July 16, 2026Hello friends! I keep trying to write a post and it keeps not happening this week, so I’m going to pivot. I’m going to share some questions I’ve been pondering. Maybe these will spark something interesting for you - or maybe you’ll just enjoy today’s photos. I’d love to hear from you if you care to share your thoughts on the questions too!Dew drop sparklesI’m always looking for those shimmers on the dragonfly wings that only show when the light it hits the wing just right. (widow…
Julie Lueken: ‘Forgiveness” (repositioned) Golgori was our god, and for as long as we could recall, we had been under his dominion. He was a proud god, a commanding god, and for millennia, we had lived each day under his guiding word. As we woke, he would write us his instructions into the sky above, and we would rise and work faithful to the night following his every sentence. Day by day, we rose and slept, breathed and died, worked and worked by his word. Each century went by the same as the…
“What is the oldest thing you own?” For Thomas, who originally asked the question, it’s a Sisters of Mercy tour shirt from 1985. For Ruben, who brought it to my attention, it’s books from the 2000s. Apart from a small blue stuffed bear i’ve had since the day i was born, the oldest thing i’ve continuously owned might be my Apple IIc, which i’ve had for 30 years1. Unfortunately, i lost my box of 5.25″ floppies half a dozen moves ago. It’s due for a cleanup and recap anyway. What about the oldest…
It’s been a while since my last post in the Books category early February, 32 fiction books further by my count. Recently Cory Doctorow pointed to the work of Welsh / Canadian author Jo Walton on the occasion of the publication of her latest novel Everybody’s Perfect, and I read some of her work these past two weeks. Among Others (2012) turned out to be a beautiful and moving coming of age story, about living with trauma and grief. The escape that reading offers, and the many pointers to pre…
I've never really been interested in the ancient classics, largely because at the time when I was looking into them (at least a decade ago), I had no patience with reading verse. However... two or so years ago, as the "What's your Roman Empire?" meme was popping off I accidentally became transfixed with the topic. I started watching a bunch of documentaries on Rome after having a thought in the car that highways are somewhat distant descendants of those old routes. Of course, the Romans did not…
July 19th is the day when two significant issues in Hawkworld history were released: Hawkman Vol. 3 No. 13 and Legend of the Hawkman No.1. Hawkman Vol. 3 No. 13 Cover Date: September 1994Release Date: July 19, 1994 Script: William Messner-LoebsPencils: Steve LieberInks: Curt ShoultzColors: Matt WebbLetters: Albert DeGuzmanEditing: Archie Goodwin (credited) (group editor); Jim Spivey Cover: Steve Lieber (pencils), Rick Magyar (inks), Matt Webb (colors) This is the famous, or infamous, depending…
Write it.Write that damn messageBefore it's too lateBefore time pulls his triggerBefore life plays a joke on youChoosing what you should have chosenWrite that damn letterPress your pen on that sheetAnd drag it along the pageBefore you run out of inkWriting in that stupid agendaWrite that dedicationOn the first page of that bookBefore they buy it themselvesWith an empty leafStill waiting for a sketchWrite that noteOn a small yellow Post-itStick it inside a sketchbookOr on the door of the…
A while ago I mentioned that I was having a chat about whether I had an idea for a book with a genuine, real life publisher. As it happened I had two which is just as well as one of them has actually been bagsied elsewhere Now I don’t know whether the publisher will be interested as this is the niche-iest niche in all of Niche City but my plan is to write (a short) book about improving hiring (and onboarding) for digital teams in large organisations (honestly the Civil Service and adjacent…
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Near the end of last year I reviewed E. C. Nevin’s debut mystery, A Novel Murder (2025) and today I am taking a look at the sequel. Given the way the author sets up her series I was intrigued to see how things developed and one thing I was particularly pleased with in this second novel, was how well Nevin’s central trio of protagonists have settled into amateur sleuthing, after their slightly bumpy beginning in the first book.
Deciding which of Chekhov’s more than five-hundred stories is the finest is a happily futile task. He is a reader’s pipe dream: a great writer who was prolific (though he died at age forty-four). My sentimental favorite is “My Life” (1896), a novella written during his Melikhovo period. Misail Poloznev is a young nobleman who resolves to become a member of the proletariat, though not out of revolutionary zeal. He rejects the life he inherited but without self-dramatization. His motives are…
Hungrier than before Meu Amigo Nietzsche Ascetic Computing Blow Smoke CV Dazzle Fangs
Cabin, October 14, 1979, photographed by Marian Zazeela, via Mela Foundation First, La Monte Young is not related to Brigham Young. Not a grandson, not a great great nephew, not a third cousin, none of that. It was such a standard part of the composer’s Mormon roots origins that I assumed it had been checked, or that it had come from him. Brigham Young University musicologist Jeremy Grimshaw obliquely dismissed any connection in the foreword to his 2011 biography of Young, Draw A Straight Line…
AVRAM DAVIDSON – The Island Under the Earth. Ace SF Special; paperback original. 1st printing, 1969. Cover art: Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon. Although published as an ACE SF Special, this is pure fantasy, living legend stuff, with centaurs, gnomes, harpies, and humans, all inhabiting some kind of counter-Earth, which may somehow justify the SF part of the label. I didn’t finish the book, I have to confess, quitting after page 120, at which point new characters were being introduced and with no…
The woman is Anna (of a couple episodes of Les Vampires), and she runs a bar on an otherwise uninhabited island (how does she restock?) with her young son and shellshocked husband. A ship full of sailors and workers arrive on the island searching for radium, not yet realizing their bosses are either incompetent or scam artists and they’ll find nothing. But while there, they cause as much trouble as possible while trying to get the woman’s attention. A couple of famous cinematic policemen are in…
you dash me just so right and when and where and exactly the way i'm afraid of, exactly, and you weren't to know, you unconscious artist drew a perfect circle threw a right hand straight in my over-sensitive nose in any case i cry on the toilet, again, swell my eyes now too about the source of all my evidence other things said alternate law Yesterday :: Saturday, 18th July 2026
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts serves, I’ve found, as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. Some items show up on disquiet.com before this post, in which case I don’t repeat them. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also…
I decided to read Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat based on Womb House Books excellent Book Domme’s recommendation. This novella is absolutely superb, curiously erotic, and astonishingly demented. Read it.Books I ReadAbout I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email
In a strange turn of events, I spent my 4th of July at banana ball with 70,000 people. This is not classically my type of event for a few reasons: - crowd - sports - audience participation And yet, I let go of expectations and allowed myself to have whatever experience I was going to have.
lingthusiasm:ALTALTALTALTALTThe same gesture can mean different things, or have different names in different languages. In this Lingthusiasm zine, Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about these “emblem gestures." Print and fold your own copies8½ x 11 paper: colour, b&w A4 paper: colour, b&wHow to cut and fold a minizineLearn moreWhy do we gesture when we talk? (Lingthusiasm podcast)Why do we move our hands when we talk? (Tom Scott’s Language Files on YouTube)Gesture: A Slim Guide (book by Lauren…
Let’s imagine an alien spaceship parked itself in orbit within view of the International Space Station. Let’s also assume the aliens announce themselves by transmitting television signals to every nation on Earth. We’ll also assume they have the technology to use the appropriate Earth language for each nation. How soon would everyone on Earth know about the alien visitors? I’d guess 99.9% of Earthlings would know within an hour with our current technology. How would you react? Like the Moon…
Another in my occasional series featuring dubious statements about language by scholars in other fields: Nelson Goering posts on FB about a book on Vietnamese history he’s reading in which the author claims the Vietnamese word for water, nác/nước, derives from “one of the archaic Vietnamese terms for woman (nàng).” (This is in service of a point about “a possible Earth Mother cult,” which makes me sigh an entirely separate sigh.) Now, I know next to nothing about Vietnamese etymology, but I…
Calvin Trillin, in the introduction to 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, by Alice Waters:Although I tend to prefer eating in the upstairs café at Chez Panisse rather than in the formal dining room downstairs, I find it comforting knowing the latter exists. For fifteen years, starting in the late sixties, I spent my time traveling to a different town every three weeks for *New Yorker* assignments, and my strategy for finding a decent meal was to ask a local motel clerk for the…
Title: Olenka Author: Budi Darma Publisher: Penguin Random House Pages: 320 In Bloomington, Indiana, Fanton Drummond’s life changes when he encounters Olenka Danton in an elevator. Infatuated at first sight, Fanton begins to see Olenka everywhere, from bus stops and parks to the imagined settings of his mind’s eye. Soon they begin an affair, and Fanton steps deeper into Olenka’s mysterious world. But one day, Olenka vanishes. Fanton’s subsequent search for Olenka becomes an existential journey…
Read the full post at - Where Do the Children Play? via eli Stark-Elster The biggest misconception about American childhood -> https://unpublishablepapers.substack.com/p/where-do-the-children-play I was generally skeptical of the 2020’s handwringing about children and technology – not because I disagree about children interacting with the world via technology, but because the media & too many parents focused on the symptoms rather than the cause. We’re all doing the “stop it and go away” form…
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When we were kids, my generation was dutifully warned about the evils of substance abuse. We were warned of complete strangers wandering oh-so-purposely into our paths with the sole intent of giving out free dope so as to perpetuate life-altering addiction among our crop. Far be it from me to discourage those who discourage drug and alcohol abuse, but I’ll also be the first to chime in and say, “Hey, Mr.
Imaginary Numbers (1954) by Yves Tanguy. • “In all his writing, Ballard seems to embrace the opposed extremes of pulp genre conventions on the one hand and avant-garde experimentation on the other, while entirely rejecting the norms of conventional literary fiction that lie between these two extremes.” Steven Shaviro reviewing The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan. • The Naturalist’s Library: A complete digital edition of William…
"A great deal of feminist theory and literature has nevertheless assumed that there is a 'doer' behind the deed. Without an agent, it is argued, there can be no agency and hence no potential to initiate a transformation of relations of domination within society.'" (Gender Trouble) The feminist problems which, at least, on the level of theory, torment me the most, always come down to the question of free-will. It was when I wrote the blog Performative women that I confronted the issue of…
Ilya RepinPart 1, Part 2Home stretch, let’s go.The BalrogHow did I skip the Balrog? Absolutely shameful.Anyway: dig too deep and you’ll find a guardian of the underworld, so I’ll roll with Ox-Head and or Horse-Face from Chinese folk religion because honestly if there’s a giant horse-headed monster wrecking your day who looks like this, yeah I’m going freak the fuck out a bit.Q: Who was fucking around with the underworld enough to bring these guys to earth?Q: Is anything going screwy in the…
