apotropaic magic

An excavation in Pompeii, a Roman city along with Herculaneum frozen in time on 24 August in year 79 AD when with the violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius it became buried under tonnes of pumice and hot ashfall, has uncovered a trove of charms and amulets believed to have been the repertoire, arsenal of a sorceress and also serves as a repository of very intimate personal items that fleeing residents might leave in the custody of the sorceress for safekeeping and retrieval upon return.
Each of the items collected in a wooden box that had all but decayed away represents not only its peculiar wish-fulfilment but by extension narratives too intriguing not to limn complete, not to mention what each talisman and totem might signify or hold power over. Included among the evil-eyes (the virtue of keeping away like with like), phalluses, skulls and scarabs were figures of Harpocrates—a Greek syncretisation of the Egyptian Child Horus who represented the new dawn and hope to conquer the day, who matured to adult form by twilight and represented the resilience to come back again as well as discretion and confidence-keeping.

Δ9

The local farmers have really done an outstanding job with creating refuges for bees and other pollinators, going above and beyond the usual fallow fields of crop rotation and cultivating verges of sunflowers and wild flowers—re-wilded to include anything that will take root among which somewhat incongruously is industry-grade hemp. I am told on good authority that because they’re male plants, they would not elicit the most enjoyable experience, though they make a novel sight to behold nonetheless.

magnum opus

Via the always captivating Miss Cellania, we are treated to a bit of chamber music from Grant Woolard’s latest edition of his Classical Music Mashup—which is a nice ensemble of melodic transitions that takes us on a tour of the great composers in a collection of seventy familiar musical vignettes. Find other iterations of Woolard’s work at the link above.

pizolgletscher

Following a recent memorial service for a departed glacier in Iceland, a Swiss environmental group in the canton of Sankt Gallen is planning on holding a similar funeral for the small cirque glacier (formed in a bowl-shaped mountain depression) at the foot of the Pizol.
Effectively dead with no longer the ability, albeit at a geologically slow pace, to impact the landscape as it crosses the range and is now regarded as a patch of dirty ice and a massively popular hiking trail through five alpine lakes and moraines is much diminished by the loss of one of its attractions. Learn how you can pay your respects and stop further glacial melting away at the link above.

tro breizh

Though the historic tour, the pilgrimage to the shrines of the region’s seven founder saints, might be too ambitious for a few days’ vacation—a grand undertaking with a circuit covering Quimper, Vannes, Dol-de-Bretagne, Saint-Malo, Saint-Brieuc, Tréguier and Saint-Pol-de-Léon—we’ll nonetheless have at least a few of those stops on our itinerary as we at PfRC take a much needed sabbatical in Brittany. Stay tuned for further adventures coming soon. Kenavo ha beaj vat!

a spacex odyssey

Via the Awesomer, Deep Fake artist called ctrl shift face has morphed the visage of entrepreneur Elon Musk onto actor Keir Atwood Dullea playing astronaut David Bowman in this four-minute clip as he confronts the HAL 9000 regarding egress for some pod bay doors. It’s not quite seamless yet and I think we like to grasp onto those glitches as hard as we can but impressive and disturbing, nonetheless with the potentials for the technique clearly illustrated—check out more canny shorts of face-swapping at the links above.

7x7

because internet: a study into how online culture is shaping language

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the vindicator is my only friend: another veteran newspaper shuts down in a reeling blow to social justice

dieu et humanitie: the unexpected gospel of Victor Hugo