Dissolution Speech ✶

From the read-again-regularly list.

Thursday, 8 May 2025

Snaking Electrical Wires

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Two or four winding wires snaking wanting to touch. A way to stop all wars by stopping them, tying them together and to a ceramic circle (in the middle of a round-shaped device? Fusion?)…

Whistling singing woman, Asian features, with daughter in a bar, staying for a month. Eyes, high-pitched sound in song makes emotion well up…

Car accident, told not to stand where person fell, by wall…

Wind strong over a curved, wing-shaped roof (a way to speed up wind, directing to turbines?)…

Mom with many visitors, confused…

Skin of salmon or fish falls on floor. Messy. Next to someone eating the flesh of the fish…

Man with pistol teaching to shoot, showing that the bullets are rocks, flicking them up and letting them fall down again on his palm…

“Ask Google” LLM interface by using a prompt or thought experiment involving water and gravity…

…from a dream.

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

“Just so you know, I don’t know where we are” ✶

Jordana Cepelewicz writing about poet mathematician June Huh in Quanta magazine:

Moreover, as he later realized, “I wanted to be someone who writes great poetry,” he said. “I didn’t want to write great poetry.” Now he sees that version of himself as almost a complete stranger.

Thursday, 1 May 2025

Dawn of the Dead ✶

My favorite zombie film, from 2004. Here’s the trailer.

Monday, 28 April 2025

Aviassembly ✶

New plane building and flying game with a cartoon flat graphic style by Jelle Booij.

Could this be a contender for a roguelite flight sim?

I’ll be trying it soon and comparing it with KitHack Model Club.

Via M0rt75.

Sunday, 27 April 2025

A Dao of Web Design ✶

Written by John Allsopp 25 years ago, this is still my favorite text concerning web typography, even though it doesn’t have the word “typography” in it.

If you want to read the Tao Te Ching, referenced in the article, I can recommend Gia-Fu Feng’s and Jane English’s English translation.

This is in reply to Jeffrey Zeldman’s Web typography: a refresher and history.

Wild Geese ✶

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

By Mary Oliver.

Tuesday, 22 April 2025

Krishnamurti on Trees

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From Krishnamurti to Himself, His Last Journal, 1987:

Brockwood Park, Friday 25th February, 1983

THERE IS A tree by the river and we have been watching it day after day for several weeks when the sun is about to rise. As the sun rises slowly over the horizon, over the trees, this particular tree becomes all of a sudden golden. All the leaves are bright with life and as you watch it as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter — what matters is that beautiful tree — an extraordinary quality seems to spread all over the land, over the river. And as the sun rises a little higher the leaves begin to flutter, to dance. And each hour seems to give to that tree a different quality. Before the sun rises it has a sombre feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins, the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiar feeling that one has of great beauty. By midday its shadow has deepened and you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, with the tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship of deep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.

Towards the evening when the western skies are lit up by the setting sun, the tree gradually becomes sombre, dark, closing in on itself. The sky has become red, yellow, green, but the tree remains quiet, hidden, and is resting for the night.

If you establish a relationship with it then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, with human beings. We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. You must be extraordinarily sensitive to hear the sound. This sound is not the noise of the world, not the noise of the chattering of the mind, not the vulgarity of human quarrels and human warfare but sound as part of the universe.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of a relationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth. Man has killed millions of whales and is still killing them. All that we derive from their slaughter can be had through other means. But apparently man loves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvellous gazelle and the great elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other human beings has never stopped throughout the history of man’s life on this earth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war. We have never said that to kill another human being is the greatest sin on earth.

Every day is Earth day.

❤

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Monday, 21 April 2025

Goodbye, Jorge Mario Bergoglio ✶

You were better than most in your position.

I pray free thought prevails, and maybe for robots, bugs, and aliens to attack, so humans stop fighting each other and join forces to combat them, instead.

Sunday, 20 April 2025

Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII ✶

One of my favorite musical performances of all time. Catch it on IMAX before the end of the month if you can.

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

When not to obey orders ✶

Andrew Milburn, former commanding officer of the Marine Raider Regiment and Combined Special Operations Task Force-Iraq, writing at War on The Rocks:

It may seem that the question of dissent in terms of loyalty to the Constitution is of academic importance to most officers, the vast majority of whom will never rise to the rank that will allow them to have a say in matters of policy. But whether obeying civilian masters or a military chain of command, the question of agency — of having an obligation to exercise your own moral judgment — remains the same.

It’s not a topic that fits well into the curriculum of any school — there is no handy acronym that will teach an officer when to disobey orders. Discussions on the subject tend to gravitate to a very binary focus: the differentiation between legal and illegal orders. As officer candidates, regardless of service, we learn that we have a duty to obey all orders that are not illegal, yet many of us learn that it’s not quite as simple as that.

See also this video.

Tuesday, 15 April 2025

General strike ✶

It’s time to organize.

Saturday, 12 April 2025

The Emperor’s New Clothes ✶

The tale concerns an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes, and spends lavishly on them, at the expense of state matters. One day, two con-men visit the emperor’s capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid. The gullible emperor hires them, and they set up looms and pretend to go to work. A succession of officials, starting with the emperor’s wise and competent minister, and then ending with the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, the weavers report that the emperor’s suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that they have all been fooled. The emperor is startled, but opts to continue the procession.

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

QR codes ✶

Lots of information, along with an open source QR code generating website.

Sound in space ✶

Matthew Florianz’s work with Frontier Developments’ audio team for Elite: Dangerous. See also his video, Creating ambient environment soundscapes.

Monday, 7 April 2025

♫ Mermaid Muse Speaks ✶

Haunting song from Amos’ new album, The Music of Tori and the Muses. Brings to mind Vangelis’ Tales of the Future.

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