WORK

But the deeper reality is that I’m sure if what I do is real. I usually believe that I’m certain about how I feel, but that seems naïve. How do we know how we feel? I’m likely much closer to Žižek’s aforementioned description of : There is almost certainly a constructed schism between (a) how I feel, and (b) how I I feel. There’s probably a third level, too—how I to think I feel.

WORK

“All Blood Runs Red”

—the motto on Eugene Bullard’s plane. Bullard was the first African-American pilot to fly in combat, and the only African-American pilot in World War I. Bullard flew for France, but never for the United States; he tried to sign with the US Army Air Service, but they were only selecting white pilots. ※ Watch the 3-part documentary ► All Blood Runs Red: The Incredible True Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard.

WORD(S)

titivil · /TIT-i-vil/ · /ˈtɪtɪvɪl/. noun. A demon said to record peoples’ sins to be used against them on Judgment Day, specifically collecting a sack of syllables dropped, skipped or mumbled during divine services and the idle gossip and chatter of churchgoers during services. Later, more generally, a gossip, a scoundrel, or a tattletale. AKA Tutivillus, Titivillus. Origin unknown. See also: knave, rogue, swindler, scallywag, busybody.

“I am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Lévy and to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have employed in lightening the burden, which Titivillus will place on my back on the Day of Judgment.” (Anatole France)

“I cannot help thinking that Titivil or Tutivillus, that literary devil, must have found himself working overtime when they published the New English Bible, with all its modern cliches.” (Country Life)

“Titivil is a word of doubtful etymology but it was current in fifteenth and sixteenth century English in the sense ‘scoundrel,’ with particular application to a mischiefmaking tell-tale, and Tom Titivil is to be taken as such a character.” (Kelsie Harder)

WEB

1. Controversial? Maybe. Essential? Absolutely → Nikole Hannah Jones on What is Owed

2. More reading for this moment. And hopefully many moments until it becomes happily irrelevant → You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument ※ The First Year Out ※ Reconstruction In America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876

3. Boompilled! → Boompilled: Fireworks Conspiracy Theories Are Bursting Across The Internet ※ The Boom in Fireworks Conspiracy Theories ※ But it doesn’t all have to be serious: I’m the Guy Setting Off Fireworks Every Night In Your Neighborhood and I Have You Right Where I Want You

4. Last week I offered you a chance to buy Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s childhood home for me, allowing me to retire in style. No one did, so this week I offer you a new opportunity → An Entire Old West Town Is for Sale. But It’s in New Zealand.

5. Coronavirus + Summer? → Walking Is Making a Major Comeback ※ In Praise of the Flâneur (apropos of nothing: flâneur is one of my favorite sounding words)

6. I had no idea the bake sale had an activist history → The Power of the Bake Sale ※ Speaking of food, some of these recipes look really good, and not just because I’m hungry right now: cook a classical feast: nine recipes from ancient Greece and Rome

7. Download and print this book designed by Big Jump Press in June 2020 in response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor → Read This Out Loud ※ While I have your…ear? Eyes? More bookish links: A clever overview of a variety of book critters, including literal Bookworms Thanks, Reader M.! ※ Page Through This Incredibly Detailed Sino-Tibetan Book Printed in 1410 ※ Rare Book School Lectures archive

8. John Peel’s iconic radio show ran on BBC radio from 1967-2004. This epic, growing list is at 968 sessions and counting → John Peel Sessions

9. This week’s miscellany → U.K. Museum Reimagines Classic Art With Face Masks // Pick a year and play those hits with Nostalgia Machine // Identifying Generational Gaps in Music // I Am Liesl von Trapp and I Owe the Resistance an Apology // In Taiwan, Pizza Hut Created Ramen Pizza // Plants fill seats at Barcelona opera house concert // Book fountain page by page

10. Today in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, are assassinated in Sarajevo, the causus belli of World War I. On this same day in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending the bloody war between Germany and the Allied Powers. In between, more than 9 million soldiers were killed and more than 21 million wounded…along with nearly 10 million civilian casualties. Sadly, this wasn’t the most deaths in the wars of human history, but it was almost inarguably as brutal as any if you consider the proportion of the fighting that involved trench warfare, chemical weapons, and direct hand-to-hand fighting in battles with death tolls nearly equalling those of the most deadly in history. It is absolutely inarguable that World War I is too often overlooked, overshadowed by World War II and the natural desensitization of time. ※ View the Treaty of Versailles as submitted to the U. S. Congress.

WATCH/WITNESS

“Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America.” → ► 13th

WHAT‽

A promotional ad for social distancing that has more than two million views? Only in the age of Coronavirus. I watched it three times. → ► A Cart Apart

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J.: “‘Africa’ - wow. Clever and - it took me down the rabbit hole of Tesla Coil music. Btw, I wonder if you might get around to some kind of tribute to the greatest living musician, Jacob Collier. ¶ Also - thanks for the BLM Heads-up. ¶ Also, also - for the Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. Down time for a sunny day.” – That’s incredibly high praise for Jacob Collier, who I have to admit I’ve only heard of, not actually listened to. I guess it’s time!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

GOETZ: Someone was to have come in the autumn.

HILDA: Who?

GOETZ: I don’t know any more. [Pause] Tell me. What is today? What day of what month?

HILDA: Do you think I count the days? We have only one now, that begins and begins again; it is given to us with the dawn and taken away with the night. You are a clock that has stopped and always tells the same time.

—Jean Paul Sartre
—from “The Devil & The Good Lord” (translated by Kitty Black)
—found in The Devil & The Good Lord and Two Other Plays (1960)

WORD(S)

costive · /KAH-stive/ · /ˈkɒstɪv/. adjective. Slow or reluctant to act; lethargic. Stingy. Originally: constipated. From Latin constipare (to press or crowd together), from con- (together) + stipare (to cram, pack).

“The Goose in Mother Goose is, or so they say, the Hamlet of animal roles, introspective and moody as only a costive bird straining over its egg might be.” (Angela Carter)

“With his little bit of money he could not, even in that notoriously cheap (because poverty-stricken) country, find a retreat or lavatory that would accommodate him long enough to coax, like a costive bowel, the art of verse back.” (Anthony Burgess)

“…the nuptial party was throttling back on celebration, the adultery table was candidly staring, the grappas were being costively withheld…” (Julian Barnes)

“…his companions had once persuaded the very young and costive Babbington that he was going to have a baby…” (Patrick O’Brian)

WEB

1. “I use time as a medium to define how long each portrait is colored in. 1 year of life = 1 minute of color.” Powerful. → stolen

2. Be careful who you donate to. → “The Black Lives Matter Foundation” Raised Millions. It’s Not Affiliated With The Black Lives Matter Movement.

3. An interesting, interactive approach. Slide a few dials around and see how your intuition compares to reality. → Do You Know How Divided White And Black Americans Are On Racism?

4. Apologies to all the people named Karen who aren’t Karens → You Know Karen. But do you know the names that could be “other Karens” or “future Karens?” We found them using data.

5. “…an imaginary museum that explores the strange place between art and curiosities.” → The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

6. “Watch Netflix at work by making it look like you’re on a conference call.” → Netflix Hangouts

7. I’ve never asked for donations, but I’ll make an exception if you want throw this my way. → Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s childhood home up for sale, complete with pool, party room and library for 22,000 books

8. Play like a child at home → Fold-n-Fly database of Paper Airplane Designs ► Play like a researcher at home → Seventy-Five Scientific Research Projects You Can Contribute to Online

9. For laughs → Texting With Famous Authors ※ For “dawwwwww” laughs → San Diego Zoo’s baby pygmy hippo makes splashy debut ※ For grimacing laughs → This Foot Does Not Exist ※ For pained laughs → Name a thing that lasted longer than the Confederacy. (New Coke, among other things).

10. Today in 1788 the U.S. Constitution is ratified. Today in 1964, civil- and voting-rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are abducted and lynched by a group including a Deputy Sheriff under the supervision of a Sheriff known for ignoring racially motivated crimes. ※ Today in 2015, Charles Marshall, armed with a cordless drill with no bit, is shot and killed by police after his wife called the police because he was suicidal and had sliced open one of his wrists. The cop told Marshall’s distraught wife that, “We [police] are trained to kill.” ※ Also today in 2015, Adrian Simental, unarmed, is killed by police responding to a psychiatric call. ※ Today in 2016, Pedro Cruz-Amado, wielding a metal chair, is killed by the police responding to a psychiatric call. ※ Also today in 2016, Lane Lesko, armed with a BB gun, is shot and killed by police responding to a psychiatric call.

WATCH/WITNESS

[Content warning: the N-word.]

“The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power 30 years later.” → ►A Class Divided (full film) | FRONTLINE

WHAT‽

►“Africa” by Toto on Musical Tesla Coils

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Apricots: as a lifelong Jacobean revenge fan, I can’t help but share this odd bit from Malfi, where a schemer detects a hidden pregnancy via that fruit.”

• Reader J.: “I loved the full etymology – but couldn’t resist the sound connection: from Arabic al-birquq, from Spanish Albuquerque…”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

I wasn’t sure what to do this week—with this newsletter, with myself—until I read Christina Tran’s How We Show Up.

The fight isn’t new and, despite what you might think if you know me only through these weekly missives, it isn’t new to me. I don’t know when I will feel like it’s the right time, if ever, for Katexic Clippings to return to its former format of frivolity. Until then, consider Katexic Clippings a mix-tape for turbulent times.

Also, a correction: one of the links last week was broken. The corrected version: Racial Injustice has Benefited Me – A Confession.

WORK

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

—Toni Morrison
—found in her 1993 Nobel Lecture

WORD(S)

What an etymology!

apricot · /AY-pri-kot/ · /ˈeɪprɪˌkɒt/. noun. Formerly apricock or abrecock. The stone fruit of the Himalayan tree Prunus armeniaca, of the rose family. The tree itself. The color of the fruit. ¶ From Catalan abercoc and Portuguese albricoque, from Arabic al-birquq, through Byzantine Greek berikokkia, from Latin praecoquum (early-ripening fruit) … from which we also get the word precocious. ¶ The original Proto-Indo-European root pekw- is the source many other words including: kitchen, pumpkin, biscuit, charcuterie, ricotta, kiln and (dys)peptic.

“He was baffled to know that apricot trees existed in, of all places, our orchard. On late afternoons, when there was nothing to do in the house, Mafalda would ask him to climb a ladder with a basket and pick those fruits that were almost blushing with shame, she said. He would joke in Italian, pick one out, and ask, Is this one blushing with shame? No, she would say, this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age.” (André Aciman)

“That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on.” (Diane Ackerman)

“Last apricot light flooded landward and brought their shadows uphill, past the lifeguard towers, into terraces of bougainvillea, rhododendrons, and ice plant.” (Thomas Pynchon)

WEB

1. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading in recent weeks (months, and years). Obviously, reading (alone) isn’t enough. → What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For? ※ What Is Optical Allyship? 3 Ways To Be Actively Anti-Racist

2. Among so many other things contributing to America’s mass incarceration problem, the predatory system of cash bail could be the easiest one to fix. → How Cash Bail Works ※ We Can’t End Mass Incarceration Without Ending Money Bail ※ The Fight to End Cash Bail

3. “Defund the police” is a slogan that demands, like many big ideas small enough to fit on a sign, some unpacking, not least because it is actually just the first step necessary for a much larger project. Dismissing the idea is easy, as is retreating to limited—painfully fruitless—ideas of incremental reforms. But with a little effort, the possibility of transformation becomes a vision that’s hard to unsee → Vox provides a solid overview: The “abolish the police” movement, explained by 7 scholars and activists. And the Cardozo Law Review goes deep: Are Police Obsolete? Breaking Cycles of Violence Through Abolition Democracy

4. While I’m at it, abolishing prison, the malignant fraternal twin of militarized and misguided policing, isn’t as outlandish as too many think. → What Is Prison Abolition? ※ A former prosecutor’s case for prison abolition ※ Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind

5. This Friday is Juneteenth.

6. Truly novel ways to promote social distancing are already becoming rare. But they’re out there. → Shoes for Social Distancing

7. I understand nothing of how this works, but the results are mind-boggling. Just look at page 8. → EAR2FACE extrapolates, with already uncanny accuracy, images of peoples’ faces from pictures of their ears. Let that sink in for a minute. ※ Also impressive, with near-future implications: Real-time Face Video Swapping From A Single Portrait.

8. Some artistic delights → Lin Yung Cheng’s conceptual photography ※ Karin Pfeiff Boschek’s pie art ※ Chris (Simpsons artist)’s strange, funny, surreal, mystifying illustrations ※ Calida Garcia Rawles’ paintings of people in water ※ Samantha French’s painting of people underwater

9. Sometimes you just need a laugh. → 40 Memes That Perfectly Sum Up The Trainwreck That Is 2020 ※ Punhub

10. Today in 1939, actress and singer Ethel Waters becomes the first African American to star in her own television show, The Ethel Waters Show. The show, a variety program that included a dramatic performance of the Broadway play Mamba’s Daughters, adapted as a vehicle for Waters by DuBose Heyward, author of the original novel, may in fact have been the first time an African American ever appeared on television. Born when her mother was in her mid-teens, raised impoverished, and married at thirteen to an abusive husband, Waters struck out on her own, working as a maid for less than $5 a week, until she was discovered singing at a party on her 17th birthday. Also an acclaimed singer, Waters won an Emmy Award, was nominated for an Academy Award and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, among many honors. ※ ► Listen to Waters’ version of “Stormy Weather,” eventually listed in the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress. ※ ► Watch Waters’ “Am I Blue,” from the 1929 film On With the Show, the first film to be recorded in color (though only black and white copies survive). ※ See and learn about the historic Ethel Waters Residence, Waters’ residence in the mid 1920s, and home to an important literary salon during the Harlem Renaissance.

WATCH/WITNESS

► James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965). Title should read “defeats” Buckley. It’s not even close. ※ James Baldwin: “I Can’t Afford Despair”

WHAT‽

A marvelous—and soothing—video whose title Google translates as “I will make a knife into a knife.” → ► Transformation of a Knife

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

Many, many thanks to everyone (I’ll spare you a long list of initials) who wrote in over the last week to support my abrupt change of content recognizing current events. Those notes happily outnumbered the unsubscriptions.

• Reader T.: “The CIA has tips for resistance.”

• Reader B.: “I confess to finding myself caught by opposing impulses and arguments. On the one hand is the line you articulated well, pace Wiesel, that it is vital to speak out against injustice. On the other are voices saying that this is the time for marginalized voices, that for whites to speak risks centering discourse on their experience.” – I hear you. I’ve settled in on the mode of trying to amplify marginalized voices, and some others that seem most genuine and insightful to help with that, while being mostly quiet myself. But it’s challenging in any case. Just going dark, which was my first impulse, seems wrong.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

For the first time in almost exactly six years and more than 400 issues, I find myself unable to ignore current events (and the politics that are part of it) here. In addition to the demands of my conscience, I realized that of the many newsletters I read, the ones that pretend it’s business as usual right now inspire feelings ranging from frustration to outright repulsion. Silence isn’t an option. I hope you read in solidarity and remain a subscriber, but if the former is impossible, the latter probably should be too.

I’ve read, listened to, watched or engaged with everything I’m sharing. Some a long time ago, many in the past few weeks. I keep coming back to the words of Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must–at that moment–become the center of the universe.

WORK

Allowables

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

—Nikki Giovanni
—found in Chasing Utopia (2013)

WORD(S)

insurrection · /in-sə-REK-shən/ · /ˌɪnsəˈrɛkʃən/. noun. Organized opposition, uprising, rebellion, or revolt against government or civil authority. From Late Latin insurrectiō, from insurgere (to rise up). See also: insurgency, revolution, putsch, coup d’état.

“When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is the most sacred of the rights, and one of the most indispensable duties of the people.” (popularly attributed to Marquis de Lafayette; found unattributed in M. A. Thiers’ History of the French Revolution)

“…insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any another, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them […] Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined.” (Karl Marx)

“The Revolution is aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hope on ‘institutions’. It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established it is dead and passes into decay.” (Max Stirner)

WEB

1. Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism? ※ Racial Injustice has Benefited Me - A Confession

2. The anger behind the protests, explained in 4 charts ※ Don’t Call It Rioting ※ There isn’t a simple story about looting

3. Violent protests are not the story. Police violence is. ※ How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country ※ Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide

4. De-escalation Keeps Protesters And Police Safer. Departments Respond With Force Anyway. ※ How Much Do We Need The Police? ※ How to reform American police, according to experts ※ National Police Accountability Project ※ 8CantWait

5. Brené Brown with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist ※ Kendi on The American Nightmare ※ Q&A with Ibram X. Kendi on the Current Protests, Joining BU, and Anti-racist Research

6. What it means to be anti-racist ※ First, Listen. Then, Learn: Anti-Racism Resources For White People ※ Anti-Racist Resource Guide ※ You can order today from these black-owned independent bookstores

7. Seeing White ※ 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge ※ Anti-Racism Daily Newsletter ※ Guide to Allyship ※ Ally Resource List

8. Photos and Voices of the George Floyd Protests: ‘We Deserve to Be Heard’ ※ From Minneapolis to Syria, Artists Are Honoring George Floyd Through Murals and Public Artworks ※ Meet the Artists Behind Some of the Most Widespread Images Amid George Floyd Protests

9. There are many excellent places to donate in the links above. The five I chose: Justice for George Floyd ※ Black Visions Collective ※ We The Protesters ※ Campaign Zero ※ National Bail Fund Network

10. Today in 1943, poet, teacher and activist Nikki Giovanni is born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Once dubbed “the poet of the Black Revolution,” gained fame as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement and has continued to be one of America’s most important writers ever since. Giovanni has taught at Virginia Tech (where she is a University Distinguished Professor) since 1987, where she delivered an acclaimed commencement address/chant poem after the 2007 mass shooting there. Giovanni has won seven NAACP Image awards, the Langston Hughes Award, the Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, the Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award and a Presidential Medal of Honor, among scores of others. ※ Poet Nikki Giovanni On The Darker Side Of Her Life ※ ► James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni, a conversation (1971) ※ ► Nikki Giovanni Reads her own Poems ※ ► Explorations in Black Leadership: Nikki Giovanni ※ The best place to start reading Giovanni’s work: The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998.

WATCH/WITNESS

► The danger of silence | Clint Smith

WHAT‽

“Foster, 80, carrying a ‘black lives matter’ sign, said she came out because it was important to show people that she had no hatred in her heart. […] ‘I’m 80 years old. If I die too bad,’ she said about the risks of someone her age marching.” → Woman, 80, is sole protester at event in Town of Palm Beach.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Maybe a little hope when we need it. It doesn’t take as many people to win as you might think. Check out The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world”

• Reader D.: “The good folks of the Katexic Clamor should get their free copy of Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States while they can.”

• Reader S.: “I’m an Indian, and this is about the indigenous experience, but it’s never been more relevant: How to Survive an Apocalypse and Keep Dreaming.”

• Reader T.: “Do you know about The Highlighter? It’s been an essential newsletter on race, education, and culture for a long time.”

• A different Reader B.: "So much this:

ESQ: How can we get the black people to cool it?
JAMES BALDWIN: It is not for us to cool it.
ESQ: But aren’t you the ones who are getting hurt the most?
JAMES BALDWIN: No, we are only the ones who are dying fastest.

from James Baldwin: How to Cool It"

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…

—Walt Whitman
—found in the Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855 edition)

WORD(S)

cathexis · /kuh-THEK-sis/ · /kəˈθɛksɪs/. noun. The concentration or charge of energy invested into an idea, person or object. From Greek kathexis (retention, holding), from katechein (to hold fast, occupy), from echein (to have, to hold), from PIE root segh- (to hold). First recorded by Sigmund Freud. See also: hypercathexis, an excessive concentration of mental energy.

“Shrinks call it cathexis,” Susan said. ¶ “Cathexis?” ¶ “A powerful emotional investment in something or someone, which in fourteen-year-old girl terms feels like love, but probably isn’t.” (Robert B. Parker)

“…bath as steam engine, body as conditioned caldron of excess libido, cathexis cathartized. His bath cools like soup in a blown-upon spoon…” (Richard Powers)

“We can try all sorts of techniques to get in touch with the hinterland of your psyche but my feeling is that, unless you your self are prepared to voyage there, it will prove impossible to extirpate this negative cathexis.” (Will Self)

WEB

1. For the LOLs → BIRD NESTING STYLES: A CRITICAL REVIEW ※ A new MasterClass: Your Dad Teaches Loading the Dishwasher ※ ► Classic Warner Bros. Bloopers

2. This Word Does Not Exist uses text generation algorithms to “make up words, definitions and examples from scratch.” (Thanks Reader S.)

3. The Kentucky Miner Who Scammed Americans by Claiming He Was Hitler and Plotting a ‘Revolt’ With ‘Spaceships’

4. Hong Kong Shop Offers ‘Tear Gas’ Flavored Ice Cream in Support of Pro-Democracy Movement

5. The Hellbox was where metal sorts (pieces of type) were tossed after printing. Sorting the used type out was a job for apprentices known as printer’s devils, a position once held by Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. ¶ In 1990, renowned print and typography firm Linotype merged with another company, becoming Linotype-Hell, and later made a Photoshop like product with the wonderful name Linotype-Hell DaVinci. ※ See (but please don’t use) the typographically horrifying Hellvetica font. ※ Watch ► a clip from the “Printer’s Devil” episode of The Twilight Zone. (Thanks for the spark, Reader B.)

6. Awwww, Penguins Get Private Tour of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. ※ Meanwhile, somewhere in California, there arose a pop-up Emergency Art Museum.

7. ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language

8. The Shakespeare and Company Project lets you browse the records (what they borrowed, where they lived, and sometimes scans of the original cards) of the many famous (and not so famous) authors and philosophers who used the renowned bookstore’s lending library from 1919-1962. As the center of bohemian literary culture, this means notables including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein…but literally thousands of more lesser-known (and forgotten) names.

9. Eye candy → Parker Thornton’s Photography ※ Polly Verity’s sensual faces curved and folded from a single sheet of paper ※ Andoni Bastarikka’s sand sculptures that near the uncanny valley ※ a parliament of shells

10. Today in 1819, poet, essayist and journalist Walt Whitman is born in Huntington, New York. ¶ Whitman’s wild free verse was the first to clearly establish an American poetry, breaking from its English roots. Deeply influenced by the strange, contradictory world of sexuality in the Victorian influenced world of antebellum America—and some brutal experiences as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War—Whitman’s poetry was expansive, populist, sensual, and simultaneously glorified individualism and the people. It’s no surprise that Whitman’s influence can be seen on all kinds of writers, including William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, John Berryman, and the entire Beat movement. It’s not a stretch to argue that without Whitman to play against, we wouldn’t have poets like Wallace Stevens or T. S. Eliot. ¶ Everything you could want to know about Walt Whitman can be found in The Walt Whitman Archive ※ Read (and listen to) Leaves of Grass. ※ ► Watch Brooklynites reading “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” ※ The Whitman, Alabama project has people from across that state telling stories of their lives…and reading Whitman. ※ Whitman wrote two famous poems when President Lincoln died: hear ► James Earl Jones reads “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d”; read "O Captain! My Captain!. ※ Or, wait, Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?

WATCH/WITNESS

Your two minutes and forty seconds of zen → ► Blooming Flowers Timelapse

WHAT‽

► The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby (but all notes are E and F)

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “The longest palindrome in Morse Code is ‘intransigence.’ This is almost the perfect Katexic sentence.”

• Reader M.: “Speaking of David Lynch, his Weather Report is back and it is splendid!”

• Reader S.: “Many fine literary references to ‘fizzgigs’, but you missed the most important fizzgig, Kira’s companion in The Dark Crystal!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Sorry about the newsletter delay last weekend. The TinyLetter gods will neither confirm nor deny, but I’m pretty sure my account was “flagged for potential” abuse because of, ironically, the links in item #8 of the WEB section.

WORK

“When we were little,” the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, “we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him Tortoise——”

“Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” Alice asked.

“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle angrily. “Really you are very dull!”

—Lewis Carroll
—found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

WORD(S)

fizgig · /FIZZ-gig/ · /ˈfɪzgɪg/. noun and adjective. A frivolous or flirtatious girl. A silly notion. A firework that fizzes. A spinning top. A harpoon or spear (also fishgig). In Australian slang, an informer. Perhaps from fizz (a hissing sound or disturbance), from obsolete fise (to break wind) + gig (multiple meanings, including frivolous person and whipping top), origin unknown but possibly onomatopoeic.

“…late last year we came upon an absolute fizgig of a girl…” (Michael Faber)

“…Joe asked what the eff I were doing talking to that fizgig for he had taken a fierce set against him from the start.” (Peter Carey)

“Seagriff, in turn taking the glass, further makes out that the men have fish-spears in their hands, and an implement he recognises as a fizgig…” (Mayne Reid)

“Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as pippins…” (Agnes C. Laut)

WEB

1. Mail Art, a Quirky Pursuit That Hasn’t Been Popular Since the ’60s, Is Suddenly Having a Renaissance Amid the Worldwide Lockdown Thanks, Reader J.

2. Tiny Animals on Fingers ※ Angela Lansbury as teapots Thanks, Reader B.

3. Fractal wrongness is “the state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person’s worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person’s worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.”

4. Russian Doll words (not about dolls) ※ Russian Artists Michael Zajkov’s Ultra-Realistic Dolls (all dolls) ※ My Secret Life as a Reporter for “Doll Reader” Magazine (a little bit about dolls)

5. LibraryThing was GoodReads before there was a GoodReads, much less before Amazon barged in, and it is now free to all forever.

6. The ancient Greeks saw all the colors. ※ The Ancient Romans Gave Us “Bones of the Dead” Cookies ※ Colonialism Shaped Body Shaming ※ The Black Death Yielded British Pub Culture

7. William Warren’s Shelves for Life are “designed to be taken down and reassembled as a coffin,” presumably for the owner, but possibly for that one friend who never returns the books they “borrow.”

8. “Deep-speare!” → This AI Poet Mastered Rhythm, Rhyme, and Natural Language to Write Like Shakespeare

9. Door Dash is Evil ※ Grubhub is Evil ※ Copyright Claims are Evil ※ The SCAN System Used by Law Enforcement is Evil ※ Supermarket Organic Veggies are Evil?

10. Today in 1844, Samuel Morse sends the first long-distance telegram from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in Washington, D. C. to the Mount Clare railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland, tapping out, “What hath God wrought” in his own eponymous dot & dash code. Originally Morse’s telegraph system used paper tape, but operators soon realized they could make out the letters from just the clicking of the receiver, simplifying the system considerably. In 1861, the Western Union Telegraph System completed the first transcontinental U. S. telegraph line, and by 1866 the first permanent trans-Atlantic cable was completed. Buoyed by Thomas Edison’s invention of the Quadraplex system allowing four simultaneous messages to be transmitted, the telegraph had transformed global communication by the mid-1900s. ※ Learn Morse Code using Google Creative Labs’ Morse Typing Trainer. ※ For the less industrious among us, there’s the Morse Code Translator, which can encode and send messages to your friends (or enemies). ※ Check out this collection of Strange CW (Telegraph) Keys, including (working) models made from rubber stamps, lollipops, bananas, a handsaw and more. ※ FYI: the longest palindrome in Morse Code is “intransigence.”

WATCH/WITNESS

► Wander “through beautiful spaces accompanied by the world’s favourite voices.”

WHAT‽

David Lynch wrote, drew, and directed this short film and it is every bit as Lynchian as anything could be. → ► FIRE (POZAR)

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Wasn’t that Val Kilmer article fascinating? I still don’t even know what to think about it or what intrigued me most—his ideas about Twain and Eddy, his art, or the whole explanation of how he was a better actor when he wasn’t playing lead characters. It pains me that his chiseled jaw is gone.”

• (A different) Reader M.: “Well, ‘parergon’ is certainly a more classy word for my writing than ‘sideline’ or ‘hobby’! Thanks for the new word and for bumping the value of my work up a bit!”

• Reader O.: “I always love your missives, but somehow ‘The Exciting of Trains’ link just hit me the exact right way at the exact right time. Thank you for sharing that and every other part of this email.” test–test

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

To keep a house in which every object, down to the smallest bibelot, is in perfect taste, is in shocking taste. No house can be truly tasteful unless it contains at least half a dozen atrocities of varying sizes and uses. This must not include the residents, however.

—Judith Martin
—found in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior: Freshly Updated (2005)

WORD(S)

parergon · /pə-RƏR-gawn/ · /pəˈrə:gɒn/. noun. An ornamental accessory; a byproduct; a piece of writing that is subsidiary to another work; work in addition to one’s primary employment. From Greek para (beside, beyond) + ergon (work). See also: opuscule.

“This long counting of landscape as parergon—subsidiary work, mere accessory—is an odd aspect of European cultural history, and sadly revealing of a much older fault in man: his belief that nature is there purely for his use…” (John Fowles)

“Sometimes this making or doing was their profession; sometimes it was a parergon carried on deliciously in leisure hours.” (A. P. Herbert)

“Literature was for him no parergon, no mere way of escape from politics. If he was an amateur in feeling, he was a craftsman in execution…” (George Wyndham)

WEB

1. An old thread, but a goodie → What is a piece of writing, on the internet (i.e. not a book), that you return to or at least consider foundational? ※ One of my picks: this pair by Allie Brosh, aka Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression + Depression Part Two. PS. Wherever you are, Allie Brosh, I hope you are well.

2. “Gaming the lottery seemed as good a retirement plan as any…” → Jerry and Marge Go Large

3. I had no idea tamales were a Mississippi Delta fixture. → How the humble tamale came to represent a region and its people. ※ I was aware of this concoction at the other end of the taste spectrum, but not the story behind it: The Creator of Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake Confesses. ※ And, while on food (or should I say “food”?): I Made Ranch Gummy Bears And You Should Too.

4. I can’t tell if this is satire or not. Or if that makes it better or worse. → Christians Against Dinosaurs

5. “A collection of good news, positive trends, uplifting statistics and facts — all beautifully visualized by Information is Beautiful.” → Beautiful News. ※ See also, an online magazine founded by David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne): Reasons to Be Cheerful, “A self help magazine for people who hate self help magazines.”

6. One of the more interesting profiles of an almost accidental, definitely weird, celebrity I’ve read → What Happened to Val Kilmer? He’s Just Starting to Figure It Out. ※ A fantastic profile of an underrated musician: The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic.

7. From the Clamor to your ears → Sweet Music Comes Across the Sky interprets the songs of Thomas Pynchon (Thanks, Reader S.) ※ Apocalypse Grooves maps Coronavirus proteins to sounds (Thanks, Reader B.).

8. A fun exploit of font ligatures → Scunthorpe Sans “censors bad language automatically,” kind of. ※ You do know about the Scunthorpe Problem, right?

9. I can’t resist a snail mail campaign for something good. Nor should you. → 18 Million Thanks

10. Today in 1866, composer and pianist Erik Satie is born in London. Satie, smarting from being called a “clumsy but subtle technician,” began calling himself a phonometrician or gymnopedist. The latter word, coined by Satie, was perhaps an oblique reference to the ancient Greek festival (or dance) called the Gymnopaedia. Whatever the origins, Satie would soon write the composition he is best known for, the ► Gymnopédies (which you will surely recognize). ¶ Satie was a bit…different. Among other eccentricities, Satie claimed to live on a diet of white food, hoarded umbrellas, carried a hammer for protection, stacked two grand pianos on top of each other in his flat (using the top for correspondence), founded his own religion, and composed pieces like “Vexations,” a piece intended to be played 840 times in succession. Satie’s influence was significant, particularly on experimental artists like John Cage and minimalists like Steve Reich. Satie’s years of heavy drinking—including a fondness for absinthe—took their toll, and he would die at just 59. ※ Listen to Satie’s ► Gnossiennes, beautiful pieces that remind me of a modernist Chopin. ※ Watch the documentary Erik Satie: Things Seen to the Right and the Left. ※ Listen to Gnossiennes No. 1 Forever, a composition that uses Markov Chains to create an endless version of this beautiful piece. ※ Listen to every recording of Gymnopedie No. 1 at the same time. ※ Listen to the complete “Vexations” (clocks in at nearly 10 hours).

WATCH/WITNESS

► Traumatized Baby Elephants Find New Human Parents

WHAT‽

► The Exciting of Trains reminds me of the ridiculous vintage 16mm films we used to dig up in the ancient film library, but even funnier.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader A. with an always-relevant suggestion: “Read Gödel, Escher, Bach…”

• Reader B.: “That flipbook was insane!”

• Also Reader B., belatedly (thanks to me): “For Chernobyl, I was most impressed by the HBO series. Well, I had quibbles with a few details, but was blown away by the 99% others. ¶ Also, it felt like Lovecraftian horror in a way. ¶ For more, I strongly recommend this: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster.”

• Reader C.: “Little Richard’s influence just isn’t appreciated enough. He Changed Everything!”

• Reader J.: “UFOs - No. If you want the real explanations of what those pics are, check out Thunderfoot. Scientific analysis wins again. ¶ Here’s his two videos explaining how things get picked up on radar, infrared, etc. as well as the science behind the specific US Navy reports: see ► UFO spotted with ADVANCED Infrared CLOAKING device! and ► US Navy CONFIRMED UFO: BUSTED (Part 2).”

• Reader M.: “Re: Balzac’s assertion that music communicates with us more directly than poetry, Richard Strauss was having his characters debate this very question a hundred years later in his brilliant little opera Capriccio frm 1942, and no doubt the debate is still with us.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

Believe me, in painting his Saint-Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he was right; music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like a perfume.

—Honoré de Balzac (translated by Clara Bell & James Waring)
—from “Massimilla Doni” (1837)

WORD(S)

chrestomathy · /kreh-STAHM-ə-thee/ · /krɛsˈtɒməθɪ/. noun. A collection of choice literary passages, most often by a single author, and moste often to assist in learning a foreign language. From Greek khrēstos (useful) + mathein (to learn); from PIE root mendh- (to learn). See also: chrestomathic.

“…although the Diary of a Romantic Artist contains some of what we might expect, it also served as many other things: work journal, travel notebook, jotter for a proposed Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts, aide-memoire, file of sent letters, chrestomathy, address book, and so on…” (Julian Barnes)

“This is also the topic of ‘Shadow and Ash’—an intellectual chrestomathy whose fragmentary method is finally its content.” (Samuel R. Delany)

“The introduction to this chrestomathy, the troubled prolegomena you have just read, is all the explanation I can give at this time, of who I am and what all this means.” (Harlan Ellison)

“Daniel glances at Barnes, who is going through a chrestomathy of head-shaking, throat-slitting, eye-bulging, and hand-waving.” (Neal Stephenson)

WEB

1. Don’t let the mundane title fool you…this flip book is stupendous, dark and beautiful. Thanks, Reader S. → I made a really big flip book during quarantine ※ Flipbook Gangnam Style -vs- Psy Gangnam Style

2. At the always entertaining Strong Language, the curious history of the Sofa King. → It’s Sofa King famous!

3. “It didn’t occur to any of them to bring a map, let alone a compass.” → The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months ※ ► Golding’s Introduction to Lord of the Flies

4. “…a single player iPad game where players help NASA classify coral reefs…” → NeMO-Net

5. The Pudding has been on fire lately. Take a musical quiz because it’s interesting, and contribute to identifying “generational gaps in music” at the same time. Also, I totally have Gen-Zers beat when it comes to recognizing Taylor Dane. → Music Challenge

6. The uplifting story of Emerson, age 11, and her mail carrier, Doug. Also, if you’re an American, support the USPS! → Emerson and Mail Carrier Doug. ※ Instead of Killing the US Postal System, Let’s Expand It

7. Reader P. says, “Apparently this is a real thing.” → Jean-Michel Basquiat Barbie ※ Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines virtual exhibit

8. I agree with Reader B. that some of these are really good! → A thread of user-made Penguin Classics covers. ※ The Penguin (or Oxford World) Classics Cover Generator.

9. Maybe? → It’s time to take UFOs seriously. Seriously.

10. Today in 2003, as an entry in its ongoing (since June 20, 1995!) Astronomy Picture of the Day series, NASA publishes a picture of NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula, which would come to be known as “The Eye of God.” Taken by the Hubble Telescope, the nearly 11,000-year-old nebula—also known as “The Eye of Sauron”—is approximately 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Contrary to the eye-like appearance from Earth, the nebula is believed to be cylindrical, our view being “down” the cylinder to the star at its center. Further imagery of the nebula revealed that it contains at least 10,000 comets swarming around, and often colliding with each other, inside it.

WATCH/WITNESS

Awesome concert: ► It’s Little Richard. 1964 UK TV Show. (RIP).

WHAT‽

► “Kiss from a Rose” by Seals

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “Am I the only one who finds Jukebox kind of mind-blowing? And the deep fakes? They implications of both of these are exciting and deeply, weirdly troubling.”

• Reader M.: “I have spent a good amount of time the past few weeks editing and ‘correcting’ various poet friends’ use of Covid-19 (and other variations) and explaining why all caps makes sense for an acronym. After all, we do mostly write NASA and not Nasa, even though that acronym is pronounceable.”

• Reader B.: “As a kid I used to take in a lot of Soviet space imaginations. My maternal grandparents were Russian and very pro-USSR. They often went to Sochi and back. Grandfather was a hardcore Stalinist. They liked to bring me magazines with space stuff.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

…you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man. This role was taught covertly to princes by ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised, so that he would look after them with his discipline. To have as teacher a half-beast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both natures; and the one without the other is not lasting.

Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves.

—Niccolò Machiavelli (translated by Harvey C. Mansfield)
—found in The Prince (1513-1515; this translation 1985)

WORD(S)

perfidy /PER-fi-dee/ /ˈpə:fɪdi/. noun. A deliberate betrayal of trust or breach of faith, particularly professing friendship to deceive. More commonly seen in its adjective form perfidious (faithless, deceitful, treacherous). From Latin perfidia (falsehood, treachery), from the phrase per fidem decipere (to deceive through trustingness), from per- (forward, through) + fidem (faith).

“Among all nations they excelled in the union of common sense and vision. But also among all nations they were most ready to betray their visions in the name of common sense. Hence their reputation for perfidy.” (Olaf Stapledon)

“…how insensitive, how perfidious it would have been on our part to be sneaking little kisses and holding hands, without being truly in love…” (Stefan Zweig)

“Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that raised her above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind.” (Edith Wharton)

“…Peter was a worse louser and lackey, perpetrated his low perfidity after Judas had betrayed his Master…” (Flann O’Brien)

WEB

1. Some mind blowing glimpses of the future with fascinating implications. Jukebox uses neural nets to generate music—and even “rudimentary” singing!— in multiple genres and styles. Vocal Synthesis is trained on the speech and speech patterns to create new audio (from a “special message” from Barak Obama and Donald Trump to Jay-Z performing Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). ¶ As these kinds of programs rapidly improve, theoretical questions of copyright (who “owns” the copyright of an AI-generated voice performance?) and life (how do we tell real from literally fake news?) become real and pressing. ※ See also: From the pyramids to Apollo 11 – can AI ever rival human creativity? ※ One more link, this time a bit less world-changing: This Meme Does Not Exist.

2. Even right here, people (and birds), live in different worlds. A pair of them: There’s an Entire Industry Dedicated to Making Foods Crispy, and It Is WILD and Inside the Outrageously Prestigious World of Falcon Influencers.

3. I love this project! Check it out while you can: This Website Will Self-Destruct

4. The King’s Letters, the fascinating story of “The 15th-century scholar who upset the Korean aristocracy by creating a native script for the Korean language, and thus wean it off Chinese characters.” ※ Pairs well with: The origin of language in the brain is 20 million years older than we thought.

5. I Turned a 1920’s Typewriter into an EDM Drum Machine.

6. Yes, I’m the kind of person that, in the midst of a pandemic, worries over such things. Maybe this is why: COVID or Covid? The comfort of pedantry at a time of national crisis. ※ See also, the Chicago Manual’s shop talk on the Styling COVID-19 and Related Terms. ※ And in sign language, literally: Due to Covid 19

7. A life well lived: Madeline Kripke, Doyenne of Dictionaries, Is Dead at 76

8. How Soviet Artists Imagined Communist Life in Space. ※ Bonus: Nikolai Mikhailovich Kolchitsky’s fantastic illustrations.

9. First, consider that there is a “literary magazine for Taco Bell literature.” Then enjoy an interview with the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly, who explains how to make art out of a fast food brand.

10. Today in 1469, writer, philosopher and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli is born in Florence, Italy. Machiavelli’s most famous book, The Prince, was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who would be the ruler of Florence from 1516-1519. Machiavelli’s book has been celebrated and condemned in the centuries since for its formal innovation, philosophical subtlety and its seeming recommendation of cruelty, autocracy and deception. The latter perception—a partially unfair one driven by partisan interests including the Catholic church—resulted in the eponym Machiavellian (one who prefers expedience and desired outcome to morality; deceitful, cunning, scheming, duplicitous) as early as the 1570s.

WATCH/WITNESS

► The Iguana King documents a Florida iguana hunter, one of a small clan going after these reptiles that, thanks to climate change, are “at once a sought-after pet, a destructive pest, and a delicacy.”

WHAT‽

► Wait for It

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L. writes: “A little something to add to your list of locked-in delights, 7 Spectacular Libraries You Can Explore From Your Living Room.”

• Reader K. with a reminder: “I don’t know who needs this, but Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity and Literally Kills You.”

• Reader B. shares my shame: “While I can barely doodle, Banksy is doing this during his lockdown!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

If you enjoy Katexic Clippings, I could use your help getting the word out that it’s back: share a link, forward a copy to a friend, bedazzle the name on your shirt before your next Zoom session…whatever you’re willing to do. Thank you!

WORK

I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes, national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich—in all such phenomena I shall steep my exhaurient mind.

—Max Beerbohm
—from “Diminuendo”
—found in The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)

WORD(S)

teratology · /tayr-ə-TOL-ə-jee/ · /tɛrəˈtɒlədʒi/ · noun · The study of physical abnormalities, gross defects, and the conditions that give rise to them. From Greek prefix terato- (of or pertaining to monsters), from Greek teras (monster or monstrosity). See also: teratoid, teratophobia, teratophilia, teratogenetic, teratoma, teratical.

“Teratology and the iconography of nightmare were his hobbies…” (H. P. Lovecraft)

“…the silence rumbled into unwelcome life with the sound of heavy breathing – a slack snorting that belonged to something teratoid and beastly.” (Kate Atkinson)

“…this bull ends up begetting on Minos’s queen the Minotaur, a hideous teratoid monster who has to be secreted in a special labyrinth and propitiated with human flesh…” (David Foster Wallace)

“…he was trying to say a single word that I, with my Ancient as well as Modern Greek, can identify, though I have never encountered it: teratophilia, erotic attraction to monsters.” (Kingsley Amis)

“She was afflicted with teratophobia, an unusual but well-documented condition: literally, a fear of bearing a monster, a fear of something horrible growing inside you.” (Paul Bowdring)

WEB

1. How the Fake Beatles Conned South America.

2. The readaletter tag on YouTube is delightful, with all kinds of people (celebrities and not) reading letters to friends, family and the public. ※ Staying with letters, read about The Stamp that Almost Caused a War .

3. No one knows, and can more accessibly talk about, new and emerging online language than Because Internet author Gretchen McCullough, and this new interview is no exception: Why “Ok.” Is the Most Terrifying Text You Could Ever Receive.

4. FixMyQuarantine links to interesting videos, songs, articles, useless facts and uplifting news intended to “help people escape boredom of staying at home.” Even better, the selection changes every 24 hours. Thanks Reader S.

5. Weaving together the ideas of Marcel Maus and Lewis Hyde on gifts and the gifted with the contemporary, mercenary market and notions of a spiritual economy, Ted Gioia’s Gratuity: Who Gets Paid When Art Is Free is a must read.

6. Unlike almost everyone else I know, I couldn’t bear Tiger King. But this not-so-depressing or salacious piece on The Strange and Dangerous World of America’s Big Cat People was great.

7. Speaking of animals: Pets in prison: the rescue dogs teaching Californian inmates trust and responsibility. ※ Pairs well with: We Put Too Many People Behind Bars. This Pandemic Shows Why That’s Not Necessary.

8. Looking for some big books to occupy your time? Then The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages is for you. ※ And if you’re one of those tricksters who find pandemic reading pleasurable (or necessary), then the inimitable Bryan Alexander has your back: Reading for the plague: a syllabus.

9. For your eyes: The weirdest, most wonderful virtual museums you can visit without leaving your couch & An inspired photographer, a disrupted senior class and 500 portraits that capture what they lost. ※ For your ears, a bit of nostalgia: 10 TV themes played on piano by Ethan Iverson. ※ And for, well, the rest of you: Burning Man Is Going Virtual, and So Are the Orgies.

10. On this day in 1986, the worst nuclear disaster in history—along with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster the only incident rated at the highest level on the International Nuclear Event Scale—occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, in what is now northern Ukraine. The accident would release 100 times more radiation than both of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, killing two plant workers immediately and more than two-dozen first responders within a few months. The ultimate death toll, including eventual deaths from cancer and other diseases, could reach 16,000. More than 350,000 people in Pripyat and nearby areas were relocated, turning Pripyat into a ghost town. After putting out the immediate fire and shutting the rest of the plant down, the reactor was covered by a 400,000 cubic meter concrete and steel structure called the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Sarcophagus but, due to degradation, the sarcophagus was replaced in 2018 by the New Shelter. ※ See also: Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl (a short film shot by drone in 2014), a Traveler piece on What It’s Like to Visit Chernobyl Today, and the acclaimed Chernobyl miniseries.

WATCH/WITNESS

“Enjoy a ► virtual walk through the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden—complete with cherry blossoms—in this extraordinary video captured by cinematographer Nic Petry…”

WHAT‽

Watch the ► Hamlet Monovlogues, in which “Hamlet is a struggling millennial vlogging his struggles of life as the events of the play unfold.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. writes in, “So glad to see Katexic back! Readers might enjoy this thread on the Origin of the Triscuit name. It’s certainly not what I would have guessed.”

• Reader B. says, “May I draw the attention of the Clamor (Klamor?) to this wonderful series of Sir Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare’s sonnets? And while I’m at it, I have to plug Star Trek: Picard, which is a great binge watch even for non-Trek fanatics like me.”

• Reader K. stops by, "I’m just going to leave this right here: As a gift to our friends (you) in a time of crisis, we’ll be keeping a thread here of beautiful, obscure, and often quite useless words.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/

It’s hard to completely ignore a global pandemic but, as usual with Clippings, while some items are inspired by current news and events, none are directly about them. Enjoy!

WORK

My soul is a secret orchestra, but I don’t know what instruments – strings, harps, cymbals, drums – strum and bang inside me. I only know myself as the symphony.

—Fernando Pessoa (translated by Richard Zenith)
—found in The Book of Disquiet (2001)

WORD(S)

anchorite /AYN-kər-iyt/ /ˈaŋkərʌɪt/. noun or adjective. Someone who has withdrawn or secluded themselves from the world, usually for religious reasons. A recluse; a person of solitary habits. From Greek anakhoretes (one who has retired), from anakhorein (to retreat, retire), from ana (back) + khorein (withdraw). See also: ascetic, hermit, loner, solitarian.

“As a mongrel anchorite he could not bear the heat of the house, or the way the TV seemed to attack you like a barking dog, or to sleep within the dank scent of heating oil.” (Jim Harrison)

“Holy men and anchorites have long found in the upper world of the mountains an environment more conducive to contemplation than the secular bustle of the lowlands.” (Robert Macfarlane)

“That is the delusion of the anchorite—a delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his own sanctity.” (George MacDonald)

WEB

1. Trained a neural net on my cat and regret everything

2. There’s a slew of streaming media by entertainers of all kinds right now, including comedy, but Tip Your Waitstaff is one of the more interesting. Each week Mike Birbiglia and a guest (so far including John Mulaney, Gary Gulman, Maria Bamford and more) get together to work on jokes, which is both fascinating and funny.

3. Nick Cave on creativity in the age of the Coronavirus | David Lynch Predicts a ‘More Spiritual, Much Kinder’ World After Quarantine Ends | John Keats wrote A Letter from Quarantine.

4. Color Names is a collaborative effort to name all (16,277,216) RGB colors based on user-submitted names and voting. Meanwhile, colors.lol selects palettes from which sets and names are randomly generated, leading to combinations such as “ungentlemanly light grey, deadly muted blue and entopic periwinkle.” | More seriously, this two-part piece on The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains is eye-opening and pairs well with this 2012 Radiolab episode on Colors.

5. Thanks to the #ColourOurCollections initiative you can download coloring book pages based on materials from libraries, archives and museums from around the world.

6. As my ability to pseudo-multitask becomes weaker—and the sheltering in place becomes staler—I find myself using ambient sound/noise systems more to help concentrate and focus. My current pick is the Name of the Rose Ambient Background Generator, just one of more than 200 customizable sound generators at MyNoise. A few other recommended sites: Rainyscope for rain sounds, Coffitivity for coffeeshop sounds and Soft Murmur for a mixable variety.

7. From the early days of commercial printing comes comes an extraordinary saga of piracy and fraud.

8. The news is getting old,but the language of, and around, Coronavirus remains fascinating. A mini-roundup of articles on the topic: A “Lockdown Lexicon, Covidictionary, Glossary of Coronacoinages” in two parts: #CORONASPEAK – the language of Covid-19 goes viral & #CORONASPEAK – the language of Covid-19 goes viral – 2 | Social change and linguistic change: the language of Covid-19 | Corpus analysis of the language of Covid-19 | Coronavirus meets linguistic diversity | ‘Take care and be safe’: Rewriting email etiquette in our new coronavirus reality | and a bit of fun, the Covid-19 Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

9. For your ears: Matthew Perpetua’s curated yearly playlists (1970-2005) | A Buddhist Monk Covers Queen, The Beatles, and The Ramones | Rare footage of a Snow leopard calling. For your eyes: 2020 Sony World Photography Awards | 50 Weirdest Stock Photos You Won’t Be Able To Unsee. For both: Louis Armstrong House Museum’s first virtual exhibit.

10. Today in 1770, while the barely 15-year-old Marie Antoinette was being married by proxy to Louis XVI of France, Captain James Cook—on a mission to find the mythical continent of Terra Australis—becomes the first European to lay eyes on the Eastern coast of Australia.

WATCH/WITNESS

Watching 植物男子 (“Plant Guy”) ► create his incredible terrariums, including cliffs and waterfalls, is compelling and soothing—a meditative window into miniature worlds.

WHAT‽

Normally a “Los Angeles based monthly curatorial screening showcasing contemporary and archival experimental film/animation,” in the era of physical distancing Cathode Cinema has transformed itself into ► CathodeTV, featuring “past programming, experimental shorts, strange TV feeds, subconscious channel surfing, themed blocks of programming and much more.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Thanks to the many folks who wrote in last week with encouragement and stories. It was great to hear from you, and I’ll be in touch with each of you soon.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Greetings, friends! You might remember me from episodes like “Not that newsletter again!” and “Why doesn’t he just make a website?”

The promised transformation of this newsletter during its hiatus didn't (yet?) materialize...but the times we are living in are so extraordinary (though, as usual, I tried to stay away from current events...we all get enough of that!) that maybe that's not just OK, but comforting. At least that's what I tell myself. So, you tell me, should I send more of these?

WORK

…you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground. People have tended (with the help of conventions) to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light, and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult. All living things do this, everything in nature grows and defends itself according to its kind and is a distinct creature from out of its own resources, strives to be so at any cost and in the face of all resistance. We know little, but that ~we must hold fast to what is difficult~ is a certainty that will never forsake us. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Charlie Louth)
—found in Letters to a Young Poet (written 1902-1908; first published 1929; this translation 2011)

WORD(S)

monophobia · /mah-nuh-FOE-bee-uh/ · /mɒnəʊˈfəʊbɪə/. noun. A severe, even morbid fear of being alone. Also, a generic term for a single, simple or specific phobia. From Greek mono- (alone, single, sole, only) + -phobia (a fear of, or aversion to, something). See also: eremophobia, isolophobia.

“The fear of solitude, monophobia, manifests itself frequently in hysteria, in neurasthenia.” (Ch. Féré)

“If he is afraid of being alone he knows that he has monophobia and has the satisfaction of knowing that he is a pathological case. If he keeps worrying, in the middle of a meal, about the possibility of being buried alive, he can flatter himself that he has taphephobia, and that it is no worse than a bad cold.” (Robert Benchley)

“…for a while I thought I would inherit my father’s lavish array of phobias: aerophobia (he flew once, as a child: a five-shilling ‘flip’ at the seaside. That did it), acrophobia (when he took his children to the top floor of the Empire State, in 1959, it was only our presence, he said, that stopped him from screaming), and nyctophobia, or fear of the night.* Nyctophobia overlapped with partial monophobia. There were many things he couldn’t do alone.” (Martin Amis)

“New siblings to rival. Perhaps for a moment, only a moment, this affront will being us together, all human, all much more alike than different, all much more alike than is good for our prickly pride. Humanity, E pluribus unum at last, a oneness focused on and fertilized by certain knowledge of alien others. What will be born of that brief, strange, and ironic union?” (Octavia Butler, from “The Monophobic Response”)

WEB

1. There’s hope for the pandas → Finally, Some Privacy: After 10 Years, Giant Pandas Mate in Shuttered Zoo … and for us? → Thanks to COVID-19, Internet-Connected Sex Toy Sales Are Booming

2. It turns out tunnel-boring machines are far from, well, boring. → Meet the Most Interesting Tunnel Boring Machines

3. A promising early experiment that may become more important than ever. → A Brain Stimulation Experiment Relieved Depression in Nearly All of Its Participants | Paradoxical pairing: If You Have Anxiety and Depression but Feel Better During Coronavirus, You’re Not Alone

4. If you’re an introvert jonesing for some of the stress of extroverting, Hyphal Mesh has you covered, every Tuesday at 12:30 PT / 3:30 ET.

5. Paper-Bag Masks from 50 Years Ago

6. People are finding delight in all kinds of things right now. Is it time to discover delight in the dead?

7. The Letterform Archive is a (well) “curated collection of over 50,000 items related to lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design.” And now the online archive is open to all.

8. Some long(ish) reads: The Mortician and the Murderer | a bank-robbing Olympic cyclist naturally uses his bike as a getaway vehicle | The highly unusual company behind Sriracha, the world’s coolest hot sauce | How a tiny endangered species put a man in prison | The Crazy True Story of the Zanesville Zoo Escape

9. Get ’em in your ears: NPR’s updated list of virtual concerts of all kinds | the Cabin Fever Tunes schedule of folk/country/americana livestreams | Nightly Met Opera streams. And your eyes: The Art Of Quarantine | Unraveling the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt’s Spellbinding Mummy Portraits | Jonathan Harris’ works. And a bit of both with the ongoing Social Distancing Festival.

10. Today in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space on a voyage lasting 108 minutes. At lift-off, Gagarin spoke to ground control, saying “Off we go! Goodbye, until [we meet] soon, dear friends!” The first phrase, Poyekhali! in Russian (listen to it)—popularly translated as “Let’s go!” or “We’re off!”—became a popular phrase that is now a regular part of the Russian lexicon. See also: a ► 5-minute mini-documentary of the historic event, a nice piece on how Gagarin inspired Soviet design, Poyekhali! Gagarin cut, a collaboration between composer Úlfur Eldjárn and filmmaker Christopher Riley celebrating astronaut Tim Peake’s first orbit of Earth in 2015, and the finally-revealed true story of Gagarin’s death in 1968.

WATCH/WITNESS

Mike Olbinski’s ► Vorticity 2 combines two years of storm-chasing footage into a mesmerizing short (under eight minutes) film. Pairs well with these unbelievably cool clouds over Lake Michigan.

WHAT‽

I don’t know what ► Paulette Traverso’s Messages from Quarantine is, exactly, but its surreal-y, dada-esque silence fits my headspace right now.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• It’s been a while. I sure would love to hear from you!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Greetings, Clamorites!

After more than 400 issues starting in 2014, Katexic Clippings is officially going into hybertransformation mode—aka hiatus—in which your intrepid editor sleeps a lot and fattens up with new ideas for bringing a revitalized newsletter back later this year (so don’t leave quite yet).

In the meantime, I’m sure I will be unable to resist posting some cool stuff to (which is effectively a two-year archive of newsletters…plus some bonus prizes) and .

WORK

Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

—David Lynch
—from Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006)

WORD(S)

banausic /bəˈnɔ:sɪk/ /bə-NAW-sik/. adjective. Ordinary; routine; run-of-the-mill; mundane; dull. Derogatory, obviously, banausic originated in Ancient Greek as a pejorative label for the laboring class, including artists and musicians. It’s possible that the Elizabethan use of “mechanical” was a translation from the Greek. From Greek banausos (handicraftsman).

“History, fortunately, will forget these banausic and irrelevant gnats, but not before thousands more die screaming in South Africa under the premiership of a man who is freedom’s friend as much as Margaret Thatcher is Dorothy’s.” (Stephen Fry)

“Continuing on without pause, he said, ‘Exacting? Prosaic? Banausic to the point of drudgery? Sometimes. Often tedious? Perhaps. But brave? Worthy? Fitting, sweet? Romantic? Chivalric? Heroic?’ When he paused, it wasn’t just for effect—at least not totally. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ’—by which I mean, of course, latter adolescents who aspire to manhood—gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is.” (David Foster Wallace)

“The locals attempt country dances, a banausic and inappropriate entertainment.” (China Miéville)

WEB

1. “Breithaupt is alarmed at the apparent new virus of selective empathy and how it’s deepening divisions. If we embrace it, he says, then ‘basically you give up on civil society at that point. You give up on democracy. Because if you feed into this division more and you let it happen, it will become so strong that it becomes dangerous.’” → The End Of Empathy

2. Each load of the the LOC Serendipity page provides a new random list of links to openly available books and other publications from the Library of Congress. Makes for a fun meander. ※ Even more fun, if you have a short attention span like mine, is the companion LOC Visual Media Serendipity site.

3. “What are human murmurations, I wondered?” Another insightful essay by Rebecca Solnit. → When the Hero is the Problem [Thanks, Reader B.!]

4. The San Diego Zoo and the University of California San Diego are crowdfunding a cervix-navigating robot to fight against the impending extinction of multiple species of African Rhino. ※ Watch ► the project’s video

5. The nutrition study the $30B supplement industry doesn’t want you to see

6. If your interests run to technology, social media, attention, unplugging, etc., then Venkatesh Rao’s thoughts on “Waldenponding” (I suggest starting with Part 2, grokkable even if Harry Potter isn’t your thing, then Part 1 if you’re interested) are an intriguing read.

7. Lenka Clayton Typewriter Drawings (“made with a portable 1957 Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter” – but how?) ※ Clayton has a lot of interesting projects of all kinds, but I am naturally drawn to the wordy ones, such as Corrected Love Letters, Today I was interviewed by the New York Times, Unanswered Letter and a project I shared here in 2015, the Mysterious Letters Project.

8. Ummm…hmmm. → Woman with two wombs gives birth twice, nearly a month apart

9. 5fathom is just a person sharing “things rich and strange,” and it’s a cornucopia of little delights.

10. Today is Easter, aka Pascha, aka Resurrection Sunday, a Christian holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Easter Sunday is the first day of Eastertide, the Easter Season, which lasts seven weeks, ending on day 50, Pentecost Sunday. The dying of Easter eggs originates in the early Christian community of Mesopotamia, who dyed eggs—an ancient symbol of birth and rebirth—red in memory of the blood of Christ. In addition to being an ancient fertility symbol, the hare was widely believed to be hermaphroditic and so able to reproduce without losing its virginity, which led to its being associated with the Virgin Mary and to the German Lutherans casting of the hare in the part of a judge—similar to Santa Claus—who determined if children had been naughty or nice at the start of Eastertide. In Western Christianity, which follows the Gregorian calendar, Easter is a “moveable feast” that can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25; in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which follows the Julian calendar, it falls on a Sunday between April 4 and May 8.

WATCH/WITNESS

I’m going to let ► Black Sheep’s official description do the talking. Powerful.

Everything changed for Cornelius Walker on 27 November 2000 when Damilola Taylor was killed. Damilola was 11, the same age as Cornelius. He lived five minutes away. He had the same skin colour. Cornelius’s mother, scared for her son’s safety, moved their family out of London. Cornelius suddenly found himself living on a white estate run by racists. But rather than fight them, Cornelius decided to become more like the people who hated him. They became his family and kept him safe. And in return, Cornelius became submerged in a culture of violence and hatred. But as the violence and racism against other black people continued, Cornelius struggled to marry his real identity with the one he had acquired.

WHAT‽

An Australian study demonstrates: cyclists not human enough for drivers. In order to look into this idea, the researchers developed the insect-human scale seen above. This is fine.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. regarding the recent WORK by Octavio Paz: “What complete nonsense. I really enjoy the newsletter, though!”

• Reader D.: “You’ve had tiny frogs and hopefully tiny bees in recent Katexic emails. How about tiny fish with an outsized impact?”

• Reader B.: "1. saprophytic? Chip Delany is amazing. ¶ 2. tenebrous? I will deploy some Ech-Pi-El:

‘It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries.’

3. I sing the body Katexic!"

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Hey, thanks for reading! Two quick notes: 1) I’d appreciate you sharing Katexic with your friends, on social media, and on websites and 2) I try not to link to many things behind paywalls, but if I do and you are unable to access it, let me know and I’ll send you a copy.

WORK

Everything in the universe is older than it seems. Blame Einstein for that. We see what a thing was when the light left it, and that was long ago. Nothing in the night sky is contemporary, not to us, not to one another. Ancient stars exploded into ruin before their sparkle ever caught our eyes; those glimpsed in glowing “nurseries” were crones before we witnessed their birth. Everything we marvel at is already gone.

Yet, light rays go out forever, so that everything grown old and decayed retains somewhere the appearance of its youth. The universe is full of ghosts.

But images are light, and light is energy, and energy is matter; and matter is real. So image and reality are the same thing, after all. Blame Einstein for that, as well.

—Michael Flynn
—from The January Dancer

WORD(S)

tenebrous /TEN-ə-brəs/ /’tɛnɪbrəs/. adjective. Gloomy, shadowy, full or darkness. From Latin tenebrae (darkness).

“The tenebrous city, city without time, the generous, saprophytic city: it is morning and I miss the clear night.” (Samuel R. Delany)

“Angela and I are my interior dialogue: I talk to myself. Angela is from my dark interior: she however comes to light. The tenebrous darkness from which I emerge. Pullulating darkness, lava of a humid volcano burning intensely. Darkness full of worms and butterflies, rats and stars.” (Clarice Lispector; translated by Idra Novey)

“The white hands of the tenebrous belle deal the hand of destiny.” (Angela Carter)

“But we aren’t through yet, no, we haven’t had the fancy words. Eldritch. Tenebrous. Smaragds and chalcedony. Mayhap. It can’t be maybe, it can’t be perhaps; it has to be mayhap, unless it’s perchance. And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)

WEB

1. A story that truly deserves the adjective “extraordinary” in many ways: who the book collector was, the volume and variety he collected, that he read and summarized the books…and that some of that index survived. → ‘Extraordinary’ 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time Thanks, Reader K! ※ Linked within that story is another worth reading: How Christopher Columbus’s son built ‘the world’s first search engine’

2. See the first image ever taken of a supermassive black hole. Just to provide some context since it’s easy to forget how big “supermassive” is: this black hole has the mass of 6.5 billion of our suns. And our Sun could contain 1.3 million Earths! ※ I’m agog that some people are actually complaining about the photo’s quality, but just in case: In Defense of the Blurry Black Hole Photo.

3. The strange politicization of cursive writing (and its conflation with handwriting). → Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back.

4. The Visible Poetry Project “pairs 30 poets and filmmakers to collaborate on short films for the month of April.” The results are awesome.

5. From cannabutter to the connectome and bawbag to sprunt, there are a bunch of (mostly) interesting new words going into the OED in March. ※ See the full list.

6. “The newly discovered Malagasy amphibians have brains that could sit on a pin.” → New staple-size frog is one of the tiniest ever discovered ※ Related, in the sense that I hope the bees in question were really tiny too: Doctors find four bees in woman’s eye, feeding on her tears.

7. Artificial Intelligence seems like one of those things that is quietly transforming our world in mostly overlooked ways while we’re all distracted debating—or waiting for—the garish apocalyptic visions to be realized. → Visualizing the AI Revolution in One Infographic

8. Quacks of the Week → The Fake Sex Doctor Who Conned the Media Into Publicizing His Bizarre Research on Suicide, Butt-Fisting, and Bestiality and Bret Easton Ellis Thinks You’re Overreacting to Donald Trump.

9. Famous Movie Scenes you probably didn’t realise were Borrowed from Paintings ※ Pairs tastily with The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Art Thief.

10. Today in 1894, the first public kinetoscope parlor opens in New York City. The kinetoscope, the precursor to modern motion picture in both camera and ultimately projection, was a product of Thomas Edison’s workshop. Though Edison claimed credit for the device, most of the work creating it was performed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and Charles A. Brown under Edison’s leadership. That first parlor featured ten kinetoscopes set up in two parallel rows of five that viewers would sequentially watch for twenty-five cents per row. To provide some context, one dollar in 1894 was the equivalent nearly thirty dollars today. Edison’s company generated nearly 2.5 million (in today’s dollars) in its first eleven months of selling the machines and films. ※ You can ► watch some of those early kinetoscope films including the scandalous The Kiss as well as ► Monkeyshines, the first film recorded in the United States.

WATCH/WITNESS

"I composed a piece of music made entirely from sounds that I had recorded from a collection of antique cameras. […] To accompany this track I created a video response […] made entirely with stop motion animation, with over six thousand still photos shot and then edited together." → ► Digital Analogue by Lu Sisi

WHAT‽

I’m mostly sure that the Heavy Metal Knitting World Championships are a real thing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Now I’m imagining you and a helpful doggie crafting Katexic one night, after a rainstorm!”

• Reader L.: “About ‘Millennials have created a form of written English that’s as expressive as spoken English’: once I grew too old and tired to maintain the energy to be a hater, I’ve discovered I love exploring how language is evolving to fit the form of texting, chatting, and tweeting.”

• Reader F.: “Bad, poaching porcupines. Good, I learned the word ‘bezoar’ (and the alliteration).”

• Reader C.: “Am I supposed to take the Kindle scamming article as career advice?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

All men, at some moment in their lives, feel them selves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature – if that word can be used in reference to man, who has “invented” him self by saying “No” to nature – consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.

—Octavio Paz
—from The Labyrinth of Solitude

WORD(S)

calque /KOWLK/ /kælk/. noun. A loan word. A word borrowed from one language into another, often with some modification. From French calque (a copy), from calquer (to trace by rubbing); from Latin calcare (to press down, to stamp, to tread).

“It seems to me that this excess of technicalities and, elsewhere, of calques from slang and American colloquialisms is not always useful, and reveals a certain amount of ingenuous exhibitionism.” (Primo Levi)

“…these glossaries would discontent a serious-minded linguist, mongrel as they are in their origins, and mingling as they do loanwords, nonce words, neologisms and calques.” (Robert Macfarlane)

“…Eventually a being will conceive
(in stalls of staves, in calques of cramp, in knuckleheads and thrall—
god help us all) the stems of words.”
(Heather McHugh)

WEB

1. Get ready! In addition to being the cruelest month, April is also (National) Poetry Month and, hot on the heels of InCoWriMo, (National) Card and Letter Writing Month. I like to celebrate both poetry and snail mail every month, as victims of my epistolary acts can attest to, but make a special effort to combine the two in April. ※ In the US, April is also the official month of: Jazz Appreciation, Parkinson’s Awareness, Cancer Control, Mathematics and Statistics Awareness, Arab American Heritage, Grilled Cheese, Pecans, Soft Pretzels and Soyfoods.

2. How scammers employ “plagiarism, book-stuffing, and click-farms” to game the Kindle Unlimited system…some earning up to $100,000 per month.

3. Read or listen to the downright amazing Emily Wilson in conversation with Tyler Cowen on Homer, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Socrates, Silicon Valley’s love of Stoicism, electing politician by lots, using Twitter to get real about translation and much more. ※ Also from Emily Wilson (and barely skirting my self-imposed ban on explicit politics, so don’t @me): What Beto O’Rourke’s love of the Odyssey says about him.

4. Dope and Sex and Rock ‘n’ Roll: Slang Lexicography with Jonathon Green: Part I and Part II

5. “What does this mean for AI? ¶ First, it suggests there’s no particular reason to study or try to mimic the columnar structure of the primate cortex; bird brains have a different structure and do just as well, neuron for neuron, as we do. ¶ Second, it means that if we ever get AIs that are ‘on the intelligence ladder" – doing the same thing as animal brains – we should expect that their abilities may scale linearly-ish with available computing power. Which dectuples every 5-12 years. Great.’” → Neuron density in humans, birds and other animals—and its implications for development of artificial intelligence.

6. “Mike Kelly, curator at the Archives and Special Collections of Amherst College, explores highlights from their Emily Dickinson collection, a huge variety of manuscript forms – from concert programmes to chocolate wrappers…” ※ See also: the complete Emily Dickinson collection at Amherst.

7. Millennials have created a form of written English that’s as expressive as spoken English (original title: “Millennials destroyed the rules of written English – and created something better”)

8. When I sharpen a pencil, I see a mess. Haruka Misawa saw a method for creating beautiful, delicate, literally unique paper shaving flowers. ※ More information on Misawa’s site.

9. Some weird links found me this week: How Russia Fell in Love with Candy Bars Made of Blood & Porcupines are being poached for their stomach content & Judge makes quick decision in Melbourne’s ‘serial farter’ case

10. Today in 1959, Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the (14th) Dalai Lama—aided by the United States CIA’s Special Activities Division—flees Tibet for India and begins what he describes as “freedom in exile” following China’s brutal defeat of the Tibetan Rebellion that had begun just three weeks earlier. The Dalai Lama’s exile continues as does China’s refusal to recognize Tibetan independence.

WATCH/WITNESS

About her sweet (I dare you not to feel at least a little happier after watching it) animated short ► Omelette, filmmaker Madeline Sharafian writes, “I wanted to make something that focuses on how meaningful it is to make food for someone you love.”

WHAT‽

From the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, ► Real-time MRI imagery of what the tongue and mouth look like when singing (and speaking) ※ Tangentially related: you don’t need an MRI machine to see ► this man lick his own forehead.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “I’ll see your bird punk and raise with Fantasy Birding Is Real, And It’s Spectacular.”

• Reader H.: “Your use of stenographer in your definition of amanuensis brought back a quote of Chesterton’s: 23,000 women rose up and said we will not be dictated to. The next year they all became stenographers.” – Ouch!

• Reader B.: “I can furrow my brown at the Josh Rogan piece. That one […] seemed weirdly angry, not matching at all what I’ve heard from other people.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

Today’s WORD suggested by Reader J. Thanks!

WORK

from “Teen-age Gangs Speak Strange Tongue; Here’s a Glossary of Common Expressions”

• Bop—To fight.
• Bopping Club—A fighting gang.
• Cheesy—Traitorous.
• Diddly bop—First-class gang fighter.
• Gig—A party.
• Jitterbug—To fight.
• Rank—To insult (usually profanity concerning a boy’s mother).
• Shin battle—Intra-gang practice or test-of-mettle fight among gang members.
• Snag—To attack an individual.
• Sneaky Pete—Cheap wine.
• To sound—To joke or needle.

—found in The New York Times (March 24, 1958)
—full article

WORD(S)

amanuensis /ə-MAN-yoo-EN-sis/ /əˌmænjʊˈɛnsɪs/. noun. A literary assistant or factotum. A typist or stenographer. From Latin āmanuensis; from the phrase servus ā manū (slave at hand, aka handwriting); from ā (from) + manū (hand).

“I became Olivia Manning’s flunkey, her amanuensis, her temp worker, in effect saying to her, for however long it took to thread her words on the page, Where you go, I follow.” (Nicholson Baker)

“Think of him as the amanuensis of all those whose tales we’ve yet to tell him, the histories of those woman who would otherwise go down nameless and forgotten…” (Angela Carter)

“How could Lord Morton have known that Sir Bradley, his faithful amanuensis and chief engineer, was a merman in disguise, an ally to the sea creatures bent on the destruction of all mankind?” (Ben H. Winters & Jane Austen)

WEB

1. Wave reviews: Under – Norway’s new underwater restaurant.

2. “Softer foods from agricultural lifestyles may have changed the human bite, making it easier to form certain sounds.” → Did Dietary Changes Bring Us ‘F’ Words? Study Tackles Complexities of Language’s Origins

3. “Depression Quest is an interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression.”

4. Julie Phillips on The dangerous shifting cultural narratives around suicide

5. The “Mandela Effect” is a collective misremembering, named after the phenomenon of people around the world falsely remembering, in often vivid detail, Nelson Mandela’s death in the 1980s, though he was alive at the time. Other common examples of this kind of group false memory, both of which I’ve been victim of, include the name of the “Berenstein” Bears and Sinbad’s non-existent genie movie. Thanks to the web and social media, examples of the effect are easier and easier to discover. My latest: the “flesh” colored crayons of my childhood which, thanks to this exhaustive history of Crayola Crayon colors, I am highly unlikely to have experienced for myself since the name was changed many years before I was born. Indian Red? Not so much…those were around until 1999.

6. I’ve tried listening Joe Rogan’s show. I just don’t get it. But…can his weird influence be ignored? → “So how did Rogan—the Fear Factor guy!—become the Larry King of the Intellectual Dark Web?”

7. Not into college basketball’s March Madness? How about a bracket of 100 new(ish) English words duking it out for domination? That’s what Daniel Donoghue does in his “History and Structure of the English Language” course. ※ See the live bracket (I’m betting on snerfle or salty).

8. “The World Wide Fund for Nature funds vicious paramilitary forces to fight poaching.”

9. For yr eyeholes: Alia Bright’s paper sculpture typography pieces & Bian Xiaodong’s anti-gravity ceramics & Winners of the 2018 Skypixel Aerial Photo and Video Contest & Pippa Dyrlaga’s exquisite paper cuttings ※ Related: Munch’s iconic work “The Scream” might not be screaming.

10. Today in 1853, the first issue of The Provincial Freeman is published in Windsor, Ontario. Co-edited by Mary Ann Shadd Cary (the first black woman publisher in North America and one of the first black lawyers in the U.S.) and the Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward, the fiery, anti-slavery paper (its masthead declared it to be “Devoted to anti-slavery, temperance and general literature”) documented the activities of African-Canadians, many of whom were recent arrivals fleeing slavery in the States. Its run would last nearly five years. ※ Read some notices from the paper.

WATCH/WITNESS

On day 86 of a walking trek to the South Pole, a very hungry ► Aleksander Gamme digs up his final food cache and the result is…one of the clearest moments of joy you’ll ever see on video. You don’t need the subtitles to get this one. ※ Via the very appropriately titled ► “Bliss” episode of Radiolab, where you can learn more about Gamme and the video.

WHAT‽

Inspired by the ► Origami Magic Ball, scientists investigating “soft robotics” have created ► a mechanical gripper that can grasp and lift irregularly shaped objects up to 100x its own weight. And it does so with (slightly-creepy) style.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L.: “OK, I now know the meaning of kipple, but what is moop? (Cory Doctorow’s quote?)” – Great question! MOOP is an acronym popularized by—if not originating from—Burning Man participants and stands for “Matter Out of Place”! See this story…

• Reader J.: “much to love here, as usual ¶ but especially ‘Magical Thinking’ and ‘birdpunk’”

• Reader B.: "So many good things: ¶ 1) I love the ant castings. Can watch those for hours. ¶ 2) Kipple: knew the PKD origin, but not the fanzine, so thank you for that. ¶ 3) Bogost’s piece on creative AI is fascinating. Gratifying, personally, as I’ve been talking about this for 4 years. ¶ 4) The Pound/Auden story is fascinating, too. Thank you. That vexed author-work relationship! ¶ Last week two of my students confessed - that is the word - their admiration for Garrison Keillor. They were very apologetic. (The earliest deplatforming I’ve heard - using the name - was in British universities during the 1960s. I’d have to research that.)

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

RIP, W. S. Merwin.

WORK

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

—W. S. Merwin
—from The Second Four Books of Poems

WORD(S)

kipple /KIP-əl/. noun. Useless, multiplying junk, dross, rubbish. A word that seems particularly useful in our age of endless digital detritus and debris. Commonly attributed to speculative fiction author Philip K. Dick as a coinage in his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, this is probably incorrect. It is likely Dick took it from the title of 60s sci-fi fanzine Kipple, a title one less charitable reader had mockingly re-defined as “useless junk.” And that magazine’s editor had himself appropriated the word from an old joke: “Do you like Kipling? I don’t know, I’ve never kippled,” (a joke Dick would re-tell in his later novel Galactic Pot-Healer).

“Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it.” (Philip K. Dick)

“…the grad students were slavering at the thought of having a bottle-washing dogsbody in residence. Someone to clean out the spam filters, lexically normalize the grant proposals, deworm the Internet of things, get the limescale out of the espresso machine, and defragment the lab’s prodigious store of detritus, kipple, and moop.” (Cory Doctorow)

“Rubin, in some way that no one quite understands, is a master, a teacher, what the Japanese call a sensei. What he’s the master of, really, is garbage, kipple, refuse, the sea of cast-off goods our century floats on.” (William Gibson)

WEB

1. Birding bop. Should I bird or should I go? You get the idea… → Welcome to Birdpunk

2. I think I meant to share this a few years ago but forgot… → Why forgetting is really important for memory: U of T research ※ Also: How the Brain Creates a Timeline of the Past. ※ But, and, because I’m feeling sprawly this morning, “You will not own what you think you will own. You will borrow it. That is raw and beautiful, right now. It’s not sad and hollow.”

3. Check out Raija Jokinen’s wonderful art, created using a technique that fuses “painting, drawing, papermaking, embroidery and textiles [to] explore the borderlines of physical and immaterial feelings.” → Raija Jokinen Works.

4. Thich Nhat Hanh’s final mindfulness lesson: how to die peacefully

5. It seems like it should go without saying that ending an addiction (or addictive behavior) is the first part of a process, not a meaningful activity in itself? → Why beating your phone addiction may come at a cost

6. “According to Elgammal, ordinary observers can’t tell the difference between an AI-generated image and a ‘normal’ one in the context of a gallery or an art fair.” → The AI-Art Gold Rush Is Here ※ Pairs directly with A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist and tastily with The Human Brain Is a Time Traveler.

7. De-platforming was a thing long before social media… → Auden on No-Platforming Pound

8. “Why so many men online love to use ‘logic’ to win an argument, and then disappear before they can find out they’re wrong.” → The magical thinking of guys who love logic

9. Paper(y)(ish) art links, in no particular order: Vox Poplar (a generative, collaborative project), Chie Hitotsuyama’s stunning art made of rolled and twisted ropes of wet newspaper, Tiffany Miller Russell’s molded, layered paper scenes and portraits, and Calvin Nicholls paper sculptures.

10. Today in 1958, The Champs’ song “Tequila” hits #1 on the US Billboard pop chart. It would be The Champs’—in reality the Danny Flores Trio, who only concocted a name for themselves, inspired by Gene Autry’s horse Champion, after the recording session—only hit. Written by “Chuck Rio” (actually Danny Flores, who used a pseudonym because he was under contract to a different record label at the time), who also shouted the song’s one-word lyric, tequila!, and recorded the memorable saxophone solo, the song was a B-side of an album that had little success and only saw the light of day thanks to a Cleveland DJ.

WATCH/WITNESS

“A Dutch archaeologist finds artisans and thought leaders who are redefining craft, skill and, ultimately, the real meaning of a knowledge economy.” → ► The Future Is Handmade ※ See also, from the same series: ► The Tale of a Women’s Coup, ► The Pen Shaper, ► Mike Snowden builds and plays a cigar box guitar, ► Anthony Bourdain visits Arion Press, and much more.

[Found via The Craftsmanship Initiative, which aims to “shine a light on those reclaiming craftsmanship’s principles of excellence and durability as a pathway to a better world” by highlighting masters at work, facilitating workshops, and producing a quarterly multimedia magazine. A treasure trove!]

WHAT‽

► Casting a Fire Ant Colony with Molten Aluminum

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Another interesting article about Lisa Smartt, last words, and the like I think the Klamor (yes, I did that) might like: What People Actually Say Before They Die.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

This is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words and metaphors for what we already know.

—Alberto Manguel
—from “AIDS and the Poet”
—found in A Reader on Reading (2010)

WORD(S)

bampot /BAM-pot/. noun. An idiot; a fool; an obnoxious person. Scottish slang of unknown origin, probably related to Northern English barmpot (a container for storing yeast) and barm (the froth on fermenting malt liquor; the head of a beer) both also used as slang with the same meaning and from which we also get barmy, slang for being mentally unsound.

“What a bampot, as Mrs Baxter would say, but what can you expect from a woman sharing her one brain cell with a poodle on a turnabout basis.” (Kate Atkinson)

“…governments usually tended to be more rational about the disposition of their strategic interstellar deterrents than bampot street performers with a grudge against society and a home brew nuke.” (Charles Stross)

“Hacks never changed much, in any generation. You always got the same complement of trojans, skivers, flakes, whizzkids and bampots.” (Christopher Brookmyre)

WEB

1. Ranging in size from a few millimeters (really) to a few inches, New York City’s Grolier Club is holding an exhibition of more than 950 miniature books. → Behold, the Tiniest of Books

2. Have fun playing with this computeiful inventorface of portmanteaus and rhymes! → Portmanteau & Rhyme Generator

3. This thread about a strangely browsable, occasionally accidentally beautiful compendium. → Helen Rosner: There’s this incredible book…. ※ You can dip into it yourself on Project Gutenberg: Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser

4. As Reader B. puts it, “The concept here is amazing, but I also love the phrases: transient anus, warty comb jelly.” → Animal with an anus that comes and goes could reveal how ours evolved

5. Recently discovered: a book of “literary confessions” with amusing, witty, occasionally cutting handwritten contributions from Virginia Woolf, Virginia West, Hilaire Belloc and others. → Really and Truly: A Book of Literary Confessions (Thanks, Reader C.)

6. This link is everywhere, but for good reason. I find it mesmerizing. → This Person Does Not Exist ※ Pairs with, because…tasty, ironic, weirdness: Man angry his photo was used to prove all hipsters look alike — then learns it wasn’t him, which is based on this research: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

7. A revealing con that didn’t take nearly long enough! → I Made My Shed the Top-Rated Restaurant on TripAdvisor

8. Loving the pictures of Cal Cullen’s typewriter art installation in Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center in this article… → Typewriter repair at the museum. ※ While I’m talking typewriters: if you are in or near enough to Rockford, Illinois on March 29-30, consider checking out the Paper Fingers: Mechanical Typewriting in the Digital Age event.

9. “Don’t worry, the colleague you’ve never met isn’t trying to kiss you over email.” → ‘XX’? But I Hardly Know Her! ※ Related: How “XOXO” Came to Mean “Hugs and Kisses”

10. Today is Mario Day (celebrated on MAR 10 because, written that way, the date resembles MARIO), celebrating the iconic mustachioed Nintendo video game franchise character who debuted as the jumping man in the 1981 Donkey Kong game. Mario Mario (yes, his last name is also Mario, at least according to the IMDB; he was named after Mario Segale, Nintendo America’s landlord, who burst into a development meeting demanding overdue rent) is a busy guy, appearing in more than 200 games, multiple film and TV shows, the 2016 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, and soon amusement parks in Japan and the United States. And that signature hat-and-mustache look? Turns out they were pragmatic choices: the artist found hair difficult to draw and the mustache was easier to see than a mouth, particularly on the low-resolution screens at the time. If all this is too newfangled for you, today is also International Bagpipe Day.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Witness a single cell grow into a salamander, from fertilization to hatching, in this short time-lapse film by Jan van IJken

WHAT‽

I had no idea the maraca could be played like a boss. → ► Compasses Mejor Conjunto Festival San Martin de los Llanos 2013

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “This is a good one about [Dan] Mallory…”

• Reader G.: “Loved your web links this week. Language of letters, communal bathing and Words at the threshold were all very interesting to me. I also wanted to share with you this article about dance, which has recently been something I’m doing and can attest to its positive benefits.”

• Reader T.: “Mr. Sweet Potato looks like a blackface version of Mr. Hankey.”

• Reader B.: “Vacation and unemployed… I think the hero of Eraserhead offers this line a few times. ¶ And I do not mean that Sardonically, but am now very conscious of the way my grin stretches across my mouth bones.” – Well played!

• Reader R.: “Followup for your various versions of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with this must-listen by Marc Martel. They say no one will ever sound like Freddy Mercury. They are wrong.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

No newsletter next week because I will be on vacation. 🏝️ Aloha! ※ Also: did you know it’s possible to go on a vacation and be unemployed?

WORK

You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C. S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

—Kevin Brockmeier
—from “The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device”
—found in The View from the Seventh Layer

WORD(S)

capitonym /KAP-i-toh-NIM/. noun. A word that changes meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when capitalized, such as August and august, Earth and earth, Polish and polish. A portmanteau of capital + -onym (word or name).

“An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to rainier Mt. Rainier,
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.”
(Dave Morice)

WEB

1. I love Robyn O’Neil’s large scale (one piece is 14 feet long!) pencil drawings that remind me (and many others, apparently) of Bosch and Bruegel. ※ I actually discovered Robyn thanks to her delightfully conversational, personal podcast Me Reading Things.

2. “Letters reveal how language changes. They also offer a peek into the way people–especially women–have always constructed their private and public selves.” → The Ladylike Language of Letters ※ Also, since InCoWriMo continues: Find a Local Letter Writing Society.

3. “…some of our favourites from the first hundred years of the book cover (as we commonly understand it today)…” → The Art of Book Covers (1820–1914) [Thanks, Reader C.!]

4. Fascinating reading as more and more implications of DNA testing, research and history emerge. → Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths – or Falling Into Old Traps?

5. I want to be snarky about this, but maybe there’s something to the idea… → Why we need to bring back the art of communal bathing

6. Old news, but new to me. And delightful. At least for the dolphins. → Dolphins Seem to Use Toxic Pufferfish to Get High ※ See video and more pics: What does a dolphin use to get high?

7. “…we refresh and refresh every tab, and are not sated. What are we waiting for? What are we hoping to find?” → Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction (Yes, I see the irony).

8. “It is engraved with 13 verses from the poem recounting the adventures of the hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy.” → Homer Odyssey: Oldest extract discovered on clay tablet [Thanks to a different, but related!, Reader C.]

9. I haven’t read linguist Lisa Smartt’s Words at the Threshold: What We Say as We’re Nearing Death (and naturally have my own thoughts on what these words might mean or point to), but it’s fascinating to consider the words people choose in their last moments. → Final Words Project

10. Today in 1876 in Eastport, Maine, Julius Wolff cans the first sardines (in North America, anyway, the earlier history is disputed by avid sardinophiles). Sardine isn’t a specific species, but a name given to a variety of small, oily herring. Canned sardines are an often underrated food both for their taste and nutritional value, but also merit distinction as one of the few canned foods I am aware of that have an active community of enthusiasts (search for yourself and see). And because word nerds need to know, the words sardine and sardonic are most likely related: the former is thought to have come from the island of Sardinia, while the latter derives from a Sardinian herb, Sardonia, which was reputed to “produce facial convulsions resembling horrible laughter, usually followed by death,” leading to sardanios, as seen in Homer to refer to scornful laughter.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music For Airports (6 Hour Time-stretched Version)

WHAT‽

Mike Dawes is a one-man band on a single guitar…and reveals beauty within songs you might not otherwise appreciate. Amazing. → ► Mike Dawes - One (Metallica) - Solo Guitar ※ See also, Mike’s version of a wholly different style of song, equally awesome: ► Somebody That I Used To Know - Mike Dawes - Live At Cedars Hall.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Heya Chris! The image of the film from those 6 oil drums [used to conjure the sound of the end of WWI] is pretty amazing.”

• Reader R.: “Add this chopstick on guitar sampling version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to you growing collection of Queenly oddities.”

• Reader B.: “The Meghan Daum essay impressed me. I don’t know her, but I’ve been in many of those kinds of conversations.”

• Reader V.: “Love it. Subscribed to the newsletter a few weeks ago, and it has been fun so far. What more could I want? Quotes, words, links. All the best things that the internet offers.”

• Reader N.: “Palaver! From the beginning of ‘The Dead’ by James Joyce: ¶ I love this line: ‘The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.’”

“Tell me. Lily,” he said in a friendly tone, “do you still go to school?”

“O no, sir,” she answered. “I’m done schooling this year and more.”

“O, then,” said Gabriel gaily, “I suppose we’ll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?”

The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:

“The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.”

Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of that office building, do you hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?

—Arthur Miller
—from “Death of a Salesman” (1949)

WORD(S)

palaver /puh-LAV-ər/. noun and verb. A conference, dispute or contest (originally, primarily West African). Tedious, time consuming or idle talk or other activity. Loud or confused talk. Flattery. From Portuguese palavra (talk), from Latin parabola (a parable, words, speech). See also: bunk, bunkum, hokum, cajolery, wheedling, jabbering.

“He had many compatriots who wrote just like him—although with less intelligence—other cultural journalists who had adopted the slick palaver of the moment.” (Siri Hustvedt)

“The loading and priming of the thing was such a palaver he nearly changed his mind.” (Kate Grenville)

“Her voice contained a hint of phoniness, an echo of the daytime palaver in her shop.” (Ross Macdonald)

“Through the trees there is the sound of the wind, palavering.” (Mary Oliver)

WEB

1. In less than 12 minutes, A Sonic Conjuring explores how audio producers re-created the sound of the final moments of World War I—and the ensuing peace—using “using audio shadows captured on film.” And it is, as a friend said, astonishing.

2. Typewriter Cartography‽ Yes, please.

3. Each week in What’s the Difference?—Brett Warshaw’s newsletter “for the curious and confused”—a concise exploration and explication of a wide range of potentially confusing things such as “Jails and Prisons,” “Cement and Concrete,” and “Cremini, Button, and Portobello Mushrooms.”

4. It’s easy to fall into (or hard against) the ongoing tech backlash. Not so fast… → My disabled son’s amazing gaming life in the World of Warcraft

5. [Via Reader S.] comes this intriguing and creepy “fur mirror” (really a kind of fur display/monitor) by Daniel Rozin. ※ See also: Rozin’s similar piece that uses 450 rotating penguins in place of fur and more information about Rozin and this exhibition at the bitforms gallery.

6. The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies features more than 700 images of art and office supplies and tools now forgotten (or nearly so).

7. “The public service of black cops, for some, has become equal to aiding the enemy. That’s why Edwards took up a project he calls ‘Black Outlined Blue.’ He wants to tell the stories of black cops in the Atlanta Police Department who deal daily with the duality of life in their skin and life in their uniform.” → The Burden They Share

8. Excellent longform journalism pieces this week, each of which is sad and bonkers in its own way. → “Down The Rabbit Hole I Go”: How A Young Woman Followed Two Hackers’ Lies To Her Death ※ A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions

9. I’m skeptical of the “Intellectual Dark Web” label, which seems like the kind of shorthand that logically eats itself, but I do think there’s something to embracing honest assessment of ideas and our relationship to them…as Meghan Daum does. → Nuance: a Love Story ※ See also: A conversation with Meghan Daum.

10. Today in 1962, the Soviet Union exchanges pilot Gary Powers and student Frederic Pryor for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam “Willie” Fisher in Berlin. Powers’ U-2 spy plane had been shot down nearly two years earlier over Sverdlosk by the Soviet air force using a “Divina” surface-to-air missile, and Powers was serving a ten-year prison term. Fischer, convicted as part of the “Hollow Nikel” espionage case in New York City, was four years into his thirty-year sentence. Pryor—arrested in August, 1961, was, by all accounts, just a student in the wrong place at the wrong time, used as extra leverage to force the US into a trade. Powers, who initially faced a groundswell of criticism for both failing to engage the self-destruct explosives in his plane and not making use of his suicide pill (actually a coin with shellfish toxin embedded in its grooves), was later recognized for his service and bravery. In 1977 Powers was piloting a news helicopter when it ran out of fuel. Going down in a heavily populated area near Encino, California, Powers diverted his emergency descent to avoid a group of teens playing baseball, resulting in a crash that killed him and the cameraman just 50 yards from the baseball diamond. ※ See also: Gary Powers: The U-2 spy pilot the US did not love || Francis Gary Powers, Jr.’s “A Few Words of Defense” || Steven Spielberg’s dramatization, Bridge of Spies.

WATCH/WITNESS

The steampunk, gothic, “anymation” story of Jasper Morello, a “disgraced aerial navigator who flees his plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself.” → ► The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.

WHAT‽

“…cook the rice, anak!” → ► Tsinelas - A Short Action-Comedy Film.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader E.: “The writer’s choice to be nearly invisible was powerful and makes sense to this visual artist. For some time I thought my aversion to artbiz was envy and weariness and being jaded, but I now think sharing on the small scale is the only way to create.”

• Reader B.: “ I must say, sir, that this latest publication offered me many pleasing moments of delight and instruction, as I have gradually understood is your method. ¶ Yr obt svt-”

• Reader S.: “You, prescriptive grammar, and Dreyer-who-supports-the-Oxford-Comma? It’s Bizarro world!”

• Reader J.: “I won’t look back at my smartphone like I do cigarettes. I already regret the former and feel like I’d be better off going back to the latter.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

As a serial abuser of parentheses, I warn you against their overuse, particularly in the conveyance of elbow-nudging joshingness. One too many coy asides and you, in the person of your writing, will seem like a dandy in a Restoration comedy stepping down to the footlights and curling his hand around his mouth to confidentially address the audience. One rather needs a beauty mark and a peruke to get away with that sort of thing.

—Benjamin Dreyer
—from Dreyer’s English : an utterly correct guide to clarity and style (2019)

WORD(S)

apotropaic /ap-ə-trə-PAY-ik/ /apətrəˈpeɪɪk/. adjective. Something that prevents—or is intended to prevent—evil influence or bad luck. From Greek apotropaios (averting evil), from apo (away) + trepein (turning).

“This close, the biodome looms over everything, and everybody in Rosewater glances at it every hour, as if it has apotropaic powers.” (Tade Thompson)

“…an Agnus Dei (a small wax cake impressed with the figure of a lamb bearing a cross, blessed by the Pope and thought to possess apotropaic power—a more modest version of the flying phallus pilgrimage badge).” (Melissa Mohr)

“T suddenly understand the gesundheit-impulse, the salt over the shoulder and apotropaic barn-signs.” (David Foster Wallace)

WEB

1. The discovery that a microbe involved in gum disease is the cause of Alzheimer’s not only might yield treatments, but could lead to a vaccine → We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it

2. Cal Newport, author of the insightful (and admittedly imperfect) book Deep Work, has a new book out (Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology) that is interesting and a little maddening. This interview captures the gist → Why We’ll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

3. If great scientists had logos…

4. I lean heavily away from prescriptive grammar books, but occasionally a titles comes along that manages to avoid off-putting pedantry and show a deep love of words in happy order. Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style is one of those rarities → Meet the Guardian of Grammar Who Wants to Help You Be a Better Writer ※ See also: The Hedonic Appeal of “Dreyer’s English”

5. Digitizing the vast ‘dark data’ in museum fossil collections

6. Hyperlocal, micro-publishing, “pomenvylopes” and postcards…the delights of small-scale, under-the-radar publishing are myriad → A Writer’s Choice to Be Borderline Invisible [Thanks, Reader K.!]

7. Owen Earl, of indestructible type*, wants to (and does) “make high quality, versatile, modern typography that’s accessible to everybody.” And he’s just released another amazing “pay what you want” (all the way down to zero), open source, meticulously detailed and documented font → Indestructible Type Bodoni*

8. A film trope I hadn’t thought about before → The Art (or Non-Art) of the Cinematic Dictionary Open

9. An essential quiz → Tolkien Character or Antidepressant?

10. Today is Setsubun, the day before the first day in Spring in Japan. Though the name literally means “the division between seasons” and is more properly called Risshun, Setsubun is celebrated as part of the Japanese Spring Festival. Celebration of Setsubun is accompanied by mamemaki, a ritual of throwing roasted soybeans (“fortune beans”) out the door, warding off evil spirits—sometimes impersonated by mask wearing family and friends—and initiating a fresh Spring start to the year. Modern Setsubun celebrations, naturally, sometimes involve televised festivities with celebrities tossing not just soybeans, but also peanuts, candy and even envelopes of money. Other Setsubun practices include silently eating futomaki (“fat” sushi rolls) while facing in that year’s lucky direction, drinking ginger sake, and putting up small decorations of holly and sardines above doorways to prevent bad spirits from entering.

WATCH/WITNESS

The making is beautiful; the results-in-motion are mesmerizing → ► Trepō - Zoetrope Pottery

WHAT‽

► Bo-meme-ean Rhapsody

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “[InCoWriMo is] no different than any other month for me, as you well know.” – Indeed. In fact, this week’s WORD came from one of your letters from many years ago.

• My other favorite Reader B.: “Endpapers!”

• Reader T.: “I think you and y’all will dig this video of a kid tearing it up with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on a uke.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

—Lewis Carroll
—from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

WORD(S)

ataraxy /AT-ər-aks-ee/ – ataraxia /at-ər-AK-see-ə/. noun. Deep tranquility; calmness. Stoic indifference. From French ataraxie > from Greek ataraxia (impassiveness) > from a (not) + tarassein (disturb). See also: serenity, imperturbability, equanimity, composure.

“Hope and ataraxia shrivel away, he is shocked into desperate reality.” (James Tiptree, Jr.)

“I was nonplussed, I stared at my teacher, never before had his swollen face seemed so replete with indifference, stone ataraxy.” (Will Self)

“…maybe this is how it goes: the boy dies and she’s like you, numbed of feeling, not concerned about anything. Practically in a state of ataraxia…” (Clarice Lispector)

“Oh, coffee, el café. Our country has survived for centuries thanks to this plant and the Arabic drink. It’s a docile, attenuated drug, with a marvellous effect, for it stimulates one’s consciousness without letting it get out of control or driving it crazy. Ideal brew for somnolence or laziness, for despondency or apathy, for ataraxy or an excess of resignation.” (Hector Abad)

WEB

1. February is International Correspondence Writing Month (aka, for the camel-casing cognoscenti, InCoWriMo or LetterMo), in which intrepid participants write a handwritten letter every day. ※ If February doesn’t work for you, there is always National Letter Writing Month in April…

2. Arborists Have Cloned Ancient Redwoods From Their Massive Stumps (and the picture of the sapling slays me).

3. From the origins of qwerty and why you’re tying your shoelaces wrong to trusting your senses and “black don’t crack,” the BBC Ideas Debunking Modern Myths video series has you covered.

4. Paper book geeks, meet the endpaper enthusiasts. ※ See also, the Vintage Endpapers collection on flickr and the University of Washington’s growing Decorated Paper Collection.

5. The BabyLand Diaries go inside BabyLand General Hospital, where Cabbage Patch Dolls are “born” through an artificial tree-like birth canal (and that’s not even the weirdest thing)…before exploring the still-mysterious, classically awesome, processes of labor and childbirth.

6. Peter Gorman’s Barely Maps are intriguing minimalist maps/graphics/visualizations. ※ While we’re mappin’ it up, see also: The map that popularized the word ‘gerrymander’

7. “It’s as rare as finding a fossilised sneeze,” said professor Phillip Manning of the identification of a 100-million-year old fossil of a hagfish.

8. “Biohacker” Dave Asprey has made millions convincing people to put butter in their coffee and follows an insane regimen of supplementation, stem cell injections and more so that he can, he says, live to be 180. Guru? Huckster? I don’t know, but it makes for a fascinating story.

9. Wow…feast your eyes on the Winning Images from the prestigious 7th Annual Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest! ※ See also: Wildlife Photographer of the Year: sharing a daydreaming leopard with the world

10. Today in 1832, author, mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—better known as Lewis Carroll—is born in Daresbury, England. In addition to his most famous written works—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its darker sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There—Carroll was an accomplished artist in the then-new field of photography and a well-regarded mathematician with 11 books to his (real) name. Carroll was also an avid correspondent—recording nearly 100,000 letters sent and received in his personal register alone, (which he didn’t start keeping until he was 29)—and inventor of the nyctograph and nyctography, a writing template and a shorthand devised so he could capture ideas in the middle of the night without having to take the idea-killing time to light a lamp. ※ Previously: Lewis Carroll’s “Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.”

WATCH/WITNESS

American Sign Language is distinct from English, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary…so ASL has to grow to accommodate new science concepts and terminology. This is ► how deaf researchers are reinventing science communication. Thanks, Reader B.

WHAT‽

Watch ► Noodle School to meet some of the students who have flocked to Lanzhou, China, to learn the secrets of its famous noodle soup. ※ Previously: catch a screening of ► Ramen Heads if you ever get a chance.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “I enjoyed today’s Katexic Clippings even more than usual today, which is saying a lot. I particularly enjoyed following Tutivillus down the rabbit hole, and am wondering how I could capture something of him, in a thoroughly indirect way, in an image of my own. ¶ Among the countless ruminations on Mary Oliver’s passing, I think you might especially enjoy this great rant by my dear curmudgeon friend John Straley, about those who are dismissive of her work.”

• Reader B: “With regards to ‘The Return of Handwriting’ article; how cursive became the latest fetish – really?”

• A different Reader B.: “The opening question of her [Mary Oliver’s] poem gets me as well. ¶ Makes me think of ‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’ Also, that weird exchange between God and Job, when God complains that Job doesn’t know anything because he didn’t make the world, after all. ‘Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’”

• Reader T.: “Considering the dad jokes last week, I bet some Clamorites are geeky enough to appreciate this command line command to display a random dad joke. Found via our mutual geek idol, Brett Terpstra.”

• Reader F.: “Wow…you really elevated Mary Oliver’s ending to ‘The Summer Day’! Hayden’s incredible ending to ‘Those Winter Sundays’ AND Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’! I have always been transfixed by Hayden’s whole poem, and ‘The Second Coming’ has to be in a class by itself. The ‘wild and precious life’ seems to me to be in a totally different class—a question that people always seem to want to answer. I never do because I stop at her use of the word ‘one.’ But I do acknowledge that it has become recognizable as her mark of inviting readers into a poetic conversation. But in that poem, I really love the grasshopper.”

• Reader E: “We know you love those Words of the Year (me too!). Since your roundup of links, the MacQuarie (Australian) Dictionary announced their word of the year.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

RIP, Mary Oliver. Today’s WORK is perhaps Oliver’s most famous poem, but for good reason: it never grows old and that final question will live forever in the pantheon of closing rhetorical questions, right up there with Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” and Yeats’ “Second Coming”.

WORK

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver
—from House of Light

WORD(S)

solecism /SOL-i-siz-əm/ /ˈsɒlɪsɪz(ə)m/. noun. A grammatical mistake or a non-standard usage. More generally: a mistake, a blunder, a breach of etiquette, a lapse in manners, an impropriety. See also: faux pas, gaffe, blunder. From Greek soloikos (speaking incorrectly or awkward/rude in manner). Perhaps originally meaning to speak like the people of the Greek colony Soloi, who were reputed to have spoken a corrupted form of Greek.

“…they were all bad spellers, and their memos, alive with solecisms, made Puttermesser grieve, because they were lawyers, and Puttermesser loved the law and its language.” (Cynthia Ozick)

“His son said nothing; only the red of his cheek merged deeper, as if I had committed a solecism we must both ignore.” (Hortense Calisher)

“He [Tantalus] also committed the unpardonable solecism of telling tales about the private lives and mannerisms of the gods, amusing his courtiers and friends with insolent mimicry and gossip.” (Stephen Fry)

WEB

1. I’m skeptical of personality quizzes but still take them all the time. I have to admit that 538’s Big Five quiz is more interesting—and, for me at least, much more accurate—than most. What shapes are you? ※ Previously: Uncovering The Secret History Of Myers-Briggs.

2. Whoa…the story of Esteban, The Escaped Slave Who Discovered America.

3. I’m a notorious purveyor of “dad jokes” to my (now adult, but daddy don’t care) children. But until this article about The Dad-Joke Doctrine, I hadn’t thought much about how they work, despite humor being one of the most fascinating areas of cognition and linguistics. ※ Can’t end without sharing some jokes: Reddit’s dadjokes board remains very active, as does Twitter’s DadSaysJokes…and there are some classics of the genre in the listicle 50+ Dad Jokes That Are Actually So Bad You’ll Laugh.

4. The Return of Handwriting? I didn’t know it had ever gone away. ※ See also: A tiny, in-demand restaurant in Maine asked for reservations by notecard – and got 20,000 of them.

5. On the other hand: SLOWLY is a smartphone app that connects you with virtual “pen friends” to exchange virtual letters and stamps. “Meet a new pen friend, seal your letter & place a stamp,” all on your phone…and the further away your correspondent is, the longer it takes for your “letter” to reach them.

6. Mr. TH.INK feeds my Nutella obsession with a link to The Nutella Billionaires: Inside The Ferrero Family’s Secret Empire. ※ Previously: Nutella: How the world went nuts for a hazelnut spread (in which we learn that the original Nutella was a loaf, among other things) and the Quartz Obsession: Nutella.

7. I might have found the culprit behind my (un)creative life: Tutivillus (or Titivillus), a medieval demon of writing and literacy.

8. Via Reader B., a peculiar story of a lost Da Vinci masterpiece that may or may not be lost (and may or may not be by Da Vinci)…and how it might be at the center of—and key evidence in—the investigation into Donald Trump’s possible collusion with Russia.

9. You might care about the value (or not) of Really Bad Reviews, or you might revel in the copious examples linked therein. Or both. Either way, The Art of the Pan is a good read.

10. Today in 1949, FBI founder and then Director J. Edgar Hoover invites twenty-one-year-old actress Shirley Temple to watch Harry S. Truman’s inaugural parade from his office balcony, where he gives her a tear-gas emitting fountain pen. A routine victim of threats and harassment since her first days as a child actress, Temple developed a friendship with Hoover during FBI investigations and would later ask Hoover to perform a background check on her future husband Charles Alden Black.

WATCH/WITNESS

“What happens when a drummer loses time?” Paul Wager was a professional drummer for more than 40 years, including stints with B. B. King. Then he suffered a stroke. ► LOST TIME explore’s Wager’s story through his own reflections. ※ See also: a behind-the-scenes interview with director and editor Leo Pfeifer and the radio story that sparked the creation of the short film.

WHAT‽

Don’t miss The Crater Lake Monster, Star Pilot: 2+5 Mission Hydra, Escape from Galaxy 3 and many other full-length— classics?—of 60s and 70s sci-fi on the FUTURE ZONE channel. Still image above from ► The Giant of Metropolis, in which “Muscleman Ohro travels to the sinful capital of Atlantis to rebuke its godlessness and hubris and becomes involved in the battle against its evil lord Yoh-tar and his hideous super-science schemes.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C.: “You shared the amazing project exploring who has the largest vocabulary in hip-hop a while back. You and your readers should know it’s since been updated with more than 75 new artists and shows some interesting trends.”

• Reader M.: “※ is such an elegant little character. I couldn’t find much about it though. Katexic should dig something up.” – Good idea!

• Reader B.: "Grover: this is weird, but the first time I played it he clearly said ‘f@#king.’ The second time, clearly not. ¶ I reloaded and the same thing happened. ¶ I do not understand. – Interesting. I’m that way with the Yanny or Laurel recording. Also: I grawlixed the swear word to avoid triggering spam filters.

• Reader A.: “Wow that octopus is different!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: mailto:clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

There are people whom the sea depresses, whom mountains exhilarate. Personally, I want the sea always—some not populous edge of it for choice; and with it sunshine, and wine, and a little music. My friend on the mountain yonder is of tougher fibre and sterner outlook, disapproves of the sea’s laxity and instability, has no ear for music and no palate for the grape, and regards the sun as a rather enervating institution, like central heating in a house. What he likes is a grey day and the wind in his face; crags at a great altitude; and a flask of whisky. Yet I think that even he, if we were trying to determine from what inner sources mankind derives the greatest pleasure in life, would agree with me that only the emotion of love takes higher rank than the emotion of laughter. Both these emotions are partly mental, partly physical. It is said that the mental symptoms of love are wholly physical in origin. They are not the less ethereal for that. The physical sensations of laughter, on the other hand, are reached by a process whose starting-point is in the mind. They are not the less ‘gloriously of our clay.’ There is laughter that goes so far as to lose all touch with its motive, and to exist only, grossly, in itself. This is laughter at its best. A man to whom such laughter has often been granted may happen to die in a work-house. No matter. I will not admit that he has failed in life. Another man, who has never laughed thus, may be buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving more than a million pounds overhead. What then? I regard him as a failure.

—Max Beerbohm
—from “Laughter, 1920”
—found in And Even Now (1920)

WORD(S)

oppilate /OP-i-layt/. verb. To block, obstruct, stop up. Most of often pores or bowels. Noun: oppilation; adjective: oppilation. To remove such an obstruction is to deoppilate. From Latin ob (in the way, against) + pīlāre (to ram down, pack closely).

“He pictured himself for the next three years spending a large part of his time suffering the oppilations and vertigo of travel in smelly and bug-ridden coaches.” (Winston Graham)

“Avicen cries out, that ’nothing is worse than to feed on many dishes, or to protract the time of meats longer than ordinary; from thence proceed our infirmities, and ‘tis the fountain of all diseases, which arise out of the repugnancy of gross humours.’ Thence, saith Fernelius, come crudities, wind, oppilations, cacochymia, plethora, cachexia, bradypepsia, Hinc subitœ mortes, atque intestata senectus, sudden death, etc., and what not.” (Robert Burton)

WEB

1. In The Guardian: why we are fascinated by miniature books. And when they say “miniature,” they really mean it: the smallest is less than 100 micrometers (around the diameter of a human hair) in width and height and has pages that have to be turned with a sharpened needle. ※ David Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books doesn’t include any miniatures, but it’s fun to browse anyway.

2. I hear Grover swearing in this Sesame Street clip and now I can’t unhear it. But, an audiologist explains that it’s all in my ears. What do you hear?

3. In The New York Times and in The Atlantic, stories about the discovery of flecks of lapis lazuli in the tartar of a 10th century-nun and what it tell us about forgotten medieval female scribes.

4. I’ve featured various kinds of typewriter art and sculpture here before, but Jeremy Mayer’s human(ish) sculptures made of typewriter parts are a whole different thing.

5. @TerribleMaps on Twitter. Trust me.

6. This American Life’s “The Room of Requirement” is extraordinary for its range (the Brautigan Library!) and emotion (homeless girl befriends children’s librarian, ultimately becomes one herself, and then journeys back to meet the woman who changed her life). ※ See also: the 110-Year-Old Dead Tree that is Now a Magical Little Library.

7. The story of Justin Alexander is one of spiritual seeking, sadhus, suspicion and disappearance in a remote region of the Indian Himalayas.

8. A treat for your eyes: Booooooom’s 64 Favorite Photos by 64 Photographers: 2018 Edition ※ See also: Anastasia Pottinger’s Centenarians and Time Lapse Video of Keith WIlliams Making Geodesic Spheres

9. The occasional weird links dump: silver skivvies and Costco’s 7-pound tub of Nutella (plus the Quartz Obsession: Nutella) and HATETRIS and The Influencer who Didn’t Influence and ► 15 Minutes by Tim Minchin and Who is Little Debbie?.

10. Today in 1935, comedian Rip Taylor is born in Washington, D.C. The handlebar mustache and toupee wearing, confetti and prop wielding comic was Carrot Top (but actually funny) before there was a Carrot Top. Taylor was a regular on the Ed Sullivan Show, a regular Atlantic City performer, a 1970s TV game show fixture, a voice on various cartoons from Scooby-Doo to The Addams Family, touring partner with Judy Garland, Debbie Reynolds and Mickey Rooney, and a guest on various 80s and 90s sitcom and a part of the Jackass, umm, universe. ※ Watch Taylor’s appearance on David Letterman in 1987, an early 80s interview with Taylor, Phyllis Diller, Marcia Lewis and Melanie Chartoff and his appearance on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”.

WATCH/WITNESS

Made from over 14,000 photographs and constructed over seven years, Simon Schreiber’s short stop-motion film ► The Lighthouse tells the story of “a lighthouse keeper’s surprising discovery pulls him out of his monotonous, daily routine and takes him onto a journey into uncharted territory.”

WHAT‽

Kirie/Kirigami Octopus Cut From a Single Piece of Paper by Masayo Fukuda

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J.: “If you’re interested in more about Janet Greene, the anti-communist answer to Joan Baez, CONELRAD can help out.” – Wow, a fascinating article from a fascinating site!

• Reader B.: “Was the title a riff on ‘Begin the Beguine’? ¶ And thank you for another fine transmission from Galaxy K.” – You have eagle eyes! It was admittedly a bit feeble…

• Reader W: “Loved all the Words of the Year links. Add this Columbia Journalism Review commentary to your list!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our Jives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We’re better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can’t even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

—Tom Stoppard
—from Arcadia: A Play in Two Acts

WORD(S)

galore /gə-LORE/. adjective. In large quantity; in abundance. From Irish go leor, from Gaelic gu leòr (to sufficiency).

“There were bear galore and deer in quantity, and many a winter day, in snow up to his knees, did the writer of this pass in tracking bruin to his den, where, I am bound to say, I commonly left him. I agreed with my lamented friend, the late Robert Weeks, poet: ¶ Pursuit may be, it seems to me, / Perfect without possession.” (Ambrose Bierce)

“Some of Theresa’s college friends (retro eyeglasses, thrift-store chic clothes, goatees galore) come around, and the talk gets a bit too pop-cultural and swervy and superallusive for me…” (Chang-rae Lee)

“What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for a tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram…” (Truman Capote)

“I won’t even get started on the décor in the dining room and on the table. When the French want to get away from the traditional ”Empire“ style with burgundy drapes and gilt galore, they go for the hospital style.” (Muriel Barbery)

WEB

1. Yeet! It’s the first newsletter of the year, which means it’s time for Word(s) of the Year! First, WOTY winners and short lists: American Dialect Society (and nominees), Merriam-Webster’s, Dictionary.com, Collins, Oxford, Cambridge Dictionaries, Australian National Dictionary Centre, LinguiBishes and Geoff Nunberg. ※ Plus, WOTYs in German, Dutch and Japanese. ※ Finally, some grist for the mill on such lists: Language nerds worked really hard on that ‘Words of the Year’ list and Language Jones on the problematic nature of such lists.

2. Let the Fountain Pens Flow! is a solid story about the ongoing renaissance of fountain pen use, including some of my favorite pen world personalities.

3. The fascinating story of David Maurer, the dean of criminal language.

4. The story of Wilson Bentley’s Crystal castles: the first snowflake photos – in pictures is a visually arresting story with a sadly ironic end. Via MR TH.INK which I encourage you to subscribe to. ※ While I’m at it, I discovered the captivating, and occasionally terrifying, profile The Whalers’ Odyssey in that wonderful newsletter too.

5. The Mind is a Collection is a “born-digital museum of early-modern cognitive models.” ※ The Mind is a Metaphor is a “collection of eighteenth-century metaphors of mind.”

6. RIP Bob Einstein. Many know him best as ► Super Dave and he appeared on all kinds of media since those days, where he inevitably stole the show. Others will remember him as Curb Your Enthusiasm regular Marty Funkhouser, where he provided one of my ► favorite (and most profane, definitely NSFW) tv comedy moments of all time.

7. A look at children texting with (often solely) emoji and digital-age language learning. ※ See also: Teenage Girls Have Led Language Innovation for Centuries.

8. “Copyrights, patents and trademarks are all important, but the term ‘intellectual property’ is nonsensical and pernicious.” I couldn’t agree more (convince me I’m wrong)!

9. I’m “152: Emotions & senses” – Which Dewey Decimal Number Are You?

10. Today in 1987, astronomers report witnessing the birth of a galaxy for the first time. The New York Times described the event as “detecting evidence that perhaps a billion suns ignited within a huge gas cloud 71 billion trillion miles from Earth.” Given the evocative name Radio Galaxy 3C 326, this area would later yield photos of one galaxy, 3C 326 North, “stealing” gases from its smaller neighbor, 3C 326 South. Incidentally, a “billion trillion” is also known as a sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) and, according to the Light Speed Calculator, light from that galaxy would take more than 170 million years to reach Earth. And in 2010, astronomers asserted that ‘Trillions Of Earths’ Could Be Orbiting 300 Sextillion Stars in our universe, three times as many as previously estimated.

WATCH/WITNESS

The ► Four Generations meme is so simple and delightful…and joyous.

WHAT‽

Janet Greene singing her 60s folk song “Poor Left Winger”.

I’m just a poor left-winger
Befuddled, bewildered, forlorn
Duped by a bearded singer
Peddling his Communist corn
In the Café Expresso…

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Although you aren’t a huge Christmas fan, can I still say that each Katexic is a gift to us, your readers?” – Why, thank you!

• Reader E.: “That FLOPPOTRON Bohemian Rhapsody is almost unbelievable. Wow.”

• Reader K.: “We started celebrating Festivus a few years ago and couldn’t be happier. There’s even a book!”

• Reader C.: “A serious visual feast this issue and of most unexpected kinds. The typewriter drawings and the albums of vintage photography were top-drawer.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.

WORK

I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.

—Steven Wright

WORD(S)

Saturnalia /sat-ər-NAIL-yə/. noun. The festival of Saturn, the ancient Greek god of agriculture. First celebrated in 497 BC. As part of Saturnalia, slaves were treated to a banquet and allowed to make fun of their masters, the toga was replaced by colorful clothes, and slave and masters alike donned conical felt hats. A time of peace, Saturnalia was also marked by temporary cessation of military activities and closing of the courts. Many customs of Saturnalia influence modern-day Christmas and New Year’s activities including the exchange of gifts, decorating with holly branches, and displaying evergreen wreathes. The customary greeting during Saturnalia is “io, Saturnalia!” where “io” is pronounced like “yo.” Try it!

WEB

1. While searching for where to stream some classic Rankin & Bass Christmas shows (the classic Rudolph and Frosty), I stumbled across a playlist of ► Fractured Fairy Tales! These twisted parables took me back. In a good way.

2. Feast your eyes on Ryan Khatam’s flickr photo albums of vintage photography, magazines, advertisements, postcards and more.. Some highlights: The Madonna Inn, Illustrations by Zdeněk Burian and Ryan’s “best of” selection.

3. The Rare Book School YouTube channel contains some great videos up for those of us fascinated by the construction of books, including ► The Anatomy of a Book: Format in the Hand-Press Period and ► How to Operate a Book.

4. [Via Reader B.], the capstone article about the strange Jered Threatin act/incident/performance art piece. As the author observes, “maybe by writing the very story you are now reading, I’ve played a part in carrying out Jered Threatin’s master plan.” → Jered Threatin ※ Previously: Threatin: band creates fake fanbase for tour attended by no one → A fake band goes on tour: Threatin provides a perfect tale for our times → Did Threatin’s Ridiculous European Tour Stunt Actually Work? → The Story of Threatin, a Most Puzzling Hoax Even for 2018

5. The SweatyPalms board on Reddit is aptly named. Other possibilities: HeebieJeeebies or AnxietyInducing.

6. The New York Times has been publishing some great writing about the people in the technology machine. This time around, a profile of Donald Knuth, one of the greatest and most influential computer scientists of all time…and creator of TeX, perhaps “the greatest contribution to typography since Gutenberg.” → The Yoda of Silicon Valley.

7. While you are on the NYT site, explore (and possibly torment yourself) by answering a question you might not have known you have… → What Is Glitter? - A strange journey to the glitter factory

8. Lenka Clayton’s typewriter drawings. ※ Previously, in the same vein: Tim Youd and A Visual History of Typewriter Art from 1893 to Today.

9. On January 1, everything published for the first time in the US in 1923 is liberated from copyright prison. I guess the death of Sonny Bono and the politicians being, umm, pre-occupied with other things (not to mention no danger to Disney yet) allowed this to happen. → For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain.

10. Today Festivus—the supposedly less-stressful, Christmas-time holiday for the rest of us—is celebrated. Created by author Daniel O’Keefe in honor of his first date with his future wife, Festivus would gain global prominence thanks to a 1997 episode of Seinfeld called The Strike, of which O’Keefe’s son Dan was a writer. Festivus traditions include “The Airing of Grievances,” in which each person explains how the world—and the others in the room—have disappointed them that year, “Feats of Strength,” a round-robin wrestling match that doesn’t end until the head of the house gets pinned, and the “Festivus Pole,” an unadorned pole that replaces the traditional Christmas tree (though this was an invention of Seinfeld writer Jeff Schaffer…the original O’Keefe tradition instead centered around putting a clock in a bag and nailing it to a wall). As Jerry Costanza kicks things off, “Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!”

WATCH/WITNESS

► ADBC: A Rock Opera … a 70s rock opera pastiche telling the story of the nativity (“a new telling, ‘told in rock’, of the birth of Christ, this time from the point of view of the Innkeeper”) with music by Matt Berry and lyrics by Berry and Richard Ayoade. You know this has to be something to see me through my aversion to musicals and my resentment of Christmas.

WHAT‽

► “Bohemian Rhapsody” on FLOPPOTRON is truly amazing. And, in the spirit of the seasonal trifecta, how about a capella group ► Six13 performing “Bohemian Chanukah” ※ Previously: ► Marbles, Magnets, and Music and ► Wintergatan - Marble Machine

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader A.: “Love the ”silence“ theme in the Web section. In the walks my previous home adjacent to National Forests, I became observant of how much highway / airplane noise one could here until you went in quite a ways. I wondered about the possibilities of maps that might show the outlines of places one could go where there was no human caused sound – now I know the area of it is one square inch ;-)”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: https://katexic.com/.