An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for September 9, 2020

Here’s a variety of notable things I’ve recently found that you may also be interested in checking out:

• “For the Slow Work of Critique in Critical Times.” About A Time for Critique edited by Bernard Harcourt and Didier Fassin, part of the New Directions in Critical Theory series.
• “Deluded, with reason. Extraordinary beliefs don’t arise in a vacuum. They take root in minds confronted by unusual and traumatic experiences.”
• “On tact in dark times. Far from a social luxury, tact becomes imperative when life is cheapened. We exercise it to show gentle respect for another.”
• “On the Rudeness of Mobs. America’s plutocratic love affair with cancellation.”
• How Cults Are Made—”From NXIVM to the Manson Family to Heaven’s Gate, cults can vary widely. But there are some commonalities.Mitch Horowitz, a historian of alternative spirituality and a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library, breaks down some of the common features of cults from how they attract members to how they end up controlling the lives of their members and make it so hard for them to leave.”
• The Vow (2020): Official Trailer—”From Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer (“The Square,” “Control Room,” “Startup.com”), The Vow examines the self-improvement group NXIVM, whose leaders have been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The docuseries takes a deep, nuanced look at the experiences of its members, spotlighting their universal desire for personal growth. Amidst claims by NXIVM participants of both profound transformation and devastating abuse, the series seeks to reveal the issues behind the headlines and explore the emotional toll of unfolding events on these individuals.”
• “Vatican fights to ‘free Virgin Mary from mafia’. Pope backs drive to end ‘deviant spirituality’ of Italian crime families who use Madonna as a shield of religious respectability.”
• The Big Black Book: Become Who You Are—There Are No Guarantees by Christopher S Hyatt, &al—”Most sections of The Big Black Book were written by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D. along with his friends and colleagues between 2003 and 2008 and were originally published as individual booklets. Now the entire series has been collected into this single volume.”
• “New Centuries Are Rare. The best films of the year 2000.”
• “Owensboro native earns book prize.” About The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali by Spencer Dew—”In The Aliites, Spencer Dew traces the history and impact of Ali’s radical fusion of law and faith. Dew uncovers the influence of Ali’s teachings, including the many movements they inspired. As Dew shows, Ali’s teachings demonstrate an implicit yet critical component of the American approach to law: that it should express our highest ideals for society, even if it is rarely perfect in practice. Examining this robustly creative yet largely overlooked lineage of African American religious thought, Dew provides a window onto religion, race, citizenship, and law in America.”
• Robot Artists & Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories by Bruce Sterling (Author), introduction by Neal Stephenson, foreword by Bruno Argento, afterword by Dario Tonani, illustrated by John Coulthart, due March 2021. Also “In this playful, dual-natured fantasticienza collection of science-fiction and fantasy, Bruce Sterling introduces his real-life Italian alter-ego, Bruno Argento. Sterling, as Argento, evinces delightfully-continental flights of technological fancy and combines them with intriguing classical European motifs.” Also, from the artist Robot Artists and Black Swans.
• Telling Stories, Telling the Truth
• “The Pleasures and Punishments of Reading Franz Kafka.” From He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka, edited by Joshua Cohen. Also upcoming: The Lost Writings by Franz Kafka, edited by Reiner Stach (Editor), trans. by Michael Hofmann, due October—”A windfall for every reader: a trove of marvelous impossible-to-find Kafka stories in a masterful new translation by Michael Hofmann.”
• Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy by Simone Kotva, from the Re-inventing Philosophy as a Way of Life series—”Philosophy and theology have long harboured contradictory views on spiritual practice. While philosophy advocates the therapeutic benefits of daily meditation, the theology of grace promotes an ideal of happiness bestowed with little effort. As such, the historical juxtaposition of effort and grace grounding modern spiritual exercise can be seen as the essential tension between the secular and sacred. In Effort and Grace, Simone Kotva explores an exciting new theory of spiritual endeavour from the tradition of French spiritualist philosophy. Spiritual exercise has largely been studied in relation to ancient philosophy and the Ignatian tradition, yet Kotva’s new engagement with its more recent forms has alerted her to an understanding of contemplative practice as rife with critical potential. Here, she offers an interdisciplinary text tracing the narrative of spiritual exertion through the work of seminal French thinkers such as Maine de Biran, Félix Ravaisson, Henri Bergson, Alain (Émile Chartier), Simone Weil and Gilles Deleuze. Her findings allow both secular philosophers and theologians to understand how the spiritual life can participate in the contemporary philosophical conversation.”
• How to Concoct Unusual and Dazzling Ideas by Unstructuring Your Imagination
• “A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression.” Time for multigenerational housing again, and for some reason I find myself reminded of Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, for which an expanded edition was released, posthumously, in 2019—”Ursula K. Le Guin’s richly-imagined vision of a post-apocalyptic California, in a newly expanded version prepared shortly before her death” “This fourth volume in the Library of America’s definitive Ursula K. Le Guin edition presents her most ambitious novel and finest achievement, a mid-career masterpiece that showcases her unique genius for world building. Framed as an anthropologist’s report on the Kesh, survivors of ecological catastrophe living in a future Napa Valley, Always Coming Home (1985) is an utterly original tapestry of history and myth, fable and poetry, story- telling and song. Prepared in close consultation with the author, this expanded edition features new material added just before her death, including for the first time two “missing” chapters of the Kesh novel Dangerous People. The volume concludes with a selection of Le Guin’s essays about the novel’s genesis and larger aims, a note on its editorial and publication history, and an updated chronology of Le guin’s life and career.” The version I had came with a cassette, Music and Poetry of the Kesh, but the music was reissued a little while ago on digital, CD. and LP—”Music and Poetry of the Kesh is the documentation of an invented Pacific Coast peoples from a far distant time, and the soundtrack of famed science fiction author, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. In the novel, the story of Stone Telling, a young woman of the Kesh, is woven within a larger anthropological folklore and fantasy. The ways of the Kesh were originally presented in 1985 as a five hundred plus page book accompanied with illustrations of instruments and tools, maps, a glossary of terms, recipes, poems, an alphabet (Le Guin’s conlang, so she could write non-English lyrics), and with early editions, a cassette of “field recordings” and indigenous song. Le Guin wanted to hear the people she’d imagined; she embarked on an elaborate process with her friend Todd Barton to invoke their spirit and tradition.” Also. Also.
• Fodder for the Imagination: Nothing is Canon—”Like languages and cultures, the writing scene that does not change dies. Nothing is canon. Inspiration comes from all corners of the ever-shrinking world.”
• “Before the Essay, the Lecture: Nonfiction’s Lost Performative.” Excerpted from Lecture by Mary Cappello, part of the Undelivered Lectures series.
• A User’s Guide to Democracy: How America Works by by Nick Capodice, Hannah McCarthy, & Tom Toro—”From Nick Capodice & Hannah McCarthy, the hosts of New Hampshire Public Radio’s Civics 101, and New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro, A User’s Guide to Democracy is a lively crash course in everything you should know about how the US government works.”
• Time to relegate the USA’s House of Lords to the history books? “Abolish the Senate. Only the House is the house of our dreams.”
• The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited and introduction by Roxane Gay—”A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s ‘intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible’ (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.” Also, another recent release: Dream of Europe: selected seminars and interviews: 1984-1992 by Audre Lorde, edited by Mayra Rodriguez Castro—”These selected writings lay bare struggles, bonds, and hopes shared among Black women in a transnational political context, as well as offering sometimes surprising reflections on the US American counter culture with which Lorde is associated. Many of the poems that were important to Lorde’s development are excerpted in full within these pages, serving as a sort of critical anthology.”
• Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate by Daniel Mendelsohn (Author)—”As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.”
• Silence Is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia—”A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction”
• The Ancestry of Objects by Tatiana Ryckman—”A young woman meets a man at a restaurant while eating alone and contemplating her own death. They exchange words only briefly, but by the end of the week he has entered her world with an intensity rivaled only by her desire to end her life.”
• The Seamus Heaney Experience. About On Seamus Heaney by R(oy) F Foster—”A vivid and original account of one of Ireland’s greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographer.” Part of the Writers on Writers series.
• “Bonfires of Reason. Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack.”
• “For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority. Not since Reconstruction has there been such an opportunity for the advancement of racial justice.” Also “The Next Reconstruction?”
• Friendship between Ireland, tribes lives on—”‘We are storytellers, but today we are without words as we contemplate the generosity of spirit shown by Ireland lacrosse,’ the statement said. ‘All we can say is: You are in our hearts. You are part of the spirit of lacrosse. We will never forget that. Nyawenha, Go raibh maith agat. Thank you.'”
• “A 24-Year-Old Activist Talks About Being At Standing Rock.” An excerpt from How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America due in October.
• “Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right. Among German conspiracy theorists, ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, the American president is surfacing as a rallying cry, or even as a potential ‘liberator.'”
• Fascism Scholar Says U.S. Is ‘Losing Its Democratic Status’
• “The Jazz Collective Drowning Out Far-Right Rallies with Terrible Music. The Danish musicians ‘Free Jazz Against Paludan’ welcome anyone who wants to push back peacefully against the hate speech of far-right politician Rasmus Paludan.”
• “Waiting to Be Thrown Out. Detained, Dehumanized, Deported. Inside the cruel bureaucracy of ICE’s immigrant detention centers.”—”The town had made money from prisoners. It could now make it from immigrants.” “There shall be not property in human flesh.”—Ministry of Information
• The Weight of History—”In an excerpt from the new book Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison, a former Navy lawyer speaks about his decision to leak classified information on detainees at the infamous prison.” About Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison.
• “Gross Domestic Misery Is Rising. The recovery is bypassing those who need it most.”
• “How Can We Pay for Creativity in the Digital Age? There’s still money to be made, but it’s mostly not the creators who are getting rich.”
• “Where people are migrating in, and out of, the West. While the region continues to grow, migration patterns are in flux.”
• Speaking of migration … “NASA’s Europa Clipper Will Find Out if Europa is Habitable. Humanity’s first dedicated spacecraft meant to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa will be complete by 2023 — and it’s custom built to find out whether life can exist on the ocean world.”
• Or, let’s just hightail it to Mongo. “Flash Gordon (1936) Space Soldiers – Serial Marathon Chapters 1 – 13”
• And interminable journeys that take forever … “The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. After two decades in a filing cabinet and three next to a parking lot in Baltimore, the author returns to New York.”
• Oh, there’s where I left it. “Heart of Belgian city mayor found entombed in fountain.”
• Honey, I think there’s a huge hairball in the drainpipe! “Remains of 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth pulled from Siberian lake. Rare find includes skin, tendon and excrement of what is thought to be an adult male.”
• Large Hadron Collider Creates Matter From Light
• New Dating of Nebra Sky Disk Makes All Previous Astronomical Interpretations Obsolete
• One of quantum physics’ greatest paradoxes may have lost its leading explanation
• New high-resolution images of the sun show how terrifying its structure looks up close
• I, Too, Had a Terrifying Encounter With Satanism in an Airbnb or Maybe My Own Apartment or Whatever
• The Mark Of The Beast—”Try to keep a level head. Try to keep an open mind. And, try to do fact checking to verify stories you hear. Don’t allow yourself to be seduced by the Mark of the Beast. Your soul is worth more than a vote. And don’t be fooled by Snake Oil Salesmen trying to frighten you. Think for yourself. This old world was here long before you were born and it will be here long after we are all gone.”
• B*tchy Roman Ghost Haunts the Archaeologist
• “ФЕМИНИЗМ ДЛЯ 99%.” About Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser—”Taking as its inspiration the new wave of feminist militancy that has erupted globally, this manifesto makes a simple but powerful case: feminism shouldn’t start—or stop—with the drive to have women represented at the top of their professions. It must focus on those at the bottom, and fight for the world they deserve. And that means targeting capitalism. Feminism must be anticapitalist, eco-socialist and antiracist.”
• “What the Numbers Say About Gender Differences. Data on abilities reveal a great deal of overlap for men and women.”
• Gender proven harmful! “California wildfire started by pyrotechnic device used at gender-reveal party. The El Dorado Fire in Southern California burned through 7,050 acres and was 5 percent contained.”—”Cal Fire did not provide any further details about the gender-reveal party.” So, wait, did they reveal the gender or not? How can the world continue without knowing? /sarcasm, ofc
• “Kate Manne on the Costs of Male Entitlement.” About Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women.
• Begum Rokeya: The forgotten 19th Century feminist
• California wildfires illustrate the consequences of climate change
• Haha! “You finally really did it. You maniacs!” “Programmer Has Made 1993’s Doom Playable on a Pregnancy Test” Also. Sure, but does it support the new widescreen? “Classic Doom and Doom 2 get native widescreen, mod tools, new modes and more. Latest patch chock full of quality-of-life improvements.”
• Also mentioned before: “‘Astrologaster’ Asks if Bad Medicine Can Make a Good Doctor. An historical comedy of astrological medicine in a time of plague has surprising insight about the problems of modern healthcare.”
• Also also mentioned before before: “Piranesi by Susanna Clark, review: a head-spinning follow-up to ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell’”
• And, more on that too … “David Graeber: The Uncertainty of Being Human”
• Paganism in Early Modern Lithuania and Prussia
• Look, I’m not saying it is going to happen. I’m just saying, with the way things are going, better to be prepared, just in case. “How to Escape From an Erupting Volcano. If you had been in Pompeii in 79 AD, you might have tried to hunker down or escape by sea. This would be a mistake. But there is a way to safety.”
• “The ‘2 Beers and a Puppy’ Test Is My Greatest Contribution to the World.”—”It’s a step toward increasing the number of people in your life and work who you like and trust, which I think is a major factor in the type of success I write about in my book.” A “like and trust” test rubric from the author’s 2015 book Works Well with Others: An Outsider’s Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You by Ross McCammon—”Esquire editor and Entrepreneur etiquette columnist Ross McCammon delivers a funny and authoritative guide that provides the advice you really need to be confident and authentic at work, even when you have no idea what’s going on.”
• There Are Real Vampires in Texas. We Interviewed Them.
• “A history of punctuation. How we came to represent (through inky marks) the vagaries of the mind, inflections of the voice, and intensity of feeling.”
• My Octopus Teacher Trailer—”My Octopus Teacher takes us to a spectacular world few humans have ever seen, rich with unimaginable vistas, creatures and characters. Directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed.”
• OP-1 08-25-20 (The Devil Deserves Better)
• “Medieval robots: How al-Jazari’s mechanical marvels have been resurrected in Istanbul. He laid the groundwork for modern machinery with elaborate automata – 850 years ago.”
• “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human? We asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace.”
• “This know-it-all AI learns by reading the entire web nonstop. Diffbot is building the biggest-ever knowledge graph by applying image recognition and natural-language processing to billions of web pages.”
• A Medieval Metropolis Existed In What’s Now St. Louis, Then Mysteriously Disappeared in the 14th Century
• How the pandemic distorted time
• “The Angel of History. Pestilence and plague have often prompted waves of apocalyptic thinking, calling into question the steady march of progress in human history.”
• “The Hunt for Catherine the Great’s Shipwreck Treasure. A ship carrying Dutch masterpieces for the empress sank to the bottom of the sea. Centuries later, a wreck hunter and his team tried to find it.”
• “Get Ready for the Great Urban Comeback. Visionary responses to catastrophes have changed city life for the better.”
• Vertigo—”Finally finished a personal project I’ve been working on for the past 4 months. It’s grown into a way larger endeavor than I initially intended going into it, but pouring myself into this project has been like a form of self-therapy to get through quarantine. The conceit of the project was that it was supposed to feel like a scene from a larger movie/game introducing a new environment for the first time.”
• Explore the World of Artists in Quarantine
• “At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here’s what I want to pass on. Now that there’s no longer any way to treat my cancer, I’ve been reflecting on what I want others to know about life and death.”
• Why people fall for misinformation
• “A Secret Society Of Artists Is Leaving Stunning Mice-Sized Buildings Around Towns. While people are away, the members of Anonymouse will play.”
• “Are aliens hiding in plain sight? Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognise extraterrestrials if we found them?”
• Across 10 Million Stars, Not a Single Whisper of Alien Technology.” Also. Also. Also.
• Constellation Monstrosity

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get access to Omnium Gatherum immediately and directly via web and email. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.