I've restructured the Regular Reading links, and added several that needed to go there. It's so tricky to come up with category headings that are sufficiently descriptive yet brief enough to fit on a single line.

"Piercing the Veils." Section title inspired by the essay I recently copy-and-pasted. I thought about dividing the batch of blogs I read covering various non-mainstream subjects into several subcategories like "spirituality", "deep politics", and "the crash", or something like that.

But then where would fantastic planet go? Spirituality, or The Crash? What about Bitter Greens? It probably wouldn't fit well in any of those listed above, but it definitely deserves a spot.

So I'm asking myself: What's the common thread running through all of these? What keeps me reading? The answer I came up with is that they all focus their writing, in one way or another, on seeing through the layers of BS that permeate the what present-day gnostics might call the Black Iron Prison. They explore new and inspiring ways of looking at the world, of how to be in this bizarre and often inexplicable universe we find ourselves in. Some approach it from a spiritual perspective, others by aggregating and presenting news of current events with a twist. But they all have something interesting to say, or I wouldn't have put the links there. :)

"Tech." Self-explanatory. I hope.

"Personal." Here, I lumped together both people I know personally, and others whose blogs I simply enjoy reading. They tend to focus more on the day-to-day stuff of life.

"Artists". This could probably use a little explanation as well. What I'm putting here is not an exhaustive list of my all-time favorite artists, but some lesser-known acts who make some damn good music, preferably not affiliated with the RIAA. Also, I'm not linking to anyone who doesn't make at least a song or two available for download from their website. This because I hate it when there's an artist that's been recommended and I want to find more about them, but when I try going to their website, I only find a bio and a bunch of press releases, but no music!

I'll probably rotate them in and out from time to time, and I'll be adding some more soon, but what I've got there right now is just to get things started.

Hmmm... What else? Well, I've got to get to work. But before I go, I'll snatch another quote off something Ran put on his site today. Because one can never quote too much of Ran Prieur! This one is really good.

If nobody ever explored the minority view, human thinking would never change. Someone has to be the first to think something, and someone else has to be the second, and so on. By the time everyone thinks it, I get bored. I'm not saying I believe that lifespan is cultural, just that I accept it. Belief is a mental state that excludes acceptance of alternatives. It's possible that human lifespan is biologically fixed, but the alternative is so interesting that I have to explore it. I've said this before and I'll say it again: If you're behind a wall and you think you see a crack, do you explore it or do you seal it up? It depends on whether you think of yourself as an inmate or a guard.

I think I've allowed this website to veer too far into politics and the crash of industrial civilization, attracting too many readers who think that's what this site is about. This site is about exploring the fringes of everything, it's about making cracks, and it's about scouting new paths. I've been using the New Orleans debacle to jam a big crowbar into the crack in human faith in central authority. I'm excited about the crash because of all the possibilities it opens for us to live our lives differently. I'm against civilization but I'm not a primitivist because primitive people have rigid belief systems -- just like civilized people! I think civilization is a disease of the primitive mind and when we stop thinking primitively we'll be immune. I think and feel that accepting "weird" stuff is intimately related to transcending the culture of Empire.

Bravo.