Mastodon Mastodon

Katexic Clippings

from The Last Man (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It is a strange fact, but incontestible, that the philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good, who patient, reasonable and gentle, yet disdains to use other argument than truth, has less influence over men’s minds, than he who, grasping and selfish, refuses not to adopt any means, nor awaken any passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the advancement of his cause.

—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
—found in The Last Man (1826)

mizzle

MIZZLE

mizzle · /ˈmɪz(ə)l/ · /miz-əl/. noun or verb. A fine rain or drizzle. To disappear suddenly, to vanish. To whine or whimper. The weather-related forms are from Middle English misellen (to drizzle), possibly from, but at least related to, Middle Dutch misel (fog, dew) and Dutch dialect miezelen (to rain gently). Origin of the others is unclear.

[Read more…]

Links: August 30, 2020

  1. “And I am telling you it kills my whole family. Breonna is like the family glue—even at 26 years old, she is pretty much the glue.” → The Life Breonna Taylor Lived, in the Words of Her Mother
  2. Evangelicals are looking for answers online. They’re finding QAnon instead.
  3. A harrowing two-part investigation of the Chinese detention camps into which more than a million Uighurs and Kazakhs have effectively disappeared → Built to Last and What They Saw
  4. I believe this site is connected to a bookstore/gallery of the same name, and I wish the images were larger, but it’s still a lot of fun to browse some of this collection focusing on “the New Avant-Gardes, the art of the 1960’s and 1970’s, in the Western, Central and Eastern Europe, in North and Latin Americas and in Japan.” → archives
  5. I didn’t even know the Internet Archive had physical archives, much less that they would collect something like the Tytell Archive. I told Reader B., who shared the link, “If there is a heaven, I want it to be that archive.”
  6. As an origami fan and folder for a long time, I’ve seen some amazing work. But this is next-level stuff → Juho Könkkölä origami
  7. There are more 7000 distinct languages on our tiny planet, over half of which are endangered. Which is why I find Wikitongues’ projects—creating a “linguistic seedbank of every culture in the world,” including signed languages, and reviving threatened languages—so compelling. If nothing else, explore some of the project’s videos and other projects.
  8. “For me, the face is something I can only look at very quickly,” she explains. “It’s like if you’re on a beach and someone’s getting changed to go into the water, and there’s that quick moment where they’re slipping off their underwear or putting on their swimming costume and you look away.” → Prosopagnosia: The artist in search of her face.
  9. Daniel Essig’s “Sculptural Books”
  10. Today in 1963, the text “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back 1234567890” is transmitted over the Moscow-Washington Hotline, the first use of the direct connection between the two Cold War capitals that would come to be popularly known as the “red phone.” But the Hotline was never red or a phone: speech was considered prone to misinterpretation, so the Hotline started as a hard-line teletype connection and evolved as technology did, taking the form of a satellite connection, a fax machine, and currently an email system with a fiber optic backup cable. The subject of intense debate for years before, prompted by the Cuban Missile Crisis, being implemented, the Hotline would be criticized by the Republican Party in its 1964 campaign, saying the Kennedy administration had “sought accommodations with Communism” (those were the days). The first official use of Hotline was, sadly, when President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Its use has varied depending on leadership, with the most prominent (known) recent example being President Obama’s 2016 use to warn the Russians not to interfere in the US election, though it seems likely President Trump has received instructions over the Hotline since then.

Withheld: August 30, 2020

Kenosha, alt-right, militias (because…just because) ☡ Sports protests (because sports ball!) ☡ Facebook (because once they removed the “poke” button) ☡ Jerry Falwell, Jr. (because how many more Fs can there be?)

Responses: August 30, 2020

  • Reader M.: “Can’t remember if I asked you this. I’m sure you and everyone else here has read a book and then have gone back to reread it and it’s not the same. Seems to be no word in the English language for that experience.” — I have that experience with books all the time…but I am not aware of a word for it! If there isn’t one, it might be time to come up with something! Ideas from the Clamor?
  • A different Reader M.: “The link to the proofreader of the NY Times made my day, and I am actually jealous that he has time for that. I would hang out with him for sure.” — He typifies a certain kind of quality curmudgeon I’ve always admired: obsessive, independent, and honed. Though I will, sadly, never have the chops to be one!
Mastodon