An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 28, 2021

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

• Sex Magicians: The Lives and Spiritual Practices of Paschal Beverly Randolph, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, Marjorie Cameron, Anton LaVey, and Others [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Michael William West, foreword by Hannah Haddix—”An in-depth look at the lives and occult practices of 12 influential practitioners of sex magic from the 19th century to the present day.” “Offering a fascinating introduction to the practice of sex magic in the Western esoteric tradition, Michael William West explores the lives and practices of 12 influential sex magicians: Paschal Beverly Randolph, Ida Craddock, Aleister Crowley, Maria de Naglowska, Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola, Franz Bardon, Jack Parsons, William S. Burroughs, Marjorie Cameron, Anton LaVey, and Genesis P-Orridge.”
• New edition of Inner Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penzak. Tweet—”In this new edition, with about 20,000 additional words of new material.” Currently, all the normal links are showing the new cover but appear to be still the old edition, so the only link is that direct one atm.
• “The Illuminati Files, Part Two: A Truly Modern Conspiracy by Brenton Clutterbuck.”
• Watch “The Rites of Mu. Conceived, Controlled and Constructed by The KLF. A film by Bill Butt.” Solid State Logik 2 [Amazon, Spotify, Apple]
• Dave Lombardo and Justin Pearson’s New Industrial Band Satanic Planet Announces Self-Titled Debut Album for May 2021 Release and Share Video for ‘Baphomet’.”—”[Lucien] Greaves summarizes it nicely saying, ‘Goat headed, human bodied, and three-horned, the Baphomet is an icon symbolizing the reconciliation of opposites; dueling binaries combined and transcending into something greater than the sum of their parts. The track we have titled Baphomet blends the electronic with the medieval, the drone with the scream, the raucous with the orchestral. These conflicting elements, we hope, blend to create Easy Listening for the Apocalypse.'” Watch Satanic Planet’s Baphomet official video. “SATANIC PLANET is the creation of Lucien Greaves (The Satanic Temple co-founder and spokesperson), Luke Henshaw (Planet B, Sonido de la Frontera), Dave Lombardo (Slayer, The Misfits, Mr. Bungle, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross), and Justin Pearson (The Locust, Dead Cross, Swing Kids, Deaf Club).” Full self-titled debut album due May 28. [Label, Apple], Spotify, Bandcamp]
• “The beauty of the ampersand and other keyboard symbols. Claire Cock-Starkey’s guide to glyphs and punctuation marks is, by turns, scholarly, poetic, philosophical and funny.” About Hyphens and Hashtags: The Stories Behind the Symbols on our Keyboards [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Claire Cock-Starkey, due April—”In our digital world, we owe much of our ability to communicate to the punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and other glyphs that hover on the edges of our keyboard. Without these symbols, it would be impossible to convey meaning–our words would run in endless unbroken lines of letters and numbers. These marks, which have their origins in the earliest written communications, have evolved over many hundreds of years.Hyphens & Hashtags presents the histories of these stalwart symbols, revealing the long road many have taken on their way to general usage. In the age of digital communication, some symbols have gained additional meanings. The obscure pound sign has transformed into the hashtag, an essential component of social media. The colon now serves double duty as the eyes of the smiley-face emoticon. Alongside the historical roots of these tools, this book also considers ever-evolving modern usage and uncovers those symbols which have now fallen out of fashion. Hyphens & Hashtags casts a well-deserved spotlight on these deceptively simple marks, whose handy knack for conveying meaning in simple shorthand can marshal our sentences, clarify a calculation, or add some much-needed emotion to our online interactions.”
• Writing Myself Back Into My Body and Into the World. We have the right to imagine what is possible beyond the systems that try to destroy us. Black and queer writers have long imagined worlds beyond this one.”
• “On making work that matters. Poet Ada Limón on the importance of taking breaks from writing, dealing with confounding edits, how leaving the city helped make her work stronger, and finding real joy in what you do.”
• “Women are harmed every day by invisible men. When men harm women, we obscure their role. Instead, we blame women for the injustice that happens to them.”
• “Amanda Gorman’s Poetry United Critics. It’s Dividing Translators. Should a white writer translate a Black poet’s work? A debate in Europe has exposed the lack of diversity in the world of literary translation.”
• “Zodiak Kids Secures Co-Development Deal for Detective Series. Zodiak Kids Studios, part of Banijay, today announces it has secured a co-development deal with Asner Productions to develop a live action TV series for 8 – 12 olds, based on the prize-winning book series, The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.” Also “Zodiak Kids in Co-Development Deal for Detective Series.” Also “Zodiak Kids, Asner sign co-development deal. The two production companies are working on a live-action TV series based on The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency books.” About The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency Series by Jordan Stratford.
• Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Cal Flyn due June 1, 2021—”A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence.” “Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an “island” of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists.”
• “The Spy Who Came in From The Carrel“—”It was no coincidence that, when war broke out and Mata Hari types were needed, so many were to be found walking around libraries.” “The keeping of records remains itself a kind of warfare. The keepers, whether they wish so or not, cannot be neutral.” About Kathy Peiss’s Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] and Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher].
• “Life Studies. Searching for Hardwick and Lowell in Maine.” More about The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
• “The Apocalyptic New Campus Novel. In Christine Smallwood’s story of scholarly precarity, what the academy wastes above all is human potential.” About The Life of the Mind: A Novel [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Christine Smallwood.
• “Fanon Can’t Save You Now.” About Alienation and Freedom [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Frantz Fanon, edited by Robert J C Young & Jean Khalfa, translated by Steven Corcoran—”Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon’s work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day. Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output – which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon’s entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world.”
• “The tragedy of Vincent van Gogh’s youngest sister Willemien—a feminist who spent 38 years in an asylum. New book explores the extraordinary story of the three Van Gogh sisters.” About The Van Gogh Sisters [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Willem-Jan Verlinden, due April—”This biography of Vincent van Gogh’s sisters tells the fascinating story of the lives of these women whose history has largely been neglected.”
• “Warrior Artist.” About Vincent’s Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Mariella Guzzoni—”A gorgeously illustrated biography that will appeal to any booklover, Vincent’s Books takes us on a fresh, fascinating journey through the pages of a beloved artist’s life. Explore Van Gogh’s musings on his favorite writers, including Thomas à Kempis, Charles Blanc, Honoré de Balzac, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Erckmann-Chatrian, Homer, Victor Hugo, Pierre Loti, Jules Michelet, William Shakespeare, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Émile Zola.”
• “Frantumaglia. Elena Ferrante’s Blurred Lines.”
• “The Quest to Tell Science from Pseudoscience. Philosopher Karl Popper famously asked how to tell the two apart. His answer—falsifiability—hasn’t aged well, but the effort lives on.” Adapted from On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Michael D Gordin, due April—”Everyone has heard of the term “pseudoscience”, typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella– astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields “pseudo” is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements–both of which display allegations of “pseudoscience” on all sides– there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud?”
• “English Translation of Finland’s Epic Poem, The Kalevala (1898).”—”This is how the world begins in the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic poem, first published in the nineteenth century. Later in the text, there will be talking salmon, forest demons, wolves that stalk the deadlands, incest, suicide, and a mysterious artefact called the Sampo, forged by a legendary blacksmith, which acts like an anchor for the universe.”
• “Audre Lorde Broke the Silence. In her poems and “The Cancer Journals,” Lorde fought to name her experience.” About The Cancer Journals [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] 
by Audre Lorde, foreword by Tracy K Smith—”Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.” And about The Selected Works of Audre Lorde [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] 
edited and introduced by Roxane Gay—”A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s ‘intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible’ (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.”
• “What Would You Do If The Internet Went Away?” About Off: The Day the Internet Died. A Bedtime Fantasy [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Chris Colin, illustrated by Rinee Shah—”One day all the screens went dark–and we couldn’t even post about it.”
• Doctor Strange: The Book of the Vishanti: A Magical Exploration of the Marvel Universe [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher], due November—”An immersive in-world guide to all things magical in the Marvel Universe.” “One of the most formidable and powerful items in the Marvel Universe, the sacred Book of the Vishanti contains an infinite number of potent spells, incantations, and lore from fantastic realms. Created thousands of years ago in the ancient city of Babylon to combat demons and those who wield dark magic, this tome has been passed down by the greatest sorcerers of the ages, each adding their own discoveries into its ever-expanding pages. Now in the possession of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme and Earth’s foremost protector against mystical threats, the Book of the Vishanti acts as his first line of defense. The greatest source of magical knowledge in our dimension, the Book of the Vishanti is the ultimate collection of spells, history, and personal accounts recorded by practitioners over centuries, including notes from Doctor Strange himself. Featuring detailed inscriptions, mind-bending illustrations, and everything you need to know about the heroes, villains, artifacts, creatures, and worlds that make up the mystical and supernatural side of the Multiverse, this book is a must-have for all Marvel fans.”
• “Dear Amazon: Why can’t we sell our ebook on your platform?” About Bird Girl [Publisher] by Avital Balwit—”In a city running on digital currency and gig economies, scooter-tracker Sasha makes ends meet before a routine job bears unexpected consequences. Between the automated phone systems, food trucks, and bustling coffeeshops, Sasha’s world is frighteningly not all that different from our own. But with subtle nods to an omnipresent strongman and truthful prose, Avital Balwit constructs a dystopian narrative for a digitized present.” “When the protagonist of Bird Girl, whose job it is to find and salvage lost or abandoned scooters, finds a crashed rider along with her errant scooter, her life quickly proves the point of real-world privacy activists: that privacy is a worthy goal even if you think you have nothing to hide. Upon realizing that the fallen rider is a ‘masker,’ or someone who synthetically alters her features to outsmart facial recognition systems, the protagonist makes a fateful decision, which sets her on course to become a persona non grata in a highly connected society, where a single misstep can lead to the loss of income and personhood—and even potentially the loss of life.”
• “Discover The Music Jane Austen Loved.”
• “At Çatal Hüyük it is starkly, and even brutally, explicit. The divine reality which dominated the minds of these people and which they worshipped in their small shrines was—the very fact of life and death; these felt as the deeds of ruthless and unaccountable powers; death pictured in the shape of enormous vultures over headless (that is, dead) human bodies; opposing them, the goddess appears in one, ever-recurring shape, namely, in the act of giving birth.” “There is not really any thought of vis vitalis, but breasts and beak; no ‘concept of fertility’, but the act and fact of birth; no ‘symbol of death’, but horrid vultures feeding on bodies. The miracle of life, unending with eruption and destruction, stands out as the content and boundary of this religion.”—Günther Zuntz (1902-1992), Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia quoted at The Unity of Life and Death.
• “The Large Hadron Collider May Have Unveiled Strange New Physics. Has a fifth fundamental force been unveiled?”
• “Bill Gates Is Thinking About Dimming the Sun. The billionaire is backing a study of the controversial technology called solar geoengineering.”
• “Something Huge and Invisible Is Making Nearby Stars Vanish, Scientists Propose. Stars that have gone missing from the Hyades cluster may have been torn away by a dark matter monster with the mass of 10 million Suns.” Tweet—”Not now, Nyarlathotep!”
• From the Ph’nglui mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! dept: “Octopus research yields insight into the evolution of sleep.”
• From the Lolth dept: “Archaeologists identify 3,200-year-old temple mural of spider god in Peru. Mural discovered last year is thought to depict a zoomorphic, knife-wielding spider god associated with rain and fertility.”
• “The Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal: The 2700-year-old ‘fake news’. A single piece of jewellery reveals the true meaning of Assyrian reliefs from the 7th-Century BC. Kelly Grovier explores how images depicting a staged lion hunt were used to proclaim a king’s greatness.”—”At first glance, the piece of jewellery appears to be little more than a deceptively simple solar symbol blossoming with barbed flares, an ornament accenting the king’s incontestable brilliance. Look closer, and the beaming petals that shoot pointedly from the earring’s centre echoes not just the sharpened arrowheads on which the king’s power is conditioned but also the claws and teeth that threaten to overwhelm him. The earring is a kind of compound emblem, one that absorbs into itself the eternity of the refulgent sun, the invincibility of the king, and the formidableness of the forces that he and he alone is powerful enough to keep at bay.” “The hunter and hunted define each other; they are coeternal cogs in the endless engine of existence. To exalt the king, the lion too must be apotheosised. However brutal the beastly battle between them, life itself relies on the struggle. The reliefs are making it clear that the king and the lion are one.”
• “African elephant recognised as two separate species – both endangered.”
• “Researchers find the secret of the bunny hop: it’s all in the genes. Scientists pinpoint gene necessary for animals to adopt a typical gait by studying breed of rabbit that can’t hop.”
• “What it will take for humans to colonize the Moon and Mars.”
• “NASA helicopter took a piece of the Wright brothers’ plane to Mars. NASA is gearing up for a dramatic Mars test flight of Ingenuity as soon as April 8.”
• “Historic Image Of Black Hole In Polarized Light From Event Horizon Telescope.”
• “Former CDC chief says ‘most likely” cause of coronavirus is that it “escaped” from a lab.”—”Editor’s note: This story has been updated to more clearly show that no credible scientist believes the novel coronavirus was man-made and that investigations are ongoing into how it was first transmitted to humans. The headline has been updated.”
• “A Year in Quarantine With the Criterion Channel.”
• “Apple and Facebook’s Fight Isn’t Actually About Privacy or Tracking.”—”That’s what the real fight is over – transparency.”
• “Google offered a professor $60,000, but he turned it down. Here’s why.”
• “What is an NFT, and why does John Cleese want to sell you his for $69.3 million? Big name artists like Kings of Leon, Boy George and Grimes are all betting on the future of non-fungible tokens.”
• “Pussy Riot shows the cypherpunk power of feminist NFTs.”
• “Your Million-Dollar NFT Can Break Tomorrow if You’re Not Careful. Without maintenance, an NFT’s art could disappear.”
• “NFTs are a dangerous trap.”—”Like most traps, they’re mysterious and then appealing and then it’s too late.”
• “What Does It Mean to Buy a Gif?”
• “Neuralink Co-Founder Has an Idea for a New Religion Based on Drugs. It might already exist.”
• “She Left QAnon. Now She Doesn’t Know What To Believe. A millennial stay-at-home mom from South Carolina, a gay couple from Texas, and a social worker in New York believed in QAnon. Now that Biden is president, they’re not sure where to go from here.”
• “Critical Disinformation Studies.”—”To demonstrate how these principles play out in practice, we created a Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus as a provocation to disinformation researchers to rethink many of the assumptions of our nascent field. While the syllabus is fully-functional as is—it could be implemented in its current form for a graduate level seminar—it is also an essay in syllabus form. We draw from a very broad range of scholarship, much which falls outside of conventional studies of “disinformation,” to expand our understanding of what “counts” as disinformation.”
• From the Synchronized Swimming / Red October on Ice dept: Three Russian Ballistic Missile Submarines Just Surfaced Through The Arctic Ice Together. The unprecedented exercise served as a bold statement of Russia’s presence and capabilities in the increasingly tense Arctic region.”
• “Multiple Destroyers Were Swarmed By Mysterious ‘Drones’ Off California Over Numerous Nights. The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the Navy.”
• “Stalin statue site reveals chilling remains of Prague labour camp. Archaeologists have discovered foundations of the previously unknown structure in the city’s Letná park.”
• “How Postwar Germany’s Witchcraft Trials Can Help Us Understand Qanon and Other Conspiracy Theories.”
• “What Passover Taught Me About Being Black.”—”Ultimately, from Passover I learned that every people should exercise the human right to tell their sacred story on their own terms, whether the rest of the world likes it or not. ”
• “Alabama’s Yoga Ban Is Part of the Christian Right’s War on Pluralism.”—”But this story speaks to something larger than a ban on yoga. It’s a manifestation of how the agenda of the religious right works, and their weaponization of religious freedom—perhaps our most foundational freedom—in service of a conservative Christian agenda.”
• “Islands in the Stream. Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.” You know, maybe also see my own 2004 research paper Concentration, Consolidation and Culture – the dialectic over extracting value from social resources in a political economy for more.
• “She Wants to Kill the Girl Boss. Ashley Sumner, the C.E.O. of Quilt, announced she was striking gender from her bio. The LinkedIn crowd went wild.”
• “Kansas City newspaper sends a warning with a blank front page.”—”It was not a printing error, they assured confused readers who called and emailed their newsroom. Like many other local newsrooms, the News has lost advertising revenue at an unprecedented rate during the coronavirus pandemic. So the six-member staff kept its front page empty, a warning sign to the community about what might come if it ceased publication. ‘That’s the message we wanted to send: What happens if we’re gone?’ publisher and co-owner Michael Bushnell said. ‘If we print a blank front page with no news, people are going to see what it’s like if we’re gone.'”
• “The Mess at Medium. 14 current and former employees explain what went wrong.”
• “The Rise of Therapy-Speak. How a language got off the couch and into the world.”
• “The truth about lying. You can’t spot a liar just by looking — but psychologists are zeroing in on methods that might actually work.”
• “The Psychology of the Silent Treatment. Social ostracism has been a common punishment for millennia. But freezing someone out harms both the victim and the perpetrator.”
• “Finding Healing in Gospel Music.”
• Tweet—”I was unaware of the Medieval trend of depicting Aristotle being ridden and whipped by a dominatrix named Phyllis to show the power of female sexuality over male intellect. Having just finished a comp exam where I was subjected to too much Aristotle, I’m enjoying these.” Also thread—”All right, porn industry, if one of you doesn’t make an ARISTOTLE: PONYBOY femdom series you are falling down on the job.”
• “A traveling Black women’s library finds a home. OlaRonke Akinmowo launched the Free Black Women’s Library on a Brooklyn, New York, stoop years ago. Now, the social art project is getting a permanent home.”
• “Superman and the American Way.”—”Karl E.H. Seigfried examines DC Comics’ Superman as an American myth – one that can be told in many ways.”
• “A Shakespearean parody of the upcoming Shakespearean parody of The Avengers.”
• “Netflix’s The Irregulars is a satisfying Victorian version of The X-Files. And it’s a Sherlock Holmes show that works without Sherlock Holmes.”
• “Isaiah Bradley’s story is one of the saddest Marvel has ever told. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier brings up a chapter in Captain America and American history.”
• “What director’s cuts accomplished, according to the directors who recut them. The released versions were only the beginning.”
• Watch “Why I Made… Murder Among The Mormons“—”We sat down with the Directors and Executive Producer of the eye-opening new documentary series, Murder Among The Mormons, to discuss how they made the craziest story you’d never heard into a Netflix special.”
• Tweet—”See you all at the next climate strike:)”
• Watch “Virtual Rome: What Did Ancient Rome Look Like?”
• Watch “The NEW Crisis in Cosmology“—”I have good news and bad news. Bad news first: two years ago we reported on the Crisis in Cosmology. Since then, it’s only gotten worse. And actually, the good news is also that the crisis in cosmology has actually gotten worse, which means we may be onto something!”
• “Annie’s Mac and Cheese is based in the Bay Area, but Annie is not. Here’s her story.”
• From the And No Other Shall Say Nay dept: “Hidden under the nostalgia, Disney Plus’ new Mighty Ducks series has a sharp message. It’s a feel-good story that also critiques modern kids’ sports.”—”Game Changers offers a blistering, hilarious critique of present-day youth sports, and the way they promise gullible, grandiose parents that if they pay for their kid’s off-season training, hire a fitness guru and a psychologist, and buy the best equipment, their 12-year-old can not only win a college scholarship, but someday go pro. This is, of course, a pipe dream, and the youth sports industrial complex might as well be a Ponzi scheme. Game Changers shows how the careerist approach to a simple kid’s game ultimately harms the children who are actually playing.”
• “Bus drivers bring adaptation of Alien to London’s West End in Alien on Stage. SXSW documentary captures ordinary people daring something truly extraordinary.”
• “Can you make a comedy set during COVID-19? Recovery takes the idea for a drive. Director: “I want people thinking it’s a Marvel movie. And that Timothee Chalamet is in it.'” Watch Recovery, official trailer—”Two directionless sisters brave a cross-country road trip to rescue their grandmother from a COVID outbreak at her nursing home.”

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