That time Jean-Paul Sartre got high on mescaline

From Emily Zarevich for JSTOR Daily: "It was exactly the kind of thing a reckless twenty-something-year-old would do. But why would a rational, academically accomplished, thirty-year-old philosophy teacher do it? For whatever reason, Sartre made the decision to get high on mescaline, used at the time to treat alcoholism and depression, and recruited a doctor friend to inject him with it at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris. If Sartre was looking for some kind of epiphany, it presented itself to him in a very bizarre form. For days he was tormented by illusions of crustaceans. Not the charming, singing, Disney-style ones, but demonic, taunting sea beasts that followed him wherever he went. His clock became an owl, his umbrella metamorphosed into a vulture."

A QAnon cult set up a compound in a small town but the locals are fighting back

From Mack Lamoureux for Vice: "Hugh Everding, a bald hulking man of about 6’4”, stares out of the kitchen window as police vehicle after police vehicle rolls down the street headed towards a check stop manned by a half-dozen cops. Every entry point into this town has such a check stop, ready to interrogate both locals and miscreants on what their business is. There’s little doubt that at this moment, Richmound, Saskatchewan, population 130, is the most fortified town in all of Canada. You can always spot a storm brewing in the Prairies, and in Hugh’s case, it was just across the street, where the so-called QAnon Queen of Canada and her followers had taken over an abandoned school."

The surprising second life of an abandoned Victorian sea fort

From Roxanne Hoorn for Atlas Obscura: "Between 1850 and 1852, a mighty, squat stone fort rose from a low-lying island near Wales. Originally proposed by Thomas Cromwell, Stack Rock Fort was built to protect the Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock from attack by sea. It had a 30-foot tower, walls nine feet and nine inches thick, and housed three large cannons and one smaller one. It only really saw active use during World War I, and in 1929 it was finally decommissioned. In 2021, the property was purchased from a private owner by Anoniiem, a community interest company that proposed a new life for the place — it plans to preserve the fort as a “living ruin.” The goal is to keep the air of discovery and magic it had built over its years of abandonment."