a wily kernel coinage

(image by Steilos Faitakis via surlaterre dot me)

Horapollo.

"THE ANGEL that presided o’er my birth
Said 'Little creature, form’d of joy and mirth,
Go, love without the help of anything on earth.' "

William Blake

Ghosts & semi-ghosts.

"I am eternally grateful to Dorothy Day for conveying to me the nicest poetical compliment I have ever received. She had been in jail in the old Women’s Prison at Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue for protesting against air-raid warnings. There the prisoners got a shower once a week. It so happened that a poem of mine had recently appeared in The New Yorker, of which the last line ran: 'Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.' One of Dorothy Day’s co-in-mates was a whore who went off to her weekly shower quoting it. 'My God,' I thought, 'I haven’t written in vain.' " --W H Auden

How to clean a hat.

Jack Vance's Big Planet (& its sequel Showboat World) takes place on a planet that has "30 times Earth's volume" & only "one-third its specific gravity." I don't know if anyone has actually run the figures in the ensuing 60-odd years, but i get a radius of 1.92757321 times Earth & a mass of 2.38324146 for this redoubtable sphere. Its gravity works out to be 0.642524403. Clearly a metal-poor system, there are none quite so small among the known candidate stars; however, tau Ceti & Kapteyn's Star are in the ballpark...

For Stanislav Petrov Day.

congruent vocables

(via josh burdick photography)

Assessing the legacy. (via wood_s lot)

"from what we cannot hold the stars are made" --Merwin

Dreadpunk.

I decided to call 2002 AW197 "Untamoinen" & 2007 OR10 "Chalkis".

Music from Mathematics.

Paid $ 1.99 for gas; it hasn't been this cheap since 10/2010.

Tengwar for Icelandic.

(Aleppo, via theloquitor dot com)

My old nearby exoplanets list finally updated.

Cyber Cherokee thread.

molybdomancy

Obviously this is a planet that needs a name. I propose Boabdil.
While i am at it, i want to start calling 2014 MU69, Therion.
Still seriously nameless: 2002 AW197, 2007 OR10 (unless "Snow White").

Pharaoschlangen.

"The camera has spoken, and before it tongues and pens are powerless. No instrument hitherto devised has been a thousandth part as effective in the creation and propagation of instant myths..." --The Infernal Grove

Beta Pictoris b in motion.

Anagrams of "transneptunian": turnip antennas, stern nun pinata, nine pun tantras, insane punt rant, i unsnap entrant. Anagram of "uudenvuodentina": a dune duvet union. Anagrams of "molybdomancy": cymbal monody, clammy nobody, my candy bloom.

A Calendar for 55 Cancri f aka the "Purple Broccoli Moon" or Veedu (not so much Uca). A good illustration.

(via Josh Burdick photography via thescoopblog via facebook)

The name Tekton has been proposed for 2002 AW197.

lovecraft in brooklyn

"The bruises' runic tongues beneath the skin" --Whitehead

(via)

"In time, as Sir John [Masterman] shows, all the enemy agents in the United Kingdom were brought under control and turned round, so that, in effect, he and his colleagues were running the Abwehr's British service for them. My impression is that they ran it better, and transmitted higher-grade material, than ever the Abwehr would have been able to manage on its own account." --The Infernal Grove

Stupid Human Tricks.

(via In Search of Pagan Hollywood on Facebook)

Aegiphanic cacophanies.

"Only clowns and mystics ever speak the truth." --ibid

The other U2.

(via)

"...when I became a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's I was put in a room between Twiggy and the Burtons..." --ibid

gab agharta

(via)

     "Song

Down the river, down the lily, down and sing.
So still the hum, the tiny tick
Of frogs upon the lily; green tongues running,
Willow lisps a quiet wind.

Away and pebble down and sleep; the dream
Runs bare, and apple-hard and slow
The rich dark hair flows on the moon;
Necks bend to white, the long stems whisper. Sing,
And down; the lily darkly blows."

--Lorita Whitehead

The wisest steel man.

(via)

Rotisserie planets.

     "Oracular Time

In this oracular time I sense you prowl,
My glistered demon, saint upon the coals
That quake to ash beneath your waking feet.
IUn this oracular time, the darkness climbs
Beyond the highest rung; illimitable Grace,
All space is you and moves in muffled shriek.
In this oracular time, how dare I speak."

--ibid

"The Grasshopper Lies Heavy refers to Ecclesiastes 12:5 and the vanity of human existence."

Meme: The Future is not a first-person shooter.

"...he apparently spent his war years inventing—and possibly trying to realize—alternate post-war realities."

Meme: Your mythology is killing us.

The drink.

Main Street Middletown is burning. #ValleyFire pic.twitter.com/warvtI2f61

— Gadi Schwartz (@GadiNBCLA) September 13, 2015

Baroque Nation.

ardbeg aged in space

    "THE DESERT

'I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.' --Moby Dick

Fingers stiffening on a knife
Would carve in air an echo's face,
Would wrench the laughter from a rock,
From dead things in an empty place.

A star hung on a hollow wind
In answer, dares hands hold it still;
The desert, silent, taunts to birth
A Christ to rape the barren hill.

The stone shall bleed, the black sky burn
But when will the giant from slumber stride?
How long must we cringe in a pebble's leer,
Praising the mountain that watches us die?"

Lorita Whitehead, Last Poems (1962)

Wikipedia: List of animals with fraudulent diplomas.

The Eternal Nazi.

Wikipedia: List of inventors killed by their own inventions.

(pic by Alison Rogers Ramsey on facebook)

Crappy Taxidermy.

"Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass, or darkness to a Spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose." --The Infernal Grove

Wikipedia: List of sexually active popes.

On the canon.

(via etsy dot com)

Miekal And on Huffington Post.

lapoi pelxu ku'o trajynobli

(via @memizon via @HarryStephenKeeler)

Tensaia.

Sometimes i wonder if it's only bookstores that have such a high percentage of people who don't seem to have ever been in a bookstore before.

"Meaning that there is each of the answer may be 'raw Lojban status quo'."

"Last month brought the opening of a Lovecraft-themed “weird emporium and information bureau,” where you can buy “CTHULHU FHTAGN” t-shirts and “I AM PROVIDENCE” bumper stickers." --Philip Eil in The Atlantic (via aldaily)

Poem on the Lisbon Disaster.

Vulcan alphabet.

"The age of ecological awareness is an age of uncanniness, not a love and lighty place of total authenticity." --Tim Morton

"Although Olu Maintain’s hip hop flavored 419 anthem 'Yahoozee' has spawned numerous imitators, the song that really put the yahoo boys on the map as urban icons was the actor/comedian Nkem Owoh’s 'I Go Chop Your Dollar' (2005)." (via yeahalrightsoundsgood via afrofutuiristaffair on tumblr)

"This is a holy moment. The air is full of giant wings, and below our feet monsters writhe." --@RALaffertyTweet ("John Salt" [1985])

2014 MU69 needs a new name (& it's not "1110113Y").

Chinese pseudonym thread. Also: "Approximately 99% of the poets are professors."