An irregular hodgepodge of links beyond the library curated together from @OmniumGatherum at Hrmtc I∴O∴ and more … Omnium Gatherum for August 31, 2022.

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

• “TEMUDJIN by Ozanam and Carrion. A gallery-sized fantasy graphic novel about a man who could be the reborn Genghis Khan lushly illustrated by Antoine Carrion.”—”A lush, lyrical, almost operatic fantasy speculating on the lineage and legacy of the first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Filled with mysticism and surreal visions, this grand epic takes on a dreamlike quality infused with just enough ties to real history to ground the setting.” “Torn between a destiny he is told he must accept and a life he would otherwise choose for himself, the mind of a legendary warlord is laid bare to readers in a cinematic and poetic narrative by writer Antoine Ozanam, breathtakingly illustrated by Antoine Carrion.” Crowdfunding effort with 56 hours to go
• “A Festival That Conjures the Strange Magic of H.P. Lovecraft. At the Rhode Island event, revelers danced to murder ballads and celebrated all things weird. They even found time to reckon with the writer’s racism.”
• “The Family Collection. Mucha. Waldstein Riding School. 15 July ‑ 31 October 2022″—”This exhibition is organized by the Mucha Foundation in cooperation with the Senate of the Czech Republic.”
• “Apocalypse Keys. Even the most powerful monsters have hearts. Unleash your destruction and reveal your deepest emotions in this TTRPG by Rae Nedjadi.” Crowdfunding effort, coming September. Also “Apocalypse Keys – Coming soon“—”Unlock Your Heart or Unlock the Apocalypse. As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.” As an aside, here’s Evil Hat talking about still using Kickstarter—”We’re going to continue to stay on top of the concerns outlined above, but for now we believe Kickstarter is the best home for Apocalypse Keys.”
• “THE ZONE. The tabletop storygame of surreal horror. Mutate your friends, play-to-lose, and have a spooky time in the dark. 1-6 players. 2-3 hours.”—”You get to make your own horrors. You and your friends will be telling stories in the vein of Annihilation, Stalker, Roadside Picnic, Uzumaki, and the SCP Foundation.” Crowdfunding effort starting in 28 days … or play a digital version online now. Watch “THE ZONE RPG is coming to Kickstarter Sep 27th!“.
• Tweet—”Following these signs like any minute now I’m going to roll up on a Do What Thou Wilt-a-Whirl, cool off in the Tunnel of Love Is The Law, then snack on Funnel Cakes of Light while waiting in line for Haunted Boleskine Mansion”
• “Pagan festivals like Wiccans’ WitchsFest USA face Christian harassment. Opponents of witchcraft and paganism have become more aggressive and even dangerous this year, some event attendees say.”
• “The Hookland Doll Emporium. Purveyors of unique, spellbinding dolls & curios. Hare’s Leap Lane, Ashcourt, Hookland.” A variety of creatures from the fictional(?) folkscape of David Southwell’s Hookland.
• “Museum of the Bible Returns Ancient Gospel Looted From Greek Monastery. The museum determined that the handwritten manuscript, which is more than a thousand years old, had been looted from the monastery during World War I.”
• A Gorgeous, Long-Lost Mural of the 10 Commandments Has Been Uncovered, Offering a Glimpse Into a Vanished Art Style. The so-called ‘Lost Mural’ was hidden behind a wall for decades.”—”A long-lost relic of Jewish folk art has been revealed after being hidden—but not forgotten—behind a wall for more than 30 years. ‘The Lost Mural’ is an interior apse painting created in 1910 by Ben Zion Black, a 24-year-old Lithuananian playwright, poet, and sign painter, for the former Chai Adam synagogue in Burlington, Vermont.”
• “The Beatles song Paul McCartney wrote after being inspired by Tarot cards“—”The idea that the fool could actually be interpreted as a wise figure struck a chord with McCartney, who was immediately reminded of how gurus were often treated as quacks and nutters by society as a whole. In ‘Fool On The Hill’, Paul draws attention to the West’s eagerness to dismiss Eastern philosophies simply because they don’t always offer concrete answers.”
• “British Christian Cult Known for Bikini-Clad Dancers and Rave Services Connected to Sex-Crime Investigation. The Nine O’Clock Service was seen as a radical attempt at attracting young people to Jesus.”
• Feeding the Enemy to the Goddess: War Magic in Śaiva Tantric Texts by Olga Serbaeva—”war magic as described in Sanskrit Śaiva tantric texts written between the 5th and the 12th Century A.D. This period marks a shift from the invocation of Aghora/Bhairava as the main war-helping god to the rituals invoking terrible goddesses, mātṛkās, yoginīs. At the same time, tantric religious specialists were invited to exchange their magical knowledge for kings’ patronage in such contexts as war, drought, epidemics and such.” “The original presupposition was that the rituals related to war shall be most violent and transgressive in the texts of the tantric initiated … However, this was contradicted by the text-based evidence, and it is the “mixed” literature that proposes the most violent rituals, while the whole subject of war happened to be of minor importance in the tantric literature.” “The war-prayogas were included to attract attention of the kings, but the aim of that was for the internal ritual use. The explanation of this contradiction is based on the fact that somewhere between the 10th and the 12th century, the tantric specialists working for the kings actually duped them into performing violent war-magic rituals, while the real intent of those procedures is actually calling the yoginīs in order to achieve a higher state in religious practice for the initiated himself.”
• LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives by Simon Joyce—”It has been decades since Michel Foucault urged us to rethink “the repressive hypothesis” and see new forms of sexual discourse as coming into being in the nineteenth century, yet the term “Victorian” still has largely negative connotations. LGBT Victorians argues for re-visiting the period’s thinking about gender and sexual identity at a time when our queer alliances are fraying.””We think of those whose primary self-definition is in terms of sexuality (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals) and those for whom it is gender identity (intersex and transgender people, genderqueers) as simultaneously in coalition and distinct from each other, on the assumption that gender and sexuality are independent aspects of self-identification.””Re-examining how the Victorians considered such identity categories to have produced and shaped each other can ground a more durable basis for strengthening our present LGBTQ+ coalition. LGBT Victorians draws on scholarship reconsidering the significance of sexology and efforts to retrospectively discover transgender people in historical archives, particularly in the gap between what the nineteenth century termed the sodomite and the hermaphrodite.””It highlights a broad range of individuals (including Anne Lister, and the defendants in the ‘Fanny and Stella”‘trial of the 1870s), key thinkers and activists (including Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs and Edward Carpenter), and writers such as Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds to map the complicated landscape of gender and sexuality in the Victorian period. In the process, it decenters Oscar Wilde and his imprisonment from our historical understanding of sexual and gender nonconformity.”
• “Nona the Ninth Left Me Sobbing in the Best Way” About Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, The Locked Tomb Series Book 3, due September 2022.
• “Cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton: ‘Our universe is one tiny grain of dust in a beautiful cosmos’. As her new book on the origins of the universe is published, the Albanian-American scientist explains how her work on multiverse theory influenced Stephen Hawking, and how totalitarian rule shaped her hunger for knowledge.” About Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond by Laura Mersini-Houghton.
• “Is the United States headed for civil war? Fighting words and extremism are on the rise. We are not yet in ‘Turner Diaries’ territory, but that doesn’t mean the country will avoid violent conflict.”
• Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media, eds Stephen Shapiro, Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas—”Looking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses.” “These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones.” “Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine … works like … Reza Negarestani’s Cycolonopedia … and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.”
• Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd—”A history of the development of London as a European epicenter of queer life.” “In Queer City, the acclaimed Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way–through the complete history and experiences of its gay and lesbian population. In Roman Londinium, the city was dotted with lupanaria (“wolf dens” or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels), and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks, and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. ”
• “The Feminist Novelist Who Turned ‘On the Road’ on Its Head. In ‘Tripticks,’ the little-known British writer Ann Quin adopted the techniques of the Beats to playfully mock their machismo and deflate the romance of nineteen-sixties drug culture.” About Tripticks Paperback by Ann Quin.
• “Giuliani used a tunnel under Mar-a-Lago to go back and forth from Trump’s home, where he stayed while he was depressed and drinking heavily, book says. After losing the 2008 GOP presidential nod, Giuliani moved to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, a book says. A tunnel under the Palm Beach, Florida, estate let Giuliani travel back and forth unseen, it adds.” Also “‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book says. Former New York mayor’s ex-wife describes breakdown Trump helped hide, years before mutual White House drama.” About Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, by Andrew Kirtzman due September 2022—”What happened to Rudy Giuliani? That is the question millions of Americans have asked about this once-beloved leader. Andrew Kirtzman, who has been following Giuliani since the 1990s, answers that question in this fascinating biography.”
• “Teacher quits in protest after being punished for banned books sign. A parent complained the first day of school that Summer Boismier violated a new Oklahoma law restricting how schools teach race and gender.”
• “Shards of pure ice might snow upwards beneath the ice shell of Europa. The moons Europa and Enceladus probably have global oceans buried beneath their frozen shells, and those seas may be home to a strange kind of ice called frazil ice.”
• “Presolar Stardust in Asteroid Ryugu“—”Thus, our results provide further evidence in support of the Ryugu–CI connection. They also reveal intriguing hints of small-scale heterogeneities in the Ryugu samples, such as locally distinct degrees of alteration that allowed the preservation of delicate presolar material.”
• “Study points to new approach to clearing toxic waste from brain. Could aid efforts to find treatments for Alzheimer’s, other diseases.”—”researchers found a way to increase clearance of waste products from the brains of mice by ramping up a genetic quirk known as readthrough. This same strategy also may be effective for other neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the buildup of toxic proteins, such as Parkinson’s disease”
• “Warming in the Arctic region has been four times faster than the global average. A study by researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute has shown that the frequently repeated notion that “the Arctic region is warming at twice as fast as the rest of the globe” significantly underestimates the observed warming in the polar regions.”
• “Lab takes ‘giant leap’ toward thylacine de-extinction with Colossal genetic engineering technology partnership.”
• “Prehistoric ‘living fossil’ fish may spawn in Georgia for the first time in 50 years. Scientists and students carrying out a census of Georgia lake sturgeon have found three females with mature eggs, suggesting the armored fish may be reproducing in the state for the first time in a half-century.”
• “A “cannibal” solar ejection heading straight for Earth could bring northern lights as far south as Illinois and trigger power voltage issues.”
• “Graphene as ‘the philosopher’s stone’: turning waste into gold“—”Throughout history, alchemists believed in the existence of the philosopher’s stone: a substance that could turn cheap substances into precious gold. Now scientists … have shown that graphene can be a kind of philosopher’s stone, allowing gold extraction from waste containing only trace amounts of gold (down to billionth of a percent).”
• “The evergreen tree that outlasted the dinosaurs is now endangered“—”The ancient monkey puzzle tree has distinctive spiny leaves and intricate scaly branches. Its unusual features, scientists believe, evolved as a defense against towering, long-necked dinosaurs.”—”today scientific experts consider the tree endangered. … in the wild the species only grows along the slopes of Patagonia’s volcanoes in Chile and Argentina.”
• “Comet impacts formed continents when Solar System entered galactic arms“—”New Curtin research has found evidence that Earth’s early continents resulted from being hit by comets as our Solar System passed into and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, turning traditional thinking about our planet’s formation on its head.”
• “Skeleton of an 82-foot-long dinosaur was found in a man’s backyard in Portugal. It could be the largest ever found in Europe.”
• More on this: “Warner Bros. Discovery Lost $20 Billion in Market Cap Trying to Cut $3 Billion in Costs. The more WBD cuts, the more the stock price goes down.”—”Zaslav, who was paid $246 million ahead of the merger … Fortune named him one of the 10 most overpaid CEOs.” Also “Laid-Off HBO Max Execs: They’re Killing Off Diversity and Courting ‘Middle America’. Warner Bros. Discovery has axed about 13 non-white executives as it tries to climb out of debt. It will likely affect the shows and movies that are made.” In other words, they want to court a racist white audience that is a mythical untapped major market. Also “Legendary and WBD: The Final Act!“—”Legendary is said to be eyeing a move to either Sony or Paramount, both of whom are courting the company behind Dune, Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island. Talks with Warners remain open but a move elsewhere seems the likeliest option at this point.” Also “HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discovery Seem to Be on Fire, and That’s on Purpose. The plan is to make a lot of money as cheaply as possible.”—”He’s made his money catering to audiences that don’t pay for streaming but, instead, flip the channel on the TV — and when they don’t find something to watch, pack up and head to the movie theater.” Good luck with that. Moving back to the cinema is a bit like investing in a return to supplying ice for ice boxes and a gross shakedown for middleman markup. Also “Warner Bros. Discovery Lost $20 Billion in Market Cap Trying to Cut $3 Billion in Costs. The more WBD cuts, the more the stock price goes down.”—”Zaslav, who was paid $246 million ahead of the merger … Fortune named him one of the 10 most overpaid CEOs” Also “Secret ‘Batgirl’ Screenings Hit the Warner Bros. Lot (Exclusive). The cancelled DC film is getting “funeral screenings” before footage is put under lock and key.” “a select group of insiders is getting to see the film during secret screenings on the Warner Bros. lot this week, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. They are said to be for people who worked on the movie, both cast and crew, as well as representatives and executives. One source described them as ‘funeral screenings,’ held before the film is sent off to an undisclosed afterlife, with footage locked away in a vault, either physical or digital.” Also “‘The Way Down’ Pastor Takes Credit for HBO Max Woes: ‘This Is a Big Win’“—”In a portion of the sermon, obtained by Variety, Elizabeth Hannah, Lara’s daughter and a leader at Remnant, called in, as she sometimes does. But instead of her usual teachings for Saturday service, Hannah delivered a homily of schadenfreude aimed directly at HBO Max, the enemy of Remnant and the Shamblin family.” “So for more than three minutes, as another Remnant leader held a microphone up to the phone, Hannah exulted in HBO Max’s troubles.” Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.
• “Why Marvel’s Phase 5 & 6 Could Kill Off Movie Theaters“—”While high-earning blockbusters are great for the current revival of theaters, there lies a greater issue underneath the jet engine fuel and spider webs.” “Hollywood is headed to a future of producing event-style films, while more streamlined direct-to-consumer content will continue to shrink the big screen. Movie theaters are falling down a path of destruction and Marvel may be either their only hope, or what puts them officially in the ground.” “So, how could Marvel kill movie theaters? Slow and painfully.”
• “Is Gandalf in The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power? Maybe“—”He’s not officially confirmed to be Gandalf, but I’m calling it: that’s Gandalf. That’s Gandalf, ahead of schedule for once, coming to Middle-earth one Age early to hang out with hobbits while the rest of the cast is busy yelling, climbing ice cliffs, swinging swords, forging rings, and getting absolutely bamboozled by hot Sauron. And that’s why the show could be great.”
• “Unix legend, who owes us nothing, keeps fixing foundational AWK code“—”Kernighan, now 80, offhandedly mentions in the interview that he has also patched something ‘quick and dirty’ to let AWK handle CSV files.”
• Watch “Slumberland | Official Teaser | Jason Momoa | Netflix“—”A young girl (Marlow Barkley) discovers a secret map to the dreamworld of Slumberland, and with the help of an eccentric outlaw (Jason Momoa), with the hope that she will be able to see her late father again. Watch Slumberland, coming to Netflix November 2022.” Maybe I missed it but there’s fuck all about this being based on Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay?! I mean, at least there’s a “based on” credit at IMDB, I guess. They appear to have Miyazaki’d* Winsor McCay, like what was done to Eiko Kadono and Diana Wynne Jones. (* The distasteful way where some people, like John Lasseter of Pixar in a DVD commentary, waxed hyperbolically about Howl’s Moving Castle could only have come from the mind of Miyazaki when it was based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones. And only Eiko Kadono’s first Kiki book in the whole series has ever been translated into English.)
• “Tool’s Maynard James Keenan confesses to stealing song ideas from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor“—”Don’t watch this Trent”: Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan admits to some selective stealing from Nine Inch Nails in new video interview
• “New Homeworld board game includes more than 100 ships and a 10-part campaign. The classic PC RTS game should look great on the table.” Also “Homeworld: Fleet Command. Take Control of Massive Fleets in Epic Tabletop Sci-Fi Battles Based on the Award-Winning Videogame Series! Coming to crowdfunding in november 2022, homeworld: fleet command puts would-be admirals in charge of kushan or taiidan fleets fighting it out in fast playing 1-4 player galactic battles featuring 101 plastic models of fighter squadrons, corvettes, frigates, destroyers and fleet-busting capital ships, including the mothership.”
• “Lite Brite Stranger Things Special Edition – Best of 4 Seasons“—”Your favorite retro toy teams up with Stranger Things for their next big release of Season 4 in 2022! Now you can create art with light with this high-definition Stranger Things Special Edition.” Also “Lite-Brite Stranger Things Special Edition – Demogorgon Hunters – Amazon Exclusive“—”Includes exclusive Demogorgon Hunter and Hellfire Club design”
• “An ice-age bison was discovered! Then soon eaten — once the foul taste was smothered.”—”In 1979, researchers unearthed the mummified body of a 55,000-year-old Steppe bison in the Alaskan tundra. Shortly after, they sliced off a piece of its neck — to eat! Here’s a news story told in rhyme:”
• “How an award-winning AI film was brought to life by text-to-video generation. Deep learning is coming to Hollywood.” Watch “Glenn Marshall Neural Art“—”In this animation, artificial intelligence is used to transform a dancer into a crow. The result is a haunting and compelling piece that follows the crow through its brief dance in a landscape of post-apocalyptic barrenness, to its inevitable demise.”
• Watch “Launching a Dice to Space“—A solo d20 helms a spelljammer from the Earth sphere into Spelljammer wild space set to music from the Spelljams album. I mean … yes please.

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.