This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too). Knitting the Web: We Need Interlinkers!by Brennan Kenneth Brown at brennan.day We are makers of digital literature. Sacredness wrapped in HTML. Ceremony in the act of blogging. For some people, each post is both therapy and proof of existence. A seed planted in soil, which might one day grow into something more. In the era of AI slop, human curation is even more importantby Juha-Matti Santala at hamatti.org The dead internet theory refers to the idea that the most of the user generated content in the web comes from bot activity and automated content rather than humans. It’s based on the idea that because these platforms operate so heavily on algorithms that can be gamed rather than human interest, it’s beneficial to many parties to fill the web with their generated content. Words, weeds and wildfires: the violence of our mother tongueby Blue Kirkhope at Caught by the River We need to talk about how we talk about nature and climate: about how the English language can be a catalyst for the climate crisis itself; how the misuse of tongue, teeth, mouth and throat can be as violent as a naked flame in an open, dry moorland. Creating a politics of longingby Andrew Curry at The Next Wave And that creation of positive images of the future is essentially a cognitive process. The idea of future time travel is a smart cognitive trick to give us permission to explore versions of the future that seem attractive—even at a sensory level—but which get screened out by the relentless dominant discourses of late capitalism. It helps to lift the weight of the present off our shoulders. From the Ecclesiastical to the Educationalby Victoria Kingham at Hastings Independent While living in Brighton, Stannard noticed that a lot of contemporary music was influenced by horror, and that many horror films featured experimental soundtrack music. Accordingly he organised The Outer Church, a series of events which combined the two. The event ran, in the UK and abroad, for about five years, and a compilation was also released. After a spell in London, he wanted to get back to the sea and was eventually attracted by the rich occult history of Hastings. Notes From Psychick Albion: Small Prophetsby Cormac Pentecost at Temporal Boundary The unobtainable glamour of TV celebrities is replaced with the gramarye of ritual magic. This is a step beyond the mundane world of commodity production, a world where the most creative way to spend time is to pretend that the commodities you are employed to sell don’t exist; as though the capitalist spell had already been broken. But beyond this first step there is the fuzzy sense of a more profound change that might be possible. A world where we don’t just rein in the urge to amplify big profits, but where we also rein in the urge to control and exploit small prophets. REVIEW: Hookland Fragments – Volume One by David Southwellby Moreau Vazh at Taskerland Hookland is best understood as a series of missives from a fictional English county of the same name. Often accompanied by photography, the posts are mostly written in the voices of named characters and describe a place that is equal parts Folk Horror, Fortean reportage and half-remembered fragments of pre-Thatcherite Britain. Please take off your smart glasses: On consent and the right to silenceby Martin Kubler at The In-Between Space If you come to my home for dinner, I don’t want to have to wonder whether something I say, something another guest says, or simply what happens around the table can be captured or processed by a device I cannot meaningfully see operating. Proof of life out thereby Derek Kedziora at derekkedziora.com Besides advanced civilisations not needing to industrialise, there’s also the possibility that a retrograde culture or fanatical religion comes to dominate a world. Even in the history of Earth, had a few key battles gone the other way, industrialisation may never have happened and we’d be living in a vastly different and far more brutal world. you SHOULD be bored sometimesby RNOTTÉ at RNOTTÉ Animation Many social animals have schedules, including humans. Most of their day is spent resting or socializing, after the couple hours they spend working, foraging, or hunting. What I’m trying to say is that being constantly stimulated is not natural nor healthy. Your brain needs time to slow down. It’s not “laziness”, it’s what animals are supposed to do after a long, hard day. august 26 dotby combatdavey at combatdavey For the most part, people’s public reactions to famous artists dying are not rooted in their actual, literal relationships with the artists —— they’re rooted in relationships with the work of those artists. Community commonsby Frances Crossley at What the Fran We have a game in my family where we work out how we can blame things on Margaret Thatcher. If the problem predates Margaret Thatcher, then enclosure. Otherwise, the Normans. When the stubborn minority winsby Carlos Peralta at weatherlinguist Consider a simple example. You are a group of four friends, one of whom is vegetarian. The meat eaters will happily eat a vegetarian meal, but the vegetarian will not touch meat. So when the four of you go out for lunch, you end up at the vegetarian place. One person in four decided where everybody ate, and nobody had to argue about it. The majority just followed. You can email me at lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk with a comment or response.