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We haven’t heard about demons for awhile
Demons! Socrates had one, the Bible has fewer than you’d imagine. Who are they, what are they and yes, they are just made up. Still, it is important that we keep an eye on whatever they might be up to. So over to our demon expert, one-time Dragon Award winning author for best Horror Novel…
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Religion & Despair
I’m reading an interesting paper whose conclusions I’m sceptical about. Entitled “OPIATES OF THE MASSES? DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN RELIGION” the paper is published by the National Bureau of Economic Research which is a private economic research group of some influence. The paper is looking at the known phenomenon: the increase…
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Ugly Connections Part 2
This is a follow-up post to one from January this year: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2022/01/06/ugly-connections/ Late in December 2021 a gunman went on a killing spree in Denver. The murders appear to be reprisals for imagined slights. The added twist to the killings was that the murderer had also been a (sort of) science fiction author with a…
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Can you be both a polytheist and monotheist at the same time?
Alternative title: how deeply buried in layers of nonsense am I right now? So, the previous Debarkle chapter was Comicsgate, the next one is Qanon and specifically Vox Day’s promotion of Qanon because Qanon itself is too big a topic. Unfortunately, before getting onto how the two forms of toxic nonsense (Comicsgate and Qanon) meet…
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On the Right & Civilisations
This is a rewrite of a Tweet thread that started here: However, Tweets aren’t a great medium for the point I was trying to make, so I’m making it more essay-like here. “Western Civilisation” or “Judeo-Christian civilisation” are almost content-free markers in right wing discourse these days. In both cases, there is a fundamental incoherence…
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Triangles are the new front in the culture war and are possibly being controlled by demons
Imagine, if you will, a triangle. I’ll make it a very specific one. It has a base of 18 centimetres and a perpendicular height of 9 centimetres. It even has a specific orientation with its base horizontal on a grid. Here it is (or at least a version of it) Am I being wholly honest?…
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Some navel-gazing about god(s)
I was prompted into contemplating my belly-button by reading the usual crypto-fascist Vox Day. So apologies for that. I’m not going to bother linking to the piece (its dated December 7 if anybody wants to look), it’s neither terrible nor insightful. However, the issue at hand is god and logic and that’s a topic that…
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Ye Olde Skull & Lobster: Reading Vox Day So You Don’t Have To: Part N+1
When P.Z. Myers is cited positively and unironically by Vox Day, you know there’s something amiss with the universe. There’s heresy in the air and right-on-right attacks going down. On the one hand, we have Jordan Peterson: transphobic right-wing purveyor of semi-coherent self-help books for people frightened by women going to university. On the other…
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Dialogue: Thessaly by Jo Walton
[Warning on themes around sexual violence and consent] Plato: Joy to you Camestros. I am pleased to see you in the Agora this morning. Camestros: Ah! Plato! I seem to have instantiated into a 1960’s movie set about the Greek myths. I assume that in your day there weren’t quite so many ruined pillars or…
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A Philosophical Muddle
The political extremities are always strange places to visit. The far-right of Catholicism (or perhaps better described as the Catholic part of the far-right) in particular has some strange features. Recruiting as it does from the same mélange of social panics and prejudices, the outcomes it preaches fall in the same spectrum as the rest…
Camestros Felapton
FELAPTONL
Camestros Felapton 