Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

With all the news I post about space, how ’bout our home planet?  No, not Pluto this time: Earth. Apparently it’s missing two billion years. Kind of. Well, we are anyway, in that we have no idea what happened for that span of time. Theories abound.

Also, the solar system is about two million years older than we thought.

Science is cool.

• In her blog Know Thyself, T. Thorn Coyle reminds us that commitment and consistency are important in any practice, whether mundane or spiritual, in “Let’s Get Engaged“. You really do earn points just for showing up.

• Charlie Jane Anders asks, “Could self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?” on io9. To which we respond, “the first” might be a stretch (servitors, anyone? or egregores, gods, etc?), but that cities can and do become sentient certainly seems reasonable. Let’s just keep an eye out for Skynet, ok?

• US Games, purveyors of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck (amongst others), now blogs! Fool Stop Tarot Blog is run by Janet, their social media person, who also maintains their Twitter account and Facebook page. Everyone’s so Web 2.0.

• Sannion (H. Jeremiah Lewis) writes in The House of Vines, “Speaking about the unspeakable“, that the old mysteries are dead, and that’s ok. We can’t reconstruct the past as it was, and that’s fine. Learning what was is great, but it’s not where we are now. Live life. Great stuff.

I had tons more links to share, but time intervened, so next week’s Signal will likely be double-sized. You’re welcome.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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I’ve been making gradual updates to blog functionality and thought I ought to let you know what changes have been implemented, and ask your thoughts on whether this improves things, or if you have other suggestions.

WordPress Upgrade

Plutonica.net runs on WordPress, and on June 17th we upgraded to WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” along with a significant portion of the blogging world.

Only a few of you may notice any differences, those who log in to comment (which is not a requirement for this site), and those who log in for guest posts. On the front end everything looks pretty much the same, and behind the scenes the changes are minimal, though there are over 1200 bug fixes and other enhancements that took place between this and the last WordPress release.

Indeed, with the insane amount of new customization options now available a new theme upgrade may be in order in the coming months.

Geeze, it doesn’t seem like that long since our last redesign, but I guess it was almost a year ago.

New Features

Liking comments

This feature was actually implemented a few months ago after a particular discussion took place where I felt that rather than repeating myself or others in the thread, it would be helpful if readers and commentators could “like” a particular response.

So, now you can.

There is no “dislike” button because I feel, as a rule, you guys are pretty civil about how you interact with each other and there’s simply no need for it. If you dislike what someone’s saying, a reasoned response is almost always more helpful than noting a negative sentiment. Continue reading »

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Saturday Signal: Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Our Esoteric Book Club officially starts on Monday, but the conversation’s already started, and people have to begun introduce themselves, come join us!

If you missed our earlier announcement, the first pick is Quantum Psychology, by Robert Anton Wilson.

Great stuff.

Now, on with our usual linkage:

• The wonderful blog Gyllene Gryningen has a great post titled “Genie or Genius?” which delves into the history and mythology of the djinn, also discussing possible elemental correspondences. Very nifty.

• Someone’s started a fan page on Facebook for people interested in Buying Crowley Books. They’ve even got a Twitter account (@crowleybooks) now. Via these methods they share info about good places to buy Crowley’s works as so much of it has gone out of print. As of this writing the Facebook page has nearly 700 fans.

• John Griogair Bell points out deficiencies in the Thelemic calendar and recommends some improvements in “Heliocentricity“.

Noise?

• In Letters from Hardscrabble Creek, Chas Clifton wrote a bit about a website he came across which focused on “Having Sex With Ghosts“. Gina “Gnothz” Lanier (what’s a “gnothz”?) is a self-described paranormal investigator who wants to hear about your intimidate relations with the dead. They’re not even funny. One woman complains about obscene phone calls from the dead. It’s just sad. For the voyeuristic with no sense of web design, here’s Real Sex with Ghosts. Oh dear.

Got a cool link? Please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious, tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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We’ve just added a brand new Facebook fan page for Plutonica.net.

It’s been up for about two weeks and we’ve already got more than fifty fans, which is great.

Fans see updates about the site, new posts, and other resources.

We’ll also post questions, solicit feedback and ideas, and you’ll be able to interact with others who share similar interests, ask questions, get advice and we’ll see what else!

You can find me there, and several others who’ve contributed to Plutonica.net over the years. So if you’re interested in interacting in another medium, I highly recommend checking it out and becoming a fan.

I’m still learning about fan pages, so let me know if you have any thoughts, suggestions or ideas about what you’d like to see.

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