An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for May 19, 2021

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

• I was chatting via email with Joscelyn Godwin and he mentioned over the last year working on Vol III of Introduction to Magic, which I mentioned last OG. But also mentioned working on two books on Harmonics by Hans Kayser. I hadn’t heard of those yet, so I went looking for them, and I’m a little confused because they don’t seem to be recent (unless they are being re-published, but I’m not finding newer information on them); but, here they are: A Harmonic Division Canon: An Analysis of a Geometric Diagram In Villard De Honnecout’s Architecture Book by Hans Kayser, translated by Ariel Godwin, edited by Joscelyn Godwin; and HARMONIA PLANTARUM: The Harmony of Plants by Hans Kayser, translated by Ariel Godwin, edited by Joscelyn Godwin. If I find more clarity on these, I’ll let you know.
• “Learning Daily Practices.”—”The components are thus modular and can be adapted to your needs. You should get the basic daily sequence down before starting on learning practical work, but once you know the sequence I am of the opinion that you should just go for it. Some teachers want their students to do some long period of time of daily practice only – years in some cases – before doing any practical work. But as I see it, the only way to get good at practical magick is to do it, and none of us are anywhere near our full potential when starting out.”
• “Things Heard and Seen: Separating the Swedenborg from the Story.”—”But how much of what’s in the move reflects what Swedenborg actually wrote? Are Swedenborgians actually real-life “ghost whisperers?” We break it down below.” About the Netflix show Things Heard & Seen, with Amanda Seyfried, James Norton, Natalia Dyer, and F Murray Abraham.
• “Fact Check: Did Noble Drew Ali Influence Nation Of Islam Teachings?”
• Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on Peacock. “Based on Dan Brown’s international bestselling thriller ‘The Lost Symbol,’ the series follows the early adventures of young Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.” Watch trailer. About The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, book 3 in the Robert Langdon series—”Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His plans are interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of esoteric, potentially dangerous wisdom. When his mentor Peter Solomon—a long-standing Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth . . . all under the watchful eye of Dan Brown’s most terrifying villain to date. Set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced story with surprises at every turn—one of Brown’s most riveting novels.”
• “Longford celebrates poet Padraic Colum.”—”Padraic’s close working colleagues in the Irish Literary Revival and the movement for independence were major figures that included William Butler Yeats […] were not only involved in the cultural and literary revival, but in the political reawakening, as well.”
• Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher] edited by Amy Hale, part of the Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities series, due October, 2021—”This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.”
• “On the Origins of White Europeans’ Bigoted Fascination with Skin Color and Racial Hierarchy. Olivette Otele Considers the Historical Representation of Black People in Art and Fiction.” Excerpt from African Europeans: An Untold History [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Olivette Otele
• “‘I Wanted to Be on Fire.’ On the Connection Between Art and Self-Destruction. Bridget Collins Considers the Hagiography of the Tortured Artist.” By Bridget Collins, author of The Betrayals [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]—”An intricate and utterly spellbinding literary epic brimming with enchantment, mystery, and dark secrets from the highly acclaimed author of the #1 international bestseller The Binding.”
• “Junk. Mark Bittman’s history of why we eat bad food.” About Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] By Mark Bittman—”From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and pioneering journalist, an expansive look at how history has been shaped by humanity’s appetite for food, farmland, and the money behind it all—and how a better future is within reach.”
• “The Bleak Prescience of Richard Wright. A previously unpublished novel invites a reassessment of a writer criticized for his doctrinaire pessimism about race in America.” About The Man Who Lived Underground [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Richard Wright—”A major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel about race and police violence by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy.”
• “How Humans Gained an ‘Extra Life’. In Steven Johnson’s latest book, he looks at what he calls “one of the greatest achievements in the history of our species,” that life spans have more than doubled since the mid-19th century.” More about Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Steven Johnson.
• “The Filing Cabinet. The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of the 20th-century. Like most infrastructure, it was usually overlooked.” Adapted from The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Craig Robertson—”The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information. Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used. The filing cabinet emerges here as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today’s digital world.”
• “The clothing revolution. What if the need for fabric, not food, in the face of a changing climate is what first tipped humanity towards agriculture?” By Ian Gilligan, author of Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory: Linking Evidence, Causes, and Effects [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]—”Clothing was crucial in human evolution, and having to cope with climate change was as true in prehistory as it is today. In Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory, Ian Gilligan offers the first complete account of the development of clothing as a response to cold exposure during the ice ages. He explores how and when clothes were invented, noting that the thermal motive alone is tenable in view of the naked condition of humans. His account shows that there is considerably more archaeological evidence for palaeolithic clothes than is generally appreciated. Moreover, Gilligan posits, clothing played a leading role in major technological innovations. He demonstrates that fibre production and the advent of woven fabrics, developed in response to global warming, were pivotal to the origins of agriculture. Drawing together evidence from many disciplines, Climate Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory is written in a clear and engaging style, and is illustrated with nearly 100 images.”
• “The Most Radical Advice Columnist of the 1920s. Few topics were off limits for ‘Princess Mysteria.'” About Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Julie Golia—”What can century-old advice columns tell us about the Internet today? This book reveals the little-known history of advice columns in American newspapers and the virtual communities they created among their readers.”
• “Who deserves a book deal? As former Trump officials and other polarizing figures seek book deals, publishing is caught in a generational battle that’s becoming an existential crisis.”
• “Mary Beard Keeps History on the Move. For Beard, change has always been a part of classics: we need to expose the field’s flaws to understand how we’ve inherited them.”
• “An Argument for Literature as Care Work.”—”The work of literature is care work, itself an undervalued and underfunded field. It is the minimality of care that interests me here. Caring just a little bit less is altogether different to not caring at all. We have become increasingly accustomed to hearing the phrase “intensive care,” a phrase which stands in not only for our contemporary crisis in public health but also for our affective states. Care requires a lot of work, we’re told, it is exhausting. But it need not always be so attached to such concentration of affective commitment. One of the greatest mysteries about care is that—as much as we might use it interchangeably with love—it remains steadfastly ambivalent.”
• “Jim Shepard: When Your Novel Veers a Little Too Close to Grim Reality.” By Jim Shepard , author of Phase Six [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]—”A spare and gripping novel about the next pandemic–completed by the award-winning Jim Shepard before COVID-19 even emerged–that reads like a fictional sequel to our current crisis.”
• “The Time I Watched Norman Mailer Try to Fight G. Gordon Liddy in the Street.”
• “Big Bounce Simulations Challenge the Big Bang. Detailed computer simulations have found that a cosmic contraction can generate features of the universe that we observe today.”
• More on this: “Ventilating the rectum to support respiration” And “Is the future of COVID-19 ventilation through your bum?” Also Blowing Smoke Up One’s Ass, QI, s08e10.
• “Nature’s scuba tanks? Researchers discover how Anolis lizard breathes underwater.”
• “Fibre-optics used to take the temperature of Greenland Ice Sheet.”
• “Inflammation is a core feature of depression: new evidence from large-scale study. People with depression have higher levels of inflammation in their bodies than those without depression, regardless of socioeconomic background, ill health or unhealthy behaviours, a study by King’s College London finds.”
• “Zapping Nerves with Ultrasound Lowers Drug-Resistant Blood Pressure.”
• “Researchers find target to fight antibiotic resistance. Significance of molecule in bacteria was previously unknown.”
• “New material can protect against resistant bacteria. ​Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new material that prevents infections in wounds – a specially designed hydrogel, that works against all types of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant ones. The new material offers great hope for combating a growing global problem.​”
• “New technology makes tumor eliminate itself.”—”A new technology developed by UZH researchers enables the body to produce therapeutic agents on demand at the exact location where they are needed. The innovation could reduce the side effects of cancer therapy and may hold the solution to better delivery of COVID-related therapies directly to the lungs.”
• “Researchers Discovered a Gut Microbiota Profile That Can Predict Mortality. Researchers discovered that a large amount of enterobacteria in the gut microbiota is related to long-term mortality risk in Finnish adult population.”—”Blocking transport to the cell membrane could not only make bacteria vulnerable to antibiotics, but the accumulation of their own toxic molecules within the cell also cause the bacteria’s death.”
• “Hidden Within African Diamonds, a Billion-Plus Years of Deep-Earth History. Scientists Find a New Way to Tell Ages of the Stones, and What Made Them.”
• “Astronauts’ Spines Under Scrutiny.”
• “One of NASA’s Solar Orbiter tools caught its first video of a coronal mass ejection. An instrument aboard NASA and ESA’s Solar Orbiter had a ‘happy accident'”
• “Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof. Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.”
• “Rare quasicrystal found in trinitite formed during 1945 Trinity Test. Research suggests other quasicrystals might form in lighting strikes, meteor impacts.”
• “Indigenous forest gardens remain productive and diverse for over a century. Gardens persist for 150 years after those who planted them were removed.”
• “Climate change is erasing humanity’s oldest art. Climate change is speeding up the process of erosion, according to a recent study.” Also “Ancient Cave Paintings Are Deteriorating Due to Climate Change.”
• “No new fossil fuel projects for net-zero: IEA.”—”All future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to stand any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.”
• “Covid Forced America to Make More Stuff. What Happens Now? A software entrepreneur pivoted to making masks at the start of the pandemic. The experience opened his eyes: ‘I thought, ‘Wow, the US really is behind.””
• “Service Workers Aren’t Returning to Work Because They Don’t Get Paid Enough.”—”President Biden has said repeatedly that Americans “aren’t looking for a handout” and that we want to work. This is all a part of the American mythology, that we all enjoy the feeling of a good, long day’s labor, and that America was built on this tenacity and industry. Though this platitude is often repeated, the truth is that America was built on exploitation.”
• I mean, maybe they could try paying them more? “Applebee’s aims to hire 10K workers in May with an interview incentive. Interview candidates who attend the ‘National Hiring Day’ event will be given a free appetizer voucher.” Yeah, guess not.
• “This is your brain on pandemic whiplash.”—”I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t enticing. I’m already getting increasingly comfortable going bare-faced in certain settings, especially outdoors where transmission risk has been shown to be vanishingly small. But when it comes to indoor interactions, particularly among strangers, I’m not rushing to jettison my masks any time soon. And I’m far from alone.”
• “Stages of Grief. What the pandemic has done to the arts.”
• You want Skynet? This is how you get Skynet. “Skyborg autonomy core system has successful first flight.”
• Well, if the FAA won’t let people fly drones, maybe it’s time to go all Seaquest DSV! “Hydromea unveils the world’s first wireless compact underwater drone providing live HD video feedback.”
• “Apple’s Phil Schiller Gives Epic iPhone Testimony. What does ‘locked in’ mean, though?—”Look, “locked in” has an accepted meaning, and it’s not a very friendly one: prisoners, for example, are locked in. Schiller gives this the old college try anyhow, telling the court that the idea behind “locked in” was just to make services more attractive, so that customers wouldn’t want to leave. Later in the email, Jobs talks about making the ecosystem even more “sticky,” which is less menacing, but — glue traps are sticky. So are flystrips. When was the last time that being stuck to something was positive for you? But hey, Schiller’s a marketer. He was Apple’s marketing guy for actual decades! Always be closing, baby. And so if it at times seemed like he presented Apple as though it were a selfless do-gooder, responding to devs’ requests for in-app payments — which was a then-nascent business — by building capability for that into the store, well, that’s his job. Still, presenting one of the most ruthlessly efficient cash machines in tech as a helpful friend of small developers is kind of like painting a whale shark orange and calling it a goldfish who feeds other goldfish.” Also “Apple might have scared one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. Roblox no longer uses the term ‘game’ on its platform.”
• “Deepfake dubs could help translate film and TV without losing an actor’s original performance. AI startup Flawless says its tech will help content reach new audiences.”
• “Republicans have a new tool to fight deplatforming: common carriage laws. Section 230 reform might not be all it was made out to be.”
• “Bill Gates will never be the same. The aura that Gates built over the past two decades may be permanently shattered.”
• “Facebook Calls Links To Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers Disagree.”
• “Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office’s covert internet operations program.”
• “The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop. Cops laugh about ‘probable cause on four legs’ but the damage to innocent lives is real.”
• “Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen. One in 10 US police departments can now access videos from millions of privately owned home security cameras without a warrant.”
• “Capitol Rioters’ ‘Trump Defense’ Comes Up Again And Again. Will It Make A Difference?”
• “CIA’s misleading inoculation drive led to vaccine decline in Pakistan.”
• “Seriously, just tax the rich. What the debate about paying for infrastructure misses.”—”Whether the government should tax rich people more to pay for spending priorities is a source of endless debate. Here’s another idea: Tax the rich because it’s the right thing to do.”
• “Idolators: Those Who Claim the Right to Oppress or Enslave Others”
• “Killing Cyclists Is As American As Mass Shootings. There are easy ways to prevent both, yet we carry on as if nothing is wrong.”
• “Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently. The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?”
• “‘How a $10k poker win changed how I think’. When amateur player Alex O’Brien unexpectedly won an online poker tournament, little did she know that she’d be pitted against one of the game’s most controversial players. A stellar team of poker pros offered to train her, and she discovered how poker can transform how you see the world.”
• “Stop Filming Us: Interrogating and Inverting the Western Gaze.” Also “Stop Filming Us. Now Playing in Theater and Virtual Cinema. In-theater Run Must End Thursday, May 20.” Also “Stop Filming Us.” Watch “Stop Filming Us” trailer.
• “Do We Really Need More Controversial Ideas? A new journal encourages scholars to share their most dangerous and tasteless thoughts.”
• “Another media acquisition? This one would involve Amazon, MGM, and ~$9B Does this at least mean we can watch No Time to Die at home soon?”
• “Sp!ng is a ‘stress ball for your brain’. I need more Sp!ng in my life.”
• “Imagining the next future. Polygon’s Sci-fi Week celebrates our never-ending curiosity about what’s next.”
• “Eastern Market Murder.”—”Investigate a spine-tingling crime from 1899. Delve into a mystical world of fortune tellers and phrenologists in this twisted tale of murder and madness. Blood red radishes, a business jealousy, whispers of false friends. When everything is not as it seems, will you foresee how it ends? With options to play at home, or at the actual location where the crime happened, you’ll explore crime scenes, question witnesses and examine evidence to outsmart the killer and reclaim justice for the victim’s family. Sound intriguing? Download now on the App Store and Google Play.” Watch “Eastern Market Murder” trailer.
• “How An Infinite Hotel Ran Out Of Room.”—”If there’s a hotel with infinite rooms, could it ever be completely full? Could you run out of space to put everyone? The surprising answer is yes — this is important to know if you’re the manager of the Hilbert Hotel.” A fun primer on the orders of infinity, even references Gamow’s One, two, three … infinity.

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