#Tarot underneath/shadow card of evening: King of Pentacles.

Seek and maintain security and stability, ground yourself, and keep goals and plans realistic. Make sure you have what you need to provide for yourself and those in your circle.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

#Tarot card of evening: Seven of Pentacles.

Be patient and focus on the essentials. Trust the process. You've done the magic, now trust it to unfold and manifest.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

I ran out of space on my ingredient shelves. Luckily I have two more shelves that I can install. As I accumulate more ingredients & start making components, oils, & incenses in larger than single use quantities; I'll need them. Cheap spice bottles FTW. #Occult #WitchyShit #ChaoticQueer #GeekCrafts

#Tarot underneath/shadow card of evening: The Sun-XIX.

If you needed a sign for a new start or venture, this is it. The path is clear, and you can see far ahead. Go ahead with your plans.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

#Tarot card of evening: Ace of Pentacles.

You may come across a good deal, so be ready and open to it. Whether it is a bit of coin or some other material or practical gain, be ready to receive it and nurture its growth.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

Being a Cult Member Invited To Speak at a -Con For Other Cult Members Is Not The Flex You Think It Is

All I am going to say is that being part of a convention that is really a conference for chronically online, insufferable reply-guy cult members is not the flex that you think it is. Neither is missing a psychiatrist appointment to argue with conspiracy theorists on Reddit.

Yes, that actually happened. A person involved in that Discord really did miss a psychiatrist appointment just to argue with strangers on the internet about *checks notes* the Anunnaki. To be fair, they were arguing against the typical high strangeness, but mentally sane people are not missing medical appointments to argue against high strangeness online and then telling everyone about it on Discord, xer (I am using neopronouns because I don’t know their gender).

That’s all I have to say about the state of fuckery in occulture. If you know, you know. Missing a psychiatrist appointment to argue with strangers online is, clinically, a symptom of obsession—but whatever.

Only losers join esoteric cults—oh, excuse me, occult lodges. It’s like feeling smug about being invited to speak at a Scientology convention. No insight. None to be found. I honestly think they believe they are more than just a creepy religious fraternity, like any other creepy religious body in America.

#Tarot underneath/shadow card of evening: Seven of Pentacles.

Patience. Trust the process. Find something else constructive to do while you wait for the one project to manifest. Don't mess nor tinker further, let the magic happen.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

#Tarot card of evening: Five of Wands.

Do your best to mind what you say and do to avoid setting off drama. People around you may be on edge and seriously touchy. Keep your distance and allow the environment to cool off.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

#Tarot underneath/shadow card of evening: The Empress-III.

Nurture your creativity, be receptive to new ideas, and integrate lessons into your craft. The time of gestation and just thinking is done.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

#Tarot card of evening: Nine of Cups.

As your wishes manifest as a result of good effort and intuition, do remember those who helped on the journey. Pass the cups around so who wish may drink.

#WhispersOfTimeTarot #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #ItinerantLibrarian #esoterica

Astroturfing Is Pretty Pointless When Social Subgraphs Are Fragmented (e.g., the Fediverse)

I am seeing astroturfing in the fediverse again, by AT Protocol developers implicitly trying to shill their products. I think it is stochastic behavior by developers with too much time on their hands. Honestly, I do not care. I like the people on ActivityPub more, but I like the AT Protocol better, and I have developed for both. Astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is fascinating to me because it is so pointless.

I am actually a Computational Biologist and Computer Scientist whose specialty is combinatorics, social graphs, graph theory, etc. Specifically, I use this to create epidemiological models for the memetic layer of human behaviors that act as vectors for diseases, using the SIRS model. I do not just study germs; I study human behaviors.

The models I construct extend into a “memetic layer,” in which beliefs, norms, and behaviors (such as risk-taking, compliance with public health measures, or susceptibility to misinformation) spread contagiously through social networks. These behaviors function as vectors that modulate biological transmission rates. As a result, the spread of ideas can accelerate, dampen, or reshape the spread of disease. By running computational simulations and agent-based models on these graphs, I study how network structure, influential nodes, clustering, and platform-specific dynamics affect behavioral contagion. I also examine how these factors influence epidemiological outcomes.

To say it very concisely, I study how the spread of bat-shit insane beliefs, shit posts, and memes influences whether or not there is a measles outbreak in Texas. Ironically, this is an evolution of my studying semiotics, memetics, and chaos magick in high school. I got a job where I can use occult, anarchist techniques professionally.

I think a large reason why I do not care about astroturfing in the fediverse is that it’s so pointless, lol. Astroturfing to manipulate the narrative would actually work better on Bluesky to keep people there than trying to recruit from the fediverse. Furthermore, big instances are relatively small. Some people on Bluesky have follower lists larger than an entire large instance in the fediverse.

Within ActivityPub networks, astroturfing rarely propagates far, because whether information spreads depends on properties of the social graph itself. Dense connectivity, short paths between communities, and a sufficient number of cross-cutting ties support diffusion. ActivityPub’s architecture tends to produce graphs that are fragmented and highly modular. This limits the reach of coordinated activity.

ActivityPub is a system where each instance maintains its own local user graph and exchanges activities through inboxes and outboxes. This makes it autonomous and decentralized. The network consists of loosely connected subgraphs. Cross-instance edges appear only through explicit follow relationships. The ActivityPub protocol does not provide a shared or complete view of the network. Measurements of the fediverse consistently show uneven connectivity between instances, clustering at the instance level, and relatively long effective path lengths across the network. Under these conditions, large cascades are uncommon.

Instance-level clustering means that in ActivityPub networks, users interact much more with others on the same server than with users on different servers. Because each instance has its own local timeline, culture, and moderation, connections form densely within instances and only sparsely across them through explicit follow relationships. This creates a network made up of tightly connected local communities linked by relatively few cross-instance ties, which slows the spread of information beyond its point of origin.

However, with the AT Protocol, global indexing and aggregation are explicitly supported. Relays and indexers can assemble near-complete views of the social graph. Applications built on top of this infrastructure operate over a graph that is denser and easier to traverse. There are fewer structural barriers between communities. The diffusion dynamics change substantially when content can move across the graph without relying on narrow federated paths.

Astroturfing depends on coordinated amplification, typically through tightly synchronized clusters of accounts intended to manufacture visibility. Work on coordinated inauthentic behavior shows that these tactics gain traction when they intersect highly connected regions of the graph or bridge otherwise separate communities. In networks with strong modularity, coordination remains local. ActivityPub’s federation model produces this kind of modularity by default. Coordinated clusters stand out clearly within instances. Their effects remain confined to those local neighborhoods.

Astroturfing on ActivityPub therefore tends to stall on its own because of the underlying graph topology. Without dense inter-instance connectivity or any form of global indexing, coordinated campaigns have a hard time moving beyond the immediate regions where they originate. Systems built on globally indexable social graphs, including those enabled by the AT Protocol, expose a much larger surface for viral spread. Network structure and connectivity account for the divergence where that is independent of moderation, cultural norms, ideology, or intent.

It’s just really funny to me how these stochastic techbro groups waste so many resources. I personally don’t want to go viral, which is why I avoid platforms where I can. The fact that it’s harder to achieve high virality on ActivityPub is exactly why I prefer the fediverse over the Atmosphere. One way to think about it is that you can change the ‘genetics’ of a system with a retrovirus, where memetic entities act as cultural retroviruses to reprogram the cultural loci of a space. That is their end goal. They are trying to hijack cultures memetically. You see this a lot with culture jamming.

Basically, the astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is designed to jam and subvert the culture. But, as I have already said, the topological structure makes memetic virality stall. They cannot achieve that kind of viral spread in the fediverse, which is why I cannot understand why they do this every year.

The most fascinating part of #magick and the #occult is its obsession with self actualization.

Historically, all magick is an attempt to surpass the traditional guardians of power and seize for yourself what it is you desire. Be it anything from justice against that guy who stole your cloak all the way to finding salvation without the need for a clergy.

Through the occult, you are your own self and it is through your will that your world will be bettered. Even if you're asking gods for help, it is you who must start the process of change!

Sooooooo I drew a present that I only realized at the last minute can’t be posted until next week. So I panic drew some cute occult items and then colored them with acrylics! I forgot to leave room for my normal signature, so it gets just a small copyright notice instead.

#art #traditionalart #originalart #acrylic #occult #goth #mastoArt

New month, new #Tarot deck, so here is the video announcing my February 2026 deck. You'll see it on my #SocialMedia and maybe a spread here or there.

https://youtu.be/UGiQwrIfuNI?si=_WcdsnJcyd4OeKfJ

#ItinerantLibrarian #occult #vlog #video #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #esoterica

New on my #blog: "Imbolc Spread 2026."
https://itinerantlibrarian.wordpress.com/2026/02/01/imbolc-spread-2026/

Taking some time for a little reflection at this halfway point between winter and spring.

#Imbolc #Tarot #AlchemicalThoughts #occult #cartomancy #divination #pagan #heathen #witch #esoterica

Can We Stop With The Dadaist Memes, Please?

Spamming Dadaist cut-up techniques into memes doesn’t make you look edgy at 50. It just makes you look like someone who never outgrew 4chan. I’m browsing through a Bluesky network of chaotes going through a 50-year-old crisis, and it’s pretty much nothing but cut-up Dadaist-style memes, shitposts, and chan-style board posts—in the year of our lord 2026.

I kid you not, I just read a long thread about someone lamenting the death of bulletin boards except for 4chan. This is why. 4chan culture is able to survive because it keeps getting spread memetically. You can’t, on one hand, curse 4chan culture and then, on the other, participate in it.

I made my own protection incense for a ritual tonight. I opened the windows & aimed this intent (along with the smoke) out to my many immigrant neighbors. You must do physical things as well as magic(k), tho. Be better than the thoughts & prayers crowd. #WitchyShit #Occult #ChaoticQueer #GeekCrafts

I had a nice day and I acknowledge that I am privileged. When I need #WitchyShit that I can't grow or make myself, I can just visit the local #Occult shops to stock up on herbs, resins, and fiddly bits. A couple books may have leapt into my shopping bag too. #ChaoticQueer #GeekCrafts

Who Gets to Speak On Discord, Who Gets Banned, and Why That’s Always Political in Spaces with No Politics Rules

So, a thing I find very interesting about the fragility of the esteem among chronic Discord users is that it’s common for admins and moderators to ban or make fun of people who leave. Essentially, they’re responding to being rejected or not chosen, so they think it’s reasonable to retaliate

A Discord server I am lurking in has a “no politics” rule and is a religious, esoteric, and philosophical server. What I find very funny about this is that politics is:

“Politics is who gets what, when, and how.”

— Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)

I find it very funny that the most minimal form of being “not political” in a virtual community is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). I was part of an IRC chaos magick channel when I was a teenager, and I submitted to a zine under my old handle (which is not Rayn) when I was 20. No, I’m not going to reveal the name I wrote under, which was published in chaos magick zines back in the day, because I’ve had a bucket of crazies following me around since 2008, with the insane network of anarchists circa 2020 being the latest instance.

ChanServ was a bot used on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to manage channel operations such as bans, who got voiced, and permissions. Think of it as an early, early moderation bot. In an IRC TAZ, everyone who entered got all the permissions from Chanserv, so anyone could ban, voice, unban, deop, or op anyone else. No one had more power than anyone else, so there was minimal negotiation over channel resources. A TAZ is still an inherently political construct; however, it is a minimal political construct because there is minimal negotiation of resources and an equal, random, and chaotic authority structure. That’s not Discord, though.

Discord inherently has a hierarchical system defined by roles, a TOS, and members are expected to abide by the rules of that server. So, when you say there is a no-politics rule on Discord, you are inherently contradicting yourself because Discord is structurally political in how you, as a moderator, interact with others. How people negotiate conversations and interact with each other to access the resources of your Discord server is inherently political.

Discord’s structure makes any “no-politics” rule itself a political act. Moderators exercise power by granting, restricting, or revoking permissions, and that distribution of power is the very politics the rule tries to avoid. So while the intention is to keep discussions “apolitical,” it creates local Discord politics by determining who gets to speak and who gets silenced (e.g., banned, timed out, kicked, or limited to certain channels). A “no politics” rule shifts political dynamics into moderation decisions rather than eliminating them.

What prompted this was me observing a typical pragmatic versus moral realism argument that you’d see in any philosophy course or forum. I’m an academic and a computational scientist, but I don’t try to shut down any arguments with that, because that’s an explicit fallacy and a dishonest, bad-faith tactic.

Technically, I am a biologist. Yes, I have a biology degree and a biotech degree. I also have philosophy, mathematics, and computer science and engineering degrees under my belt. I have to work with people like this on a daily basis, and I find them insufferable, so the last thing I want to do in my free time after looking at stacks of dumbass papers is argue with people on Reddit or Discord when I could be fucking, getting fucked, or spending time with my husband. But, alas, they have no life. Keep in mind, as a computational biologist that reviews a lot of shit, I get paid to argue. These idiots are arguing on the Internet for free! The reason why Redditors, Reddit moderators, and Discord moderators get shat on so much is that all of their labor is unpaid! People with lives don’t take it that seriously!

On to the convo:

A new person in the community defined morals as: morals = {a, b, c} exhaustively. An established member of that community responded that, for them, morals are either {x, y, z…}, non-exhaustive and polymorphic, or not inherently defined by the tradition itself but supplied externally by the individual. The new person replied, effectively, “According to my definition of a, b, c, that still constitutes a moral framework.” An established member who is also a scientist pushed back as if no definition of morals had been proposed at all, when in actuality they were disagreeing with the scope and applicability of the given definition, not the act of defining itself.

By the way, the symbolic way I’m defining this is ambiguous. You have no clue what anything is; however, it is ontologically defined, and the logic makes sense. That is the problem. An ontological definition was given, so arguing that no definition was proposed—simply because they disagreed with it—is in bad faith. Personally, I am a constructivist, poststructuralist, pragmatist, instrumentalist, and anti-realist, so I don’t care too much about the realism of the ontological propositions and expressions. I am pointing out logical mistakes.

This is especially egregious when individuals rely on their authority in a domain where their degree is not pertinent. A well-known issue with scientists is that their curiosity can outstrip their morality. Essentially, an ethics board composed mostly of scientists without degrees in ethics, law, or philosophy will make poor decisions and saturate the political sphere they occupy with advocates and lobbyists to bend laws to their interests. Therefore, a board with no philosophers is pretty sinister.

Morals and ethics are philosophical problems. To my knowledge, many people who sit on ethics boards that seriously address ethical issues have philosophy, and not just astronomy, degrees. Relevant degrees include psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, etc. For example, I have a philosophy degree, so I am technically qualified and credentialed by a university to have these discussions. An astronomy degree alone does not make someone qualified to discuss ethics—maybe if they also had a theology degree?

The thing I find really funny about this group is that they avoid dilemmas. Morals and ethics are developed through ethical dilemmas. Their response to any type of dilemma is to exert their local authority and exclude, deny, or shut down conversations.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science is a little less messy and more defined. We can all see something and agree on what we see, right? The difference with philosophical questions and moral dilemmas is that they are relatively open-ended and ambiguous. It’s really amusing to me how those who try to argue philosophy are uncomfortable with indefinite answers that are open to interpretation.

It’s just funny how they tacitly assume that they are the only academics in their field in existence and that their opinion on things is the consensus, especially on metaphysical issues where there is no consensus. No human knows what the right thing to do is all the time. It’s great to know that they have somehow achieved a level of inhuman perfection.