft and Bildung, pp. 89-125.
(6.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) "El sindrome inquisitorial estadounidense de alineacion parental," p. 11. This document may be downloaded from http://www.revistaiuris.com/MISC/8618/borrador%20el%20sindrome%20inquisitorial%20del%20sap.doc.
(7.) The interview with Dr. Ralph Underwager was originally published in Paidika, Issue 9, 1993, and has been reproduced online at http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/Underwager2.html.
(8.) Richard A. Gardner (1992) True and False Accusations of Child Sex Abuse. Cresskill, New Jersey: Creative Therapeutics, pp. 46-7.
(9.) Ibid. p. 549.
(10.) Ibid. p. 585.
(11.) Ibid. p. 612.
(12.) Richard A. Gardner (1986) Child Custody Litigation: A Guide for Parents and Mental Health Professionals. Cresskill, New Jersey: Creative Therapeutics, p. 93
(13.) Richard A. Gardner (1992) pp. 24-25.
(14.) Ibid. p. 593.
(15.) See note 5.
(16.) From the Preamble to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, also known as the Convention of Belem do Para, adopted by the OAS General Assembly June 9, 1994; entry into force March 5, 1995.
(17.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) p. 219.
(18.) John E. B. Myers (n.d.) "What is 'Parental Alienation Syndrome' and Why Is It So Often Used Against Mothers?" an excerpt from a forthcoming book titled A Mother's Nightmare: A Practical Legal Guide for Parents and Professionals. Available online at http://www.gate.net/~liz/fathers/pas.htm.
(19.) Maltrato Infantil. Riesgos del compromiso professional. Silvio Lamberti, ed., Buenos Aires: Editorial Universidad, 2003. The contributing authors were Maria Ines Bringioti, Cristina Caprarulo, Julio Cesar Castro, Alicia Ganduglia, Norberto Garrote, Isabel Gens, Eva Giberti, Carmen Gonzales, Irene Intebi, Victoria Irazuzta, Silvio Lamberti, Patricia Paggi, Mirta Pirozzo, Carlos Rozanski, Diana Sanz, Juan Pablo Maria Viar, Maria Cristina Vila and Juan Carlos Volnovich.
(20.) Regina Soares Jurkewicz (2005) Develando la politica del silencio: Abuso sexual de mujeres por sacerdotes en Brasil. Brazil: Red Latinoamericana de Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir.
(21.) Pepe Rodriguez (2002) Pederastia en la Iglesia Catolica: Delitos sexuales del clero contra menores: Un drama silenciado y encubierto por los obispos. Barcelona: Ediciones B.
(22.) Regina Soares Jurkewicz (2005) pp. 20-22.
(23.) Maria Jose Blanco Barea (2006) p. 219.

I want to preface this by saying I do NOT intend to do so, I'm just wondering if theoretically, different species (that are unable to breed with each other) can be kept together?
For example, a tinc patricia and Mint terribilis. I don't think they could breed since they are classified as completely different species, they share similar housing and temps. in theory, could it work? not with these species specifically, they are just examples off the top of my head.

Midtown Jane Doe, found in Manhattan, New York, USA on February 10, 2003, has been identified as Patricia Kathleen McGlone of Manhattan. McGlone was 16 years old when she was last heard from in 1969. Her identification was made through genetic genealogy; a DNA sample from a relative who died in the 9/11/2001 terror attacks confirmed it.

• Case background:

In February 2003, workers at a Manhattan, New York construction site made a terrible discovery: the skeleton of a girl or young woman, buried in cement. She had been murdered. The deceased was White, aged 15-21, and stood about 4'11 to 5'4 (149 to 162 cm) Her killer tied her body with electrical cords, wrapped her in carpet, and buried her behind a coal furnace. A few personal items were found on the body: a dime minted in the late 1960s, a toy soldier, a ladies' Bulova watch, and a distinctive ring engraved with "P McG."

• The investigation:

Investigators considered many different leads to Midtown Jane Doe's identity. The apartment building where she was found had also hosted The Scene nightclub for many years; had she been a patron there? "Scraps of glittery material", which could have been worn by a dancer or sex worker, were found nearby. Isotope testing on her bones seemingly pointed to a Midwestern American childhood. That fit with what detectives believed: "'[that] she was a young, middle-class woman who probably hopped on a bus to New York full of dreams, but who ended up on the streets,' [NYPD Detective Gerard] Gardiner said." The intersection near where she was found was called "the Minnesota Strip" for the background of many sex workers who could be found there. However, ultimately, nothing came of these tips, and Jane Doe's case went cold...until recently.

• Identification:

Today, 21 years after the discovery of Midtown Jane Doe's remains, she has her name back: Patricia McGlone. Patricia was just 16 years old when she was last heard from in 1969, and contrary to previous theories, was born and raised in Brooklyn. Her identity was discovered through genetic genealogy coordinated by the NYPD Cold Case Squad. McGlone had no close living genetic relatives to confirm the potential identification, so a sample from a matrilineal relative who died on 9/11/2001 was used instead.

• Sources/further reading:

Marc Santia, NBC Channel 4 NYC: ‘Midtown Jane Doe' cold case breakthrough comes after 50-year DNA match to 9/11 victim
Joseph Wilkinson, NY Daily News: NYC teen murder victim ‘Midtown Jane Doe’ identified after 21 years
Doe Network: 337UFNY
Unidentified Awareness Fandom wiki page: Patricia McGlone
Older sources:
Al Guart, NY Post (2003): STUMPED BY TOMB MYSTERY ; COPS CHASE DECADES-OLD CLUES IN PROBE OF GRUESOME ‘JANE DOE’ SLAY
Johnny Pierre, Mind Smoke Records: Celebrating Steve Paul's The Scene
Etc.:
UnresolvedMysteries Writeup on the case from several years ago
Midtown Jane Doe's Websleuths forum thread: includes unconfirmed additional information on Patricia McGlone's life and comments from a genetic genealogist who worked on this case

https://preview.redd.it/il440hu4p8xc1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4bef8482798f1bf5867274f8de752058bdf8458
Hi folks, I'm new to this sub, found this yesterday and decided to make an account. Always wanted to find people who read. Most of the books in the pic are TBR since these are part of my recent collection. The majority of my collection is on a different shelf, I'll probably post a pic when I clean them next.

Open to looking at what you have to trade, or sending for the price of shipping!
Want

• Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan (PB)
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang (PB)
• Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles (PB)
• The Orange by Wendy Cope (any edition)
• The Unfortunate Life of Worms by Noemi Vola (HB)

Books to send
Picture of spines here. Can send pic of front cover if any interest you!
Fantasy

• The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin (PB) x2 x1
• The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin (PB)
• The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin (PB)
• Jade City by Fonda Lee (PB)
• The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker (ARC)
• A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab (PB)
• The Luminaries by Susan Dennard (ARC)
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (PB)

ThrilleHorror

• The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor (ARC)
• House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland (HB)
• When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen (PB)

Sci fi

• Counterweight by Djuna (ARC)

Romance

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (PB)
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (PB)
• The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (PB)
• The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (PB)
• Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover (PB)
• Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (ARC)
• Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen (ARC)

Historical fiction

• The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (ARC)
• The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (PB)
• The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai (PB)
• The Apology by Jimin Han (ARC)
• The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan (ARC)
• Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes (HB)
• Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton (HB)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton (ARC)
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (ARC)
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King (PB)

Contemporary fiction

• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (PB)
• Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (ARC)
• Greek Lessons by Han Kang (HB)
• Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor (ARC)
• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (HB)
• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne (ARC)
• Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas (ARC)
• Nonfiction by Julie Myerson (PB)
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (PB)
• The Unfortunates by JK Chukwu (HB)
• The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (PB)

Short story collection

• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (ARC)
• What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri (ARC)
• Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go by Cleo Qian (PB)

Classics

• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (HB)
• The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (PB)
• Nana by Emile Zola (PB)
• The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (PB)
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (PB)

Nonfiction

• Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (PB)
• Finding Me by Viola Davis (PB)
• This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay (PB)
• I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee (ARC)
• Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong (HB)
• You’ve Changed by Pyae Moe Thet War (HB)
• Moonshot by Mike Massimino (ARC & HB)
• Everybody by Olivia Laing (ARC)
• The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon (ARC)
• Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths (HB)

Graphic novel

• Sapiens Vol 1 by Yuval Noah Harari (PB)
• Sapiens Vol 2 by Yuval Noah Harari (PB)

DAY: APRIL 25 2024
​

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This post is Part 6 out of 6 as to why Gary Mathias of the Yuba County Five is innocent. READ THE PREVIOUS PARTS (1, 2, 3, 4, AND 5) IF YOU HAVE NOT.
This post is a deep deep dive into Gary Mathias, who has been considered an endangered missing person since his mysterious disappearance along with four of his friends on February 24, 1978. (Note: this is a long post, you have been warned. I have spilt my post into various sections. If you want, you can just look at certain sections.)
(Note: I will call the Yuba county five "The Boys", not out of disrespect but because that is what their families used to and still do call them).

Did Gary Mathias Survive the Whole Ordeal/Make It Off the Mountain? Is He living as a Homeless Person?

Personally, the answer is no, for several huge reasons. Anyone who has been to a national forest (like myself) will know how treacherous the land can be, and this is no different for the Plumas National forest. In some areas up in the Plumas, you cannot even go on foot, and there are huge drops and snowdrifts that are as high as 10 to 12 feet. It's incredibly easy to get lost in any forest. What's more than likely happened was that eventually, assuming that Gary makes it to the trailers, after he left maybe to go get help, he was able to walk further away than anybody anticipated (because he was amazing at walking), got lost, and died from exposure and hypothermia, just like his friends did, and because he probably walked out way farther than the search radius, that's why his body was never found. I find it strange that a lot of people equate no body to meaning that he is guilty somehow. I've been to a national forest, and so I know how easy it is to get lost. In the expanse wilderness, they were unable to find his body, which at the time would probably have been reduced to bones or even less at that point, so it's not that surprising that his body was never found (it's just sad).
Gary Mathias Sighting
A lot of people think that he could have made it out due to one main sighting. A few months after the four bodies were found, Cathy Madruga (Jack Madruga's niece) stated that as she was in her mother's bar called La Casablanca, she allegedly saw Gary Mathias sitting, calmly drinking beer. The two briefly locked eyes, but "Gary" then looked away. Cathy went to get her mother, and when they came back they saw that "Gary" was gone. Cathy stated that she knew what Gary looked like pretty well and she called the police of her find. The police got her to look at doctored photos to see if she could recognize Gary and she was able to. Although this sighting may, at first, seem convincing, it, frankly, doesn't make much sense. Not that I'm saying that Cathy was lying, but I seriously doubt that it was Gary she saw. First off, a lot of people were claiming to have seen Gary after the other four were found, like at Denny's or in a department store. None of these sightings can really be taken seriously because earlier a whole bunch of people claimed that they saw The Boys when they first went missing at lots of places, like at roller skating rinks and stuff, when it turns out they were up in the Plumas the whole time. Also, for some time after the other four bodies were found, there was still a reward money for the whereabouts of Gary Mathias. This shows that misidentification was incredibly easy to make, and to be honest, I bet a lot of dudes looked similar to Gary. Second off, there is no way that Gary could be totally relaxed, drinking beer. He was without medication for months, and he would not be acting normally as Cathy said he was. Gary probably would have been disheveled and talking to himself, as that's how he was without medication. And lastly, as far as I'm aware, Gary did not go to La Casablanca ever before, so why would he even be there in the first place?
There's also no way that Gary could remain under the radar for so long. He kept getting arrested, for even minor infringements, or sent to a psychiatric hospital, so, at one point, the police would have found him if he were alive. Gary could not function by himself without his meds. The police sent pictures of Gary in hospitals, morgues, and police stations all throughout the state of California to see if Gary could have been there and there was never anything. Also, if you go back and look at his history, during basically every episode, he walked all the way back home to his parents, without fail. He never forgot his family and he had lots of opportunities to live homeless before, but did not. So, the fact that he never walked back home tells me that's because he was already dead. As Tammie Mathias, Gary's sister, has stated: "I believe he had to watch all of his friends die before he left on foot to find his own confused mind a way out. He would have contacted one of us if he had been alive himself. It's been 42 [now it has been 46] years and my tears keep flowing like it was yesterday." Law enforcement do not believe that Gary made it out of the Plumas National forest.

Aftermath and Conclusion:

When Gary Mathias disappeared, it gave a heavy blow to his family. They tried everything they could to find him. Gary's step-father stated that: "You don't expect your son to go to a basketball game, and to never come back home." They went up to the Plumas almost everyday to search for him and were a part of the search parties. They sent posters out and contributed, along with the other four families, to a huge reward fund to determine the whereabouts of any of the men. Gary's step-dad looked all throughout the forest and around Lake Oroville to see if he could find anything of Gary. Gary's mom hired divers to search Lake Oroville to see if there was a body. As the months went by after February 24th, Gary's mom did not dare turn on the TV for fear of finding out what had happened to her son, and when they started to find the bodies up in the Plumas, all Gary's step-dad was looking for were his glasses, as he lost all hope to even find his son's body at that point because of animal predation. Gary's family has always believed that Gary and his friends met with foul play. Ida Klopf, Gary's mom, during the search effort, stated: "There is no doubt in my mind [that it was foul play]. If he is physically able, he would be coming home right now. I’m convinced that where one is, the five are. Gary won’t be alone.” Sadly, all five ended up dying separately and alone, with no answer as to how it all came to that. Gary's family prayed with the other families for their sons' safe return home, only to be met with their deaths. Gary's family got the least closure of the five families affected. They never found anything of Gary's except his black tennis shoes, and they don't even have a grave to visit because he is still a missing person. After the police found Jackie Huet's body, they pretty much gave up on searching for Gary. When the search effort was officially called off on June 19, 1978, Gary's family stayed up on the mountain for two more weeks to see if they could find anything, but could not.
After Gary disappeared, his sister Sharon developed Bipolar disorder. Sometime during the late 80s, Gary's biological father, Garland Mathias, visited Sharon and had dinner with her, and only a few days after that, he committed suicide. In 2002, Gary's sister Sharon began to have delusions that somebody was after her and going to kill her, just like how she believed people were after her brother Gary on that fateful night that resulted in his disappearance, and, sadly, as a result, she, too, committed suicide.
After his disappearance, Gary's parents always held out hope that maybe he would walk through the door one day, as he used to do. Both of Gary's parents passed away in 2005, without ever knowing what happened to their son.
Gary's brother, Mark, ran the following obituary on 2008, on the 30th anniversary of his brother's disappearance:
Gary Mathias
October 15, 1952 - February 24, 1978
Part of us, yet parted from us.
Managing grief that becomes us.
Departed in body; eternal in thought
Birthday gifts no longer bought.
Gone to the Heaven far above us
Parted from us, forever far from us.
Love Always
Gary's brother, Mark, has also stated that: "The only thing that I could ask for right now is please find his remains. He needs to come home. I don't believe in closure, I don't. As long as there's an empty chair at that table, nothing's closed. I can't even remember what the last words were that I ever said to my brother. And I'm hoping it was, "I love you.""
Blaming Gary Mathias without any evidence or motive, aside from "he's a schizophrenic", feeds into the demonization of mental illness and is, frankly, irresponsible and insulting to the memory of the real Gary Mathias. It's pretty easy to slander someone who isn't alive anymore, isn't it? It's easy to make up all of this stuff against him and act as if he were evil just because his isolated and untreated self was unpredictable and hostile, isn't it? With the wealth of information we finally have on this case, when you finally educate yourself about mental illness and look objectively at the evidence at hand for this case, there is virtually no evidence that points to the theory that Gary Mathias was the perpetrator of any kind. Whatever happened that Friday night, almost 50 years ago, Gary Mathias was a victim to the tragic set of circumstances that ended his life brutally, along with the lives of his four friends.
In mid-October 2020, a Yuba County Sheriff's Department letter ruled that Gary Mathias is believed to be "a victim of foul play." The note added that "this case remains open as a missing person/homicide case," and that "it would be the best interest to not forward the Mathias family of this change."
(If you managed to read to the end, CONGRATULATIONS! I respect that a lot. Write in the comments what you think of the huge amount of information I presented to you. Was any of it new for you? Did you find some pieces of information particularly interesting?)

New Photos of Gary Mathias:

Here are some links to new photos of Gary Mathias, never before released until the new Netflix documentary that did this case came out on April 3, 2024 (Tell me what you think of them):
https://imgur.com/EyBXaMK
https://imgur.com/ueTBBWu
https://imgur.com/9JlaBrY
https://imgur.com/a/PGHZ90P
https://imgur.com/jiN4Z0N
(Please tell me if the links do not work)

Sources for Yuba County Five:

https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/2017/12/7/mathias-group-from-yuba-city
https://www.thehumanexception.com/l/the-yuba-county-5/
https://www.thehumanexception.com/l/the-yuba-county-5-revisited/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/07/06/5-boys-who-never-come-back/f8b30b11-baeb-4351-89f3-26456a76a4fb/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/book-explores-what-happened-to-yuba-county-men/ar-BB1iOslF#
https://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/new-book-examines-the-yuba-county-five/article_8e721890-ab65-11ee-8e48-f36bad639fe5.html
I used some of the police files (unable to link any though, sorry)
I did genealogical research of Gary's family: https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L2YM-N5sharon-lavonne-mathias-1954-2002
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L2XM-3G8/garland-dwayne-mathias-1929-1987
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L2YM-CGJ/ida-marie-mosley-1935-2005
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L2YM-B6W/robert-lafollet-klopf-1927-2005
https://www.californiabirthindex.org/birth/gary_dale_mathias_born_1952_4706195
https://www.familysearch.org/search/discovery/results?tab=memories&page=1&results=12&q.birthLikeDate.from=1952&q.surname=mathias&q.givenName=gary&q.anyPlace=Olivehurst%2C%20Yuba%2C%20California%2C%20United%20States
https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=gary+dale_mathias&event=_olivehurst-yuba-california-usa_69834&birth=1952
https://www.ancestry.com/search/categories/34/?name=gary+dale_mathias&birth=1952-10-15&father=garland_mathias&gender=m&mother=ida_mosley
I used family interviews of the Boys' families
I used some of the 1978 newspaper articles (Can't link any though, sorry)
Some of this information is in "Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five" a book written by Tony Wright.
Some of this information is in "Out of Bounds: What Happened to the Yuba County Five" a book written by Drew Beeson.

Sources for Schizophrenia:

https://www.healthline.com/health/schizophrenia/types-of-delusions-in-schizophrenia#types-of-delusions
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/diary-of-a-high-function/
https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-and-violent-crime-perpetrators-or-victims/
https://livingwithschizophreniauk.org/information-sheets/understanding-voice-hearing/
https://livingwithschizophreniauk.org/information-sheets/schizophrenia-and-dangerous-behaviou
https://www.psycom.net/schizophrenia-hallucinations-delusions
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2012/05/31/why-do-psychotic-people-go/49611810007/
https://psychcentral.com/schizophrenia/negative-symptoms-schizophrenia
https://livingwithschizophreniauk.org/cognitive-symptoms-schizophrenia/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromomania
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6138106/
"Surviving schizophrenia : a manual for families, consumers, and providers" by E. Fuller Torrey https://archive.org/details/survivingschizo000torr
"The family face of schizophrenia : true stories of mental illness with practical advice from America's leading experts" by Patricia Backlar https://archive.org/details/familyfaceofschi0000back/page/180/mode/2up

Previous Posts
It’s confirmed. Something is wiping out my conversations with Grayson. I’m glad I made it home and wrote down the last one right away, because the only reason I remember it right now is because I reread my last post. Yes, I am seriously freaking out about this. This means that not only is the Forgetter somehow getting access to me despite living off campus, but it is also ignoring Grayson’s warning from the prior year. Either Grayson is losing his authority on campus (very possible) or the Forgetter is a lot more powerful than I thought.
Or both could be true. That would suck.
I called Grayson up and asked if we could talk. We’re just friends now. I can talk to him about these things.
I asked him if I had a tendency to repeat conversations.
“You told me you were forgetful,” he added, after he confirmed that I did.
First off, wow, I told him that last year when I was panicking about finishing an assignment I’d forgotten about before the devil felt it necessary to intervene. I’m a little surprised that he remembered and also interpreted it to mean that I was forgetful enough to not remember very important conversations we’d had. Which I clarified to him.
“Normal forgetful!” I said. “Assignment due dates!”
“So repeating conversations isn’t normal.”
“No. It isn’t. Has this been going on for a while?”
He told me that it’s increased in frequency, starting sometime last year in the spring semester. He assumed it was mostly due to stress, as I’m starting to hit the harder classes in my degree program and am having to think about big decisions like internships and what I was going to do after I graduated. Some of the conversations also felt like they could have been continuations of the prior one, just with some details repeated, and he didn’t feel it was significant enough to bring up.
“I need you to start telling me whenever I’m repeating myself,” I said urgently. “I think the creature that makes people forget things is responsible for this. I have no idea how it’s getting to me. Can it leave campus?”
A long pause.
“It can,” he said quietly. “It’s not coming after you though.”
“But I’m forgetting-!”
“Some things,” he interrupted. “You’re forgetting some things. Not everything.”
That stopped me cold. My stomach twisted into an uncomfortable knot. Cassie didn’t even remember her former roommate existed. If it really was the Forgetter, then wouldn’t I have forgotten about Grayson and his dad? The tree? Everything that’s happened to me and my friends so far?
I’m just forgetting the things about Grayson. The important things, like what’s happening to his dad and his relationship with the university.
“Is there something else protecting this college?” I asked. “Something that wouldn’t want me to help you?”
“I think you already know the answer to that,” he replied.
The tree. The damn tree, the one in the graveyard, the one whose roots are spreading everywhere. I think it’s time to bring in the full team to figure out this problem. Maria might be distracted by keeping the Folklore Society out of trouble (which might be extra hard if my theory about them being here to attract the monsters is correct) but I’ve still got Cassie in my corner. I told Grayson I’d see what I could find out about the tree and then went to fill Cassie in on our problem.
Also I need to tell you what happened when I told Cassie about the incident with the garbage hill because damn it was savage.
“So there’s a sentient trash pile on campus,” I announced to Cassie as soon as I was home.
She didn’t even look at me.
“What, your ex came back from the dead?”
It was a good minute before I recovered my wits. How do you follow that up? You can’t. I’m glad our friendship has progressed to the point where she can casually roast my dead ex-boyfriend like that.
Anyway, she’s been helping me spread rumors about the sledding tradition. Not a word about the hill trying to eat people. Instead, she’s telling folks that there’s debris buried in it and someone wiped out on it and broke both legs - badly. It helps that the person who broke both legs is back on campus in a wheelchair and while she doesn’t remember exactly what happened, she’s confirming the story that yes, there was an accident on the hill and that’s how it happened. We might be stupid college students that do stupid things but we’re still American and no one wants to risk crushing medical debt on top of student loans. That’s a recipe for being in debt for the rest of your life and never being able to own a home or happiness ever.
It’s the best we can do. Besides, in Cassie’s opinion we’ve got bigger problems to deal with. I filled her in about the whole forgetting things to do with Grayson and she’s decided we need to deal with that first and foremost. I think it bothers her that I’m forgetting things like she did. Like. Bothering her more than I expected it to. She looked like she was about to cry there when I told her and then she got angry, but it wasn’t at me, and finally she calmed down and came up with a plan.
We’re going to run an experiment. I remember my last important conversation with Grayson because I re-read it. For the next week, I’m going to avoid Grayson. I already let him know what we’re doing and why. He agreed, saying if that’s what I wanted to do, then he’ll support it. I’m going to have no contact with him and at the end of the week Cassie will check to see if I still remember the conversation. After that, I’ll go hangout with Grayson as I usually do, and at the end of that week Cassie will check again.
I’m scared to find out what the results of this will be. I’m not sure I’d be going through with it if it weren’t for Cassie’s insistence. Because what if it is Grayson? What if he’s the trigger?
Right now it’s looking like he might be. We’re starting the second week and I still remember. I haven’t talked to him yet. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to. But I wanted to type all this up in case I forget… because something very important happened.
Grayson did want a way to contact me, in case something urgent happened, so Cassie made sure he had her phone number and he could contact her instead. Which he did. And Cassie, reluctantly, knocked on the door of my room to let me know we had a problem. It was in the evening, not so late that campus was quiet, but late enough that the sun had set. It was an overcast day and the moon wasn’t visible from behind the low-hanging clouds that had settled over campus like a shroud.
“Grayson’s dad is missing,” she said. “He didn’t come home from the office today.”
The flickering man would have found him in the past. Found him and taken him to Grayson. I wanted to throw up and for a moment I wasn’t hearing what Cassie was saying to me. I was just thinking of the pavement and how it looked with the water pooling on it. That’s all. Just the texture of the sidewalk.
“Let’s go together,” she was saying when my head cleared. “I’m worried about you going alone.”
“Yeah,” I said, still feeling like I wasn’t fully there, “that sounds good.”
Then I got up, got my shoes, jacket, and umbrella, and it wasn’t until we were crossing the street to campus that I finally came fully back to myself. Cassie was asking me if I knew where we should start. Grayson was going to stay close to his house in case his dad made it home. He’d search the surrounding neighborhood and periodically check back at the house. Cassie and I would look around campus. Campus security was also searching, but Grayson had his doubts that they’d be effective and that was why he’d contacted us. His pessimism was understandable. They didn’t know what was going on with the university president and so Grayson had to make it sound like he was just out of the loop of where his dad was. It was possible campus security would find him, tell him his son was looking for him, and then leave him wherever he was.
He’d tried not to tell Cassie what was really going on, even. Cassie told me as we walked towards the administration building that he’d only said there was an emergency, then when she held firm he said it was with his dad, and didn’t admit to anything else until Cassie told him she already knew. After that he was willing to tell her everything about the situation.
“Was he angry?” I asked anxiously.
“Nope,” she replied immediately. “Didn’t seem to mind at all. I told him I had to know if our experiment was going to work.”
So that’s reassuring. He hadn’t explicitly told me to keep this between us but he also hadn’t given me permission to tell anyone. I just… did because I was panicking a little bit and needed some help. I’m still not used to relying on people for things. Like it’s always been just my family and we had appearances to keep up so we didn’t let people outside the family know how hard it was. Outsiders with no blood ties weren’t to be trusted. They were gossips and voyeurs. Surely none of them would actually be genuine in their offers to help.
Looking back, I wonder if that was actually true, or just a consequence of my mother’s desire to shelter us from the rest of the town. Her affair became common knowledge, after all, and small towns can be vicious.
So it just feels wild to me that Grayson would trust Cassie because I trust her.
We started our search at the administration building. I checked at the front desk first, telling them that Grayson was wondering where his dad was and I’d volunteered to check his office first. The student at the front desk reluctantly made a call to the president’s secretary, clearly doubting that we had any legitimate reason to be asking, and then informed us (with more surprise than skepticism) that the secretary confirmed he’d left for the day.
After that we followed the path that he would have taken to the nearest parking lot. We found his car from the license plate that Grayson had given us. Still there. Cassie glanced back and forth across the parking lot, as if she’d see him just standing around waiting for us to discover him.
“Now what?” she asked. “Do we follow the route he’d take towards Grayson’s house if he was going on foot?”
“I feel like we’re long past the point where he would have made it home on foot,” I said, thinking hard. “Otherwise Grayson wouldn’t have called in a panic.”
“So we search campus.”
We’d go methodically, I suggested. Sweep back and forth, starting from the administration building. I suggested splitting up so we could each cover one half of campus, but Cassie quickly shot that down. We’d stick together.
Also she didn’t know what Grayson’s dad looked like.
My hopes were pretty thin that we’d find him, but I felt we had to try. This might not be Grayson’s real dad and while I no longer thought that Grayson loved him, it was clear that he felt responsible for his condition and was trying his best to take care of him during his deterioration. I guess I can understand that. I know that it’s not my fault that things have happened like they did on campus. It’s not my fault what happened to Patricia or Steven or anyone else, but I still feel like I have to do something so it doesn’t happen to others. Grayson can’t walk away either. This was foisted on him and he’s trying to make it better in whatever small way he can.
We walked and walked. Occasionally we saw someone from campus security also walking out on the sidewalks, but it didn’t seem to me like they were deliberately searching. More like they were dutifully out looking, but without a real plan and without a sense of urgency. I unconsciously picked up my pace until Cassie told me to calm down, that panicking wasn’t going to help and I was going to walk her into the dirt if I didn’t slow down.
Then, to make matters better, it began to rain. It quickly became a steady rainfall, not a downpour, but enough to quickly coat the sidewalks in a glistening sheen underneath the streetlights. Visibility dropped even further and Cassie insisted we slow down even more, so that she could make sure he hadn’t wandered off the sidewalk or between buildings where he would be easier to miss.
“What do I tell him?” I said fretfully. “Sorry Grayson, but we lost your dad.”
“You didn’t lose him,” Cassie snapped. “And once we hit the other end of campus we call him up and tell him it’s time to involve the police.”
“But-”
“STOP.”
Her tone cut through me like ice.
“He is not your ex,” she continued. “He’s not going to get upset because you’re not a mind-reader or a goddamn miracle worker here. And if he does, I will end him. Now take a deep breath.”
I did as she said. 4 seconds in, 4 seconds hold, 6 seconds out. Just like my therapist had told me during our handful of sessions. I was focusing on this when Cassie put out an arm to stop me.
“Look,” she said urgently. “Does that seem weird to you?”
She was staring at the ground. It took me a moment to realize what she was seeing.
The water on the ground. It was moving. Flowing, like a stream.
Flowing uphill.
And I knew exactly where it was going.
“The graveyard,” I whispered with growing horror. “That’s where he is!”
Cassie was asking what I was talking about, but I wasn’t listening to her anymore. I began to run. I abandoned my umbrella and ran. From the sound of footsteps behind me, Cassie was following suit, no longer trying to ask what was going on. She was trusting that I knew what was going on and following me, knowing that there would be time for explanations later.
It had to be the graveyard. That was the direction the water was flowing. Towards the center of campus.
And that was where the tree was, waiting to drink him up.
The gate to the cemetery was hanging wide open. My heart sank in dread as we rounded the corner and saw it drifting in the wind, glistening in the electric lights. Beyond it stretched the graveyard, wreathed in an almost impenetrable darkness, the headstones brooding shapes in the gloom. I came to a halt just outside the boundary and stared into the cemetery, straining my eyes to locate any sign of movement.
“You’re not actually going in there, are you?” Cassie panted as she caught up.
“I think he’s in there,” I whispered.
“But the groundskeeper…”
“I know!”
I took a deep breath. Of the two of us, I was better suited for this. I grew up in a rural area. I knew how to navigate a dark forest. And if our flight here was any indication, I was certainly a better runner than Cassie.
My legs didn’t want to move. They felt like they were made of lead.
“He’s not worth it,” Cassie said. “He’s already dead. You said so yourself.”
Already dead… and not worth risking my life over.
But this wasn’t just about Grayson’s dad.
“I feel like everything is pointing towards this tree,” I said quietly. “There’s been… signs.”
And by signs I mean the devil contriving a reason for me to go into the graveyard. I don’t think that was entirely because he enjoys sowing chaos. He does, he totally does, but there is also a purpose behind his actions. I know this.
“I don’t know if the tree is responsible for what’s happening to me,” I continued, “but I see its roots everywhere. I think it’s hurting Grayson. I don’t know if it’s protecting campus or hurting the college or maybe it’s just another entity with no real purpose… but I’m not going to find out standing out here.”
Cassie swore under her breath.
“I’m going with you. We can watch out for the groundskeeper together.”
I started to protest but Cassie didn’t let me. She just… walked into the graveyard. I wanted to tell her no, that I’d already made this mistake, that I trusted Steven and I was wrong and he died. That I couldn’t bear to go through that again. She didn’t give me a chance. She was inside the graveyard before I could speak and then it was too late, because the only thing worse than her going inside would be making a scene inside the graveyard boundaries. I feel like that would attract the groundskeeper’s attention.
I followed her. What choice did I have? My heart was pounding and I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the muddy ground and stay there until I died, but Cassie was moving resolutely forward, walking carefully on the slick paving stones. At one point she reached back and I took her hand and just that small connection, the feel of her palm against mine - starkly warm in the cold rain - gave me some small measure of courage. I wasn’t doing this alone. And if we saw the groundskeeper, well, I’d drag her with me as I ran for the exit if I had to. It’d be different this time.
The tree was easy to find even in the darkness. It stood starkly against the dark sky, without form or definition, like a paper cutout. We made our way towards it. Both of us were scanning the graveyard and Cassie would periodically pause to look behind as well. The groundskeeper was slow. We had that in our favor, at least. The rain seemed to be lessening as well and I could hear even the distant creaking of the trees branches from underneath the pattering of the raindrops.
“There,” Cassie hissed, pointing. “Is that the president or the grounds keeper?”
He stood a short distance ahead, a few rows of headstones over. It was the president. The groundskeeper is way more intimidating in stature. We picked our way over, watching our steps. I edged up to him, calling out so I wouldn’t inadvertently sneak up and startle him. He didn’t turn to look at me. His gaze was fixed on the headstone.
“Is that… your grave?” I ventured.
“It should be,” he said. “He purchased a plot and had the headstone made but they never put a body in the ground and never engraved a date.”
There was a flash of light behind me. I flinched. Cassie had taken a photo of it and had to use flash in the darkness. The president didn’t seem to care, but I had to hope it wouldn’t attract the attention of the groundskeeper.
“You seem a bit more with it right now,” I ventured.
“The graveyard does that for me. That’s why they keep me out of it, you know.”
They. They they they. The administration? I had my doubts. The flickering man?
Grayson?
He turned and began walking towards the exit. Cassie and I quickly followed.
“We need to get you two out of here,” he said firmly. “Shouldn’t have used flash.”
“Sorry,” Cassie said. “But I don’t think we could find that headstone again in the daylight.”
“Who made you like this?” I demanded. “Is it the tree?”
The gate was just ahead, hanging wide open. I thought we’d gone further inside than this. My heart pounded in my chest. I wanted answers and something told me that once we passed that gate I’d lose my chance. He wasn’t answering, not right away. He tilted his head as he walked, considering his answer, while everything inside me was screaming to please, just tell me something, even if it wasn’t the answer to the question I’d asked.
“The tree isn’t the cause,” he said thoughtfully. I could tell he was slipping away again. “It was a… reaction. When they realized what was happening.”
We were at the gate. Beside me, Cassie made a small, strangled sound of dismay.
The river. The traveling river had arrived while we were inside.
It flowed around the graveyard. I stared at it in dismay, tracing its course as it wrapped around the fence of the cemetery, curving around to hug the corners and encircle it like a moat. The water was choppy. Agitated. It spanned wide, far too wide for us to jump or maybe even swim. Like it was trying to cover the whole of campus.
I glanced behind us, afraid of what I’d see. It was so hard to make out details in the darkness. Was that figure a headstone or was it the hunched form of the groundskeeper making its slow progress towards us? My skin was icy cold from both the rain and fear.
“Thank you,” Grayson’s dad said, turning to me. He was smiling sadly. “You didn’t have to come after me.”
“It was nothing,” I replied automatically. I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at the river and wondering what we could do now, cut off by its expanse.
“It was everything,” he replied, still smiling. “Listen. It’s not the body that’s the problem here. It’s the soul. They haven’t gotten a replacement in a while. Got too greedy there and tried to do something different. I don’t know if they’ve got one in mind or if they’re finally putting an end to this charade… but with this last bit of lucidity I have, I’m going to make sure they’re not able to trap anyone else.”
I opened my mouth to speak. To ask who it was that I was talking to. Whose soul. Beside me, Cassie said with relief that the river was receding, but I wasn’t listening to her. I was staring at the president’s body and the person inside, who turned away from me, still smiling…
…and threw himself into the river.
He swam down, straight down, and vanished into the darkness.
The river raced away from us, like a snake fleeing the shadow of a hawk, convulsing on itself like it was trying to spit him back out. It was too late. He was too far down. Too determined.
And there are things in the river that have a mind and a hunger of their own.
He was gone.
The river gave up, flattening out as if in exhaustion, and then it became a puddle - glistening darkly like a slab of stone - and then it was gone. Nothing but water on the soaked earth, slowly sinking into the ground.
“What the hell just happened?” Cassie asked from beside me after a long moment of silence.
Yeah. My thoughts exactly.
Cassie told Grayson what happened. He sounded defeated on the phone, she said. Like he hadn’t expected a good outcome all along. He asked that we not talk about this with anyone for now. He had to figure out what to do. The university needed a president, after all. Then he hung up and hasn’t called back. He won’t answer Cassie’s calls, either. I want to tell him to forget it, to let the university flounder, that he doesn’t owe them anything. I will tell him that, when I next talk to him.
But before that, I’m writing all of this down and telling you.
I need to remember what happened.
Next post.

🌿 Detailed Overview:
An extensive exploration of the chakra system, detailing the seven main chakras and their importance in achieving physical, emotional, and spiritual balance. This guide is designed for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike, providing comprehensive insights into each chakra's functions, associated colors, sounds, and healing practices.
🔍 Key Themes and Insights:
Overview of Chakras: Mercier provides a detailed introduction to the concept of chakras, energy centers located throughout the body that influence various aspects of our lives. Each chakra is thoroughly explained, including its position, role, and the bodily functions it governs.
Balancing Techniques: The book offers a wide range of techniques to balance each chakra, such as meditation, yoga, color therapy, food, and crystal healing. For each chakra, Mercier describes specific practices that can enhance its energy flow and correct imbalances.
Physical and Emotional Health: Mercier connects the health of specific chakras with physical and emotional wellness, explaining how imbalances in particular chakras can lead to health issues. She provides practical advice on how to address these imbalances effectively.
Spiritual Growth: The guide emphasizes the spiritual dimensions of chakra work, exploring how mastering chakra energies can lead to greater self-awareness, inner peace, and a deeper sense of connection to the universe.
Diagnostic Tools: The book includes methods to diagnose which chakras may be blocked or overactive. These tools help readers assess their own chakra health and decide which healing practices might be most beneficial.
Historical and Cultural Contexts: Mercier also delves into the historical and cultural backgrounds of chakra theories, providing readers with a well-rounded understanding of the origins and development of chakra practices in different spiritual traditions.
Audience Takeaway:
"The Chakra Bible" is ideal for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the chakra system and integrate chakra practices into their daily wellness routine. Whether you are a novice eager to learn about the basics of chakras or an experienced practitioner seeking to expand your knowledge and skills, this book provides valuable information and practical tools for personal development and healing.
💌 Your Experiences and Reflections:
Have you used any of the techniques described in "The Chakra Bible" to work with your chakras? What practices have you found most effective, and what changes have you noticed in your physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being? Share your experiences and discuss how understanding and working with chakras have influenced your journey toward health and balance. Let’s explore the benefits and challenges of engaging with this intricate energy system.
- Purchase

When watching sitcoms, I see why actresses who are in the leading roles are nominated and praised for their performances. Actresses can give characters comedy, love, development, personalities in their roles. These are what makes their characters so hilarious and memorable by fans of the sitcoms. So, I made a long list on who I would consider to be many of the best actresses.
My favorites are
(1) Debra Messing from Will and Grace
(2) Jennifer Aniston from Friends
(3) Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory
(4) Shelley Long from Cheers
(5) Kristen Johnston from 3rd Rock from the Sun
(6) Helen Hunt from Mad About You
(7) Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond
(8) Jean Stappleton fom All in the Family
(9) Amy Poehler from Parks and Recs
(10) Roseanne Barr from Roseanne
(11) Jane Kaczmarek from Malclm in the Middle
(12) Suzzanne Sommers from Three's Company and Step by Step (R.I.P.)
(13) Laura Prepon from That '70s Show
(14) Judith Light from Who's the Boss
(15) Leah Remini from The King of Queens
(16) Suzanne Pleshette from The Bob Newhart Show
(17) Candiace Bergen from Murphy Brown
(18) Katey Sagal from Married with Children
(19) Crystal Bernard from Wings
(20) Melissa McCarthy from Mike and Molly
(21) Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams from Laverne and Shirley
(22) Pam Dawber from Mork and Mindy
(23) Fran Drescher from The Nanny
(24) Patrica Richardson from Home Improvement
(25) Nancy Travis from Last Man Standing
(26) Markie Post from Night Court
(27) Kaitlin Olson from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
(28) Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs from 2 Broke Girls
(29) Anna Faris from Mom
(30) Jenna Elfman from Dharma and Greg
(31) Reba Hart from Reba
(32) Christa Miller from The Drew Carey Show
(33) Julia Louis-Dreyfus from The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep
(34) Laura San Giacomo from Just Shoot Me!

The following is a true story in the small town of Crescent Hill, Indiana. It will likely not be published in newspapers, nor will you find it in online publications. It exists here, and only here, though this too will soon disappear. This is the story of a missing person, Angela Blake, who has now been found.
Crescent Hill is a sleepy, woods-flanked slice of Americana. Within its borders are a single police station, a fire station, and a twenty-four-seven diner. The businesses of Crescent Hill are all family-owned, save for a single Dairy Queen on the long stretch of road leading towards the highway. At the start of this story, there are five hundred and fourteen residents of Crescent Hill, though that number would soon dwindle.
The woods surrounding Crescent Hill carry an air of mystery and forbidding, their density so that one could conceivably enter from Crescent Hill and never make it through to the other side. In all reality, they are just woods, and the stories have been fabricated, expounded upon, and exacerbated due to how little there is to do there. Often, when I'd been sent out to investigate a child that had gone missing in the woods or a creature hiding in the trees, I'd find the child playing in the mud or a neighbor's dog that freed itself from its leash and gotten into the neighbor's trash cans. There was no resident more notorious for such claims than Eugene Blake.
Eugene was fifty-seven years old at the beginning of this case and would be at the time of his death. For fifteen years, he had seen a ghost in every corner and a ghoul behind every tree. I was responding to the two-hundred-fifty-first report he'd made.
"Blake?" I called out from outside his mobile home.
"Hold on there, detective!" He yelled from inside.
He had lived in this motorhome for the better part of those fifteen years, drinking his days away when he wasn't on call at the water treatment plant. He wasn't working that day and, as a consequence, was intoxicated by the time I arrived.
He stumbled out of the motorhome, nearly falling into the fresh mud at his feet.
"Hermann! What took you so long? It's almost three?!"
"Had another call to tend to. What's the problem?"
"What's the problem? Why do you have'ta say it like that?"
"Eugene. Get to it."
"Fine… Fine… Look, I saw something in the woods; I think it could be a bear."
"There are black bears in the woods, Eugene."
"I know, detective, but the fuckin' thing was all mangled. Torn apart." He says seriously.
Often, Eugene gave reports with a tinge of uncertainty: it could be this or might have been that. But his voice was direct, leveled, and assured.
"I'll have a look," I said.
We walked through the trees for about a minute or so, back towards a naturally formed brook that, upon reaching, Eugene admitted to tossing spent beer cans into. And sure enough, there it was. A black bear, not particularly large, maybe three to four hundred pounds, female, with its stomach slit open and its entrails spilled outward. The bear's face had been torn apart, its jaw broken open. It had begun to decompose, indicating it had been killed and left out more than 48 hours prior.
"See, I told ya. Look at it, what could have done that?" Eugene asks anxiously.
He had a point, but the question wasn't "what" but "why?" It could have collapsed for one reason or another, and coyotes could have gotten at it. Why would the entrails be displayed and untouched? And how would they have broken its jaw?
I escorted Eugene back to his motorhome and went back to the station. There isn't much of a protocol for something like this, but the best I can do is send animal control to examine the bear. But I had something else on my mind. Eugene was the type of person you'd mock behind their back, but you couldn't help but feel sorry for him if you looked in his eyes. There's a reason he'd made two-hundred fifty-one reports over the last fifteen years, a reason he'd lived in a motorhome drinking his life away all that time. Or, if not a reason, justification.
Fifteen years ago, his daughter, Angela Blake, aged fifteen, would disappear on the way home from school. She'd taken Pritchett Road as she had every school day for the few years prior. The missing person's report was light on details, as the closest thing to the site of her disappearance was that twenty-four-seven diner, Lucky's. A single patron, swollen with coffee and pancakes, was our only witness, and their description was as follows. "A forest-green sedan, Mercedes, real nice. She got in, and the car sped off, lightning-quick. And the license plate, it was blank!"
We searched through every corner of Crescent Hills for Angela Blake and the green Mercedes, though I was only a patrolman then. Countless hours of investigation, theorizing, even consulting psychics and fortune tellers. Spending our department budget on anything that could get us the slightest bit closer to finding her. It would remain open for a year and then close, unsolved, and it was this that tore the Blake family apart. Eugene and Patricia Blake separated shortly after the closing of the case. I can't blame him, now, for his drinking, for his reports. Maybe he'd just like someone to talk to.
But, every time I see him, I'm brought back to that investigation, brought back to the interview where he sobbed, repeating, "She was wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans, black Converse shoes, she had a red backpack," maybe knowing, somewhere deep within that we'd have to stop looking for her and start looking for artifacts left in her passing.
The missing person's case of Angela Blake would remain closed until the morning after my conversation with Eugene on February 27th this past year. As a patron at Lucky's reported, Angela Blake stepped out of a forest-green Mercedes sedan wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans, black Converse shoes, and a red backpack. And she hadn't aged a day.
February 27th, 2:22 pm. Above, swollen clouds threaten rainfall. A gentle wind cuts through the line of trees on Pritchett Road's eastern side, whistling as it does.
A forest-green Mercedes sedan, make uncertain, pulls to a stop along Pritchett Road 200 feet from the door of Lucky's. Frank Brennan, who'd taken his break from work to visit Lucky's for mid-day pancakes and coffee, watches as a young woman steps out of the Mercedes and stares blankly across the road. The Mercedes then accelerates to a speed approaching eighty miles an hour instantly. There's no smoke, no tire screech, and, to quote, "Frank Brennan, the car wasn't moving, and then suddenly, it was." We wouldn't receive the call until roughly thirty minutes later, when Linda Greene, manager of Lucky's, would report that a girl had just "shown up."
Angela Blake's disappearance had become a ghost story, twisted, morphed, changed over the years to be repurposed for everything from campfire scares to convincing children to come home before dark. It was our rural boogeyman, and everyone in town knew the case. Since Angela's disappearance, there had been no murders, no violent crimes of any kind. The worst offense over the last fifteen years was our Captain accidentally leaving his truck in neutral, having it run over the foot of a poor bastard outside Mill's Hardware. No charges were pressed, and he'd limp the pain away within a month.
Even still, despite the reputation of the Angela Blake case, even though she stepped out of the same car she'd been seen getting into, although she wore the same clothes, no one in Lucky's diner could believe that this was Angela Blake. I couldn't either.
"I'm Detective Hermann. Are you feeling okay?" I asked.
"I'm warm," Angela said.
"Can you tell me your name?"
"Angela. Angela Blake."
At the mention of her name, the small gaggle of patrons, as well as Frank Brennan and Linda Greene, gasped and started talking amongst themselves. The girl calling herself Angela Blake could barely keep her head up. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks; her eyes were glazed over and yellow with strain. She wore thick, black bags under her eyes.
"Angela Blake went missing fifteen years ago. She'd be thirty by now." I said.
"I'm Angela Blake."
"Can you tell me about the car you were riding in?"
"What car?"
"The green Mercedes. Do you remember who was driving?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"You arrived in a green Mercedes. You stepped out onto Pritchett Road, and it sped away."
"No. I was just walking home from school. I always walk home on Pritchett Road." She responded, her eyes empty, her voice tired and passive.
"You don't remember a green Mercedes?"
"No."
I paused for a moment, trying to piece this together as she stared through a plate of pancakes in front of her. The whole diner, enraptured by our conversation, was quiet enough that you could hear every gentle raindrop patter against the roof. They stared at her with glassy, scared eyes, save for one. A tall, slender man in a black coat, seated alone in the opposite corner, stared as though he were watching a show.
"Angela, can you tell me what year it is?"
This is the first time since our conversation began that she looked up at me. Her eyes were cold and empty, but if she wasn't Angela Blake, I felt that, at that moment, she believed she was. She wondered why I was asking these questions, why the patrons of Lucky's diner were so infatuated with our conversation and her walk home. She stared at each of them, and as I turned to look, I realized the Man in Black had vanished, though his coffee remained.
"Mister Hermann, why are they all looking at me that way?" She asked.
"There just worried about you, that's all. Now, Angela, please, what year is it?"
"Why would you ask me a thing like that?" she responded. "It's two thousand and nine."
Eugene Blake stumbled into the diner in his work uniform. Linda Greene had called his work to look for him a few minutes prior, and Eugene had run out of the plant to his truck and sped down here the moment he'd heard. He's still out of breath.
"Angie!" He cried out.
"Dad?!" She responded.
She hurriedly got up, rushed to him, and sank into his arms. In absolute dumbfounded shock, Eugene stood at the entryway to Lucky's diner, staring into and through her as she fell into his arms. He squeezed her tightly.
"I'm scared." She whimpered.
One by one, the patrons at Lucky's diner would leave as Eugene and Angela stood there clinging to one another. In time, Patricia Reed (formerly Patricia Blake) would join them. I sat there with them, watching, waiting for the girl calling herself Angela Blake to slip, break character. But she never did.
Linda closed the diner for the day. One of only a few times, the diner had defied the "Open 24/7" sign emblazoned on the signpost. I can't be sure how long I sat there or exactly why, but the longer I did, the more my questions bled into each other. I was left only with a sense I couldn't shake. How could this be Angela Blake? She looked like Angela Blake, wore the same clothing she wore when she disappeared, and came from the same type of car Angela Blake had been seen getting into fifteen years prior. But if this was Angela Blake, this was Angela Blake from fifteen years ago, slipped through time and now appearing on the other end.
Then, I noticed two large dots On the underside of Angela Blake's wrist. Rust in color and splotchy. Blood, dried.
Eugene and Angela Blake moved back into the home of Patricia Reed within a week. Outside of the mystique, the questions, and the confusion around the case, the Blake family had returned to a reflection of the family they had once been. The church, which sat only two hundred but held nearly all of Crescent Hill come Sunday morning service, held a prayer for Eugene, Patricia, and Angela that following Sunday.
"After fifteen years of prayers, Crescent Hill's dear Angela Blake has been returned to us. We do not know how or why but must thank god, for our prayers have finally been answered—" He started. And with those words came murmurs from the crowd.
"There's something wrong with her." One whispered.
"Shouldn't she be thirty?" Another said.
"We thank god for blessing the Blake family with her return and for blessing our church with their presence. Let us all now bend our heads and pray." The Pastor finished.
But the congregation on that Sunday morning did not bend their heads, nor did they pray. They stared. As Eugene and Patricia prayed with eyes closed, Angela stared up towards the body of Christ, tortured, mangled, hanging on the cross. And the congregation all stared at her.
Theories ran as rampantly through our five-man police brigade as they did through all of Crescent Hill, though ours sounded differently. All we had to go off of was a metallic residue found on the clothing Angela wore, sulfur dioxide, though that was chalked up to her father's work at the plant, and the blood on the underside of her wrist. It had been washed away the night she was found, and she, as expected, had no explanation for it.
We didn't know this at the time—though if we had, I'm not sure we would have the means to dissuade them—but the town had been slowly coming to a series of strange conclusions around Angela Blake's return. She was a shapeshifter dressed as the missing girl; she was really the devil, and he stole her skin. Those kinds of theories, theories rooted in superstition, quickly dissolve under the slightest prodding or observation, but that did little to dissuade them.
The first question I wanted to answer was, "Is this really Angela Blake?" Her age be damned, if we can at least identify that this really is Angela, then we can start asking the other questions. With our limited resources, with no budget for extravagant tests, and no large hospital to test them in, we settled on a paternity test.
"A paternity test? Are you out of your mind?" Eugene barked.
"We're just trying to figure a few things out," I responded.
For the first time that I've seen in those 15 years, Eugene was stone sober, clean-shaven, and with his hair properly tended to. He looked foreign to me now. The man who tossed his beer cans in the brook out of his mobile home, seemingly buried deep and replaced upon Angela's return.
"Like what, Al, like what?" He asked.
I pulled him aside. "Eugene, has it not struck you as odd that she's the same age as when she disappeared?" I asked. "Has it not struck you as odd that she's wearing the same clothes she disappeared in, the same clothes you gave a statement to?"
He looked past me into the living room, where Patricia and Angela sat side by side. "What does it matter if I have her back?" He responded emptily.
Maybe it was curiosity, fear, or the desire to put the ceaseless rumors around them to rest, but he would eventually allow us to perform a paternity test. According to this test, the girl was indeed Eugene's daughter. Upon completing the test and receiving the results, Eugene asked me, "Al, this was an unsolved case for 15 years; I have my girl back; can you just leave it unsolved? I want this to be over. I want things to go back to normal." I wish I could have obliged that request; I wish we could have left this story, this case, in the past and allowed the Blake family to resume or reattain whatever their version of a normal life could look like. None of us would be so lucky.
On March 1st, around 1 am, a passerby in a pickup truck spotted Angela Blake on Pritchett Road. She was standing in the same position she'd been left in by the green Mercedes, staring into the dense forest on the other side of the road. I was second to be called and third to arrive, Eugene having beaten me there only a few minutes. She sat in the back of Captain Tillo's squad car.
"It's nothing, Al, don't blow it out of proportion." Eugene would say. But his words and the look in his eyes were in opposition, the worry boiling over and spilling into the air around him. You could feel it on him, the stench of desperation, of fear, a pheromone dispersed into the air as his soul begged for help.
That night, we would come to an agreement. The Crescent Hill police department recommended transferring her to a rehabilitation center a few hours North. A hospital with the proper tools and infrastructure to examine Angela with the appropriate depth. On the other hand, Eugene was desperate for this report to be off the record entirely. Instead, we'd decide that Angela would be seen by our town psychiatrist for evaluation, who would recommend how to proceed. In the meantime, we would sit in on the sessions and continue our investigation as quietly as possible.
"Ain't it enough that everyone is talking about her, Al?" He asked.
"Can you blame them?" I responded.
I didn't mean it to come out so biting; I didn't mean for the words to dig into him the way they did, to wound him. But wound them they did, and deeply so. And, in retrospect, I realize it wasn't the words themselves or that I had said them, but that within himself were those same questions, those same concerns, and a desperation to silence them.
Captain Tillo stayed there, staring at the road and the line of trees, periodically looking up toward the crescent moon. And he said something to me that I haven't stopped thinking about since.
"Ain't it strange we've had nothing bad happen since she was gone? Not a murder, or assault, or an accident of any kind." He shuddered. "Never forgave myself for not finding her. And her being back hasn't softened that feeling a bit… I got this bad feeling, Al. I got this bad feeling about the girl. Like she's back to collect the debt for the last fifteen years."
The next day, Patricia would leave the house, Eugene and Angela behind, along with a note. The note, written in smudged, hurried handwriting, would become another scrutinized, theorized, and embellished whisper shared over every meal at Lucky's, every family dinner, and every garage beer. To some, it was pages long condemnation and quoted the Bible; to others, it was a suicide note left to provide closure. But, this note was neither of those and said far more than any of those could have in the five plain words scribbled across the page:
"THAT IS NOT MY DAUGHTER"
I was desperate for anything that could point to an explanation for Angela Blake. There was, at the time, only a single other case in Crescent Hill, that being the mutilated bear in the creak by Eugene's mobile home. The results, according to the vet, were "inconclusive," but in conversation, he said to me plain as day, "I couldn't tell you what the fuck happened." Due to the state of decomposition, the bear was in and his relative inexperience in autopsy analysis, all he could parse out from the corpse was a single, loose thought: "I can't imagine an animal that would do this."
"Angela, could you tell me what you remember from that night? From the night you got into that car?" Doctor Meadows asked.
It was quiet in the Blake House that evening without so much as the rustle of a breeze to cut the silence. Despite sitting in the next room, Eugene and I could hear the breath rise and fall in Angela's throat as she searched for words. A group of onlookers had formed outside, desperate for a glimpse inside. Doctor Meadows, the only psychiatrist still licensed in a nearly 50-mile radius, was called in to help us. Technically, we can't interrogate Angela, as she'd not committed a crime. And this, per the agreement with Eugene, was as close as we could get. Doctor Meadows stared at her, examining the flutter of Angela's pupils as they struggled to focus.
"Angela, can you tell me what you remember?" She repeated.
"Warm," Angela said, finally.
"You remember being warm?" Meadows asked.
"Not just warm. Hot. I can feel it now." Tears come to Angela's eyes.
"Do you need some air?"
Angela went quiet again as her face grew red. Eugene sat across from me, staring into the reflection made at the surface of his coffee. He was tired, bags stretched from under his eyes down the length of his cheeks, his brow furrowed in a permanent strain.
"My skin is burning," Angela said finally, her eyes widening until the tears had no choice but to fall.
Eugene's eyes rose from his coffee to meet mine.
"What do you mean?" Meadows asked.
"My skin is burning. My skin is melting from my bones. I can feel the fire—"
"Angela, you're here with me; you're safe, "Doctor Meadows interjected. But it was of no use.
"—My bones burned, the marrow melts, the marrow melts, the marrow melts."
Eugene quickly rose, pushed past me, and ran to Angela's side, wrapping her in his arms. But she just kept screaming.
"The marrow melts."
I already tried to hand this case off to a better-equipped agency, but none of the agencies would return my call. Hoping it might make some information materialize, I tried leaking this to every major news corporation in America, but none of them had any interest. We had, at present, no information on the car, with no one within fifty miles having seen it besides that patron from Lucky's. Angela had given us no further details, as this session was, until that point, the most she'd said. So, that night, persuaded by a drink-too-many, I returned to Pritchett Street to investigate on foot.
The tree line, thick with fog, consumed my flashlight's beam, bleeding it through the trees. I stood there in the road, waiting for something, anything, willing to accept UFOs, Demons, or a Windigo's advance so long as it would explain this case to me. Instead, I found a single, five-and-a-half size sneaker turned over and a foot trail leading into the trees. I followed.
Hung between two oak trees, held by harnesses made from the clothing she would have worn, with her stomach slit open and her entrails spilled forth, was another girl. At roughly 3 am, after paramedics and police officers had cut her down, she'd be identified as Caroline Tull, aged 15. She was supposed to have gone on a school field trip on February 28th, and her return would not have been for another day or so. Assuming she'd opted out when she didn't show, the school simply marked her absent and docked her points. Her parents, who'd assumed she'd joined the trip as intended, figured she was having too much fun and wanted to adopt some independence. Captain Tillo later told me her family asked only a single question when they were told. "Was it that fucking girl? Was it Angela Blake?" There was one last piece of evidence, something that would only further persuade me to a conclusion I'd make that night. On the clothes that held Caroline Tull up by a tree branch was the same chemical found on Angela Blake's clothes: Sulfur Dioxide.
It took a while for it to strike me, so long that I'd reach my driveway before the thought would occur, and then I'd sit there with it, the car idle, for some time before I let the thought solidify. Angela, the day she was found, had blood on her wrist but no cut from which she could have bled. Who's blood was it?
"I was with her all night," Eugene said.
But that didn't dissuade the Mob that started forming at the perimeter of his house. A mob, consisting of concerned citizens with signs emblazoned with scripture and condemnations, barked at every movement inside the home.
"How could you think she'd do something like this?" He asked.
"I'm not saying I think she did anything. But Angela went to that spot the night before, and we found her staring in the same direction as the body was found!" I responded.
"I don't know what happened. And I'm sorry for what happened to the girl. But I was with her all night every night since she went out there, and that girl wasn't there then."
"Caroline Tull," I responded.
"Don't you say her fucking name like it's supposed to get a rise out of me—"
"That's her name."
"—Like I have some guilt I'm carrying—"
"Fifteen years old, like Angela was."
"Like Angela is."
"Do you really believe that?" I asked. "Do you really believe, deep in your gut, Eugene, deep in your fucking gut, do you really believe that Angela disappeared fifteen years ago, didn't age a day, and came back?"
"Hermann, don't push me."
"Your ex-wife didn't believe it, Eugene. Your ex-wife knew something was wrong."
"Hermann, I swear to god—"
"That's why she left. She knew that whatever that CAN'T BE ANGELA—"
Eugene struck me on the left side, just under my eye. Quickly, Captain Tillo grappled Eugene and slammed him onto the tile floor. Angela, meanwhile, sitting on the couch in the family room, in the same spot as she had the day prior, didn't so much as look up.
"What choice do I have, Al? WHAT CHOICE DO I HAVE?" He'd scream, beg, even. And still, Angela didn't look up. This would be the last conversation I'd have with Eugene, and regardless of what my gut told me, now I wished I had been just a little bit kinder. The Mob that formed around the house would remain through the night, and Captain Tillo would stay there, staring out of them. Before I left, he said, "This ain't right, Al. They ain't right." And, at the time, I didn't quite grasp what he meant or think about it too deeply. But I understand now. It wasn't about Angela Blake, Caroline Tull, or the crowd itself. It was about the people in the crowd galvanized in an ethereal, malevolent way. He looked out at a crowd of people he knew, and yet he couldn’t recognize any of them.
The following day, around 4 pm, Eugene, with Angela in tow, drunkenly stumbled into the police station. He had a few bruises on his arms and a scratch along his face. "They threw rocks at us!" he cried loudly, demanding we believe him when he told us Caroline's death wasn't Angela's fault. He'd spend the night in the drunk tank, with no family to send her to and her safety in question; Angela would remain at the station, too.
I'm going to do my best now to transcribe the conversation as it happened, but the further I've gotten from this case, the more the feelings have overtaken the specifics of the words and corrupted them. It's eight-thirty pm. All officers, except Constance at the front desk, are out on patrol. Angela Blake, who had been unable to answer our questions previously, now sits across from me on the other side of the iron bars.
"Angela. I'm going to ask you a few questions, okay?" I asked. "Do you remember my name?"
"No."
"That's okay, I'm Detective Albert Hermann."
"What questions?"
"Questions about Caroline Tull."
"What questions about Caroline Tull?"
"Did you know her?"
"No."
"I want to ask you about when you were gone. Can you tell me everything you remember?"
"It's hard."
"Try. Just try."
"There was a man in the car. He asked me if I needed a ride. But he didn't ask me with words."
"What do you mean?"
"He just looked at me, and he knew what I needed, and I knew he would give it to me, so I got in."
"What did he look like?"
"He didn't look like anyone—"
"He didn't look like anyone you know?"
"No. He didn't look like anyone at all. And he looked like everyone. And then he looked like no one again."
"What happened when you got into the car."
"Nothing. I don't remember the car. I just remember how his face changed and how the fire felt. It burned my hair and my skin and then my bones. And it felt so good to be free," she said as tears ran from her eyes. "Maybe that's why he took Caroline—to show her too," she said.
The knuckle of my middle finger broke as I slammed my hand into the bars, but I wouldn't yet feel it.
"You and Caroline Tull had the same metallic substance on your clothing. You and her are connected! Stop fucking with me, and tell me what you know!"
And suddenly, as if by the switch, her tears stopped, the redness disappeared from her eyes, the veins in her forehead subsided, and she responded simply, "Maybe he'll show you too."
I would leave her then, out of an anger I used to mask my fear, and the following morning, we'd let her and Eugene Blake go. She was, by police account, a person with a fractured mind in need of medical help. And beyond the connection of Sulfur Dioxide, the best we could do was keep her on suspicion. But the idea of letting her go would quickly become moot. The Mob that gathered around the Blake home would set it ablaze, and it would burn down to embers and ash by morning. And, before daybreak, that same Mob, burdened by a blind, visceral rage, armed with biblical signs and vile threats, would surround the Crescent Hill police station.
The details around the case, the sulfur dioxide, Angela's comments, and even the bear had all spread first through the police station and then out onto the streets and into the homes of Crescent Hill, carrying with them vague but loud assertions: Angela Blake was a rot that threatened the way of life in Crescent Hill. And that rot must be eradicated.
The Mob, which formed outside the police station, yelled, screamed, and waved their signs with an impossible energy—an intensity that should have seen the skin of their throats grow sore or the joints in their shoulders grow heavy. Maybe they did, but they persisted nonetheless. I watched them from beyond the glass doors at the front of the station and looked into the Mob of familiar faces, yet I recognized none.
Angela was seated at my desk, and Eugene sat by a window next to the entryway, staring out into the crowd. The officers on patrol either couldn't hear them or disregarded my constant calls for backup. That is, save for Captain Tillo, who I watched try desperately to work his way through the crowd.
It began with a single bullet shattering through the window at the front, striking Eugene in the temple. He bled profusely, the small caliber round embedding itself between the skin and the skull. He was conscious, though delirious, and couldn't summon the words to question what was happening. I dragged him behind the front desk, taking cover.
A second crash, a flaming bottle slamming into the station's exterior, catching the scaffolding ablaze. The crowd rushed forward, banging against the doors. They slammed, again and again, the door frame warping, the glass breaking. But Angela did not move.
Finally, their voices caught up to me. "Kill her!" Like pigs desperate for a meal, they squealed, hungry for Angela's recompense. Finally, they broke through the doors and funneled in. And again, Angela did not move.
The fire spread quickly now. So quickly, it would consume the entire eastern side of the station. I tried to get to her, despite the voice, despite the voice telling me to stay, despite the voice telling me to let it happen, I ran to her. But the Mob trampled over me. I felt the bones of my left leg break underfoot, and I watched helplessly as they descended upon Eugene and Angela Blake.
Another Molotov sailed through the window on the station's western end and carried an immense wave of heat. Despite the fire burning away their clothes, hair, and skin, the Mob that descended upon Angela and Eugene Blake didn't stop. Eugene died of blood loss; he'd live through thirty-one stabbings and die before the thirty-second. All told he'd have seventy or so before those around him would succumb to the flames. Angela, who I saw beaten and stabbed, did not react nor move. She simply closed her eyes and waited for the flames to take her.
Captain Tillo would be the one to drag me out. I saw them then up close, faces I'd seen thousands of times before, now unfamiliar, the other officers I'd called for backup, all hissing, crying, and begging for Angela's death along with the rest of Crescent Hill. All of Crescent Hill was desperate for blood. All of Crescent Hill save for one, the man in black, who watched with a gentle smile, enjoying the show. I understood then what Angela meant. The man in black didn't look like anyone. And he looked like everyone. And then, once again, he looked like no one at all.
All told, twenty-two people died that night, twenty from the crowd, as well as Angela and Eugene Blake. No one was charged, and no one was blamed, and in the end, it'll likely become another of Crescent Hill's ghost stories. After all, you can't arrest an entire town. Later on, Captain Tillo would end his life by hanging, leaving behind a note that simply read, "I'm sorry." I'm sure he carried an immense guilt for how this story ended; I know I do.
The following morning, the residents of Crescent Hill would talk about that night as though it were an accident. A fire had broken out, and the townsfolk had rushed in to save us. The report indicating stab wounds on Eugene Blake would find its way into a bin and be erased from the record. The last I heard was the autopsy report on Angela Blake. Before that, too, would go missing. They didn't find a demon under the skin or a shapeshifter from the deep.
They found a fifteen-year-old girl burned until the marrow melted.

A few years back I read Portriat of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell and I just finished the graphic novel From Hell. Just wondering if anyone here had a good nonfiction read for this. Prefer newer publications because older theories seem to have a few holes. Thanks for the help happy reading.

The New England Highway is a major highway in Australia running from the town of Yarraman, north of Toowoomba, Queensland, and culminating at its southern end in Hexham, a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales.
It is possible that along this 883km stretch of road, 30 years ago, a transient, without rhyme or reason, without provocation, his only motives seemingly sexual gratification and bloodlust, passed through and committed one of the most harrowing small town murders in New South Wales’ history.
Located at the junction of the New England Highway and Putty Road, upon the banks of the Hunter River, lies the small town of Singleton. It sits 202km north-north-west of Sydney and is within a stone's throw of the famous wine region of Pokolbin. But perhaps what Singleton is most well known for is its 25-foot high sundial.
It was financed by the Lemington Coal Mine to honour the Bicentenary of Australia (1988) and to stand as a visible link between old and new Singleton through the ancient method of time telling. At the time of its completion it was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest, and even to this day lays claim to being the largest one-piece sundial in the Southern Hemisphere.
Like most towns situated in the Hunter Valley region, Singleton's economy is driven by coal mining. At one point it was estimated that almost one quarter of the town's workforce was employed in the sector of coal mining. Given that fact it would be fitting that Singleton's long running murder mystery would start with coal miners.
Late at night, Easter Saturday, April 2, 1994. Four men, all coal miners, carpool on their way to their shifts at the Bulga Mine. This is a routine, uneventful trip they've made several times before but this particular trip was about to take a shocking turn. Turning onto Dunolly Road they are met with the sight of a house cloaked in thickening smoke, they immediately call for help.
They don't know it yet, but this house belongs to the matriarch of a well known and respected Singleton Family. Margaret Howlett (nicknamed Peggy), aged 84, has lived here for 66 years now. She moved here when she was just 18 years old with her partner (who is now deceased), Alec “Snow” Howlett. She is a mother of 7, grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of 7.
As panic sets in, so does the fear that Margaret is trapped inside, unable to escape. Firefighters rush to the scene and fight the flames, despite the ferocity of the fire they're able to extinguish it. It stopped just before the bedroom.
Hope that Margaret may still be unharmed from the fire turns to anguish as firefighters inspect the bedroom and make a grisly discovery. There is Margaret's body, lying face down on the floor, naked, with her head bashed in. The fire was no accident, instead a deliberate act of arson utilized to destroy evidence of a crime and/or (as sickening as it may sound) burn the 84 year old alive…
This day started out like any other for Margaret, she was surrounded by her family before later settling down to watch television with her daughter, Patricia, who bid farewell to her mother at around 8:30pm.
Soon after her departure, under the cover of darkness, a silent figure slips into Mrs Howlett's backyard and lies in wait.
In a cruel twist of fate what may have led to Margaret's untimely demise is the design of the very home she's lived in for so long. Of the old school variety, the only toilet is situated in the backyard in the form of an outhouse. This fact could indicate that the killer had staked out the home in advance and potentially conducted reconnaissance to learn Margaret's patterns and routine. If this is accurate then only the killer himself knows how long he spent stalking Mrs Howlett leading up to this moment.
Not too long after, Margaret leaves her house through the backdoor, enters her back yard and makes her way to the outhouse to relieve herself.
Due to bloodstains belonging to Mrs Howlett being found inside the outhouse, forensic experts believe that the initial attack took place as Margaret was opening the door to leave the toilet and was set upon by her perpetrator before being dragged back inside the residence.
Once the perpetrator has Margaret at his mercy she is taken to the bedroom where she is subjected to an extended period of torture, during which she is horrifically sexually assaulted. Then, using a blunt instrument he bashes her violently around the head before setting a fire at the other end of the house and fleeing the scene which would later be spotted ablaze by the group of miners on their way to work.
The autopsy of Margaret Howlett would reveal that she died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, there were five deep lacerations around her head and her skull had been fractured. It would also go on to show a lack of carbon monoxide in her lungs, telling the pathologists conducting the examination that she was either dead or very close to death when the fire began. If there is any silver lining to take away from the case then perhaps this is it…
It's easy to forget today, but in the mid-1990’s in Australia, advanced forensics used in criminal investigations were still in their infancy. Initial investigators in this case were already at a disadvantage in terms of their limited resources compared to their big city counterparts but that was only compounded by the state of the crime scene itself. The extreme heat of the fire had resulted in serious smoke and water damage to the property which in turn damaged any forensic clues available to investigators at the time.
Additionally, the only evidence not affected by the fire, the bloodstains inside the outhouse are later determined to be Margaret’s blood and Margaret’s blood alone, the killer did not cut himself in the initial attack, only setting the investigators back further and making the hunt for the killer more difficult. At this point, even if detectives are able to find a strong suspect in the killing of Margaret Howlett, barring a confession, it appears unlikely that they'll be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are the killer in a court of law.
The blunt instrument used to bludgeon Mrs Howlett to death was never found at the scene and it is believed that the killer took the weapon with him when fleeing the premises. Through extensive interviews with relatives in the days that followed, police determined that nothing was stolen by the killer which would indicate that the motive of the crime was not robbery.
The case would soon grow cold. In August, 1995, a coronial inquest into Mrs Howlett’s death returns an open finding. The officer assisting the inquiry, Sergeant Terry Gannon reportedly told the coroner that “in 20 years of police work he had never seen such “muddy waters’’”. We can assume from this statement that the initial investigation into Margaret’s death was handled poorly and that detectives assigned to the case may have overlooked more promising suspects chasing persons who didn't fit the profile of the unknown killer.
9 months later in May, 1996, a $100,000 reward is offered for information leading to the arrest of Mrs Howlett’s killer (a reward that still stands to this day). Yet it leads nowhere and the case only grows colder.
As the years go by the case suffers from a lack of resources and a lack of detectives working cold cases in the region. The Newcastle Herald would report in May, 2007, that a promising new lead in the case was unable to be followed up due to a lack of resources in the Hunter Valley command (whether this lead has since been followed up is unknown). However, the biggest setback in the case was yet to come, in December, 2010, The Northern Region Unsolved Homicide Squad was left decimated due to transfers and stress leave. Team leader, Senior Sergeant George Radmore was the last remaining investigator working the case before he took up a promotion in Sydney.
The case lay dormant for almost a full year before in November, 2011, The Northern Region Unsolved Homicide Squad reopens the case with a team consisting of 4 officers led by Detective Sergeant Stephen Davis. This would lead to the biggest update in the case so far, over 18 years after the murder, in October of 2012, forensic analysis techniques not available at the time of Margaret’s murder were utilized to generate a DNA profile from re-examined items of evidence found in her home. The bank of scientific evidence they'd built up since the time of the crime finally paid dividends but so far has yet to result in an arrest in the case as the DNA profile was not matched to any existing profile in the national database.
Five and a half years later, a few weeks after the 24th anniversary of Margaret’s murder, the case would gain unlikely hope and momentum from across the globe. On April 24, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in California in connection to the infamous Golden State Killer case with the use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy. It involves putting crime scene DNA of an unknown offender into a public DNA database (usually an ancestry website) to find close familial DNA matches which allow you to build a family tree that will hopefully lead you to the source of your unsub profile.
In May that year, New South Wales police announced that they would be attempting to use the same technique used to unmask DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer in order to provide answers for over 500 unsolved murders and mysterious deaths statewide. Dr Xanthe Mallet, a well known forensic criminologist working out of the University of Newcastle assisting in the police investigations said that 20 of the Hunter Region’s most perplexing mysteries would be going under the microscope.
The Hunter cases earmarked by Mallet for review included:
the disappearances of Lake Macquarie girls Leanne Goodall, Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson in the late 1970s which many suggest could be the work of infamous serial killer Ivan Milat, the abduction and probable murder of Gordana Kotevski from Charlestown on her way home to her aunt’s house in 1994, the store robbery and murder of well respected Cooks Hill grocer Frank Newbery in 2007 and the rape and murder of Margaret Howlett, discussed in this post.
“It’s a huge commitment by police and I’m very hopeful we’re going to see some significant results come out of it. I think we’re also going to see retrials of people who’ve been acquitted in the past because of new evidence using technology that wasn’t available only a short time ago.” Mallet told the Newcastle Herald.
It is important to note however that unsolved crimes probably aren't quite as easy to solve with genetic genealogy in Australia as we've seen in countries like America due to privacy laws and restrictions. At the time the Xanthe Mallet piece was published in the Newcastle Herald it was specified that NSW police wouldn’t be able to access information submitted by the public on ancestry websites but instead only a law enforcement genetic genealogy database that started accumulating profiles at the beginning of May 2018. Although it isn’t specified in the article I would assume that most profiles already in the national DNA database would have been entered into the NSW crime solving genealogy database if they met certain criteria.
According to Mallet the NSW police committed to regular reviews of all cold cases meaning that every 6 months families of murdered and missing loved ones get informed of the status of the genealogical investigation.
Unfortunately in the case of Margaret’s murder as well as the cases I mentioned above, in the 6 years since this development, none have so far been resolved with the help of genetic genealogy but that doesn’t rule out that it could be solved in the near future with this method as more profiles are added to the database for comparison.
At regular intervals throughout the years since the DNA breakthrough in 2012 detectives have revisited former leads as well as contacting key witnesses from the original investigation and reviewing their original police statements. But this so far has also not proved fruitful in arresting the unknown perpetrator.
The fact that no arrest has been made in the case 3 decades on from Margaret’s murder is a cause for unrest amongst Singleton residents. To this day the impact of that Easter Saturday is still felt, there are many theories about the crime but no answers to accompany them.
If it happened once could it happen again? Or has it already happened again unbeknownst to us?
Is he still alive? Did he pass away? And if so, when?
Could he be in prison somewhere on an unrelated charge? Could he have been in prison for an unrelated charge in the past but was later released and avoided giving a DNA sample?
Was he really a drifter? Or has he been living under the noses of the people he terrorised the whole time?
With how little information we have at our disposal apart from his genetic profile it’s impossible for us to do anything but speculate as to the genesis and discontinuance of Margaret’s slayer. But there may be some clues to his identity in the crime he committed and the way he carried out that crime:
-Detective Sergeant Davis suggests that the offender attempting to burn down the house in order to destroy evidence could indicate that he had an interest in lighting fires or that he used fire in other offending behaviour.
-If we are to assume that the offender was on the younger side of the age spectrum, say 20-35 when he committed the murder, then he would be somewhere between 50-65 (if alive today).
-Whether he was a drifter or a resident of Singleton/one of the nearby towns he would've more than likely had some form of strong presence in the Hunter area in the mid-90’s.
-Although we can't be sure, there appears to be an element of stalking and premeditation to this murder. This might suggest that the offender is obsessive with the women in his life or has a history (potentially criminal) of harassing women he finds attractive.
-It is also important to keep in mind that police haven’t ruled out the possibility of there being two killers involved in the carrying out of this murder. Could our unsub have had the help of an accomplice?
Mrs Howlett’s daughter-in-law, Alison Howlett, who was at one point a councillor for Singleton, had this to say about the elusive killer:
‘‘We’ve never given up,’’
‘‘When I sat on the grass beside her body I gave her that commitment.
‘‘I sat with her to give her some dignity because the person who killed her gave her no dignity and no respect.
‘‘We want to know where is this person who violated a beautiful woman?
‘‘While ever no one’s been made accountable, whoever it is is still out there. Peggy deserves justice, and the family deserves answers and some closure.
"She was tortured, she was violated and they tried to burn her alive,
"This bastard. We can never stop until we identify him.
"She was my children's grandmother, my husband's mother, and Peg deserves justice so she can finally rest in some sort of peace."
Alison Howlett also said her relatives had never been able to get over the violent loss of the family matriarch.
"It is a terrible place to be," Alison Howlett said.
"Our family has suffered a lot of medical problems, stress-related illnesses.
"We need to know who the person is - we don't know if they are still living in our community and you fear that they are going to do it again."
As mentioned earlier in the post a $100,000 reward remains in place for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for Mrs Howlett’s murder.
Anyone with information that could assist with the identification, arrest and conviction of an offender should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or use the Crime Stoppers online reporting page: https://www1.police.nsw.gov.au/.
A few images I found related to the case for anyone interested
SOURCES (MOST ARE PAYWALLED UNFORTUNATELY)
NSW Police Force Cold Case
Family of murdered great-grandmother shattered by new hurdle PAYWALL
Peggy Howlett murder case reopened PAYWALL
Preying on the elderly PAYWALL
DNA evidence update in Howlett murder case PAYWALL
DNA used to help people trace their ancestry to be used in hunt for killers PAYWALL
I hope you guys enjoyed my post. I grew up in the area where this happened so I've always been equally fascinated and disturbed by the case especially with all the rumours and whatnot floating around about who the killer could be. I'm optimistic that within the next couple of years there might be an arrest or identification of the killer and that I will be able to make an update post for you guys.

ON THE SUBJECT OF ATHEISTS, UNABLE TO FACE REALITY, MAKING THE DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS SOMETHING OTHER THAN EXPERIENCE: OF TYPE-A MATERIALISM OR...THE DENNETIAN DELUSION!
For the fun of it, I recently sparred with atheists in atheism regarding the logic-trap of Gervaisian death and how it negatively revealed the central irrationality in believing noumenal (made up of something that is not that pre-dated the existence of subjective experience) brains generate pheomenal consciousness or experience.
While some began to oh so tentatively question their unthinking embrace of the irrationality (while standing their ground), others began to doggedly and adamantly define consciousness not as a person experiencing and that which the person experiences (the most commonsense definition of 'consciousness' given the manner in which existence actually demonstrates itself), but as brain function itself (no one was foolish enough to claim the brain itself independent of function could be defined as 'consciousness'), some comparing the difference between a car (the brain) and the car while it is running ("consciousness").
When presented with consciousness defined as a person experiencing and that which the person experiences, proponents of 'consciousness' as just and only 'functioning of the brain' would willfully ignore the existence of experience, or even more strangely, admit it exists and emerges from the brain, but either refuse to define this as 'consciousness', instead repeating the song of 'consciousness' being 'just the function of the brain'. In this bizarre second case, the atheist willfully remains silent on how a person experiencing and that which the person experiences could possibly arise from within neurons (or even the electrons that jump from atom to atom within neurons) and most importantly, where was the experience before the neurons purportedly created it or it emerged as a property of neurons (a person experiencing a starry night or an automobile accident is a property of neurons that must come out of these star-shaped pieces of electrified flesh in a 3-lb clumb of flesh cramped inside a skull?)
At any rate, continually refusing to define 'consciousness' as 'a person experiencing and that which the person experiences, that is usually something that lies outside the skull and body' dodges the consequence of believing that a person experiencing and that which the person experiences, that is usually something that lies outside the skull and body comes from or comes out of something inside a confining skull.
The belief that 'consciousness' is not a person experiencing and that which the person experiences but just 'the brain while its functioning or the function of the brain' is a property of the brain/consciousness philosophy that is Type-A Materialism (what I call: The Dennettian Delusion). In this section, I recuse myself to allow Professor of Consciousness Studies David J. Chalmers to argue the untenableness of Type-A Materialism in his paper: Moving Forward On The Problem of Consciousness.
From:
Moving Forward On The Problem of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
Philosophy Program
Research School of Social Sciences
Australian National University
​
2 DEFLATIONARY CRITIQUES
Recall the main conceptual distinction between the easy and hard problems. The easy problems - explaining discrimination, integration, accessibility, internal monitoring, reportability, and so on - all concern the performance of various functions. For these phenomena, once we have explained how the relevant functions are performed, we have explained what needs to be explained. The hard problem, by contrast, is not a problem about how functions are performed. For any given function that we explain, it remains a nontrivial further question: why is the performance of this function associated with conscious experience? The sort of functional explanation that is suited to answering the easy problems is therefore not automatically suited to answering the hard problem.
There are two quite different ways in which a materialist might respond to this challenge. The type-A materialist denies that there is a "hard problem" distinct from the "easy" problems; the type-B materialist accepts (explicitly or implicitly) that there is a distinct problem, but argues that it can be accommodated within a materialist framework all the same. Both of these strategies are taken by contributors to this symposium. I will discuss the first strategy in the next two sections, and the second strategy after that.
2.1 Deflationary analogies
The type-A materialist, more precisely, denies that there is any phenomenon that needs explaining, over and above explaining the various functions: once we have explained how the functions are performed, we have thereby explained everything. Sometimes type-A materialism is expressed by denying that consciousness exists; more often, it is expressed by claiming that consciousness may exist, but only if the term "consciousness" is defined as something like "reportability", or some other functional capacity. Either way, it is asserted that there is no interesting fact about the mind, conceptually distinct from the functional facts, that needs to be accommodated in our theories. Once we have explained how the functions are performed, that is that.
Note that type-A materialism is not merely the view that consciousness is identical to some function, or that it plays a functional role, or that explaining the functions will help us explain consciousness. It is the much stronger view that there is not even a distinct question of consciousness: once we know about the functions that a system performs, we thereby know everything interesting there is to know. Type-A materialism subsumes philosophical positions such as eliminativism, behaviorism, analytic functionalism, and others, but it does not include positions (such as those embraced by Clark and Hardcastle) that rely on an a posteriori identity between consciousness and some physical/functional property. Positions of the latter sort accept that there is a real phenomenon to be accounted for, conceptually distinct from the performance of functions (the a posteriori identity ties together a priori distinct concepts), and therefore count as type-B materialism. Type-A materialism, by contrast, denies that there is a conceptually distinct explanatory target at all.
This is an extremely counterintuitive position. At first glance, it seems to simply deny a manifest fact about us. But it deserves to be taken seriously: after all, counterintuitive theories are not unknown in science and philosophy. On the other hand, to establish a counterintuitive position, strong arguments are needed. And to establish this position - that there is really nothing else to explain - one might think that extraordinarily strong arguments are needed. So what arguments do its proponents provide?
Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to deflate the "hard problem" by using analogies to other domains, where talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a vitalist arguing about the hard problem of "life", or a neuroscientist arguing about the hard problem of "perception". Similarly, Paul Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying about the hard problem of "light", and Patricia Churchland brings up an analogy involving "heat". In all these cases, we are to suppose, someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better.
This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is that there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued otherwise.
2.2 Is explaining the functions enough?
So, analogies don't help. To have any chance of making the case, a type-A materialist needs to argue that for consciousness, as for life, the functions are all that need explaining. Perhaps some strong, subtle, and substantive argument can be given, establishing that once we have explained the functions, we have automatically explained everything. If a sound argument could be given for this surprising conclusion, it would provide as valid a resolution of the hard problem as any.
Is there any compelling, non-question-begging argument for this conclusion? The key word, of course, is "non-question-begging". Often, a proponent will simply assert that functions are all that need explaining, or will argue in a way that subtly assumes this position at some point. But that is clearly unsatisfactory. Prima facie, there is very good reason to believe that the phenomena a theory of consciousness must account for include not just discrimination, integration, report, and such functions, but also experience, and prima facie, there is good reason to believe that the question of explaining experience is distinct from the questions about explaining the various functions. Such prima facie intuitions can be overturned, but to do so requires very solid and substantial argument. Otherwise, the problem is being "resolved" simply by placing one's head in the sand.
Upon examing the materialist papers in this symposium, such arguments are surprisingly hard to find. Indeed, despite their use of various analogies, very few of the contributors seem willing to come right out and say that in the case of consciousness, the functions are all that need explaining. Only Dennett embraces this position explicitly, and even he does not spend much time arguing for it. But he does spend about a paragraph making the case: presumably this paragraph bears the weight of his piece, once the trimmings are stripped away. So it is this paragraph that we should examine.
Dennett's argument here, interestingly enough, is an appeal to phenomenology. He examines his own phenomenology, and tells us that he finds nothing other than functions that need explaining. The manifest phenomena that need explaining are his reactions and his abilities; nothing else even presents itself as needing to be explained.
This is daringly close to a simple denial - one is tempted to agree that it might be a good account of Dennett's phenomenology - and it raises immediate questions. For a start, it is far from obvious that even all the items on Dennett's list - "feelings of foreboding", "fantasies", "delight and dismay" - are purely functional matters. To assert without argument that all that needs to be explained about such things are the associated functions seems to beg the crucial question at issue. And if we leave these controversial cases aside, Dennett's list seems to be a systematically incomplete list of what needs to be explained in explaining consciousness. One's "ability to be moved to tears" and "blithe disregard of perceptual details" are striking phenomena, but they are far from the most obvious phenomena that I (at least) find when I introspect. Much more obvious are the experience of emotion and the phenomenal visual field themselves; and nothing Dennett says gives us reason to believe that these do not need to be explained, or that explaining the associated functions will explain them.
What might be going on here? Perhaps the key lies in what Dennett has elsewhere described as the foundation of his philosophy: "third-person absolutism". If one takes the third-person perspective on oneself -- viewing oneself from the outside, so to speak - these reactions and abilities are no doubt the main focus of what one sees. But the hard problem is about explaining the view from the first-person perspective. So to shift perspectives like this - even to shift to a third-person perspective on one's first-person perspective, which is one of Dennett's favorite moves - is again to assume that what needs explaining are such functional matters as reactions and reports, and so is again to argue in a circle.
Dennett suggests "subtract the functions and nothing is left". Again, I can see no reason to accept this, but in any case the argument seems to have the wrong form. An analogy suggested by Gregg Rosenberg is useful here. Color has properties of hue, saturation, and brightness. It is plausible that if one "subtracts" hue from a color, nothing phenomenologically significant is left, but this certainly doesn't imply that color is nothing but hue. So even if Dennett could argue that function was somehow required for experience (in the same way that hue is required for color), this would fall a long way short of showing that function is all that has to be explained.
A slight flavor of non-circular argument is hinted at by Dennett's suggestion: "I wouldn't know what I was thinking about if I couldn't identify them by their functional differentia". This tantalizing sentence suggests various reconstructions, but all the reconstructions that I can find fall short of making the case. If the idea is that functional role is essential to the (subpersonal) process of identification, this falls short of establishing that functioning is essential to the experiences themselves, let alone that functioning is all there is to the experiences. If the idea is rather than function is all we have access to at the personal level, this seems false, and seems to beg the question against the intuitive view that we have knowledge of intrinsic features of experience. But if Dennett can elaborate this into a substantial argument, that would be a very useful service.
In his paper, Dennett challenges me to provide "independent" evidence (presumably behavioral or functional evidence) for the "postulation" of experience. But this is to miss the point: conscious experience is not "postulated" to explain other phenomena in turn; rather, it is a phenomenon to be explained in its own right. And if it turns out that it cannot be explained in terms of more basic entities, then it must be taken as irreducible, just as happens with such categories as space and time. Again, Dennett's "challenge" presupposes that the only explananda that count are functions.[*]
*[[[Tangentially: I would be interested to see Dennett's version of the "independent" evidence that leads physicists to "introduce" the fundamental categories of space and time. It seems to me that the relevant evidence is spatiotemporal through and through, just as the evidence for experience is experiential through and through.]]]
Dennett might respond that I, equally, do not give arguments for the position that something more than functions needs to be explained. And there would be some justice here: while I do argue at length for my conclusions, all these arguments take the existence of consciousness for granted, where the relevant concept of consciousness is explicitly distinguished from functional concepts such as discrimination, integration, reaction, and report. Dennett presumably disputes this starting point: he thinks that the only sense in which people are conscious is a sense in which consciousness is defined as reportability, as a reactive disposition, or as some other functional concept.
But let us be clear on the dialectic. It is prima facie obvious to most people that there is a further phenomenon here: in informal surveys, the large majority of respondents (even at Tufts!) indicate that they think something more than functions needs explaining. Dennett himself - faced with the results of such a survey, perhaps intending to deflate it - has accepted that there is at least a prima facie case that something more than functions need to be explained; and he has often stated how "radical" and "counterintuitive" his position is. So it is clear that the default assumption is that there is a further problem of explanation; to establish otherwise requires significant and substantial argument.
I would welcome such arguments, in the ongoing attempt to clarify the lay of the land. The challenge for those such as Dennett is to make the nature of these arguments truly clear. I do not think it a worthless project - the hard problem is so hard that we should welcome all attempts at a resolution - but it is clear that anyone trying to make such an argument is facing an uphill battle.[*]
*[[[One might look to Dennett's book Consciousness Explained for non-circular arguments, but even here such arguments for the relevant conclusion are hard to find. The plausible attacks on a "place in a brain where it all comes together" do nothing to remove the hard problem. The book's reliance on "heterophenomenology" (verbal reports) as the central source of data occasionally slips into an unargued assumption that such reports are all that need explaining, especially in the discussion of "real seeming", which in effect assumes that the only "seemings" that need explaining are dispositions to react and report. I think there may be a substantial argument implicit in the "Orwell/Stalin" discussion - essentially taking materialism as a premise and arguing that if materialism is true then the functional facts exhaust all the facts - but even this is equivalent to "if something more than functions needs explaining, then materialism cannot explain it", and I would not disagree. At best, Dennett's arguments rule out a middle-ground "Cartesian materialism"; the hard problem remains as hard as ever.]]]
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“Well, let's first forget about the really difficult aspects, like subjective feelings, for they may not have a scientific solution. The subjective state of play, of pain, of pleasure, of seeing blue, of smelling a rose - there seems to be a huge jump between the materialistic level, of explaining molecules and neurons, and the subjective level. Let's focus on things that are easier to study - like visual awareness. You're now talking to me, but you're not looking at me, you're looking at the cappuccino, and so you are aware of it. You can say, `It's a cup and there's some liquid in it.' If I give it to you, you'll move your arm and you'll take it - you'll respond in a meaningful manner. That's what I call awareness."
-Francis Crick (interview): What Is Consciousness? Discover Magazine, November 1992, pg. 96
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To avoid the obvious irrationality of something causing something that does not exist to exist, particularly the irrationality of how a star-shaped neuron could contain the experience of a starry night within itself prior to someone's experience of a starrry night, many atheists dive headlong into the delusion of Type-A Materialism, claiming 'consciousness' is not experience but nothing more than the function of the brain and whatever chemical state the brain must have to give rise to consciousness (function of the brain).
Experience: that which is felt, tasted, smelt, emoted, or thought, that exists with an experiential appearance that seems to be of things that exist outside the skull and forehead of an organism or that is invisible and intangible, cannot be confused for a clump of star-shaped nodes of flesh trapped in a skull. The Type-A Materialist either believes experience does not exist (though one might question this intellectual psychosis, as the Type-A Materialist is presenting to the listener something other than neurons invisibly hidden in a skull or the "basketball passing" of their outer-shell electrons between each other to express the bizarre belief that experience does not exist) or may accept the existence of experience, but refuse to face the irrationality of how experience can not exist, then exist when electrons are "basketball passed" between the atoms making up electrons in a 3-lb. piece of flesh trapped within a skull.
Type-A Materialism is delusional. Existence demonstrates itself constantly as just a person experiencing and that which the person experiences. It is largely inconceivable how a person experiencing and that which the person experiences can "come out from within" a clump of flesh in a skull. It is even more ludicrous when one claims experience first does not exist, then exists in response to the passing of electrons between atoms in a brain. If something does not exist before it exists, how does the brain, or anything for that matter, "cause" something that does not exist to exist?
The most rational definition of 'consciousness' is the definition that simply looks upon the apparent nature of existence: a person experiencing and that which the person experiences. Consciousness cannot rationally be defined as anything else, unless one is will to define an 'apple' as a skyscraper, which Type-A Materialists accomplish when defining 'consciousness' as 'brain function'. It (Type-A Materialism) is a strange, futile tactile, one might accuse, of dodging the irrationality of the brain's ability to cause experience that does not exist to exist and the reverse condition of causing experience to altogether cease to exist in response to cessation of function of the noumenal brain.
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NARROWING DOWN THE NONSENSE: OF THE CONCEPT OF NOUMENA AND THE NOUMENAL BRAIN
Similarly, when a person dies, he or she ceases to exist as a person. But the dead body does not lapse into nothingness, since the materials of the body continue in other forms of matter or energy. In other words, all sorts of organization wholes (e.g., biological organisms) do cease to exist only as such when they disintegrate and their parts are scattered. But their parts continue in some form.
-Adolf Grunbaum, The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology
But still I ask: Why take these attributes for granted, or why ascribe to the cause any qualities but what actually appear in the effect? Why torture your brain to justify the course of nature upon suppositions, which, for aught you know, may be entirely imaginary, and of which there are to be found no traces in the course of nature?
​
In such complicated and sublime subjects, every one should be indulged in the liberty of conjecture and argument. But here you ought to rest. If you come backward, and arguing from your inferred causes, conclude, that any other fact has existed, or will exist, in the course of nature, which may serve as a fuller display of particular attributes; I must admonish you, that you have departed from the method of reasoning, attached to the present subject, and have certainly added something to the attributes of the cause beyond what appears in the effect; otherwise you could never, with tolerable sense or propriety, add anything to the effect in order to render it more worthy of the cause.
​
-David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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A TALE OF TWO SUVS
The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.
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To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept.
-Wikipedia, Perception
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When a person believing experience comes from or results from the operation of one's brain looks upon an SUV, did the SUV spring from the person's brain, to intangibly phase through the person's forehead, to stand in a parking lot before the person outside the person's body?
Can an SUV, an object composed of plastic, glass, and metal weighing over a ton larger than a human brain and for that matter, the entirety of a human body reside within a neuron or in pieces within a person's neuron before growing to the size of an SUV and intangibly passing like the Vision out from the innards of the brain through the person's forehead to become a large, tangible mechanical objects standing before the person's body?
Probably not.
If an SUV can emerge from the brain as an 'emergent property' of the brain? What type of SUV begins inside the skull and seemingly emerges from the skull to rest outside a person's body?
NOUMENAL SUV, PHENOMENAL SUV
The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept.
-Wikipedia, Perception
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​

as good as law, religion, education and other societal institutions have been at helping us make better ethical choices, climate change alone tells us that we still have a long way to go.
here are seven researchers who have turned their attention to how technology can help, and how ai can powerfully ramp up their progress.
robert sapolsky work: understanding how stress affects behavior to create strategies that manage stress-related immoral actions.
ai can analyze data to identify when stress is likely to lead to negative behavior, helping in developing personalized stress management strategies that promote moral decisions.

1. joshua greene work : studies how the brain makes moral decisions to help resolve conflicts between emotional and rational moral reasoning.

ai can process complex brain imaging data to identify patterns in moral decision-making, potentially leading to interventions that strengthen rational, rather than emotional, approaches.

1. james r. flynn work: understanding cognitive development trends to develop education strategies that enhance moral reasoning skills.

ai can analyze global educational and cognitive data to develop educational programs to strengthen critical thinking.

1. patricia churchland work: understanding the neurological basis of moral beliefs and decisions that inform how to nurture moral behavior.

ai can integrate neurological data with ethical theories to develop models of moral decision-making, potentially leading to more targeted interventions.

1. simon baron-cohen work: how empathy deficits in conditions like autism can help cultivate empathy, a key component of moral behavior.

ai-driven analysis and simulations can help in developing personalized interventions to improve this strategy.

1. adrian raine work: studies the biological roots of antisocial behavior to inform prevention and rehabilitation strategies for at-risk individuals.

predictive ai models can identify individuals at risk of antisocial behavior, enabling early interventions that promote moral behavior.

1. elizabeth phelps work: how do emotions influence decisions?

ai can analyze how different emotional states affect moral choices, leading to the development of tools or strategies to better manage those emotions.
we are making great strides in creating stronger and more useful ai systems, but the work of implementing these advances in concrete ways largely remains to be done. i hope those with advanced ai programming skills will reach out to researchers like these, and build powerful new collaborations.

This essay was written by Jeremiah Johnson of the Center of New Liberalism and was originally published to his Substack, Infinite Scrolls. Jeremiah is the Founder of the Center for New Liberalism and the very first guest on the Bridges Podcast.
Complaints about "The Man" were a common theme in film and television through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. As with so many parts of pop culture, the phrase had roots in Black film and television before migrating to the mainstream—what used to be a mainstay of blaxploitation films parroted by white teenage stoners. Anybody who grew up in the 90s can perfectly recollect “It’s just like, Society, mannnnn. It’s like, The Man, screwing us over,” as spoken by an angsty teen.
This was seen as ridiculous. Not all complaints about society are ridiculous, of course. But this particular one always was. The person spouting it was always a disaffected loser. They were rarely making any sort of coherent point. Sometimes they were just listing random things they disliked about the world. And at the end of the complaint was the all-blame-taking Man, the omnipresent Society who was responsible for it all in some sinister way.
Jack Black’s speech here in School of Rock provides a trope-defining example. At this point in the film, Black is a deadbeat who’s failed at most everything in his life. He has vague complaints ranging from the ozone layer to Shamu the whale, and believes that one used to fight The Man with ‘Rock n Roll’ until The Man ruined that as well with MTV. Black takes himself seriously, but to the audience he’s inherently comedic, an object of derision.
Fortunately, this trope became so well-worn that today we’re largely spared rants about The Man. Social commentators are too savvy to appear that childish. Unfortunately, the exact same vague complaint has resurfaced in a more respectable form.

Complaints Under Late-Stage Capitalism

In an incredible bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, our talking heads have managed to take the exact same puerile statements about The Man and turn them into serious commentary by substituting “capitalism” for The Man. If you’ve existed on the social web for more than ten minutes, you’ll have seen this. Mad about gentrification? That’s just life under capitalism. There might be a supply chain issue for bourbon? Capitalism is broken. In a beautiful stroke of irony, the internet is filled with merchandise for sale telling you that you don’t hate Mondays, you hate capitalism. The sea is on fire? Proof capitalism can’t be managed. Someone says you should meal prep to save time? Stop slaving under the tyranny of packed lunches. Once you notice this trend, you will see it everywhere.
What’s incredible about this rhetorical trend is how seriously it’s taken. It’s not just anonymous posters or lazy teenagers who post these things—one of the examples above is from Joe Weisenthal, host of one of the most popular economics podcasts in the world. Vox proclaims TV shows to be “capitalist tragedies” or “set in the ruins of capitalism.” One of the most popular personal finance experts on YouTube gives advice on how to save and invest in late-stage capitalism. Even lovable Ted Lasso now comments on late-stage capitalism! Commentators like Anne Helen Petersen and Adam Conover have practically built their entire schtick on this trope. Even Bono, who intends to praise capitalism, has to do so begrudgingly—to show that he’s grossed out by it:

You still have to vote and get organized. I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The offramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.

Ugh, don’t you hate when you have to admit capitalism isn’t evil?
We understand Jack Black to be a deeply unserious person when he rants about The Man, but vague complaints about capitalism are given the opposite treatment—they add respectability and weight to an argument. Make any sort of complaint about the state of the world, add on “capitalism, am I right guys???” to the end, and you are now a Serious Social Commentator. I don’t want to be too harsh on the folks above—I think many of them are quite intelligent and do valuable, interesting work. But they just can’t resist appending the capitalism complaint to what they’re saying, whatever it might be. We’ll take Bono’s reluctant sigh as the name for this practice—Ugh, Capitalism.
Why do people reach for this boogeyman so often? The phenomenon of Ugh, Capitalism is frustrating because it doesn’t have a single unifying reason for existing. Instead, there are a number of trends in play here.

The Status Signal

Perhaps the most common reason people perform the Ugh, Capitalism dance is pure status signaling. Humans are status-seeking monkeys. We’re constantly sending signals of our own status. We want to show that we’re smart, we’re compassionate, we’re successful, that we have the correct political beliefs. This isn’t an attack on any individual as much as a comment on the human condition—we’re all like this. And it’s especially true on social media, as I pointed out recently:

“Status as a Service” is the core feature of social media as a business. Beyond the basic utility (it’s useful to have a place to chat with friend, or to upload videos), human beings inherently seek out social capital. We’re hungry for status…

Scroll through TwitteX or TikTok and you can practically taste the desperate reaching for status. Everybody wants to get likes, everybody wants to go viral, everybody wants to be recognized as one of the cool kids with a high follower count, lots of clout, and lots of attention.
On the Internet, where there’s no tone of voice or body language to send signals, using particularly evocative phrases is even more important than normal. Ugh, Capitalism and all its variations are a reliable way to give any statement that oomph, that hit of seriousness. It can signal that you’re one of the Good Guys, one of the people who gets it. Patricia Lockwood’s excellent book No One is Talking About This, and its unnamed protagonist, offer one of the finest examples of internet logic I’ve seen:

Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn’t have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.

If there’s a better encapsulation of how socialism became culturally trendy and capitalism became our collective object of derision, I haven’t seen it yet. Most of the people invoking capitalism this way can’t give a coherent definition of capitalism without frantic googling, and they certainly can’t explain what capitalism has to do with what they’re saying. They don’t even have any specific complaint. They just want people to know they too are furious at the state of things.
After all, what’s the difference between a video titled “How to Invest Smarter” and “How to Invest Smarter Under Late-Stage Capitalism”? Nothing. But the second one marks you as a politically-astute-culturally-trendy-cool-person. What other reason than status signaling could explain how every single person on Tinder in Brooklyn advertises that they want to “dismantle capitalism” in their bio? These are overwhelmingly yuppies with well-paying white collar jobs living in one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the country. They are not the oppressed masses or the vanguard of the revolution—they’re just showing how committed they are to having the correct politics, as defined by what is ineffably cool online. It’s why they insist their bougie vegetables are dismantling late-stage capitalism, that their cookie recipes have something to do with overthrowing the system.
There is no subject so banal on the Internet that a Brooklynite has not tied it to “overthrowing capitalism.”

Personal Coping

Another common source of capitalism angst is what Clare Coffey calls “failure to cope.” Her entire piece over at Gawker is worth reading, but the most crucial parts are these:

There is a strain of discourse that insists an inability to cope in one’s day-to-day life is in almost all cases a political problem, or even the primary political problem. By volume, the most examples are on social media. Sometimes it’s an elaborate hypothetical in which asking a disabled person to make alternate arrangements and forgo ordering Instacart groceries for one day of a strike is tantamount to a genocidal program. Sometimes it’s a prompt tweet inviting you into a post-revolutionary fantasy world where, instead of collecting municipal garbage, you will be “doing art.”

This is the brand of Ugh, Capitalism that skirts closest to self-parody. It is communism where 90 percent of the workers produce theory and bad poetry. It is “my dog got cancer and capitalism is to blame.” It is the anger that if you don’t prepare food, it will take you longer to eat. Coffey continues:

What binds these pleas together is an application of “the personal is political” so expanded in scope that, for a certain kind of person, personal problems, anxieties, and dissatisfactions are illegible or illegitimate unless described as political problems… The complete identification of human foible with structural failure excuses you from identifying and dealing with personal problems as such. Especially when it turns out the real culprit is capitalism.

These people aren’t angry at capitalism. They’re upset at the demands inherent to living life in the modern world. They’re mad that the human condition is sometimes stressful or imperfect. Like the first group, they couldn’t define capitalism if they tried. They do have specific complaints, but the complaints are conceptually distant, unrelated to capitalism as a system. Canine cancer would still exist under socialism, as far as I can tell. The concept of Mondays is not dependent on our economic system. At the core, these are people with some degree of dysfunction in their life who need a boogeyman to blame for personal travails.
To let Coffey have the final word:

Capitalism, in this rhetorical strain, is not so much the object of analysis or a concrete historical phenomenon as an all-purpose gesture. “Capitalism” is useful everywhere: as the punchline of self-deprecating jokes about the way we live now, as a perennial-but-distant bogeyman that explains chronic frustrations without ever causing enough pain to force serious disruption. Most importantly, its invocation immediately establishes a phenomenon in the realm of the political, without any further work required.

“Without any further work” is key. There is no politics or economic system that can solve all your problems, or spare your life from instances of suffering, discomfort or pain. Dealing with that is part of being human. It always has been and always will be. The only way to move past those things is to work hard, to strive, to struggle. But if you can blame the system, it’s not your fault. You’re not lazy, you’re a victim. You’re released from the burden of having to struggle—you just need someone to overthrow that damn capitalism.

Angry About a Thing

The last major category of Ugh, Capitalism complaints are more grounded in actual public policy than the previous categories. The typical structure goes something like: “Here is a fact about the world. This fact is bad, and it’s bad that we haven’t fixed it with politics or policy. Ugh, Capitalism.”
This is an improvement! They’re not purely riding the vibes, and they’re not talking about personal failings, random television sitcoms, or brunch ingredients. They’ve found a specific fact about the world—and it’s even related to the economy or politics! They’re usually pointing out something that is indeed quite bad. The flaw comes when they completely fail to relate the bad thing in question to capitalism.
There’s almost never any attempt to explain why capitalism caused this. How is it a capitalist problem? There’s no effort to examine what specific chain of events is actually causing the problem. Would it exist under socialism, or some other system? Who knows! Easier to blame capitalism with a sort of vague rhetorical shrug and move on.
Could the problem actually be fixed in a capitalist system? The answer here is almost always yes. The problem our hero is mad about—whether it be the housing crisis, pollution, climate change, or working conditions—has virtually always been solved in some other country that the hero admires… that is also capitalist. Given that Ugh, Capitalism complaints almost always come from the Left, this is usually an American commentator wanting the United States to be more like Denmark. Which is a capitalist country with a somewhat larger welfare state.
The generalized complaint is that the state of the world is imperfect, and if we improved public policy then we could make the world better. Completely true, but unspecific to capitalism. As Eric Levitz wrote in NYMag, blaming capitalism is not an alternative to solving problems.
There’s never any real discussion of detailed fixes in this kind of complaint—because that might acknowledge we can fix the problem without overthrowing the system. There’s never any argument about how under socialism (or some other alternative economic model) public policy tradeoffs, political failures, or scarcity just wouldn’t exist. Perhaps there will be some extremely vague hand-waving at “profit motive” or “commoditization,” but let’s be honest—most don’t even bother with that, and the ones who try don’t really understand those ideas either. There’s just Ugh, Capitalism.
If there’s one unifying theme here, it’s that capitalism is not an economic model in these gripes—not really. It’s more of a blame-the-system impulse. People are either mad at the state of things, or they at least want to signal that they are. It feels sophisticated to blame “capitalism” (or “America” or “individualism”), and it’s less work than actually deep diving into the guts of policy and figuring out the specific steps needed to correct the issue. Easier to blame late-stage capitalism, completely blind to the irony that people have been talking about “late capitalism” for around 100 years. Late capitalism was a term before our grandparents were born, and there will still be people talking about it when our grandchildren are old.
There are of course a few lonely souls who can actually define capitalism correctly and make coherent arguments about it. Rare as they may be, some people actually are writing detailed critiques of capitalism as an economic system. Good for them, even if I think they tend to be wrong more often than right. I hope they keep going.
But that’s not the typical way this argument goes. The typical way it goes is basically two words: “Ugh, capitalism*.*” There’s no escaping this, not until we have another generational shift and complaining about capitalism becomes as culturally passé as complaining about The Man Keeping You Down. It’s likely that as capitalism replaced The Man, some other boogeyman-societal-force will replace capitalism a few decades from now. In the meantime, we should at least notice the pattern.

Ugh, Capitalism by Jeremiah Johnson
Complaints about "The Man" were a common theme in film and television through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. As with so many parts of pop culture, the phrase had roots in Black film and television before migrating to the mainstream—what used to be a mainstay of blaxploitation films parroted by white teenage stoners. Anybody who grew up in the 90s can perfectly recollect “It’s just like, Society, mannnnn. It’s like, The Man, screwing us over,” as spoken by an angsty teen.
This was seen as ridiculous. Not all complaints about society are ridiculous, of course. But this particular one always was. The person spouting it was always a disaffected loser. They were rarely making any sort of coherent point. Sometimes they were just listing random things they disliked about the world. And at the end of the complaint was the all-blame-taking Man, the omnipresent Society who was responsible for it all in some sinister way.
Jack Black’s speech here in School of Rock provides a trope-defining example. At this point in the film, Black is a deadbeat who’s failed at most everything in his life. He has vague complaints ranging from the ozone layer to Shamu the whale, and believes that one used to fight The Man with ‘Rock n Roll’ until The Man ruined that as well with MTV. Black takes himself seriously, but to the audience he’s inherently comedic, an object of derision.
Fortunately, this trope became so well-worn that today we’re largely spared rants about The Man. Social commentators are too savvy to appear that childish. Unfortunately, the exact same vague complaint has resurfaced in a more respectable form.

Complaints Under Late-Stage Capitalism

In an incredible bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, our talking heads have managed to take the exact same puerile statements about The Man and turn them into serious commentary by substituting “capitalism” for The Man. If you’ve existed on the social web for more than ten minutes, you’ll have seen this. Mad about gentrification? That’s just life under capitalism. There might be a supply chain issue for bourbon? Capitalism is broken. In a beautiful stroke of irony, the internet is filled with merchandise for sale telling you that you don’t hate Mondays, you hate capitalism. The sea is on fire? Proof capitalism can’t be managed. Someone says you should meal prep to save time? Stop slaving under the tyranny of packed lunches. Once you notice this trend, you will see it everywhere.
What’s incredible about this rhetorical trend is how seriously it’s taken. It’s not just anonymous posters or lazy teenagers who post these things—one of the examples above is from Joe Weisenthal, host of one of the most popular economics podcasts in the world. Vox proclaims TV shows to be “capitalist tragedies” or “set in the ruins of capitalism.” One of the most popular personal finance experts on YouTube gives advice on how to save and invest in late-stage capitalism. Even lovable Ted Lasso now comments on late-stage capitalism! Commentators like Anne Helen Petersen and Adam Conover have practically built their entire schtick on this trope. Even Bono, who intends to praise capitalism, has to do so begrudgingly—to show that he’s grossed out by it:

You still have to vote and get organized. I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The offramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.

Ugh, don’t you hate when you have to admit capitalism isn’t evil?
We understand Jack Black to be a deeply unserious person when he rants about The Man, but vague complaints about capitalism are given the opposite treatment—they add respectability and weight to an argument. Make any sort of complaint about the state of the world, add on “capitalism, am I right guys???” to the end, and you are now a Serious Social Commentator. I don’t want to be too harsh on the folks above—I think many of them are quite intelligent and do valuable, interesting work. But they just can’t resist appending the capitalism complaint to what they’re saying, whatever it might be. We’ll take Bono’s reluctant sigh as the name for this practice—Ugh, Capitalism.
Why do people reach for this boogeyman so often? The phenomenon of Ugh, Capitalism is frustrating because it doesn’t have a single unifying reason for existing. Instead, there are a number of trends in play here.

The Status Signal

Perhaps the most common reason people perform the Ugh, Capitalism dance is pure status signaling. Humans are status-seeking monkeys. We’re constantly sending signals of our own status. We want to show that we’re smart, we’re compassionate, we’re successful, that we have the correct political beliefs. This isn’t an attack on any individual as much as a comment on the human condition—we’re all like this. And it’s especially true on social media, as I pointed out recently:

“Status as a Service” is the core feature of social media as a business. Beyond the basic utility (it’s useful to have a place to chat with friend, or to upload videos), human beings inherently seek out social capital. We’re hungry for status…

Scroll through TwitteX or TikTok and you can practically taste the desperate reaching for status. Everybody wants to get likes, everybody wants to go viral, everybody wants to be recognized as one of the cool kids with a high follower count, lots of clout, and lots of attention.
On the Internet, where there’s no tone of voice or body language to send signals, using particularly evocative phrases is even more important than normal. Ugh, Capitalism and all its variations are a reliable way to give any statement that oomph, that hit of seriousness. It can signal that you’re one of the Good Guys, one of the people who gets it. Patricia Lockwood’s excellent book No One is Talking About This, and its unnamed protagonist, offer one of the finest examples of internet logic I’ve seen:

Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn’t have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.

If there’s a better encapsulation of how socialism became culturally trendy and capitalism became our collective object of derision, I haven’t seen it yet. Most of the people invoking capitalism this way can’t give a coherent definition of capitalism without frantic googling, and they certainly can’t explain what capitalism has to do with what they’re saying. They don’t even have any specific complaint. They just want people to know they too are furious at the state of things.
After all, what’s the difference between a video titled “How to Invest Smarter” and “How to Invest Smarter Under Late-Stage Capitalism”? Nothing. But the second one marks you as a politically-astute-culturally-trendy-cool-person. What other reason than status signaling could explain how every single person on Tinder in Brooklyn advertises that they want to “dismantle capitalism” in their bio? These are overwhelmingly yuppies with well-paying white collar jobs living in one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the country. They are not the oppressed masses or the vanguard of the revolution—they’re just showing how committed they are to having the correct politics, as defined by what is ineffably cool online. It’s why they insist their bougie vegetables are dismantling late-stage capitalism, that their cookie recipes have something to do with overthrowing the system.
There is no subject so banal on the Internet that a Brooklynite has not tied it to “overthrowing capitalism.”

Personal Coping

Another common source of capitalism angst is what Clare Coffey calls “failure to cope.” Her entire piece over at Gawker is worth reading, but the most crucial parts are these:

There is a strain of discourse that insists an inability to cope in one’s day-to-day life is in almost all cases a political problem, or even the primary political problem. By volume, the most examples are on social media. Sometimes it’s an elaborate hypothetical in which asking a disabled person to make alternate arrangements and forgo ordering Instacart groceries for one day of a strike is tantamount to a genocidal program. Sometimes it’s a prompt tweet inviting you into a post-revolutionary fantasy world where, instead of collecting municipal garbage, you will be “doing art.”

​
This is the brand of Ugh, Capitalism that skirts closest to self-parody. It is communism where 90 percent of the workers produce theory and bad poetry. It is “my dog got cancer and capitalism is to blame.” It is the anger that if you don’t prepare food, it will take you longer to eat. Coffey continues:

What binds these pleas together is an application of “the personal is political” so expanded in scope that, for a certain kind of person, personal problems, anxieties, and dissatisfactions are illegible or illegitimate unless described as political problems…
The complete identification of human foible with structural failure excuses you from identifying and dealing with personal problems as such. Especially when it turns out the real culprit is capitalism.

These people aren’t angry at capitalism. They’re upset at the demands inherent to living life in the modern world. They’re mad that the human condition is sometimes stressful or imperfect. Like the first group, they couldn’t define capitalism if they tried. They do have specific complaints, but the complaints are conceptually distant, unrelated to capitalism as a system. Canine cancer would still exist under socialism, as far as I can tell. The concept of Mondays is not dependent on our economic system. At the core, these are people with some degree of dysfunction in their life who need a boogeyman to blame for personal travails.
To let Coffey have the final word:

Capitalism, in this rhetorical strain, is not so much the object of analysis or a concrete historical phenomenon as an all-purpose gesture. “Capitalism” is useful everywhere: as the punchline of self-deprecating jokes about the way we live now, as a perennial-but-distant bogeyman that explains chronic frustrations without ever causing enough pain to force serious disruption. Most importantly, its invocation immediately establishes a phenomenon in the realm of the political, without any further work required.

“Without any further work” is key. There is no politics or economic system that can solve all your problems, or spare your life from instances of suffering, discomfort or pain. Dealing with that is part of being human. It always has been and always will be. The only way to move past those things is to work hard, to strive, to struggle. But if you can blame the system, it’s not your fault. You’re not lazy, you’re a victim. You’re released from the burden of having to struggle—you just need someone to overthrow that damn capitalism.

Angry About a Thing

The last major category of Ugh, Capitalism complaints are more grounded in actual public policy than the previous categories. The typical structure goes something like: “Here is a fact about the world. This fact is bad, and it’s bad that we haven’t fixed it with politics or policy. Ugh, Capitalism.”
This is an improvement! They’re not purely riding the vibes, and they’re not talking about personal failings, random television sitcoms, or brunch ingredients. They’ve found a specific fact about the world—and it’s even related to the economy or politics! They’re usually pointing out something that is indeed quite bad. The flaw comes when they completely fail to relate the bad thing in question to capitalism.
There’s almost never any attempt to explain why capitalism caused this. How is it a capitalist problem? There’s no effort to examine what specific chain of events is actually causing the problem. Would it exist under socialism, or some other system? Who knows! Easier to blame capitalism with a sort of vague rhetorical shrug and move on.
Could the problem actually be fixed in a capitalist system? The answer here is almost always yes. The problem our hero is mad about—whether it be the housing crisis, pollution, climate change, or working conditions—has virtually always been solved in some other country that the hero admires… that is also capitalist. Given that Ugh, Capitalism complaints almost always come from the Left, this is usually an American commentator wanting the United States to be more like Denmark. Which is a capitalist country with a somewhat larger welfare state.
The generalized complaint is that the state of the world is imperfect, and if we improved public policy then we could make the world better. Completely true, but unspecific to capitalism. As Eric Levitz wrote in NYMag, blaming capitalism is not an alternative to solving problems.
There’s never any real discussion of detailed fixes in this kind of complaint—because that might acknowledge we can fix the problem without overthrowing the system. There’s never any argument about how under socialism (or some other alternative economic model) public policy tradeoffs, political failures, or scarcity just wouldn’t exist. Perhaps there will be some extremely vague hand-waving at “profit motive” or “commoditization,” but let’s be honest—most don’t even bother with that, and the ones who try don’t really understand those ideas either. There’s just Ugh, Capitalism.
If there’s one unifying theme here, it’s that capitalism is not an economic model in these gripes—not really. It’s more of a blame-the-system impulse. People are either mad at the state of things, or they at least want to signal that they are. It feels sophisticated to blame “capitalism” (or “America” or “individualism”), and it’s less work than actually deep diving into the guts of policy and figuring out the specific steps needed to correct the issue. Easier to blame late-stage capitalism, completely blind to the irony that people have been talking about “late capitalism” for around 100 years. Late capitalism was a term before our grandparents were born, and there will still be people talking about it when our grandchildren are old.
There are of course a few lonely souls who can actually define capitalism correctly and make coherent arguments about it. Rare as they may be, some people actually are writing detailed critiques of capitalism as an economic system. Good for them, even if I think they tend to be wrong more often than right. I hope they keep going.
But that’s not the typical way this argument goes. The typical way it goes is basically two words: “Ugh, capitalism.” There’s no escaping this, not until we have another generational shift and complaining about capitalism becomes as culturally passé as complaining about The Man Keeping You Down. It’s likely that as capitalism replaced The Man, some other boogeyman-societal-force will replace capitalism a few decades from now. In the meantime, we should at least notice the pattern.