RAW Semantics on 'Hardcore kindness semantics'

 

The RAW Semantics blog has a new post up, "Hardcore kindness semantics," that discusses the semantics of unfair generalizations about groups, and how to replace those generalizations with kindness.

"Some of the worst cases, for me, of the unfortunate habit of over-generalising on abstract groups (eg “The Media”, “The Establishment”, “The Elite”… or insert your favourite scapegoat group: “shitlibs”, “woketards”, “Tory scum”, etc) ironically came from people whose political views I otherwise agreed with on many issues. Cue the classic Monty Python scene, which illustrates what I’m thinking of here better than any number of long-winded blog posts."

The clip Brian references (from the Life of Brian) is above. 

Articles: Richard Powers, Gene Wolfe, Don Dixon, Chris Diffords, Chris Frantz

Don Dixon, music producer and musician, and his wife, singer Marti Jones. (Courtesy Don Dixon).

One of the cool things about being a newspaper reporter is that if I am interested in a writer or a musician, I sometimes get to interview that person. Perhaps some of you would be interested in them, too; I should probably mention my Sandusky Register articles a bit more often.

Here is my 2014 interview with novelist Richard Powers (I was prompted by his novel about classical music, Orfeo, but he is probably better known for The Overstory, The Echo Maker and The Gold Bug Variations.) 

Here is my 2015 interview with writer Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun, etc.). 

Musician Don Dixon co-produced the first two REM albums and has worked with any other musicians; I wrote an article about him this year after a long interview. 

I snagged an interview with Chris Frantz (Talking Heads drummer) when he issued his memoir in 2020. 

My 2018 piece about Chris Diffords, after his book came out. I picked 10 of my favorite Squeeze songs and asked him to comment on them. 

Prop Anon interviews Noah23 [UPDATED]

Noah23 has released several albums this year, but he describes this one as his major release. 

Prop Anon has revived his podcast series with two new podcasts.

One is an interview with rapper Noah23, the Canadian rapper influenced by Robert Anton Wilson. The interview is about 23 minutes long. Most of the discussion is about music, but I had previously reported that Noah23 has faced legal woes, and in the interview, Noah23 reveals that's behind him, the charges have been dropped. I listened to the podcast and enjoyed it; Prop had turned me on to Noah23's music. After I listened to the podcast, I bought Noah23's  Tank Girl album on Bandcamp, the album released on Maybe Day this year (I like the tune "Tiger Cage," featured on the podcast.)

Here is Noah23's Bandcamp page, which has many of his albums. Noah 23 also has many albums on Hoopla Digital, the streaming service which most U.S. citizens can access with a library card from their local library, and  you should be able to find him on any of the commercial music streaming services.

Prop also has released a podcast interview with John Crawley. Here is the description: "In this episode I speak with author, John Crawley about his book The Yank: The True Story of a former U.S. Marine in the Irish Republican Army. John joined the IRA in 1980 just as 'the Troubles' was about to enter its 'long war' period."

I've included links to the podcasts, but you should also be able to get them at many podcasting apps; on mine, I had to put in the URL for the RSS feed, which you can get at the links I provided. 

UPDATE: I learned about the podcasts from Prop's newsletter. I did not have the URL for the newsletter when I wrote the post, but now I have the link. 

New Hilaritas podcast: Oberon Zell-Ravenheart

 The choice of guest for the latest Hilartas podcast seems like a great one: Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, founder of the Church of All Worlds (inspired by Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land) and the publisher of Green Egg, the pagan magazine. As usual, the Hilartas podcast page for the episode has useful links and background information, and Mike Gathers returns as host. 

One of Tim Leary's favorite bands is still around

 

It is weird to realize that the Rolling Stones are still around and still have the two core members, Mick Jagger, 80, and Keith Richards, 79; Ron Wood, 76, has been the band's second guitarist since 1975. The Beatles may be long gone, but somehow the Stones, who formed in 1962 and put out their first single in 1963, not only still exist but have issued a new studio album, Hackney Diamonds, which I've been listening to. 

It's not a replacement for your favorite Stones album, but it's a pretty decent album. If it gives you an idea of my tastes, Sticky Fingers is probably my favorite; I do like Blue and Lonesome, the 2016 blues cover album; Tattoo You, from back in 1981, was the last previous studio album I liked. 

Oz Fritz, in his review of Joanna Harcourt-Smith's memoir, Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary, records the couple's fondness for the Stones: "Joanna and Timothy met and got together largely as a result of being separately drawn into the Rolling Stones orbit when the Stones were working in France recording Exile On Main Street.  Leary, at that time, was THE exile on main street along with the Stones.  The opening lyrics of the first song, Rocks Off go: "I hear you talking when you're on the street, your mouth don't move but I can hear you speak."  Leary was known to demonstrate remarkable telepathic abilities at different times several examples of which you'll find in this book."

Below is a "Visionary Portrait of Timothy Leary" I found on X today, from Nuwan Shilka, a psychedelic artist from Sri Lanka. 

Poem by Arlen Wilson

 

Source.  Hilaritas is coming out soon with a reprint of Chaos and Beyond, which includes other Arlen Wilson poems. 

Friday links

Meme on what RAW called the "Jumping Jesus Phenomenon." (Source).

 George Monbiot on observing the rules of war. I try to avoid being too "political" here, but I think a RAW blog can come out against killing civilians. Via RAW Semantics on Twitter.

I'll let Jesse Walker explain this link. "My favorite presidential candidate is in legal trouble for speech, just because he vilified some public servants. No, of course I don't mean Trump." (Jesse's X account.)

The Whole Earth Catalog is available online. 

High-ranking Tibetan Buddhist official lives in Ireland. 

Will Detroit go Georgist? (As in Henry George, who RAW was interested in). 

Professor who revived research into psychedelics has died

Roland Griffiths (public domain photo)

Psychedelics research, including its use in "brain change," was taboo for many years in the U.S.; Robert Anton Wilson used to rail about the situation in his writings.

Roland Griffiths, a Johns Hopkins professor whose courageous work revived research into psychedelics, has died of cancer, the New  York Times reports.

The Times obituary is full of interesting sentences: "In 1994, Dr. Griffiths began meditating regularly, which led to a transformative experience that, he said, “profoundly shifted my worldview and got me very curious about the nature of spiritual experiences.”

"He told Mr. Pollan that the experience was so profound that he nearly quit science to devote himself to a spiritual practice. But, as it happened, others were working to rehabilitate the study of psychedelics. One was Bob Jesse, a former vice president of the software company Oracle, who had established a nonprofit to encourage research on mystical experiences and whose introduction to Dr. Griffiths became the engine for what would soon change the direction of Dr. Griffiths’s research and reinvigorate the field."

Hat tip, Jesse Walker. 

Ohio to vote on legalized marijuana

 

 Photo by manish panghal on Unsplash

As Robert Anton Wilson was against the "war on some drugs," I should mention that Ohio, where I live and where RAW lived in the early 1960s, will vote Nov. 7 on whether to legalize possession and use of recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over. As with many other states, there would be licensed dispensaries, and an adult also would be allowed to grow up to six plants at home (12 if two adults lived at the residence) and to order home delivery.

If the state question passes, Ohio would, if I remember correctly, be the 24th state to fully legalize marijuana (as opposed to approving medical marijuana), although my former state, Oklahoma, has such a liberal medical marijuana law that the state  has legalization in effect in all but name. A new poll from Baldwin Wallace University in Berea (where I live), shows 57% of likely voters planning to vote for it. Another 58% favor another passage of another state question, which would put the right to abortion in the state constitution.

Interestingly, the marijuana question is an "initiated statute," i.e. a change in state law, not a change in the state constitution. That means that state lawmakers, in a legislature dominated by a large Republican majority, could tinker with the law or even repeal it. So if the question passes, we'll have to see what happens.

I have written a couple of newspaper stories which (I hope) go beyond the obvious in covering the marijuana state question. Michigan legalized marijuana a few years ago, and prices in the dispensaries have dropped sharply in recent years. I wrote a story on how Michigan towns with dispensaries near Ohio would face a sharp drop in sales if the question passed in Ohio. (I found one Michigan town, Morenci, right on the Ohio border with a population just above 2,000, which has no real grocery stores but which has five weed dispensaries.)

I also wrote a story about how Ohio has unregulated "diet marijuana," Delta 8 THC, available everywhere, even as state voters debate whether to authorize properly regulated marijuana. The latter story mentions Yellow Springs, Ohio, where RAW once lived and which is mentioned in Illuminatus!; it's also the hometown of Ohio's current governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who opposes legalization of marijuana. 

English university to offer graduate degree in magick

Reed Hall at the University of Exeter (public domain photo by Benjamin Evans, source.)

 From the New York Times: 

"In the ancient city of Exeter, three women were hanged for practicing witchcraft in the late 17th century, the last of such executions in England. Now, merely a short walk from where the hangings occurred, the University of Exeter will offer a postgraduate degree in magic and occult science, which the school says is the first of its kind at a British university.

"Prof. Emily Selove, the head of the new program and an associate professor in medieval Arabic literature, said the idea for the degree, which will be offered starting in September 2024, came out of the recent surge in interest in the history of witchcraft and a desire to create a space where research on magic could be studied across academic fields.

"Coursework will include the study of Western dragons in lore, literature and art; archaeology theory; the depiction of women in the Middle Ages; the practice of deception and illusion; and the philosophy of psychedelics. Through the lenses of Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, lecturers will explore how magic has influenced society and science."

More here. 

Emily Selove also is an expert in medieval Arabic literature and magick.  Contact her, I guess, if a new edition of the Necronomicon is found. 

Piper Laurie has died

Piper Laurie in 1990, in her Twin Peaks days. (Creative Commons photo by Alan Light, source). 

As there are many RAW fans who are Twin Peaks fans (though I've never seen any evidence that RAW was) I am going to share the news that actress Piper Laurie has died, at age 91. Here is the New York Times obituary.  Laurie played the scheming lumber mill owner Catherine Martell in Twin Peaks. 

Of course Laurie had a very long career and played many roles and there's a good Wikipedia bio. 

We may be able to recover some ancient lost books

The Last Day of Pompeii. Painting by Karl Brullov, 1830–1833 (via Wikipedia)

As this is by definition a blog for people who are serious readers, I thought I would share something.

If you had not heard, there is an effort underway to read the many charred scrolls available at the site of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy in A.D. 79, and it seems to be actually succeeding.  And here is a speculative article on the kinds of books that might be recovered. 

I found both links via the Marginal Revolution blog. 

H.P. Lovecraft podcast series from the BBC

It seems appropriate for the Halloween season to note that the BBC is doing a critically-praised  HP Lovecraft podcast series, The Lovecraft Investigations,  and that a new season has just dropped.

Living in the U.S., I don't keep up with the BBC, I guess, as I had not heard of the series until I saw this post on X today from Sitting Now: "For those who haven’t listened to the BBC’s ‘The Lovecraft Investigations’ go and do so now, because out of nowhere Season 4 is about to drop. SUPER excited. This is so sooo good."

As I discovered via Wikipedia, each season is based upon modernizing a classic Lovecraft work, and the podcast has won a great deal of praise. Some details via Wikipedia:

"The story is a modernization of the original Lovecraft works, set around the same time the podcast aired and presented as a podcast-within-a-podcast in which the two hosts of the Mystery Machine, a true crime podcast investigating cases related to the occult and conspiracy theories, stumble upon a case hiding a much larger mystery. It features a large voice cast led by Barnaby Kay and Jana Carpenter as the two podcasters, Matt Heawood and Kennedy Fisher.

"Each season of The Lovecraft Investigations is titled after, and mostly based on, one of Lovecraft's works, namely 1927's 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,' 1930's 'The Whisperer in Darkness,' and 1931's 'The Shadow over Innsmouth,' while creating an overarching story; it is also set within Simpson's Pleasant Green Universe of audio dramas."

The new season is based on "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936) and has just been released. Downloads can be made from the official website and probably from the other usual podcast apps.