Tex's Place

Good evening my friends,  I often get things from the Athenaeum Book Club , and I really enjoy them. In the latest one, Jeremy, from the book club, is joined by writer and illustrator Megha Lillywhite for a discussion on Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror classic, Dracula. From there I found this piece she wrote on her own Substack. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thus decided to share it with all of you. Enjoy! -Tex By MEGHA LILLYWHITE All vampire stories present only one form of immortality, except Bram Stoker’s Dracula , which reminds us that there are two. This simple fact helps us understand the core metaphysical motivation of the modern vampire story and why the modern story tends to present the vampire as someone attractive and beautiful rather than repulsive and vulgar. Modern vampire stories (written after the 1950s) are not truly gothic because they only carry forward half the tradition, which is a fascination with death and if they carry anything of the...

According to local reports, Ahmad's extremist rhetoric has drawn national attention due to documented ties linking his Melbourne institution to controversial Sydney networks. By ALEX CARSON A Muslim preacher from Melbourne, known as Abu Ahmad and associated with the Al Bayyinah Islamic Centre in Springvale, urged his followers to take up arms against Christians and Jews, according to local reports. At a sermon in July, Ahmad instructed devotees not to take Jews and Christians for friends and declared that devotion to Allah carries an obligation to oppose and fight enemies. For the sake of Allah, it includes the obligation to declare enmity for his sake, opposition for the sake of Allah,” Ahmad said in a clip posted to the center’s social media feed. “It is to declare opposition: indeed, to take up arms against his enemies, to shun them, and to stay far from them both in word and deed.” According to local reports, Ahmad’s extremist rhetoric has drawn national at...

By Steven Richards & John Solomon Dr. Anthony Fauci privately sounded the alarm when he learned the U.S. Army had conducted an experiment a decade ago that aerosolized the lethal Ebola virus, which is not normally transmitted by air, and then shared the results publicly amid an ongoing outbreak in Africa, according to diary entries obtained by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul.  The then-top scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was particularly concerned in 2016 that the Army medical research arm's experiment seemed to show that exposure to aerosolized Ebola caused more damaging effects in subjects that had been vaccinated. This was almost four years before he championed shutting down the U.S. economy and social life over the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Fauci wrote he believed such research should be kept secret, preferably classified, so that it didn’t undermine public confidence in vaccination in the African countries su...

By Bryan S. Jung The Spanish Civil Guard detained two former Venezuelan diplomats at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport after they were caught smuggling approximately 50 kilograms of cocaine into Spain.  According to CiberCuba, a team of independent journalists covering Cuba and its regional allies, the detainees are José Rafael Escorihuela Pereira, the former deputy head of the Venezuelan embassy in Madrid, and Kelvin Jesús Matos Pérez, a former embassy official and ex-brother-in-law of Nicolás Maduro Guerra, the son of the former Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro. Escorihuela attempted to evade customs inspection on September 8 by claiming active diplomatic status, but Spanish authorities discovered the narcotics in his luggage.  The arrests, which were revealed weeks later, have drawn attention to the detainees’ connections to Venezuela’s former diplomatic corps and the Maduro family. Spanish law enforcement is investigating whether Matos Pérez acted as an intermedi...

By Virginia Kruta ITHACA, NEW YORK — It’s socialist red at Big Red! Cornell University’s lefty crowd gave Democratic Socialist superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a warm, hate-filled welcome by singing anti-Israel chants at a campaign event meant to gin up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms Sunday. While warming up the standing-room-only crowd of roughly 2,000 people gathered for the congresswoman’s “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall in downtown Ithaca Sunday, Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman led the crowd singing “from the river to the sea” and declaring “long live the student intifada.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks with Cornell students during a town hall in Ithaca Sunday. More Perfect Union/X “Cornell is fundamentally a capitalist institution that prioritizes billionaires and profit over students and community and is controlled by CEO trustees that are profiting off of genocide and war,”...

The Treasury secretary said only about 15M barrels of Iranian oil remain out for delivery under Operation Economic Outcast By Max Bacall Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted Sunday that Iran will complete its remaining oil shipments to China within two weeks, leaving Tehran with "nothing left to trade for anything" as the Trump administration intensifies its economic pressure campaign against the regime. Bessent said only about 15 million barrels of Iranian oil remain out for delivery now that the U.S. is blockading the ports, describing the dwindling shipments as evidence that Operation Economic Outcast has left Tehran economically isolated. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent participates in a Shield of the Americas event during the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 22, 2026. (REUTERS) "They will have nothing to trade for anything, probably within the next two weeks. They are going to make their final deliveries of oil to...

By Ward Clark A person can get pretty jaded in the news business, particularly where dealing with lax justice systems is concerned. But now and then something comes across that jolts one nonetheless; something so outrageous that you have to read it two or three times to make sure you aren't missing something. This is one of those cases: Last week, we saw and reported on the arrests of five would-be terrorists who were allegedly plotting a scheme to attack the British Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Fairford with explosives. They were caught, thanks to a sharp-eyed citizen, and their plans thwarted. And, one would think that once locked up, people accused of a crime on this scale would stay locked up pending trial, right? Right? No. The Fairford Five are out on bail . This is the same Fuked-up country that jails its people for words... It's time for @POTUS to throw every UK diplomat out of the USA... btw, Our founding fathers were smarter than we thought... pic.twitter.com/vH...

A former Pentagon official warned Trump would decide how Iran 'pays' if evidence shows Tehran was behind the attempted attack on RAF Fairford By Emma Bussey Five men arrested near a key U.S. bomber base in the U.K. on Sunday may have planned a "complex," coordinated attack with potentially far-reaching security implications for American military installations globally, a former U.S. intelligence official warned. As counterterrorism police investigated after officers detained the suspects near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, a former Pentagon official also said President Donald Trump would ultimately be the one to decide the consequences if indeed the "trail leads to Tehran." The men were initially held on suspicion of offenses under Britain’s Explosives Act before being arrested on terrorism charges in connection with the airfield, a key U.S. Air Force hub and the primary European base for American strategic bombers. On Sunday, Trump said U.S. autho...