An irregular hodgepodge of links beyond the library curated together from @OmniumGatherum at Hrmtc I∴O∴ and more … Omnium Gatherum for July 6, 2022.

First curated OG post of the month, so welcome all Patrons! And, in a year, when this is made public, hello to the future!

I also went back made all the OG posts from June 2021 public, so check out all the posts from back then, if you didn’t have access to them, or for a reminder of what was going on, in case you missed them.

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

• Watch “Live from CERN: Join us for the first collisions for physics at 13.6 TeV!“—”Join CERN scientists live on 5 July, 16.00 CEST to celebrate this world record and the upcoming physics season.”
• “This Independence Day, we are less free than the year before. We must work together for liberty. Liberty is not a consumer item to market to individuals. It is a common good.”
• “Indie Bundle for Abortion Funds. A bundle hosted by Caro Asercion , itch.io with content from 604 creators.”—”100% of the proceeds from this bundle will go to the National Network for Abortion Fund’s Collective Power Fund, which moves money directly to abortion funds across 20+ U.S. states, with a particular focus on the South and Midwest”
• “Lectures Return to The [Viktor Wynd] Museum [in London] – from Trolls to Seances, Alexandrian Witchcraft and Aleister Crowley“—”Join us in our Museum for Lectures on Trolls, Seances & Aleister Crowley & New Monthly Guided Tours or On Zoom for Lectures on Dreams, Fairytales, Rudolf Steiner & Surrealism”
• Events in July at Treadwell’s
• “‘La Golden Dawn y otras sectas mágicas’, de Juan Ignacio Cuesta“—”Una obra de Juan Ignacio Cuesta quien inicia esta obra con una búsqueda del origen de la Tradición mágica que la humanidad descubrió y empleó para poder sobrevivir, y que con el paso de los tiempos se ha ido transmitiendo, en muchos casos, a sociedades secretas, como Rosacruces, algunas de tipo masónico, la Sociedad Teosófica, o la más influyente entre clases elitistas, la del Amanecer Dorado (La Golden Dawn).” (A work by Juan Ignacio Cuesta who begins this work with a search for the origin of the magical Tradition that humanity discovered and used in order to survive, and that over time has been transmitted, in many cases, to secret societies, such as Rosicrucians, some of the Masonic type, the Theosophical Society, or the most influential among elitist classes, that of the Golden Dawn.) Mentions the Golden Dawn and William Wynn Westcott. About La Golden Dawn y otras sectas mágicas by Juan Ignacio Cuesta (affiliate link)
• “Exploring the Occult World of Jack Parsons. Jack Parsons led a double life: rocketry pioneer by day, black magician by night who worshipped Aleister Crowley, had a run-in with L. Ron Hubbard and called himself the Antichrist.” Mentions Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley and OTO and more
• “The Alchemy of Language: Ina Cariño on Naming, Claiming, and Protecting Ancestral Land. ‘I spell myself deliberately, with intention: an alchemization, plain metal to gold.'”
• Operation Mindfuck: QAnon and the Cult of Donald Trump by Robert Guffey—”In Operation Mindfuck, Robert Guffey argues that this is not as mysterious as QAnon’s anonymous “drops” of cryptic directives seem to be. Drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of conspiracy theories and mixing deep-dive research, political analysis, and firsthand notes from QAnon’s underbelly, Guffey insists that we’ve seen it all before.” “Unraveling QAnon’s patchwork quilt of recycled material, from pulp-fiction spook stories to Hunter S. Thompson-style pranksterism to Nixon-esque dirty tricks, Guffey diagnoses QAnon as a highly engineered ploy, calibrated to capture the attention and lock-step loyalty of its audience. Will its followers ever realize that they’ve been had? Can this new American religion be dispelled as a cult like any other? The answers, Operation Mindfuck reveals, are hidden in plain sight.”
• “When Abortion Was Illegal, Adoption Was a Cruel Industry. Are We Returning to Those Days? A conversation with the author of ‘The Shadow History of Adoption.'” About American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Secret History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser.
• GaeaGenesis: Conception and Birth of the Living Earth by Oberon Zell, ed Haleigh Isbill—”GaeaGenesis is the first work to fully integrate the mythological, spiritual, biological, and social history of what has become known as the Gaea Thesis.” “GaeaGenesis culminates five decades of work developing Zell’s thesis, building on his own original ideas as well as [others].”
• “America and the ‘Heathen’: How we set ourselves apart from ‘sh**hole countries’. If the concept of ‘heathenism’ seems outmoded, author Kathryn Gin Lum says it defines race and religion in America.” About Heathen: Religion and Race in American History by Kathryn Gin Lum.
• “Oregon School’s Ridiculous Battle Over ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Ends With Book Ban. The graphic novel version of Margaret Atwood’s novel became embroiled in controversy after one parent complained about its sexual imagery.” About The Handmaid’s Tale, graphic novel, by Margaret Atwood, illo. Renee Nault.
• “Why Solidarity is Not a Finite Resource. A Letter from Robyn Maynard to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.” Excerpt from Rehearsals for Living by Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson—”Outrage needs to be rationed precisely because only a limited amount of ‘justice’ is, in fact, possible, or achievable … trimming here and there at the worst and most visible excesses of harm, while leaving a violent system intact.”
• “The Russo Brothers’ Next Film ‘The Electric State’ Starring Millie Bobby Brown Lands At Netflix“—”The film is based on adaptation of the illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag and is set in a retro-futuristic past, where an orphaned teenager (Brown) traverses the American West with a sweet but mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother.” About The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag.
• “Strange Horizons 2023. A free weekly speculative fiction magazine with a global perspective.”—”Strange Horizons is a speculative fiction magazine, available free online, published every Monday.” “we’re entirely volunteer-run and rely on donations from generous readers to continue paying contributors, running our website, and putting together special issues without depending on advertisers or corporate interests.” Crowdfunding with 11 days to go … Also Strange Horizons—”Strange Horizons is a weekly magazine of and about speculative fiction. We publish fiction, poetry, reviews, essays, interviews, and art.”
• “HarperCollins Union Authorizes Strike“—”Unionized employees of HarperCollins have voted to authorize a strike if the publisher does not agree to a fair contract.”
• “Predicting the future: a quick, easy scan can reveal late-life dementia risk. A new long-term study has shown a common bone density scan can reveal if people are at increased risk of developing dementia, based on calcified plaques in the abdominal aorta.”
• “Algorithm predicts crime a week in advance, but reveals bias in police response. A new computer model uses publicly available data to predict crime accurately in eight U.S. cities, while revealing increased police response in wealthy neighborhoods at the expense of less advantaged areas.”
• “UK’s earliest hand axes were made by ancient humans 560,000 years ago. Stone tools found in Fordwich in Canterbury may have been made by an early human called Homo heidelbergensis.”
• “A Doctor Just Declined To Prescribe This Patient Their Arthritis Treatment Because It Could Hurt A Fetus That Doesn’t Even Exist. ‘Disabled people who can become pregnant deserve the right to not be in pain.'”
• “Philip Gunn’s connection to the Southern Baptist Convention sexual abuse scandal. House Speaker Philip Gunn, serving as his church’s attorney, was publicly accused of trying to cover up a sex abuse scandal that was featured prominently in this week’s explosive report about mishandling of sex abuse cases in Southern Baptist Convention churches.” Tweet—”Who could have imagined that Philip Gunn, MS Republican House Speaker who insists that 12-year-old girls raped by their fathers must bear their children, was personally involved in the coverup of pedophilia in the Southern Baptist Church.”
• Tweet—”Remember when they were trying to figure out why there was a giant drop in crime like 30 years ago and they tried to say it was due to better policing… And then the Freakonomics dudes figured out it’s because an entire generation wasn’t forced to give birth to unwanted kids.” Also “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime over the Last Two Decades“—”We estimate that crime fell roughly 20% between 1997 and 2014 due to legalized abortion. The cumulative impact of legalized abortion on crime is roughly 45%, accounting for a very substantial portion of the roughly 50-55% overall decline from the peak of crime in the early 1990s.”
• “Dehumanization Is a Feature of Gig Work, Not a Bug“—”What I observed and experienced was a system that suppresses workers’ uniqueness, experiences, and future aspirations. It was a system that treated people like lines of code to be deployed instead of humans to be developed.”
• Thread—”The Cagots: Europe’s untouchables. When you think of an ‘untouchable caste’, a social group of people seen as lower and relegated to certain jobs and social roles, you might think of the Indian Dalit. But what if I told you that something very similar happened in Europe?”
• “Inside the Heated Scientific Debate to Redefine Who Is Dead. The line between life and death seems simple, but changes to the law behind it could spark another culture war.”—”The country needed clear, consistent criteria—lest the courts be flooded with lawsuits from anguished family members whose loved ones lay in a legal gray zone between heaven and Earth.”
• “These Mormons Have Found a New Faith — in Magic Mushrooms. Worshippers are leaving the Church of Latter-day Saints in record numbers, and some are finding solace with an apostate band of psilocybin-loving spiritual explorers looking for God — one trip at a time.”
• Watch “FREE SOLO RULES! Solo RPG with Magic the Gathering | Free PDF Download! | Solo RPG, Ep. 002″—”In this video we walk through an experimental rules set we have developed for how to use Magic the Gathering cards for running a solo roleplaying game.”
• “Winona Ryder Fact-Checks ‘Stranger Things’ 1980s Accuracy on Set“—”‘This song actually came out in ’85, and you have it in ’83,’ co-star David Harbour recalled Ryder saying.”
• “Hugh Grant To Play Zeus In Netflix’s Greek Mythology Reimagining ‘Kaos’ From Creator Charlie Covell; Janet McTeer, Cliff Curtis & David Thewlis Among Additional Series Regulars.”
• “‘Game of Thrones’ Actors Tom Wlaschiha, Jazzy de Lisser Join Cast of Lasse Hallström’s ‘Hilma’ (EXCLUSIVE)“—”The biopic, which explores the life of revolutionary Swedish artist and feminist pioneer Hilma af Klint, will bow this fall in theaters and on Viaplay, Scandinavia’s leading streaming service.” “Wlaschiha stars as Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian artist and founder of the anthroposophical spiritual movement. Steiner became a key figure and mentor for Hilma af Klint who created more than a thousand striking paintings, sketches and watercolors that remained largely unknown until decades after her death.” “The film explores the enigmatic life of Klint, who navigated through a male-dominated artistic scene to eventually become one of the Western world’s first abstract artists.”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons. Patrons get access to Omnium Gatherum immediately. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.