“Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood”
Cabinets of Curiosity and the Rise of the Gallery Painting
“Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime”
On Benjamin Britten and the Angels of History
If you were alive in 1800 and someone asked you about the future of research, it wouldn’t occur to you to mention the university. Real scholarship happened in new, modern, enlightened institutions like the British Royal Society or the French Académie des sciences. Universities were a medieval relic. And nowhere was it more medieval, hidebound, and generally dysfunctional than in the German-speaking world. - The Origin of the Research University—Asterisk
New paper: Fresh evidence and novel analyses strongly suggest that theropod dinosaurs were lipped
[Screenwriter Harry] Kurnitz’ most quoted observation was made when he became involved in a running feud with Lynn Loesser, then the wife of Frank Loesser, the songwriter.
‘Lynn,’ Kurnitz said, ‘is the evil of two Loessers.’
— Richard Gehman, “The Little World of Harry Kurnitz,” Playboy, June 1958 - Epithet - Futility Closet
Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson
ZineMap - A Collaborative Map of the Global Zine Scene
a place to find good blogs that interest you
Tempest prognosticator - Wikipedia
The Mudder, the Lawyer, the Prince, and Mr. Wrong
A selection of topics considered by the Athenian Society, a learned organization established in 1691 to answer “all the most nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious of either sex”:
- Bashfulness, why in Women more than Men?
- Books least known to those that need ’em
- Bath-waters, what makes ’em hot?
- Dials, Clocks and Watches, when first made?
- Eunuch, whether ever in Love?
- Greenland, how should a Tree come there?
- Hedg-hogs, how are they propagated?
- Head or Feet, which Travels most?
- Knowledge of Men or Things, which best?
- Kissing, is there any Pleasure in it?
- Love, its discovery
- Lady, whether she may marry herself?
- Love after Marriage, whether as great as before?
- Matter, whether infinitely divisible or no?
- Memory, how shall I strengthen it?
- Nettle, how does it sting?
- Original copy of the Bible, how proved?
- Offence committed, which was the first?
- Pre-existence of the Soul, how is it?
- Rain-bow, its Cause
- Socrates, did he wisely in bearing the Clamours of his Wife?
- Vow never to Marry, whether I may break it?
- Vows made to a Lady, whether binding?
- Virginity or Marriage, which best?
- Women, why more talkative than Men?
“Although the sun had sunk behind the houses, the sky was still luminous and the blue of the wall had deepened. She rubbed her fingers along it: the wash was fresh and a little of the powdery stuff came off. And she remembered how once she had reached out to touch the face of a clown because it had awakened some longing. It had happened at a little circus, but not when she was a child.”
“Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man, or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority.”
Gan Yang 1980s Interview 1 - Reading the China Dream
In a work known in the west as De radiis stellarum, al-Kindi developed a theory "that everything in the world ... emits rays in every direction, which fill the whole world."
"Instead of trying to write a “great” first line, write a friendly first line (clear, simple, unassuming) that will gently invite the reader in and not alienate them." - 18 pieces of writing advice - Tao Lin
"The kite is a religious symbol and represents the soul. It is a demon-queller. It is not of recent introduction.”
"in Venice, he first came across the disarticulated odalisques of Alexander Archipenko"
A terrible dream about managing shrimp. Their tank had four functions, water, air, food, and Zoom (to video call the shrimp). It was very stressful because the water button would either flood or completely drain the tank and the air button would turn it into a spa.
I microwaved a chip and when I bit in it creaked like a floorboard
Overnight I leave the driver's door of my car open. That morning I find a pile of white ash on the seat.
A cyclist stopped and singing badly Cameron Winter moaning on about some hairy football arms. Yet another 7-11 tiramisu.
Sliced apple and bread with butter and salt and bread with hummus and salt and hard cheese and Earl Grey tea in a mug with a picture of a cat in a miniskirt playing the French horn for breakfast in the garden.
Dreamt I was teaching a roomful of spies the white person grimace -- "to blend in"
People don't struggle to struggle, they just struggle. In the same way; you don't have to struggle to sit, you can just sit. If someone hands you a blurry photograph, do you try to bring the subject into focus?
Being bad at liking stuff is not something to brag about. Relatedly, the paradox of hedonism is just a skill issue. As with most skill issues, it can be overcome through autism (see Lu Yu et al.).
People stop finding new favourite things (e.g. music) as they get older because they get rusty at finding new favourite things. If they just spent more time finding new favourite things, they wouldn't have so much trouble finding new favourite things.
In the future, you'll be able to carbon date people by seeing which social skills they've failed to develop, since this tells you how old they were during covid.
Epigrams are source code. Explanations are compiled binary.
Free career advice:
1. Find a genius and help them. Even if they're not a genius, realising that will save you a lot of time.
2. If you're stuck doing something you don't want to be doing, practice being great at it. Being great at things is a skill in itself, separate from whatever object-level thing you're great at.
3. All advice is a form of confession.
Fanfiction version of the Macy conferences where it's the exact same in every way but Henry Kissinger is there.
A meme from the future: "actually, being trans is retvrning to tradition, it's just being gay that's WEIRD"
henosis/theosis -> Chardin's Omega Point -> NGE fanta -> Silicon Valley transhumanists. Sad!