An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 24, 2021

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

• “Creation Stories: Who Plays Who in the Biopic of Creation Records Founder, Alan McGee? Pop, politics and paedophiles meet in this raucous rock film from Danny Boyle and Irvine Welsh.”—”Aleister Crowley, played by Steven Berkoff. Pulling out the big guns for one of McGee’s drug-induced hallucinations, the acclaimed actor and playwright Steven Berkoff became the British mystical occultist, as McGee credits him as a big influence. Fun fact: this is the second time in screen history that Berkoff has played Crowley, as he also appeared as him in a 2002 TV series called Masters of Darkness. Cosmic.”
• “The bizarre story of the University of Reading building that was declared a centre of devil worship. A curious urban myth surrounds Foxhill House.”—”Rumours were that it was visited by a notorious occultist by the name of Aleister Crowley.”
• I still hear people trot this one out, but I hadn’t heard the origin of it tracked down before. “Fact check: 15-year-old conspiracy theory about Barbara Bush originally an April Fool’s joke.”—”On April 1, 2006, a blogger who identifies himself as Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire.com posted the first article to espouse this false theory. His article, transparent about its lack of solid evidence and mostly based on “resemblance” between Crowley and Bush, suggested that Pauline Pierce, Barbara Bush’s mother and Marvin Pierce’s wife, had a secret affair with Crowley during a trip to France. In an email interview with USA TODAY, Cannon wrote that the article was an April Fool’s joke. He says he created the theory as a litmus test for conspiracy theory and “truth seeking” groups. “I wanted to test whether anyone would take the first, obvious step of contacting me and asking ‘Is this real?'” he said.”
• From the Symbolism dept: “Barnhart Brothers & Spindler / Barnharts stock cut catalogue.”
• The Four Elements of the Wise: Working with the Magickal Powers of Earth, Air, Water, Fire [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Ivo Dominguez, Jr., foreword Courtney Weber, due June 2021—”An in-depth exploration of the elements, their lore, history, correspondences, and use in spellwork and ritual. The four elements are the pillars that uphold the manifest world and anchor spirit to matter. They are associated with a wide range of spiritual entities, from small elementals to divine beings. This book explores the consciousness of the elements, which provides a system of understanding that supports most of the magic of the West and paganism. The use of the elements in a wide range of systems and practices will be examined. Much has been written about the four elements already; this book offers new teachings for newcomers and long-time practitioners alike. Each of the four elements is explored in depth, including how they interact and change as they rise on the planes. Practical applications for working with the elements are also woven throughout the book. The book concludes with the union of the elements that is more than just becoming Spirit, but the completion of their Great Work.”
• “‘It Seems That I Know How the Universe Originated’. The theoretical physicist Andrei Linde may have the world’s most expansive conception of what infinity looks like.” Excerpt from 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.”
• “Poetic Language and the Science of Rediscovery in One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Excerpt from Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Angus Fletcher—”A brilliant examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, that shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs–rivaling any scientific inventions–and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.”
• “The Sexual Translator. ‘I want to borrow your embodiment.'” By Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Cheerful Scapegoat: Fables [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”Wayne Koestenbaum’s first book of short fiction: a collection of whimsical, surreal, baroque, ribald, and heartbreaking fables.”
• “Major SciFi Discovery Hiding in Plain Sight at the Internet Archive“—”Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word “robot” was first used in 1920—a full three years earlier than originally thought.”
• “How Crying on TikTok Sells Books. ‘BookTok’ videos are starting to influence publishers and best-seller lists, and the verklempt readers behind them are just as surprised as everyone else.”
• “Language is speaking. It is my wish to convert as many colleagues and students as possible away from conceiving of language as a matter to be grasped with the eye fixed on letters and through abstract imagination, to assimilating it by speaking and hearing. In this way, and particularly by memorizing many impressive quotations, they will be imbued, so to speak, with the language.”—Günther Zuntz (1902-1992), Greek: A Course in Classical and Post-Classical Greek Grammar from Original Texts, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Vol. I (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), p. 20 quoted at Language Is Speaking.
• “It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.52 [Internet Archive], tr. George Long (London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 205 quoted at No Opinion.
• “Did a scholar really find an early copy of the Ten Commandments? Outside experts are skeptical.”
• “Nanotech Cannabis is Here, and It’s Amazing.”
• “Dark energy could be warping light from the dawn of time.”
• “The next act for messenger RNA could be bigger than covid vaccines.”
• “Hubble Shows Torrential Outflows from Infant Stars May Not Stop Them from Growing.”
• “Want to Improve Your Health? A New Study Says Head into Nature and Absorb the Sounds.”
• “New basalt type discovered beneath the ocean. A new type of rock created during large and exceptionally hot volcanic eruptions has been discovered beneath the Pacific Ocean.”
• “From the Reading Minds with Ultrasound: A Less-Invasive Technique to Decode the Brain’s Intentions. What is happening in your brain as you are scrolling through this page? In other words, which areas of your brain are active, which neurons are talking to which others, and what signals are they sending to your muscles?”
• “Don’t let the small stuff get you down. A new study led by University of Miami psychologists suggests that the longer negativity lingers in your brain, the unhappier you may be.”
• “Big breakthrough for ‘massless’ energy storage. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than all previous versions. It contains carbon fibre that serves simultaneously as an electrode, conductor, and load-bearing material. Their latest research breakthrough paves the way for essentially ’massless’ energy storage in vehicles and other technology.”
• “UCSF Study Finds Evidence of 55 Chemicals Never Before Reported in People.”
• Leading Blue Energy Revolution: CUHK Faculty of Engineering Develops Water-Tube-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Efficient Ocean Wave Energy Harvesting.”
• “Changing the Silkworm’s Diet to Spin Stronger Silk.”—”Tohoku University researchers have produced cellulose nanofiber (CNF) synthesized silk naturally through a simple tweak to silkworms’ diet. Mixing CNF with commercially available food and feeding the silkworms resulted in a stronger and more tensile silk.”
• “Knitting roads. Empa scientists are investigating how roads could be reinforced with simple means and recycled easily after use. Their tools are a robot and a few meters of string.”
• “Asteroid Dust Found in Crater Closes Case of Dinosaur Extinction.”
• “Could a common barnacle help find missing persons lost at sea? UNSW marine scientists have used a barnacle to develop two equations that can help estimate when and where a local boat may have sunk.”
• “Light-emitting tattoo engineered for the first time. Scientists at UCL and the IIT –Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) have created a temporary tattoo with light-emitting technology used in TV and smartphone screens, paving the way for a new type of “smart tattoo” with a range of potential uses.”
• “Intriguing new result from the LHCb experiment at CERN. The LHCb results strengthen hints of a violation of lepton flavour universality.”
• “Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Feeds on Smaller Storms. The massive storm near the gas giant’s equator has been shrinking, but collisions with a series of anticyclones are likely only surface deep.”
• Watch “Iceland: Up close drone footage of volcanic eruption. A drone operator cycled through snow for seven kilometres to capture spectacular images as the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano spewed lava.”
• “NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prepares for First Flight.”
• “New Technology ‘Retrains’ Cells To Repair Damaged Brain Tissue In Mice After Stroke.”
• Giant fossil’s ‘bird-brain’. The largest flightless bird ever to live weighed in up to 600kg and had a whopping head about half a metre long – but its brain was squeezed for space. Dromornis stirtoni, the largest of the ‘mihirungs’ (an Aboriginal word for ‘giant bird’), stood up to 3m and had a cranium wider and higher than it was long due to a powerful big beak, leading Australian palaeontologists to look inside its brain space to see how it worked.”
• “‘Zombie’ genes? Research shows some genes come to life in the brain after death.”—”In the hours after we die, certain cells in the human brain are still active. Some cells even increase their activity and grow to gargantuan proportions, according to new research from the University of Illinois Chicago.”
• “A Year in Masks.”—”In the past year the face covering became a part of most outfits and sometimes a statement in itself, as New Yorkers found a way to express themselves even through their concealment.” Quotes James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
• “Evidence supports Covid hearing loss link, say scientists.”
• “Facebook’s Misinformation Addiction.”—”By the time thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol in January, organized in part on Facebook and fueled by the lies about a stolen election that had fanned out across the platform, it was clear from my conversations that the Responsible AI team had failed to make headway against misinformation and hate speech because it had never made those problems its main focus. More important, I realized, if it tried to, it would be set up for failure. The reason is simple. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth.”
• “Demonic Voter Fraud.”
• “The Government Just Admitted It Doesn’t Really Try to Collect Rich People’s Taxes.”
• “Columbia Graduate Arts Students File Lawsuit, Seeking Reimbursement Amid Pandemic.”
• “Pay Attention When They Tell You to Forget.”—”Remember that anti-Black violence has been the central dynamic of US history—and how Black women have struggled with this violence for centuries.”
• “The Tormented Dance of the Colonizer. Peter Beinart, Liberal Zionism and the Battle for Palestine–Plus a Response From Yehezkel Landau.”
• From the Deprogramming dept: “Can Religion Give You PTSD? Meet the ‘exvangelicals’ seeking therapy for religious trauma.”
• “The Stargate Franchise May Be Moving To Disney.”
• “An Esoteric Artist Opts to Make Art, Not Talk About It.”

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