your daily demon: amy

Also known as a Hanni, this demon with the rank of President—corroborated and conflicted depending on one’s sources—initially presents as a flame (as seen in the sigil) until called upon by the summoner and knowledge in astronomy and the liberal arts and reveal hidden treasures, ruling the fifth quartile of Capricorn corresponding with this day, Epiphany, through the tenth of the month. Opposed by the angel called Ieialel, this fifty-eighth spirit in the calendar of demonology reportedly harbours the believe that he and his legion can reclaim the throne of the Seventh Heaven after twelve centuries have passed.

patent medicine

Prolific inventor and obvious turophile, lumberjack Stuart M. Stebbings (previously) of Wisconsin prototyped and registered a cheese-based filter for cigarettes in 1966. Trials showed that a blend of grated hard cheese with charcoal performed best, removing up to ninety percent of tar from smoke, reportedly outdoing anything else on the market. There is no evidence this proposal got off the drawing board. Much more from Weird Universe at the links above.

mánasteinn

We always enjoy—albeit too often only vicariously and not as active readers who’ve done the assignment beforehand—listening to episodes of the BBC World Book Club and are usually drawn in, intrigued to add a new title to the pile, by a thoroughgoing discussion that some might call spoilers but strike me more as insights from the author. A recent instalment featuring poet, lyricist and novella-writer Sigurjón “Sjón” Birgir Sigurðsson, sometimes collaborator with The Sugarcubes and Björk and his now very timely 2013 work Mánasteinn: drengurinn sem aldrei var til (Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was) about identity, otherness and escapism through cinema in Reykjavík just as the nation is granted independence and the island is visited by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Visit the link up top to listen to the programme and learn what’s next on their reading list.

en attendant godot

The original French version of the play, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot had its premiere performance on this day in 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, coming in translation to London’s West End two years later. Held as one of the most significant English-language theatrical pieces of the twentieth century, the tragicomedy extolling existential conundrums in the milieu of vaudeville in two acts follows the characters Vladimir and Estragon (see also) as they await the titular Godot, whom never arrives. The author grew weary and distracted by what he felt was over-analysis, declaring he had not imbued the play with deeper meaning, but later Beckett came to embrace these multiple readings and interpretations.

in the public interest

Untethered to a particular year (otherwise we’d be reluctant to dip our toes in the recent past), we enjoyed this piece from the New York Times Insider section—via Digg—as a final year-end list for 2020 of seventy-four favourite facts gleaned and cited in the articles that they came from—see also. It’s a fun read-through and we liked re-encountering the concept of “pants drunk” and Bayesian logic, and especially enjoyed learning the delightful fact that unique among their kind when “ants of the species Myrmecina graminicola encounter danger while on a slope, they tuck into a ball and roll away” and that the form of protest in Latin America that involves pot-banging (see also) is called cacerolazo—the Spanish word for casserole. Let us know your favourite new fact.

i just want to find eleven-thousand seven hundred and eighty votes

In an extraordinary hour-long phone call over the weekend reminiscent of Trump’s earlier attempt to persuade the Ukrainian government to smear his political opponent with defamatory material discovered or manufactured regarding his son, Trump pressured the Georgian secretary of state to apply a new calculus to their method for tabulating the vote and overturn the narrow but solid and multiple times reconfirmed win for Joe Biden whose ticket carried the state. This behaviour, inappropriate and contemptible, is a low point in American democracy and warrants a second impeachment before Trump sets a new nadir.

it is pitch black—you are likely to be eaten by a grue

Via Waxy, we learn that in homage to the first text-based version of the pioneering computer game Oregon Trail (see also) that began circulating—peer-to-peer—in the winter of 1971, Aaron A. Reed of Substack will be looking back at the past five decades of gaming and its evolution with an in depth retrospective year week for the coming year. Watch that space for new instalments. You have died of dysentery.

it befits the roman pontiff

Since in response to earlier threats from Leo X (previously) and repudiation of forty-one points put forward in his Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther burned his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine at the Elstertor in Wittenberg, the Pope issued his Decet Romanum Pontificem (the title taken from the first words of the text) on this day in 1521, excommunicating the religious reformer (see previously). The Catholic Church has not rescinded the excommunication, despite urging from Lutherans.