I’m joined by Richard Saville-Smith to discuss his book Acute Religious ExperiencesMadness, Psychosis and Religious Studies.
Book link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/acute-religious-experiences-9781350272910/
I’m joined by Richard Saville-Smith to discuss his book Acute Religious ExperiencesMadness, Psychosis and Religious Studies.
Book link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/acute-religious-experiences-9781350272910/
#377 — John Michael Greer blogs at Ecosophia, subtitle, Toward an Ecological Spirituality. JMG has been an astute observer of Western Civ’s arduous economic and cultural descent, and is the author of many books, both novels and non-fiction, including Green Wizardry, After Oil, The Wealth of Nature, and Not the Future We Ordered. Star’s Reach, is a novel set 400 years ahead in America’s neo-medieval future, The King in Orange, a meditation on the relationship between archetype psychology and the occult as acted out in politics and culture. Things are getting weird in America, wouldn’t you agree? Even a bit supernatural. To help us navigate through this wilderness of the weird, JMG and I talk about magic and the re-enchantment of daily life in these turbulent times.
The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.
When it comes to the world’s heaviest living organism, it is a “forest of one tree” that is thought to take the crown. Now a sound expert is listening into the quiet grove in an attempt to hear its secrets.
Known as Pando – Latin for “I spread” – the 47,000 genetically identical quivering aspens in south-central Utah are considered to be a single organism, with the “trees” actually branches thought to be connected by a shared root system.
The upshot is a vast living entity, thought to be thousands of years old, that covers 43 hectares (106 acres) with a dry weight of about 6m kg, making it, putatively, the Earth’s heaviest living organism. But it is also an organism in danger, with experts warning Pando is probably dying off due to human actions.
Now an acoustic artist has revealed how he has delved deep to uncover fresh insights into the tree.
A crew of young environmental activists execute a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline in this taut and timely thriller that is part high-stakes heist, part radical exploration of the climate crisis.
Julian Langer and I often haunt the same spaces. Julian is writing a story, the first chapter of which is here. It resonates with similar forest spirit themes I am working with these days. Looking forward to more in the future.
As the U.S. deals with a nationwide swatting wave, Motherboard has traced much of the activity to a particular swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram. Torswats uses synthesized voices to pressure law enforcement to specific locations.
LINK: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7z8be/torswats-computer-generated-ai-voice-swatting
Hundreds of teenagers flooded into Downtown Chicago on Saturday night, smashing car windows, trying to get into Millennium Park, and prompting a major police response. A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat. Police were escorting tourists and others back to their cars in the Millennium Park garage.
‘Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?’ asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded. ‘I ate civilisation.’
The Machine is like an exotic gemstone unveiled before us, laid out on a cloth of black velvet. At first we gasp, then we wonder. What is this miracle? Where did it come from? Who made it? It glisters in the daylight in ways which our best artists cannot capture. The Machine glisters and it makes promises.
I will save you, it says. And then: I will become you. Entwined, we will go forward together. We have always been together. You need me.