TW: discussion of make-believe self-harm. Back in 2002, I made friends with someone who played the live-action role-playing game (LARP) Vampire: The Masquerade. I was familiar with it, having attempted to play back in the late 90’s, but I never got to do much with my character. This time I Read more
I don’t read many fiction books. I used to, but in the last decade or so I’ve had a harder time with mental world-building. I still read Rudy Rucker, though. He’s a physicist and computer scientist who did a lot of acid and it shows in his work. Rucker was Read more
You can learn a lot about a society by its taboos. Surprisingly, Britain and her former colonies still have a lot of the same social mores as the English during the Elizabethan period. From the disgust at open-mouthed chewing, to many people’s horror at frank discussions of menstruation, there’s a Read more
I am currently reading Life on the Edge: : The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili. It was recommended to me by an acquaintance who is a biologist, and it’s interesting reading. I had never heard of quantum biology before. I wasn’t aware that Read more
I’ll be honest with you: I haven’t been reading any non-fiction lately. I’m sorry. I go through phases, you see, and as of late I’ve been reading novels. I’m going back to school full-time this month, so I don’t know how much free time I’ll have to read anything other Read more
I originally wrote this up on the Facebook “Tarot Nerds” group, and someone wanted to share it elsewhere. Instead of joining other groups just to post it, I thought I’d put it here and expand it a little. Even if you’re not interested in tarot, it’s a very brief summary Read more
The Dutch tulip craze of the 1630’s went far beyond a love of pretty flowers. Tulipomania created a bizarre futures bubble in which some people literally sold their homes and businesses to bet on tulips that hadn’t even bloomed yet. When the bubble burst, fortunes were lost. Domesticated tulips, originally Read more
I just read a book on sanguivores: animals that drink blood for survival. It was so good. I should warn you, this post gets a little disturbing at times. Okay, maybe all the time. Enjoy. Let’s start with the bats. There are three species of bats that live on blood. Read more
Jon Entine’s Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People is a history of Judaism through the lens of what DNA research has produced in the last ten years. While Jewish history is worth studying in its own right, ancestral DNA testing has added to the story Read more
Aleister Crowley was a dick. I’ve known that for a long time, mind you. I read his “autohagiography” (a hagiography being the biography of a saint) when I was a teenager. He had some interesting magickal ideas, a lot of which is well worth studying if you have an interest Read more