iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

On how some books were lost and then found in a strange happenstance. Some lost books find their way back to their original owners in a way that might be "rational" but still seems wildly implausible. My own entanglements with Aldous Huxley, etc. Another olde-fashioned essay w/no AI used at all.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Some Books Seem to Silently Migrate, or Even Peregrinate

And other notes on some strange editions of certain books

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A review of Naomi Kanakia's What's So Great About The Great Books?, how Kanakia inspires me, and my own life reading in the Great Books. No AI used, or even contemplated being used.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Slumming With the Great Books

Naomi Kanakia’s recent book and my own perfunctory excursus on Great Books

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Counterculture/underground/anarchist writer Robert Anton Wilson found solace with Drug Warrior and pro-Vietnam Republican Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, over a harrowing tragedy they both shared.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

When Tragedy Bridges Politics

A micro-example: Robert Anton Wilson (anarchist) and Sen. Charles Percy (R-Illinois)

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I essay on my Walter Mitty-ish life around books, libraries, librarians, sex, intrigue, information, espionage and how we go into finite provinces of meaning all the time, and we should cultivate those "spaces," which are internal ones. I used books, memory and no AI. For writing?: I never will!

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Books, Librarians, Sex, Intrigue

A world I’ve made over decades OR: What a nutjob!

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Another ye olde fashioned no-AI used essay, another in my series about reading and thinking about History. This time as a bulwark against the ravages of advertising. Tell me what ya think!

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Thesis On History #8: Intellectual Self-Defense

One Adversary: Advertising. Immerse yourself in reading history to combat?

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

On how cannabis might enhance your own art appreciation. I give a first hand account, but Allen Ginsberg's is better than mine. Have you ever gotten baked and learned about art because of cannabis?

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Cannabis and Art Appreciation

One clear enhancement weed gives us: get high and go to a museum!

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Just dropped this non-AI essay on how we all "perform" in our day-to-day lives, and I try to link it with parties we remembered or heard about, sex, politics, science, performance art and "Happenings." I wonder if Diogenes the Cynic was the first performance artist, but I suspect it's way older.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

On Mundane "Reality", Wild Parties, Performance Art and "Happenings"

The blurring is to be expected and embraced. Hell: it was always a blur

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Here's yet another plea to read dense, deeply immersive literature and actual books. I try to argue why. You've been reading a lot of articles like this online over the past 12 years, haven't ya? I am not original here, at all. Tell me about your own difficult reads!

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

On the Decadent Pleasure of Reading Difficult Books

It's a way to understand our modern world, this reading in the dense and difficult

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

My lifelong evolution trying to find out what's going on with UFOs/aliens. Model Agnosticism, social science and cognitive dissonance theory, UFO cults, government disinformation agents as cottage industry since 1947: why? How trying to understand took me to Psy Ops, endogenous DMT, etc

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Swamp Gas, Ball Lightning, Anal Probes and the Stench of Disinformation

My ongoing, evolving relationship with UFOs and aliens, and "all that" OR: Sorry that "Disclosure Day" was such a drag, but I couldda told ya so!

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

On Robert Anton Wilson's mind-blowing 1962 trips: one on peyote, the other on belladonna. This latter trip is about as horrific a Bad Trip as you'll ever read about, but RAW used this bad trip throughout his writing career, so it was fruitful. ZERO AI. Not used in any way.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Robert Anton Wilson: Two Formative Drug Trips

RAW had two notable experiences before 1963, one that echoed down through his work for decades

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Olde timey essay on my life listening to the radio and observing the prosidic aspects of human speech and its effects on us. No AI used, much less even considered.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Radio Days

A life listening to radio and the erotics of disembodied voices

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A review of Jos. Flatley's 2026 book The Occult Timothy Leary, which focuses on Leary's life, his influences & especially the influence of Crowley's tarot deck and corresponding symbols and knowledge between systems, whether they be psychological, sociological, philosophical, scientific, or occult.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Book Review: The Occult Timothy Leary

The imaginative fire of correspondences

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

What does "Osiris is a black god!" actually mean? I do a lot of reading, get sidetracked, get back on track, come up with a few things. You tell me. (ZERO AI used!)

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

"Osiris is a black god!"

Notes on feeling like an (increasingly?) weirdo reader

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Another olde-timey essay with AI not used, in any way. Sex and neologisms: demisexuals, sapiosexuals, young people and their dreams of Dark Academia. Etc. Do new words open up more thinking in "reality"?

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Sexy Neologisms

(And some not-so)

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

A review of Ian McEwan's 2025 novel: what we can know about history, why it matters, the values of AI, how we're in what might be called the Great Derangement due to relative inaction on global warming, the role of the Humanities, nostalgia, and falling in love with people from history.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Thesis On History #7

A review of Ian McEwan's What We Can Know (2025)

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Another non-AI essay on Sex (sacred sperm), Food (the hidden influence of the military), and Death (taphophobia: the fear of being buried alive).

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Sex, Food, Death (episode Gimel)

Sex: mystical semen; Food: influence of military; Death: taphophobia

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Robert Anton Wilson and the trippy romance of mathematical ideas. He's but one of a number of eccentric intellectuals who sought to fire the popular imaginary with ideas emanating from mathematical thought, mostly starting in England in the 1870s. An olde-timey essay, with no goddamned AI used.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Robert Anton Wilson and The Laws of Form

Reflections on RAW and his background in Math and Engineering

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

On having been from a broken lower middle class home and having read a ton of "elite" social theory/theory about elites and class warfare and about the very rich: what do you do with all that? Keep your sense of humor, for one thing!

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Elite Theory: Call It What You Will

Sociology? Conspiracy Theory? Deep Politics? Realpolitick? Modern Machiavellian Practices? Parapolitics? Institutional Analysis? Becoming "Tough-Minded"?

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

A brief history of radical skepticism, from Lao-Tzu and Pyrrho to Montaigne to McLuhan and Robert Anton Wilson, whose "Model Agnosticism" can make you smarter, sexier, funnier, and less of a Cosmic Schmuck know-it-all. Maybe?

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Model Agnosticism: Precursors, Examples

Associated terms, etc.

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Robert Anton Wilson's Model Agnosticism: epistemology as a life-practice which can make you smarter, happier and more of your own type of mystic-critter. Also: it's sorta exhilarating, even when you're wrong. overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/model-agno...

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Model Agnosticism: Get Smarter and Happier

On the joys of epistemology and being wrong

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/dreamed-an... An olde-timey essay on dreams, dream research, the widespread denigration of dreams, how some Modernist writers used dreams, and humor around the activity and experience of dreams.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Dreamed Anything Good Lately?

Musing on dreams

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/intelligen... Will Levin's bio-electric model open up the materialist RNA-DNA paradigm, or shatter it altogether? Time will tell.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Intelligence: Michael Levin's General View

My intuition tells me this is the place. Or one of them, at least

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The idea of "intelligence" being about the mammalian brain and it neural connections is really on its way out. Here's just one reason: overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/meditation...

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Meditation on Intelligence

Near-Brainless Cognition, etc. Something WEIRD is goin' on...

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

An old-"timey" essay on our desire to escape the strictures of space-time within the ambits of our daily lives. overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/escape-hat...

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Escape Hatch: Time

On wanting to get lost and separate ourselves from mundane, stupid "reality"

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com/p/sexfooddea... On Jeffrey Epstein's "misreading" of Lolita; physiology of taste; death and the value of memento mori.

overweeninggeneralist.substack.com

Sex/Food/Death (episode: Beth)

Sex: Jeffrey Epstein’s “Misreading” of Lolita

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Way past 50 & zero tats. I remember when tattoos just started appearing, everywhere. Was it 1993? The seeming "herd effect" turned me off to the idea of getting one myself, but I'm not against anyone's tattoos. They were for pirates, military guys, & inmates. Then: almost overnight: everyone. WTF?

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R. Michael Johnson @r-michael-johnson.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Yet another Thesis on History: why are we so damned miserable? Why hasn't this panned out? Why do so many wealthy people seem not to actually have creative...I dunno "lives"? Where are we going? I'm spitballin' and baffled. Someone enlighten me, por favor?

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