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In some ways, Hazel Sinnetts life has been a privileged one. Shes a young noblewoman from a wealthy family who has been given all the advantages that her familys money can afford.

But, frankly, 17-year-old Hazel hasnt ever taken an easy path. She hasnt simply relied on her attractiveness and position to help her find a suitable husband and start a suitable family. In fact, she has run determinedly away from suitable at every turn.

The idea of healing the human body has always consumed Hazels attention. Shes wanted nothing more than to become a doctor. A surgeon, in factthough she is forbidden to do so in 19th-century Edinburgh. She has lied, deceived, disguised herself as a boy and worked diligently to absorb every shred of medical knowledge she can.

Of course, if Im being absolutely truthful, thats not the only thing Hazel has ever desired. There was also a young man.

Their meeting was, shall we say, unusual. In an effort to procure human corpses to autopsy and learn from, Hazel turned to young Jack Currer, a desperate sort who stole freshly buried bodies from the graveyard for a living. During their secret interactions and late-night conversations, they fell in love. And then everything else fell apart.

Hazel nearly lost her life. And Jack likely did.

Now Hazels world is turned upside down. She is alone.

Amid losing Jack and any chance of accreditation, her clandestine work treating the broken bones, torn flesh and rotting teeth of the poor caused her great trouble. One case brought Hazels activities into the public eye. And it got her thrown in jail for murder.

Hazel is currently wasting to skin-and-bone in a filthy jail cell. She has no one there to help. No one to care. But even as her life wastes away, there is hope. For Princess Charlotte in London is mysteriously ill. And she wont let her male doctors touch her.

Hazel, however, is no male doctor. And even people in the royal court are, lately, whispering about the lady doctor in Scotland. After losing nearly everything, Hazelwho can never be a doctormight just be called to doctor a royal.

Excerpt from:

Immortality: A Love Story - Plugged In

Image credit: PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay.

Editors note: We are delighted to welcomeScience After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from Chapter 7.

The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which it gave rise made modern science possible, but it was the algorithm that made possible the modern world. They are utterly different, these ideas. The calculus serves the imperial vision of mathematical physics. It is a vision in which the real elements of the world are revealed to be its elementary constituents: particles, forces, fields, or even a strange fused combination of space and time. Written in the language of mathematics, a single set of fearfully compressed laws describes their secret nature. The universe that emerges from this description is alien, indifferent to human desires.

The great era of mathematical physics is now over. The three-hundred-year effort to represent the material world in mathematical terms has exhausted itself. The understanding that it was to provide is infinitely closer than it was when Isaac Newton wrote in the late 17th century, but it is still infinitely far away.

One man ages as another is born, and if time drives one idea from the field, it does so by welcoming another. The algorithm has come to occupy a central place in our imagination. It is the second great scientific idea of the West. There is no third.

An algorithm is aneffective procedure a recipe, a computer program a way of getting something done in a finite number of discrete steps. Classical mathematics contains algorithms for virtually every elementary operation. Over the course of centuries, the complex (and counterintuitive) operations of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division have been subordinated to fixed routines. Arithmetic algorithms now exist in mechanical form; what was once an intellectual artifice has become an instrumental artifact.

The world the algorithm makes possible is retrograde in its nature to the world of mathematical physics. Its fundamental theoretical objects are symbols, and not muons, gluons, quarks, or space and time fused into a pliant knot. Algorithms are human artifacts. They belong to the world of memory and meaning, desire and design. The idea of an algorithm is as old as the dry humped hills, but it is also cunning, disguising itself in a thousand protean forms. It was only in this century that the concept of an algorithm was coaxed completely into consciousness. The work was undertaken more than sixty years ago by a quartet of brilliant mathematical logicians: Kurt Gdel, Alonzo Church, Emil Post, and A. M. Turing, whose lost eyes seem to roam anxiously over the second half of the 20th century.

If it is beauty that governs the mathematicians soul, it is truth and certainty that remind him of his duty. At the end of the 19th century, mathematicians anxious about the foundations of their subject asked themselves why mathematics was true and whether it was certain, and to their alarm discovered that they could not say and did not know. Caught between mathematical crises and their various correctives, logicians were forced to organize a new world to rival the abstract, cunning, and continuous world of the physical sciences, their work transforming the familiar and intuitive but hopelessly unclear concept of the algorithm into one both formal and precise.

Unlike Andrew Wiles, who spent years searching for a proof of Fermats last theorem, the logicians did not set out to find the concept that they found. They were simply sensitive enough to see what they spotted. We still do not know why mathematics is true and whether it is certain. But we know what we do not know in an immeasurably richer way than we did. And learning this has been a remarkable achievement, among the greatest and least known of the modern era.

Dawn kisses the continents one after the other, and as it does a series of coded communications hustles itself along the surface of the earth, relayed from point to point by fiber-optic cables, or bouncing in a triangle from the earth to synchronous satellites, serene in the cloudless sky, and back to earth again, the great global network of computers moving chunks of data at the speed of light: stock-market indices, currency prices, gold and silver futures, news of cotton crops, rumors of war, strange tales of sexual scandal, images of men in starched white shirts stabbing at keyboards with stubby fingers or looking upward at luminescent monitors, beads of perspiration on their tensed lips. E-mail flashes from server to server, the circle of affection or adultery closing in an electronic braid; there is good news in Lisbon and bad news in Saigon. There is data everywhere and information on every conceivable topic: the way raisins are made in the Sudan, the history of the late Sung dynasty, telephone numbers of dominatrices in Los Angeles, and pictures too. A man may be whipped, scourged, and scoured without ever leaving cyberspace; he may satisfy his curiosity or his appetites, read widely in French literature, decline verbs in Sanskrit, or scan an interlinear translation of theIliad, discovering the Greek for greave or grieve; he may search out remedies for obscure diseases, make contact with covens in South Carolina, or exchange messages with people in chat groups who believe that Princess Diana was murdered on instructions tendered by the House of Windsor, the dark demented devious old Queen herself sending the order that sealed her fate.

All of this is very interesting and very new indeed, interesting because new but however much we may feel that our senses are brimming with the debris of data, the causal nexus that has made the modern world extends in a simple line from the idea of an algorithm, as logicians conceived it in the 1930s, directly to the ever-present always-moving now; and not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

It is the algorithm that rules the world itself, insinuating itself into every device and every discussion or diagnosis, offering advice and making decisions, maintaining its presence in every transaction, carrying out dizzying computations, arming and then aiming cruise missiles, bringing the dinosaurs back to life on film, and, like blind Tiresias, foretelling the extinction of the universe either in a cosmic crunch or in one of those flaccid affairs in which after a long time things just peter out.

The algorithm has made the fantastic and artificial world that many of us now inhabit. It also seems to have made much of the natural world, at least that part of it that is alive. The fundamental act of biological creation, the most meaningful of moist mysteries among the great manifold of moist mysteries, is the construction of an organism from a single cell. Look at it backward so that things appear in reverse (I am giving you my own perspective): Viagra discarded, hair returned, skin tightened, that unfortunate marriage zipping backward, teeth uncapped, memories of a radiant young woman running through a field of lilacs, a bicycle with fat tires, skinned knees, Kool-Aid, and New Hampshire afternoons. But where memory fades in a glimpse of the noonday sun seen from a crib in winter, the biological drama only begins, for the rosy fat and cooing creature loitering at the beginning of the journey, whose existence Im now inferring, the one improbably responding tokitchy kitchy coo, has come into the world as the result of a spectacular nine-month adventure, one beginning with a spot no larger than a pinhead and passing by means of repeated but controlled cellular divisions into an organism of rarified and intricately coordinated structures, these held together in systems, the systems in turn animated and controlled by a rich biochemical apparatus, the process of biological creation like no other seen anywhere in the universe, strange but disarmingly familiar, for when the details are stripped away, the revealed miracle seems cognate to miracles of a more familiar kind, as when something is read and understood.

Much of the schedule by which this spectacular nine-month construction is orchestrated lies resident in DNA and schedule is the appropriate word, for while the outcome of the drama is a surprise, the offspring proving to resemble his maternal uncle and his great-aunt (red hair, prominent ears), the process itself proceeds inexorably from one state to the next, and processes of this sort, which are combinatorial (cells divide), finite (it comes to an end in the noble and lovely creature answering to my name), and discrete (cells are cells), would seem to be essentially algorithmic in nature, the algorithm now making and marking its advent within the very bowels of life itself.

DNA is a double helix this everyone now knows, the image as familiar as Marilyn Monroe two separate strands linked to one another by a succession of steps so that the molecule itself looks like an ordinary ladder seen under water, the strands themselves curved and waving. Information is stored on each strand by means of four bases A, T, G, and C; these are by nature chemicals, but they function as symbols, the instruments by which a genetic message is conveyed.

A library is in place, one that stores information, and far away, where the organism itself carries on, one sees the purposes to which the information is put, an inaccessible algorithm ostensibly orchestrating the entire affair. Meaning is inscribed in molecules, and so there is something that reads and something that is read; but they are, those strings, richer by far than the richest of novels, for while TolstoysAnna Kareninacan only suggest the woman, her black hair swept into a chignon, the same message carrying the same meaning, when read by the right biochemical agencies, can bring the woman to vibrant and complaining life, reading now restored to its rightful place as a supreme act of creation.

The mechanism is simple, lucid, compelling, extraordinary. In transcription, the molecule faces outward to control the proteins. In replication, it is the internal structure of DNA that conveys secrets, not from one molecule to another but from the past into the future. At some point in the life of a cell, double-stranded DNA is cleaved, so that instead of a single ladder, two separate strands may be found waving gently, like seaweed, the bond between base pairs broken. As in the ancient stories in which human beings originally were hermaphroditic, each strand finds itself longingly incomplete, its bases unsatisfied because unbound. In time, bases attract chemical complements from the ambient broth in which they are floating, so that if a single strand of DNA contains first A and then C, chemical activity prompts a vagrant T to migrate to A, and ditto for G, which moves to C, so that ultimately the single strand acquires its full complementary base pairs. Where there was only one strand of DNA, there are now two. Naked but alive, the molecule carries on the work of humping and slithering its way into the future.

A general biological property, intelligence is exhibited in varying degrees by everything that lives, and it is intelligence that immerses living creatures in time, allowing the cat and the cockroach alike to peep into the future and remember the past. The lowly paramecium is intelligent, learning gradually to respond to electrical shocks, this quite without a brain let alone a nervous system. But like so many other psychological properties, intelligence remains elusive without an objective correlative, some public set of circumstances to which one can point with the intention of saying, There, that is what intelligence is or what intelligence is like.

The stony soil between mental and mathematical concepts is not usually thought efflorescent, but in the idea of an algorithm modern mathematics does offer an obliging witness to the very idea of intelligence. Like almost everything in mathematics, algorithms arise from an old wrinkled class of human artifacts, things so familiar in collective memory as to pass unnoticed. By now, the ideas elaborated by Gdel, Church, Turing, and Post have passed entirely into the body of mathematics, where themes and dreams and definitions are all immured, but the essential idea of an algorithm blazes forth from any digital computer, the unfolding of genius having passed inexorably from Gdels incompleteness theorem to Space Invaders VII rattling on an arcade Atari, a progression suggesting something both melancholy and exuberant about our culture.

The computer is a machine, and so belongs to the class of things in nature that do something; but the computer is also a device dividing itself into aspects, symbols set into software to the left, the hardware needed to read, store, and manipulate the software to the right. This division of labor is unique among man-made artifacts: it suggests the mind immersed within the brain, the soul within the body, the presence anywhere of spirit in matter. An algorithm is thus an ambidextrous artifact, residing at the heart of both artificial and human intelligence. Computer science and the computational theory of mind appeal to precisely the same garden of branching forks to explain what computers do or what men can do or what in the tide of time they have done.

Molecular biology has revealed that whatever else it may be, a living creature is also a combinatorial system, its organization controlled by a strange, hidden, and obscure text, one written in a biochemical code. It is an algorithm that lies at the humming heart of life, ferrying information from one set of symbols (the nucleic acids) to another (the proteins).

The complexity of human artifacts, the things that human beings make, finds its explanation in human intelligence. The intelligence responsible for the construction of complex artifacts watches, computers, military campaigns, federal budgets, this very essay finds its explanation in biology. Yet however invigorating it is to see the algorithmic pattern appear and reappear, especially on the molecular biological level, it is important to remember, if only because it is so often forgotten, that in very large measure we have no idea how the pattern is amplified. Yet the explanation of complexity that biology affords is largely ceremonial. At the very heart of molecular biology, a great mystery is vividly in evidence, as those symbolic forms bring an organism into existence, control its morphology and development, and slip a copy of themselves into the future.

The transaction hides a process never seen among purely physical objects, one that is characteristic of the world where computers hum and human beings attend to one another. In that world intelligence is always relative to intelligence itself, systems of symbols gaining their point from having their point gained. This is not a paradox. It is simply the way things are. Two hundred years ago the French biologist Charles Bonnet asked for an account of the mechanics which will preside over the formation of a brain, a heart, a lung, and so many other organs. No account in terms of mechanics is yet available. Information passes from the genome to the organism. Something is given and something read; something ordered and something done. But just who is doing the reading and who is executing the orders, this remains unclear.

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Iterations of Immortality - Discovery Institute

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C. S. Lewiss 1946 science fiction novelThat Hideous Strengthis almost eighty years old now. Written during the throes of World War II, the novel is the culmination of Lewiss cosmic trilogy, preceded byOut of the Silent PlanetandPerelandra. There are hosts of other articles attending to the prescience of Lewiss terrifying novel, and for good reason;That Hideous Strengthis a warning against using technology to dehumanize people and ultimately cripple the world into submission. Its a great book as a novel, but it seems especially appropriate to revisit in lieu of the growing interest in transhumanism and the rapidacceleration of AI development.

It feels like much of the talk on AI in recent months involves its surface-level manifestations or consequences. It might take away jobs in journalism and help college kids cheat on exams. These are real concerns. The other dangers involvingAI scams, disinformation, and deepfakes are formidable, too. And yet a novel likeThe Hideous Strengthshows the danger behind the danger: the temptation to reject being merely human.

The novelists protagonist, Mark Studdock, must decide whether hell opt into a scheme to destroy humanity via machine intelligence. Mark, a sociologist in training, gets caught up in a secret society known as N.I.C.E., which stands for theNational Institute for Coordinated Experiments. N.I.C.E. is the perfect symbol of todays benevolent-sounding yet bloated and banal administrative state, carrying out power initiatives that impact everyday people. While its unclear exactly what the overall goals of the Institute are, one thing is clear: its time to throw off the limits of being human and transcend into the world of pure intelligence.

Mark Studdock and his wife, Jane, both have a lot to learn in the book. Mark is eager to find acceptance among elites at N.I.C.E., while Jane, who is a lapsed academic struggling to finish her dissertation onJohn Donne, longs for a kind of freedom and independence that her married life fails to afford her. Through their own journeys, both learn that accepting their limits and choosing to commit to each other is the real path to freedom. In the end, domestic family life, which includes birth, growth, and death, is envisioned as a kind of antidote to the mad quest for human immortality and domination.

Okay, so that was 1946. Its 2023. OpenAI, ChatGPT, Altos Labs, bio-longevity; is any of that relevant to C. S. Lewiss great book?Paul Kingsnorththinks so. Kingsnorth writes often on the state of our tech-intoxicated culture. He doesnt own a smartphone. He apologetically writes on Substack while decrying all the bad things the Internet has done to us. But, his voice is among the few out there pointing out how merging ourselves with the Machine will compromise our humanity. In a recent piece, The Abbey of Misrule, Kingsnorth asks what we gain by developing these new AI tools. He writes,

Nearly sixty years back, the cultural theoristMarshall McLuhanoffered a theory of technology which hinted at an answer. He saw each new invention as an extension of an existing human capability. In this understanding, a club extends what we can do with our fist, and a wheel extends what we can do with our legs. Some technologies then extend the capacity of previous ones: a hand loom is replaced by a steam loom; a horse and cart is replaced by a motor car, and so on.

What human capacity, then, is digital technology extending? The answer,saidMcLuhan, was our very consciousness itself.

While technologies made life more convenient, faster, or efficient, artificial intelligence is about extending human consciousness. Do we want that? What would that mean to our ability to think, understand, and reason on our own? Beyond that, AI at its worst will be a kind of divinity, a man-made God. At least, thats what our friends over in the transhumanist camp would like. Kingsnorth continues,

Transhumanist Martine Rothblattsaysthat by building AI systems we are making God. Transhumanist Elise Bohansayswe are building God. Kevin Kellybelievesthat we can see more of God in a cell phone than in a tree frog. Does God exist? asks transhumanist and Google maven Ray Kurzweil. I would say, Not yet. These people are doing more than trying to steal fire from the gods. They are trying to steal the gods themselves or to build their own versions.

For the last two years, I have found myself writing a lot here about God; more than I had intended. I have claimed several times thatthere is a throne at the heart of every culture,and that someone is always going to sit on it. Humans are fundamentally religious animals. We are drawn towards transcendence whether we like it or not. But here in the West, we have dethroned our old god, and now we can barely look at him.

Kingsnorths article is worth reading in full, and his Substack is consistently interesting and compelling.

We dont like to try and predict the future here atMind Matters, since it seems so difficult to do. Nonetheless, C. S. Lewiss novel and Kingsnorths warning rightly point out the dangers of depending too much on the machines we create. They might make us feel powerful, but in reality, they leave us weak.

Peter Kreeft, a philosopher at Boston College, wrote about this idea in his great bookThe Philosophy of Tolkien:The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings.As the title indicates, the book goes into depth on Tolkiens intricate worldview, conception of ethics, and the battle between good and evil. Kreeft writes,

We have done exactly what Sauron did in forging the Ring. We have put our power into things in order to increase our power. And the result is, as everyone knows but no one admits, that we are now weak little wimps, unable to survive a blow to the great spider of our technological network. We tremble before a nationwide electrical blackout or a global computer virus. Only hillbillies and Boy Scouts would survive a nuclear war. In our drive for power we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we have become more powerful when all the time we have been becoming less.

This is why it probably wouldnt be so great an idea toforce everyone to get electric stoves. Power goes out, and everyones basically doomed. I appreciate the technology of a lighter, but if Im ever trapped in the Colorado wilderness and need to keep warm, Id probably need a how-to manual for making fire from friction. Technology shows the remarkable ingenuity of human beings, but the more sophisticated it gets, the more tempting it will be to compromise the creativity that makes us unique and live as makeshift drones.

In short, we create technology, but we seem to be at a point where its compromising the very things that allowed us to develop it in the first place: innovation, creativity, hard work. If its ever stripped away, will we have the skills, stamina, and discipline to recover? If I upload my memories, consciousness, and relationships into the Machine, will I have laid myself at the altar of that hideous strength?

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At the Altar of that Hideous Strength - Discovery Institute

Yoga is incomplete without Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dhyana (meditation) and Dharana (focused concentration)

The history of Yoga in Indian culture is more than five thousand years old. Many complex physical diseases and mental disorders can be cured by various yoga asanas, pranayama, deep breathing, meditation, and mindfulness. There is also improvement in the personality. Due to these benefits, the popularity of yoga as a preventive therapy is increasing progressively all over the world. Yoga counsellors have been appointed in allopathic hospitals in many countries around the world including India.

The global popularity of yoga is not without reason, psychologists and doctors themselves have wholeheartedly accepted its positive effects on the body and mind. In the transition period of Covid-19, one can lead a stress-free and happy life by practising yoga. This unique way of life of the Indian sages teaches a person to live happily and also provides liberation to those who move forward on the path of Yoga. The sages created this knowledge for self-welfare so that they can get freedom from the hassle of worldly traffic and lead a prosperous life.

Today, yoga is being spread more in the context of health protection than from a spiritual perspective. There are three stages of yoga education - medicine, immortality, and salvation. After the scientific interpretation of Yoga Vidya, it is being used significantly all over the world to make the body healthy as well as to get rid of mental diseases.

According to a research work published in May 2020, in a prestigious research journal, the 'Indian Journal of Psychiatry', the Lab for Molecular Reproduction and Genetics of the Anatomy Department of AIIMS and the Department of Psychiatry together concluded that the treatment of depressed patients due to genetic causes is also possible through yoga.*

Under this research, a comparative study was done by a group of doctors on 160 patients undergoing treatment for depression. They were divided into two groups of 80 each - One group was restricted to medicine only, while the other group was made to practice yoga asanas for twelve weeks along with medicinal treatment. On completion of the research work, blood samples from both groups were tested. The report gave astounding results. Only 29% of the patients taking only the medicines benefitted, on the contrary, 60% of those who practised yoga along with medicines availed benefits.

*The Corona epidemic resulted in a rapid increase in the patients of depression in all the countries of the world.

By the research of AIIMS, Dr Reema Dada suggested that practising asanas like Surya Namaskar, Mayurasana, Vrikshasana, Tadasana, Bhujangasana, Janushirasana, Pawanmuktasana, Shalabhasana, Paschimottanasana, Anulom-Vilom Pranayama, Bhramari, Kapalbhati can significantly help in curing depression and other diseases like arthritis.

Mayurasan and Ardhamatsyendrasan are considered a panacea for diabetes and abdominal disorders. Apart from physical and mental balance, yoga is also effective in maintaining efficiency, a well-organized routine, and a lifestyle. Yoga has special importance in changing the sanskaras of the mind.

Although India has had many sages of Yoga, the most famous and prominent among them is Maharishi Patanjali. Today, yoga is directly related to disease prevention, keeping the body flexible and healthy. In reality, this is not yoga but only a means of 'Ashtayoga' of Patanjali Yogasutra. Patanjali has specifically defined yoga in the Yoga Sutras 'Yogaschittavrittinirodha' i.e., restraining the violent and malevolent instincts of the mind by practicing Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dhyana, and Dharana respectively.

On International Yoga Day, emphasis is given to the practice of physical postures and workouts. There is hardly any discussion on Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dhyana (meditation), and Dharana (focused concentration). Yoga is incomplete without imbibing these three steps of the Yogasutra. It paves the way to make a person's body, mind, subconscious and soul work smoothly in one rhythm. It is a method of establishing an interrelationship between man and nature. Patanjali was an intense psychologist; he observed that man's personal life is full of sorrows. These sorrows are directly related to the change in the mind and so, Patanjali talks about living a disciplined life by methodically practicing the middle way of meditation Ashtanga Yoga.

However, in today's era, yoga is associated with Hinduism, and there is also an attempt to take political advantage of it. But the concept of yoga was born even when the concept of religion was not clear and is used for thousands of years to get rid of physical distress and worldly sorrows. Thus, it is propagated today at the international level due to its positive impact on the health of human beings and the welfare of humanity.

(The writer is a Yoga Expert and Naturopathist. Views expressed are personal)

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Imbibe yoga in its true spirit on the International Yoga Day - Daily Pioneer

They say its good to be bad but which TV villains arethe very bestat being bad?

Below, TVLine has compiled an updated list of small-screen foes who made an indelible impression with their evil plots and wicked ways. These memorable enemies, from shows such asBuffy the Vampire Slayer, Arrow, Once Upon a TimeandSupernatural, range from crafty opponents to downright despicable human beings. And lest you think only genre shows breed troublemakers, weve also included some classic villainesses fromDynasty, Falcon CrestandMelrose Place.

Plus, weve selected a handful of characters who arecurrentlydelivering dastardly performances onThe Boys, Evil and The Walking Dead universe. Our refreshed rankings also feature baddies from Doctor Who, Succession, Smallville, Sons of Anarchy and more shows!

Note:We limited our picks to just one villain per series/franchise, which certainly wasnt an easy task when it came to the plentiful options in the Vampire Diaries and Arrow universes or onGame of Thrones. That said, one actor issogood at being bad that he appears on our ranking twice, for two very different roles!

So whos the best of the worst? Review our list, then hit the comments with any evildoers who missed the cut!

Theresplenty of sexual deviance onBig Mouth, and luckily for Nick and Andrew, the Shame Wizard was around to keep them in line! (Were kidding.) But we did getmanylaughs from watchinghimspreadembarrassment andcausemanic spiralsthroughout.Whenever we sawthe kids squirming, wewerealwaystickled bytheWizards ghoulishhavoc-wreaking.This is oneevildoerwe can get behind.

Former drug peddler Blaine DeBeers is best known as the guy who turned heroine Liv into a zombie. He ran an underground and very illegal brain delivery service, which sourced its inventory by killing street kids, fueling the fear between zombies and the general public. His love for money was only topped by his love for creating chaos. After being cured, he faked amnesia to stay close to Peyton, proving one doesnt have to be a zombie to be a slimeball!

Regina may have been the queen of mean, but the Dark One was a sinister, slithery piece of work. Plus, where Regina was for so long laser-focused on making Savior Emmas life hell, Rumple had his scaly green fingers in multiple pies, battling Miss Swan as well as Hook, Peter Pan, Zelena, Mother Goethel and others.

If something smelled rotten in the Aloha State, chances are that Wo Fat was involved. Off and on during the CBS reboots first four-and-a-half seasons, the criminal mastermind (played by Mark Dacascos) would dog top cop Steve McGarrett, going from framing him for the assassination of the Hawaii governor to, with his dying breath, revealing that Steves mother Doris veritably adopted him as a youth. Oh, brother!

Sure, hes a lifelong criminal with some problematic views and a nasty violent streak. But Boyd Crowder was a charmer as well, thanks to Walton Goggins charismatic performance, and he proved to be a very worthy adversary (friend-versary, even?) to Timothy Olphants deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Boyd may have been a thief and a liar, but just like Raylan, we cant quite bring ourselves to hate him.

Evil, glamorous and campy as hell, Sabrina Spellmans nemesis-turned-mentor is among the Netflix series most spellbinding personalities, whether shes taking the form of mousy teacher Ms. Wardwell or wicked seductress Madam Satan. As for her being two-faced, we think this photo speaks for itself.

Join us, wont you, in raising a glass of sour grapes to Jane Wymans queen of mean, whose age and Little Orphan Annie hairdo gave the entirely false first impression that she was a sweet old lady. So frosty was the First Lady of Tuscany Valley, she could kill a nemesis crop just by fixing it with her withering gaze.

TheDallasspinoffs answer to J.R. Ewing had hair as big as her ambitions, dramatic bedroom eyes and absolutely no sts to give. Time and time again, Donna Mills sardonic supervixen proved that she thought of other women as mere hot plates: something to keep their husbands warm until she had a craving for one of em.

When it comes to Jessica Langes femmes fatales on the FX anthology series, the wicked witch that she played in Season 3 reigns Supreme. The lethal beauty was living proof that vanity kills. Yet, despite her misdeeds, she stood on the right side of history, tasking former slave owner Delphine with serving a Black enchantress as she remarked, Theres nothing I hate more than a racist. You go, bad girl!

When a character snaps an innocent infants neck as if it were a dandelion stem, you know that character is someone to fear. But Tricia Helfers character at the start of the sci-fi reboot was more than that: infinitely interesting, slinkily intimidating and coldly capable of taking out an entire civilization without mussing a hair on her Cylon head.

In a lesser actors hands,Dexters most famous serial killer couldve come across as a silly cartoon. But John Lithgows ability to infuse Arthur with flashes of humanity made the character all the more terrifying. And for a man in his 60s, Arthur possessed the kind of super-human strength that could make anyones hair stand on end.

Had Siobhan Finnerans miserable maid merely been a mean-spirited gossip, we couldve written it off as a side effect of her station in life. But Thomas fearsome frenemy was anythingbutall talk: She not only tried to get dear Carson arrested, she tried to do the same to Thomas! And dont even get us started on the soap incident that caused Cora to miscarry.

A white supremacist,rapistandpedophile? T-Bagwas so vile hemade our skin crawl.Buthe was fascinating,too,as he usedhiscunningto blackmail Michael andshoehornhimself intotheir big break.Wevegot to hand it to actor Robert Knepper, whose certain je nesaisquoi kept us glued to our screens as wewatchedthissickeningmadmansreign of terrorunfold.

Was it any wonder that Joe had no problem rallying minions to his serial-killing cause? The Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed literature professor was so damn charming that his followers voluntarily gouged out their own eyeballs and did far worse to others at his say-so. And the mind games he played with FBI agent Ryan Hardy for years? Just bloody icing on the icky cake.

Heres the thing, we dont totally disagree with The Carvers mantra beauty is kind of a curse on the world! but we also dont approve of how the serial stabber went about teaching that lesson to their victims. Say it with us: We. Do. Not. Cut. Up. Peoples. Faces.

The computer hacker/serial killer tormented Brennan, Booth & Co. for seasons with his almost omniscient-like technological skills, draining Hodgins bank account and leaving behind haunting clues for Bones. Somehow, Pelant always seemed to be one step ahead of the Jeffersonian team, making him a worthy foe for the intellectual squints.

London detective John Luther more than met his match in this evil genius, played by an icy Ruth Wilson. Alice was a coldblooded killer, and a good one, using her considerable smarts and ruthless cunning to avoid getting caught. She and Luther engaged in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse that stretched over several seasons as Alice worked her way into Luthers psyche, Hannibal Lecter-style. Luther took on other cases, but none were as bloody thrilling as Alice Morgan.

Calculating, manipulative, and oh-so cold-hearted, Rachel was raised to be a cutthroat clone who made savage decisions that benefitted an evil corporations agenda rather than her ownsestras. She only feigned empathy when it seemed to benefit her, making her motives and allegiances permanently gray areas. The power-hungry clone even kidnapped sweet little Kira! Though she eventually turned around to help Sarah and the others, we never, ever fully trusted her.

Zachary Quintos Big Bad wasnt just a soulless serial killer. He was a soulless serial killer who could manifest anyones super powers and use them for evil. Scary combination!

With all due respect to the Master/Missy, these are theWhodevils thatreallymake our skin crawl. The quantum-locked Angels are creepy but impassive stone statueswhen youre looking. When youre not, they attack with terrifying speed, flinging victims back in time, where they essentially live to death. Give these lonely assassins fifty points for originality and Gothic horror vibes, plus a million for nightmare fuel. Dont. Blink.

On one hand, hes an esteemed psychiatrist with a refined palate, interesting fashion sense and a seductive manner of speaking. On the other hand, he kills people and eats them. So while we certainly have a healthy fear of Hannibals dark side, we do admit we developed a taste for him over three seasons. (From a safe distance, of course.)

Honestly,anymember of the HBO dramas chain-smoking Guilty Remnant couldve earned a spot on this list, so appallingly indifferent was the cult to humanity. But Ann Dowds unfeeling leader of Mapletons chapter was particularly vile and terrifying, what with a commitment that ran so deep, she slit her own throat just to ensure that tormented Kevin couldnt get in the last word.

Who among us didnt cheer when Miss Rosa purposely struck and killed Vee with the prison van? (Always so rude, that one!) Lorraine Toussaints sociopathic alter ego wasnt necessarily the most vicious villain inOITNBs storied run, but she was easily the most ruthless (and most frightening) antagonist due to her uncanny ability to manipulate and deceive those she took under her wing, including Suzanne, Poussey and Taystee.

Like a cat toying with a mouse before going for the kill, Helen McCrorys seductive rhymes-with-bitch delighted in messing with our protagonists literally, in the case of besotted patsy Sir Malcolm. (Ahem.) But, despite her considerable powers and warped creativity, the leader of the Nightcomers never could quite get under her thumb daughter Hecate, who set up Mommie Dearest to be werewolf Ethans scratching post.

Before revealing herself to be a total softie in the musical comedys final season, Sue was a living nightmare for the students at McKinley High, stopping at nothing to destroy the lives of anyone associated with its precious glee club. Should we really be surprised that she eventually became a conservative news correspondent before getting elected Vice President of the United States?

When Lucy Lawless Roman spitfire wasnt acting as an accessory to her wretched husband Batiatus many war crimes, she was perpetrating diabolical acts of evil herself. In fact, she has more murderous notches on her belt than any other female character in the series.

Rosewoods textual terrorist was so frightening, it took but a single letter to send a chill down the spine of any liar, pretty or otherwise. And while a number of beautiful sociopaths assumed the dreaded moniker over the course of the shows seven-season run, A was very much an entity unto itself and it was a bitch.

The billionaire corporate titan played by Brian Cox loomed over every frame of HBOs Emmy-winning drama, ruling his sprawling media empire with an iron fist. He belittled his children, scoffed at anygenuinedisplay of human emotion and dismissed all those who challenged him with a gruff Fk off. He was so formidable, we didnt even believe it at first when he suddenly passed away midway through the final season. If anyone could cheat death, its Logan Roy.

Avuncular on the outside and a Rambaldi zealot on the inside, Sydneys SD-6 boss spent half his time trying to kill her (and a not-inconsiderable amount of time gunning for people she loved R.I.P, Danny). His fervor for chasing down Rambaldis secret to immortality made him merciless, but karma got him in the end: After achieving eternal life, he was trapped in a cavern, doomed to spend the rest of time alone and underground.

A master of seduction, infidelity, kidnapping and, of course, returning from the dead, this killer queen wouldnt just blow up your life, shed blow up your entire apartment complex and shed do it with a smile on her face.

When first introduced, the fallen archangel was far from what the Winchesters and viewers were expecting. The baddie was almost soft-spoken and contemplative but that didnt mean that he didnt have an agenda that he wouldnt stop at anything to achieve. And even after Sam sacrificed himself to trap Lucifer, Lucy still found his way back to Earth, eventually even spawning a Nephilim son (who, thankfully,turned out to not be like his bio dad).

Of all the characters you didnt want to cross on FXs biker drama, you really didnt want to cross Clay. Ron Perlman brought an unnerving intensity to SAMCROs onetime president, who shifted the energy of a room just by walking into it. During Sons of Anarchys early seasons, Clay had a formidable amount of influence over the club and its allies but what made him truly terrifying was his casual penchant for violence, from which no one was safe until Clays demise in Season 6.

The Saviors former leader may have been rebranded as a lovable antihero before being spun off ontoDead City, but were as likely to forget his past villainy as his wives. How could we when we still have nightmares about the time Jeffrey Dean Morgans Chatty Cathy forced Carl to sing? (Shudder.) What? Did you think we were gonna say the time he struck out Abraham and Glenn? Did youhearCarl sing?

Whereas the super-A.I. known as The Machine was out to do good (by dispensing Social Security numbers that could help stop forecast crime), its evil twin, Samaritan, was out for Greer and the other Decima goons while going to any lengths necessary in the name of self-preservation. Samaritan saw everything and knew everything, making for a nearly inescapable adversary.

Easily the most hated man in Springfield, this crusty, coldblooded billionaire takes great pleasure in making others miserable, whether hes squeezing every last penny out of the less fortunate or releasing his hounds to maul any trespassers. He even tried to blot out the sun at one point! Its no wonder that, when he was shot back in Season 6, nearly everyone in town was a suspect.

We decided early on that Leland was a wicked, manipulative and dangerous psychological mastermind and that wasbeforehe maneuvered himself into the role of father to Kristins lost embryo, now gestating in his oblivious pawn. Though he provides plenty of comic relief, dont be deceived: Leland is a monster, and were absolutely terrified to find out whatelsehes capable of.

Well be the first to admit that Cigarette Smoking Man, aka Cancer Man, aka C.G.B. Spender, lost a little of his creepiness as the seasons went on. (A jacked-up, retconned backstory will do that to a bad guy.) But think back to when he was the silent, shadowy figure lighting up in the corner of Blevins office in the pilot, and we defy you not to shiver.

The deeply flawed husband and father seemed to have no limit when it came to despicable behavior: He physically and psychologically abused his sons, tormented his ex-wife Deb so much that she turned to booze and pills, and, worst of all, killedhis own brother.So when a dog ate his donor heart, it felt like karmic payback.

How can you possibly defeat someone who has the power to control others minds? In the first season of Netflixs comic book drama, even Jessica Jones who doesnt fear much of anything was tormented by the very thought of Kilgrave, who once kept Jessica under his thumb for months and convinced her to do awful things. Kilgraves ability to turn even innocuous actions into torturous punishments, like ordering a man to turn and face a fence forever, made him an especially chilling baddie, and David Tennants deliciously twisted take on the role kept us fixated on our screens no persuasion needed.

The super-slithery serial rapist/sometime killer, played so well (meaning detestably) by Billy Burke, taunted not only The Closers Brenda Leigh, but also her teenage would-be ward Rusty, in the procedurals Major Crimes offshoot. Any time Stroh showed up, you got a chill sensing that something was about to go very, very wrong.

Take Slade Wilson a badass with a legitimate beef and jack him up on Mirakuru, and you get the most formidable, and personal, of foes for Oliver Queen. The way that one-eyed Slade slid back into Olivers life still gives us chills, while his brutal kills (not Moira!) made us double over, as Oliver did, in anguish.

As if it werent bad enough that Fred Waterford participated in state-sanctioned, ritual rape every month and it was so,sobad Gileads merry misogynist had the audacity to play humiliating mind games with his handmaidandchop off his own wifes finger when she dared step out of line.At least he eventually got what was coming to him, courtesy of his victim, June, and a bloodthirsty band of former handmaids whod had enough.

Nina Myers was24smost twisted badguy.Originally second in command at CTU: L.A.,shehad everyone fooledwith her deep cover and liesus included!The molesold classified government information right under everyones noses, and attempted to buyand sella deadlyvirus afteralreadyreceiving a presidential pardon.Plus,she killed Teri Bauer! JackBauerfoughtheaps of terroristsover the course of his career, but this one was painstakingly personal.

The bestStar Trekbaddies since the original Klingons, this collective of alien cyborgs were a terrifying vision of A.I. run amok, with a relentless drive to assimilate any and all beings they encountered. Their hyper intelligence and lack of human emotion made them formidable enemies, and if you dared to stand in their way? Even Jean-Luc Picard learned that resistance is futile.

Few villains in TV history were as flat-out fun to watch as the stylish assassin played to perfection by Jodie Comer. We shouldnt have liked Villanelle: She was a bloodthirsty psychopath who delighted in making people suffer. And yet we did, because she turned killing into an art form, bringing a playful flair to her grim calling. She was always the bad guy but she was just so damn good at it.

Theres been many portrayals of Lex Luthor over the decades, but watching his Smallville journey from Clark Kents friend to Supermans nemesis, with all its complicated relationships and shady moves, made for an especially gripping villain story. And because he started out as Clarks pal, that made all the terrible things that Lex would go on to do all the more awful and painful.

Joan Collins scheming, acid-tongued antagonist was as groundbreaking as she was popular; the characters dramatic arrival in the Season 2 premiere gave the initially ratings-challenged ABC soap a much-needed shot in the arm, propelling it to the top of the Nielsens and paving the way for generations of primetime female evildoers to come.

Picking just one villain from HBOs fantasy drama was a daunting task on its own. But for us, Ramsay tops em all even the snot-nosed Joffrey and menacing Night King because he reached levels of diabolical we didnt even know existed. Even worse? He absolutely relished each one. To be clear, we dont approve of the way Ramsay endlessly tortured Theon, or his utterly despicable treatment of Sansa. But ofThrones many adversaries, Ramsay will forever stick out as the most sadistic and dread-inducing; not even a literal army of the undead could scare us as much.

The first of his kind, this vampire-werewolf hybrids unspeakable reputation preceded him, making Klaus an imposing presence long before finally appearing at the end of the shows sophomore season. And even though he received a thorough redemption arc along with a five-season spinoff to further explore his demons hell always be remembered as one of the most fearsome beasts to walk the streets of New Orleans. (Wed be remiss if we didnt also mention Kai Parker we immediately loved to hate Chris Woods snarky psychopath be were keeping this list to one baddie per show/franchise.)

The Sevens twisted leader fights super villains, and yet, hes as far from the definition of hero as you can get. Devoid of empathy and capable of squishing a skull in seconds, Homelander is an unpredictable, narcissistic sociopath with serious mommy issues, making him one of the most dangerous (and complex) supes on the series.

Sure, the Smoke Monster had moves (and made that discomfiting rattling-chain noise), but Ben as a mortal among humans was a more tangible threat to Jack, Kate et al. First introduced as meek Henry Gale, Ben was soon revealed to be the leader of the Others, setting in motion a domino chain of dastardly reveals. In the end, he was good, but when he was bad, he was awful.

As diabolical as she was gorgeous, the most vicious of Earths Visitors would stop at nothing to hasten her rise to power. (And it showed she eventually became Supreme Commander.) But the scene that will always stay with us and no, therapy hasnt helped is the one in which we caught our first glimpse of the secret lizard lady unhinging her jaw and swallowing a guinea pig whole.

If Davids psychotic ex-wife ever challenged you to call her a simple bitch, you obviously didnt do it. Not because Angela Robinsons character was really all that complicated, but because youre still breathing to read this. Veronica was as crazy as they come: a homophobic thirst trap who shot first, asked questions never, and once drove her long-suffering gay son to stab her in the breast implant. In. The. Breast. Implant.

Sure, the likes of Mr. Freeze, Ma Parker and Egghead had their campy, Caped Crusader-vexing charms, but the recurring threats posed by Penguin (Burgess Meredith), Riddler (Frank Gorshin is our pick), Joker (Cesar Romero with that painted stache) and Catwoman (lets go with Eartha Kitt) is what kept us tuned into that same Bat Channel every Bat Time.

Long before he romanced Phoebe Waller-Bridge asFleabags Hot Priest, Andrew Scott terrorized Benedict Cumberbatch as the Big Bad Moriarty. The legendary villain was a psychopath, yes, but he was a brilliant, clever, eccentric, unpredictable lunatic. And there was nothing he wouldnt do to destroy his longtime nemesis, including shooting himself in the head in order to compel Holmes to take his own life.

The demonic possessing spirit spent most of his time inhabiting other bodies, but it was in his true form that of a long-haired vagrant played to creepy perfection by the late Frank Silva that he was the most terrifying. He was a literal nightmare come to life.

Walter White may have been the one to break bad but no one was badder than Gus Fring. Played with chilling precision by Giancarlo Esposito, Gus was an unassuming drug lord, so mild-mannered that he could double as the manager of a fast food chicken joint and no one would look at him twice. But underneath that calm demeanor was a stone-cold killer who used his keen intellect to rule the local meth trade and crush his enemies with ruthless efficiency. Were gladBetter Call Saulbrought him back: Even though we already knew his fate, we still wanted more Gus.

The fact that the late, great Larry Hagman appeared to take such delight in playingDallas iconic scoundrel put J.R. in a class by himself, making the character alternately charming and despicable. Hagman also never let the audience lose sight of the fact that J.R.s treachery was driven by his love of family, however misguided that love often was.

The Redcoat captain may have looked exactly like Claires gentle husband, but thats where the similarities ended. The 18th-century sadist received way too much pleasure from endangering the lives of Jamie Fraser and his British bride and thats way before the abominable assault that happened at Wentworth Prison near the end of Season 1.

When Buffys boyfriend experienced a moment of true happiness and lost his soul, he wenttrulyevil, snarking about his and Buffys night of passion and, worse yet, tormenting her loved ones with almost sadistic zeal. After Angelus eagerly snapped Jenny Calendars neck in a tragic twist were still not over, it became abundantly clear the show had done the unthinkable: turned its romantic lead into its most formidable enemy.

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