An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for February 10, 2021

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

• “A film about ‘The Witch Of Kings Cross’, Rosaleen Norton, has arrived.” Watch “The Witch of Kings Cross” dir Sonia Bible—”Allegations of satanic rituals, obscene art and sex orgies in 1950s Sydney. Inspired by the work of Aleister Crowley, bohemian artist Rosaleen Norton advocated a pantheist vision of witchcraft, and a sexual magic freed from religious and moral rules. Eventually the relentless scandals led to the downfall of her high society lover.” Also “Sex magic, occult art and acid: the story of the infamous witch of Kings Cross. In the 1960s she would have been celebrated by the counterculture – but a decade earlier, Rosaleen Norton was shunned and mocked.”
• “What Makes K2 Mountain A ‘Death Zone’?“—”Later in 1902 English occultist Aleister Crowley with his partner Oscar Eckenstein made the first attempt on K2.”
• “Introducing the VIEW Workshop.”—”I’m incredibly proud to introduce a brand new course we’ve been working on for the last few months. It’s called the VIEW Workshop, and its purpose is to teach authentic communication. It trains people in how to create life-changing conversations. Not just to have such conversations whenever they happen to show up. But to be the active agent who causes such conversations in any situation you find yourself in.”
• MATMOS, Nik Francis, Heejin Jang, Foam/Rawlings/Staubnitz, Friday, Feb 12th, 9pm Eastern and 9pm Pacific (presumably this is run twice), virtual doors/chat opens at 8:30 at Imaginary Network Topologies, a weekly noisecast show by Jeff Carey, on Twitch.
• Valentines Day Singalong in Scotland, a Zoom concert with Jim & Susie Malcolm, Sunday February 14, 2021 @ 4pm PST; 5pm MST; 6pm CST; 7pm EST, Suggested donation $15. To sign up and receive Zoom & donation links, and song lyrics, please email: [email protected]
• Crowdfunding with 28 days to go: “Mask of the Rose: a Fallen London romance. A romantic visual novel set in the same universe as Fallen London, Sunless Sea, and Sunless Skies.”—”Mask of the Rose is a romantic visual novel about love, mystery, the restructuring of society after profound change, and bats.”
• Tweet—”Valentine’s Day is just around the corner! Heart with arrow Locked down and can’t get to a shop? Don’t panic – we’ve got you covered: Use code LOVE21 at checkout and get 20% off ALL digital subscriptions, digital issues and specials until midnight on Feb 14th!” Digital issues – Shop – Ancient History Magazine
• “Roman Oil Lamp Flying Phallus / Fascinus.” £17.00 GBP from Potted History. Also tweet.
• “Rosicrucians, Drugs, and Angelic Transformations: An Interview with Dr Hereward Tilton.” Interview with Hereward Tilton, author of the “The Path of the Serpent: Volume One: Psychedelics and the Neuropsychology of Gnosis.”
• “‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ Remake in the Works at New Line.” Check out my own Magical Work in Oz which I’ll totally, probably, maybe, I hope, mirror over at my page at the library eventually, some day, when I get a round tuit.
• “Quote, Don’t Dote.” About Yeats Now: Echoing Into Life [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Joseph M Hassett—”W. B. Yeats believed that a poet’s life should be an experiment in living. His poems fashion into memorable words the sometimes puzzling emotions that hover over important life events. Yeats’s remarkable work can clarify our own thinking about similar situations. Joseph M. Hassett’s Yeats Now: Echoing into Life extracts and distills the rich harvest of Yeats’s experiment. As Yeats’s biographer Roy Foster comments, Yeats Now is ‘a personal, quizzical, imaginative testament that ranges through Yeats’s thought and writings, showcasing and discussing a series of ringing statements, suggestions and aphorisms that evolve into a kind of vade-mecum or guide to life. The subjects cover love, anger, friendship, politics, violence, and the competing claims of perfecting the life, or the work’. This book is a wonderful companion to the work of this significant poet. Hassett’s writing provides an excellent frame of context through which to explore one of Ireland’s greatest poets.”
• Different People by Carl Abrahamsson &al. “‘Different People’ is an anthology of interviews by Swedish author Carl Abrahamsson, focusing on art, life and the creative process. Included are in-depth conversations with Conrad Rooks, Malcolm McLaren, Stelarc, John Duncan, Charles Gatewood, Mark McCloud, Ralph Metzner, Peter Beard, Bill Landis, Ralph Gibson, Maja Elliott, Michael Bowen, Bob Colacello, Dian Hanson, Anton Corbijn, June Newton, Kendell Geers, Simeon Coxe III (Silver Apples), Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), and Brian Williams (Lustmord). These groundbreaking artists, writers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, editors and psychedelic researchers have all helped shape the culture we live in. But what makes them do what they do? Which are their driving forces and their inspirations; their joys and fears?”
• The Complete American Gods, adapted graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, & al., due Sept 2021—”The complete American Gods comic series, adapted by comics legend P. Craig Russell from the award-winning novel by Neil Gaiman, in a deluxe, oversized collection with slipcase and ribbon.”
• “Tom Stoppard’s Double Life. For Britain’s leading postwar playwright, virtuosity and uncertainty go hand in hand.” About Tom Stoppard: A Life [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Hermione Lee, due Feb 23—”One of our most brilliant biographers takes on one of our greatest living playwrights, drawing on a wealth of new materials and on many conversations with him.”
• “When Do Unspoken Social Rules Become Fashion Laws?” From Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Richard Thompson Ford—”A revelatory exploration of fashion through the ages that asks what our clothing reveals about ourselves and our society.”
• “Two Paths for the Extremely Online Novel.” About Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] and Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher].
• “Page refresh: how the internet is transforming the novel. Doom scrolling, oversharing, constantly updating social media feeds – the internet shapes how we see the world, and now it’s changing the stories we tell, writes author Olivia Sudjic.”—”It’s clear that the digital colonisation of the literary world has not resulted in its predicted death, but an exciting evolution.'” “Our offline lives turn out to be just as much of a lie as our online ones.” “Because there is no way out, the characters of these novels usually decide it’s better to be an agent of their own techno-dystopian futures than simply a victim of them. It’s enough to make you put down your phone and read a book.”
• “How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction. While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented flawed worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one.” About We [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Yevgeny Zamyatin—”Yevgeny Zamyatin’s page-turning science fiction adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel that became the basis for the tales of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood, among so many others. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was at the beginning of the twentieth.”
• “Rare and lurid document of 18th-century English queerness discovered.”—”A rare extant document of 18th-century English queerness, The Life of Thomas Munn, alias, the Gentleman Brick-maker, alias, Tom The Smuggler, was recently discovered by a UK bookseller. Originally published in 1750, the 24-page pamphlet reveals Munn’s deathbed confessions”
• “Virginia Woolf’s literary burn book has just sold for £21k.”
• “The riverbed of our life deepens with passing years, while the possibility for us to change, to break into another stream, lessens.”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quoted at “Riverbed.”
• “The link between literature and empathetic presidents.” (I mean, it’s really their choice in speech writers … but, sure, give them full credit instead.)
• “Darwin’s Dim View of the Second Sex.”
• “The Library of Possible Futures. Since the release of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock 50 years ago, the allure of speculative nonfiction has remained the same: We all want to know what’s coming next.”
• “Blake and the Mad Crew: The Ranters and the Historians.”—”In many hands Blake’s books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning”
• “I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age. The internet rewired our brains. He predicted it would.”
• From the Velikovsky Vindicated dept: “Why some scientists believe life may have started on Mars.”
• “Humanity Is Flushing Away One of Life’s Essential Elements. We broke phosphorus.”
• “A Single Altered Gene Can Make Fish Fins More Like Limbs. Researchers find a mutation that offers clues to the ancient sea-to-land transition of vertebrates.”
• “Antarctic Seals Vocalize in Ultrasonic—but Not for the Usual Reason. Nearly one fifth of the underwater vocalizations produced by Antarctica’s Weddell seals occur at pitches above the limits of human hearing, according to a recent study.”—”Echoes from ultrasonic calls may provide enough basic environmental information to help seals return to breathing holes in the ice or to locate food—even if their sound-processing is not specialized enough to be called true echolocation. High-frequency vocalizations travel shorter distances than lower-frequency ones, and this may also help Weddell seals communicate without alerting predators.”
• “New Stone Age: Discovery of massive island ritual site. The spectacular feature in the landscape is likely to have drawn people from all over a Scottish island around 5,000 years ago for ritual and ceremony.”
• “‘Audeo’ teaches artificial intelligence to play the piano.”—”The researchers used machine learning to create a system, called Audeo, that creates audio from silent piano performances.”
• “Student astronomer finds galactic missing matter. Distant galaxies used as ‘locator pins’ to detect ‘invisible’ gas cloud.”
• “Study finds potential treatment to reduce chronic suicidality. A new study from USC Australia has found that oral doses of ketamine administered in a clinical setting can provide a rapid-acting treatment for chronic suicidality.”
• “[Neanderthals]’ gut microbiota and the bacteria helping our health.”—”Neanderthals’ gut microbiota already included some beneficial micro-organisms that are also found in our own intestine. An international research group led by the University of Bologna achieved this result by extracting and analysing ancient DNA from 50,000-year-old faecal sediments sampled at the archaeological site of El Salt, near Alicante (Spain).”
• “The Future of Hydrogen Power… Is Paste?.”—”The idea is that the paste effectively stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. At 250C, the paste decomposes and releases its hydrogen.”
• “Kenyan woman finds a way to recycle plastic waste into bricks that are stronger than concrete.”
• Watch “Europe’s Roma community’s life under Covid.”—”Roma communities are some of the most marginalised in Europe. More than 10 million people live largely in poverty, often in overcrowded settlements. The pandemic has ravaged many of their communities, further cutting them off from society.”
• “Vaccine Ordering.”—”Weird side effect.”
• “Gnostic” as a buzzword has even reached Good Man Project, only, interestingly(?), this time it’s being applied to a reactionary right-wing extremist. “The Gnosticism of Marjorie Taylor Greene. The reappearance of the heretical in today’s politics.”—”Now I’m no expert in Gnosticism …”
• The GOP Might Still Be Trump’s Party. But That Doesn’t Mean There’s Room For Him.
• “Truth Alone Cannot Unify the United States. In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden spoke as if ‘democracy’ and ‘truth’ are naturally allied concepts. But they’re not, are they?”
• “Minneapolis police tapped Google to identify George Floyd protesters. The warrant ordered the search giant to turn over user account data.”
• “Jeff Bezos, Enemy of the People. As he steps down from Amazon, his brutal anti-worker legacy can never be forgotten.”
• “This Utah man invited homeless people to live in his front yard.”
• “Virginia Lawmakers Pass Marijuana Legalization Bills. Pending Governor Ralph Northam’s signature, dispensaries could open in state beginning 2024, while legalization would start as soon as this summer.” Tweet—”From tobacco colony to weed commonwealth.”
• “In Defense of Doing Nothing. The cultural impetus to hustle is built on decades-old political language. Why not try idleness instead?”
• “How To Trick Your Mind Into Performing Your Best Under Pressure. Cognitive scientist Sian Beilock reveals why we play our worst when it matters the most.”
• “More Women Are Dealing Cocaine. This is Why. Rising numbers of women are getting mixed up in the powder cocaine and crack trade. But for most, it’s an act of desperation.”
• “Exploring the Outer Edges of Society and Mind. Tending the Hearth Fire – Practical steps towards the Art of Contemplation.”
• “How knitters are making their favorite garments from pop culture. Bernie Sanders’ mittens are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reverse-engineer knits.”
• A cartoon demon musical drew in 53 million YouTube viewers. The creator of ‘Hazbin Hotel’ says she couldn’t have predicted its success. Vivienne Medrano spoke to Insider about her YouTube shows ‘Helluva Boss’ and ‘Hazbin Hotel.’ ‘I had no idea it would grow into something so big,’ she said. Redefining YouTube animation, she’s carved out a niche for adult animation on the platform.”
• “Italy’s Cineteca di Bologna Publishes Book With Full Screenplay of Charlie Chaplin’s Unfinished Film ‘The Freak’ (EXCLUSIVE).”
• “‘Gig’ and its kin.”—”The fact that gig “a temporary job” arose among jazz musicians reinforces the reference to the idea of “light, brisk movement.””
• Watch “Reviving Mosul: Muslims and Christians work together to rebuild the Iraqi city.”
• “Naomi Klein: Against Dystopian Visions of the Future.”
• “The Museum of the Bible Must Once Again Return Artifacts, This Time an Entire Warehouse of 5,000 Egyptian Objects. The man behind the DC institution has admitted his collecting ‘naiveté.'” Also “More Legal Trouble for Museum of the Bible.”
• “Opening the Anthropocene Archives.”—”The Anthropocene has long been discussed in terms of hard science. What do the humanities have to teach about this human age?”
• “Shooting Straight: ‘Blade Runner’ and Queer Notions of Selfhood.”
• “An invitation to WandaVision.”—”If you have any interest in the craft of television, the cultural politics of pop entertainments, old sitcoms, or contemporary surrealism, it is worth checking out.”
• “http://Disney Closing Blue Sky Studios, Fox’s Once-Dominant Animation House Behind ‘Ice Age’ Franchise.” Wait. “Production on the Patrick Osborne-directed Nimona, which is dated for January 14, 2022, is being stopped and the film will no longer be released, Deadline has learned. Nimona, which had 10 months of production still left to complete, followed a young shape-shifter who teams with a mad scientist named Lord Ballister Blackheart to expose the ruler of the kingdom.” Oh no! The adaption of Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona is dead!
• “Bring Back the Nervous Breakdown. It used to be okay to admit that the world had simply become too much.”
• “Oh My Gods, Dan Harmon Is Making an Animated Series Set in Ancient Mythical Greece.”
• Watch “THE DAEMON LOVER (Scottish Sea Shanty) – Harp Twins, Camille and Kennerly” and “DARK ELVES (Dökkálfar) – Original Song – Harp Twins, Camille and Kennerly”
• Watch “FKA twigs, Headie One, Fred again.. – Don’t Judge Me.”
• Watch “Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor 1936 1080 HD remaster-restoration Cartoon Renewal Studios“—”Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor 1936 Max Fleischer 1080 HD remaster and restoration Cartoon Renewal Studios 2021.”
• Watch “Watch this artist turn pages of magazines into surreal collages.”—”This video is part of our new series Paper Cuts, in which you get to be hypnotized by artists doing incredible things with paper, scissors, glue sticks and X-Acto knives.”
• Watch “Love Your Servitude – Aldous Huxley & George Orwell.”
• Watch “Henry Rollins is Sick of ‘We’“—”A hardcore legend tells us why he focuses on ‘you’ and not ‘we’.”
• Watch “Zolita – Bedspell“, official music video—”Zolita goes on a date with a witch in a gothic mansion and ends up under her bed spell.”
• Watch “Cupid’s HEARTBREAKING Corona Virus Valentine’s Day.”
• Tweet—”Over 2,000 years later and women still getting tricked by Zeus.”

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