Nerding Day: Zodiac Faces🌭 (Patreon)

A whole week of effort, and divination still eludes me. That’d be fine, if the present sucked less shit. Half my neighbors support execution by lottery, and cooler heads want more affordable coffins. Reliable spoilers would make me King Gambler of the wasteland. Yet I’m stuck treading time.

Maybe it’s my skillset. Numerologists memorize numbers, but my bachelor’s is in puns. Tarot readers talk to people, but my master’s is in typing alone. Horoscopes just need my birthday, but I’m an adult. It’s not going well.

There must be a better way.

Clearly not. Back to pendulums.

Wait, I’ve read this. My brain just buried it. I’m a Libra chin/Gemini nose, you know how we are.

Don’t try to make sense of that yet. You’ll black out and get Taurus wrinkles early. I just want you to absorb the tone. Cheekbone scrying has its own grammar, and your mind needs time to adapt. Think Retinol, for your brain.

Welcome to Meta-Science. You’ll hate it.

I, on the other hand, am in love.

Today’s stargenics guide comes from the Organization for Professional Astrology. Russ hasn’t channeled a full book yet, so we’re meeting a master early. I look forward to his rise in the Great Fraud Era. Mediocre grifts are a memory: the path ends in the stars or a cell.

Russ von Ohlhausen has the rare genius I can only find 48 times a year, by Tuesday, with rent at stake. A mind that can type “Astrological Physionomy” with self-esteem intact. And he knows it. For this is no conjurer of expensive, subscription-based tricks. Russ is a scientist.

Or at least loves the word science. Deeply. I’d call it manifesting, if Russ were a wordy wizard in denial. But that would make me a professional cyberbully, and those couldn’t exist in the Age of Wisdom. Instead, I’ll call it channeling.

Out the gate, Russ makes sure we know he’s smarter than those other astrologers. While their non-science prints money, Russ recreates academic tone, publishing style, and profit margins. Noble. So noble, I’ll die not knowing why. It’s like seeing YouTube’s most famous clown wrestle Rey Mysterio; at least two industries are broken.

As for astrology’s definition, our modern opinions don’t count. For the first time, my playground jabs at your harmless hobby mean nothing. Russ is on some whole other shit.

Official sounding shit. With at least two science words. You can start retaining information here, as long as you stretch afterwards.

Sorry: whole other rectal scorpion. That drawing's from the 1800s, when more doctors winged it. Their work’s an important stepping stone to measuring Peter Dinklage’s skull. Before the taint poison reaches your brain, let’s learn scientific racism.

Sorry again: this phrenology isn’t for racists. Racism grasps at straws, and Russ doesn’t even have straws.

I don’t know where we’re headed. But science says it’s not racist.

True, Qin Shi Huang bought into this. And a mercury-based diet. As a wytch, I can’t speak to the science of chugging liquid power. But my tuna-and-tuna meal plan honors the first emperor.

The takeaway: face science goes back further than science, and you should ignore the foul lies of Han historians. Now that you’re convinced, we can move on to examples. As a scientist, Russ has heard of repeatable results. He might try them later.

First, moles. If you’ve got a birthmark/scar/food smear, you love to fuck.

Simple enough. With an open mind, “people want sex with movie stars” is like the scientific method. In fact, it’s much more repeatable than that heathen devilry earlier:

Now, mole-based hookup detection’s settled science. But Russ’s next jump tends to lose faithless scientists.

“What the fuck am I looking at, and is there a subscription?” Research, and yes. Stick with me, and learn about horsepower:

True, that still looks insane. And “centaur teeth” seems mean. Like something your fiance calls you before meeting a Trojan archer. But there’s logic to it:

Your fucked-up horse teeth make you a firebender! Along with your furrowed, “is he still talking about astrology” brow. While I didn’t know gum reading could help me catch the Avatar, I’ll take any chance to restore my honor.

He doesn’t close those parentheses. The rest of the article is a side note to “look at those chompers.” As a star neophyte, I don’t know what sin’s getting December babies dragged today. It must be worse than whatever breakup labeled Geminis emotional terrorists.

As an Oscar-bait neophyte, I don’t know what sin’s getting Judy Dench dragged today. It must be worse than Philomena. I could feel the academy in the theater with me.

Elegant bullying. Can The Pinch compete?

Not quite. All the skull-measuring gets in the way of ice burns. And some mumbling about Scorpios that undermines the whole enterprise. I respect covering your tracks, but Russ should go the Silver Route and lie through his horse teeth. If you’re a non-centaur with visible gums, your parents lied. You’re a Sagitarius, switched at birth for two grand in unmarked bills. Your father loves you, but he doesn’t love the truth. Flee at dawn.

Sidereal-bar: this is the first time I’ve read “sidereal” outside of Exalted. My dumb ass spent two decades thinking White Wolf made up star grammar. Maybe “horse brain” is a Libra Sun trait.

Russ may meet Judy’s lawyers. Or Mozart’s ghost.

We’re almost ready to read Tyrion’s pores. But first, a refresher on why this is science. For you. I’ve already bought everything on the OPA webstore.

For a science paper, my magick background is surprisingly helpful. The point above isn’t Russ’s spiritual development. In fact, that’s impossible to care about. The point’s the number of 203 course titles in the paragraph. The first sentence has at least six prog metal album titles. Properly bullied prog metal, not this new thing where prom-goers play and attend shows. Or that half-decade everyone decided they were Meshuggah. If that joke didn’t scan, pretend I said something about Dr. Stone monologues. If that joke didn’t scan, pretend I said something about offing the president. Scientifically.

Who could reach such attainment? It’d take some kind of OPA-published wunderkind. We will have to dream of the savior in the darkness, under unchecked Aries tyranny.

To grasp Russ’s vision of science-based martyrdom, it helps to misread Foundation. After that, it helps to skim another Russ paper. It’s on Medium, which draws alternative PhDs the way Substack draws blood libel.

Prometheus Unbound sounds egoistic, until you understand the power at an Astrology Scientist’s fingertips. If we’d just listen.

He’s writing from the peak pandemic, so current reality looked grim. In fact, for all the tumult, the 2020s experience is notably consistent. Less Summer of Love, more Winter of Discontent.

Russ confronts a recent issue: God wants to blow up the world again. Allegorically. But literally. But allegorically.

Wayward technology? Machine-driven chaos? Unlike reading gumlines, this part’s nonsense. Though the cure’s more interesting: a new age of wytch-nerd hybrids, trained in both the Zodiac and things that matter.

Russ puts it a bit more simply:

Again, retain that at your own peril. You need new antibodies for each article. In fact, they should be done about now:

There, now you can process his point. It takes a lot for me to call something overwritten—my book of the month is one long sentence. But Russ combines the broad appeal of science writing with the specificity of horoscopes. All to describe a theoretical god-king named Russ.

He’s Neo. I thought I was joking with the messiah complex, but there it is.

Now we know: Russ isn’t just a scientist. He’s the scientist the Enshittified Age needs. And his vision as The One? The fluff-free, science-based truth mankind needs to survive itself?

We’re saved.

I know what a doppelganger is. Anyone that would or could read this knows what a doppelganger is. If I wanted to watch someone regurgitate Naomi Klein, I’d be on BlueSky.

A skeptic might ask: are you saying Dinklage and Laurie look alike, if your liver’s failing? Is that your entire point, made across countless run-ons?

A skeptic would be right. Skeptics stay winning. I miss sitting at their table of success. Becoming a wytch has exposed me to genres of failure my mortal eyes thought were impossible.

Holy shit, right! Richard Dawkins used to be a biologist. I thought he was just my Ghost of Christmas Future. If I kept screaming about religion without off-brand Power Rangers or broomsticks, I’d host a podcast about Defending The West by now.

Holy shit, right! That’s why I repressed this lost art. After all these words, Russ sprints through the astral link between Hermione and The Self-Indulgent Gene.

These two don’t look alike. I’m from a family of black vampire bats. My hobbies are reading in the dark and blinking-free Hades II runs. I’ve got the facial recognition skills of Kharn the Betrayer during the Siege of Terra. These two don’t look alike.

Again: Russ isn’t a chud sun or non-political moon. I’m careful enough with other people’s vanity search results to repeat that. But he might not enjoy meeting his fans.

After the celebrity revelations, we take a detour. Another detour, fueled by Russ’s dream of becoming Neo. By now, we’re used to mentors defying skeptics. Instead, Russ saves his harshest words for other astrologers. They’ve skimped on the scientific rigor that once put scorpions in assholes around the world:

Russ deploys the B. Rabbit strategy. Step One: admit other sorcerers don’t respect you. Say you ate a thesaurus and don’t know what a pisces is. Concede that your work doesn’t make sense, or even entertain tourists. Step Two: be an analogue of the main actor. Draw yourself as the Chad, while your haters forget how to rap.

There’s a point here, somewhere. Imagine the study of space, from a more scientific perspective. What would such a field be called? Or the sailors of the stars, taking the first small step into the aether? How much funding would they lose to diamond mining incels?

You’d be bitter too. Imagine a convention’s worth of astrologers telling you “that’s a waste of fucking time.” I’d break. I’d fight Batman in a calendar costume. I’d become Secretary of Faces, and ban blush for hiding Prometheus’s truth.

Negritude?

Negritude. If race science is pseudoscience, what do you call pseudo-race science? Racecraft? I.C.E. training? FSU orientation?

Russ underestimates how many people would listen to him, and overestimates their brainpower. It’s careless grifting, like Uber prices on St. Patrick’s Day. Woogenics end in crystal calipers and Thanksgiving rants about Leo crime stats.

On the plus side, looksmaxxers can Fit Face their way to a new star sign. Or try invasive surgery, I’m on Earth for the show. Either way, the merger between magick and science Russ dreamed of is possible. The new Neo’s bonesmashing as I write.

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