An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for September 20, 2020

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

• The Illuminati Files, Part One: A Conspiracy is Born by Brenton Clutterbuck
• “A Global History of Sex and Gender: Bodies and Power in the Modern World. Discover how a focus on gender and sexuality transforms our understanding of modern, global history.” Via University of Glasgow, join course for free, 4 weeks, starts 26 Oct 2020.
• Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 by Tanya Cheadle, from Manchester University Press—”Sexual Progressives is a major new study of the feminists and socialists who campaigned against the moral conservatism of the Victorian period. Drawing on a range of sources, from letters and diaries to radical newspapers and utopian novels, it provides the first group portrait of Scotland’s hitherto neglected sexual rebels. They include Bella and Charles Pearce, prominent Glasgow socialists and disciples of an American-based mystic who taught that religion needed ‘re-sexed’; Jane Hume Clapperton, a feminist freethinker with advanced views on birth-control and women’s right to sexual pleasure; and Patrick Geddes, founder of an avant-garde Edinburgh subculture and co-author of an influential scientific book on sex. A consideration of their lives and work forces a reappraisal of our understanding of British sexual progressivism during this period and will therefore be of interest to all historians of modern gender and sexuality.”
• “Notes: The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower.” About Kenneth Brower’s The Starship and the Canoe, foreword by Neal Stephenson.
• “No Time But the Present.” From Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs—”From the author of How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a literary guide to engaging with the voices of the past to stay sane in the present.”
• “The housewife, the ghost hunter and the poltergeist. In 1938, 34-year-old Alma Fielding reported objects mysteriously flying around her home. Eighty years on, Kate Summerscale, author of true crime classic The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, set out to investigate the unexplained case of the Croydon poltergeist.” From The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale, due in the US in April, 2021. Due in the UK in early October.
• ​Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, due end of Sept—”From the bestselling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience and virtue. Nearly 2,300 years after a ruined merchant named Zeno first established a school on the Stoa Poikile of Athens, Stoicism has found a new audience among those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. It’s no wonder; the philosophy and its embrace of self-mastery, virtue, and indifference to that which we cannot control is as urgent today as it was in the chaos of the Roman Empire. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known–and not so well-known–Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it, dusting off powerful lessons to be learned from their struggles and successes. More than a mere history book, every example in these pages, from Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius–slaves to emperors–is designed to help the reader apply philosophy in their own lives. Holiday and Hanselman unveil the core values and ideas that unite figures from Seneca to Cato to Cicero across the centuries. Among them are the idea that self-rule is the greatest empire, that character is fate; how Stoics benefit from preparing not only for success, but failure; and learn to love, not merely accept, the hand they are dealt in life. A treasure of valuable insights and stories, this book can be visited again and again by any reader in search of inspiration from the past.”
• Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino, part of the Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities series, due in 2021—”Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.” Also.
• “Vincent Van Gogh’s image is cemented in our cultural memory. His letters complicate the view.“—”‘Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters’ is a beautifully produced selection of about a tenth of his surviving letters, culled by Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen and Hans Luijten of the Van Gogh Museum from a complete collection published a decade ago.” “The correspondence of the great artists and idealists in the history of Western Man is mostly about money.” About Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters edited by Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen and Hans Luijten, due end of Sept—”A remarkable selection covering all aspects of Vincent van Gogh’s life and offering valuable new insights into the creative process behind his many famous works.”
• The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is by Justin E. H. Smith—”This is a draft excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Living Mirror: A Philosophy of the Internet, appearing in 2021 from Princeton University Press. Text and title are still subject to change.”
• “The history of book burning. A new study of the destruction of knowledge explores how societies depend on fragile archives.” About Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge by Richard Ovenden, due November—”The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction―and surprising survival―of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia.”
• “Waltham Intellectuals.” About Learning on the Left: Political Profiles of Brandeis University by Stephen Whitfeld—”Stephen J. Whitfield makes the case for the pertinence of Brandeis University in understanding the vicissitudes of American liberalism since the mid-twentieth century. Founded to serve as a refuge for qualified professors and students haunted by academic antisemitism, Brandeis University attracted those who generally envisioned the republic as worthy of betterment. Whether as liberals or as radicals, figures associated with the university typically adopted a critical stance toward American society and sometimes acted upon their reformist or militant beliefs. This volume is not an institutional history, but instead shows how one university, over the course of seven decades, employed and taught remarkable men and women who belong in our accounts of the evolution of American politics, especially on the left. In vivid prose, Whitfield invites readers to appreciate a singular case of the linkage of political influence with the fate of a particular university in modern America.”
• “52 Years Ago, Thelonious Monk Played a High School. Now Everyone Can Hear It. An ambitious student named Danny Scher booked the jazz great at Palo Alto High School in Northern California. A recording of the event gathered dust for five decades.” About Palo Alto by Thelonious Monk.
• “$3.2 million worth of rare stolen books have been found under a house in rural Romania.” Also “Book ‘em: Police find ‘irreplaceable’ tomes stolen in 2017.”
• “Encuentran en Salamanca la primera obra de Shakespeare que llegó a España. El libro habría sido traído primero a Alcalá de Henares, después haber pasado por Valladolid y finalmente trasladarse hasta Salamanca.” (“They find in Salamanca the first Shakespearean play that arrived in Spain. The book would have been brought first to Alcalá de Henares, after having passed through Valladolid and finally moving to Salamanca.”)
• No pubs, no kissing, no flying: how Covid-19 is forcing authors to change their novels
• “‘I Could Show You Stuff You Wouldn’t Believe:’ Gravediggers Speak Out About Horrifying Conditions. Gravediggers employed by one of the country’s largest cemetery and funeral home corporations, StoneMor, are battling for their first union contract—amid a COVID-related increase in burials.”
• How We Survive the Winter. The coming months of the pandemic could be catastrophic. The U.S. still has ways to prepare.
• “The Crushing Reality of Zoom School. We’re only a few weeks in. We can’t keep doing this.”—”Of course Zoom school is a nightmare—with the lack of time to properly plan and the lack of funds to make anything work, how was it going to be anything else?—but every school option right now is. Depending on where you live, school has started as an endless navigation of web logins, unmutes, and dropped connections at home; attempts at confusing part-time hybrid schedules that help only the calendar industry; or the fuck it approach that has already lead to sick kids and teachers, with many more to come.”
• More like endless cubicle, amirite?! Watch “Infinite Office.”
• Watch “Scientists say vast areas of Siberia are thawing with ‘devastating consequences’.”
• Giant sperm and reproductive organs in 100-million-year-old ostracods
• “The U.S. Is on the Path to Destruction. Climate change is killing Americans and destroying the country’s physical infrastructure.”
• “What’s in wildfire smoke, and how dangerous is it? Blazes on the West Coast are spewing a haze clear across the country.”
• “When building an embryo, timing is everything. Mice take 21 days from egg to animal, humans take nine months. How’s that managed?”
• I completed my 7-year quest to play Thieves’ Guild
• “This unheard Steve Jobs tape is part of an amazing trove of tech history. When Steve Jobs demoed his NeXT computer at a 1988 user meeting, Charles Mann was there to record it—along with dozens of other talks by computing pioneers.”
• “Flamethrowers and Fire Extinguishers – a review of ‘The Social Dilemma’.” Directed by Jeff Orlowski, and released to Netflix in early September 2020, The Social Dilemma . Also tweet thread—”I watched The Social Dilemma last night. If anyone is curious why STS scholars could be so upset with a documentary that at its core espouses an agreeable and important critique of social media, here’s a thread. 1/11.” Also “The Social Dilemma Fails to Tackle the Real Issues in Tech.”
• “Scientists find ‘secret molecule’ that allows bacteria to exhale electricity. The soil bacteria breathe through ‘giant snorkels’ made of a special conductive protein, the researchers found.”
• “Humans reached Saudi Arabia at least 120,000 years ago. The footprints appear alongside tracks from a herd of Pleistocene elephants.”
• “Ancient DNA sheds light on Viking origins, travels. The Viking Age brought more genetic diversity into Scandinavia, the study suggests.”
• The sun has started a new solar cycle, experts say
• “He Spent Years Forging Ties With the Amazon’s Most Isolated Tribes. Then He Realized His Mistake. While living among the native tribes of the Brazilian Amazon, Sydney Possuelo discovered a human society that has no awareness of the modern world. He learned that the best way to protect it is to stay away.”
• “The Last Quiet Places. Little can compare to the healing power of silence.”
• Hubble Captures Crisp New Portrait of Jupiter’s Storms—”This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the famous Great Red Spot region gearing up to change color – again.” Also “Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa.”
• “America has a long history of forced sterilization. The alleged hysterectomies at a Georgia ICE camp follow decades of inhumane laws and policies at hospitals and detainment facilities.”
• “How Jewish history and the Holocaust fueled Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s quest for justice. Her death was announced Friday as Jews around the world marked Rosh Hashanah.” Also tweet—”What if the future of our democracy rested on an intact state and the rule of law, instead of the shoulders of a very small woman with a gigantic legacy who held on as long as she possibly could.” Also tweet—”Last night during this, someone yelled out ‘SHE WAS JEWISH!'”
• Letter from Seattle: A Season of Peaceful Protest
• “Thomas Paine, Offbeat Hero. Paine was a deist, who felt he could sense god in the immensity of nature, and who once wrote, ‘I hope for happiness beyond this life.'”
• President Lincoln’s Republican Party Was the Original Party of Big Government
• Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter
• “Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World. How much longer are we going to allow its platform to foment hatred and undermine democracy?”—”Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit.”
• “Trump’s Strategy to Upend the Election Is Being Implemented in Plain Sight. A multimillion-dollar legal strategy, egged on by President Trump, is erecting barriers to voting and creating chaos in battleground states.”
• Opinion: A Little Bit of History Repeating – The New “Satanic Panic”—”all the makings of a crazy conspiracy theory the likes of which we haven’t seen since “the Satanic Panic” of the 1980’s and early 90’s.”—”It used to be funny. Oh, that person believes in chemtrails. That one is a flat earther. This one believes that they have alien DNA. But now it isn’t funny. Things are getting serious.”
• “QAnon conspiracy theory gaining ground in UK, analysis shows. Followers believe that Donald Trump is waging secret war against ritual child abusers.”
• Watch “In Search Of A Flat Earth.”
• “The longer Trump stays in office, the crazier the GOP becomes.”
• “How the Government Lost Its Mind. Over the past 50 years, America has given up on the Enlightenment-era ideals of its Founders—and the country’s coronavirus disaster is the result.”
• “Do You Speak Fox? How Fox News Became a Language.”
• Tweet—”Q just posted a ‘drop’ instructing followers to hide connections to QAnon on social media: ‘drop all references re: ‘Q’ ‘QAnon’ etc. to avoid ban/termination’. Then Q reposted another user who explained the tactic.” Also tweet—”Despite this being a complex & mutating rube goldberg machine, the end result is nearly always convincing the ‘redpilled’ person to vote for trump. The next 47 days are going to be the most important phase ever for this movement. QAnon has never existed during an election.”
• Armed civilian roadblocks in Oregon town fuel fears over vigilantism
• The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure
• Stonehenge autumn equinox gathering cancelled
• An Idaho pastor skeptical of masks lands in the ICU for Covid-19.” Also “An Idaho ‘no-masker’ pastor prayed against a mask mandate. He’s now in intensive care for covid-19.” Also “Anti-mask pastor hosts church gathering of hundreds in Washington, officials say.”
• Theologians, activists, former bishops staff urge Catholic voters to oppose Trump
• Pope Francis to parents of L.G.B.T. children: ‘God loves your children as they are.’
• Stanley Crouch, Towering Jazz Critic, Dead At 74
• On Quitting Academia
• “The unforgettable pyre: How The Wicker Man changed the face of horror. As a reminder of the Christopher Lee classic arrives with Sky Atlantic’s ‘The Third Day’, Ed Power looks back at one of the most influential British films of the past 50 years.”
• Tweet thread—”In advancing the X-Men theme of protecting a world that hates and fears them, Claremont cultivates the idea of mental and spiritual exhaustion for his marginalized group, as a result of their desire to contribute to a society despite being excluded from it. #xmen 1/10.” “In this, Claremont’s X-Men empowers marginalized readers to feel the frustrations created by social inequity, rather than encouraging some variation of noble suffering for the sake of subservience. X-Men preaches tolerance, but also clearly understands the toll that takes. 10/10”
• When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?
• “The Boys confronts real American Nazis better than most comic-book stories. Stormfront is a frightening picture of modern fascism.”
• Tweet—”ps it’s an argument for God’s existence that nu-metal peaked just as Napster appeared.”
• “Commentary: A museum plans to auction a crucial Jackson Pollock painting. It’s inexcusable. As part of an alarming trend, a museum is selling a 1946 Jackson Pollock drip painting to raise money to diversify its collection. Good intention, bad plan.”
• Dream house! BYO Axe! “Ax murder suspect Lizzie Borden’s house for sale in Massachusetts. Take a look inside.”
• Or, BYO gun? Also, the invite said “gender reveal” not “gender might never heal”? “A dad shot himself in the crotch during a gender reveal party gone awry.”
• “How a ‘Hillbilly Brigade’ saved an Oregon town from raging wildfires.” Watch.
• The Surrealist Roots of the “Vaporwave” Genre
• How Black Sabbath album ‘Paranoid’ murdered the 1960s
• “Clinging to a Zine. The pandemic further endangers indie music journalism.”
• Poetry in Pandemic—”We’ll emerge someday from these distressing times. […] But right now I think I’ll put aside my pen and just watch the hummingbirds buzz around the flowers and the hawk circle above the bay.”
• This doesn’t actually talk much about ingredients of a teen movie, but it does list a lot of 90s teen movies that are “radical adaptations of classic literature” and whilst I was aware of most, some I hadn’t heard of before. Watch “Are these the ingredients of a PERFECT teen movie?”
• Watch “Humpback whales enter crocodile river ‘in Australian first’”
• “Video shows huge alligator swimming in Sally’s storm surge”
• Watch “An Egyptomania House Tour.”
• “How the rich and famous stole OnlyFans from sex workers. Sex workers brought tens of millions of people to the subscriber-only social network. Now they say it’s dumping them in favour of celebrities.”
• Watch Lady Gaga’s 911. Also tweet thread—”aquí pueden ver completa the color of pomegranates, película en la que gaga basó la mayor parte de la estética del video de 911″ and “de paso también échenle un ojo a 8 1/2 de fellini y el topo de jodorowsky” (“Here you can see the full Color of Pomegranates, a film on which Gaga based most of the aesthetics of the 911 video” and “Incidentally also take a look at 8 1/2 of Fellini and El Topo of Jodorowsky.”)
• “Why Goodreads is bad for books. After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.”
• ??. Watch “Blowing FIRE RINGS underwater”
• “‘Life On Venus?‘ is one of the songs Tim Arnold wrote and recorded for the stage adaptation of ‘H.G Wells and The Spiders From Mars’ written by John Higgs and produced by The Mycelium.”
• Maybe even, and moreover, when not visiting the library! Tweet—”Visiting the Library? Wear a face covering. Keep a 2m distance from others. Only sit in spaces marked with a green sticker. Don’t move furniture. Clean your hands regularly. Take everything with you when you leave. Thank you for keeping our Library safe!”

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