Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam

Shed A Light: Rupert Read – This civilization is finished: so what is to be done?

Rupert Read, Environmental Philosopher and Chair of Green House Think Tank.

The Paris Agreement explicitly commits us to use non-existent, utterly reckless, unaffordable and ineffective ‘Negative Emissions Technologies’ which will almost certainly fail to be realised. Barring a multifaceted miracle, within a generation, we will be facing an exponentially rising tide of climate disasters that will bring this civilization down. We, therefore, need to engage with climate realism. This means an epic struggle to mitigate and adapt, an epic struggle to take on the climate-criminals and, notably, to start planning seriously for civilizational collapse.

Dr Rupert Read is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Rupert is a specialist in Wittgenstein, environmental philosophy, critiques of Rawlsian liberalism, and philosophy of film. His research in environmental ethics and economics has included publications on problems of ‘natural capital’ valuations of nature, as well as pioneering work on the Precautionary Principle. Recently, his work was cited by the Supreme Court of the Philippines in their landmark decision to ban the cultivation of GM aubergine. Rupert is also chair of the UK-based post-growth think tank, Green House, and is a former Green Party of England & Wales councillor, spokesperson, European parliamentary candidate and national parliamentary candidate. He stood as the Green Party MP-candidate for Cambridge in 2015.

About the series
Shed A Light is a series of talks that seek to present alternative framings of future human-nature interactions and the pragmatic solution pathways that we could take to get there.

By recognising the interlinkages between struggles for ecological, social and economic justice in addition to the desperate need for immediate societal transformation, Shed A Light aims to engage everyone with the green agenda and prompt broad-based discussions on sustainability issues.

Filmed at Churchill College, 7 November 2018.

THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH: LIFE AFTER WARMING – David Wallace-Wells

THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH: LIFE AFTER WARMING - David Wallace-Wells

Writing about climate change can be challenging, especially if the desire is to raise serious alarm but offer some solutions and hope. No one has done that better than DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, whose recent book, The Uninhabitable Earth, has been called “this generation’s Silent Spring.” He alerts us to the human effects on our planet, the ways that environmental damage is transforming nature, influencing global politics, threatening capitalism and, indeed, human progress. But—as the author will explain—his book is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. Guiding us forward, Wallace-Wells will also lay out some of the dramatic actions we could take to build a livable, prosperous world in the age of global warming.

LINK: https://youtu.be/wrFhFz2EQfE

 

Episode 55 – Peter Grey and the Two Antichrists

Episode 55 – Peter Grey and the Two Antichrists

…and the lord spoketh, and more episodes of SittingNow Radio were bestowed upon the people. The people were annoyed though, because they’d asked for Playstation 5’s all-round, but hey, they get what they’re given amirite

This week Ken and Ulysses Black sit down with the amazing Peter Grey Occultist and co-founder of the excellent Scarlet Imprint. We talk to Peter about his new book ‘The Two Antichrists’, Scientology, The Future of the Occult, Why Magicians should be looking to space, and not to the past, and a whole host of other weird goodness.

https://sittingnow.co.uk/episode-55-peter-grey-and-the-two-antichrists/

For more Peter Grey, check out our SittingNow TV episodes

Main theme by Simon Smerdon (Mothboy)

Music bed by chriszabriskie.com

 

Peter Grey Bio:

Peter Grey has spoken at public events and conferences in England, Scotland, Norway and the United States as well as closed gatherings. These have included Occulture, the Occult Conferences in Glastonbury and London, Treadwell’s Bookshop, the Esoteric Book Conference in Seattle, the Psychology, Art and the Occult conference in London, Here to Go II in Norway, the Trans-States conference in Northampton University and many Pagan Federation events. A long term supporter of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in his native Cornwall, his work on the witches’ sabbat was first given at the annual Friends of the Museum gathering.  His work has also appeared in numerous small journals and collections, such as The Fenris Wolf, as well as online. His collected writings, from 2008–2018, are published in The Brazen Vessel (2019) with those of Alkistis Dimech.

His Lucifer: Princeps (2015), is a study of the origins of the figure of Lucifer; he is currently writing the second part, Lucifer: Praxis, which addresses working with the fallen angels of the Enochic tradition and their transvection into the grimoires and modern practice.

In Pictures: The Arctic struggle

At only 1,000km away from the North Pole, the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen stands at the frontier of climate change. Here, homes constructed on a thawing permafrost balance precariously on unstable foundations, residents are plagued by frequent landslides, and rain – instead of snow – falls in winter. In February last year, Vanessa Liu and Mark Cheong visited the northernmost town in the world to explore how climate change is affecting everyday life in the Arctic.

Despite its breathtaking natural attractions, the Svalbard region is ironically also known for its high per capita carbon footprint. The town’s power supply comes from coal, one of the dirtiest fuel sources, and almost all of its food supply is flown into the town.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG

Click to see the rest of the images

Merlin: The Influence Of King Arthur’s Magical Mentor | Merlin – The Legend | Chronicle

This ancient story was an influence on Xen: The Zen of the Other

Merlin is the archetypal wizard, Welsh and Celtic in origin but with connections across the water in Cornwall and middle Europe, and, of course, the Arthurian legends. The powerful wizard is portrayed across folklore with many magical powers, including the power of shapeshifting, and is well-known for being King Arthur’s mentor, ultimately guiding him towards becoming the king of Camelot. In this documentary, we take a deep dive into the fantastic world of Merlin and his influence in today’s society.

FBI Bankrolled Publisher of Occult Neo-Nazi Books, Feds Claim

Court documents claim that a confidential informant who helped bring down Atomwaffen Division is also a publisher of white supremacist literature.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has paid a man involved in a publishing house specializing in occult neo-Nazi books more than $100,000 since 2003, according to court filings.

The publishing house is Martinet Press, fine purveyors of Atomwaffen Division-approved books such as Iron Gates and Liber 333. The former is a book about a Satanic cult roaming a post-apocalyptic America, which opens with a scene of a child being murdered.The apparent informant is Joshua Caleb Sutter, a man with longstanding ties to white supremacist organizations. Sutter’s father was a Pentacostal preacher who ran racist memorabilia stores in the area around the South Carolina capital of Columbia; Sutter and his father would take turns running the counter.

The court documents implicating Sutter are from the federal government’s case against Kaleb Cole, whom prosecutors say was a leader of the neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division. Obtained by investigative journalist Ali Winston, the documents are a motion to suppress evidence related to a search warrant used to search Cole’s house.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv9zk/fbi-bankrolled-publisher-of-occult-neo-nazi-books-feds-claim

 

So much ice is melting that Earth’s crust is moving

So much ice is melting that Earth’s crust is moving

As the continents’ frozen burden dissipates, the ground deforms — not only in the immediate area, but also in far-flung locations.

The loss of melting ice from land masses such as Greenland and Antarctica is causing the planet’s crust to warp slightly, even in spots more than 1,000 kilometres from the ice loss.

LINK: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02285-0?fbclid=IwAR1_d0xhB7frPvmD8AOizqgY8tNHtj1mZ9xJjvRJj4fPhtEmEJaHJYl5E8w

How David Foster Wallace Used Compromise Aesthetics to Sell Infinite Jest

How David Foster Wallace Used Compromise Aesthetics to Sell Infinite Jest

Rachel Greenwald Smith on the Treacherous Common Territories of Literary Culture and Capitalism

Ardor characterizes Anderson’s tone, but it also becomes a value in and of itself in her editorial work. “I loathe compromise, and yet I have been compromising in every issue by putting in things that were ‘almost good’ or ‘interesting enough’ or ‘important,’” she writes in this particular issue. “There will be no more of it.”

Against “good poems” she wants to publish capital-A Art, art that goes beyond simply being the best version of itself. Notably diverging from Poetry magazine’s Open Door policy, Anderson believed that truly great art was not a matter of individual quality; it was a matter of ferocity of commitment. She wanted art that could knock a person over, art that “uses up all the life it can get.” She invokes the modernist credo “art for art’s sake,” but in an avant-garde reversal insists that this means not a retreat from the world of politics and history but a commitment to it. “Revolution is Art,” she explains. “You want free people just as you want the Venus that was modelled by the sea.”

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE: https://lithub.com/how-david-foster-wallace-used-compromise-aesthetics-to-sell-infinite-jest

Climate Change and the Future of Cities | Eric Klinenberg

What qualities help assure that a community can survive the threat of disaster? The population density of cities leads to inherent vulnerabilities to mass climate disasters: such as single point of failure transit systems and utilities built prior to today’s environmental realities. At the same time the resources of cities offer tremendous potential for preparation and innovation.

As a sociologist, Klinenberg brings insights on how neighborhood dynamics (what he calls “social infrastructure”) can help individuals & communities prepare for extreme weather including flooding and heat waves. He discusses how cities can be wiser and think more long-term by planning traditional infrastructure projects which also enable such social infrastructure in their design.

“Climate Change and the Future of Cities” was given on March 07, 02017 as part of The Long Now Foundation’s “Conversations at The Interval” Salon Talks. These hour long talks are recorded live at The Interval, our bar, cafe, & museum in San Francisco. Since 02014 this series has presented artists, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists (and more) taking a long-term perspective on subjects like art, design, history, nature, technology, and time. To follow the talks, you can: