Another Shaligram verification today and sadly, the stone turned out to be a fake. Once again, I am seeing more fabricated Shaligrams being passed off as genuine by sellers hoping to capitalize on devotees who cannot travel to #Nepal. (A Thread)
This fake was pretty good though. More convincing than some I've seen.
But here were the obvious signs:
1. There's a seam/break that you can see between the outer nodule and the internal chakras which pries up fairly easily. This is a giveaway that someone took a few likely broken pieces of a real Shaligram (the ammonite imprints) and covered them with a nodule of industrial epoxy.
2. The "printed" look of the outer chakra spiral. This one actually takes a fair amount of experience to recognize though. In some cases, this might actually be convincing as a real, river-worn, ammonite mould but the raised edges are the red flag.
Because! Here, for example, is another fake Shaligram I have. I got this one years ago and use it as a teaching piece. It's entirely fabricated out of M-Seal epoxy and a kind of carved stamp has been used to make the chakra.
So, sadly, I have to return this particular little Shaligram under bad news. It's a fake and was likely made for a seller's market. It didn't even pass my pin test, which revealed the plastic-y exterior. A real Shaligram would powder-scratch.
Anyway, if you want to know more about uncovering fake Shaligrams, or just about Shaligrams in general, check out my discussion here!
You hear a lot about “Marxism” these days. Mostly as a scare word. The big bad Socialism coming to ruin your good, American, life just like the Communist Red Scare of the 1950s. Problem is...
...almost no one talking about Marxism in the news right now is using the term even remotely correctly.
So, what then, is Marxism?
The majority of breathless, talking heads going on about “Marxism” lately seem to be confused by the relationship between several different moments in intellectual history. The first is “postmodernism,” a tragically out-of-date category dragged kicking and screaming out of...
I'm serious. STEM without the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities will produce more "innovative" tech bros who giddily reinvent rent, roommates, taxes, and now...roller skates. With complete, straight-faced, sincerity.
This is a problem. And I have a list (So, thread 🧵)
Last night I was watching @FoldableHuman's "Decentraland and the Metaverse" video as I continue looking at data for my digital religion project. And, I just have to say, these tech bros who were all "inspired by The Matrix?" Didn't actually watch it.
Not only is Techno-Salvationism utterly front and center in most of their rhetoric about the future of virtual/augmented reality, but they seem to have almost no real grasp of the meaning in the sci-fi narratives they admire.
I was recently reading a paper on folk/false etymologies (also sometimes called backronyms), and given the proliferation of them I have seen in terms of politicized language policing online lately, I have some thoughts! (A Thread 🧵 about Language Use)
The paper, "The inevitability of folk etymology: a case of collective reality and invisible hands" by Rundblad and Kronenfeld, traces the popularity of folk etymologies through a kind of linguistic consensus. Or, as anthropologists say, because they do a kind of "cultural work."
But what struck me particularly was the line: "Folk etymologies often begin as highly individual constructions, but yet seem to conform to some kind of collective reality, which enables language users to accommodate folk etymologised words with apparent ease."
Unsurprisingly, I am getting very frustrated with media reporting on the arguments between Graham Hancock, his fans, the Netflix series, and actual archaeologists.
The framing of so many of these articles is just awful.
For example, my current aggravations are...
Archaeologists aren't "dismissive" of Graham Hancock's theories. That implies that they are hand-waving him away out of arrogance. Archaeologists don't take Hancock seriously because he's been peddling theories of Atlantis for 30 years with absolutely NO evidence for his claims.
Secondly, they keep quoting Michael Shermer. Who isn't an archaeologist or a scientist. He's a science writer who has a tendency to lean into pop psychology to justify his libertarian political leanings.
"Ancient Apocalypse" isn't going to tell you anything new. At all.
In fact, I can 100% guarantee that the racism you'll be presented with in regards to archaeological finds is straight out of Victorian Imperialism and the colonialist project.
In my "History of Anthropological Thought" lectures, I cover this in regards to two Victorian theories.
1. Hyperdiffusionism 2. Unlinealism
Hyperdiffusionism is a pseudo-archaeological hypothesis suggesting that certain historical technologies or ideas originated with a single people or civilization before their adoption by other cultures.
(In modern New Age circles, it is called "single-sourcing")