I am a simple person who thinks that telling the truth about things is important. I watched the video footage of this shooting, and the killing is casual and unhurried. DHS and aligned political actors are very ready to present a story of rushed, panicked violence, and it just is not true.

I've been having so much fun watching streams of Blood on the Clocktower. It really shows how demonic imagery and concepts can be utilized for play and bonding, and IMO that's as much of a political demonology as the scarier forms that involve dehumanization.

Watching THE GREEN KNIGHT again

This is what academic New Testament studies is like.

Coming soon! (I just wrote a chapter, but very excited about this project) www.bloomsbury.com/uk/esoteric-...

A couple of months ago, Media Club Plus / Friends at the Table published a great episode recapping + critiquing M. Night Shymalan's Signs (2002). I try to explicate their critique of the movie's take on theism/atheism, pulling a little from Brook Ziporyn's recent book: haliphron.ink/2025/11/24/s...

We have been reading Swamp Thing to facilitate discussion about green religions, ecospirituality, pantheism, & similar topics on campus. I argue the comic presents an alternative to Science & Religion research on the imago dei: give it up, and find the sacred there. haliphron.ink/2025/11/22/s...

CFP due this Friday for a special panel on reality shifting and manifestation in Gen Z religiosity. Description: haliphron.ink/2025/11/10/c... Relevant paper: www.zygonjournal.org/article/id/1...

In preparation for our reading group on Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing (if you're in Oxford, HMU), we've read Neonomicon. Here's an interview where Moore endorses Graham Harman's book on Lovecraft. It's fun hearing about him learning to appreciate academic philosophy. thequietus.com/culture/book...

had an idea (wallpapers are below!)

The Chainsaw Man film was wonderful, but it shared the weakness of the Reze arc in the manga: the fight sequence is too long and one note. I wrote up some of my thoughts on how the sequence could have been altered with dynamic stakes and more Reze characterization. haliphron.ink/2025/11/05/c...

Found an interesting chapter which details an anti-colonial Sri Lankan folk tale which describes Jesus as an avatar of Mara ("the Buddhist devil" in oversimplifying terms), sent to trick the world to trap people in samsara (citation in alt-text).

"Not caring about the things I care about" is not nihilism. With few exceptions, authoritarians and techno-capitalists are immersed in a world of meaning, moralism, and narratives. Islamophobes don't believe in *nothing*, they believe they are *at war with the Devil* or *defenders of The Occident*.

Contrary to what you might think, we've actually 𝑛𝑜𝑡 been sleeping and / or dead since launching Dread Delusion... ...we've been making a dying earth JRPG called 🍄 ⚔️ 💀 𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐘 💀 ⚔️ 🍄 & you can wishlist it on Steam rn! store.steampowered.com/app/3940340/...

!!!

Wes Craven's Red Eye was released in theaters on this day 20 years ago 🛩

Spoilers for #CSM210 what a wild chapter . . . . . . . . .

1. First #TTRPG played: Fiasco 2. First ever ran: Call of Cthulhu 3. Played most: Kingdom 4. Run most: Godbound 5. Favorite: Blades in the Dark 6. Most recently played: Dungeon World 7. Most recently run: Monsterhearts 2

The earliest known depiction of a crop circle is in The Mowing-Devil (1678), a 5-page pamphlet which recounts a labor dispute ending with an unwitting deal with the devil, and a field mown in way “that no Mortal Man was able to do the like”: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t... #cropcircles

This statement does nothing for people deeply concerned about the removal of Rebel Scum from this platform. I will not purchase another product from DriveThru until they publicly admit fault re: this incident and make changes to their policies to prevent this from occuring again.

The art of arranging marine algae into designs, bouquets, and even sometimes intricate little scenes, was surprisingly popular in the 19th century. See an album of such pictures by a woman named Eliza A. Jordson here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/album-of-seaweed-pictures-1848

Descartes gave us all the tools we need to survive in an era of misinformation. Simply begin with the understanding that you are real but everything else is fairly likely to be the cruel games of a demon sent to torment you specifically.

I made a sigil in opposition to Dem Islamophobia today, so expect Gillibrand to resign soon. We call this interfaith solidarity.

Our greatest living philosopher <3

It has come to the point in my dissertation where I must discuss Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh making right-wing reaction video slop. This article was really interesting/helpful in theorizing the genre. Schankweiler, Kerstin. "Reaction Images and Metawitnessing." Parallax 26, no. 3 (2020): 254-70.

yes I’m worried about x-risk, why do you ask?

Roll20, which owns DriveThruRPG, told Rebel Scum's designer (@9thlevelgames.bsky.social) that allowing their "hateful content" and political speech on its platform constituted a "slippery slope."

If anyone in Oxford wants to do a Michaelmas reading group on this Brandom/Hlobil text, let me know!

Sad news that Helen De Cruz passed away. We are grateful that they agreed to be part of our editorial board as they embodied the ideal philosopher: brilliant, kind, creative, endlessly curious, passionate about public philosophy, and striving for meaningful change dailynous.com/2025/06/20/h...

pope leo speaks on the risks children face from using ai, saying he’s concerned about “the possible consequences of the use of ai on their intellectual and neurological development.” “access to data, however extensive, must not be confused with intelligence” he said.

Many Satanists have shown up to anti-Trump protests, fought the rise of Christian nationalism in the courts, and reject the violent language found all across the New Testament. DBH's rhetoric here is utterly bankrupt and *repeats* the exact logic MAGA people use to demonize their enemies.

This is a news story that one of Paul Verhoeven’s protagonists are watching during a transition scene in one of his 80s films

I have so many happy memories on the blocks where this went down, gun violence and authoritarianism have made SLC feel haunted.

(saving every devilfish for future reference)

The PhilSci program at the U was what I thought the future of philosophy would look like. Interdisciplinary and collaborative, I loved my time studying there. I am always wrong about the future! dailynous.com/2025/05/19/u...

greetings VISITOR! welcome to BETHEL! NEARER MY GOD TO THEE is a 2 - 6 #ttrpg of gendered christmas horror! play as a VISITOR to the strange town of BETHEL, where you will be hunted (or scouted) for their deadly CHRISTMAS PARADE! the ASHCAN version of NEARER MY GOD TO THEE will release on 01 June!

One of a series of early 17th-century engravings depicting imaginary utopias and dystopias, illustrations for The City of Truth, or, Ethics (1609), Bartolomeo Del Bene's poetic reworking of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

We are planning on meeting at Merton College tomorrow at 6:45pm for reading and discussion re: you and Cavendish on ritual and memory. The chaplaincy offered to host us in the chapel, where the flooring is the same as when Cavendish lived there :) Invitations are open to everyone in the area!

As we get closer and closer to the end of Hunter x Hunter, we want to make sure we wish a "Happy Mother's Day!" to all the great moms we've met during the first season of Media Club Plus!

Next week our reading group on politics and demonization is covering a chapter from Ryan Duns's book on the theology of horror + screening George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Why the study of political demonology is so important.

Associationist Demonology: James Gilray’s 1798 etching "The Tree of Liberty." Charles James Fox as the Edenic serpent tempting John Bull (personification of England). Amongst the rotten apples of the Tree are the fruit of "democracy" and the "Age of Reason," associated with "murder" and "treason."

Happy #MayDay and #InternationalWorkersDay! This poster by Dutch artist Jan Toorop was for the Hague's 1898 National Woman’s Labour Exhibition, which had the goal to improve women's wages and working conditions. More posters from Toorop here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

Pages from a beautifully illustrated account of a journey made from Venice to the Middle East. Although the book was once purported to reflect a journey made in 1465 it is actually a German translation of an account from more than a century earlier: publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...

Badar Khan Suri Is a Peace Scholar at Georgetown. Now He's Being Held as a High-Risk Threat in ICE Jail

Very happy news to share this morning: Yesterday, #Thailand prosecutors have decided NOT to pursue charges against Dr. Paul Chambers! 👏 👏 👏 Hopefully this also means he's able to get back to work ASAP. Cheers for #academicfreedom! www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

Devil (2010) associates Satan with bad luck, not increasing entropy but the collapse of uncertainty into certain doom. In my research this tracks the difference between projections of demonic (disorder, chaos) and diabolic (evil order, dark purposity) iconography. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rbO...