An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for January 13, 2021

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

• Crowdfunding effort from Thomas Negovan / The Century Guild, with 14 days to go: “MALEVOLENT VISIONS rare 1920s horror scifi art Orchid Garden. Book 5 in our series documenting the eerie and creepy artworks from DER ORCHIDEENGARTEN (1919-1921), the FIRST fantasy horror magazine!”
• Rejected Knowledge Reconsidered: Some Methodological Notes on Esotericism and Marginality by Egil Asprem in New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism, all of which is available via Open Access.
• “Play A Game With Me…“-“No sermon, salve, or sorcery this week from me. Just a short thought experiment I want you to play.” “If you are troubled by all that is happening in the US and in the world, I don’t have any salve for you this week. No Sorcery to make it all better. Just a thought experiment that maybe will provoke you to spend more time and effort on understanding than on hunkering down into your algorithm.”
• “Heathen Visibility and Anti-Racism.”
• “Editorial: The Pagan is Political.”
• “An Open Letter to the Pagans and Heathens That Took Part in the Assault on Congress.”
• “‘Q-Shaman’ is a Thing?“—”They say that you eventually become what you hate. So I suppose it was inevitable that followers of the QAnon conspiracy, who hate occultists, would eventually develop their own school of magick.”
• “Bran Mak Morn: Social Justice Warrior.”—”If the crucified Pict can be contemporized as George Floyd, a real man, then Bran Mak Morn becomes a warrior for social justice; the worms, the riotous mob assaulting the citadel of democracy.”
• Necromancy in the Medici Library: An Edition and Translation of Excerpts from Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 89 sup. 38 translated and introduced by Brian Johnson, foreword by Alexander Cummins, due March (presumably 2021, though the page says 2020). Also “Pre-orders now open for Necromancy in the Medici Library.”
• “Karl Ove Knausgaard on the Genius of Ingmar Bergman.” More from In the Land of the Cyclops [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken.
• “How to Read Ulysses By the Numbers.” Excerpted from Ulysses By Numbers [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Eric Jon Bulson—”Ulysses has been read obsessively for a century. What if instead of focusing on the words to understand the structure, design, and history of Joyce’s masterpiece, we pay attention to the numbers?”
• “On Imagining Gatsby Before Gatsby.” About Nick [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Michael Farris Smith—”Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance-doomed from the very beginning-to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence. An epic portrait of a truly singular era and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades. ”
• “Sheanderthal. Not all Neanderthals were ‘cavemen’: half were women. What can archaeologists tell us about how they lived?” By Rebecca Wragg Sykes, the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher].
• Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Leon R Kass—”In this long-awaited follow-up to his 2003 book on Genesis, humanist scholar Leon Kass explores how Exodus raises and then answers the central political questions of what defines a nation and how a nation should govern itself. Considered by some the most important book in the Hebrew Bible, Exodus tells the story of the Jewish people from their enslavement in Egypt, through their liberation under Moses’s leadership, to the covenantal founding at Sinai and the building of the Tabernacle. In Kass’s analysis, these events began the slow process of learning how to stop thinking like slaves and become an independent people. The Israelites ultimately founded their nation on three elements: a shared narrative that instills empathy for the poor and the suffering, the uplifting rule of a moral law, and devotion to a higher common purpose. These elements, Kass argues, remain the essential principles for any freedom-loving nation today.”
• “They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author’s politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of dossier of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a Critique manqué, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic.”—Richard Francis Burton quoted at Peevish, Petulant, Personal Comment.
• “Shelley’s Aeschylus.”—”This may be a fanciful and embellished account of Shelley’s drowning, but even so it is a pity we are not told at which print-bearing page Shelley’s Æschylus opens.”
• “Here’s some surprising good news: In the US and the UK, book sales are up and indies are growing.”
• “The Spiritual Message at the Heart of ‘Peanuts’.” From The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Andrew Blauner—”A one-of-a-kind celebration of America’s greatest comic strip–and the life lessons it can teach us–from a stellar array of writers and artists.”
• From the Cyclonopedia Studies dept: “The Inhuman Core of Reza Negarestani’s Philosophy.”
• “Food for thought? French bean plants show signs of intent, say scientists. Many botanists dispute idea of plant sentience, but study of climbing beans sows seed of doubt.”
• “Why do humans embrace rituals? Disease and danger may be at the root of the behaviors. While the origins of many rituals remain murky, emerging research suggests we evolved such social practices to ward off or address common threats.”
• “Psychedelic Mushrooms Grew in a Man’s Veins After He Injected Them.”
• “Inspired by kombucha tea, engineers create ‘living materials’.”
• “Scientists ‘program’ living bacteria to store data.”
• “In First-of-Its-Kind Discovery, Scientists Confirm Bacteria Have a 24-Hour Body Clock.”
• “Rocky ‘super-Earth’ planet spotted orbiting one of the Milky Way’s oldest stars. The universe has been making rocky planets for a long, long time.”
• “New details revealed about Megalodon’s shocking size: They ate their siblings in the womb. The research suggests that these massive sharks were born more than 6 feet in length.” On the other hand: “Climate change is making baby sharks smaller, undernourished and exhausted.”
• Watch “Researchers discover an unexpected ancestor of the extinct Tasmanian tiger.”
• “Scientists decry death by 1,000 cuts for world’s insects. A package of 12 studies by 56 scientists around the globe lays out the threats to insects — and why it’s bad news for Earth.”
• Time to become fluent in Belter! “Asteroid rim could ‘support TRILLIONS’ of humans in bombshell space colonisation finding. There are enough resources in our solar system’s outer asteroid rim to support a human population of ‘trillions’ according to a leading space expert.”
• “Why Parler Is Likely to Fold.”—”Always seemed pretty obvious that the minds behind Parler weren’t exactly sharp knives, but it’s looking more and more like they’re on the plastic cutlery end of the spectrum.” Also “Bare Metal Parler Tricks.”
• “Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users’ Location Data, Has Been Archived.”
• “Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes. Bitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you can’t access that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?”
• “How Many Microcovids Would You Spend on a Burrito? Six nerdy roommates used public health data to create an online Covid-risk points system for every activity—and protect their pandemic pod.”
• “The Codebreaker honors Quaker woman who helped bring down Nazi spy ring. Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband William Friedman helped pioneer cryptology.” Watch trailer for The Codebreaker from American Experience on PBS. “Based on the book “The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies,” THE CODEBREAKER reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government would send infamous gangsters to prison in the 1920s and bring down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII. Her remarkable contributions would come to light decades after her death, when secret government files were unsealed. But together with her husband, the legendary cryptologist William Friedman, Elizebeth helped develop the methods that led to the creation of the powerful new science of cryptology and laid the foundation for modern codebreaking today.” Also “How America’s ‘First Female Cryptanalyst’ Cracked the Code of Nazi Spies in World War II—and Never Lived to See the Credit.” About 2018’s The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jason Fagone—”Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.”
• Think like a Virus—”Rather than accepting that a virus will come, we can learn how viruses live and thrive—and work to suppress them before they take off.”
• “California’s Disneyland to become Covid vaccination site.”
• “Gorilla Troop at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park tests positive for COVID-19. On Jan. 8, Zoo officials said the preliminary tests detected the presence of the virus in the gorilla troop.”
• “Failed Screenwriter from New Jersey Behind One of QAnon’s Most Influential Personas. Logically has identified another prolific QAnon player –the pseudonym ‘Neon Revolt’ is linked to Robert Cornero Jr. of Neptune City, New Jersey. After a failed attempt to become a screenwriter in Studio City, CA, he returned home with disdain for Hollywood and embraced QAnon.”
• “The End of the Line. The edifice of Trumpism has collapsed. It was rotten from the very beginning.”
• “QAnon Woke Up the Real Deep State. An open letter to QAnon, “stop the steal,” and other communities involved in the Capitol attack.”
• “Hundreds of Historians Join Call for Trump’s Impeachment. More than 300 historians and writers, including Ron Chernow and Taylor Branch, signed an open letter calling President Trump ‘a clear and present danger to American democracy.'”
• “How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism. A potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war.”
• From the Architecture of Doom dept: “How a Trump Executive Order Aims to Set White Supremacy in Stone.”
• “This Is Who We Are.”—”Until America fully reckons with, accepts, and makes amends for the two primary sins of its founding — the colonization and genocide of indigenous people and the system of heredity chattel slavery — the nation cannot truly move forward and be a democracy. From the standpoint of indigenous and Black people — as well as women, LGBTQ+ folx, people of color, and other historically marginalized groups — America has always been a fascist country.”
  
• Lost Lost Causes—”‘This is not America.’ That strange, contradictory phrase seems to descend like fog every time a legible and precedented event occurs in the United States. If it wasn’t America, it wouldn’t need to be said.”

• “The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy.”—”Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the ‘taxpayer’ has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy.” Also “The Not-So-Strange Death of Right Populism.”—”A string of pseudo-populist conservative movements have reverted to the same agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. Why should we expect anything different?”
• “The Repeachment is Coming.” Also “But What If We Didn’t.”
• “The fascist farce on Washington.”
• “A Dark Day in the Capitol: Donald Trump Calls For Insurrection.”
• “On the Cult of Trump.”—”How can you write about people who live in their own paranoid novel?”
• “From Al Qaeda to QAnon: Rebecca Solnit on the Inside Job at the Capitol.”
• “Congress Is Under Attack.”—”How can you ‘secure Congress’ when members of Congress are part of the effort to subvert it?”
• “The Madness of King Trump: On Being Unfit to Serve.”
• “Some Thoughts from a Nithing.”—”The opposite of honor is a state that the Old English-speaking Hwicce, the original Tribe of Witches, called níð: dishonor.* One who behaved dishonorably was known as a níðing or—even more cutting because it’s diminutive—a níðling.”
• “Trending: ‘sedition’. Lookups spiked 1,500% on January 6, 2021.”
• “How Do We Fix America?.”
• “How Do We Preserve Artifacts From the Capitol Attacks?.”—”I think the impetus to preserve things from this event is spot on, but actually how and what we save is a much more difficult question.”
• “The joys of being an absolute beginner – for life. The phrase ‘adult beginner’ can sound patronising. It implies you are learning something you should have mastered as a child. But learning is not just for the young.”
• Tweet thread—”They absolutely do not believe their own bullshit, but it’s useful for them to pretend they do.”
• “Bearing Witness to the Legacy of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.” Also “Ireland’s ‘brutally misogynistic culture’ saw the death of 9,000 children in mother and baby homes, report finds.” Also Ireland to lay bare scandal of baby deaths at Church-run homes.” Watch “Head of Ireland’s Catholic Church apologises to survivors of mother and baby homes.”
• “Crafting a Support Network as a Founder and CEO.”—”I now believe that the best way to reach your potential in life, is to form a support network for yourself and cultivate it over time.”
• “Public Domain Day Short Film Contest Highlights Works of 1925.”
• “5 strategies for cultivating hope this year.”—”First, let’s understand what hope is. Many people confuse optimism with hope. […] In sum, optimism is about expecting good things; hope is about how we plan and act to achieve what we want.” “Here are five key strategies to cultivate hope in these trying times: 1. Do something – start with goals […] 2. Harness the power of uncertainty […] 3. Manage your attention […] 4. Seek community. Don’t go it alone […] 5. Look at the evidence”
• “Wreck This Deck. Wreck This Deck is a solo journalling and deck modification game. Catch and trap demons in playing cards, modifying them as you go, building yourself a Demon Deck. You use the Demon Deck to cast rituals and do tarot-style readings which turn into journal entries but you can swop notes, tips and tricks and do little micro-fictions by using the hashtag #WreckThisDeckRPG on your favourite social media. This lets you play Wreck This Deck totally solo, dipping in and out of a more social style of gaming when you feel like it.”
• Watch “The Good of the One” – Spock tribute – by Melodysheep
• Watch “Yoda – Feel the Force” (Yoda Remixed) by Melodysheep
• Watch “Cheating Creativity with Programming for my Tabletop Role-Playing Game” in which Miscast programs a Magical Thought Provoker.
• More about this: “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults,” official trailer for the documentary on HBO Max—”‘Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults’ is a thorough examination of the infamous UFO cult through the eyes of its former members and loved ones. What started in 1975 with the disappearance of 20 people from a small town in Oregon ended in 1997 with the largest suicide on US soil and changed the face of modern new age religion forever. This four-part docuseries uses never-before-seen footage and first-person accounts to explore the infamous UFO cult that shocked the nation with their out-of-this-world beliefs.
• Watch “Lex Luthor Joins Republicans In Calling For Unity.”—”Moments after ordering Mr. Freeze to freeze the Capital, Lex Luthor thought it was indeed a time for the nation to come together.”

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.