Today I learned about Müllerian mimicry, “in which species with strong defences evolve to resemble one another. By mimicking similarly coloured species, the warning signal to predators is shared, causing them to learn more quickly at less of a cost to each of the species.”
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Fernando Pessoa
Today I learned about Henry Wickham, an “explorer” and braggart who, in 1876, smuggled rubber seeds out of Brazil to Kew Gardens in England, who in turn used them to grow rubber in Asia, collapsing the Brazilian economy: “The greatest act of biopiracy…maybe in history.”
That sad feeling I get when the person I‘m talking to has nothing to say that isn’t in the news? I’m finally understanding it as a call to compassion: we’re all so addled, trying so hard in the face of all this. If you have any mental/emotional space, please lend it to others.
At the wind’s mercy, \ Alone, each leaf will tremble; \ Together, they roar.
What if the highway is not an entitlement or a competition, but a joint agreement to facilitate the risky and trying business of travel, the way roads of all kinds tend to be?
Pierre’s insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people’s merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Part Four, Chapter XIX (I bet that reads badass in the Russian)
Paul Simon: Late in the Evening, 1980. pandora.app.link/9cPOt3LPu…
Prolepsis (n) - The representing of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so. As in he was a dead man before he entered.
It is decidedly difficult to tell a lie when you don’t know the truth.
Péter Esterházy, from this article full of his amazing sentences
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.
Bertrand Russel, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930, as mentioned in this Aeon article.
My favorite six word story was written by Kurt Cobain:
Here we are now entertain us.
Today, after hearing Journey’s “Faithfully” on the radio, I went into my old mp3 library and rediscovered Girl Talk’s amazing album “Feed the Animals,” which is just…wow. For extra fun, follow along with the sample list on the wiki.
Finished “Abel and Cain” by Gregor von Rezzori / “The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land” by Thomas Asbridge / “Gingerbread” by Helen Oyeyemi / “Congo” by David van Reybrouck / “Inherent Vice” by Thomas Pynchon (again) / “I Hotel” by Karen Tei Yamashita / “The Invented Part” by Rodrigo Fresán / been filling empty time rereading “Seiobo There Below” by Lazlo Krasznahorkai / currently reading “El Mysterio Nadal” by A. B. / “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy (for #tolstoytogether) / and “The History of Herodotus” as well Lapham’s Quarterly.
It don’t look like a lot, but it’s thousands and thousands of pages worth, not counting all the reading I do for work.
Heres an excerpt from a fascinating speech by Republican Senator Charles Sumner in 1872, deriding President Ulysses S Grant for being “first in war, first in nepotism” during his first term. Grant of course won re-election anyway, with a pro-Grant newspaper accusing Sumner of crawling “bedaubed and bedraggled in the slime of our curbstone politics,” demonstrating once again that there’s nothing new under the sun, and that among the more notable changes over the last 150 years is the impoverishment of the vocabulary used by American politicians and propaganda.
Sometimes I like to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and imagine what Indiana Jones would have passed the time thinking about on that long, wet trip across the Mediterranean, clinging to the conning tower of a U-boat.
I can’t be the only one who frequently confuses Maynard James Keenan and John Maynard Keynes, right? I mean… it’s understandable. Right?
A Public Space has long (and patiently) kindled my engagement with the human experience, and this is no exception: lets read #tolstoytogether. Yes, of course I’m doing it.
My fidget spinner is actually a rocking chair, a beer, and a book.
I found these portraits in the attic of the house my wife just inherited, under four inches of blown cellulose insulation, wrapped in brittle newspapers dated 1965. The gentleman pictured, Éteinne Jambon, once owned the land on both sides of our street here in Golden Meadow, Louisiana (long story, another time perhaps). He is said to have been washed into the gulf during the 1893 Chenier Caminada hurricane, where a ship bound for New Orleans found him floating on a roof (of course, he spoke only French). Once he got to New Orleans he managed to pantomime and improvise and hitch and hustle his way all the way back down the bayou, where he discovered that he was the only member of his family who survived. Every Jambon from Golden Meadow today is thus related to this man. Not sure exactly who the woman is yet. We’ve given these to our neighbor, of course, being as how she’s a Jambon.
This is a great summary of New York Apartment, an online art project commissioned by The Whitney that just absorbed a surprising portion of my evening.
What if one day wearing a face mask in public becomes so common that facial recognition is abandoned as a surveillance technology? Dystopias are jealous, after all.
Sitting at my kitchen table drinking beer and looking up all the different Cajun words for “drunk” in my trusty Dictionary of Louisiana French. Happy Mardi Gras from South Louisiana, where people have been tchaquéed for days now!
On this day in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the incarceration of 112,000 Japanese Americans in prison camps.
In a world where everyone shouts as loudly as they can every last thing that crosses their minds, the most radical thing one can do is be quiet and listen and do the work without stopping to advertise it.
(I find I’m reading for shorter stretches of time these days because I keep getting distracted by new words)
Check out this fantastic word: autochthonous au·toch·tho·nous (ô-tŏk′thə-nəs) adjective: 1. Originating or formed in the place where found; indigenous: autochthonous rocks; an autochthonous people; autochthonous folk tales. (American Heritage Dictionary App)
They call it a remote control cause it’s always far away from wherever you are.
Sometimes I’m upset that I didn’t grow up to be a lexicologist, not in the least because1 the idea has only recently occurred to me.
I Don’t Need Anything From Here
Pro tip: Everyone might seem afraid of everyone else but most everybody is actually super nice.
I love the heavy way it rains in South Louisiana. The air gets so thick and wet that it collapses into a thunderstorm, but the drops don’t land with the exhausted plop common to inland thunderstorms. In any season, the rain descends from the sky insistently. It’s overbearing at times. It demands attention; defy it dry and you’ll be soaking wet in ten seconds, easy. In a neighborhood of metal roofs, the roar can seem deafening, but then it will crescendo as water accumulates on the street like snow. There’s always water everywhere anyway. In any season it makes me thankful for shelter, three feet off the ground, where I’m damp, but in a broader sense, dry. Coastal swamp rain.
Today while researching ways to get oil out of an old wood chest, I ran across this helpful thread on the Practical Machinist forums and fell down an amazing rabbit hole over there. Reminded me of this: My Safe Space in a Polarized Internet Is an Off-Road Truck Community Forum.
Today I learned that oropolitics is the use and abuse of mountaineering for political purposes. The most notable example of which culminated in the Siachen conflict.
In case you, like me, are not at all interested in getting any work done for the rest of the day, check out the British Library’s Georeferencer, which overlays historical maps onto a zoomable, pannable modern world map. You know, for comparison.
Events in themselves are not so interesting to me as the conditions that led to the events. These conditions are often quite commonplace, and yet full of what is imminent. Immanent and imminent.
David Goldblatt, from this Places Journal article
The whole usefulness of education consists only in the memory of it, for just as having heard something does not profit one who cannot understand, likewise having understood is not valuable to one who either will not or cannot remember.
Hugh of Saint-Victor, Chronicle (c. 1130)
Why, yes, I did get a new Lapham’s Quarterly in the mail earlier this week: “Memory.” Having a ball.
In true reality, there is nothing but relationships.
One of my favorite acts of early technoanarchy, the Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion, occurred on this day in 1987. The perpatrators were never identified.
The movers and shakers depend on the visions of the dreamers: those for whom the world is real are nothing without the others for whom the world is an idea: the two have to work together to reshape the chaos into a world we can live in.
On this day in 1907, railroad engineer Jesús García saved the entire town of Nacozari de García by driving a burning train full of dynamite six kilometers away before it could explode. Hence the town’s name.
Today I learned that in 1831, French satirical artist Charles Philipon “published a drawing of the king’s head, metamorphosing in four stages to a rotting poire (pear-head), also French slang for ‘fool’ or ‘simpleton.’ Philipon was hauled into court and, as legend has it, avoided prison by demonstrating the resemblance—of king to pear—to the jury, by means of sketching and (very likely) verbal panache. He was acquitted of the charge of defamation.”
That’s a win!
Back at it: Finished “Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa” by David Livingstone / finished “Calligraphy Lesson” by Mikhail Shishkin / finished “Vaseline Buddha” by Jung Young Moon / finished “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming” by Laszlo Krasznahorkai / finished “Blood Sisters” by Kim Yideum / finished “Muslim: A Novel” by Zahia Rahmani / finished “The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree” by Shokoofeh Azar / re-read “The Scatter Here is too Great” by Bilal Tanweer / re-read “Life: A Users Manual” by Georges Perec / currently reading “Abel and Cain” by Gregor von Rezzori and “The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land” by Thomas Asbridge / I’ve decided listing periodicals and articles hoarded in my Pocket account is cheating / and I’m not listing “on deck” books anymore because I always change my mind anyway 📚
Autumn thing
Today I also learned that Standard Oil founders John D Rockefeller and William Rockefeller Jr. were sons of snake oil salesman William A Rockefeller Sr. aka Dr. Bill Levingston.
Today I learned about Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire
Advertisements do not exist to inform you, they exist to sell you something. They are carefully designed to short circuit the parts of your brain that evaluate information; ads are form of propaganda. NEVER let an advertisement tell you what to think. Be mindful, be vigilant!
Today I learned that Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the flight that crashed and killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens in 1959.
You know, people say that things move faster nowadays, but Napoleon’s empire only existed for ten years.
When dogs wake up do they know they were dreaming?
Today I learned about…Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
The Accidental Planners: An inspiring attempt at community centered redevelopment in Berlin.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
-Epictetus
What’s the point of art? This is wonderful potential explanation. I’m sold.
This evening, in search of a particular quote from one of my favorite novels, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” describing Baton Rouge as “the whirlpool of despair,” I found myself slumming morbidly in the comments on Goodreads (AKA the Yelp of literature), where a frequent complaint was the total repulsiveness of the main character, Ignatius. Putting aside the amazing fact that many of the one-star reviews read like they could have been written by Ignatius (as this post also likely reads by now, but that’s the genius of the book, right?), the expectation that characters should be appealing reminded me about this great essay on The Dehumanizing Politics of Likability.
This list of terms of venery (the collective name for a group of animals) is often pleasantly alliterative and even quite poetic at times.
This article about early 20th century landscape architect Martha Brookes Hutcheson is really interesting. Hell of an inspiring woman, y’all, with lots to teach us still, about more than landscapes.
On this day in 1859, Joshua A. Norton of San Francisco proclaimed himself Norton I, Emporer of the United States. Where have all our visionary madmen gone? They’re still here, but, in our insecurity, we ignore them (or banish them), and elevate the facile instead.
A forest in a stadium. Love this and everything it speaks.
Peppers
It never gets dark in the city so the people go blind.
![mp-photo-alt[]=mp-photo-alt[]=](https://www.restlesslens.me/uploads/2019/2ee0e57290.jpg)
On this day in 1914, the last known passenger pigeon, Martha, died in Cincinnati.
Why Epicurean ideas suit the challenges of modern secular life
If you’re the guy who calls the baseball game someone else owns your voice.
Finished re-reading Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” / finished the third book of al-Shidyaq’s “Leg Over Leg” / finished “The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery PIke, Volume 2” by Pike himself / finished “The Geography of Rebels” by Maria Gabriela Llansol / finished “The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers” by Fouad Laroui / finished “Voroshilovgrad” by Serhiy Zhadan / finished “Mephisto’s Waltz: Stories” by Sergio Pitol / finished “The Awakening of the Soul” by Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Mali Ibn Tufayl / have taken to loving thumbing through “Use the Right Word: A Modern Guide to Synonyms” (1968) / read hundreds of articles online / a couple issues of Paris Review / really enjoying an assortment of open access scientific journals / and I’ve recently discovered how amazing “Lapham’s Quarterly” is / currently reading “Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa” by David Livingstone (who has thus far turned out to be somewhat more open minded than I’d expected) / also currently reading “Calligraphy Lesson” by Mikhail Shishkin / on deck is “Grant” by Ron Chernow / “Vaseline Buddha” by Jung Young Moon / and probably a reread of “Seiobo There Below” by Laszlo Krasznahorkai / theres so much to read (and I’m a little embarrassed that this appears to be the extent of my reading for the last six months). Gotta get back at it.
Amazing thrown together dinner, or Saturday’s shrimp boil leftovers? You can have both!
Today I learned about…ergodocity
Ask yourself: are you reading your statistical models right? What if economists aren’t?
Maybe, just maybe, the problem is that everyone is always yelling.