An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for May 5, 2021

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

• Laikens Awen has launched, on May 1, a new video podcast, check out the debut episode: “The LVX Files – S1 : E1 – Frater R.C.“.
• Satan’s Little Doc Box, just released on blu-ray, well, supposedly released at the beginning of this year, but this is the first I’ve heard of it, in Sweden; not yet available elsewhere, afaik. This includes the documentary films Anton LaVey: Into the Devil’s Den by Carl Abrahamsson, An American Satan by Aram Garriga & Hail Satan? by Penny Lane together in one package. The Njuta Films page has trailers for each, in English.
• Music For Satanic Children by Simon Stålenhag, the artist/author of Tales from the Loop and other books.
• “Maker Music Festival. Be a part of the virtual event!” “Musicians, artists and makers who have created interesting and unusual methods of producing music and sound. From modern primitives to high tech wizards. If it’s interesting, fun or entertaining we want it to be a part of this event.” “The festival takes place on May 15th and 16th, 2021.”
• ‘I’m bursting with fiction’: Alan Moore announces five-volume fantasy epic. Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer lands six-figure deal for fantasy quintet Long London and short story collection.”—”Bloomsbury, home to the Harry Potter novels, acquired what it described as two ‘major’ projects from the 67-year-old. The first, Illuminations, is a short story collection which will be published in autumn 2022 and which moves from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the ‘Boltzmann brains’ fashioning the universe. Bloomsbury said it was ‘dazzlingly original and brimming with energy’, promising a series of ‘beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic’.” “The second acquisition is a fantasy quintet titled Long London, which will launch in 2024. The series will move from the ‘shell-shocked and unravelled’ London of 1949 to ‘a version of London just beyond our knowledge’, encompassing murder, magic and madness. Bloomsbury said it ‘promises to be epic and unforgettable, a tour-de-force of magic and history’.”
• “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 2: What To Expect?.”—”Constantine’s efforts to contact Sara with his magic are in vain. He suggests using a book written by Aleister Crowley.”
• Looks like this is a new article on this interactive map, I’ve mentioned back in 2019: “William Shakespeare to Clive Owen – map shows most searched person linked to your town. There are some interesting names on the list.”—”Leamington Spa. Aleister Crowley – was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema in the early 20th century.”
• “‘The Strangest Collection of Weirdos Ever Assembled’: Revisiting the early days of cattle mutilation research” Excerpt from Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO disinformation in the Age of Aquarius [Amazon, Bookshop] 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.”
• Sorrowland: A Novel [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Rivers Solomon—”Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.”
• “How Do You Write a Historical Novel About Under-Documented Lives? Emily Hourican on Researching Her Novel, The Glorious Guinness Girls.” About Emily Hourican’s The Glorious Guinness Girls [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher]—”From London to Ireland during the 1920s, this glorious, gripping, and richly textured story takes us to the heart of the remarkable real-life story of the Guinness Girls–perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia.”
• “Seeking a Counterculture of Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing.” Excerpt from Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Pete Davis—”A profoundly inspiring and transformative argument that purposeful commitment can be a powerful force in our age of restlessness and indecision.”
• “The Violent Haunting That Rattled an English Suburb. Kate Summerscale on Ghost Hunter Nandor Fodor.” Excerpt from The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Kate Summerscale—”With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious.”
• Objectophilia: On the People Who Fall in Love with Inanimate Things. ‘People love objects because they reflect what we value in ourselves.'” About Satellite Love [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Genki Ferguson—”Set in 1999 Japan, Satellite Love is a heartbreaking and beautifully unconventional debut novel about a girl, a boy, and a satellite–and a bittersweet meditation on loneliness, alienation, and what it means to be human.”
• “Natural Alchemy: On the Long History of Community Gardens in Indianapolis. Angela Herrmann Considers Urban Agriculture and Food Production.” Excerpt from The Indianapolis Anthology [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] edited by Norman Minnick—”Is Indy just another Midwestern city to fly over on the way to bigger and better destinations? Or is it, as locals know, a place where different peoples and ideals converge to create a rich cultural center? The Indianapolis Anthology showcases Naptown’s vibrancy and diversity with pieces from journalists, poets, historians, established community voices, and first-time writers. Indianapolis is more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Kurt Vonnegut, Prozac, and Wonder Bread. Here is a taste of what you will find in these pages: lawn chairs in the beds of pick-ups; the magnificent stench of diesel, sweat, and sweetly hissing charcoal; suffragists and entrepreneurs; cement pietàs; sneakers dangling from power lines; dog bakeries and yoga studios; red brick bungalows and war memorials; steakburgers and Mexican seafood; pho and sauerbraten. In other words, you’ll find images from a city that is truly a cross section of today’s America.”
• “All in the Timing: On Publishing a Novel Nine Years After Giving Up on It. Joy Lanzendorfer Considers Ambition, Failure, and Serendipity.” By Joy Lanzendorfer, author of Right Back Where We Started From [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher]—”Right Back Where We Started From is a sweeping, multigenerational work of fiction that explores the lust for ambition that entered into the American consciousness during the Gold Rush and how it affected our nation’s ideas of success, failure, and the pursuit of happiness. It is a meticulously layered saga—at once historically rich, romantic, and suspenseful—about three determined and completely unforgettable women.”
• “She Was Groomed and Gaslit by NXIVM as a Teen. Then She Testified. A woman who spent nearly two years confined to a room talks about how she got involved with NXIVM and her first sexual encounters with Keith Raniere.” Excerpt from Don’t Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Sarah Berman—”They draw you in with the promise of empowerment, self-discovery, women helping women. The more secretive those connections are, the more exclusive you feel. Little did you know, you just joined a cult.”
• “The Oldest Productivity Trick Around. Too often I spent my days wanting to write and not writing. The simple power of the check mark helped me get back on track.”
• “John Swartzwelder, Sage of “The Simpsons’. The first major interview with one of the most revered comedy writers of all time.”—”I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—’Homer, I don’t want you to do that.’ ‘Then I won’t do it.’ Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.”
• “‘I don’t want to be L. Ron Hubbard’: Andy Weir on writing escapism & new book ‘Project Hail Mary’. ‘The Martian’ author spoke to Salon about what inspired his new sci-fi novel, driving plots and scientific optimism.” In part about
  Project Hail Mary: A Novel [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] by Andy Weir—”A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly) new science-based thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.”

• “Mary Rose ship had multi-ethnic crew, study shows. Analysis of remains of crew on Henry VIII’s favourite warship sheds light on diversity in Tudor England.”
• “An electrifying new way to seal up broken blood vessels.”—”A team of researchers led by NTU Singapore has developed a device that offers a quicker and less invasive way to seal tears and holes in blood vessels, using an electrically-activated glue patch applied via a minimally invasive balloon catheter.”
• “Too much salt suppresses phagocytes. Small changes of sodium in the blood reduce the amount of energy produced in the mitochondria – the power plants of our cells. This has consequences for immune cells. An international research team has discovered the mechanism behind this phenomenon and published their findings in the journal ‘Circulation’.”
• “CityU scientists invent cryomicroneedles for intradermal therapeutic cell delivery.”—”Dr Xu and his team at CityU have developed these cryomicroneedles that carry and deliver living cells into the skin. By putting the patch-like device on the skin, the microneedles would penetrate through the skin, detach from the patch base and then melt.”
• “Mars helicopter aces 4th flight, gets extra month of flying.”—”Instead of wrapping up flight tests at the beginning of May, NASA is giving its Ingenuity helicopter at least an extra month to tackle tough new terrain and serve as a scout for its companion rover, Perseverance.” “Designed to operate on Mars for 30 days, Ingenuity probably can survive the freezing Martian nights — and repeated flights in the extremely thin atmosphere — for at least another few months. ‘We really do expect some finite life,’ Aung said, ‘and so it will be a race between how long these parts surprise us in surviving.'” Also “NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to Begin New Demonstration Phase.” Also “The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Experiment Is About to Get More Interesting.”
• “NASA Perseverance Mars rover spots delightfully goofy rocks (hello, butt rock). Behold the funniest Mars rocks the rover has found so far.”
• “NASA announces launch plans for new Dream Chaser spaceplane.”—”The Dream Chaser spaceplane, a cargo spacecraft built and operated by Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp., is to begin launching and landing in Florida in 2022, NASA and the company announced Tuesday. The uncrewed, robotic spaceplane will be launched aboard a United Launch Alliance rocket from Kennedy Space Center for flights to the International Space Station.”
• From the Tang dept: “Spacecraft magnetic valve used to fill drinks.”—”In a typical beverage dosing system, you would normally have a carousel with lots of valves – often over a hundred – to fill the containers with the final liquid, whereas with our solution you only need one to three valves providing microdoses of the concentrate at the end of the line. Speed and precision are vital; we can fill up to 120 000 cans per hour.”
• “Billion-year-old fossil reveals missing link in the evolution of animals. A billion year old fossil, which provides a new link in the evolution of animals, has been discovered in the Scottish Highlands.”—”Scientists have discovered the fossil of an organism with two distinct cell types, thought to be the oldest of its kind ever recorded. The fossil reveals a new insight into the transition of single celled holozoa into more complex multicellular animals. Found in the Scottish Highlands, the fossil suggests the evolution of animals occurred at least one billion years ago and may have occurred in freshwater lakes rather than the ocean.”
• “World’s first fibre-optic ultrasonic imaging probe for future nanoscale disease diagnostics.”—”Scientists at the University of Nottingham have developed an ultrasonic imaging system, which can be deployed on the tip of a hair-thin optical fibre, and will be insertable into the human body to visualise cell abnormalities in 3D.”
• “SRI’s Manta underwater kite system to provide reliable, eco-friendly and cost-effective power from tides. SRI’s Manta system will harness the incredible power of tides and rivers.” Also “Underwater Manta Kites for Tidal Power Harvesting. SRI’s manta-inspired kites can safely and efficiently extract energy from moving water.”
• “Fasting acts as diet catalyst. Those who need to change their eating habits to normalise their blood pressure should start with a fast. In the journal “Nature Communications”, MDC and ECRC scientists explain why patients can use it as a tool to improve their health in the long term.” Also “Fasting lowers blood pressure by reshaping the gut microbiota.”
• “Receding glaciers causing rivers to suddenly disappear. Global phenomenon known as river piracy demands urgent adaptation from ecosystems and people who rely on their flow.”
• 3D Heart of the Crab Nebula.”—”Astronomers have done something very cool: Made a 3D map of the expanding debris from the supernova explosion that created the Crab Nebula, one of the closest and brightest such supernova remnants in the sky.” Also “Spectacular ‘honeycomb heart’ revealed in iconic stellar explosion.” Also watch “Animation: The expansion of the Crab Nebula by Detlef Hartmann.” But, also watch “Flythrough of the Crab Nebula”
• “The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?”
• “Millions Are Saying No to the Vaccines. What Are They Thinking? Feelings about the vaccine are intertwined with feelings about the pandemic.”—”From my conversations, I see three ways to persuade no-vaxxers: make it more convenient to get a shot; make it less convenient to not get a shot; or encourage them to think more socially.”
• “How Underrepresented TV Writers Have Faced More Inequities During The Pandemic. A new survey of underrepresented TV writers found that last summer’s racial reckoning may have led to more opportunities — but not necessarily better ones.”
• “8 Ways the Pandemic Has Changed How I Teach High School English.”—”1. Be flexible, or fail. … 2. Short and slow. … 3. Model forgiveness. … 4. Rethink deadlines. … 5. Make sure that kids tell the stories of their lives. … 6. Make sure that kids mine the history of their communities. … . Laud language. … 8. Naps are glorious.”
• “Tumblr Says It’s The Queerest Social Media Platform, But Can It Hold On To That? Tumblr is known for its queer discourse — but also for the massive impact of its 2018 NSFW ban.”
• “German police shut one of world’s biggest darknet child abuse images sites. Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers.”
• “Facebook and Instagram threaten to charge for access on iOS 14.5 unless you give them your data. Skirting App Store rules as they go.”
• “The Instagram ads Facebook won’t show you.”—”We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea.” Also tweet—”Facebook breaks the law and says “our enforcement is never perfect.” Sure, because it’s impossible to control their vast platforms. But @Signal posted FB ads showing surveillance in action, and Facebook disabled them immediately.”
• “The U.S. military takes UFOs seriously. Why doesn’t Silicon Valley or academia? The government wants to know if these unidentified objects pose a military threat. But they also represent an opportunity to advance science and technology.”
• “Charlie Munger calls bitcoin ‘disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization’.”
• “The Revolution in Classic Tetris. How a younger generation used the Internet to master the falling blocks.”—”The fact that we are still out here revolutionizing the mere concept of pressing a button on a controller that is almost 40 years old. I love this community.” “Dana Wilcox, one of the highest-scoring players on the Twin Galaxies leaderboard, discovered that she’d played for twenty years without knowing that the blocks could be spun in either direction.”
• Watch “Apple vs The Paradox of Choice! How Apple kills entire companies with the flip of 1 switch.”
• “Tim Sweeney emailed Tim Cook personally to call for open app sales after WWDC in 2015. ‘Is this the guy that was at one of our rehearsals?’ Cook asked.”—”‘The App Store has done much good for the industry,’ Sweeney wrote to Cook, ‘but it doesn’t seem tenable for Apple to be the sole arbiter of expression and commerce over an app platform approaching a billion users.’ In particular, Sweeney asked to ‘separate iOS App Store curation from compliance review and app distribution,’ essentially suggesting that Apple could maintain its security features across the platform without routing all downloads through the central App Store.” Also “Why Epic Is Burning Its Own Cash to Cook Apple. Follow the money, baby.”—”Epic Games didn’t sue Apple to get a big payout, but that’s because the lawsuit itself is an investment. And to rewrite Apple’s rules, Epic is spending a fortune.”
• Watch “Why Amazon workers in Alabama voted not to unionize.”—”Workers at a massive Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Ala., (just outside Birmingham) had the chance to form a collective bargaining unit, and in an election at the warehouse that was watched all over the U.S., they decided not to. We asked a bunch of employees in the parking lot why.”
• Forget AI Tom Cruise, experts are worried about deepfake satellites. Deepfakes can be hilarious. They can also be dangerous. Now, geographers are concerned.”
• Someone is copyright trolling a piano teacher with a claim of rights to public domain “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven, and this is being upheld by YouTube, and the whole process of how this happened and of her trying to dispute this is risible. Watch “Five Years On YouTube.”
• “Why Are Eports Players So Young? And why they don’t tend to stick around.”—”But even when players come in young, they don’t tend to stick around for long. Twenty-five is the generally accepted age for most pros to retire into traditional jobs or move into entertainment. Why? Because esports, even to this day, is not the most secure career path for even the most talented competitors. It wasn’t even until recently that players received a salary, even from the major organizations, with most players in the early days entirely relying on tournament winnings.”
• “Bill and Melinda Gates Divorce Sends QAnon Conspiracy Theorists Into a Frenzy.”
• “Trolled Lawyer Richard Luthmann was a Roger Stone-worshipping member of the Staten Island political scene. Then the fake Facebook posts began.”
• Watch “Men with badges tried to stop CNN reporter, but they weren’t police. CNN’s Kyung Lah examines the ongoing Republican election audit of the 2020 ballots from Arizona’s largest county.”
• “Deb Haaland: ‘Unfortunate’ That Rick Santorum Doesn’t Know Native American History. The interior secretary said she could recommend some books to the former GOP senator who said “nothing” was in America before white colonizers.”
• “Asian Americans Are Severely Underrepresented In U.S. Elected Office. Though Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 6% of the nation’s population, only 0.9% of federal, state and local elected officials were AAPI in 2020.”
• “Mexico apologises to Mayan people for historic abuses.”
• “Zapatistas set sail for Spain on mission of solidarity and rebellion. Small band of mariners embark upon peaceful ‘invasion’ of Europe 500 years after the conquistadores.”
• “The Labor Battle for the Right to Pee. App delivery workers for DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and other tech giants are fighting for a living wage, employment status, and the simple right to pee in privacy.”
• Rome’s Colosseum to get new gladiator arena floor.”—”A new arena floor will be added to Rome’s iconic Colosseum to give visitors an idea of how the ancient Italian structure looked when gladiators fought there. The project ‘will give us back the same vision from the stage of the monument that it had in ancient times,’ Colosseum director Alfonsina Russo said in a press conference Sunday. Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini hailed it as an ‘extraordinary project,’ which will allow visitors to walk on the new floor and go to the center of the Colosseum.”
• “Ancient Indigenous Petroglyphs Defaced With Racist Message.”
• “The Language of Women. Searching for the origins of shame.”
• Watch “VH1s The Fabulous Life of Billion Dollar Wall Street Ballers Featuring Jeffrey Epstein.”—”This puff piece profile of Jeffrey Epstein has not, shall we say, aged very well.”
• “‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’: How a cult animated series points to the future of the franchise. Analysis: To keep a global franchise humming along, Disney needs to pull characters and storylines from more far-flung reaches of the fictional galaxy.”
• “‘The Flash’ Original Cast Members Tom Cavanagh & Carlos Valdes Exit The CW’s Series After 7 Seasons.”
• “The Smithsonian has a full-size Star Wars X-wing starfighter now. The National Air and Space Museum won’t let you take the X-wing for a trench run, but you can go look at it.”
• “Colorado cult leader found dead was mummified, wrapped in Christmas lights.”—”The mummified remains appeared to be set up in some type of shrine”
• “Billie Hayes Dies: Wicked Witchiepoo Of ‘H.R. Pufnstuf’ Was 96.”
• “All Aboard Tito’s Train: A Dictator’s Time Capsule of Luxury Travel.”
• From the This is Fine dept: “Elkton woman charged with attempted murder after allegedly setting her home on fire with someone inside“—”Witnesses told investigators that Gail J. Metwally, 47, set multiple fires in the home and then watched from a chair on the front lawn before walking away from the scene”. The article has a picture of the house in flames with a lawn chair in front.
• This is especially fun since the most recent folktales translated by Jürgen Hubert, and added this month, are about moving boundary stones: “Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border. A farmer in Belgium has caused a stir after inadvertently redrawing the country’s border with France.”
• “Chasing the Sun. The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of discovery a thousand years apart.”

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