The Holy Madness of Devil-Hunters – A Review of Hanns Heinz Ewers's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" – Mountains often breed strange, isolated cultures. Sometimes this strangeness is mere stagnation—a remote people are encased in amber, and thus their folkways harken back to an earlier time period. – Besides witches, warlocks, and werewolves, the Italian Alps were also home to religious zealots and rebels like the Waldensians—a proto-Protestant sect that ran afoul of the Vatican in the twelfth century for translating the Gospel into local languages. Although the Waldensians began with the preacher Valdus (or Peter Waldo) of Lyon, France, they found refuge in the Piedmont and other areas of Italy. It is here, in this fog-shrouded and legendary region, that Hanns Heinz Ewers’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice takes place. –> https://theobelisk.substack.com/p/the-holy-madness-of-devil-hunters –> https://archive.org/details/sorcerersapprent0000hann/mode/2up

Brigitte Bardot obituary: French star who redefined female sexuality on screen – Bardot became a global icon of post-war France. From her scandalous breakthrough in And God Created Woman and the ensuing Bardomania, her bold, brazen screen image embodied a new freedom and made her a much scrutinised celebrity. –> https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/brigitte-bardot-obituary

Πώς βάζεις προγράμματα να ανοίγουν μόνα τους με το ξεκίνημα των Windows –> https://www.dwrean.net/2026/01/fakelos-ekkinishs.html

Hundreds of Mysterious Victorian-Era Shoes Are Washing Up on a Beach in Wales. Nobody Knows Where They Came From – The leading theory is that the black leather boots, which were discovered by volunteers, were traveling on a cargo ship that sank nearby roughly 150 years ago –> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hundreds-of-mysterious-...

David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus – Proto-Gnostic Gospel –> https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/david-lindsay-a-...

An Occult Thriller in Oxford: 'Snow' by Nigel Frith – The novel draws together deftly these various strands, the college politics, the strange house, the vision in the garden, and manages to achieve both dramatic action and delicate, wistful scenes. It is an unusual, highly personal work, distinctive and told with panache: we never doubt both the author’s relish for his plot and his commitment to evoking the truly unearthly. –> https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/01/an-occult-thriller-in-o...

Talking Out of School About Dark Academia: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang and We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad – Perhaps not coincidentally, many dark academia authors hold graduate degrees and professorships at the very elite institutions whose campus culture and academic politics they mock. Which might seem like biting the hand that feeds you. –> https://www.blackgate.com/2026/01/10/talking-out-of-school-about-...

Wilfried Sätty – Born at Bremen in April of 1939, Wilfried Sätty, birth name Wilfried Podriech, was a German graphic artist who became known for his assemblages, black and white collage art, and lithographs. –> https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2026/01/03/wilfried-satty/

The Nature of Life: Shyama Golden on Art, identity, & The Not So Elusive Catsquatch –> https://hifructose.com/2025/12/23/the-nature-of-life-shyama-golde...

Young Elephants Adorably Attempt to Pop Yoga Balls –> https://laughingsquid.com/young-elephants-yoga-balls/

RadioSure - Χιλιάδες ραδιοφωνικοί σταθμοί με δυνατότητα εγγραφής – Το RadioSure είναι ένα καταπληκτικό δωρεάν πρόγραμμα για Windows που περιέχει πάνω από 39.000 ραδιοφωνικούς σταθμούς απ' όλο τον κόσμο! Μπορούμε να επιλέξουμε σταθμό ανά είδος μουσικής, ανά χώρα, ή αλφαβητικά. Μας δίνεται η επιλογή να προσθέσουμε τους δικούς μας σταθμούς και να εγγράψουμε την αγαπημένη μας εκπομπή και τραγούδια χάρη στο ενσωματωμένο εργαλείο ηχογράφησης. –> https://www.dwrean.net/2014/01/radiosure-22-17.html

Space Stares Back Vol. 02 – Metal Hurlant –> https://archive.org/details/space-stares-back-vol.-02/mode/2up

Italy Fines Cloudflare €14 Million for Refusing to Filter Pirate Sites on Public 1.1.1.1 DNS –> https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-for-r...

This First-Of-Its-Kind Motorcycle Is Powered by the Sun – Solar energy has benefitted many industries around the world, but few have used it in transportation. –> https://mymodernmet.com/solaris-mask-architects/

This is Silly. Book Goals Are Not Personal – I’m speaking of the BookTok community. There have been a few ruffled feathers with folks getting angry at other folks for the massive number of books they may (or may not, as one of the accusations proclaim) have read. –> https://www.blackgate.com/2026/01/06/this-is-silly-book-goals-are...

The art of Benvenuto Disertori (1887–1969) –> https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/12/29/the-art-of-be...

Barsoom Eternal: H. Beam Piper's Omnilingual – “Barsoom Eternal” is a title I coined for stories written by those SF or fantasy writers who inherited something of ERB’s Mars, be it the landscape, the cultural settings or simply the mood of a vast mysterious Mars. – H. Beam Piper was born March 23rd, 1904. Born into poverty, he became a railroad worker, then a guard. Not a train guard, but a security officer patrolling marshalling yards. He then became a Pinkerton agent. Blessed with an acute, perceptive intelligence, Piper read voraciously and taught himself many subjects. He became an expert on firearms, and had an extensive collection of his own. Piper was often enigmatic in public and had a slightly mysterious persona. In his thirties he started writing fiction. –> https://dmrbooks.com/test-blog/2026/1/3/barsoom-eternal-h-beam-pi...

Punks Git Cut: The Art of Jay Howell –> https://hifructose.com/2025/11/25/punks-git-cut-the-art-of-jay-howell/

Chernobyl’s “Radiation-Eating” Fungus Turns Nuclear Fallout Into Its Own Energy Source – Deep inside the abandoned walls of Chernobyl’s reactor ruins, where radiation remains deadly to most life, a humble black fungus is quietly thriving. This is not a ghost of destruction—it’s a living, growing organism that appears to have adapted to one of the most hostile environments on Earth. –> https://mymodernmet.com/chernobyl-black-fungus-discovery/

THE MYSTERY OF THE XV – Léo Saint-Clair is hot on the trail of Oxus, a would-be world ruler. Oxus and his confederates (the “XV”), from whose Congo base radiotelegraph-guided spacecraft travel to and from a base on Mars, have abducted Saint-Clair’s sister, Christiane, and also Félicie Jolivet. So Félicie’s teenage brother, Max, has traveled via airship to the Congo with the Nyctalope on a mission impossible. – Léo Saint-Clair, known as the “Nyctalope,” is an indomitable crimefighter with night vision — and an early example of a pulp superhero. Excerpted here is a section from the first of his many outings, in Jean de La Hire’s Le Mystère des XV (The Mystery of the XV, serialized in 1911 in the French newspaper Le Matin). There’s a proto-Batman vibe to the Nyctalope; here, he even mentors an irrepressible teenage sidekick. In Josh Glenn’s translation, which first appeared in the anthology Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age (MIT Press, Summer 2025), he’s attempted to retain the proto-cartoonish tone of the prose. –> https://www.hilobrow.com/2026/01/06/mystery-xv-1/

Best Books of 1976? –> https://biblioklept.org/2026/01/01/best-books-of-1976/

Snappy Driver Installer - Ο μαγικός Driver updater για τον Υπολογιστή σου – Αυτονομία: Το Snappy Driver Installer δεν απαιτεί σύνδεση στο Διαδίκτυο, καθώς περιλαμβάνει μια πλήρη βάση δεδομένων με οδηγούς για πληθώρα συσκευών. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι μπορείς να το χρησιμοποιήσεις ακόμη και όταν δεν έχεις πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο. –> https://www.dwrean.net/2023/09/Snappy-driver-installer.html

Justin Lovato & The Atomic Soup of the Natural Universe –> https://hifructose.com/2025/12/17/justin-lovato-the-atomic-soup-o...

24 films to watch on TV this Christmas – Time to plan your festive time on the sofa. –> https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/24-films-watch-tv-this-christmas-2025

The Art of Chie Yoshii – When you stand before one of Chie Yoshii‘s paintings, you might notice the technical mastery first—that jewel-like luminosity built up through countless translucent glazes on wood panel, each layer deepening the richness until gold leaf seems to glow beneath skin, until fabric appears soft enough to touch. Every thread is visible, every feather meticulously rendered. It’s a technique inherited from the Flemish masters, requiring patience and precision. –> https://unquietthings.com/dissolution-of-separateness-and-the-sec...

Maternal paradox – ‘Scientific motherhood’ promised to create high standards for child-rearing. But it’s really a system designed to police women – Midway through our two-hour catch-up, the older one threw a small fist when she stopped him from tipping the sugar bowl into his milk. ‘I can see you’re upset because you really wanted to pour the sugar yourself,’ Macy said calmly. ‘But sugar isn’t for pouring right now. How about you stir your milk instead?’ Always validate the child’s feelings, prioritise warmth at all costs, and avoid negative words such as ‘no’, ‘don’t’ or ‘bad’ – that’s how Macy explained gentle parenting to me. This certainly isn’t how she and I remember our mothers parenting us in 1990s Hong Kong. Before Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) scandalised Western readers, Chinese parents were already infamous for their strictness –> https://aeon.co/essays/how-scientific-motherhood-polices-and-subj...

Ο Γαβριήλ Σακελλαρίδης σχολίασε τον έλεγχο της ΑΑΔΕ στα γραφεία του Συλλόγου Θυμάτων και Συγγενών των Τεμπών 2023, σε δημόσια ανάρτησή του – Όταν το κράτος, αντί να ελέγχει τις δικές του ευθύνες για ένα πολύνεκρο δυστύχημα, επιλέγει να ελέγξει με την ΑΑΔΕ εκείνους που έχασαν τους ανθρώπους τους και ζητούν δικαιοσύνη, τότε αντιστρέφονται πλήρως οι ρόλοι. Και αυτό δεν είναι κράτος δικαίου, αλλά «εκδικητικό» κράτος –> https://www.doctv.gr/page.aspx?itemID=spg19525