The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

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I went to a Unitarian church service1 yesterday, the first time i’d ever done anything of that sort in my life — having been raised atheist, and Paganism being a quite lonely path — and it was… surprisingly affirming? I’ll say this much, at least: it’s the only hymn-book i’ve ever seen that features “Bread and Roses”.

Stuff i watched recently, October ’25

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A montage of the undermentioned films

An odd commonality with many of today’s films is that, because either their production companies have gone default or nobody really cares about them any more, you can watch them for free on Youtube in varying degrees of quality right now. Videos have been linked where applicable.

Her (2013)

Every baffling product that’s come out of Silicon Valley in the past ten years can be explained by this film. They’ve all seen it, and they all desperately want to make it real.

The Humane AI Pin? Joaquin Phoenix carries around a little camera doodad in his pocket that he talks to instead of using a screen. Windows Recall? Scarlett Johansson helps organise his computer. People grieving the loss of their AI girlfriends? You know it. It’s a marvel they haven’t tried to abolish our keyboards yet.

It’s generally a strange experience watching Her in 2025, because it was right on the money about so many things that it now barely registers as science fiction. Mr Phoenix and Ms Johansson’s robosexual relationship is meant to be beautiful, and it is ­— the most tender sex scene of the twenty-first century occurs entirely through voice — but you have to work to quiet that little voice in your head going “lol, this loser fell in love with ChatGPT.” (8/10)

Weapons (2025)

Weapons takes the Silence of the Lambs approach to horror, being more of a nerve-wracking thriller with some spooky bits in it than a traditional “horror movie”, and is all the better for it. Satisfying as that ending was, it still seemed to be missing a little extra oomph to me. (7/10)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

“This is the universe. Big, isn't it?”

My word, how had i never seen this before? Seeing nineteen-forties Britain in Technicolor would be worth the price of admission alone, but everything about this tale of heaven and earth is so touching, even when it suddenly decides to be about British–American postwar relations. An all-time classic. (10/10) (Watch now!)

Breakdown (1997)

The best kind of 6/10: a serviceable mid-afternoon action flick where Kurt Russell does his take on The Vanishing. (6/10) (Watch now!)

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Possibly the best werewolf movie we’re ever going to get? They do some brilliant stuff with what’s clearly quite a low budget. “I hope i give you the shits” is going in the movie one-liner hall of fame. (6/10) (Watch now!)

Matinee (1993)

From the director of Gremlins comes a nice little film where John Goodman plays a William Castle–type gimmick-horror director trying to promote his new B-movie in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A wonderful watch, if a bit slow to get going — every second we see of Mant!, the fictional creature feature, is hilarious. (7/10) (Watch now!)

Lord of War (2005)

Great intro, good-but-messy everything else. It’s weird seeing a depiction of Ukraine in pop culture before it all got coloured by the war. Nic Cage delivers as always. (6/10)

Downfall (2004)

You know, this “Adolf Hitler” guy doesn’t strike me as a very nice fellow. (7/10) (Watch now… if you can speak German!)

Re-Animator (1985)

“And what would a note say, Dan? ‘Cat dead, details later’?”

Oh, this is glorious. It’s cheap and crummy, but in the best way possible. Every actor knows exactly the sort of film they’re in and delivers a performance to match. The special effects alternate between brilliant and hilarious. Watch it with your friends if at all possible! (7/10) (Watch now!)

Caught Stealing and One Battle After Another (2025)

These were the last two films i saw at the cinema, and they tread similar ground, so i thought i’d talk about them together.

“We’re in enough trouble with HaShem as it is without driving on Shabbas.”

The only other Darren Aronofsky film i’d seen before was π, and while my understanding is that the two are outliers in his filmography, Caught Stealing makes a great spiritual sequel, a stylish, high-octane, downward-spiralling crime caper squeezing every last drop of cosmopolitan flavour from its New York setting. Austin Butler is magnetic, and Matt Smith kills it in his role as the instigating punk, but the real star of the show is surely Tonic, the acting cat. Possible best-of-the-year material. (9/10)

“If you don’t give me the rendezvous point, i swear to God i will hunt you down and stick a loaded fucking hot piece of dynamite right up your fucking asshole.”

Of the two, One Battle After Another has been the better-received, rapturously applauded from all around as The Film Of The Year, a Very Important All-Timer Film with lots to say about The Issues. And while it is great, i can’t help but think… calm down? It’s not the Second Coming.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s excellence was already pre-assumed, but Benicio del Toro’s Sensei Sergio is surely the coolest guy of the twenty-twenties. Everyone else does nothing but larp, larp, larp about how cool and revolutionary they are (or how bvsed and rvdpvlled they are, in the antagonists’ case), but he’s out there quietly putting in the work to protect his little community without needing to brag about him. How can you not love a man with a secret ladder with a carpet that unrolls to hide the entrance? (8/10)

In praise of binturongs

Tagged as nature, links, videos☞ Four comments

I recently learned about binturongs, ridiculous animals which look like a hybrid of roughly five different cute critters, galumph about the place, and smell suspiciously like popcorn1. Thank you to the algorithmic Youtube overlords for blessing me with the above video.

More on binturongs:

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume LIII

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The Satyrs’ Forest: Now with seasons!

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The redesigned front page, showing off eight colour schemes

I’ve always been enamoured with the idea of the website as a living, breathing place; not just a dumb, static object, like a book or a reel of film, but, well, a site, like an ancient oak that bears the scars of all who’ve scrawled their loved ones’ initials on it.

For The Satyrs’ Forest, i’ve been slacking on that ideal. Sure, we have our annual tradition, and i’d change the theme to be more orange in autumn sometimes if i could be bothered, but never anything automatic — something that could outlive me if i dropped dead tomorrow. (Continuing with the forest metaphor, i’d toyed with the idea of a series of annual rings that would grow into different shapes depending on how active i was in updating the site, but quickly realised that my database just wasn’t set up to support that kind of thing.)

I had the itch to tinker with the home page’s design anyway, so i decided to finally implement something to solidly ground this site in the real world: seasonal themes! In daytime, there are four themes, one each for spring, summer, autumn, and winter, which shift throughout the year like an actual forest. There are also three complementing darker themes (spring and summer share one) which activate when it’s night here in Northumbria. That last part was important to me: i wanted the Forest to be like a real place, one that could, of course, be nowhere else but the actual location of the server, not just an ætherial construct where “night” happens whenever it’s past six on the viewer’s clock.

Finally, for the real old-heads, the “Modus anciens” theme replicates the look of the site as it appeared in 2020, when i was just starting out. I’ve always loved those neon purples, even if they don’t fit the arboreal metaphor, and it’s a joy to bring them back.

List of Witchfinders-General of the United Kingdom

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The Witchfinder-General is the head of His Majesty’s Finder Corps (known as HM Witchfinder Corps until 1952), the undisclosed agency tasked with classifying occult and otherwise anomalous phenomena in the UK and keeping their occurrence a secret from the general public.

1896–1900: W. B. Yeats

1900–1909: [Round Table gestalt leadership]

Yeats was discharged from his position in 1900 after his devastating loss in a magickal confrontation with Aleister Crowley, at that time HMWC’s enemy number one.

1909–1922: Francis Younghusband

1922–1935: Arthur Machen

1935–1948: Peter Fleming

Fleming’s management of the Witchfinder Corps during wartime included such feats as successfully placing an anti-Nazi geas around the island of Great Britain and the placement of a firewall in the collective unconscious against intrusions from German occultists, but his handling of the home front is more controversial, particularly when it came to the nascent public revival of the witch-cults. Supporters argue Wicca was successfully defanged as a threat to the public gestalt, but on the other hand, he still let the knowledge of the New Forest coven leak to the public in violation of all Corps protocols.

1948–1961: Ralph Izzard

1961–1974: Christopher Lee

1974–1987: John Bingham, Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan’s appointment befuddled many in the Corps, as he had no prior occult experience, and he immediately broke convention by ending his public life entirely rather than keep up a masquerade. Still, he ended up a much-needed reformer for the agency, finally lifting the ban on non-Abrahamic theurgy and increasing coöperation with overseas counterparts, such as David Lynch’s U.S. Occult Affairs Office and Dan Aykroyd’s Royal Canadian Witchfinders-General.

1987–1992: Marianne Martindale

1992–2000: [Round Table gestalt leadership]

Martindale’s thirteen-year term came to a swift end only five years in after it was revealed that she had acted as a double agent on behalf of St. Bride’s School, an Irish occult group which aimed to found its own cyber-republic separate from any temporal countries. The interregnum that followed was a disaster for HMFC; most infamously, the information firewall against Nick Land’s CCRU broke down, causing thousands in Silicon Valley to be infected by dangerous infohazards. The USOAO still hasn’t forgiven us.

2000–2013: Alan Moore

2013–present: John Constantine

John Constantine perhaps has the greatest cover story of all: officially, he is entirely fictional. A creation of his predecessor Alan Moore, he met him in a sandwich shop in 1993, and slowly continued to slip into consensus reality thereafter. Though those like him are ostensibly the very thing HMFC is meant to combat, Constantine proved a useful ally, and his semi-fictional nature has been nothing but an asset during his term as Witchfinder-General, allowing him to neutralise hyperstitions before they can even dream of breaking containment. That said, his time in office has been marred by instutitional rot in the USOAO, with many fearing he is not doing, or cannot do, enough to prevent the rising tide of “meme magic” and metaphysical civil warfare from crossing the pond.

What if (Modern) Greek was written as if it were a Romance language?

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As someone learning Ancient Greek, the modern iteration of the tongue often strikes me as far more similar to… i don’t know, Italian or something, having been shaped by millennia of loanwords and the influence of neighbouring peoples. So, what if it was just like Italian or something? Presenting: Elinicá.

  • Simfona Consonants
    • /m n ɲ ŋ/ ⟨m n ny~yš~n² n⟩
    • /p b t d c ɟ k g/ ⟨p b t dd qui~qu²~chÂł gui~gu² c g⟩
    • /f v θ Ă° s z ç ʝ x ÉŁ/ ⟨f v th d s z x~c²~y⁴ j~g² ch gh⟩
    • /r l j/ ⟨r l y⟩
    • /ks/ ⟨cs~x²⟩
  • Foniedda Vowels
    • /a e i o u/ ⟨a e i o u⟩
    • Stress is unmarked if on the antepenultimate syllable, or the first syllable of a two-syllable word; otherwise, it is marked with an acute accent.
  • IposimiĂłsis Footnotes
    • š In the word mya
    • ² Before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩
    • Âł After ⟨s⟩
    • ⁴ After another consonant

An example of a plain, encyclopĂŚdic text:

O Constaddínos Caváfis itan Elinas piitís o opíos theoríte enas apó tus simaddicoterus piités tis sinchronis epocís. Genithique qu’ezise s’tin Alecsandria, tis Egíptu j’aftó qui’anafereti sichná os o Alecsandrinós. Dimosiefse piimata, enó decádes pareminan os proscedia. Ta simaddicotera ergha tu, ta dimiurgise metá ta 40 eti.

And of a more conversational one:

— Ma jatí aftó meghálo misticó? I anthropi ine exipni; borún na to djaciristún.

— To atomo ine exipno. I anthropi omos ine anoita, panicovlita, epiquindina zoa, que to xeris. Prin apó cilya peddacosia chronya, oli ixeran oti i Gi itan to queddro tu sibaddos. Prin apó peddacosia chronya, oli ixeran oti i Gi itan epipedi, que prin apó decapédde lepta ixeres oti i anthropi itan moni s’aftón ton planíti. [Anastenázi] Fantásu ti tha xeris avrio.

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume LII

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A brief prescript: if you want some links that were too good for this roundup (not to shatter the illusion too much…), check out the nine new ones on the main site’s linkroll!

Ten dead people

Tagged as rankings, history☞ Four comments
A montage of said ten people

The ten dead people i would most want to have a discussion with over a cup of tea,1 in no particular order:

  • Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE–33 CE)
  • Emperor Julian (331–363)
  • Hildegard von Bingen (c. 1098–1179)
  • Nikolai Fyodorov (1829–1903)
  • Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920)
  • Willem ArondĂŠus (1894–1943)
  • Gerald Gardner (1884–1964)
  • Richard Nixon (1913–1994)
  • Dixy Lee Ray (1914–1994)
  • John C. Lilly (1915–2001)

Honourable mentions go to Arthur C. Clarke, Christopher Lee, Gemistus Plethon, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

…And three alive people who are historically interesting enough that they’ll likely join the ten above after they pass:

  • Miss Martindale (1937–)
  • Jim Morasco/Sevy Verna (the Toynbee Tiler)
  • Any one of the Pintupi Nine

Ranking the Twelve Angry Men

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12. Angry Man #7

As comic relief, he’s great, and should obviously be played by Tim Robinson in the inevitable event of a remake. As a person, fuuuuuck this guy. A life is hanging in the balance and you just want to watch some Yankee cricket? You fold under pressure, rather than actually reëvaluating your beliefs? Kill yourself, my man.

11. Angry Man #10

There is nothing but hate behind those eyes. A wretched soul who is rightfully told to sit down and shut up. #CancelAngryManNumberTen

10. Angry Man #2

Detestable for the same reason as Angry Man #7. A doormat with no opinions of his own whose soul is carried away with the current. But at least he’s affable.

9. Angry Man #6

The boringest Angry Man. Why is he here? We needed twelve of them, i guess.

8. Angry Man #3

The kind of man who turns on Fox News, sees his son send a post-ironic femboy meme in the family group chat, and immediately decides every transgender person should be rounded up. Not a dyed-in-the-wool bigot like Angry Man #10, but no nicer to be around. All we can do is pray that someone turns on the parental controls on his TV and switches him over to MSNBC.

7. Angry Man #12

He treats the case as frivolously as Angry Man #7, but you know what? I can’t help but like him. He just wants to show off his cereal box slogans and play noughts and crosses.

6. Angry Man #11

“Continental Europeans who moved to an Anglophone country” are God’s chosen people.

5. The Foreman

Poor fella’s just tryin’ ta dee his job and he’s stuck in the room with all these colourful characters. I can’t help but feel bad for him.

4. Angry Man #5

The most mysterious Angry Man. He’s of the same ethnicity as the descendant, and he knows how switch-blades work, but otherwise… who knows? What mysteries lie in his past? We’ll never find out, but he seems like a cool dude.

3. Angry Man #8

“You know, i would have voted for FDR a fifth time if i could.” The greatest bleeding-heart liberal in cinematic history. His heroism made a tear come out of my eye that then turned into a dove of peace and flew away. But just as admirable as those who lead the charge are those who can admit their faults — which leads us to…

2. Angry Man #4

Hell yes. Unlike Angry Men #3 and #10, #4 doesn’t vote “guilty” because of prejudice. He sincerely believes that the boy did it, and, once every argument is dismantled, he quietly accedes and admits defeat rather than loudly crashing out. Also spends the most time aura-farming out of any of the Angry Men.

1. Angry Man #9

The coolest old man in the universe. The Paddington Bear of the 12AMCU, able to disarm anyone with a hard stare. Somehow the only person in the room who knows how glasses work. 10/10 Angry Man-ing.