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

So, I know I already posted separately about this on Patreon, but this weekend I finalized four mug designs for the next new Patreon merch offering! And, I also have the first of those four designs set up and completely ready for when people hit their milestone, which should start in May.

The first one I set up is “Aum! Let it fill / kill me!”, and I’ll probably go in the order shown here, from left to right. Here’s the full designs, showing both sides of each (of the four, only “fill kill kult” has the same thing on both sides):

Also, the very first merch item has started to ship! I set that up in January, and I got an email that fulfillment was starting. According to my records a few have actually shipped, and they’re already going all over the world, including UK, Spain and Japan! If you’re an Omnologist or above, you should have one coming, but you’ll need to make sure that there’s an address associated with your Patreon account. I notice there’s a few Patrons that don’t yet, so Patreon can’t ship until that’s fixed; but, for everyone that does have an address filled in, you’ve got a mini print on the way!

Next month the Berniemit(tens) / Baphomet sitcker should start to fulfill for everyone with Epistemologist and above, and then, again, in May, the first mug design will go out already for Ontologists and above! Wow! This new merch experiment is really getting busy!

I’ve not got to figure out what to do for the next new merch item after the mugs, which will be, I think, pretty sure, full sized wall posters; and I’m afraid, like I mentioned, I’m going to have to create new Patron tiers for that. Also, I need to start thinking about the next mini art print! Also, also, I need to figure out when to swap those designs so that people who want it, get it, but also people how got it, get the next one without waiting too long for me to get it set up. It’s a conundrum! But, we’ll get it sorted together as this experiment is still new to us all, and I’m finding out new things about it each time I set something up.

But, yeah! Huzzah!

In other news, it’s almost warm enough to keep my windows open 24/7! Also, I recently paid a deposit on a future install date, to be determined, on 1 Gbps fiber service to my house, the library World Headquarters! Whee! I’m really trying not to jinx it by talking about it, but I’m pretty excited for this to happen. Whenever it actually happens. Soon? I hope!

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

• “Photographer Creates His Own 78-Card Tarot Deck Inspired by His Sleep Paralysis [Interview].”—”The Somnia Tarot is now on display at the Haven Gallery in Northport, New York, until March 21, 2021. In addition to the exhibition, Bruno has fashioned his photographs into his own deck of cards that will be available for pre-order soon.”
• Agenda Thelêmica – Anno V:vii—”Esta é a sua agenda para o Anno Thelêmico de V:vii, que corresponde ao período de 21 de março de 2021 e.V. a 20 de março de 2022 e.V. Aqui você vai encontrar não apenas um espaço para organizar seus compromissos ou manter o seu Diário Mágicko mas também as Festividades Thelêmicas conforme colocadas no Capítulo II do Liber AL vel Legis – O Livro da Lei, além de outras datas especiais do calendário pagão, horários de nascente e poente, fases da Lua e outras informações astronômicas.” (This is your schedule for the Thelemic Anno V:vii, which corresponds to the period from March 21, 2021 ev to March 20, 2022 ev Here you will find not only a space to organize your appointments or keep your Magical Diary but also the Thelemic Festivities as placed in Chapter II of the Liber AL vel Legis – The Book of the Law, in addition to other special dates of the pagan calendar, sunrise and sunset times, phases of the Moon and other astronomical information.)
• 5 Ways to Live Like A Monk in the World. Here are five tenets of Benedictine monasticism that you can cultivate in your life.”—”1. Cultivate Silence. 2. Be Faithful to Daily Prayer. 3. Form Authentic Community. 4. Make time for Lectio Divina. 5. Practice Humility.”
• “Folklore and etymology: imps and elves (or COVID-19 and backpain).”
• “The Goddess of ‘Lord of the Rings’.”—”Judging from the trilogy alone, there’s one god in Middle-earth, and her name is Elbereth.”
• “The Lives of saints are full of references to demons that haunted the out-of-doors […] Demons lurked in deserted places, kept watch at the crossing of rivers and torrents, and were particularly numerous underground.”—Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome quoted at Be Careful Outside, and Watch Where You Dig.
• “How Leonora Carrington Used Tarot to Reach Self-Enlightenment.” Excerpt from The Tarot of Leonora Carrington [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq, introduced by Gabriel Weisz Carrington—”An oracular Surrealism: the debut presentation of Leonora Carrington’s recently discovered tarot deck” “The Tarot of Leonora Carrington is the first book dedicated to this important aspect of the artist’s work. It includes a full-size facsimile of her newly discovered Major Arcana; an introduction from her son, Gabriel Weisz Carrington; and a richly illustrated essay from Tere Arcq and Susan Aberth that offers new insights ­—­­­ exploring the significance of tarot imagery within Carrington’s wider work, her many inspirations and mysterious occult sources.”
• “Fernanda Melchor on the Complicities of Fairy Tales and Femicide.”
• “What Happens When a Publisher Becomes a Megapublisher? The merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has the potential to touch every part of the industry, including how much authors get paid and how bookstores are run.”
• “It was a clear reminder that free information was something not to be countenanced. I do remember thinking that any German soldier who was intellectually alive could not have done that job.”—Bob Le Sueur, Growing Up Fast: An Ordinary Man’s Extraordinary Life in Occupied Jersey, quoted at Removing Problematic Literature
• “Engineers place molecule-scale devices in precise orientation.”
• “Juno Just Saw a Spacerock Crash Into Jupiter.”
• “If Dark Matter is Made of Sterile Neutrinos, a new Survey has Narrowed Down What to Look for.”
• “Dark Energy Camera Captures Messier 83 in Glorious Detail.”
• “A New Technique to Find Cold Gas Streams That Might Make up the Missing (Normal) Matter in the Universe.”
• “Superpowerful ‘oscillon’ particles could have dominated the infant universe, then vanished.”
• From the I Want To Go To There dept: “Potentially habitable exoplanet candidate spotted around Alpha Centauri A in Earth’s backyard.”
• “Human eye beats machine in archaeological color identification test.”
• “Fossil mimics may be more common in ancient rocks than actual fossils.”
• “A Surprising Cycle: Researchers Discover an Immense Hydrocarbon Cycle in the World’s Ocean.”
• “Plasma Thruster Could Dramatically Cut Down Flight Times to the Outer Solar System.”
• “Outer space is a treasure chest of gemstones.”
• “Tintern ‘secret’ medieval tunnel system found by accident. A ‘secret’ medieval tunnel system has been discovered by electrical technicians in south Wales.”
• “Anglo-Saxon ‘island’ unearthed in Lincolnshire field.”
• “Cern: scientists discover four new particles – here’s why they matter.”
• “‘Gravity portals’ could morph dark matter into ordinary matter, astrophysicists propose.”
• “Scientists find source of dangerous, high energy solar particles that could threaten Earth.”
• “A million years into the future: why you need a dose of very deep thinking.”
• “MIT Math Students Continue Aristotle’s Tetrahedra Tiling.”
• “Horse Remains Reveal New Insights Into How Native Peoples Raised Horses.”
• “120000-Year-Old Cattle Bone Carvings May Be World's Oldest Surviving Symbols.”
• Watch “When We First Talked.”—”The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s taken several million years to get to this moment where we can tell you about how it took several million years for us to get here.”
• “How the ‘Noise’ in Our Brain Influences Our Behavior.” Also “Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries.”
• “Neuroscience shows how interconnected we are – even in a time of isolation.”
• “We Hate You Now. The Hardest Problem of The Aftertimes.”—”If people were doing those things, we’d be fine. But we’re not fine, are we?”
• “‘When will it end?’: How a changing virus is reshaping scientists’ views on COVID-19.”—”They now believe that SARS-CoV-2 will not only remain with us as an endemic virus, continuing to circulate in communities, but will likely cause a significant burden of illness and death for years to come. As a result, the scientists said, people could expect to continue to take measures such as routine mask-wearing and avoiding crowded places during COVID-19 surges, especially for people at high risk.”
• “Don’t Cross this Virtual Picket Line. Simple weeklong Boycott of Amazon starts Sunday March 7th.”
• “GPT-3: We’re at the very beginning of a new app ecosystem.”
• “New AI ‘Ramanujan Machine’ uncovers hidden patterns in numbers.”
• From the Giger dept: “Collective worm and robot ‘blobs’ protect individuals, swarm together.”
• “New Age communities are driving QAnon conspiracies in Brazil. These spiritual, pseudoscientific groups are domesticating QAnon narratives for non-American audiences.”
• “Why some New Age influencers believe Trump is a ‘lightworker’. The New Age philosophy-Trump connection has concerning parallels to the role mysticism played in Nazi Germany.”
• “A Better Way to Think About Conspiracies. People will always be interested in conspiracy theories. They need a tool kit for discriminating among different fringe ideas.”
• “Fact check: Pence echoes Trump’s Big Lie in dishonest op-ed on election rules.”
• “I Read Mike Pence’s Blueprint for Permanent Authoritarian Rule.”
• “Originalism’s Original Sin. The legal philosophy cloaks its theocratic impulses in secular garb.”
• “‘Woke’ American Ideas Are a Threat, French Leaders Say.”
• “There’s a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise. When Michaeleen Doucleff met parents from around the world, she encountered millennia-old methods of raising good kids that made American parenting seem bizarre and ineffective.”
• “Three Life Lessons From a Dying Man. None of them involve money.”
• From the But What About Second Breakfast? dept: “There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a Day. Your weird pandemic eating habits are probably fine.”
• “The Value of Truth. At a time of anxiety about fake news and conspiracy theories, philosophy can contribute to our most urgent cultural and political questions about how we come to believe what we think we know.”
• “Sex, scandal and high society in Chips Channon’s uncensored diaries. Channon was a snobbish, sexually voracious Tory who revered Hitler – and a new edition of his journals shines a startling light on interwar Britain.”
• “Paul Valéry and the Mechanisms of Modern Tyranny. All modern forms of government presume an objectification of their citizens.”
• “Forgotten 20th-Century Photography Studio Found in New York Attic.” Also “A Lawyer Cracked a Hidden Room in His Office and Found a Cache of Historic Photography, Including a Famed Portrait of Susan B. Anthony.”
• “Rome’s Response to the Spread of Christianity.”
• “How ancient astronomy mixed science with mythology.”
• “Did the Amazon female warriors from Greek mythology really exist?”
• “Spike Lee to Produce Netflix’s ‘Gordon Hemingway & The Realm of Cthulhu,’ Directed by Stefon Bristol.”
• “Hogwarts Legacy developer leaves after controversy over reactionary YouTube videosWarner Bros. was apparently aware of the channel.”
• 2017’s indie adventure puzzler The Franz Kafka Videogame at the Humble Store. “The Franz Kafka Videogame is an original puzzle/adventure game inspired by the writings of Franz Kafka. The protagonist named K. gets a sudden offer of employment. And this event changes his life, forcing him to make a distant voyage. To his surprise, the world beyond his homeland appears to be not as normal as he would think. Together with K. you will experience an atmosphere of absurdity, surrealism, and total uncertainty.” “No inventory. No Boss battles. No RPG features. Only Absurdity and Surrealism.”
• “VITRIOL – A narrative word puzzle game. Rearrange a mosaic of letters. Journey into a bureaucratic nightmare. Find hidden answers within the words. Escape between the lines. VITRIOL is coming to iOS soon.”
• Watch Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle’s “Anhedonia“, official video.
• Watch “Bewitched: It was Gay All Along?“—”The sitcom Bewitched is one of the queerest shows I’ve ever seen — which is a little strange, since it’s about a straight couple. Just a few years later, Soap had gay characters; Mary Hartman Mary Hartman had a gay couple; MASH had a gay coming-out episode. Bewitched never had any of that. And yet … it somehow feels more queer than any of those other shows. So, why is that? Well, that’s what I want to show you.”
• Watch “Living with the Dark Winters in Sweden | Midnight sun & Polar night“—”Dark winters with no sunlight for many weeks, and bright summers with sunlight 24 hours/day. How is it to live with the extreme light conditions that countries in the Northern hemisphere have? In this video I want to share my own personal experience and perspective of living with the seasons in the North of Sweden, and take you on a journey to the darkest and brightest times of the year, and share the beauty and the challenges that comes with them. ”

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