obmutescent /ob-myuew-TESS-ənt/. adjective. Willfully silent. Obstinately mute. From Latin obmutescere (grow mute), from ob- (to, toward) + mutescere (to become mute).
[Read more…]Links: December 16, 2018
- Soundscape ecology—and silence and solitude—in Denali National Park (near my old home) → Whisper of the Wild ※ See also, near my new home, the Quietest Square Inch in the U.S.
- The Science of Silence: How Solitude Enriches Creative Work
- “Silence, for me, is neither an absence of sound, nor is it uniform. The silences of the river are different from the silences of a desert. Yet both are vast, and they are full of surprises.” → On a Walk Through Busy India, a Nature Photographer Discovers a Craving for Silence ※ Part of the ongoing Out of Eden Walk, Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile walk tracing the paths of the first humans to migrate out of Africa in the Stone Age, “a decade-long experiment in slow journalism.”
- “As I browsed subjects ranging from agriculture to medical mathematics, I noticed a sign hanging overhead: ‘Realm of Knowledge and Silence.'” → How an abandoned lab could show us the future.
- One of the better running jokes in Get Smart was the Cone of Silence, which ► appeared in the first episode but featured even before that in the demo reels used to sell the show to the network. The joke got new life in the 2008 film farce starring Steve Carell and then the even shorter-lived farce Scott Pruitt: EPA Director and his top-secret phone booth.
- “You and the voice in your head — whatever you want to call it — are pretty much all you have in the end. You have to hang on to it, and listen out for it.” → The Power of Shutting Up and Sitting in Silence
- “Cultivate quiet spaces or go mad.” — some of the examples, such as MetaFilter, show how various the ideas of “quiet” can be. → Finding silence online is difficult, but the pursuit is worthwhile. ※ Pairs well with The Disconnect, the online magazine you have to unplug from the internet to read.
- “she set to make of nothing most” — I keep going back to some of Olena Kalytiak Davis’ poems because I’m not always sure what is going on, but beautiful. → “SONNET (silenced)” by Olena Kalytiak Davis
- Silence for the eyes: Jason Oddy Photographs The Deafening Silence Of Empty Political Spaces ※ Lorado Taft’s sculpture “Eternal Silence” (aka the “Statue of Death”) ※ Jason Oddy Photographs The Deafening Silence Of Empty Political Spaces
- Today in 1928, the “Shakespeare of science fiction” Philip K. Dick—and his twin sister Jane Charlotte, who would die just six weeks later—is born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Among the 44 novels he would write before dying at only 53 are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, adapted for the film Blade Runner, the Hugo award winning The Man in the High Castle, and my favorite, the as-always-mind-bending A Scanner Darkly. Dick was a troubled, often addicted, survivor of multiple suicide attempts who was mostly unknown to readers outside the science fiction world at the time of his death…but whose work has had significant influence on not just science fiction, but speculative and modern fiction of all kinds, not to mention Hollywood.
Into Great Silence
After considering his request for 16 years, the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps—which doesn’t allow visitors—decided to allow Philip Gröning to shoot a film documenting their lives. After nearly three years of editing, ► Into Great Silence is the (naturally-lit, with no commentary or sound effects) result. ※ See also, a documentary invoking many other kinds of silence: ► Samuel Beckett: Silence to Silence documentary.
Puddles and Tongo Hiti’s “Sound of Silence”
from Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)
Because the guys who say life isn’t worth living without some principle so important you’re willing to die for it they are all nuts. And the guys who say you’ll see there’ll come a time you can’t escape you’re going to have to fight and die because it’ll mean your very life why they are also nuts. They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren’t alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn’t say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn’t say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn’t say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living? There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.
—Dalton Trumbo
—from Johnny Got His Gun
canorous
canorous /cə-NOR-us/. adjective. Musical, melodious, richly resonant, tuneful. From canor (melody), from canere (to sing). From PIE root kan– (to sing) from which are derived accent, canto, chant and incentive. See also: euphonious, harmonious.
[Read more…]Links: December 9, 2018
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There is something amazing and comforting and classically awe-inspiring about listening to ► the sound of the wind on Mars. || Pairs well with: The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert.
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Announcing the Winner of the 2018 Bad Sex Writing in Fiction award || See also (if you can bear it), the shortlist.
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Ironically, significantly less robotic writing can be found in this roundup of the 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition entries. Also known as IFComp, the competition is "an annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators." || See also: the full list of 2018 entries.
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The US Library of Congress’ Crowd initiative invites everyone to help transcribe and tag items from their vast collection. How can you pass up a chance to discover fascinating writing and make a contribution to historical knowledge? Campaigns right now include Civil War Reminiscences and Letters to Lincoln. Thanks, Reader C.
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Is speciesism, aka anti-animal language, really a thing? || See also: a new PSA from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Philosophers
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What if there was a war on a religious minority with more than one million detainees, constant surveillance and espionage, and a complete abrogation of human rights…and no one seemed to care? → China’s Uighurs told to share beds, meals with party members & Spying On The Uyghurs: A First-Person Account From A Han Chinese Student & China’s brutal crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, explained & China admits to locking up Uyghurs, but defends Xinjiang crackdown
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"In their latest installment of Literature vs Traffic, Spanish design collective luzinterruptus transformed a major street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, into a glowing river of 11,000 books."
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Two fantastic (in very different ways) longform pieces about technology and humanity and connection at its best → The Friendship That Made Google Huge and worst → Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche.
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The eyes have it, paper and books edition → Daria Aksenova’s narrative shadowboxes and "illusionary paper" series & Elizabeth Sagan’s book-lov(ing)(er) photos & for the DIY-ers How to make a book page wreath, and more book art ideas.
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Today in 1905, screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo is born in Montrose, Colorado, USA. Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun won one of the first National Book Awards…and so inspired the band Metallica that they not only wrote their well-known song "One" as homage, but bought the rights to the film so they could use segments from it in their iconic ► music video. But it was as a screenwriter that Trumbo would find his greatest fame, success and eventually—as a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten—heartache, writing films such as The Brave One (which won an Academy Award he couldn’t claim because he couldn’t be credited), Roman Holiday (same), Spartacus, Exodus, Papillon and the aforementioned Johnny Got His Gun.
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