Calisto, like the moon

Michael Newton’s Monsters, Mysteries and Man was a bit of a mystery for me for many years. I remembered it from my local library (it was at the Main, which I didn’t go to as much as the closer, smaller Branch). I had gotten it out before a trip to my grandparents' house and I distinctly remember reading it in bed there in almost one sitting. I remembered that it had a garish monster head on the cover and that the title reminded me of Richard Cavendish’s Man, Myth and Magic series, but that was all I could remember. Searching, for years, on the internet, turned up zilch.

And then, sometimes, I find that magic combination of words on the right site and boom, there it is, the thing I was looking for all those years. The site in question was Archive.org, so hey, you can read it too. The dust jacket is magnificent, isn’t it?

The text was a bit less noteworthy all these years later. It’s a general survey of crytpids — Yeti, Sasquatch, surviving dinosaurs, sea and lake monsters, Kraken, Nessie, UFOs — and the efforts to find and study them. Two more chapters cover vampires and werewolves, but they are half-hearted because there’s no meaningful chance that they are real. And that’s what Newton wants. He’s the opposite of skeptical Daniel Cohen; the whole book is arranged around finding the small holes of doubt in the skeptic’s argument and filling them to brimming with the hope of the believer. Considering not much has changed on any of these fronts in my lifetime, I don’t expect they ever will. Sorry Mike.

Long live the Intifada!

available on my INPRNT

Screenshot via Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net on bluesky

Tldr Amnesty International, global human rights organisation, published a report called 'A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK'. In it is detailed, amongst others, a whole bunch of transphobic groups and organisations, including Beira's Place, JK Rowling's trans exclusionary sexual violence support service. JK Rowling threw a shit fit and got Amnesty to take the report down by threatening libel. This was obviously not enough, because you can't appease a fascist, so now she's going to bankroll a bunch of lawsuits anyway through the JK Rowling Women's Fund.*

You can read an archived version of the report here, please save it and share it.

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!