An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for December 30, 2020

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

• On December 31 at 23:25 CET (4:25pm Central/US), watch “Welcome to the Other Side (NYE in virtual Notre Dame)“—”In partnership with Ville de Paris, and under the patronage of UNESCO, Electronic Music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre teams up with French VR start-up VRrOOm to take us into the New Year with a Live-stream trailblazing concert-spectacular set in the virtual environment of the planetary landmark, Notre-Dame de Paris. ‘Welcome to the Other Side’ is a one-off exclusive, worldwide and open-to-all, free concert experience whose ambition, beyond celebrating the New Year in a futuristic and festive way, is to send a message of hope for 2021 and for the end of the dark times we are all going through this year: a digital and virtual invitation from Paris, the City of Light, vibrant metropole of the Arts & of Culture and home to the most famous cathedral in the world. Notre-Dame has a unique place in the collective imagination, it is a symbol of the strength and of World Heritage that binds us together.”
• Watch “Mozart’s The Magic Flute in full” from Royal Opera House, London. “The production will be available to watch from 25 December 2020 – 6 January 2021. We will also be streaming The Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote over the same period.”
• New book by Hermetic Library Anthology Artist T Thorn Coyle with a cover by Anthology Artist Valerie Herron! We Seek No Kings [Bookshop, Amazon] by T Thorn Coyle—”In a world of djinn, drake, yakshini, and troll, one woman has only her sword.” “Xena, Warrior Princess meets Sons of Anarchy in this post-apocalyptic epic fantasy adventure!”
• “Slavoj Zizek’s Confusion.”—”For years I’ve listened to Slavoj Zizek’s misunderstanding of Gnosticism as he confuses it with the whole tradition of Hermeticism.”
• “Malkuth, Body of Earth.”
• “What is a pseudo-cipher?.”—”Pseudo-ciphers are typically ciphers that have not been used by an author, but the cipher was invented to analyse a text anyway. For example, in 2009 Emery Moreira (Samuel K. Vincent) released a book called ‘The English Qabalah’ which applied the table (below) to Aleister Crowley’s ‘Book of the Law’ (1904). […] There are a great many of these ‘English Qabalah’ ciphers about because Aleister Crowley included a riddle in his Book of the Law that required the use of gematria to solve it. Despite the fact that he left clues that the cipher was using the Standard Gematria cover-cipher, many people stepped forward to provide ‘solutions’ using the pseudo-ciphers they created.”
• “He was Trotsky’s sidekick and Kahlo’s lover—Jean van Heijenoort is one of the strangest philosophers you’ve never heard of. Until his sticky end in Mexico City, ‘Comrade Van’ lived a chaotic and colourful life—one that contrasts with the orderly logical theories with which his name is still linked.” About the author of From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”The fundamental texts of the great classical period in modern logic, some of them never before available in English translation, are here gathered together for the first time. Modern logic, heralded by Leibniz, may be said to have been initiated by Boole, De Morgan, and Jevons, but it was the publication in 1879 of Gottlob Frege’s Begriffsschrift that opened a great epoch in the history of logic by presenting, in full-fledged form, the propositional calculus and quantification theory.”
• “A Caveman Would Never Do CrossFit. Why There’s Nothing Natural About Exercise. A new book debunks popular myths, including ‘that your inner primal macho ripped hunter-gatherer ancestor is who you were meant to be’.” About Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Daniel E Lieberman, due January 2021—”If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? These engaging stories and ex­planations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising–not to mention sitting, sleep­ing, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing.”
• “Work Sucks: On Anne Helen Petersen’s ‘Can’t Even’” About Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Anne Helen Petersen—”An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials–the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change.”
• “Dark Archives: Come for the floating goat balls, stay for the fascinating science. Explore the macabre history of ‘anthropodermic bibliopegy’: books bound in human skin.” More about Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Megan Rosenbloom—”In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy―the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, innocents, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.”
• “Want the Good Life? This Philosopher Suggests Learning From Cats.” More about Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by John Gray—”The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats–and what they reveal about humans’ torturous relationship to the world and to themselves.”
• “What Drives Writers to Drink? Seeking in the eloquent benders of Dylan Thomas and Herman Mankiewicz an answer to an ancient riddle.”
• “Brenton Clutterbuck guest post: Discordianism and Deleuze.”
• “Tesla’s Starman Finally Reaches Mars.”
• “The ashes of James Doohan — Scotty from Star Trek — are aboard the International Space Station. Until now, only a handful of people knew that Doohan’s ashes got on the ISS in 2008.”
• I hope it is lovely and uses no nails: “Japan is developing wooden satellites to send into orbit by 2023.”
• “Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine. The architecture of the modern web poses grave threats to humanity. It’s not too late to save ourselves.”
• Earth Actually Has Four North Poles. There’s four spots that correspond to the fabled location — it just depends on your definition.”
• Science Says You Need to Plan Some Things to Look Forward To. With the current state of the world, it’s essential, not selfish or silly, to give yourself a positive, anticipatory boost—here’s why.”
• “Operation Warp Speed at a crawl: Adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at current pace. In other coronavirus news: Vice President-elect Kamala Harris got her shot; the pandemic has left many Americans ‘stuck in time.'”
• “The Plague Year. The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy.”
• “Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us. As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget.”
• Sources are RT, so, you know, state media, which I’m loathe to link to, but: “Covid-denying Russian monk, who insists Putin has been replaced by Antichrist in rubber mask, detained over child suicide claims.”—”An ex-Orthodox priest, known for “expelling demons” and warning of secret plans to enslave the world, has been held by police on suspicion of pushing children to kill themselves. His monastery was raided by riot police overnight.” Also, the same guy, previously: “Russian cleric SEIZES CONTROL of convent after being censured for calling Covid-19 an excuse to ‘chip population’.”—”A Russian priest who believes Covid-19 is an invention by evil forces hellbent on ‘chipping the population’ has apparently used Cossack fighters to seal off a women’s convent after church authorities prohibited him from preaching.”
• A few from The Daily Beast: “Proud Boys Are at War With Their Female Extremist Wing. A transphobic MMA fighter has announced herself to be the ‘Den Mother’ of the Proud Girls, but some members of the extremist, misogynistic Proud Boys don’t want her in the ranks.” Also “Michael Flynn Is Now Selling QAnon Merch. Trump’s former national security adviser is going all in on QAnon, selling QAnon T-shirts and launching a QAnon news site.” Also “Missouri Parents Who Watched Beating Can’t Go to Their ‘Demon’ Child’s Funeral, Judge Rules. Neighbors have been charged in the killing in a “religious-type event” that involved beating and dunking a 4-year-old girl in icy water to “remove demons” as the parents watched.”
• “QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic. How the ancient, antisemitic nocturnal ritual fantasy expresses itself through the ages—and explains the right’s fascination with fringe conspiracy theories.”—”Sociologists and journalists have struggled to precisely categorize the shambolic conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Is it a political movement? A new religion? A cult? It has elements of all these things.”
• *Emily Litella voice* “What’s all this I hear about Q? I think it’s time to drop that letter from the alphabet. No one really uses it, and it’s useless without U anyway. It’s just a horrible waste! Also, it seems to be driving people crazy. I also find the little squiggle in the big O shape of it slightly obscene, or, at least, a little disappointing.” “Emily, it’s part of the name of a conspiracy hypothesis, not about the letter of the alphabet.” “Oh! *smiling* Never mind! (But, maybe let’s get rid of it, just to be sure.)”
• “Nero fiddled. Trump plays golf.”
• “The Urgent Case for Shrinking the Economy. Endless growth is destroying the planet. We know how to stop it.”
• “‘Toxic Individualism’: Pandemic Politics Driving Health Care Workers From Small Towns.”
• “What the New York Times Gets Wrong About Jesus. An essay in the paper of record presents Jesus as radically more compassionate than his Jewish peers when, in fact, most of his social justice interests come right out of Judaism.”
• “What Thomas Jefferson Could Never Understand About Jesus Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.”
• “Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back.”
• What did you do during lockdown? Oh, you know, the usual … “We Calculated the Total Number of Dicks in Michelangelo’s Oeuvre. From the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to ‘David,’ we examined every single painting and sculpture of the Renaissance master to determine the true measure of his work.”
• “The Men Who Lost Their Wives to ‘Eastern Lightning’. Also known as ‘Church of Almighty God,’ the forbidden religious group keeps attracting members, despite prosecution.”
• Steadying—”For some time now it has felt like history is itself the pandemic. In our country and elsewhere, it has been in overdrive, teeming with evils, flush with collapses, abounding in fear and rage, a wounding contest between the sense of an ending and the sense of a beginning, between inertia and momentum, with all the terribilities of ages of transition. What is going has not yet gone and what is coming has not yet come. We have become connoisseurs of convulsion. At sea is our new sea.”
• “Japanese Shop Sells Hyperrealistic 3D-printed Face Masks.”—”As if 2020 wasn’t weird enough, a Japanese company is now selling hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks that allow you to practically wear someone else’s face.”
• From Any Robot Uprising Without Dancing Is Not A Revolution Worth Having dept: watch “Do You Love Me?.” (The joke quote here, btw, is actually a common misquote from Emma Goldman. She didn’t actually say it.)
• Tweet—”The All Seeing Tyrannosaur of Providence”
  
• Watch “Fat Kathy / Gruba Kaśka“—”The lives of millions depend on eight small clams working hard to detect contamination in the city’s water supply. Clams are the new canaries in the coal mine in this stranger-than-fiction peek at how humans create problems for the planet and then use living organisms to protect themselves… from themselves.”

• Watch “Byzantine Sundial-Calendar ‘1000 Hrs’ Mega Edit“—”It’s been a year like no other folks, so its definitely time for a chill out vid. Do please enjoy this ‘1000 hours’ style mega edit of the Byzantine Sundial Calendar project.” “As the name suggests, it’s a combination portable sundial and lunar calendar mechanism. In addition to being a portable sundial, it computes the current age and phase of the moon, the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, as well as the current date. I’ve extended the original design to include a Lunar Node display, according to the research of the engineering historian Michael Wright. This transforms the device from a simple calendar into a very effective eclipse prediction machine. It also makes it a great tool to help visualise the celestial mechanics behind an eclipse.”
• Watch “Pro-Trump rally goes METAL! [The Jericho Walls].”—”You never played The Flight of the Bumblebee! C’mon, man!”
• Watch “A New Definition of Cunt.”—”I’d like to add a definition of cunt to the dictionary that includes the overlap or intersection in a Venn diagram by 2023. Please help.”

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