An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for February 7, 2021

Head on over to check out Hermetic Library Newsletter – Issue #2 (How to order a pizza in Thelema)! That one was quick on the heels of the first, but my current plan is to try to get a newsletter out each Friday. So, look or the next one at the end of the week. Essentially like the old weekly summaries, but better! Er, I hope so anyway.

Daytime highs are going to be below freezing here at the library for over a week. Yikes! Hope you’re staying warm and cosy, if it is cold where you are, or, you know, whatever is appropriately nice for you wherever you are? Yeah! That’s it!

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

• All out of lead tablets on which to inscribe a curse? No cakes of light to leave on the windowsill to gather bugs for crushing? “Name a cockroach after your ex and watch it get eaten for Valentine’s Day.”—”For just $5, the San Antonio Zoo will name a cockroach after your former significant other and feed it to a bird, reptile or mammal. It’s part of the zoo’s ‘Cry Me a Cockroach’ event on Valentine’s Day. And if your ex-boo was an especially snaky one, pay $20 more to have zoo keepers feed a frozen rat to a reptile instead. For those not into critters, the zoo offers a $5 herbivore option that consists of romaine lettuce, cabbage and other leafy greens that can be fed to vegetarian animals.”
• Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed, Fri 12 Feb 2021, 21:00 (UTC), BBC TWO—”Professor Alice Roberts follows a decade-long historical quest to reveal a hidden secret of the famous bluestones of Stonehenge. Using cutting-edge research, a dedicated team of archaeologists led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson have painstakingly compiled evidence to fill in a 400-year gap in our knowledge of the bluestones, and to show that the original stones of Britain’s most iconic monument had a previous life. Alice joins Mike as they put together the final pieces of the puzzle, not just revealing where the stones came from, how they were moved from Wales to England or even who dragged them all the way, but also solving one of the toughest challenges that archaeologists face.”
• But What Does Esotericism Have To Do with Sex? by Marco Pasi, 2019, Published in: Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Peter J. Forshaw, and Marco Pasi (eds.), Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
• Theses de magia: A response to the responses by Marco Pasi, 2010
• “Friday essay: why Rosaleen Norton, ‘the witch of Kings Cross’, was a groundbreaking bohemian.”
• “If art is a math problem – basic research.”—”On the other side of the Atlantic there is evidence of the link between art and mathematics. According to Fernando Pessoa, “Newton’s binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo,” but people don’t notice. Here art bestows its ideals as an arrow pointing to the beauty of the mathematical object. But maybe you can go on.” “Art, math, and science must have much more in common than we can imagine – after all, they are ways of developing the human mind. I hope there are more and more people who realize this.” Mentions figure Fernando Pessoa
• “We asked readers for their favorite poems. Here’s what they shared. Robert Frost remains a favorite in New England.” Includes William Butler Yeats, among others.
• From the Jack LaLanne with an Axe dept: Tweet thread—”An interviewer asked me: “Does the yoga world have a conspiracy problem?” My short answer was yes, but it forced me to step back and really try to encapsulate why. I’ve got a boiled-down answer using 4 different lenses: historical, ideological, political, and technological. /1″ Also, in a reply by Phil Hine: “Fascist Yogis: Martial Bodies and Imperial Impotence.”
• Watch “Tyger Tyger“, official trailer, with Dylan Sprouse, Barbara Palvin. Also tweet—”The trailer has a few William Blake-inspired paintings. Wonder if the film will have any other Blake references…” Also. Also. Connections to figure William Blake.
• Forbidden Fruits: An Occult Novel [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Hermetic Library Fellow Joscelyn Godwin and Guido Mina di Sospiro—”A bold thriller filled with esoteric secrets, psychedelic rituals, blackmail, and murder.”
• Oops. My bad. But, also, I’m not gonna stop. Sometimes this is just necessary to show changes made in a quote for the purpose of clarity, context, or concision in quotations. Fight me. “I Have Something to Say. Stop Defacing Quotes With Brackets! Yes, I’m talking to [you].”
• “The Perils of Fame: Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney.” About Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Heather Clark—”The highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.” And On Seamus Heaney [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Roy Foster—”A vivid and original account of one of Ireland’s greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographer.”
• “The Pascal of the North. ‘Philosopher of the Heart’.” About Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Clare Carlisle—”Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world.”
• “Mary, Quite Contrary.” About Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Sylvana Tomaselli—”A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work”
• “Transgression, An Elegy.”—”We used to know what transgression was, but that’s not plausible anymore. Maybe violating boundaries was a more meaningful enterprise when bourgeois norms reigned, when liberal democracy seemed like something that would always endure. The ethos of transgression presumed a stable moral order, the disruption of which would prove beneficial. But why bother trying to disrupt things when disruption is the new norm, and permanence ever more of a receding illusion?”
• “An Enterprise of Solid Gold. On the lucrative business of pirating Voltaire in eighteenth-century Europe.”
• “How a Poetry Collection Masquerading as Buddhist Scripture Nearly Duped the Literary World. ‘The lioness’s roars of the ancient nuns have been muffled into sweet new-agey purring.'”
• “What Jane Austen can teach us about resilience. Her novels may be mischaracterised as romantic escapism, but at their core, they have a lot to say about perseverance – and it makes them perfect reading for now, writes Heloise Wood.”
• “February’s Gonna Be a Big Month for Mars. On the 9th, the first of three spacecraft will arrive at the Red Planet and inaugurate a new era of Martian exploration.”
• “Intriguing dark streaks on Mars may be caused by landslides after all.”
• “Mars Rumbles Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows.”
• From the Let the salt of Earth admonish the Water dept: “Ancient embalmers used mud to hold a damaged mummy together. After grave robbers damaged the remains, embalmers undertook emergency repairs.”
• “Remastered images reveal how far Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the Moon. 50 years ago, the Apollo 14 astronaut hit a golf ball that traveled roughly 40 yards.”
• “How the Brain Responds to Beauty. Scientists search for the neural basis of an enigmatic experience.”
• “Galaxy-Size Gravitational-Wave Detector Hints at Exotic Physics. Recent results from a pulsar timing array, which uses dead stars to hunt for gravitational waves, has scientists speculating about cosmic strings and primordial black holes.”
• “New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum.”
• “Stonehenge tunnel discovery: Ancient civilisation evidence found under A303. Stonehenge archaeologists have found two prehistoric bodies and a Bronze Age industrial site at the new A303 tunnel works.”
• “Chemists create and capture einsteinium, the elusive 99th element.”
• “An origami-inspired medical patch for sealing internal injuries. The patch, which can be folded around surgical tools, may someday be used in robotic surgery to repair tissues and organs.”
• “Study finds childhood diet has lifelong impact. Effects of unhealthy food followed young mice into adulthood.”
• More about this: “Is this the end of the A-68A iceberg?.”—”Satellite images have revealed that the once colossal A-68A iceberg has had yet another shattering experience. Several large cracks were spotted in the berg last week and it has since broken into multiple pieces. These little icebergs could indicate the end of A-68A’s environmental threat to South Georgia.”
• “Neutrinos, atomic clocks and an experiment to detect a time dilation. Griffith University researchers are conducting an experiment at ANSTO that will test a revolutionary physics theory that time reversal symmetry-breaking by neutrinos might cause a time dilation at the quantum scale.”
• “A Little Drop of Poison. ‘Poisonous’ sperm may offer clues to a common medical problem.”—”Imagine a marathon, in which all participants get poisoned drinking water, but some runners also take an antidote.”
• “How Scientists Shot Down Cancer’s ‘Death Star’. No drug could touch a quivering protein implicated in a variety of tumors. Then one chemist saw an opening.”
• “Blue beads in the tundra. Glass beads the size of blueberries found by archaeologists in a Brooks Range house pit might be the first European item ever to arrive in North America, predating the arrival of Columbus by a few decades.”
• “Exclusive: indigenous Americans dying from Covid at twice the rate of white Americans. One in every 475 Native Americans has died since the pandemic began: ‘Families have been decimated’.”
• “When Will Life Return to Normal? In 7 Years at Today’s Vaccine Rates. Our new calculator shows how long it will take states and countries to vaccinate 75% of their populations.”
• “Recycling face masks into roads to tackle COVID-generated waste. Researchers have shown how disposable face masks could be recycled to make roads, in a circular economy solution to pandemic-generated waste.”
• “There Are Spying Eyes Everywhere—and Now They Share a Brain. Security cameras. License plate readers. Smartphone trackers. Drones. We’re being watched 24/7. What happens when all those data streams fuse into one?”
• “Eavesdropping marmosets understand other monkeys’ conversations.”
• “The MyPillow Guy’s Fever Dream. In a bizarre, two-hour-plus disinfomercial on OANN, an election conspiracist sells a myth of a victory stolen.”—”His monologues are the sort that people will change subway cars to avoid.”
• “Nebraska Catholic priest who boasted about performing exorcism at the Capitol during the riots faces expulsion from the church.”—”He said he was trying to rid the building of a demon named ‘Baphomet’ who he said is ‘dissolving the country'” I mean, Baphomet is more a symbol of the union of opposites, tbh. But, okay.
• Watch “QAnon followers react to Trump refusing to condemn them.”
• “QAnon Rep Basks In Controversy: All This Uproar Is Awesome For Me!” Also, tweet—”This idiot eats your hatred like a radiation that turns her into a brain-damaged superhero to low IG racist buffoons, miscreants and potato bug people.”
• “‘Speak to the Moment’​ | Art and Culture under Trump.”
• Maybe the real Deep State was just the Rousseauian Social Contract we collectively negotiated along the way. “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”
• “Social Justice, Austerity, and the Humanities Death Spiral. Radical rhetoric won’t save the humanities, but neither will humanist nostrums.”
• From the William Gibson dept: “Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments.”—”Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.”
• “Canadian Artists Testify on the Dire Need for Basic Income. Their output has ‘kept us all alive throughout this pandemic.’ But several blows have made the creative life too precarious.”
• “Are We Witnessing the Emergence of a New ‘Lost Cause’? Just as after the Civil War, desperate attempts to preserve white supremacy are being camouflaged as a valorous fight for a noble end.”
• “Christopher Plummer, Sound of Music star and oldest actor to win an Oscar, dies aged 91. Veteran and respected Canadian actor had a career stretching back to the 1950s, but won his Oscar for best supporting actor for Beginners in 2011.”
• “The Subtle Mindset Shift That Could Radically Change the Way You See the World. The Dalai Lama teaches that we are all interconnected and inseparable from one another. Acknowledging that can make us less lonely, more compassionate, and better investigators of the truth.”
• “JSTOR Companion to the Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List. JSTOR has created an open library to support readers seeking to engage with BIPOC+Q-authored reading lists like the one developed by the New York Public Library.”
• “Police in Libraries: What the Cop-Free Library Movement Wants. In cities like Los Angeles, activists are working to end contracts between local police forces and public libraries.”
• “Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s Technocratic Despotism. This academic odd couple champions surrendering ourselves to social science. That’s a bad idea.”
• Tweet—”I am watching a Christian “documentary” on Satanism and the occult from 1978 and it’s AMAZING. Prime Video, Revival of Evil. They’re just…. making shit up, it’s a delight.” Watch “Revival Of Evil“—”This documentary investigates the growth of the occult in the United States from New Age religions and Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal and psychic powers.”
• “The Wanting Mare is a special-effects triumph for indie sci-fi. But it’s also frustratingly opaque and distanced.” Watch “The Wanting Mare“—”In the fictional city of Whithren, a ship arrives once a year to trap and transport wild horses across the sea. Just north of the city- past the horses running along the coast- a line of women pass a secret dream through generations.”
• “A Glitch in the Matrix is a compelling trip into the emotional depths of conspiracy theories. Meet the people who believe this world is a simulation.” Watch “A Glitch in the Matrix“—”Are we living in a simulation? Filmmaker Rodney Ascher (ROOM 237, THE NIGHTMARE) wrestles with this existential question in his latest documentary, a multimedia journey that’s part sci-fi mind-scrambler, part true-crime horror story.”
• “If You’re Starting an Online Class, Check to Make Sure Your Professor Is Alive. A college student Googled his remote instructor and found an obituary.”—”Three weeks into his online class on art history, Concordia University sophomore Aaron Ansuini had a question about one of the recorded lectures. He combed through Concordia’s portal, but couldn’t find his professor’s contact information. So he Googled his name — François-Marc Gagnon — and found an obituary.”
• “Cleopatra Entertainment Acquires North American Rights to Horror Film Baphomet Featuring Dani Filth; Video Interview.”
• Silent Running dir Douglas Trumbull, with Bruce Dern. “Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, approved by director Douglas Trumbull and produced by Arrow Video exclusively for this release.”
• Watch “SQUADRON: A STAR TREK FAN PRODUCTION – PART 1 (EN/CZ/PT/DE SUBS)“—”At the height of the Dominion War, four starships are sent to patrol a remote sector. Real problems arise when Dominion agents attempt to hijack one of the ships and bomb a nearby neutral world.”
• Watch “The Shore, official release trailer—”THE SHORE is a game that focuses on the mystery of the unknown on a forbidden island with horror elements. The whole story is based on mythology that goes deep through Lovecraft’s creations and beyond. The players will see the story from eyes of a Father who lost his lovely daughter and will experience the world through immersive atmospheric gameplay while trying to encounter the most nightmarish Lovecraftian entities, survive and to solve mind-blowing puzzles all that to save his daughters’ life while being haunted; try to survive and uncover the secrets behind the mystery of his own sanity.”
• Watch “Potion Craft“, announcement trailer—”Potion Craft is an alchemist simulator where you physically interact with your tools and ingredients to brew potions. You’re in full control of the whole shop: invent new recipes, attract customers and experiment to your heart’s content. Just remember: the whole town is counting on you.”
• Watch “The Professor Who Changed The World: A Guide to Noam Chomsky.”
• Tweet—”Beginning to plot out a taxonomy of vibes and other ambient feelings here”
• Watch “What Still Works Cold Open.”
• Watch “Hong Kong to teach children about subversion“—”Hong Kong has unveiled controversial guidelines for schools in the Chinese-ruled city that include teaching students as young as six about colluding with foreign forces and subversion as part of a new national security curriculum.”

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