Thanks, Reader B. for alerting me to the WORK that gave me the WORD this week!

WORK

WORK

I suppose it is submerged memories that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

---W. G. Sebald
---from Rings of Saturn (1998)

WORD(S)

exonym /EK-soh-nim/. noun. A place name or name given to a group of people by someone outside that place or group and not used by the place's inhabitants or the group themselves. For instance, Germany is an exonym for Deutschland. Often exonyms are pejorative, or come to be so---or are perceived so by the named group---such as the Romani preferring that name to (the originally Egyptian) exonym Gypsy. See also: xenonym and ethnonym.

Some commonly used exonyms (by English speakers): Moscow for Москва/Moskva, Turkey for Türkiye, India for Bharat, Prague for Praha, Lapp for Saami, and Mecca for Makkha.

WEB

1. Just your typical "inmate creates detailed golf course drawings, sends them to Golf Digest, who investigates and ultimately assists in getting his murder conviction vacated...after 27 years served" story.

2. I have to agree with Reader B., who shared this story about memory towns being built in strip malls to treat dementia and said, "What an idea..." && An earlier article about the intentions of the project.

3. Why do great white sharks migrate, en masse, from California to what appears to be an "empty, oceanic Sahara desert?" To dine at the White Shark Café, of course.

4. Relevant to me as I get ready to ghost the party that is my workplace next week → Is it the Irish Goodbye, the French Exit, or to Leave the "English Way"?

5. What if it turns out that Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong?

6. Discovery of Galileo's long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition

7. I don't have the book, but the faux-TV guide on the front page of NetGuide is good for some LOLs all by itself.

8. The Love Poems of Japan's Heian Court Were the Original Thirst Texts && A Modern History of Thirst && There's a Problem with the Term "Thirsty" That We Don't Talk About

9. This week in Weird Wikipedia: The Mariko-Aoki Phenomenon describes a very specific set of bookstore browsers. && Runner up: Jenny Haniver, the name sounds so nice...

10. Today in 1889, the Nintendo company is founded in Kyoto to produce Hanafuda cards (also known as Flower Cards). Along the way to becoming one of the largest video game companies in the world featuring Mario, Zelda and Pokémon on Game Boys and NES and Wii, the company dabbled in love hotels, taxi services, an instant rice company, and various other endeavors. The kanji phrase rendered as "Nintendo" has traditionally been translated as "leave luck to heaven" or "leave fate to heaven" but it might well (or also) mean "the temple of free hanafuda." Whatever the case, let's hope the company weathers the storm of recent comparisons involving Trump and the Mario mushrooms.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Porcelain Unicorn, Grand Prize winner of the Philips Parallel Lines 'Tell It Your Way' international competition.

WHAT!?

It's weirdly fascinating to listen to these ► imitations of languages by a non-English speaking comedian...

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader R.: "I've been going through all the newsletters I've filed away for later and I just have to say thanks for your consistently interesting and various links. I don't know how you find so many links that I'd have otherwise missed. And I, like others I bet, should've written in a long time ago!"

• Reader E.: "Listening to Young Adults and I found this absolutely freaking amazing ukulele version of The Cranberries' 'Zombie'. This maybe ten-year-old nails every bit of it!" -- Here's a "see also" link for you: 'Grace' by Lamb of God on the Hurdy Gurdy

• Reader V.: "The first two links of the week [Open Culture's list of free art and art books & the reports on trends in art attendance and reading] should be a mood elevator. Why don't I feel more optimistic?"

• Reader T.: "Dude! The Door of Perception is an endless amazing trippy rabbit-hole. Thanks (and thanks for nothing)!"

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 concīs  http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

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: http://katexic.com/.

For your earholes: I’ve updated the Katexic/KUAC page with more (3–7 minute) WORD audio segments, including pieces on penumbra, etymythology, omphalos, “beyond the pale” and fake/fake news.

WORK

Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

—May Sarton
—from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

WORD(S)

aibohphobia /IY-boh-FOH-bee-yə/. noun. An irrational fear or distrust of palindromes. Etymological origin is obvious. Origin of the coinage is unclear, but the word is first found in Stan Kelly-Bootle’s Ambrose Bierce-inspired The Devil’s DP Dictionary and its successor The Computer Contradictionary. Bootle was known for his wordplay even while writing computer programming articles and textbooks…and his folk-singing career.

See also: ebohphobe and ailihphilia.

WEB

1. There’s nothing like standing in front of a piece of art, but how many will we ever have the chance to see in person? That’s why I appreciate Open Culture’s list of links to nearly two million pieces of art and more than 100,000 art books. All free, naturally.

2. The U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002–2017 report is generally positive, but I am stoked by the significant increase in poetry readers. The page includes an interactive data tool and links to the raw data used to write the report.

3. New podcast! The Keepers – “stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep.” && Old podcast (and one of my favorites) returns! – Ear Hustle – “stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it.” || See also: Podstand, where you can “browse people’s podcast subscriptions, and share your own.”

4. A collaboration between Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting, Bundyville is a beautifully produced series about the infamous ranching family that combines longform articles and audio/podcasts.

5. Of his hard-to-describe but endlessly-browsable site The Door of Perception, Ben Roth writes: “[it] is an ever-growing compilation of things that talk to me on a deep level. Passing on that feeling of resonance is a way of caring. I wanna take you with me on a path towards the light of consciousness.” An incredible collection of sometimes trippy, often mind-bending, usually enlightening stuff.

6. “The US prison system is broken. It sucks up billions of dollars each year and destroys lives. Could a Thai princess and an accidental criminal justice reform activist in the Pacific Northwest have the answers?” → Stripped: The Search for Human Rights in US Women’s Prisons || See also: in The Conversation: quite a story of art behind bars—and survival—in an increasingly perverted penal system.

7. In the (often maddening) Blind Spots, “ favorite artists” listen to famous albums they’ve never heard before. It would be be better if the sides were a bit less lopsided as far as accomplishments (so far) go, but still mostly fun.

8. This week in radically different photography sites → Irenaeus Herok’s aerial shifting sands photos! && The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are open for your votes (previously: CWPA galleries).

9. Just for funsies → Smash Mouth’s “All Star” translated to Aramaic and back into English && Funny Pub Signs

10. Today in 1620, the Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World. The 102 passengers (including nearly forty “Separatists” who called themselves “Saints”) were intending to establish a settlement in what would come to be Virginia but instead landed near what is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Establishing a settlement named Plymouth, half the colonists would die of disease in the first year, but the colony survived thanks to help from most of the local Indian tribes. In thanks, the descendants of the settlers committed multiple acts of genocide against the Native Americans on their way to creating the country that would elect Donald J. Trump as its president.

WATCH/WITNESS

“► Pauvre Pierrot (aka Poor Pete) is an 1892 French short animated film directed by Émile Reynaud. It consists of 500 individually painted images and lasts about 15 minutes. ¶ It is one of the first animated films ever made…”

WHAT!?

I thought I knew everything about ► the history of the word “OK,” but I was mistaken. Thanks, Reader S. for the nudge.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader H.: “A few years ago a novel The Hummingbird by Stephen Kiernan came out. It was about Nobua Fujita and his initial bombing run and all the subsequent journeys to America.” – Thank you for the tip! I wouldn’t have realized Kiernan’s book involved Fujita based on the description!

• Reader M.: “‘Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica from Ariel’? I see what you did there and I’m not sure I like it.”

• Reader C.: “Yes-or-BS is simple and fun. I’m batting way less than .1000 after getting the JOANIE McJOANFACE story right.”

• Reader K.: “That puffer fish video was disturbing. Readers might also like to watch the crazy fast and swallowing whole frogfish in action.”

• Last week we had a comment/poem…today a comment/story! Reader B.:

The miners had been at work for weeks in this sector, drilling and digging through these new, previously untapped seems. The materials were pried loose and hauled back out through the fresh shafts, into the old pits, and out, presumably, onto the surface (the miners worked long shifts, and by the time they left their work, the surface was cleared, scoured of any signs of their output. They did not know who conducted this labor.)

Still they had only received trace reports of Katexic. Their most sensitive equipment, maintained with exquisite attention, indicated that a vein or even a seam must be within this section of the mountain. All of the indicators were present: the lines of gold in the spectrum, the vowel-heavy muttering sound whose source could never be discerned precisely, warm spots plainly felt every twelve meters, and the same, sad, one-handed figure in every miner’s dream.

Frustration did not gnaw them as they gnawed at the mountain’s mesozoic roots. The miners were stolid and steadfast in their Katexic pursuit. It was going to be there. It had to be there.

One afternoon (although time was meaningless in the shafts) their devices suddenly emitted flickering lights, even those unequipped with LEDs. Davies, the new man, fell to the ground, clutching his head. The sound of laughter erupted from the rock face they were addressing, a sound terrifying yet delighfu-

TRANSMISSION ENDS

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: http://katexic.com/.

Thanks to Reader Z. for today's WORD and the accompanying pictures!

WORK

What doesn’t slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn’t enough discussion in the world.

—Cesar Pavese (translated by R. W. Flint)
—from The Beach (La Spiaggia, 1941)

WORD(S)

parablepsis /PAIR-u-BLEP-sis/. noun. In which a scribe miscopies a text due to looking to one side, or away, or simply skipping lines in the original. Also, archaically-but-aptly, “false vision.” From the Greek paráleipsis (to neglect, omit or “look askance at”), from para- (beside, parallel to) + blepsis (sight). 

An example from the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition currently hosted at The College of St. Scholastica:

[view larger; view image of full page]

WEB

1. “Frederick Wiseman’s film, ► Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, goes behind the scenes of one of the greatest knowledge institutions in the world…”

2. ¿ YES or B.S. ? is a simple game where you attempt to decipher fact from fiction. Apparently a related podcast is coming soon.

3. We each have to chart our own linguistic paths. Teen Vogue’s “How to Use Gender-Neutral Words” is a curious mix of the old and new (linguist Debbie Cameron thought so too) regarding one of the more difficult terrains. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but among other things I do intend to start using nibling to refer to nieces and nephews because…cute! || Related: Talk the Talk’s episode on ► Kinship Terms, which get real complicated real fast.

4. Speaking of complex issues of language, discussion of “singular they” is all over: the OED Blog provides a brief history (only back to 1375), in the Boston Globe the always-fab Kory Stamper writes of its history and future and in Lexicon Valley John McWhorter observes that ► it’s time to embrace singular they (and that the whingeing about it is baseless).

5. Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica or Ariel?

6. Reader A. writes in, regarding the dangers of being a Victorian librarian: “I’d suggest that working in a library remains a dangerous profession too.” Subsequent email prompted them to share another amazing related link: was Napolean poisoned by his wallpaper? || See also: Some Books Can Kill.

7. Years ago I shared how a chance opportunity to see Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester was an epiphany for me. Now the Victoria and Albert Museum has put the first of five volumes (collectively known as Codex Forster) online. || Previously: the Codex Arundale.

8. In more recent, but still long overdue science news: Jocelyn Bell Burnell was robbed of the Nobel Prize; 30 years later she has won the $3,000,000 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. And she’s donating the winnings to the U.K.’s Institute of Physics.

9. This thread: i noticed there was a blank wall at mcdonald’s so i decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It’s now been 51 days since i hung it up.. Don’t miss some of the hilarious examples of other guerilla art in the comments.

10. Today in 1942, Japanese aviator Nobuo Fujita takes off in his submarine-based seaplane just off the coast of the Oregon/California border and flies over Brookings, Oregon on his way to dropping the first—and paired with his second attack a few weeks later, the only—enemy bombs ever to reach the continental United States. Intending to start massive fires and draw resources away from the Pacific theater, Fujita’s thermite bombs exploded but the flames fizzled due to extremely wet weather. Fujita would first visit Brookings 20 years later, where he attended peace ceremonies and presented the city with a 400-year-old samurai sword—a family heirloom—which he planned to use to commit ritual suicide if the people were still angry. Instead he was greeted generously and would visit multiple times, donating money for books for children and planting trees that are now part of a historic trail leading to a historical site where the bombs landed.

WATCH/WITNESS

I’ve mentioned Jana Dambrogio’s “letterlocking” site and video channel here before, but it’s worth re-visiting because both are packed with new information and videos on letter folds, real and fictional, from the beautiful “butterfly lock” used by Mary Queen of Scots to send her last letter—just six hours before her execution—to a secure method used by Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster to Dumbledore’s will as seen in the film Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 1.

WHAT!?

Part of the first Antarctic Biennale, “the Arriba! installation by Paul Rosero Contreras was conceived as a kind of tropical time capsule, taking us back 50 million years to when Antarctica itself had a temperate climate.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “I enjoy your newsletter so much! ¶ I wanted to suggest this […] Interesting method of presenting data about gender in the top 100 AU picture books.” – Thank you! That is a fascinating presentation…of some sometimes sad facts.

• Reader T: “I may be developing an obsession with the ukulele player [in Young Adults].”

• Reader B: “Another sapid banquet from Katexic Kitchen. Thank you.”

• Reader G. with a comment/poem:

I don’t know why exactly
maybe because it sounded so true
but your “work” made me cry a little.
Because when all is said and done,
the hardest thing of all is just to keep going,
every day, day after day after day.
Especially when there is no courageous battle
to be fought, no occasion
in particular to rise to.
Nothing, but that ruthless,
endless grind, that drags
us down and kills us
in small pieces,
that disappear
unnoticed, unremarked into the abyss
of yesterdays.

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Courage doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, (whispering), “I will try again tomorrow.”

—Mary Anne Radmacher
—from a 1985 poem

WORD(S)

sapid /SA-pid/. adjective. Having a pleasant, decided/distinct taste (of food). Engaging and stimulating (of writing). The opposite of insipid. From Latin sapidus, from sapere (to taste). See also: saporous, ambrosial, delectable, scrumptious and gustie.

“Precious culinary overtones were interspersed between the crude treble and bass of sour and sweet, of sapid and vapid, and the still barbaric medieval gustatory nerves speedily found it impossible to dispense with these exotic flavourings.” (Stefan Zweig)

“I suppose that when the sapid and slippery morsel [the oyster]—which is gone like a flash of gustatory summer lightning—glides along the palate, few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of machinery (and going machinery too) greatly more complicated than a watch.” (Thomas Huxley)

“He makes two leaves of fat to grow where but one grew before, lessens the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is something, certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments and does nothing in mitigation of the poor’s animosity to the rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing; its place among moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer.” (Ambrose Bierce)

WEB

1. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—nor the Black Hand or the Society of the Banana—could stop a postal work from bringing the Mafia to justice.

2. I find it hard to read without a pen in hand and am fascinated by marginalia of all kinds. What a treat to see Oliver Sacks’ conversations with his books. See also, the New York Times article on the subject.

3. There are quite a few of these 25 Scariest Fast Food Dishes of All Time that I would totally eat.

4. Great segment on Twitch, the “unedited, real, reality TV.” More—and more interesting than—“just those crazy kids”. || Pairs with Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer

5. I can (barely, arguably) command one language…hyperpolyglots, who speak eleven or more are practically alien, though hopefully some of the lessons can penetrate even my thick skull. (Sorry for another potentially paywalled New Yorker link…try a private/incognito window in your browser).

6. Regardless of different opinions about what the solutions might be, this Vox piece on mass shootings in America is extremely well presented…and terrifying.

7. Conserve the Sound is an “online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life. ¶ Accompanying the archive people are interviewed and give an insight in to the world of disappearing sounds.” || Pairs with Phantom Islands, a “sonic atlas” that “charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”

8. The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is obviously nonsense…so where did it come from and why is it still used?

9. Wayne Levin’s photos of schools of fish!

10. Today in 1914, folk singer and composer Tom Glazer is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glazer would write songs later performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and many others, but he is best remembered for his popularizing (authorship of the lyrics is unclear) of the children’s song “► On Top of Spaghetti,” sung to the tune of the Appalachian folk song “On Top of Old Smoky.”

WATCH/WITNESS

Young Adults—three Russian musicians in a kitchen, outfitted with a trombone, a ukulele and a smooth voice—► cover “Can’t Stop” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and make me so happy. The trio has other great covers as well, such as ► Of Monster and Men’s “Little Talks” and the once-omnipresent ► “Pumped Up Kicks.” I might be developing an obsession with the trombone player. || Related find while burrowing into the rabbit hole of surprisingly good cover songs: ► Daniela Andrade covers the Gorillaz “Feel Good Inc.,” teaching listeners that a) even Damon Albarn songs like this have ravishing melodies, and b) we’ll never hear lyrics with the words “ass crack” in them sung more beautifully.

WHAT!?

“► The Crayon,” by eight-year-old playwright Hana Morshedi, performed by Stephanie Beatriz, Jack Black, Max Greenfield, Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key, Tom Lennon, Leslie Mann, Jason Mantzoukas, & Jason and Randy Sklar.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “re: WORD, spolia are building materials taken from existing structures by residents or pillagers and used to build new structures elsewhere. It’s why we’ll sometimes find an inscription in a language thousands of miles from home carved into in some ancient cornerstone.” – Awesome! The Wikipedia article has some great pictures and links (plus any article with a “See also: palimpsests” has to be good).

• Reader M.: “Turns out I’m following a trail of disillusionment with Steven Pinker’s work. This thread dismantling part of Better Angels is just one of many reasons why.” — Ouch. I am beginning to wonder if any of Pinker’s work is even fractionally as good as I thought it was.

• Reader B.: "Ah, another lovely shipment from the Katexic mines. ¶ Indexes: JG Ballard wrote a short story as an index, which is a lot of fun. Just called “The Index,” and it’s the index of a biography of a man who’s the 20th century’s great hero – who then vanishes…

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things, the Greek things, too, had their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.

—Edith Hamilton
—from The Greek Way (1930)

WORD(S)

spoliate. verb. To plunder, rob or deprive. Legally, altering a document and making it invalid. In wartime, the authorized seizure of neutral vessels. A less common form of despoil. From Latin spolium (spoil).

“…give me back my spoliated rights – restore me to my violated franchises – give me back my liberty, or – I pause upon the brink of the alternative to which I had hurried, and, receding from it, leave it to you to complete the sentence.” (Richard Lalor Sheil)

“…the wood seemed to Alan to have a tender bruised beauty, spring renewing it only for further spoliation, and he knew the authors were right when they wrote of what love does, of how it transforms and glorifies and takes the scales from the eye of the beholder.” (Ruth Rendell)

“In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good.” (Charles Dickens)

WEB

1. The New York Public Library debuts InstaNovels, beginning with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The NYPL says the new form is “a reimagining of Instagram Stories to provide a new platform for iconic stories.”

2. A fascinating history of the index, from the scroll to the codex and from stichometric to alphabetic. → INDEX: A Brief History

3. Extraordinary…what are the odds of this kind of discovery? → Mum’s a Neanderthal, Dad’s a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid

4. Can You Rewire Your Brain? Maybe. (It’s Tricky. Be Careful.)

5. Of course the art isn’t the point, but it’s still pretty amazing. → Re-creating the “Mona Lisa” using light-stimulation and bacteria

6. The racist language of space exploration

7. Ministry of Cinema says their mission is to “spread our love of cinema however we can.” And they do a fine job of it with their chock-full video channel.

8. Apparently, Being a Victorian Librarian Was Oh-So-Dangerous. Not least because Melvil Dewey was a serial sexual harasser.

9. Good Show Sir features only “the worst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers.” Jump right into the gallery.

10. Today, and every Sunday nearest August 26, is International Go Topless Day. Founded in 2007 by Claude Vorilhon (AKA Rael, founder of the UFO religion Raelanism), Go Topless Day fights for a specific equality, that “women should have the same constitutional right or men should also be forced to wear something that hides their chests,” and encourages women to go topless and men to wear brassieres or bikinis. This year, Go Topless Day serendipitously falls exactly on Women’s Equality Day.

WATCH/WITNESS

It’s Okay That It’s Not Okay is Christina Tran’s powerful, ongoing “comic memoir about making the decision to take a sabbatical – and why it’s so hard to make time to slow down and feel the things we need to feel.” Updated weekly.

WHAT!?

► A puffer fish will eat all your nightmares

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T.: “Re: And Vinyly—see also LifeGem and Holy Smoke.”

• Reader B.: “Another fine haul of words and links in the Katexic hold. Thank you!”

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 concīs  http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.

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: http://katexic.com/.

If you see something (you like), say something (about Katexic Clippings)!

WORK

“The Purist”

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

—Ogden Nash
—from The Selected Verse of Ogden Nash (1945)

WORD(S)

etiolated /EE-dee-ə-lay-təd/. adjective. Whitened due to lack of sunlight. Figuratively, weakened and/or stunted and/or having a pale, sickly appearance. From French étioler (to become pale, to grow into stubble). From éteule (stubble). From Latin stipula (a stalk or straw).

“They ate and drank but were silent. The six candles in their branched entwined stems seemed to burn less brightly than on their first evening so that their features, half shadowed, were sharpened into caricatures of their daytime selves. Pale, etiolated hands reached out to the fruit bowl, to furred and flushed peaches, the curved shininess of bananas, apples burnished so that they looked as artificial as Ambrose’s candlelit skin.” (P. D. James)

“The one she hated most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not bad enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degenerate.” (D. H. Lawrence)

“Stained and frayed, these three hung together without speaking, Woodward very tall, giving the impression of an etiolated newt, Whipp small, his glasses repaired with Sellotape, Woolmer-Mills for ever launching himself back and forth on the balls of his feet.” (William Trevor)

WEB

1. A powerful story providing one small entry point into an amazing and amazingly different world. → Raising a DeafBlind Baby

2. Turns out our tears are more artistic than even the most dramatic amongst us might have thought. → Rose Lynn Fisher’s microscopic photography, the Topography of Tears. || Earlier: Fisher’s stunning BEEyond series of microscopic photos of bees.

3. From micro- to macro-photography… → The Turn-of-the-Century Pigeons That Photographed Earth from Above

4. This might make me start not only believing that the “millennials” label means something, but also that I like them. Alas, it is but a dream. → How Millennials Killed Mayonnaise || See also: You Can Now Watch A Livestream Of This Mouldy Fatberg 24/7 || And while I’m just free-associating: Animal fat on ancient pottery reveals a nearly catastrophic period of human prehistory

5. A really well-written article about the trying dynamics of civility and dialogue in a small town characterized by both a liberal arts college and a philanthropic family with deep roots in the region…and the NRA. → How Civil Must America Be?

6. Via Reader B., who says, “my favorite part of this was the Russian AI.” → The Quantified Heart

7. Love this: students author a handbook for teachers (and it includes a lot more than just the fascinating “Philly Slang” section). → Jawn? Ocky? Philly kids school teachers with new handbook

8. Last week it was forensic linguistics…this week, food linguistics. → The Creepy Language Tricks Taco Bell Uses to Fool People Into Eating There

9. I try to stay away from links to Atlas Obscura, which all Clamorites should be reading anyway, but this was too interesting not to note. → Tattooing in the Civil War Was a Hedge Against Anonymous Death

10. MOAR TWITTERZ! → First, from Reader A., Deleted Wiki Titles (@DeletedWiki) posts “actual article titles that have been removed from Wikipedia for various reasons.” On screen right now: Oscillating penguin of ultimate seduction – Five clicks to jesus – Category: Farts in literature – I DONT NO HOW TO MAKE A WIKERPEDIA ATRICLE. || Second, a thread of “metaphorical invective” that made me literally LOL and has that old-school-twitter vibe or, in the words of Reader S., who shared the link, a “community feel.” || And finally, the sometimes fascinating examples of real-time text-to-image generation in this thread.

11. Today in 1902, Ogden Nash, perhaps the finest light verse poet ever (in the English language, anyway), is born in Rye, New York. Perhaps most famous for his 1931 poem “Candy / Is Dandy / But Liquor / Is Quicker” (updated in 1968 with the additional line “Pot is not”), Nash composed over 500 pieces, may of which used unexpected rhyme schemes, twists-of-words and turns-of-phrase that word nerds in the Clamor should appreciate. “Further Reflections on Parsley,” the first Ogden Nash poem I read, when I was not yet ten, I still remember completely: “Parsley / Is gharsely.” See also: ► Ogden Nash recites ‘Oh, Please Don’t Get Up!’ and ► Common Cold by Ogden Nash (read by Tom O’Bedlam).

WATCH/WITNESS

► What if English Were Phonetically Consistent? The result sounds kind of like Finnish to me. I’m amazed the narrator was able to pull this off. Also, Shakespearean language loses all of its verve when rendered “consistent” in this way.

WHAT!?

“With their basic package they will take your actual cremated ashes and press them into 30 discs, each with 24 total minutes of audio (12 minutes on each side). You have to supply the sound, so you can record something original like a message or have them use a favorite song, but the discs come with standard artwork and labels that include your name, date of birth, and date of death.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T.: “In honor of this week’s theme, ‘Wow.’”

• Reader M.: “Kya bol raha hai?! (What are you saying?!) I’m a hindi and english speaking Indian, and I’ve never chatted with anyone using ‘ek number’. I wonder which part of India it comes from…”

• Reader A.: "Thank you for another great start to my Monday. ¶ A while back you shared The Disconnect. I really enjoyed it. They have a new issue out now. Inside, there is an interview about the gamification of social media that is well-thought-out and not alarmist. I recommend it. – Great article! Jurgenson writes, “However far we go back, we’ll find this same conversation. Because the world feeling inauthentic and post-truth and more technical than natural is the state of modernity. We just constantly call each new thing fake in a futile attempt to solve the modern problem of not grasping the real and the true.” Indeed.

• Reader B.: “Another glorious Katexic! ¶ Fore-edge painting [See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]: the used bookshop I used to work in had a small collection of these. I loved presenting them. Such a hidden gem within the book. What a fine intrusion of painting. ¶ That Nation poem: I admire your diving into it, but I’ve only found it to be a rabbit hole. I keep running into limitations of time as well as ideologies.”

• Reader J.: “I passed along the Daily Mail forensics article to my niece who’s fascinated with blood splatter, etc. I also sent her this Irish Times article on the ‘Commision of Inquiry’ into the supposed complicity of Charles Stewart Parnell in the assassinations of Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke. I first heard of this in Finnegans Wake, but I’m not going to dig back through that to find the reference–there’s only so much time in one person’s world.” – Interesting! The omnipresent Wikipedia says of this connection in Finnegans Wake:

“…notable real-life Irish figures are alluded to throughout the text. For example, HCE is often identified with Charles Stewart Parnell, and Shem’s attack on his father in this way mirrors the attempt of forger Richard Pigott to incriminate Parnell in the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 by means of false letters. But, given the flexibility of allusion in Finnegans Wake HCE assumes the character of Pigott as well, for just as HCE betrays himself to the cad, Pigott betrayed himself at the inquiry into admitting the forgery by his spelling of the word ‘hesitancy’ as ‘hesitency’; and this misspelling appears frequently in the Wake.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

Happy Palindrome Week!

WORK

…he began to read, to start with, the stories that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he liked he read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

—W. Somerset Maugham
—from Of Human Bondage

WORD(S)

sclerotic /SKLəR-aw-tik/. adjective. Of or related to the sclera (tough white outer layer) of the eye. Characterized by hardening and/or thickening of the cell walls. Figuratively: hard, unmoving, unchanging. From Greek sklēros (hard).

“Always this problem of re-entry. How the strands of duplicity tightened, like the veins on the surface of a sclerotic soul.” (Martin Amis)

“…with fine features and a Byzantine profile; deep sad eyes, set at a curious and touching angle to the line of the nose; the expression of a statue, all statues, eyes looking gently upward from the inclined head, revealing a sclerotic pattern of unhappiness and yearning regret, endlessly repeated…” (J.M.G. Le Clézio)

“The two women had dust smeared on the backs of their skirts; one of them wore a brooch with its stone missing. The short man looked like a squashed head on a sack of clothes. The tall one had magnanimous eyes, a sclerotic nose, and a liver-spotted white head.” (Mary Gaitskill)

WEB

1. A bit of a meander here, but bear with me. First, Steven Pinker says something about the “n-word” that sounds reasonable but is pretty stupid, backing himself up with something even more stupid (that people somehow take seriously). Corey, AKA TiltedListener, does a fine job dismantling the latter sentence-by-sentence and Taylor Jones, a linguist cited in the article, demolishes whatever credibility is left. Where all this ultimately led me was to some writing about “ableist language”, which poses an ongoing challenge in my own speech. Particularly the word “crazy,” which, for some reason, I battle with myself about changing. || See also, John McWhorter’s interesting take on the poem that started the whole thing.

2. “Shocking” is right. → The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage

3. Forensic linguist reveals how murderer was snared sending texts because of commas || See also: Words on Trial and What is Forensic Linguistics?

4. Whither Clark Bars, Mary Janes, Thin Mints and the eponymous half-chalk-dust half-sugar wafers? → Necco shuts down abruptly, is sold

5. Fore-edge painting! → A Hidden Art Form You’ll Flip For (fore-edge painting) || Fore-Edge Paintings at the Lilly Library || Fore Edge Painting - An Introduction | On the Edge. Previously: The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.

6. “Kurt Vonnegut compared the role of the artist in society to that of the canary in the mines: Both alert us to the presence of danger. The reading brain is the canary in our minds. We would be the worst of fools to ignore what it has to teach us.” → Screen Time Is Changing Our Brain Circuitry || Pairs well with Why ‘getting lost in a book’ is so good for you, according to science.

7. Katexic Clamorites know one of my favorite topics is words we mispronounce(d) because we learned them by reading. Daniel Midgley, host of the fab Talk the Talk podcast, proposes calling them “calliopes” (rhyming with ropes), “persephones” (rhyming with telephones), or “booklish.” Then he and the Speakeasy hosts share many great examples. → Speakeasy: accidental mispronunciations

8. I Say LOL, You Say Ek Number: How People Around The World Laugh Online

9. This week in visuals and visual art: The Daring Golden Bridge || Visarute Angkatavanich’s amazing betta fish photos || Dennis Isip - The Neon Archives

10. Today in 1927, Wings, the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (at the first annual award ceremony in 1929), premieres at the Criterion Theater in New York City. Starring famed flapper Clara Bow, Wings not only set the standard for aviation films thanks to the technical achievement of its air-combat scenes, but was also the first movie to show two men kissing and among the first wide-release films to show nudity. This was perhaps in keeping with the debauchery around the set in San Antonio (where The Rough Riders was simultaneously being filmed), which director William Wellman would later describe as the “Armageddon of a magnificent sexual Donnybrook.” Remastered by Paramount in 2012, you can watch ► clips of wings on YouTube and, naturally, pay to see the rest.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Wild Life tells “the story of a dapper young remittance man, sent from England to Alberta to attempt ranching in 1909. However, his affection for badminton, bird watching and liquor leaves him little time for wrangling cattle. It soon becomes clear that nothing in his refined upbringing has prepared him for the harsh conditions of the New World. A film about the beauty of the prairie, the pangs of homesickness and the folly of living dangerously out of context.”

WHAT!?

I’d eat that. → ► Watermelon Smoked to Look Like Meat.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “That Chang-rae Lee quote is dizzying to think of. Buddhist? Quietist? ¶ Where’s the Powers quote from? A fine snapshot of early punk. ¶ PS: another barge floated down the wild river flowing out of Katexia, freighted with delights. The crowd surged the piers, every member demanding more sweetness.” — Thank you! The Powers quote is from Orfeo!

• Reader M.: “Who would have thought photos of coin-operated laundries could be as mesmerizing as watching laundry tumbling in the dryer?”

• Reader N.: “All the talk of ‘othering’ and ‘privileging’ in our speech and writing wears me down. But the article about italicizing non-English words in English texts hasn’t been so easily dismissed.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

For if there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it’s when we’re closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we’ll tread through any flame.

—Chang-rae Lee
—from On Such a Full Sea

WORD(S)

cantillate /KAN-tə-layt/. noun or verb. To recite or chant musically, usually a religious text. From Latin antillāre (to sing softly), from cantāre (to sing). See also: cantor and cantata.

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring…
(Galway Kinnell)

“What would that strange man, the trope—cantillation—teacher, have said to that? The trope teacher! Why have I suddenly recalled the trope teacher? A quickening beat of the heart in the swiftly gathering clouds of sleep.” (Chaim Potok)

“Punk had blown the top of pop’s skull off, and downtown concert music was on high alert. The scene was stripping down—postminimal, pulsed, machinic. The music grew a skin of brushed steel and smoky glass. It sounded to Els almost nostalgic, like a holy cantillation for a city slipping down into the East River ooze.” (Richard Powers)

WEB

1. “String is far more important than the wheel in the pantheon of inventions.” → The Long, Knotty, World-Spanning Story of String

2. I’d never really thought about this…and now I can’t stop thinking about it. → Bilingual Authors are Challenging the Practice of Italicizing Non-English Words

3. The language at the end of the Earth || Pairs with: Why no-one speaks Indonesia’s language

4. Coin-Op Eye Candy → coinop_london

5. “With the aid of a Georgetown law student, Genevieve Bentz, he [John Mikhail] embarked on a lexicological odyssey into dozens of long-forgotten dictionaries, published over a 200-year period before 1806, 40 regular dictionaries and 10 legal dictionaries” → Trump’s ‘emoluments’ battle: How a scholar’s search of 200 years of dictionaries helped win a historic ruling

6. I’m unsure whether sharing this is the right thing to do. It is definitely challenging to see. → Willoughby Wallace Hooper: Photographer of Death

7. Sometimes I read about physics and math that I barely (to be generous) understand. But still…octonions? → The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature

8. I want to be there. → Ye Oldest Public Library in the English Speaking World

9. Wikipedia page of the week: an internationally published Siamese cat. → F. D. C. Willard

10. Today in 1966, singer, songwriter, painter and future Nobel Prize in Literature winner Robert Allen Zimmerman—better known as Bob Dylan—crashes his motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. Or does he? In any case, Dylan didn’t perform publicly for years and took the opportunity to both reshape his image and record some powerful songs that would emerge years later on The Basement Tapes.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Printed Rainbow

WHAT!?

A 1970s Finnish TV cover of “YMCA” — need I say more?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Hehehe I knew cupidity and the other three mentioned. In exactly the context of word meanings that surprise you.”

• Reader A: “I’ve been subscribing for a while and I just wanted to say thanks. Each newsletter is a perfectly balanced diet of interest, intrigue, whimsy and delight. Thank you so much for making my Inbox worth opening.”

• Another Reader A.: “Gotta love OEDILF […] But you have to love better a site with grand dreams and an ironic about page (learn about the lighthouse icon)”

• Reader J.: “The OEDILF project is a hoot—quixotic like nobody’s business and loving it. It just makes me sad that Richard Wilbur isn’t around to jump in. Could he write a limerick? I’m sure he could and did, but given what’s on hand here at Inaction Central, I can only offer one of his many ”Opposites":

The opposite of tiller? Well,
It’s when some farmer in the dell
Has grown so lazy that by now
He lacks the energy to plow.

A bowsprit also comes to mind,
Since, like a tiller, it’s a kind
Of stick, and since on sailing craft,
The bowsprit’s fore, the tiller aft.

I also think of butter, brads,
Shoe polish, cannon, shoulder pads,
Daisies, and stock exchange, and goat,
Since none of these can steer a boat.

(R.I.P. Dick Wilbur, 1921–2017)

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: http://katexic.com/.

Like Katexic Clippings? I’d appreciate your forwarding it to a friend!

WORK

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark

—Warsan Shire
—from “Home”

WORD(S)

cupidity /kyoo-PID-ə-tee/. noun. Despite the sensual connotation of its Latin roots, cupidity now refers to non-erotic greed, covetousness, lust, or inordinate appetite for material things. From Latin cupidus (ardent desire); from cupere (desire); maybe from Proto-Indo-European root kup-(e)i- (to tremble; to desire). File under: words that might not mean what you think they mean. See also: avarice, rapaciousness and venality.

“Tantalizing aromas: food frying in vats or simmering in huge kettles or roasting on sticks over fires. Sarah pulling me from one culinary spectacle to another in an agony of cupidity.” (Deborah Eisenberg)

“Cassandra in some crafty excitement this woman alone she elected as worthy to share with her—ever more agitated, insisting; Mop, ever so evasively placating—the girl almost hilariously angry; each, although obviously at odds, fully enjoying a tussle in cupidity.” (Mina Loy)

“Inevitably, the unknown became the focus for legends; frustrated cupidity acted as a spur to imagination…” (Evelyn Waugh)

“…this woman had a child, that was unable to walk or talk, at the age of five years, neither could it cry like other children, but made a constant, piteous, moaning sound. This exhibition of helplessness and imbecility, instead of exciting the master’s pity, stung his cupidity, and so enraged him, that he would kick the poor thing about like a foot-ball.” (Sojourner Truth)

WEB

1. The New York Times asks: Why Are Some Crows Committing Acts of Necrophilia?. A fascinating article in itself…and includes one of the best corrections ever (at the end of the article). Pairs well with podcast listening: ► HBM038: Do Crows Mourn Their Dead? and ► The Genius of Birds: Live From the Aspen Ideas Festival. Closer to (my) home and involving the greatest of corvids: Hundreds of birds seem to mourn deaths of fellow ravens.

2. BAP! BARM! COB! BLAA! → Why the UK has so many words for bread. Thanks, Reader B.!

3. The Digital Newberry collections feature more than a million “manuscripts, maps, books, photographs, artworks, & other rare & unique materials” from the famed Chicago research library. Such as my first cool find: a 1931 map of Chicago’s gangland from authentic sources.

4. Myrtis Dightman not only broke the color barrier, but became one of the best bull riders who ever lived…and then he just kept going. → The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo

5. Science says: You Should Actually Send That Thank You Note You’ve Been Meaning to Write

6. The OEDILF—pronounced /oh-DILF/—aims to create “at least one limerick for each meaning of each and every word in the English language.” Currently at about 100,000 entries but most are marvelous! → OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form || Via the highly-recommended A Way With Words podcast

7. Terrifying, sad and emblematic. → Alt-Right Troll To Father Killer: The Unraveling Of Lane Davis

8. Sichuan, spice and spies. → How the chili pepper got to China

9. This week in bots: Botnik’s Twilight Zone but creates eerily apt ideas for revivals of the iconic show. On Twitter, @venmodrugs culls public profiles on Venmo to highlight … umm … strange transactions … and @ThinkPieceBot creates hot take, think piece headlines that often sound much more interesting than the real thing.

10. Today in 1849, poet, translator and teacher Emma Lazarus is born in New York City. Lazarus would publish her first volume of poems and translations, to no small acclaim, at just 18, but her most enduring work was the sonnet “The New Colossus,” which is (for the time being?) inscribed on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, ending with the famous lines:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

WATCH/WITNESS

► Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence? Do little things matter?

WHAT!?

Recorded in 1987, this is ► the song of the last male Kauai ’O’o singing for a mate. The Kauai ’O’o was declared extinct in 1989. Listen also: an orchestral piece inspired by the song.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader H.: “Somehow I can imagine you and some of Katexic’s readers doing this kind of thing in their spare time. King of Dictionopolis: Why I procrastinate by compiling my own niche dictionaries.”

• Reader S.: “Do you get stats on how many people follow the links you share? Would be interesting to see ‘Katexic’s Top 10 Links for 2018’ at some point if you do. I’m always intrigued by what links call to me. It’s never immediately obvious. There is inevitably at least one per issue (and that is a high success rate in my books) if not more that I do follow, but always interested to see where what piques me does the same to others.” — Great idea! I will dig into this and do a retrospective best of previous years soon!

• Reader P.: “Interesting, as always…” — Glad to hear from you! I miss you and many others from the ol’ Café!

• Reader B.: “This is one of my favorite emissions from the Katexic nebula. ¶ Jára Cimrman! ¶ wyr_bot! ¶ Formation flying over the Alps! ¶ And a good reminder to finally start reading Murdoch. ¶ Thank you so much for this regular deluge of splendor.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.

—Irish Murdoch
—from The Sea, The Sea

WORD(S)

iatrogenic /iy-A-tro-jen-ik/. adjective. In medicine: an illness or symptom caused by a physician’s treatment or medications. In more general use, a problem caused by the means of treating another problem but ascribed to being a natural part of the original. From Greek iatro- (pertaining to medicine or physicians) + -genic (producing, caused by).

“In healthcare, a significant percentage of illnesses are iatrogenic. In other words, they are caused by the treatment. Antibiotics may solve the problem of a current infection but also may be the cause of a future infection.” (Michael J. Gelb)

“Weber suggested they go outside and stroll down toward the river. A little nervously, Mark agreed. The brisk air worked on Mark. The longer they talked, the more adamant Mark became. It struck Weber that maybe he’d been helping the man create this illness. Iatrogenic. Collaboration between doctor and patient.” (Richard Powers)

“Those who cannot pay constitute about one-third of the population of our overcrowded and hopelessly mismanaged prisons, and the business of their trial by due process delays and overtaxes the courts beyond all reason. These are nomogenic crimes, caused by bad laws, just as iatrogenic diseases are caused by bad doctoring.” (Alan Watts)

WEB

1. The always awesome 99% Invisible podcast put out a particularly tasty episode last week on the interrobang (‽‽‽) and the octothorpe (###) || See also, two new (to me), conversational word nerd/language podcasts I’ve been enjoying lately: Lexitecture and Words for Dinner. Speaking of podcasts, how has it taken this long for something like Wilson—a podcast magazine (sadly iOS only right now)—to become a thing?

2. The Linguist Who Helps Police Catch Child Predators

3. “The Race Card Project encourages people to condense their observations and experiences about race into one sentence with just Six Words.” Some of them are extremely powerful.

4. Play the Font Memory Game for the 30% discount on a quality book…or just because it is addictive.

5. This week in Twitter: @WYR_Bot is a neural network that asks deliciously weird, sometimes surreal “would you rather” questions every three hours on Twitter. A few from recent days: “Would you rather eat your own hair or have a cat with a giant cake?” “Would you rather be able to run anywhere or have no pain?” “Would you rather be santa or climb uncontrollably??”

6. This Week in Wikipedia: the bizarre story of Jára Cimrman, “universal genius, and one of the greatest Czech playwrights, poets, composers, teachers, travellers, philosophers, inventors, detectives, mathematicians, and sportsmen of the 19th and early 20th century.” And entirely fictional.

7. This week in heists: ATMs spewing cash, jet-setting money mules, and more than a billion dollars still missing and the Con Queen of Hollywood (Thanks, Reader B.!)

8. “Such ambiguous words not only allow the speaker to avoid being pinned down but also allow the receiver to interpret the message in a way that is consistent with their preconceived notions. Obviously, the result is poor communication.” → How to communicate likelihood and probability more effectively.

9. “There’s an ambient grandiosity to it all, like fridge poetry for Roman Emperors.” → I don’t get the appeal of Jordan Peterson. This has to be the best (and most brutal; same thing) assessment of Peterson and his “thinking” I’ve been lucky enough to read.

10. Today in 1919, novelist and philosopher (Dame Jean) Irish Murdoch is born in Dublin, Ireland. Winner of the Booker and James Tait Black Memorial prizes, the Whitbread Award, and routinely listed as a top 10, 50, 100 etc novelist, Murdoch’s fiction nevertheless remains under-read, though not as criminally under-appreciated as her philosophy. Murdoch led a rather unconventional lifestyle, marrying novelist and critic John Bayley (who declared that sex was “inescapably ridiculous”) in 1956 and remaining with him, while engaging in numerous destructive affairs with men and women, until her death from Alzheimer’s—a cruel end for such a bright mind—in 1999. To learn more about Murdoch, I highly recommend Martha Nussbaum’s insightful 2001 assessment of Murdoch, the “anomalous” novelist and philosopher. Good places to start with her deeply various fictions are the Booker-prize winning The Sea, The Sea, her first novel Under the Net and the unrepentant and racy A Severed Head.

WATCH/WITNESS

“The film shows the most in-depth and visually easy-to-understand process of making type. It follows the entire process of type making from original design (showcasing Lydian by Warren Chappell) to pattern making, punch cutting, matrix making, and the use of the Benton engraving machine.” → ► Type Speaks - 1948

WHAT!?

► Formation Wingsuit Terrain Flying at the Mettlehorn in Switzerland

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader V.: “Readers might be interested in another OED appeal for reader contributions. This one is for hobby words.”

• Reader B.: “Love those British PSAs.”

• Reader S.: “your word today brought to mind another that I have been recently investigating, psychopomp a term that has come up in my preliminary investigations of ‘death doulas’ as a potential new career choice (not sure how serious I am, but am intrigued and feel like it’s a critical element missing in modern society, proper relation to death and dying.)”

• Reader K.: “That poem… Can I apply it to every single ex-boyfriend I have ever had? The ex-husband? Select family members?”

• Reader D.: “Your poem about darkness reminded me of an episode of RadioLab called Dark Side Of The Earth, specifically the part starting at 9:00 from the beginning, a wonderful and beautiful description of the darkness of space by an American astronaut, Dave Wolf, who was aboard the Mir spacecraft, the precurser of the International Space Station operated by the Russians in the 1990’s. Dave is a riveting story teller. I’ll never forget this segment of RadioLab.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver
—from Thirst

WORD(S)

hierophant /HIY-ər-ə-fant/. noun. In Ancient Greece, a high priest and revealer/teacher of mysteries/duties. Now, a chief advocate or spokesperson. From Greek hiero- (sacred) + phainein (to reveal).

“To all the worlds Sanctity stands forever upon the Terran horizon, perceivable yet remote, holy and unapproachable, fully accessible only to its chosen ones: the Hierophants, the servitors, the acolytes.” (Sheri S. Tepper)

“There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being preserved on a floating lotus leaf.” (Ambrose Bierce)

“We had all the time in the world to do everything a beautiful night invites one to do, everything which, on a damask bedspread that was less and less of pearl and more and more of dead leaves, could elevate us to the dignity of the hierophant—I liked to call Léopoldine the hierinfanta, I was already so cultured, so spiritual…” (Amélie Nothomb; translated by Alison Anderson)

“And I am no longer a surgeon, but a hierophant who must do magic to ward off the punishment of the angry gods.” (Richard Selzer)

WEB

1. “The day Joe Howlett died dawned perfectly.” → How one man died so a whale might live

2. The Oxford English Dictionary wants to record “the words, phrases, and expressions particular to where you live or where you are from.” → Appeals: Words where you are | Oxford English Dictionary. Also, a fun Twitter hashtag to follow: #WordsWhereYouAre.

3. Are humans really blind to the gorilla on the basketball court? → Re-thinking the iconic experiment. Pairs well with re-contextualizing the “marshmallow” test and refuting, or at least harshly rebuking, the Stanford Prison Experiment.

4. Celebrating the world’s most beautiful libraries (and a new book about them). → Libraries: Where the world’s memory is stored

5. “The researchers found longevity benefits associated with nearly every level and type of coffee consumption.” Good news, assuming you feel longevity is a benefit. → Drinking Coffee May Help You Live Longer

6. Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. → Independent Voices

7. What was the best thing before sliced bread? Now you can know. → The Best Thing Before Sliced Bread - a History of Sliced Bread and Its Idiom

8. World War One Color Photos

9. Allegorical Maps of Love, Courtship, and Matrimony

10. Today in 1867, German artist, printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz is born in Königsberg, Prussia. Though apparently often dismissed by contemporary artists, this art lover finds her often dark, always emotional work—even her self-portraits, not a favorite genre—irresistible. Some of my favorite pieces include: Old Man with Noose, Woman with Dead Child, Hunger (hey, I said her work could be dark!) and Self-Portrait, Hand at the Forehead. Though she made fewer then 300 prints, there are many more at WikiArt and MoMA.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Lotte Reiniger: The genius of early animation. See also: a great article with links to many Reiniger animations.

WHAT!?

I remember public information films in the 70s as laughably boring affairs. Apparently in England they were occasionally terrifying. → Dark and Lonely Water: The Singular Terror of Public Information Films

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S.: “The ‘below the surface’ exhibition is indeed a wonder. Not sure what made me click the link but glad I did, impressive both for the finds but as a lesson in elegant web interface too. My favourite objects I found in my exploration of the site were this buddha from the 1930s and this kosher seal (there were many) from sometime in 1700s.” — Awesome. I was intrigued by this partial porcelain angel.

• Reader M.: “The author of the insightful poem in WORK, Ricky Ray, […] has his own brand-new literary journal called Rascal. Check it out!”

• Reader B.: “Another splendid shipment from Port K.!”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

Regeneration

Rising from the wheelchair,
my legs hold me up—
two withered twigs.

I love dead wood,
the way it keeps daring
lightning to strike again.

And I love lightning,
the way it keeps reminding
the heart it’s on fire.

—Ricky Ray
—found in Fealty (2018)

WORD(S)

cincture /SEENK-chər/. noun or verb. A girdle or a belt. More generally, something that encircles or surrounds. From Latin cinctura (girdle), from cingere (to gird, surround).

“Two immense, grape-coloured clouds butted and brawled in the vault of heaven, roped in by a cincture of spine and gorge.” (Nick Cave)

“As he was telling me this I pictured her in my mind, seeing her as one of those maidens of ancient Greece, in sandals and cinctured tunic, surging forwards in ecstatic welcome for the return of some warrior god or god-like warrior.” (John Banville)

“All the nuns at the convent wore plain blouses and skirts except for Sister Edgar, who had permission from the motherhouse to fit herself out in the old things with the arcane names, the wimple, cincture and guimpe.” (Don DeLillo)

WEB

1. “4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.” → from Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag [Thanks, Reader B.]

2. Below the Surface is an amazing project documenting tens of thousands (of more than 700,000) artifacts uncovered during a systematic excavation of Amsterdam’s central River Amstel, a central artery in the city for millennia.

3. RFID Machines in British Libraries Are Producing Charming Found Poetry [Thanks, Reader S.]

4. “Swearing was a litmus test […] Swearing could unite people.” → “Damn your blood”: Swearing in early modern English

5. “The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now revere as ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity.’” → Mary Carruthers (and Alan Jacobs) on memorization

6. Isochrone maps depict time on maps, such as this fascinating map by Francis Galton showing just how large the world was in 1881 (with the center being London, naturally).

7. “How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail” → How one man went from hunting meteorites to being hunted by the law

8. Beautiful. → Daniel Mercadante’s long exposure light paintings

9. Some happy news: After searching for years, Wisconsin woman learns her sister lives next door || Harrogate bookshop tweets about dismal sales and sets a sales record || Teenage Girl Helps a Blind and Deaf Passenger

10. Today in 1916 is the first—and deadliest—day in the four-and-a-half-month long World War 1 Battle of the Somme. Ultimately the largest battle on the Western Front, with more than 70,000 casualties on this day alone—the Battle of the Somme would end only after more than one million wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles of all time. While undeniably the beginning of modern warfare, and the introduction of the British forces to this kind of combat, the strategic value of this most-costly battle remains in dispute to this day.

WATCH/WITNESS

The directorial debut of Jesse L. Martin and Rick Cosnett, this “chilling fable […] depicts one family’s struggle for freedom from slavery.” → ► The Letter Carrier

WHAT!?

KitKat Sushi is a thing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “How is it I have never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett?! She was spot on about ‘the habit of idle speech’ and that was over 100 years ago! Social media seems to be all about ‘idle speech’, as well as ‘eristic’, another great word I didn’t know.”

• Reader F.: “The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor tore at my heart.”

• Reader K.: “There’s nothing complicated about child sex robots. At least until I really thought about it. But, ugh, what a time we live in.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

A quick(ish) but still good(ish) newsletter this week due to travel. Tell your friends (about the newsletter, not my travel).

WORK

The wood-road was not a place for common noisy conversation; one would interrupt the birds and all the still little beasts that belonged there. But it was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

—Sarah Orne Jewett
—from “A Dunnett Shepherdess”
—found in The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction (1896)

WORD(S)

eristic /ə-RIS-tik/. adjective or noun. Of, given, or relating to, argument, particularly argument for its own sake. A person who engages in such (usually tedious) debates. From Greek eristikos, from erizein (wrangle), from eris (strife). In Greek mythology, Eris was the goddess of discord and discontent.

“Socrates himself was said to have disapproved of this enthusiasm of his: ’On seeing Eucleides devoting himself to eristic arguments, he said, ”You’ll be able to associate with sophists, Eucleides, but not at all with human beings." (Robin Hard)

“…the eristic preoccupation with victory displaces any commitment to truth.” (Gilbert Ryle)

“The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion.” (Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson)

“Eristic is what contrarianism is all about. Although the main reason for its prevalence in contemporary public debate is that controversies, quarrels, exposés and attacks sell newspapers and get people switching on their television sets, there is another reason besides. This is that the public media think they are engaging in dialectic on whatever happens to be the hot topic of the day, when despite their good intentions they are in fact promoting eristic.” (A. C. Grayling)

WEB

1. “We think the next school shooter could be your son.” → Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter

2. There may be no end to Mr. Rogers’ awesomeness, generally, but most definitely in his amazing ear for language. → Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children

3. When linguistics and science and chart nerdery unite → Phonetic Periodic Table Poster

4. Infantilizing? Maybe. Complicated? You bet. → Digital Wellness for Grown Ups

5. Also…complicated. → The House Unanimously Passed a Bill to Make Child Sex Robots Illegal

6. This one triggered some feels… → The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor

7. Today in Twitterbots, LMAO edition → Tweets by Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) via the excellent Pop Loser, “a weekly newsletter of innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair.”

8. The lavishly illustated story of the beautiful Reforma font. Three fully featured families of typeface goodness. Did I mention that it’s free?

9. 50 [mostly] ingenious logos with hidden meanings

10. Today in 1849, poet, novelist and short story writer Sarah Orne Jewett is born in South Berwick, Maine. Jewett began publishing at just 19, with stories—like her later longer work—notable for a keen ear for local color and dialogue. Often compared to Flaubert, and a strong influence on later writers including Willa Cather, Jewett’s 1909 New York Times obituary observed that she was “regarded as one of the foremost women writers of America,” and her reputation has only increased in the intervening years. For your reading pleasure, a baker’s dozen of Jewett’s books free on Project Gutenberg.

WATCH/WITNESS

► “Robin Williams met Koko in 2001.”

WHAT!?

A platform floats in a neutral space. Strange men, identical except for the numbers on their back, appearing as though out of some dystopian future, must work in concert to prevent the platform from tipping. The emergence of a strange box, a new development in this closed and sterile space, disrupts the tedium but also the teamwork…

► Balance

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “The etymology of ‘feisty’ is priceless! ¶ As is the ‘blueblack cold’ of Robert Hayden’s heart-wrenching poem ‘Those Winter Sundays’.”

• Reader B.: “That opening poem hit me hard, fellow father.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Those Winter Sundays”

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

—Robert Hayden
—from Collected Poems

WORD(S)

feisty /FIY-stee/. adjective. Lively, tenacious, excitable, aggressive. From American English feist (small dog) > from fisting cur (derogatory term for lap dog) > from Middle English fysting curre (stinking cur) > from Middle English fysten (break wind) > from Proto-Germanic fistiz (fart). See also: spunky, plucky, gutsy, spirited, etc. || Pairs with the legendary Embuggerance & Feisty article.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, an “1811 slang dictionary defines fice as ‘a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs.’”

“My! Don’t he look feisty?” commented Octavia, with courteous admiration. “Watch him jest a-lickin’ out his tongue in Eve’s face. Lord,” she sighed conventionally, “how prone women air to sin!” (Alice MacGowan)

“His chest and arms are a panorama of tattooed emblems: feisty dragons, coiled chrysanthemums, uncoiled serpents.” (Truman Capote)

“A few experiments with foster parents did not end happily. I was what’s known as a ‘feisty child’. In the end the state agreed I was best off with the Jesuit Brothers.” (David Mitchell)

WEB

1. An online, community reading of Willa Cather’s novel, “My Ántonia”… three page-spreads at a time. Beautiful. → The Slow Read Thanks, Reader M!

2. Food for intentional technology thought. → Taking a photo of something impairs your memory of it, but the reasons remain largely mysterious.

3. Don’t let the geeky name stop you, the Regex Dictionary lets you find words of all kinds based on their construction and their part(s) of speech. Surprisingly useful…for word nerds like myself anyway.

4. Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives revise, re-contextualize and re-write subtle (and sometimes none-too-subtle) racism on the New York Times front page, turning them into large pieces of public art. More and sometimes larger images can be seen in Art21 and on the Spencer Musefum of Art. Discovered via this (potentially paywalled) New Yorker profile of Bell.

5. BotSpot: Sex And Sensibility: A horde of Jane Austen-quoting bots leads to Russian porn sites. Thanks, Reader B!

6. “Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience.” → How Do You Count Without Numbers?: Some human societies lack words for numbers. What does this say about the rest of us—and human evolution?

7. “A recursive recipe is one where ingredients in the recipe can be replaced by another recipe. The more ingredients you replace, the more that the recipe is made truly from scratch.” For example: make that apple pie from scratch in just over 7.5 years.

8. The Archive of Styles - From Gutenberg to the Moon - Reserve of Punches is an immensely browsable archive of physical typefaces, punches, experimental typography and much more that will entrance any type nerd. Clamorites might want to start with the curiosities, featuring manicules, coats of arms, bestiaries, lunar phases and more.

9. And some memes and slang too! → Dictionary.com Has Officially Added Emoji

10. Today is Father’s Day in the United States. Founded in 1910 in Vancouver, Washington by Sonora Smart Dodd as “Fathers’ Day” and celebrated by Presidents including Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Lyndon B. Johnson, it would take 62 years for Father’s Day to become an official holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law. Father’s Day is the fourth-biggest sales day for the greeting card industry, though it trails far behind Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

WATCH/WITNESS

► People react to being called Beautiful

WHAT!?

“Nearly 1 whole week of standing still and over 4 thousand pics later… I present to you, ► Dancing Without Moving.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Bumf? So what is Banff?”

• Reader B.: “Red Harvest is a fun book. Inspiration for my favorite gangster movie, Miller’s Crossing. ¶ Really enjoyed that wine bottle name article, especially for its use of bibliomancy.”

• Reader G.: “Is Dashiell Hammett one of the most underrated prose stylists ever? Why yes, yes he is.”

• Reader C.: “That record logo collection is a stupendous, Proustian-level memory trigger.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.”

—Dashiell Hammett
—from Red Harvest

WORD(S)

bumf /BUMF/. noun. Literally, toilet paper. Figuratively, worthless, superfluous, boring papers. Abbreviation of slang bum-fodder (same meaning).

“…I heard a tentative rap at my office door. I rose to open it and found Judd Wilkins. He was bearing a roll of bumf bound with a low-tech rubber band.” (Lawrence Sanders)

“‘Humanity treads ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses …’ Of course there weren’t inevitably abysses, sometimes only shallow ditches, Martin thought. Novelists were very prone to exaggeration. ‘Let’s have a look at all this bumf then, shall we?’ he said.” (Ruth Rendell)

“…this is all nonsense. You’ve no idea how much of this bumf I have to wade through in a week. I wake up in a blue funk at night, asking myself if this is how we’re going to fight the war, with reports and queries and signatures required in triplicate.” (John Banville)

WEB

1. An amazing collection of Record Label Logos.

2. I dropped “Jeroboam of wine” into a conversation the other day (because that’s what I do). Then I needed to know more. Now you will too. → Why Are Extremely Large Wine Bottles Named after Biblical Kings?

3. Preaching to the Clamor Choir here, but a nice pair of articles about reading and the brain: What’s Going On In Your Child’s Brain When You Read Them A Story? || Your Brain on Reading (Why Your Brain Needs You to Read Every Day)

4. With at least 7000 glyphs (compared to fewer than 850 for Latin scripts that can be used to represent hundreds of languages), Chinese fonts are just as awesome and complicated as you would expect.

5. I think it’s possible to embrace the idea of cultivating quiet time and even that some technologies tend to have more negative effects on our (or at least my) inner landscape without buying wholesale into the “technology is ruining our brains” market. → Why we owe it to ourselves to spend quiet time alone every day. See also: (Bored and Brilliant)[http://ktxc.to/bored-and-brilliant] and Being Bored Is Fun and Good, Sorry.

6. And I thought learning that porcupines could climb trees was scary… → New Research Shows That T-Rex Was as Smart as a Chimp

7. Kids these days, with their smart phones and their globe and paper making, leather-working and clog-cobbling.

8. Twenty years after finding a newborn, buried alive with his umbilical cord still attached, the jogging rescuer is reunited with him.

9. The 100 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of The Great Gatsby || Pairs well with Report: John Grisham Slowly But Surely Climbing List Of Greatest Living American Authors Thanks, Reader B.

10. Today in 1894, Dashiell Hammett, premiere author of hard-boiled detective novels and stories, is born on a farm in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland. Hammett wasn’t just one of the best, iconic authors of tough-guy mystery fiction, but one of America’s best prose stylists, evidenced in books such as The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon as well as indelible short stories including “Corkscrew” and "Nightmare Town. A dedicated anti-fascist, Hammett managed—despite being a disabled veteran of World War I with tuberculosis—to re-enlist during World War II, where he served in the Aleutians. Incidentally, if you can get there, the Aleutian World War II Museum and the bunkers in Dutch Harbor are extraordinary.

WATCH/WITNESS

► AMA - a short film by Julie Gautier

WHAT!?

Army Doctors Grew a Soldier a New Ear — On Her Forearm

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G.: “Kumi Yamashita’s work! All I can say is – WOW!”

• Reader B.: “I have nothing to say in response, except wordless applause for your fine work.” – Thanks…it is nice to know people are reading!

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall — it’s wet.”

—Banksy
—from Wall and Piece

WORD(S)

funambulist /foo-NAM-byoo-list/. noun. A tightrope walker. From French funambule (tightrope walker); from Latin funambulus; from funis (rope) + ambulare (walk).

“But after a week there had been an office crisis. The cabaret editor died on the job, in an incident involving a French funambulist and seven live eels (one of which was in flames).” (Will Self)

“It was a funambulesque exhibition sans parasol. To race with deft, sure steps, to grease his way through rather than ponder on equilibrium—that seemed the safest measure.” (Henry Miller)

“But then, perhaps one needs to be conceited, or at least to have no doubts about oneself, if one is to prosper in funambulism or any other métier that requires absorption of the mental self in the physical self, an absorption that is indistinguishable—as you point out in the interview—from concentrated thought.” (J. M. Coetzee)

“Electrical wiring that had lost its moorings hung like a clothesline for the laundry. Pants and shirts floated like truncated sentries while they slept. On windy nights the garments danced on the wire, friendly funambulating ghosts.” (Rohinton Mistry)

WEB

1. Welcome news for word nerds: the new Fiat Lex (“a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them”), featuring Kory Stamper (author of the immensely entertaining Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries) and Steve Kleinedler, whose book I haven’t read yet. See also: The great American word mapper, which lets you map usage in the US based on a harvest of billions of tweets.

2. Doesn’t the legal system’s insistence in the face of any amount of evidence prove the problem? → One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won’t California Do It?

3. “Of the roughly 230 men who flew mail for the Post Office Department between 1918 and 1927, 32 lost their lives in plane crashes. Six died during the first week of operation alone.” → Delivering the Mail Was Once One of the Riskiest Jobs in America. See also: A Chicago Man Filled Out a Single Postal Change of Address Form and Redirected UPS Corporate Mail to His Apartment. And, just for funsies (via Reader B.), Postal Service Unveils New Line Of Stamps Honoring Americans Who Still Use Postal Service.

4. We need more voices like Wil’s. → My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed.

5. Chess boxing (yep, it’s a thing) as a path upward for poor Indian girls? You bet. → How an Obscure Sport is Transforming the Lives of Indian Girls. Via Mr. TH.INK, a newsletter everyone in the Katexic Clamor should subscribe to.

6. Laughter climax (and conception): the structure of stand-up comedy. See also: Researchers uncovered 2 pages of ‘dirty jokes’ in Anne Frank’s diary.

7. The secret languages of flight attendants, plants, ships, handheld fans and babies.

8. This bot-written Modern Love column is one of the best and funniest pieces of its kind I’ve ever read. → My Marriage Was Just Dinner

9. Think you can explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? Prove it!

10. Today in 1992, the City Council of Chicago votes to ban the sale of spray paint claiming that “mindless ‘taggers’” were turning them into “weapons of terror.” The ban wouldn’t be enforced until 1994, when Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turned down an emergency request by spray paint manufacturers and sellers to postpone the ban. While the city’s handgun ban was struck down in 2013, spray paint cans remain unavailable for sale in the city’s limits.

WATCH/WITNESS

In ► Coda, “a lost soul stumbles drunken through the city. In a park, Death finds him and shows him many things.”

WHAT!?

Using thousands of nails and a single thread, Kumi Yamashita creates amazing, intricate portraits.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on double spacing between sentences: “My understanding is completely different from what was explained in the article on single spacing or double spacing after a period. Typewriters produced manuscripts. Certain rules are applied to instruct the typesetter. Two spaces after a period was to help the typesetter distinguish the period from a comma. Similarly, underlining instructed the typesetter to put specific words into italics and not to reproduce the underline. Word processing programs resemble typesetting, not typewriting, so there shouldn’t be a double space after the period, unless you are imitating a typewriter, such as when you use Courier type.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

The warm night claimed her. In a moment it was part of her. She walked on the grass, and her shoes were instantly soaked. She flung up her arms to the sky. Power ran to her fingertips. Excitement was communicated from the waiting trees, and the orchard, and the paddock; the intensity of their secret life caught at her and made her run. It was nothing like the excitement of ordinary looking forward, of birthday presents, of Christmas stockings, but the pull of a magnet – her grandfather had shown her once how it worked, little needles springing to the jaws – and now night and the sky above were a vast magnet, and the things that waited below were needles, caught up in the great demand.

—Daphne du Maurier
—from “The Pool”
—found in Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories

WORD(S)

isthmus /IS-thməs/. noun. A strip of land with water on both sides that connects two relatively larger land areas. In anatomy, a narrow part or organ connecting two larger parts. From Latin isthmus, from Greek isthmos (narrow land between two seas). Further history is unknown, though it could be from eimi (to go) and suffix -thmo (step, movement).

“They journeyed by canoe as far as the Chagres River would take them, then onward by mule. The isthmus, a thin, serpentine twist on the map, became five days’ journey through a stinging, biting fog.” (Alissa York)

“There was of course her figure to be assimilated; and only the most vicious corset, he thought at first, could so constrain the isthmus of her waist.” (Martin Amis)

“She sat on the sand and put her shapely foot in his lap, oblivious to the fact that she was exposing the metallic-gold isthmus of thong bikini between her legs, or that her pumiced heel was pressing down on his groin.” (Tatjana Soli)

WEB

1. Thanks to Reader K. for pointing out this compelling selection of photos of Russia from 100+ years ago. The photo of Tolstoy isn’t even the most interesting! See also: the rest of the more than 2600 photos in the Prokudin-Gorskii Collection at the Library of Congress, a link from last year that leads with one of my favorite century-old color photos and, not quite as ancient but still amazing, Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78 (in NYC).

2. Some fascinating background—and some litt words—in this “analysis of nearly one billion Tweets” that “maps the emergence of new words across the USA in unprecedented detail”.

3. This is the Surface of a Comet! Thanks, Reader B.

4. James Somers gets a bit deep in the weeds at times in this piece on reverse engineering Google Docs but the general idea of the “archaeology of writing” is one of the more intriguing in this time of living documents. You might remember Somers as purveyor of one of the greatest pieces of word advice for Mac users ever, featured here a few years ago.

5. Behold how 19 other U.S. states could be packed into the state of Alaska!

6. Quite a moving story of a teen who serendipitously rediscovered a book and, through it, her dead mother and herself.

7. Dollar Street documents the lives of 264 families in 50 countries through more than 30,000 photographs. That’s cool enough, but the sorting by income makes the photos even more interesting.

8. MSG gets a bad rap. And I’m not the only one who thinks so: An MSG Convert Visits the High Church of Umami.

9. Multiple people shared the provocatively titled article “One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong.” Except the research actually shows no such thing as the article itself clearly shows. Do I really need to spell this out? #DeathToTheDoubleSpace

10. Today in 1907, author and playwright Daphne de Maurier is born in London to a prominent family of actors and authors. Her most famous work, the novel Rebecca, was an instant best-seller, though initially panned by critics. In addition to being the basis of the Oscar-winning Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name, Rebecca was also used as by the Nazis as a code key during World War II and the monstrous housekeeper Mrs. Danvers has infiltrated popular culture.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Diffusion Choir, a kinetic sculpture that visualizes the organic movements of an invisible flock of Tyvek birds moving in harmony.

WHAT!?

POV video of ► Claudio Caluori on the Mont-Sainte-Anne downhill mountain biking course. Looks like a video game.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L.: “I need more lagom in my life.”

• Reader B.: "Too bad the Philip K. Dick tv series is weak. ¶ Man, that GQ piece! I have resisted responding so far.

• Reader C.: “Book Cell = Amazing”

• Another Reader B.: “Roget was cray-cray. See what I did there?”

• Reader J.: “That subject, ‘Rusting Sights First and Last’? – I see what you did there.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

No newsletter next week, but I welcome suggestions for what is bound to be an awesome issue two weeks from now!

WORK

My venerable and much thumbed copy of Black’s Medical Dictionary, by the estimable and ever unflappable William A. R. Thomson, M.D.—Adam & Charles Black, London, thirtieth edition, with 441 black-and-white, or grey-and-greyer, illustrations and four colour plates which never fail to freeze the cockles of my heart—informs me that rosacea, a nice name for an unpleasant complaint, is due to a chronic congestion of the flush areas of the face and forehead, leading to the formation of red papules; the resultant erythema, the name we medical men give to redness of the skin, tends to wax and wane but ultimately becomes permanent, and may, the candid Doctor warns, be accompanied by gross enlargement of the sebaceous glands (see SKIN), leading to the gross enlargement of the nose known as rhinophyma (qv) or grog blossoms. The repetition there—gross enlargement … gross enlargement—is an uncharacteristic infelicity in Dr. Thomson’s usually euphonious if somewhat antiquated prose style. I wonder if he does house calls. He would be bound to have a calming bedside manner and a fund of information on all sorts of topics, not all of them health-related. Medical men are more versatile than they are given credit for. Roget of Roget’s Thesaurus was a physician, did important research on consumption and laughing gas, and no doubt cured the odd patient, into the bargain. But grog blossoms, now, that is something to look forward to.

—John Banville
—from The Sea

WORD(S)

lagom /LAH-gəm/. adjective. A Swedish word meaning something like “happily and satisfyingly just the right amount.” Often translated as enough or adequate, lagom has a more positive connotation of fulfillment (though not perfection). Popularly believed to come from laget om (around the team), which goes back to the Viking custom of passing around a shared drink, each person contentedly sipping, it is actually derived from laghum (according to common sense). One of Sweden’s most well-known proverbs is Lagom är bäst, literally “the right amount is best” but often translated as “enough is a good as a feast.” See also: hygge.

WEB

1. From the brain trust at GQ, 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read (and 21 you should read instead)…with a little something to irritate everyone.

2. The New New York Times Twitter account tweets words as they appear in the New York Times for the first time. Great fun to follow despite the occasional “firsts” that are misspellings || Related: NYT Minus Context, posting often surreal verbatim bits from the New York Times || See also, more Twitter fun: Fake Library Stats

3. With pictures this powerful, I can’t imagine what experiencing the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice would feel like.

4. Even if just browsing them as nerdy eye-candy, Xenographics (“weird but (sometimes) useful charts”) are great.

5. Choose Your Own Adventure books are being adapted into interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Movies.

6. Two examples of large scale book art made their way to me this week…and they are astounding! → Alicia Martin’s Biografias Book Sculptures and Matej Kren’s “book cell”, which could come straight out of my head.

7. Inspired by this NYT article, I gave the peanut butter and pickle sandwich another try. And…they were right. Except in dissing the bread and butter pickle’s delectable suitability.

8. Can Handwriting be Copyrighted? Well, no. But using the names of celebrities could have been a problem.

9. Some great art this week: Seung Hoon Park’s woven photos & Mimi Choi’s Makeup Artistry & Kate Kato’s paper sculpture

10. Today in 1852, the first edition of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus is published. Originally “only” 15,000 words, the current 7th International Edition contains more than 325,000 words and phrases. Highly recommended: The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus, an ultra-readable biography of Roget, a driven, eccentric polymath, inventor of the slide-rule and, umm, frolicsome bachelor who was compelled to categorize just about everything starting at the age of eight. In fact, he intended his thesaurus to be not just a categorization of words, but of the world’s ideas.

WATCH/WITNESS

► Dirty Computer - an emotion picture* by Janelle Monáe || Incidentally, the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams television series is mostly a forgettable, anemic Black Mirror imitation…but Janelle Monáe’s turn as an android factory representative was extraordinary.

WHAT!?

► Fresh Guacamole by PES. The shortest film (1 minute, 40 seconds) ever nominated for an Oscar.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Nobokov is mystical. Thanks for mentioning. People hate Lolita now because of the subject. I guess I want people to see it as more than that without disregarding what’s in it.”

• Reader G.: "Thanks for posting that Kit Kat story, it’s so interesting - it reminded me of this I read last week: Is the Chinese Language a Superstition Machine? How ambiguity in language can create unique taboos..

• Reader D.: “Mayracha. That’s probably a Japanese Kit Kat, too…”

• Reader B.: “If you have the time, you should see this: Prague Astronomical Clock - 600th Anniversary Show. ¶ This is not the official video, but I like this one better.”

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: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief – the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say ‘patter’ intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.”

—Vladimir Nabokov
—from Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

WORD(S)

frottage /FRAW-tawzh/. noun. Taking a rubbing from a textured surface, such as from a gravestone. Sexually touching or rubbing, while clothed, against someone. From French frotter (rub, scrub, scrape, caress).

“It glowed, an eerie, mechanical hatchery, replete with all the secret trip levers of an ingenious Max Ernst frottage.” (Richard Powers)

“His hand slides slowly down the pole, touching her fingers, so she bids her fingers retreat. He chases, they bump again, she retreats farther. Their hands slide down, all without eye contact. One of many daily contests here. Beware of frottage. Readjust your balance at every lurch. If you don’t know what time it is, wait for a peek when he changes his grip.” (Colson Whitehead)

“He riffles through his drawer, handing me one last ‘curiosity object,’ an English pamphlet describing every conceivable sexual act, beginning with frottage…” (Malena Watrous)

WEB

1. Some amazing engineering, ancient and most contemporary.

2. My whole life is research into this → Sitting Too Much Can Change Your Brain & Impact Your Memory, A New Study Says

3. Every once in a while, a crossword puzzle scratches an itch. A good, free bet: Will Nediger, who posts an original, “erudite, witty idie puzzle” every Monday.

4. SkyKnit: When knitters teamed up with a neural network

5. Lu Xinjian’s City DNA series: complex abstract art based on views from Google Earth using colors based on the city and national flags of each city.

6. I knew Kit Kats were popular in Japan because I’ve tried some of their regional variations. But now I know why.

7. Mayochup is a thing. I can’t wait for Mustaise or Mayotard.

8. Grammar gripes: why do we love to complain about language?

9. Of course an air conditioning company would create a fascinating look at 20 Incredible Ways Animals Keep Cool. And I learned the word (a)estivation.

10. Today in 1922, novelist, poet and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov is born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Though English was Nabokov’s second language he was one of its finest craftsman with a penchant for dazzling wordplay and verbal puzzles that reward multiple readings. I don’t think you can go wrong with Nabokov, but if my recommendation matters, Lolita (so underestimated and misunderstood) or Pale Fire are the best places to start.

WATCH/WITNESS

Prince - Nothing Compares 2 U official video.

WHAT!?

10 Satirical Covers for the Terrible Books You Can’t Get Away From: Imaginary cover designs for the worst clichés in publishing.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “Another fine word-hoard! ¶ That Powers interview made me deeply happy. I need to catch up with his latest novels. I loved Galatea and Plowing the Dark. Had lunch with him once – brilliant, generous, kind man.”

• Reader S.: "Thanks so much for the link to the Richard Powers interview. I have Generosity: An Enhancement on my desk, out from the library, hoping to get to it soon. And now a new one, The Overstory.
  The interview was worth it for this insight alone:

‘I believe the reason for that retrenchment into the personal is that we have all completely habituated to the first tenet of commodity-individualism: meaning is entirely something we make for ourselves. We have absorbed that belief so completely it is impossible for most of us even to imagine that there might be other possibilities. But there is, of course, a meaning of and for trees, a meaning to the hugely interconnected living world that cares very little for human meaning.’

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: http://katexic.com/.