Shameless pluggery and linkery-pokery.

A writer friend (and fellow Ekklesía Antínoou member), P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, has just published Devotio Antinoo: The Doctor's Notes, Volume One. This book has been a long time in coming, and labor intensive, and so I'm excited for him that it's finally arrived! This is the first time that I'm aware of that much of the material -- both ancient and modern -- in this volume has been collected in a relatively user-friendly format, and Lupus is a solid scholar to boot. If you are interested in queer-friendly Graeco-Roman-Egyptian syncretist pagan deity work, or happen to know someone who is, this book could make an excellent gift for Saturnalia (or alternate gift-giving occasion of your choice).

Also, I may have painted the cover art. So, er, bonus.

~*~

- From a friend I trust because she is actually credentialed and works in a related area: How the EPA linked "fracking" to contaminated well water. This is a big deal, because with seven billion people on our planet, how we treat our land and water is going to get even more important over the next 100 years. It's also an object lesson in how the industry does not effectively police itself, and how deregulation is not our friend in this arena.

- This is a bacon Skyrim helmet. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

- Mitt Romney crashes a 60-year-old gay Vietnam vet's dinner date while trolling for anti-gay votes. Considering that the other likely Republican candidate, Newt Gingrich, appears to be trying to resurrect the Cold War (only with Iran this time) and believes child labor laws are "stupid", I believe the country is entitled to a giant facepalm right about now.

- Self-publishers considering using the new KDP Select program to get your books into the Kindle lending library should check out this article, which discusses the weird fine print (including clauses that determine the pay scale and force exclusivity). My take? Locking yourself into a non-compete with uncertain pay with an entity like Amazon just to have distribution in a single format is a bad deal, hands down.

- One of the best stories I've read in a while about an antique object -- in this case, a fourteenth century quadrant -- being found more or less by accident. The really don't make these things the way they used to...

- A mysterious ailment is causing kidney failure in sugar cane workers. Check out the links in the sidebar as well for more information.

- Badass mid-century American advertising art. What I'd love to see, of course, is a new golden age of illustration with similarly epic images that include women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc. doing massive, symbolic things for modern industries.

- An interesting graphic displaying regional distribution of place names that reflect cultural patterns in the US. Obviously, a significant portion of these names were imposed by European settlers, but I've been turning this over in my head a little bit and wondering what it might mean to be one of the "Branch" people.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com