“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered with data centers over time” is one of those crystallizations of an entire way of being so unimprovably perfect that it will be studied for centuries – if, indeed, there’s anyone left to study it. The most astonishing thing is that Altman neither appears to realize that he’s said the quiet part out loud, nor to perceive what’s so self-refuting about it.

He establishes the shallowness of modern postural practice’s genealogy, the false ascription of a “mystic” Hindu origin for its techniques, and the fabulation of an ostensibly ancient and superior “Aryan” culture behind that in turn – the last, mind you, an element “fascist yoga” has in common with the rantings of any number of contemporary Hindutva weirdos online. That’s sufficient, and it’s fine. But the book simply isn’t as wild or nearly as much fun as it promised to be. Ah well.

OK, finished. Sadly, “disappointing” remains the final verdict: in a way that oddly mirrors some of the charlatans and mountebanks he’s writing about, Home has oversold (or allowed his editors and publishers to oversell) the book’s actual content.

That said, the chapter titles are a hoot (“Happy Baby,” “Warriors 1, 2 and 3” and “Downward Dog”). And so I return to my doom yoga practice, purged of all worry that I am inadvertently propagating something monstrous on the heart of an unsuspecting Hackney.

He’s made the case, overwhelmingly convincingly, that there were a whole lot of unsavory characters involved in the promulgation of a set of ostensibly Indian postural practices called “yoga” across the 20th century. What he *hasn’t* shown is that any of their ideas attached to the practice, i.e. that modern yoga has any notable (or indeed detectable) degree of fascist *content*. It may be a ludicrous, orientalist pastiche…but it’s not, like, esoteric Hitlerism in matching Lululemon.

Three-quarters of the way through, and I’m actually a little bit disappointed. Home’s scholarship is sound enough, but for most of its length so far the book has mostly been a linear chain of guilt-by-association – peppered with the occasional anachronistic inclusion slagging off musicians he finds dodgy. (Michael Moynihan I’ll give you, obviously, but I think the case of Current 93 is rather more complex than Home allows.)

I figure a good number of you heads’ll be interested to know this exists. Picked it up at blessed Housmans the other day, and really looking forward to getting into it when I’m done with “Fascist Yoga” (to which it seems like it’ll be a useful corrective/palate cleanser).

I knew some of what Home’s managed to put together about the (perhaps surprisingly shallow) history of modern yoga, but not all of it. It *definitely* puts an unexpected spin on the charges of cultural appropriation that are often lodged against Western yoga practitioners.

Holy shit this is great – five pages in and I’m cackling with what I can only describe as enraged and disgusted glee. The perfect companion to @spencersunshine’s “Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism” (which Home namechecks).

This is an open call for insight and help: I’m looking for guidance from folks who are familiar with #Meshtastic to help me understand what would be involved in setting up and maintaining a national-scale #mutualaid and disaster-response (relief/recovery/“resilience”) network in the UK.