An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for January 17, 2021

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

• Music That Travels Through Space, Chamber Series, Sunday, January 17, 2021 · 2pm ET (7pm UTC)—”Alas, we can’t all become astronauts, but this concert offers the next best thing. Seven talented NatPhil instrumentalists bring us on a musical journey through space, exploring the universe, the moon, and the stars in a way that will make you feel out of this world! Accompanying images and videos supplied by NASA complete the experience.”
• “Nepal’s dream team becomes first to conquer K2 in winter. In the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay, a largely Sherpa expedition has achieved the last great mountain challenge.”—”Aleister Crowley, the British occultist, joined the first attempt on K2 in 1902.”
• “Lilac Apple Champagne Shatter gets transcendent.”—”The optimum and preeminent cannabis products, the ones that even a tastemaker or critic can’t help but cherish, are those that help me in my mystical and metaphysical activities. In his book, The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant recounts the story of London artist/occultist Austin Osman Spare, who once met two “smatterers” who dabbled in the occult. He gave them ample warning of the danger, but eventually decided to show the skeptical couple his paranormal ability. After conjuring a thoughtform with a green face and black, oil-like eyes, he apparently so spooked the pair that one died a few weeks later and the other ended up in a mental asylum. I like to think he blazed some bomb bambalacha before the incident, the kind of stuff that gets you stoned enough to be at your best in a magickal way.”
• “Who (or what) is Babalon?“—”Please enjoy the third lecture/podcast in the Fenris Wolf series. This one is called ‘Babalon: The Psychology of Supra-Sexual Transformation'”
• “Weird Suffolk: Have you encountered the ghost on this Suffolk beach?.”
• Proportion as Spiritual Self-Defense—”Proportion lies at the foundations of culture. Yet our society is increasingly based on disproportion.” Watch “Proportion As Spiritual Self Defense”
• Make Sanctuary—”However you think of it, or whatever you think is going on, consider seeing it as the cosmos tipping us all into a grand experiment to determine what comes next, how we live next. You are invited to be part of that experiment, to explore and discover what comes next: health, habitation, wealth, togetherness, meaning making, right relation. And if you don’t participate in the experiment, then you are part of the control group -part of what the next thing is measured against for success and efficacy, the yardstick for what happens if you do nothing and slide into oblivion with the outgoing world story. Don’t be the control group. Make sanctuary.” (Also, there’s a mention of Liber Oz, with a link to the library.)
• “Stop: Hammer Time!“—”This is a follow-up to posts I made last year regarding original Abramelin sources online …”
• A Ring Around The Moon: Witch Rites Revisited by Nigel G. Pearson—”An initiate of both Traditional and Modern Witchcraft, the author gives here the actual rites and rituals of a working Coven, from an insider’s point of view. These rites were developed by the Coven themselves over a period of nearly a quarter of a century and give a fascinating insight into the actual workings of an initiate-only Coven. As the Coven itself has ceased practice and is no longer in existence, and a significant period of time has elapsed, the secrecy surrounding these rites may now be lifted and they are here offered as working examples, which other Covens may benefit from.”
• Miracles of Our Own Making: A History of Paganism [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Liz Williams—”Miracles of Our Own Making is a historical overview of magic in the British Isles, from the ancient peoples of Britain to the rich and cosmopolitan landscape of contemporary paganism. We explore the beliefs of the Druids, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, the alchemy of the Elizabethan Court and the witch trials. We encounter grimoires, ceremonial magic and the Romantic revival of arcane deities. The influential and well known – the Golden Dawn, Wicca and figures such as Aleister Crowley – are considered alongside the everyday ‘cunning folk’ who formed the magical fabric of previous centuries. Ranging widely across literature, art, science and beyond, Liz Williams debunks many of the prevailing myths surrounding magical practice, past and present, while offering a rigorously researched and highly accessible account of what it means to be a pagan today.”
• “Book Review: Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide” About Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Darmon Richter—”Drawing on unprecedented access to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone―including insights gained while working as a tour guide and during an illegal “stalker” hike―Darmon Richter creates an entirely new portrait of Chernobyl’s forgotten ghost towns, monuments and more.”
• “Marianne Faithfull & Warren Ellis collaborate on new album.” About She Walks in Beauty [Amazon (Vinyl), Amazon (CD), Amazon (MP3)] by Marianne Faithfull, due, April, 2021—”Marianne Faithfull and Warren Ellis team up in an unique way to rediscover some of the 19th century great poems (Byron, Shelley, etc.). They re-invent the « spoken word » records and remind us of what is beautiful in the world we are living in at the moment and what we could lose. Beautiful and useful… With special participations of Nick Cave, Brian Eno et Vincent Segal.”
• “‘Drug Use for Grown-Ups’ Review: A Dose of Dissent. For people who can control their impulses and regulate their emotions—so it is argued—the use of drugs, including heroin, can have good effects.” About Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Carl L Hart—”From one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject, a powerful argument that the greatest damage from drugs flows from their being illegal, and a hopeful reckoning with the possibility of their use as part of a responsible and happy life.”
• “Secrets of the VIP Party: Why the 1% Love ‘Ritualised Waste’.” Interview about Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Ashley Mears—”A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of ‘models and bottles’ to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men.”
• “A Modern Update to the “Gentleman Thief” Genre.” About Lupin on Netflix—”Inspired by the adventures of Arsène Lupin, gentleman thief Assane Diop sets out to avenge his father for an injustice inflicted by a wealthy family.”
• “Stop Reading Like a Critic.”
• “A.I. Displays an Unsettling Skill: The Ability to Show Empathy.”
• “Discovery of quantum behavior in insulators suggests possible new particle. In a surprising discovery, Princeton physicists have observed an unexpected quantum behavior in an insulator made from a material called tungsten ditelluride. This phenomenon, known as quantum oscillation, is typically observed in metals rather than insulators, and its discovery offers new insights into our understanding of the quantum world. The findings also hint at the existence of an entirely new type of quantum particle.”
• “Biologists discover bizarre ‘lasso’ snake locomotion. UC biologist helps decipher a type of snake movement new to science.”
• Watch “Whooshh Passage Portal“—”Check out the Whooshh Passage Portal. It’s the automated successor to the salmon cannon. A volitional, selective, fish passage system, that works with obstacles of every height and most species of fish.”
• “Do as the Romans: Power plant concrete strengthens with time. Nagoya University scientists find a rare mineral in nuclear power plant walls, significantly improving their strength following years of full operation.”
• “‘Galaxy-sized’ observatory sees potential hints of gravitational waves.”
• “Biomarkers in fathers’ sperm linked to offspring autism.”
• “Spice up your solar panels by adding a touch of chili.”—”Scientists in China and Sweden have determined that a pinch of capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives chilli peppers their spicy sting, may be a secret ingredient for more stable and efficient perovskite solar cells. They found that sprinkling capsaicin into the precursor of methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3) perovskite during the manufacturing process led to a greater abundance of electrons (instead of empty placeholders) to conduct current at the semiconductor’s surface. The addition resulted in polycrystalline MAPbI3 solar cells with the most efficient charge transport to date.”
• “We found the oldest known cave painting of animals in a secret Indonesian valley.” Also “World’s oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia.”
• “How ‘Iron Man’ bacteria could help protect the environment. MSU researchers show how microbes stand up to a toxic metal, opening the door for applications in recycling and remediation.”—”But Reguera’s team challenged that thinking and found Geobacter to be effective cobalt ‘miners,’ extracting the metal from rust without letting it penetrate their cells and kill them. Rather, the bacteria essentially coat themselves with the metal. ‘They form cobalt nanoparticles on their surface. They metallize themselves and it’s like a shield that protects them,’ Reguera said. ‘It’s like Iron Man when he puts on the suit.'”
• “‘Old Faithful’ cosmic eruption shows black hole ripping at star. Regular flares are first of their kind witnessed by humans.”
• “New Horizons Spacecraft Answers Question: How Dark Is Space?.”—”New measurements of the sky’s blackness show galaxies only number in the hundreds of billions. How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can’t count them, their light suffuses space with a feeble glow. To measure that glow, astronomical satellites have to escape the inner solar system and its light pollution, caused by sunlight reflecting off dust. A team of scientists has used observations by NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt to determine the brightness of this cosmic optical background. Their result sets an upper limit to the abundance of faint, unresolved galaxies, showing that they only number in the hundreds of billions, not 2 trillion galaxies as previously believed.”
• From the A Boy and His Dog dept: “Remains of an upper-class one-year-old that lived 2,000 years ago is found buried with their pet dog.”
• “Hidden secrets revealed in microscopic images of ancient artifacts. Close-up images display the unseen beauty in objects from the past.”
• I mean, who could have predicted what decades of movies and books predicted? “Calculations Show It’ll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI.” Also “Superintelligence Cannot be Contained: Lessons from Computability Theory.”
• “Quixotic Californian crusade to officially recognize the hellabyte and hellagram is going hella nowhere. The Reg speaks to Stanford boffin behind decade-long push for SI prefix.”
• “Forget Memory, Try Imagination: A Social Innovator Takes On Dementia.”
• “Stanford team behind BS gaydar AI says facial recognition can expose political orientation.” Also “Facial recognition reveals political party in troubling new research.”
• “Make-up of gut microbiome may influence COVID-19 severity and immune response. Imbalances in type and volume of bacteria may also be implicated in ‘long COVID'”
• “Superbugs have an arsenal of defences – but we’ve found a new way around them.”—”Researchers have not discovered new antibiotics in decades. But our new research, published today in Nature Microbiology, has found a way to give a second wind to the antibiotics we do have. It involves the use of viruses that kill bacteria.”
• “SARS-CoV-2 can infect neurons and damage brain tissue, study indicates.”
• “Hymn Written in Time of Plague.”
• “COVID-19’s ‘Anthropause’ Has Made Nature Visible Again—At Least for Now.”
• “Doctors Begin to Crack Covid’s Mysterious Long-Term Effects. Severe fatigue, memory lapses, heart problems affect patients who weren’t that badly hit initially; ‘It’s been so long’”
• “The Richer You are, The More Likely You’ll Social Distance, Study Finds.” I mean, no shit Sherlock. “But the team found it was also much easier for people with more money to take extra safety measures.” Um, right, and this surprised you in some way?
• “Life inside QAnon, the cult that stormed the Capitol. The conspiracy theorists who struck at the American government have become the public face of QAnon, but the group has attracted many ordinary US citizens too. Melissa Rein Lively explains what happened to her — and how the movement almost destroyed her life.”
• “A Closer Look at the ‘QAnon Shaman’ Leading the Mob. Conspirituality — in which New Age wellness meets conspiracy culture — helped stoke the riot on Capitol Hill.”
• “John Mappin and the Camelot of conspirituality.”
• “The Neuroscience of Hate. What were the insurrectionists thinking?”
• “Can The Forces Unleashed By Trump’s Big Election Lie Be Undone?”
• “Desperate QAnon Believers Think Trump Spoke to Them in Morse Code. QAnon is so desperate for any sign that the ‘plan’ is still in place, it’s willing to believe Trump is using a communication method devised in the 19th century.”
• “A Parler archive is being converted into an interactive map of the Capitol building attack. Views from inside the violent protest, created using posts from an app used to plan it.” Also “Parler Users Unknowingly Gave Away Their Personal Data in Videos They Uploaded Illegally Storming Capitol Hill. ‘There is nothing you can do to prevent what’s already happened. All you can do is prepare for the fallout’ a message from the North Central Florida Patriots Telegram chat reads.” Also tweet—”People worried that Bill Gates is going to microchip them with the COVID vaccine just went ahead and stormed the capitol with their iPhones in hand. Peak intelligence.”
• “The American Abyss. A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.” By Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.” [HT Jason Kottke and Hrag Vartanian.]
• “Trump’s Last Act.”—”Donald Trump has worn his vileness like a snakeskin tuxedo ever since he first stepped onto the public stage, where, in 1980, he demolished the gracious Art Deco Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue to make way for his clichéd black glass Trump Tower, and in the process instructed his workers to jackhammer the decorative friezes he had promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His last act on the public stage, four decades later, has left the Capitol smashed, looted, and smeared with blood and feces.”
  Also “A Post-Democratic World? Or, How We Got Here…”

• “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics, revisited.”
• In Front of Your Nose by George Orwell—”The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” This essay is collected in George Orwell: Narrative Essays [Bookshop, Amazon, Amazon UK, Publisher] by George Orwell, compiled and introduced by George Packer.
• Watch “Former Google ethicist: ‘We have been watching different movies of reality’“—”Tristan Harris tells Lawrence O’Donnell that the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, ‘predicted so much of what happened on January 6th.’ Harris says the Capitol insurrection was a manifestation of the social media business model leading us to ‘a more and more extreme view of reality.'”
• “A Reckoning for Political Science. As a recent APSA statement faulting ‘both sides’ makes clear, the field is too worried about appearing partisan.”
• “Bravura Single-Take Fight Sequence in ‘Crazy Samurai’ Stirs Excitement Nine Years After Being Filmed.” About Crazy Samurai Musashi, due February, 2021. Movie fans who identify with villains share similar dark characteristics.”—”It takes one to know one. Fiction fans who favor villainous characters appear to share a ‘Dark Triad’ of characteristics with those shifty individuals.”

• “Turn off the gaslight. The skilled manipulator casts a shadow of doubt over everything that you feel or think. Therapy can bring the daylight in.”
• “A Discovery of Witches: Who Was the Real Mary Sidney? Diana’s new friend in season 2, Mary Sidney was a celebrated Elizabethan poet and translator with strong ties to the royal court…”—”Diana and Matthew are introduced to John Dee by Mary Sidney. They explore his library, hoping to find clues to the whereabouts of the Book of Life. Dee tells them his scryer Edward Kelley stole a valuable book from him and is now hiding in Bohemia, and Matthew and Diana suspect it must be the Book of Life.” “Mary had several poetic works dedicated to her, and after her brother’s death, published a revised version of his poem ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia’. Her French-to-English translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine is thought to be the first play translated by a woman to be published in England. A scholar who went on to translate works by Plutarch, as well as the Psalms, Mary Sidney lived almost to the age of 70. She spent her later years in Belgium (where she’s rumoured to have had a relationship with physician Matthew Lister) and died in 1629. Her funeral was held at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and her body was taken by candlelit procession to its final resting place at Salisbury Cathedral, close to Wilton House. A fitting end for a remarkable woman.”
• “The Cybergrim Aesthetic – Precarity and the Neoliberal Endgame.”—”The Necroscapes of the future will be sites of surpassing repetition producing liminal zones of necrotic existence. A libidinal economy of necrotic repetition, a sado-masochistic environ of predatory existence; competition on steroids. The marketization and militarization of these necrofeudal enclaves will harbor the architecture of death, much as the ancient cities of Moloch were built around the never-dying ovens of a sacrificial holocaust of babies, or the Mayan cities of blood where obsidian dreams of knowledge and power sacrificed warriors at the peak of their existence, cannibalizing their hearts in rituals of bloodletting to the gods of time.”
• Watch “Kate Winslet, Jennifer Hudson and More Enter a VR World in ‘Baba Yaga’ Trailer“—”Daisy Ridley and Glenn Close also lend their voices to a “contemporary portrayal of the Eastern European legend breathed to life” through immersive VR experience. ‘Baba Yaga’ is available exclusively on Oculus Quest on Jan. 14.”
• “Why “Soul” Is Good For Your Soul.”—”Life isn’t about fulfilling some great purpose bestowed upon you by the universe, it’s about living. It’s about enjoying being alive and finding things that make you enjoy the wonder of the world.”
• “Giger’s first alien: Swissmade: 2069.”
• “When to trade bitcoin? When Saturn crosses Mercury, of course.”
• “From note-taking to note-making.”
• “Meet the gun-toting ‘Tenacious Unicorns’ in rural Colorado. How a transgender-owned alpaca ranch in Colorado foretells the future of the rural queer West.”
• Okay, okay, I confess. I was super skeptical about Hulu’s (Marvel’s) Helstrom, but when I finally watched the first, and only, season, I actually liked it. Suitably creepy, enjoyable script and directing, and great acting, especially, but not exclusively, a Hannibal Lector inspired Elizabeth Marvel. It ends up being pretty good, and a bittersweet end to Jeph Loeb’s Marvel TV projects. Pour one out for Marvel TV: they won so many battles, but lost the war.
• “The Deep Sadness of Marvel’s ‘WandaVision’. So far, the Disney+ show is telling a story not about an epic struggle to save humanity, but about one woman’s efforts to save herself from her grief.” Also “The one thing to know about WandaVision. The show is what it is, which may surprise some.”—”The secret sauce of every Marvel movie is the way filmmakers stuff cinema-history vegetables into a swirl of cotton candy. WandaVision is exactly that in TV form, indulging in the quirks of situation comedy while peeling away at its conservative husk with a sprinkle of (somewhat literal) dark magic on top.” Also tweet—”Oh my god Elizabeth Olsen has channeled the perfect blend of Elizabeth Montgomery and Lucille Ball and Paul Bettany’s Darren is amazing.”
• “What’s the Difference between a Shanty and a Sea Song? ‘Soon May the Wellerman Come’ is the heart of ShantyTok—but it’s not a sea shanty at all. Two authoritative essays roil the waters.” (As an aside, for those who are discovering enjoyment or interest in sea shanties, let me introduce you to sean nós, Irish for old style! And, Joe Heaney! Check this various stuff out.)
• Watch “Smithsonian Open Access: 2.8 Million Images Are Yours to Use.”—”People everywhere can now download, remix and share Smithsonian Open Access content for any purpose, for free, from portraits of historic Americans to 3D scans of dinosaur fossils. What will you create, imagine and discover? https://www.si.edu/openaccess” Also Smithsonian Open Access. Create. Imagine. Discover.”—”Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to more than 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. What will you create? #SmithsonianOpenAccess”
• “300.000 Pages of Science Right at Hand!. What do mammoths, meteors and the principals of moral philosophy have in common? Each of them is a topic that you can look up on our brand-new publication platform – a public access, free of charge tool that allows you to browse through all of the scientific books and articles published by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 1745.” Also directly: “Collected publications – since 1742.”

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