Novas: The Whole Ridiculous Thing
http://natecull.org/wordpress/2019/09/09/playlist-notes-novas-chronology/
Six episodes in and Legend of the Condor Heroes 2017 continues to impress me as the best TV version yet of probably *the* most famous Chinese martial arts epic ever.
If you like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc, then this is a great time to get on board the Jin Yong train.
Genghis Khan! The Jin-Song wars! Kung fu princesses! (multiple of) Kung fu witches! The forbidden NINE YIN BONE CLAW skill! A martial arts tournament! (of course) Romance! (multiple of) A big war!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4crHldKx6c&index=1&list=PLJIYzNjvxw8v2TkPFnjYx-xD2IqOKjbYk
Esoteric
This idea (and of course for it to make sense you need an idealist / panpsychic cosmology to start with, this will all read as pure unintelligible nonsense in a materialist framework) is why I have hope that the Earth is not actually destined to die in a psychic garbage fire, as it currently appears to be doing.
The fact that we can smell the fire means that we're waking up.
Esoteric
I think Steve Taylor is roughly on my esoteric wavelength.
"Spiritual illumination is communicable"
https://www.stevenmtaylor.com/essays/the-power-of-spiritual-presence/
The idea of satsang is something that I've been thinking about quite a lot for a few years now.
I think it's basically at the root of what the Christian traditions call 'grace'. Kind of 'donated' spiritual energy.
It doesn't do everything for you, there's much personal transformative work that must be done. But it does do something that's more than nothing.
Now you're just rubbing it in, Professor Stradivarius. Your nonofficial chronometry has been most dissociable, you high-class hyperparasite. The manhunt is approaching finality. Turn on the stationary wave.
But they had warp beams and wave theory? But of course they did, because Torchwood.
This is a worriment.
Great Karen's kneecap! There was neither personal property nor pants before 1833 either! Those sneaky socialists!
Holy effervescent electrodes, you plane-polarized pteropods. That's also the year they invented carnivores and capitalism!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1833?src=defrecirc-timetraveler-etycard
Ok which of you is it who's been taking the chronosteamer out for an unlicenced jaunt
"The first known use of 'ultramodern' was in 1833"
Conspiracy
Apparently there is a conspiracy theory that the COVID vaccine is filled with secret Apple nanotechnology Pym particles which lets you literally time travel and also upgrade your body to give you killer abs and the ability to breathe underwater and fire lasers out of your nose
frankly the underwater thing isn't that helpful now that Hong Kong has paved over all its canals
but the laser nose has opened a lot of doors for me. Literally.
Computer (Red Dwarf 'Holly' voice):
Hello. I just wanted to tell you that, the patch which you installed to uninstall the Adobe Flash I installed did not install. I just thought you should know that.
Me (Lister voice):
So the uninstaller did not install, meaning the install is not uninstalled? So it is installed, which is bad?
Computer:
Yes.
Me:
Could you just, not have installed Flash in the first place? Save us all the trouble?
Computer (thinks furiously for a minute):
Computer:
No.
Conspingularity
And I'm sorry to say it but William Gibson's "The Peripheral" (2014) was soaked in Conspingularity juices. It's straight up "there is a vast elite criminal conspiracy which has probably already won, and the only alternative is a military takeover of government". Gibson's conspingularity happens to have a nominally left-wing flavour, but...
Well. It's rural American good guys (and girls) versus evil urban London bankers.
It gives off a worrying smell. So I haven't read Agency.
Conspingularity
Cos Bitcoiners, Curtis Yarvin, and the LessWrong / Effective Altruism / Slate Star Codex people might not be "spiritual" but.... they're kinda all a bit wrapped up in there too.
Deus Ex (2000) was soaked in both 1990s right-wing militia conspiracies.... and Transhumanism / Singularitarianism. That was its whole big cultural deal, bringing those two otherwise unrelated weird things together with Video Games. And they've been together ever since.
Conspingularitarians.
Conspingularity
Man we've been callin it "Conspirituality" for the last year when we could have been calling it "The Conspingularity"
(article from July 2020)
"The Conspiracy Singularity Has Arrived"
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gz53/the-conspiracy-singularity-has-arrived
Wikipedia, spotting pivotal cultural trends ten years ahead of time, and voting to delete them because they're not notable
(I think what actually happened was the original article was for the band of the same name, which got deleted, then the page got resurrected in 2011 as being for the *fairly important* concept described in the 2011 academic paper. But the talk pages persist.)
and we're all gonna shine a light together