A chance mention in the Arthur Machen book The Three Impostors reminded me that there used to be a British corporation, based in London, that sold "aerated bread". The full story is astonishing: the founder, a Scottish doctor from Edinburgh named Dauglish, thought that yeast fermentation destroyed some of the nutritive value of wheat flour, and also felt that kneading bread by hand was unsanitary. Therefore he devised his "aerated bread" which was mechanically mixed and leavened with carbonated water. The resulting bread was low on flavor but highly uniform in its physical properties, so it was a big hit in Britain! Of course.

The process was cheap and quick and thus eminently adaptable to mass production, and eventually there were "A. B. C." (Aerated Bread Company) shops and tea houses everywhere, selling bland bread and other highly processed foodstuffs, popular for their convenience and ubiquity. We still have tasteless mass-produced bread but now they use different methods to get a highly uniform product.

Isn't mass production wonderful?

~Chara of Pnictogen

Both Frisk and I are considering how we might want to publish (online) longer-form writing. Ghost? Medium? We have only a few glimmers about this whole business. It's hard to know how to make longer-term decisions when it seems like the world might come apart in six months... ~Chara

One of the most remarkable technological developments of the last few years has been straight from the pages of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness: the elite nerds of corporate technology have constructed themselves something that's very much like a shoggoth, a practically shapeless mass of technological promises that's sold as the solution for literally every conceivable problem. It's almost become "superintelligent" (any moment now!) and sure, maybe it'll decide to kill us all, but presumably this catastrophe will be prevented so long as OpenAI gets a bigger share of the public treasury. Meanwhile the AI shoggoth, like Lovecraft's, is struggling to learn how to mimic speech and painting and other human skills.

In the backstory of At the Mountains of Madness, the alien beings who once occupied Earth before humanity did, the radially symmetrical "Elder Things" or "Old Ones", created and trained the shoggoths as technological servants (slaves, really) and, as the Elder Things' civilization sank into decadence, they grew increasingly dependent upon the shoggoths' abilities, and eventually there was rebellion and war, wiping out the Elder Things' society. Only the shoggoths remain as living survivors of their civilization. Lovecraft regards this as horrific of course but really it's fascinating: the implication is that the shoggoths, who are capable of learning, might one day build a civilization of their own.

The very shapelessness of the shoggoths, both the Elder Things' shoggoths and the modern-day AI versions of them, seems almost symptomatic of decay.

(cw: discourse about the decayed state of human technology leading to speculation about humanity's possible extinction)

Sometimes I feel like Tannhäuser more than I care to admit. What an opera to identify with, huh? The plot: Tannhäuser is a great Franconian knight and bard, floruit 13th century C.E., ran away from home a year before the opera takes place and found his way into the Venusberg, the mythical subterranean domain of the goddess Venus. But now he's getting bored with Venus (how?!) and decides to return home. There he's reunited with Elisabeth, an old flame of his from before Venusberg. Elisabeth had fallen in love with Tannhäuser and his songs but then he fled home and she's been pining. Now we've got a proper Wagnerian conflict between unholy pagan love (i.e. Venus) and sacred Christian love (i.e. Elisabeth.)

Everything blows up when there's a singing competition and Tannhäuser scandalized everyone by singing about the venereal joys of Venusberg. He's sent on a lonely pilgrimage to Rome and an audience with the Pope, only to be told he's forever damned and "Wie dieser Stab in meiner Hand, nie mehr sich schmückt mit frischem Grün, kann aus der Hölle heissem Brand, Erlösung nimmer dir erblühn!" (As this staff in my hand no more shall bear fresh leaves, from the hot fires of hell salvation never shall bloom for thee!) Elisabeth has tried to follow him on the pilgrimage but died along the way. Tannhäuser decides going back to Venus is the only option, she shows up to welcome him back, but then he remembers Elisabeth and learns of her death. Venus is foiled, Tannhäuser expires next to the body of Elisabeth, someone comes running in with the Pope's staff covered in new green leaves, and everyone's who's still alive shouts praises to Heaven. Happy ending!

Gawd, it's practically autobiographical, except for the staff thing. Miracles don't happen for me. Anyway I'm glad Tannhäuser exists, if only because that made "What's Opera Doc?" possible. Venusberg is all over "What's Opera Doc?"

~Chara