Mastodon Mastodon

Katexic Clippings (ARCHIVE)

Withheld: September 27, 2020

That interview with the Rubik’s Cube inventor (because I’m still mad at him) ☡ The Supreme Court or The Nominee Who Must Not Be Named (because the impending theocracy) ☡ Breonna Taylor (because what can I add to the ludicrious outcome so far)

Responses: September 27, 2020

  • Reader B.: “Such riches! ¶ I especially admire those book covers. Reminds me of a James Blaylock novel where someone figures out a meditation technique based on old sf paperback covers.
  • Reader J.: “Well done on Kirby Ferguson. I’d say the jury’s out on human rationality, what with the national IQ test coming up this November, but every little bit helps.”
  • Reader K.: “Based on your link a few weeks ago, you must love Allie Brosh as much as I do. There’s a new interview! And a comic/chapter from her new book!”
  • Reader S.: “Your piece on the language of suicide. Beautiful and challenging.”
  • Reader T.: “Some time ago you shared the story of prisoners uniting to create a meal honoring George Floyd. I was reminded of that when I saw this thread on a death row inmate making cheesecake using what he had. It’s heartbreaking on its own and because we continue the barbaric practice of state murder.”

from Pandemonium (Lauren Oliver)

But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.

—Lauren Oliver
—found in Pandemonium (2012)

anomie

anomie

anomie · /ˈanəmi/ · /AN-ə-mee/. noun. Hopelesness because of, or characterized by, a breakdown in the social or moral standards in an individual or society. Isolation and anxiety caused by a lack of social control or regulation. An absence of accepted social values. A borrowing, with French spelling, of anomy (lawlessness, violation of divine law), from Greek anomos (without law). Not to be confused with anomia, a kind of aphasia rendering one unable to recognize everyday objects.

[Read more…]

Links: September 20, 2020

  1. September is Suicide Prevention Month. In the US in 2018, the most recent year of reliable statistics I could find, there were 132 deaths by suicide and 3,865 attempts every day. The simplest thing you can do on a personal level is be there. On a larger scale, supporting mental health awareness and treatment (and reducing armed police responses to mental health crises), fair housing, and universal health care could drastically decrease these numbers. ※ A radio segment I recorded on The Language of Suicide · Previously, Marie Howe’s poem “The Gate.”
  2. Robin Sloan’s beautifully realized work of short fiction → Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate
  3. A unique movie recommendation site → Cinetrii
  4. Learning to live with singular they → All My Pronouns
  5. What a world. And what people in it. → Buying Myself Back When does a model own her own image?
  6. This week’s CuriosityCluster → Good Movies As Old Book Covers · The Art of Penguin Science Fiction · Russian Book Jackets: 1917-1942 · Marvel turn album covers by Nirvana, Blondie and The Clash into comic book covers · Four Classic Prince Songs Re-Imagined as Pulp Fiction Covers
  7. Dutch develop ‘living’ coffin made of mushroom mycelium
  8. Jalapeño Noir → Taco Bell Is Getting Its Own Wine to Pair with Chalupas
  9. More than what you might expect from the title → Not So Simple: Notes from a Tech-Free Life
  10. Today in 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sets sail with a five ship fleet on what would become the first successful circumnavigation of the world. Of the 270 who set out with Magellan, only 18 or 19 (accounts vary) men, on one ship, would return in September 1522. Not among those returning: Magellan himself, who was killed the previous April in the Philippines by Mactan islanders who didn’t take well to the expedition’s attempts to convert them to Christianity. Regardless of the political intrigues before and during his last voyage, or the colonialist expansions to come that he helped make possible, Magellan was rightly famed for his navigational abilities; the next successful circumnavigation, by Sir Francis Drake, wouldn’t be completed until nearly 60 years later. ¶ Magellan’s name lives on in the Strait of Magellan, the Magellanic Clouds, NASA’s Venus-mapping spacecraft Magellan, and of course, ▸ gellin’ like Magellan.

Trump, QAnon and The Return of Magic

From the maker of the excellent ▸ Everything is a Remix comes ▸ Trump, QAnon and The Return of Magic, the best, in-depth explainer I’ve found of the madness that is QAnon. ※ ▸ In Search Of A Flat Earth is a great look at how conspiracies and conspiracists like Flat Earth(ers) are and are not like QAnon. · I needed some help understanding Why Right-Wing Conspiracies Are so Obsessed With Pedophilia. · And then we have One Data Scientist’s Quest to Quash Misinformation.

Mastodon