An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for February 21, 2021

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

• Hermetic Library Anthology Artist Ace of Space (also Odd Order Anthology Artist!) just released Radio Hat.
• Submission is a new rack by Salford Electronics (technically an Odd Order Anthology Artist!)
• Hermetic Library Anthology Artist Anantakara (also Odd Order Anthology Artist!) new track When A Goddess Loves
• From 2015, “An early history of the 8000m peaks: Mummery, Crowley and the Duke of Abruzzi.”—Of Crowley: “There aren’t many mountaineers who can say that.”
• Via newsletter—”Shani Oates’ masterful opus The Devil’s Supper’s reprint as a Paperback edition, will be Available for Purchase (and ready to ship out) on the North-American webstore this coming next Friday, Feb 26th 2021.” No direct link, yet but watch their webstore.
• From 2019, “Bird Divinations in the Ancient World” Open access from Birds in the Bronze Age: A North European Perspective [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher], pp 53-70 by Joakim Goldhahn—”This book provides new insights into the relationship between humans and birds in Northern Europe during the Bronze Age. Joakim Goldhahn argues that birds had a central role in Bronze Age society and imagination, as reflected in legends, myths, rituals, and cosmologies. Goldhahn offers a new theoretical model for understanding the intricate relationship between humans and birds during this period. He explores traces of birds found in a range of archaeological context, including settlements and burials, and analyzes depictions of birds on bronze artefacts and figurines, rock art, and ritual paraphernalia. He demonstrates how birds were used in divinations, and provides the oldest evidence of omens taken from gastric contents of birds – extispicy – ever found in Europe.”
• “Before Me, Raphael: Sacred Magic and the Four Archangels.”—
• Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius [Amazon, Publisher] by Adam Gorightly—”From flying saucer crashes to underground alien bases, a number of modern mythologies have come into being since the advent of the UFO era in the 1940s. But how much of these myths is real, versus being the invention of either government agencies or deluded conspiracy theorists? Saucers, Spooks and Kooks provides an eye-opening survey of the history behind these stories, and the individuals promoting them.”
• Treasury of Folklore: Seas & Rivers. Sirens, Selkies and Ghost Ships [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham, due March—”Enthralling tales of the sea, rivers and lakes from around the globe.” “Folklore of the seas and rivers has a resonance in cultures all over the world. Watery hopes, fears and dreams are shared by all peoples where rivers flow and waves crash. This fascinating book covers English sailor superstitions and shape-shifting pink dolphins of the Amazon, Scylla and Charybdis, the many guises of Mami Wata, the tale of the Yoruba River spirit, the water horses of the Scottish lochs, the infamous mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and much more. Accompanied by stunning woodcut illustrations, popular authors Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham explore the deep history and enduring significance of water folklore the world over, from mermaids, selkies and sirens to ghostly ships and the fountains of youth.”
• “Playing Catch with Los Angeles.”—”We get Jack Parsons, of course, the Pasadena rocket scientist who held occult sessions in his backyard. The topic of Jack Parsons feels tired, though Lunenfeld does write thoughtfully on the Cold War aerospace milieu that Parsons helped create. Here, Lunenfeld has a booster stage, adding the cultists behind the Topanga Sandstone Retreat and Project Synergy colony, with aerospace engineer John Williamson and his wife Barbara’s sybaritic, hedonistic, and sexualized response to systems engineering.” About City at the Edge of Forever: Los Angeles Reimagined [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Peter Lunenfeld—”An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles.”
• “The Most Radical Thing You Can Do.” From the foreword to The Most Radical Thing You Can Do: The Best Political Essays from Orion Magazine [Publisher]—”The Most Radical Thing You Can Do collects the best political writing in Orion from the past twenty years, with a focus on justice, direct action, and (of course) the environment. The essays included tend to be to be future-oriented rather than too deeply entrenched in the past, though there are a few strong reminders of how unpleasant things got under previous administrations. The hope is to inspire people about what they can start doing tomorrow rather than relitigating the errors we’ve already made. The lineup of writers includes Robin Wall Kimmerer, Glenis Redmond, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben, Winona LaDuke, Scott Russell Sanders, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Sandra Steingraber, and Barbara Kingsolver.”
• “Order Amid Chaos. A poet-scientist considers the imponderables of existence.” About Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Alan Lightman—”From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams, a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities, and impossibilities, of nothingness and infinity–and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.”
• “Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q47.”—”The many, many, fires started in 2020 may have been put out, but there are dozens of them that need to be tamped out. As you rest between tamping out your fires, HFQ is here to give you the drive you need to get the new year started strong. We bring a party-pack sized issue, with three stories, three poems, art, music and audio.”
• “Storytelling — Harmon vs. McKee.”—”I’ve been on a gigantic yak-shave for the last few months exploring storytelling theories, so I figured I’d start a new blogchain to compile my findings.”—”Harmon’s eight-word Hero’s Journey — you, need, go, search, find, take, return, CHANGE — is about as close as you can get to the ineffable void at the heart of story. ”
• From 2020 “Freytag’s Pyramid: The Five-Act Structure Explained.”—”Though you may encounter explanations of the pyramid that identify 7 elements, Freytag’s original narrative arc only refers to 5 key acts: Introduction; Rise, or rising action; Climax; Return, or fall; Catastrophe.”
• “John Steinbeck’s ‘Little Fishing Place’ in Sag Harbor Is on the Market. The novelist spent his summers at the waterfront property, which sits on 1.8 acres and includes his ‘writing house.’ The asking price is $17.9 million.” Also “Got $18 million dollars lying around? Wanna buy Steinbeck’s house?“—”If you’re like me, the millions of dollars you set aside for travel and leisure in 2020/2021 are now burning a hole in your pocket. … Of course, for $18 million dollars you could probably buy a crumbly old castle in Scotland, build an exact replica of the Sag Harbor property out back, staff the entire place with animatronic Lennys who spend their days petting genetically-modified uncrushable mice, and just live offa the fatta the lan’. Between basic groundskeeping and chasing down Robominations before they reach the perimeter, though, you might not get much writing done.”
• “Bookfeed.io. An RSS feed listing all newly released books from your favorite authors.” Also more info: Bookfeed.io.
• “A library staffer has been fired for burning Trump and Ann Coulter books in his free time.“—”Cameron Williams, a former staffer at Chattanooga Public Library and a local Black Lives Matter activist, has been fired from his library job three months after being accused of ‘improperly’ burning books written by Donald Trump and Ann Coulter.”—”Williams says his boss asked him to comb the political section and take down titles that contained misinformation or where views had changed, as well as books more than 10 years old. … This is to say nothing of potential misinformation or offense in the books’ text. According to Williams, his boss specifically mentioned Williams’ activist background when asking him to complete this task.”
• From 2016, from the Tesla Was Right dept: “Thomas Edison and the War of the Currents. Thomas Edison had a big stake in the AC/DC war of the currents and would say anything to win.”
• “3D Printing Bone Directly Into the Body. A novel ink enables bioengineers to print bone-like material at room temperature with living cells.”
• Watch “10 images that reveal what we’ve learned about Mars after decades of exploration.”
• Watch “Gravitational Wave Background Discovered?“—”It was pretty impressive when LIGO detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Well we’ve just taken that to the next level with a galaxy-spanning gravitational wave detector that may have detected a foundational element of space itself – the gravitational wave background.”
• “Metabolic mutations help bacteria resist drug treatment. Study suggests forcing bacteria to burn more energy could make them more susceptible to antibiotics.”
• “8-Year-Old Calls Out NPR For Lack Of Dinosaur Stories.”—”An 8-year-old from Minneapolis recently pointed out a big problem with NPR’s oldest news show, All Things Considered. … ‘I never hear much about nature or dinosaurs or things like that. Maybe you should call your show Newsy things Considered, since I don’t get to hear about all the things. Or please talk more about dinosaurs and cool things.'”
• “Incredible Microscope Images of Molecules Show What Titan’s Haze Looks Like Up *Very* Close.”
  
• Watch “Why didn’t this 2,000 year old body decompose?“—”Discover the surprising biodiversity of soil, and how its microbes help support all life on Earth.”

• “Norwich Castle: ‘Fascinating’ medieval manuscripts to be restored. Medieval manuscripts which give a glimpse of life hundreds of years ago are to be to be given ‘new life’ in an extensive conservation project.”
• “Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers in Breakthrough. International scientists have unlocked a new and exciting avenue to explore the world of dreams.”
  Also tweet—”Must read to see if analogies are possible to pathworking, mediumistic trances, automatic writing, the Abuldiz & Amalantrah-type workings, hypnosis, or other altered states of consciousness.” Also “Scientists entered people’s dreams and got them ‘talking’.”

• “Islamic 12th-century bathhouse uncovered in Seville tapas bar. Dazzling geometric motifs dating from Almohad caliphate discovered during renovation of city’s bar.”
• “Dogs Are Teaching Machines to Sniff Out Cancer. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers used dogs’ diagnoses of prostate cancer to inform a machine learning algorithm with the goal of one day detecting cancers with canine-level accuracy.”
• “First black hole ever detected is more massive than we thought.”
• “End of Neanderthals linked to flip of Earth’s magnetic poles, study suggests. Event 42,000 years ago combined with fall in solar activity potentially cataclysmic, researchers say.”
• From the Star Sponge Vision dept: “Phenomenology solves quantum puzzles. Bringing consciousness back to the quantum table.”—”At the heart of the quantum measurement problem is a profound misunderstanding of the subject-object relationship. A closer look at Fritz London and Edmond Bauer’s work on the problem reveals Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology at play. Recognising this provides a new way to explain the fate of Schrödinger’s cat, writes Steven French.” “This approach takes the states of systems to be essentially relational in nature: just as velocity is not a property possessed by a system alone but only relative to some other system, so the state of ‘cat alive/dead’ is not one that the cat is in, in and of itself, but only in relation to the state of the other system in the measurement interaction – in this case the observer. Rovelli’s interpretation obviously meshes nicely with the ‘correlational’ aspect of a phenomenological stance, but what the latter brings to the table is the role of consciousness as a fundamental ‘pole’ of Rovelli’s relations. The other ‘pole’ is the system being observed and so on this picture, the world is what it is only as the correlate of an experiencing consciousness, but both the world as it is experienced and that consciousness are constituted by their inter-dependent relationship.”
• From the What Could Possibly Go Wrong? dept: Russian lab to research prehistoric viruses in animals dug from melted permafrost. Project aims to identify paleoviruses and study virus evolution using the remains, Siberian lab says.” Also, you want The Thing? This is how you get The Thing!
• “1.6-million-year-old mammoth DNA uncovers lineage we never knew existed. The breakthrough research reveals an entirely new lineage of mammoth, previously unknown to science.”
• “Amazon Is Forcing Its Warehouse Workers Into Brutal ‘Megacycle’ Shifts. The company has been quietly transitioning warehouse workers at Amazon warehouses nationwide to a 10-hour graveyard shift, known as the ‘megacycle.'”—”‘If I work more than eight hours, it takes a day and a half to recover, and I’m a very fit person,’ they continued. ‘Amazon work can be so demanding that Jeff Bezos doesn’t just own your time at work; he owns your entire weekend that you’re in bed recovering so you can go back to the warehouse.'”
• I struggled as a self-employed Amazon driver – while the company boomed. As I delivered orders around the Scottish Highlands, I saw how drivers with no guaranteed work try to make ends meet.”—”I am actually making negative weekly earnings.”
• “Millions of jobs probably aren’t coming back, even after the pandemic ends. The United States needs to invest more in retraining workers, economists warn.”
• “The next pandemic? It may already be upon us. Antimicrobial resistance won’t race across the world like Covid-19, but its effects will be devastating. Thankfully, we already know what we need to do to defeat it.”
• Watch “The Current State Of QAnon.”—”QAnon supporters have shifted to a new theory that falsely claims former President Trump will be reinstated on March 4th, NBC News’ Ben Collins reports.”
• “One night in Cancun: Ted Cruz’s disastrous decision to go on vacation during Texas storm crisis. The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights”—”Usually, it takes at least one full day in Cancun to do something embarrassing you’ll never live down.”
• “Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue.”—”The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better.” “The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.”
• “New Zealand Will Offer Free Sanitary Products At Schools To Fight Period Poverty.”
• “Enraged by Ravi (Part 1): The wreckage of Ravi Zacharias.”—”The church is bleeding out the next generation, not because ‘the culture’ is so opposed to the church’s fidelity to the truth, but just the reverse. The culture often does not reject us because they don’t believe the church’s doctrinal and moral teachings, but because they have evidence that the church doesn’t believe its own doctrinal and moral teachings. They suspect that Jesus is just a means to an end—to some political agenda, to a market for selling merchandise, or for the predatory appetites of some maniacal narcissist.”
• “Slanted and Disenchanted.”—”But let’s not toss the baby out with the Emotional Detox Soak bathwater. In my (admittedly slanted) view, a mature seeker is, like the Beats of yore, a spiritual existentialist. The seeker is not a finder, or a knower, or a master. They are always on the road, or traversing, even drifting, along Krishnamurti’s “pathless path.” As such, they distrust settled solutions or popular formulas, and prefer the company of fellow travelers or even reprobates to cults or congregations. Seekers can and do find teachers, and take up practices of discipline and devotion, just like Leonard Cohen did. But if one remains a seeker in one’s heart there is always a certain distance or tension. Longing fuels the entire quest, and that longing is always oriented to the beyond, to the not-yet, to a liberation that almost certainly won’t happen the way one imagines, and may very well not happen at all.” “David Crosby was no seeker. He gobbled lots of acid, sure, but as a cantankerous freak rather than a barefoot mystic. He was pals with Jerry Garcia for a reason. But he did write ‘Laughing’ for a seeker.” “But that’s part of the genius of ‘Laughing’, whose deeper message, which Crosby perhaps did not intend, is that disenchantment is, or can be, or should be, part of the path.” Listen to David Crosby’s Laughing [Amazon, Apple, Spotify].
• Zappa, official trailer for Zappa, dir Alex Winter—”With unfettered access to the Zappa family trust and all archival footage, ZAPPA explores the private life behind the mammoth musical career that never shied away from the political turbulence of its time. Alex Winter’s assembly features appearances by Frank’s widow Gail Zappa and several of Frank’s musical collaborators including Mike Keneally, Ian Underwood, Steve Vai, Pamela Des Barres, Bunk Gardner, David Harrington, Scott Thunes, Ruth Underwood, Ray White and others.” Watch on Amazon, Apple, Google, & so on.
• “New Jewish Horror Film Steeped in Ancient Jewish Lore and Demonology. ‘The Vigil’ is a supernatural horror film set over the course of a single evening in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood.” The Vigil, dir Keith Thomas, at Boston Jewish Film, streaming anytime until February 22—”Yakov, who recently left his Hasidic community, is low on cash. When his former rabbi asks offers asks him to be an overnight shomer, and fulfill the practice of watching over the body of a deceased community member, he reluctantly accepts. Shortly after arriving at the recently departed’s dilapidated house to sit the vigil, Yakov begins to realize that something is very, very wrong. Steeped in ancient Jewish lore and demonology, The Vigil is a supernatural horror film set over the course of a single evening in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood.”
• “5 Ugly Truths About Abraham Lincoln Exposed in Netflix’s Amend: The Fight for America.” Watch Amend: The Fight for America [Netflix]—”Will Smith hosts this look at the evolving, often lethal, fight for equal rights in America through the lens of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment.”
• “How a Three-Word Phrase Sabotaged Black Voting Rights, and How They Can Be Reconstructed. There’s power in the 14th Amendment. It’s time to use it.”
• “A Forgotten Black Founding Father. Why I’ve made it my mission to teach others about Prince Hall.”
• Kinda clickbaity, but maybe interesting: The Crazy Real-Life Story of Casanova.
• “The Passion of the Space Jockey. Alienated Sentience and Endosymbiosis in the World of H.R. Giger.” From Volume 5 (2020): Issue 1 (Mar 2020): Special Issue: Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture. Part 3: The Gnostic in Popular American Culture, edited by April D. DeConick and Jeffrey J. Kripal.
• “Surrealism’s Beating Heart. On Leonora Carrington, Unica Zürn, and leaving musehood behind.”
• “Queer Theory and Literary Criticism’s Melodramas. Recent debates suffer from a strange amnesia.” Adapted from “A Few Lies: Queer Theory and Our Method Melodramas” by David Kurnick, ELH, Volume 87, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp 349-374.
• “It’s Time to Shift the Power Inequities Among Arts Nonprofits.”
• “The Origins of St. Valentine’s Day. The complicated origins of St. Valentine’s Day.”
  
• “Okay GPT-3: Candy hearts!“—”Our tentacles are more alike than you might think.”

• More about King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and wife Toyah making videos: “Couple Goals: Toyah’s Lockdown. Toyah Willcox tells us about her and husband Robert Fripp’s bonkers lockdown videos, why she sees herself as honouring Barbara Windsor, how they might influence King Crimson going forward, and how they’ve inspired a surge of interest in her kitchen cupboards. Plus, tQ’s top seven lockdown home broadcasts!”
• “Massive sunken heads take up residence on the seabed.”—”Any unsuspecting swimmers diving off the coast of Cannes, France, may think they’ve stumbled onto some kind of ancient Easter Island-type civilization swept into the sea long ago, but they’d actually be seeing the work of underwater artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who has completed his first installation in the Mediterranean. The project consists of six large head-like sculptures and is now open to those able to swim down to take a look.”
• “Do you believe in poetry?“—”There is much more of these poets in their many books. In the present darkness, I urge you to seek out these and other poets, to use their light. That’s poetry’s place.” Mentions William Butler Yeats.
• “A Conversation: Star Trek’s Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew.”—”Two science fiction television icons, Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew share their personal stories of becoming inspired by space in their roles as The Doctor and Captain Janeway on the set of Star Trek: Voyager.”
• Yardi Gras! “Photos: Preparing for “Yardi Gras” in New Orleans. A collection of images of this year’s socially distant “Yardi Gras,” as New Orleanians prepare for Mardi Gras on February 16″ Also “Houses are the new parade float this Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”
• “Far and wide with force the wind shouts so shrill In this frozen season sharp and chill, The cold air, penetrating and clear, Benumbing the blood in every creature, Made me seek warm vapors and comforting hot fires, In double garment clad and heavy undercoat, With potent drink and comforting foods To struggle against the harsh winter. Well refreshed and by the chimney basking, Early at night down in bed I stretched myself, Wrapped my head, threw on covers threefold, To drive away the perilous, piercing cold.—”Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), Eneados, Prologue VII, lines 85-96, trans. Michael Gilleland at Perilous Piercing Cold.
• “But now, as then, I am in alien land. For from the friends I love the sea divides me And day by day I stand upon the shore Seeking with all my soul the land of Greece; And to my sighs, alas, there comes no answer But hollow echoes of the roaring wave.”—Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris 1.1.9-22 (tr. David Luke) at Lament of an Alien.
• “And what is that bulwark? It is mistrust. Guard that; hold fast to that. If you preserve it, no harm can touch you.”—Demosthenes 6.23-24 (Second Philippic, Demosthenes addressing the Messenians; tr. J.H. Vince) at Bulwark Against Tyranny.
• Tweet—”Taiwan’s CDC has created anime villain renditions of various diseases, and I just… *blink*” Also “Taiwan CDC’s personified disease illustrations go viral in US.” Reminds me of the personifications of computer operating systems, back in the day.
• Watch “Will You Wear A Mask? I Ask“—””Will You Wear A Mask? I Ask,” a rhyming read-aloud picture book for everyone. Performed by Mark Hamill. All proceeds go to World Central Kitchen: wck.org” Also Will You Wear A Mask? I Ask by Tom Reugger—”In this rhyming picture book, a grocery clerk tries to convince a defiant customer to put on a mask before entering the store.”
• “It’s Okay to not be okay.”
• Watch “BBC Headroom. Mindful tips. Mood mixes. Motivation.“—”We know it’s tough right now. To help you through the day a little, we’ve created a mental health toolkit with mindful tips, stories and mixes to lift your mood or calm your nerves.” BBC Headroom.

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