Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 🔤SpellBinding: AUGLNRD Wordo: STIES

  • Game #2: Turn 11

  • Ceremonial Magic Isn't A Closed Practice

    No, "ceremonial magic" (empty as the term is—most magic and religion is ceremonial in nature, come on) is not a closed practice. It was never closed, and it was never considered closed by anyone actually involved with it. By all means, have at some yoga, but claiming that it's closed is a goddamn stretch. Like, there are no initiated mysteries in "ceremonial magic" that you don't already get from just doing things, maybe with someone more experienced than you to train under, but even then they're not someone who has to somehow "ordain" or "initiate" you.

    When most people say "ceremonial magic", they generally refer to Solomonic magic, the texts of which are based on the myth of Solomon summoning and binding demons. It's been learned from books by literally anyone who can get their hands on it—and this sort of stuff has literally been in publicly-circulated books since well before the printing press. To that end: can you read? Can you follow instructions? Do you want to do it? Congratulations, you fulfill all the cultural and educational requirements necessary to do Solomonic magic—and, by extension, basically all its variant offshoots. Sure, Hebrew script and words are often part of Solomonic magic, sometimes because part of it comes from Jewish magical practices (which in this case are also definitely not closed), sometimes because of Orientalizing impulses to make shit seem more mystical; big whoop. Besides, many of those words written in Hebrew aren't actually Hebrew at all, but back-transliterations of Greek words or imports from Christian or other cultural influences into Solomonic magic that weren't Jewish at all to begin with. Even the named angels like Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, et al. aren't (either entirely or partially) Jewish in origin, only appearing after the Babylonian Exile and showing definite pagan influences. This only increases, especially with pagan and non-Abrahamic origins of many spirits associated with goetia.

  • So I Read This Book

    Back when I started this phlog, almost a year ago, I wanted to make it a bit like a diary, not so much to capture the minutiae of my daily life (fascinating though I'm sure that would be), but rather to make a record of some of the things I think about, and so maybe trace the evolution of my ruminations (such as they are) over time.

    I always assumed the primary audience for such a thing would be myself. But experience has shown that posting my writing in a place where others _might_ stumble upon it provides an incentive for me to spend a little more time clarifying my thought and expression than I otherwise might if I were scribbling in a notebook, which is why I post these entries here, in one of the more obscure corners of the Internet. It always surprises me to learn that someone else has in fact read one of my posts. And even more so, has gotten something out of it, which a few kind souls have written to tell me they did.

  • Controlled Opposition Media

    Le Grand Soir, one of the good news sites I visit too rarely, has a series of two interesting articles on Yves Klein, depicted in a new book as a charlatan and plagiariser.

    [...]

    The same writer, Maxime Vivas, also engages in a diatribe against two other independent media platforms, Le Média and Blast. Vivas admits that both cover domestic politics very well from a leftist perspective, but also claims they often fail miserably when it comes to geopolitics.

  • Pine trees

    Looking at an apartment I might move into. It had all the things I wanted except the location. It's not exactly *far* from stuff, it's just not on my preferred side of the city. It's in unfamiliar territory. My sister lives very close to the place, though.

• Politics and World Events

  • Sunday-2

    Two days from masses aligned in opposition parties pretending to be exercising a genuine voting system despite there being no proof to it being genuine save for the "winners" repeatedly saying it is.

    It's not even remotely close to auditable, because on top of it obviously not being technically auditable, any auditors would come from amongst us, meaning they'd necessarily be lying/cheating sacks of shit inebriated on their own self concept.

    Pretense's finest hour!

  • The Best of Limited Options

    On Tuesday, the United States will elect a new President.

    I do not consider myself a Democrat or any other kind of partisan.[1] I'm a deep-ecology proponent who looks at many of the things in the liberal order with a certain disgust. The future I look toward is not one of nation-state confrontation or of economic growth or of the thunder of industry, but of people working together on small scales. I don't think I'll have much ideological common ground with a hypothetical Harris administration.

    One thing I am confident of, however, is that a second Trump administration would be drastically worse. Former President Trump does not possess the moral temper to be entrusted with power ever again. He clearly separates the world into "his people" and "enemies" - and the latter category includes vast segments of the population (black people, Latinos, immigrants, gays, women, trans people, Jews, Muslims - the list goes on.) It would be irresponsible to entrust a petty and vengeful man with the instruments of State authority to unleash against his perceived enemies.

  • Murica

    Whenever I watch the news, or read something about current events, I always end up getting confused by the use of the word 'America', claiming some action or attitude on the part of 'America' in geopolitics, or whatever.

    I wonder if these people know that America is a big continent with very many different countries, all of which have their own differing, often conflicting, positions on just about anything, be it politics, economy, ecology, etc.

    "You're missing the point, America refers to the United States". Of course, I know this. I realize it made a lot of sense, in the past, to use America to mean the US, back when it enjoyed world hegemony and it had managed to impose it's own interests on the greatest part of the continent.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Disclaimer

      On numerous German websites, a statement titled "Legal Notice" or "Disclaimer" may be frequently encountered. This content includes something like this (Please note that the appearance of this notice might differ within the EU or maybe even isn't necessary in other countries):

      "According to the judgment of May 12, 1998 - 312 O 85/98 - 'Liability for Links', the Hamburg Regional Court (LG) has decided that one may be held responsible for the content of a linked page. This can only be prevented, according to the LG, by explicitly distancing oneself from these contents. Hereby, we explicitly distance ourselves from the linked pages."

      [...]

      PS: I'm not sure if this becomes a habit or if I'll stop doing it, but this text was written in German and then translated by the local ollama LLM AI into English. It seems the translation has much better wording than my own writings in English (even if you could easily figure out i'ts an AI).

    • How to filter AI slop from Youtube feed?

      There's a particular genre of Youtube channels whose upload consist of music + a still image, usually in "anime style", sometime embellished with a little bit of Live2D animation or a waveform visualization. Channels like this used to be a good source for discovering new musicians and visual artists to follow, because if you liked a particular track or the picture that accompanied it you could check the video description and usually find proper artist credits, with links.

      But recently a new crop of track-and-pic channels have been popping up in my Youtube feed, channels that serve up algorithmically generated slop rather than actual music. To add insult to injury, there's no artist credit to follow when the accompanying picture is particularly good -- even though everyone knows that to get the machine to spit out good pictures you have to instruct it to plagiarize the style of a specific human artist, operators of AI slop channels do not, as a rule, give credit to the humans they plagiarize by algorithmic proxy.