#doyouknowdarkness

Trivia Obscura is ALIVE (or UNDEAD if you prefer) on Kickstarter! We just launched so spread the love!

Death and Anarchy are not only the abstract notions as most of us take them to be, but they are also scientifically verifiable, through the second law of thermodynamics! Let’s meet physicist and philosopher Ludwig Edward Boltzmann (1844 –1906), entropy, and his infamous equation of death:

S = k log W.

Essentially, what Boltzmann’s formula describes, is as time passes and as we move into the future, everything turns colder and colder until it …errrm yes, you got it, turns death cold! This all is connected to the increase of entropy in the universe. Entropy, as first theorized by German physicist Clasius in 1865, always increases when we are dealing with irreversible processes. Our life and universe are Solar ones, and the sun always burns up. As we cannot reverse this—unburn the sun—well you guessed it …the more we look into the future, the more entropy we find.  When entropy maxes out, we reach a state of complete disorder—Yes, full on Anarchy for you and me—where what is most improbable in our normal condition becomes precisely what we experience. Maybe this means different things to different people, but it certainly is a cool way to think about the cosmic finale!

Boltzmann, as a person, was a tragic figure whose theories were lauded during his lifetime. He did not live to see them acknowledged by science figureheads like Albert Einstein or Max Plank, as he hanged himself without leaving an explanation after his mental and physical health deteriorated. The last days of his life were tormented by recurring nightmares of “suddenly losing his mind and memory during a lecture”. If you want to pay him a visit you can do so in Vienna’s central cemetery where his tomb is adorned with his entropy formula!

+++Trivia Obscura™ goes live on Kickstarter on the 3rd of March!+++

Part of the Italian cheap and subversive publications known as fumetti comics, Jacula was the answer to Americas Vampirella. The offspring of Giorgio Cambiotti (1931-2004), Jacula verged on the fine edge between pornography and gothic darkness. The first issue published in 1969 under the title "Queen of the Vampires" was the first of 327. More realistic erotic comics, unfortunately, signalled Jacula's demise in 1982.

Today marks the 25 year release anniversary of “The Downward Spiral”, by Nine Inch Nails. An album that helped propel NIN to wider audiences, and brought new blood into our scene! And some Trivia Obscura™ for you, in connection to the album:

Did you know that Trent Reznor, recorded the album in a studio he built himself in 10050 Cielo Drive, the exact same place where actress Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s first wife was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969? Following the murder, Tate’s blood was used to scrawl the word “Le Pig” on the front door. Reznor gave that name to his studio and proceeded to record the Downward Spiral. Marilyn Manson’s debut album “Portrait of An American Family”, which Reznor co-produced, was also recorded in “Le Pig”.

Here is David Bowie singing Reptile…Enjoy…

We frequently hear terms such as dark matter or dark energy, but do we really know what they are?

Well in cosmology the universe is made up of three parts: matter, radiation, and dark energy. So there you have it Dark Energy is one of the standard constants of the universe. Problem is we know nothing about it! All we can do is guesswork, (hence the name). Scientists have roughly come up that 68% of the universe is made out of Dark Energy.

Then we also have matter that we know nothing about! …Material in the universe that does not emit or reflect light and is, therefore, invisible. Yes, you guessed it! This goes by the name Dark Matter and it makes up for another 27% of the universe.

Trivia Obscura™ @AthensCON 2018 Teaser! More videos coming soon…! Stay tuned!

Proud to be supported by: Cultartes rockyourlife.gr Nyctophilia.gr Dark Sun Club Athens

The very word trivia derives from the Latin Trivium; meaning "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via). The spot marked by the meeting of three roads is a very powerful place in folkloric traditions around the world as it symbolically signifies the meeting of two realms. You know: our realm and that other one. At such a site of being “neither here nor there”, “betwixt and between” is where most contact with the supernatural occurs.

So, anyone wishing to cut a deal from beyond, has best do so at the Trivium. Faust struck his pact there. Hoodoo religion claims that a 3 time visit at the strike of midnight will turn someone into a mean musician or dice-thrower.  In ancient Greece Oedipus murdered his father at such a spot, and in Britain up until the mid-18th century, the bodies of the unclean dead (suicides and criminals) where buried there.

Instruments of public execution such as Gibbets, (a low budget type of gallows), where often placed at such spots. Those usually convicted of treason or murder where put in a cage suspended in the air and where left in the trivium to die of thirst and hunger.

The Yokai is a Japanese class of monsters and the word roughly can be translated to “phenomenon that surpasses human knowledge”. Very prominent in early folklore, the Japanese approached the Yokai with academic fervour and went to great lengths to class, categorise and write down their attributes, but never actually depicted them.

As the world progressed and people begun to find rational explanations behind certain phenomena they attributed to the Yokai, their numbers started dwindling. The Yokai started living a second life n the 1700’s as the printing press made it possible for their stories to reach a wider audience and writers begun inventing new yokai to incorporate into their storytelling.

Toriyama Sekien (1712 –1788) is a key figure of that era, as Sekien begun to actually draw the Yokai, and thus give a visual anchor to the story. Yokai today are ultra popular as they have moved to manga, dolls, movies and even some odd looking kitchen utensils.

Here are three of our favorite Yokai and what they do:

Makuragaeshi: This lot have a bedding fetish. They appear in a bedroom where someone is asleep and rearrange the pillows. That’s it.

Kappa: They live in the water and they attack you when you get too close…There are two ways that you can use to catch a kappa. Lure it out with a cucumber, (Kappas are suckers for cucumbers). Or you can try method 2: Expose your anus to it, (there is one thing Kappas like more than cucumbers)