His report of northern Albania contains the only picture of my great-grandfather we have. When I showed my grandmother (before she died) she screamed with delight!
I’m with you on the anti-liberals—they see the world in such a different way that reading them is incredibly stimulating, even though that distinct worldview is that way because of how thoroughly they lost the fight. Joseph de Maistre is my personal favorite; he’s one of those writers with the kind of titanic intellect that bowls you over through his words.
Nagorno Karabakh is a beautiful land with fascinating history. The Western media is ignoring the ongoing human rights abuses of ethnic Armenians in the region. Here is the latest on history repeating itself: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-visit-a-warzone-part-2
I’ve been to Metsovo once. Vlach stronghold in Greece, very good cheese and distinct architecture. Word etymology, especially place names that reveal older language substrates I’m pretty sure would count as a niche interest.
some of my obscure areas of interest: Lee Kuan Yew, Columbo character actors, Gulf War air campaign, yacht rock, and probably the biggest one (technically not obscure, though) is Stanley Kubrick
Jack Cassidy, Robert Culp, Patrick McGoohan, Dabney Coleman, Donald Pleasance, and Richard Kiley. I thought they made the best villains.
I find that certain character actors are great canaries in the coalmines. If you see Charles Durning (sadly not in Columbo) in something, you can be pretty sure it's not bad.
Apr 10, 2023·edited Apr 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Homeopathy.
The idea that miniscule amounts of minerals and poisons and other organic materials can heal us...it's astonishing to me. And it has healed me and my family and my pets, again and again over a decade.
It hints at the fact that our model of reality is completely wrong. Our world is much more mysterious and beautiful and miraculous than we can imagine.
I like planes and air travel, like any self-respecting autist. A system of machines and processes that enables you to not only go much faster and much higher than any living thing, but even be bored doing it!
I have a longstanding interest in golf course architecture. It is how I found Sailer of all things. I belong to golf course architecture clubs/societies. I go on about a trip a year to interesting/new/historic courses to meet other obsessives. Dozens of books.
Even other golfers look at us like we are nuts. One guy pours over steamship manifests to prove a point about which architect built which course (many highly debated and the origin of Merion ended decades-long friendships).
Etymology (a buttery has nothing to do with dairy but is a place for your butts, which are a kind of barrel; a bottle is a little butt; a butler takes care of your butts). Paleoanthropology/aDNA (just did a substack post on some of my favorite books on the topic). Richard Nixon (Frazerian sacrificial king for America).
Etymologically unrelated! The butt that’s a kind of barrel is a Middle English word, from Latin buttis (via Old French bot). Butter is from Old English butere, which is cognate with Latin butyrum and Greek bouturon.
Esoterica tends to attract those who are on a spiritual journey. Are you on a spiritual journey?
The proper term for someone who makes a living from studying a niche area of interest is scholar.
By comparison, I'm a professional dilettante. Jack of all trades, master of none. The closest I have to a niche interest is FreeBasic programming. In theory, an operating system could be written in FB.
This is a point too many people dismiss, even as they enthusiastically participate in powerful rituals (football, the Pledge of Allegiance which always sounds to me like it should end with “Amen”, consuming magical substances that purport to give lifelong health…) One of my own more obscure interests is the history of liturgical development in the Catholic Church.
That’s directly opposite of the current thing. I remember reading a professor, who said she believed in religion, but not God. I tend to agree with her.
I have met and know a lot of really, really pious, devoted, and spiritual people. I am able to compare myself to them and find myself lacking in what they have. My family on both sides has not produced many Priests over the years.
If you want to explore some very trenchant critiques of metaphysical materialism, check out the contemporary Dutch philosopher/computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup.
I can also say, as a former scientific skeptic/cringe internet atheist, that the whole world of esotericism and occultism is if nothing else extremely and genuinely interesting; all the more so when you consider what a big part of the lives of many great geniuses from Bruno to Newton it was. If it’s something that interests you also, then I’d love to point you to some works of interest.
https://www.ecosophia.net/blogs-and-essays/the-well-of-galabes/ This collection of essays, which collectively would be enough content to make up a modestly sized book, is by far one of the most interesting philosophical works of the past decade that I’ve read. You’re probably already loosely familiar with the author via Tinkzorg, but his works on this subject were the first to really persuade me that the whole world of esotericism has some serious intellectual merit.
I've been reading a lot of RAW and Discordianism recently and really liking it. I was first introduced to it by Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, which I'd recommend to anyone who wants their mind expanded. The anarchist politics it espouses might not appeal to some of you, but it's a tremendous feat of imagination that has introduced me to many esoteric concepts.
If you haven't read George Pendle's Strange Angel, I'd recommend that too. It's a biography of the rocket scientist & occultist John Whiteside Parsons. The TV show based on it wasn't bad either, but it was cancelled after two seasons, just as L Ron Hubbard was introduced. Pesky Scientologists meddling in the media yet again.
If you have not heard about, you may be interested in John Carter's SEX AND ROCKETS: THE OCCULT WORLD OF JACK PARSONS (2005). Read and enjoyed it when it came out. Jack was a lad, no doubt about it.
Apr 10, 2023·edited Apr 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I love the Marx Brothers, though it's hard for me to articulate why; you articulated your own reasons pretty well, and I pretty much agree with most of them. I had some indirect exposure to them growing up but really got into them after hearing Woody Allen say how heavily his own comedy was influenced by Groucho, which motivated me to rent what movies of theirs I could find from my local Blockbuster. Really love a Night at the Opera and a Day at the Races. And then it was fun to see how many traces of their influence ran through our culture, from the names of Queen albums to the character of Bugs Bunny, to the novelty glasses/mustache combo worn by kids, etc. I really like that so many of their movies are set in this timeless never-never land that seems made of the same stuff as Wind in the Willows, Narnia, fairy tales, etc., and as you noted, they showcase a fun combination of silly physical comedy with Groucho's more sophisticated wit and mannerisms. Hopefully their appeal outlives that 80-year time horizon!
Bugs Bunny IS Groucho Marx. I developed a theory over a decade ago about how Jewish humour in America has been a mirror to their politics and climb up the ladder of success. I should write this essay one day. The Marx Brothers represents the political anarchism of extremism that had a strong presence on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, , a very Jewish part of NYC. in the early 20th century
I very much look forward to reading that essay! Incidentally, I discovered Jack Benny via a Bugs Bunny episode on Saturday Morning cartoons (the best time of the week growing up). It's interesting how big names from prior generations live on for a time, not through the main things they did that made them famous in their own day, but via some side project (something that seems to happen surprisingly often). Anyway, I have a liking of Jack Benny that is even harder to articulate than my enjoyment of the Marx Brothers. Something about the quaintness and corniness of his humor makes it enjoyable to me.
Have you heard any of the interviews with old-school comedians like Benny that Larry Wilde did for his book "The Great Comedians on Comedy?" He released the audio for the interviews, under a series of albums titled "[Insert comedian's name] on Comedy." You can find them on music streaming platforms as well as YouTube. The interviews with the older generation are interesting historically. The one with Woody Allen is incredibly interesting, as it's basically Allen's philosophy of humor. And for a rerelease in the 80s, Wilde added an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, which is also really interesting (similarly philosophical).
Now I know why I like this Substack so much. Some of mine: mid-century Los Angeles, say the 1920’s to the 1960’s, geography, development, architecture, the criminal scene; the Austro-Hungarian Empire and associated Central European culture; the history of political repression.
People who know me know about my deep interest in California of the Golden Age, and the shift that occurred in the 1970s. I had a very, very long thread on California Esoterica on a now-closed forum.
I think my interest really kicked into high gear when I read Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, which--in addition to offering a lot of mildly interesting detail about life aboard a sailing vessel--is a fascinating description of coastal California just before the gold rush. I'll never think of Long Beach the same way again.
"Energy" is something that seemed really abstract to me, until I saw a World Series baseball game in person - Jays v Braves. Crazy.
But my idea for Ontario Hellaproject is why not build a causeway from Port Dalhousie to Port Credit, and drain the entire western part of Lake Ontario? I don't know if this is practical (well, I do actually) but the result would be amazingly useful.
I remember Udinese frequently coming to Southern Ontario for pre-season friendly tourneys. The GTA has a lot of Italians from Friuli.
“The very forgetful conductor-Nazi Herbert von Karajan”
– _Spy_, September 1988; cf.
https://fawny.org/spy/spy-september-1988.html#forgetful-Nazi
I can spot a Carleton Coon fan a mile away.
His report of northern Albania contains the only picture of my great-grandfather we have. When I showed my grandmother (before she died) she screamed with delight!
I’m with you on the anti-liberals—they see the world in such a different way that reading them is incredibly stimulating, even though that distinct worldview is that way because of how thoroughly they lost the fight. Joseph de Maistre is my personal favorite; he’s one of those writers with the kind of titanic intellect that bowls you over through his words.
There are dozens more that I could have listed, but these will do for now.
Hit the like button at the top of the page if you enjoyed this entry. Share it on social media using the share button.
What are your niche/obscure/arcane interests? Let us know in the comments.
Nagorno Karabakh is a beautiful land with fascinating history. The Western media is ignoring the ongoing human rights abuses of ethnic Armenians in the region. Here is the latest on history repeating itself: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-visit-a-warzone-part-2
I’ve been to Metsovo once. Vlach stronghold in Greece, very good cheese and distinct architecture. Word etymology, especially place names that reveal older language substrates I’m pretty sure would count as a niche interest.
Definitely. Toponymy is a very interesting field of research.
some of my obscure areas of interest: Lee Kuan Yew, Columbo character actors, Gulf War air campaign, yacht rock, and probably the biggest one (technically not obscure, though) is Stanley Kubrick
I'm a fan of Columbo. Which actors/characters are you interested in?
Jack Cassidy, Robert Culp, Patrick McGoohan, Dabney Coleman, Donald Pleasance, and Richard Kiley. I thought they made the best villains.
I find that certain character actors are great canaries in the coalmines. If you see Charles Durning (sadly not in Columbo) in something, you can be pretty sure it's not bad.
DONALD FUCKING PLEASANCE
He played Adrian Carsini in Any Old Port in a Storm, probably my favorite non-Cassidy or Culp killer.
Perhaps Pleasance is too famous to be strictly considered a "character actor," though.
He was fantastic in the greatest Aussie flick of all time, WAKE IN FRIGHT.
You mean, the best Aussie flick not named The Road Warrior
Homeopathy.
The idea that miniscule amounts of minerals and poisons and other organic materials can heal us...it's astonishing to me. And it has healed me and my family and my pets, again and again over a decade.
It hints at the fact that our model of reality is completely wrong. Our world is much more mysterious and beautiful and miraculous than we can imagine.
I like planes and air travel, like any self-respecting autist. A system of machines and processes that enables you to not only go much faster and much higher than any living thing, but even be bored doing it!
I have a longstanding interest in golf course architecture. It is how I found Sailer of all things. I belong to golf course architecture clubs/societies. I go on about a trip a year to interesting/new/historic courses to meet other obsessives. Dozens of books.
Even other golfers look at us like we are nuts. One guy pours over steamship manifests to prove a point about which architect built which course (many highly debated and the origin of Merion ended decades-long friendships).
Golf course architecture is such a harmless interest, but these days I am sure that it can be "prolematicized".
Sounds about white
Albino grade caucasity.
Hodag, are you in Rhinelander? That’s my association: the mythical beast.
No. I go fishing there .
I love that town.
My family’s ancestral home, or as close to something like that as white Americans can claim.
Hello fellow bumpkin.
Oh, I find it ridiculous that the nature of bumpkiness is so hotly contested. Just typical Balkan/East EU lunacy IMHO.
Etymology (a buttery has nothing to do with dairy but is a place for your butts, which are a kind of barrel; a bottle is a little butt; a butler takes care of your butts). Paleoanthropology/aDNA (just did a substack post on some of my favorite books on the topic). Richard Nixon (Frazerian sacrificial king for America).
So I assume butter is the produce of your butts then, as in the big churns they used to use?
Etymologically unrelated! The butt that’s a kind of barrel is a Middle English word, from Latin buttis (via Old French bot). Butter is from Old English butere, which is cognate with Latin butyrum and Greek bouturon.
That's very interesting, thank you!
Esoterica tends to attract those who are on a spiritual journey. Are you on a spiritual journey?
The proper term for someone who makes a living from studying a niche area of interest is scholar.
By comparison, I'm a professional dilettante. Jack of all trades, master of none. The closest I have to a niche interest is FreeBasic programming. In theory, an operating system could be written in FB.
To be very frank, I am not very spiritual, but I am religious.
John Waters had a great substack essay on this just the other day. https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/easter-essay-only-wonder-knows?
Apparently it’s what Nick Cave used to say to wind people up. But I think it’s a great line and have used it myself.
Ritual has its own power. Think about Andy Warhol and how much Byzantine Catholic Mass and Iconography influenced his art.
This is a point too many people dismiss, even as they enthusiastically participate in powerful rituals (football, the Pledge of Allegiance which always sounds to me like it should end with “Amen”, consuming magical substances that purport to give lifelong health…) One of my own more obscure interests is the history of liturgical development in the Catholic Church.
They never go away, either. Just look at how "Land Acknowledgments" are popping up all over the place in Canada and the USA.
That’s directly opposite of the current thing. I remember reading a professor, who said she believed in religion, but not God. I tend to agree with her.
I have met and know a lot of really, really pious, devoted, and spiritual people. I am able to compare myself to them and find myself lacking in what they have. My family on both sides has not produced many Priests over the years.
I am also lacking, I think honestly and disinclined to fake it.
I think honestly but just can't control what I say so I am paying for my sins in this world rather than the next.
Untrue, you are tactful in expressing your opinions. The fact that others are close minded or ignorant doesn’t reflect on you.
Very good line. This is exactly how I would define myself.
If you want to explore some very trenchant critiques of metaphysical materialism, check out the contemporary Dutch philosopher/computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup.
I can also say, as a former scientific skeptic/cringe internet atheist, that the whole world of esotericism and occultism is if nothing else extremely and genuinely interesting; all the more so when you consider what a big part of the lives of many great geniuses from Bruno to Newton it was. If it’s something that interests you also, then I’d love to point you to some works of interest.
Yes please, of course. I went on a tear a few years back around Crowley and Discordianism (e.g. Robert Anton Wilson).
https://www.ecosophia.net/blogs-and-essays/the-well-of-galabes/ This collection of essays, which collectively would be enough content to make up a modestly sized book, is by far one of the most interesting philosophical works of the past decade that I’ve read. You’re probably already loosely familiar with the author via Tinkzorg, but his works on this subject were the first to really persuade me that the whole world of esotericism has some serious intellectual merit.
Discordianism. Damn that brings me back. Also the Church of the Subgenius.
I've been reading a lot of RAW and Discordianism recently and really liking it. I was first introduced to it by Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, which I'd recommend to anyone who wants their mind expanded. The anarchist politics it espouses might not appeal to some of you, but it's a tremendous feat of imagination that has introduced me to many esoteric concepts.
If you haven't read George Pendle's Strange Angel, I'd recommend that too. It's a biography of the rocket scientist & occultist John Whiteside Parsons. The TV show based on it wasn't bad either, but it was cancelled after two seasons, just as L Ron Hubbard was introduced. Pesky Scientologists meddling in the media yet again.
Parsons is VERY interesting to me. I have that book, but it's on the Himalayan-sized "to read" pile.
If you have not heard about, you may be interested in John Carter's SEX AND ROCKETS: THE OCCULT WORLD OF JACK PARSONS (2005). Read and enjoyed it when it came out. Jack was a lad, no doubt about it.
Yeah, I've got it already.
Bernardo is indeed fabulous.
He was great on Skeptiko.
I love the Marx Brothers, though it's hard for me to articulate why; you articulated your own reasons pretty well, and I pretty much agree with most of them. I had some indirect exposure to them growing up but really got into them after hearing Woody Allen say how heavily his own comedy was influenced by Groucho, which motivated me to rent what movies of theirs I could find from my local Blockbuster. Really love a Night at the Opera and a Day at the Races. And then it was fun to see how many traces of their influence ran through our culture, from the names of Queen albums to the character of Bugs Bunny, to the novelty glasses/mustache combo worn by kids, etc. I really like that so many of their movies are set in this timeless never-never land that seems made of the same stuff as Wind in the Willows, Narnia, fairy tales, etc., and as you noted, they showcase a fun combination of silly physical comedy with Groucho's more sophisticated wit and mannerisms. Hopefully their appeal outlives that 80-year time horizon!
Bugs Bunny IS Groucho Marx. I developed a theory over a decade ago about how Jewish humour in America has been a mirror to their politics and climb up the ladder of success. I should write this essay one day. The Marx Brothers represents the political anarchism of extremism that had a strong presence on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, , a very Jewish part of NYC. in the early 20th century
I very much look forward to reading that essay! Incidentally, I discovered Jack Benny via a Bugs Bunny episode on Saturday Morning cartoons (the best time of the week growing up). It's interesting how big names from prior generations live on for a time, not through the main things they did that made them famous in their own day, but via some side project (something that seems to happen surprisingly often). Anyway, I have a liking of Jack Benny that is even harder to articulate than my enjoyment of the Marx Brothers. Something about the quaintness and corniness of his humor makes it enjoyable to me.
I loved the Jack Benny Show! There's something so wholesome about it, but not cringe at the same time.
Have you heard any of the interviews with old-school comedians like Benny that Larry Wilde did for his book "The Great Comedians on Comedy?" He released the audio for the interviews, under a series of albums titled "[Insert comedian's name] on Comedy." You can find them on music streaming platforms as well as YouTube. The interviews with the older generation are interesting historically. The one with Woody Allen is incredibly interesting, as it's basically Allen's philosophy of humor. And for a rerelease in the 80s, Wilde added an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, which is also really interesting (similarly philosophical).
Never even heard of this. Sounds like gold, Jerry!
Here's a track from the interview with Woody Allen where he talks about Groucho: https://youtu.be/JE0hPXuje1c
Also, unrelated, but necessary viewing https://youtu.be/Vkc5-RI39Ho
Rick Moranis was great in that!
Groucho's interview with William Buckley "Is the World Funny?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXlIZBZpkoA
is really great.
they still all there on YouTube...Jack is hilarious and Rochester is a star!
Bugs does have a lotta Groucho in him but they took "What's up, doc?" from Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night"
Now I know why I like this Substack so much. Some of mine: mid-century Los Angeles, say the 1920’s to the 1960’s, geography, development, architecture, the criminal scene; the Austro-Hungarian Empire and associated Central European culture; the history of political repression.
People who know me know about my deep interest in California of the Golden Age, and the shift that occurred in the 1970s. I had a very, very long thread on California Esoterica on a now-closed forum.
I think my interest really kicked into high gear when I read Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, which--in addition to offering a lot of mildly interesting detail about life aboard a sailing vessel--is a fascinating description of coastal California just before the gold rush. I'll never think of Long Beach the same way again.
You just wrote a pretty good teaser.
Several of these coincide with mine, somewhat.
"Energy" is something that seemed really abstract to me, until I saw a World Series baseball game in person - Jays v Braves. Crazy.
But my idea for Ontario Hellaproject is why not build a causeway from Port Dalhousie to Port Credit, and drain the entire western part of Lake Ontario? I don't know if this is practical (well, I do actually) but the result would be amazingly useful.
I used to joke about making a 32 lane highway from Port Dalhousie to Toronto Island Airport.
when I was young and stupid(er), I made it from Port Dalhousie to Simcoe Street in 55 minutes. Now you'd need a 32 lane highway
Just the thought of driving on the QEW from Guelph Road towards Toronto makes me agitated.