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Public Key

npub1eshu978jvr5p6hpu2yz52x8ddydq7a38qmprk3u0vfrv7rrs43ws44wk4a

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvct7zlrexp6qats79zp29rrkkjxs0wcnsds3mg78ky3k0p3c2chgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntycm6q9

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Last Notes

2026-08-24 08:49:17 CEST

Hans Memling. The Man of Sorrows in the Arms of the Virgin, 1475/79.
Have you ever wondered why many Christian images feature tools like hammers, pliers, saws and nails just sort of gratuitously tacked on? It's Arma Christi, and it's very weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arma_Christi
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/117/149/138/046/505/109/original/f266a29e446d8ccf.jpg

2026-08-15 16:16:18 CEST

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nice. Thank you.
This older film might also interest you, similar themes:
https://youtu.be/zbXBg7I7MQc

2026-08-15 08:59:07 CEST

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A related story:
I grew up around farms. I absorbed many lessons from the elders without ever fully becoming aware of them as facts in themselves to learn. They were just always there by example, like how to plant a potato eye, pick okra, sharpen a knife, herd a goat, can a tomato or pluck a chicken.
Later as a grown man I was installing example gardens for urban schools in a poor area of Miami...
1/3

2026-08-15 08:30:03 CEST

This is a reminder to myself to patiently do the work of education:
Just because I've known something deeply for 20 or 30 or 40 years, even to the point that I take it for granted or am bored with it, it doesn't mean that a kid of 18 has ever heard of it, until I myself tell them. History has to be taught all over again to every single generation as brand new information, or it will be erased. This applies especially to marginalized communities whose story is not taught in public schools.

2026-08-12 05:18:02 CEST

Rain feels like something we recall from another era and try to explain to our children who just shrug sympathetically without any understanding of what, or how useful, it was.

2026-08-11 15:33:43 CEST

Europeans, we need to appreciate & defend what we have. Americans... well, it's just not working:
"[USA] without insurance, a colonoscopy could range from $1,250 to more than $4,000. A colonoscopy screening generally costs less than a diagnostic colonoscopy, which includes a biopsy or excision..."
A no-insurance pay-at-the-counter colonoscopy with excision & biopsy in Italy today costs €368. Without biopsy it's €318. With any European national health insurance, it's all covered, of course.

2026-08-05 09:18:56 CEST

Peter Blume. The Rock, 1944-48.
It seems that we have come full cycle in the 80 years since he painted this alternately macabre and hopeful vision of reconstruction by our forebears. We are again busy destroying the world they built.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/117/038/263/182/441/895/original/18d86ed0f710f41b.jpg

2026-08-04 22:30:49 CEST

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damn poor car design. I did the same thing on a Ford 3 months ago. It was sore for weeks. I'm so sympathetic! Keep an eye on that pumpnoggon and I hope it goes away fast.

2026-08-04 08:02:01 CEST

Do fedi folks have advice about wildfire smoke air filtration, both indoors and masks?
We are in an area under threat. We'd like to prepare but not go overboard, as ultimately the plan is to evacuate, so any measures here are emergency only and temporary.
Our minimum zone to filter is 35m². 1.0 micron seems possible, but is 2.5-3.0 good enough? Coway and Levoit brands home models are our current picks, but any other guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks.
#AskFedi

2026-08-03 22:50:55 CEST

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"Hitler had told his generals on 22 August, "I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

2026-08-03 22:21:27 CEST

Leonora Carrington. Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945.
This article is a good artistic assessment of a work which is almost always discussed in terms of gross financial worth first:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/leonora-carrington-les-distractions-de-dagobert-2718627
I will only add that they elide the period of her nervous breakdown and abandonment by Ernst with a few glib words, when the reality was horrific sexual violence. She undertook an amazing rebirth which informs her later feminist activism in Mexico.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/117/033/384/401/873/007/original/e329be1546ea2617.jpg

2026-08-03 09:42:36 CEST

Franciszek Honiok
Famously he was the first victim of WW2, but we wouldn't know anything about him, or the origin of the false-flag Nazi operation that murdered him and started the war, except for the Nuremberg Trials. He has no memorial and his body was never found. How many others remain unknown? And how much like the regimes we're familiar with the today to plant such false flags.
[This was prompted by a TIL post someone deleted earlier and I wish they hadn't!]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciszek_Honiok

2026-08-02 11:05:58 CEST

If justice can't be brought in a whole generation it's not justice. What is with Sarkozy's trial taking 17 years and the Bologna bombing taking 45!? Never mind Trump waiting out his investigations til he was back in office again. We have been duped by legal systems that serve only themselves, while calling themselves justice.
All of Nuremberg took 3 months to start and 54 weeks to finish.

2026-07-31 08:09:26 CEST

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further I think they were making the point that Africa doesn't matter to them one whit. "Taking full responsibility" as a badge of pride.

2026-07-31 06:21:10 CEST

Yesterday was a vision of the future: 38c at rush hour in a traffic jam on a narrow sunk channel of controlled-access black asphalt highway, each car a single fragile airconditioned bubble in a cauldron, churning out toxins & rippling heat. 1 jam turned into 4. 1 hour became 2. I started to run out of gas. Cell connectivity flickered. Then I had a random health emergency (better now thx, but I was not okay to drive). It was the 2nd time in 6 days that heat became life-threatening.
#ClimateDiary

2026-07-26 19:39:51 CEST

If you've traveled Italy you may be as mindblown as I am by this #Geography trivia.
Because "the boot" is set at an angle to the cardinal directions, you can get all turned around!
E.g., Florence is directly south of Bologna and they're just 1 hour apart.
Milan is due north of Sardinia.
Venice, Rome and Palermo are all aligned vertically on the same longitude.
All of Puglia is east of Trieste.
Bonus: Northern Italy and SW France are at roughly the same latitude as Montréal and Mongolia.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/987/462/082/830/598/original/e366070b9b7bf7c7.jpg

2026-07-20 17:54:13 CEST

Cheap as they seem to be, could we not just groupsource and buy our own congresspeople outright?

2026-07-18 09:47:22 CEST

This will make you so angry. No wonder Albania is rioting.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/939/866/423/558/630/original/1dc54c91c661f300.mp4

2026-07-17 08:57:37 CEST

I visited two underground sites yesterday, one an abandoned marble mine, the other a 1900 year old underground nymphaeum complex later adapted by Christians, with the paint still on the walls. In both places the ambient air temp dropped to less than 17c instantly upon descent, and I felt the future of my species, with mixed emotions. We will have to learn to dig again.

2026-07-15 13:50:29 CEST

I walked in to ask for an appointment and the barber said, you know what, I can squeeze you in now, I have just 12 minutes. So the dude laid into my hair and without so much as a "how do you want it?" just cut it plum off! To the nubbins, mowed it down. And you know what, I'm going to like this. At the end he squirted some gel on his palms, wiped over the carnage, and like magic it took perfect shape, good as it's ever looked. Well done!

2026-07-13 15:21:15 CEST

There's an odd doublethink in our era: It's often the same people who bewail current-day imperialism, colonialism, militarism & the manosphere, who also like to play videogames based on feudal slavery, admire the ruins of medieval castles & churches, and debate the history of Rome & Gengis Khan. Maybe the older a thing gets the more sanitized it becomes, but the origin is in fact the same violence. I suppose that's just a bleaching of bones.

2026-07-13 08:19:25 CEST

Someone (you know who you are!) recently told me that dahlias are considered "vulgar" and so now every time I see one I want to yell Hubba-Hubba!

2026-07-12 20:55:41 CEST

Fridge-cold Pappa al Pomodoro on a hot summer evening, always a huge hit.
(It's not cold for long outside the fridge and on the plates, I assure you.)

2026-07-09 10:12:46 CEST

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thank you for sharing these. "A timber baron" - the irony

2026-07-07 11:29:47 CEST

https://thegrimhistorian.substack.com/p/has-america-crossed-the-asshole-threshold
Worth reading

2026-07-06 08:17:58 CEST

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How so many major historic personalities accomplished all they did and died by age of 50 is another mystery.

2026-07-06 08:14:59 CEST

I spent the predawn reading about Byzantine Empress Irene today, i.e., Irène of Athens (d. 803). I'm a buff on the Pornocracy and felt a need for more background, which I was sure would be more staid, but no! To say that every single thing in the west today is predicated on her life and decisions is not an understatement. Sine qua non. Charlemagne's crowning quite literally was a direct misogynist reaction to her rule as the first female independent Roman Emperor. Plus tons of feuding eunuchs.

2026-07-05 15:53:05 CEST

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[2/2]
Someone asked me last night if I was devastated by the recent losses from the heat on my terrace. At first I didn't know what they meant, but then I realized that's probably how most people think of gardening, as static win or loss. But I tend to think of it as a story in seasons, a community always evolving, a work forever in progress. There's no finality but constant change, like a painting that's never finished, layer over layer of striving and yes sometimes glories, which come and go.

2026-07-05 15:45:08 CEST

This beauty decided to finally grace us this morning. There's a story here: I bought it for 10 cents in a close-out bin in a grocery store checkout line in April. It was far too late to sink it and I thought it wouldn't come up, but it finally did. And then I thought, well, but it won't bloom, but it eventually has. It's not the blue-black color advertized on the package, of course, but I didn't expect it to be, and it's perfect as it is, in red...
[1/2]
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/867/658/644/642/765/original/086e8b13c44d91e7.jpg

2026-06-28 11:06:22 CEST

#Recipe
For overgrown squash & other vegs, one solution is tajine but an easier one is to stuff and roast them. If you don't want to go to all the trouble of real stuffing, and maybe even frying bread crumbs in butter seems too long or heavy, you can just mix bread crumbs with olive oil salt parmesan spices in a bowl, hollow and wipe the vegs with oil and salt, and loosely pile on the bread mixture. Broil hot until brown & the vegs are cooked but still firm. Adjust to your own taste! Enjoy.

2026-06-27 08:59:30 CEST

Deserted city under the broiler.
We haven't seen anything like this since covid began.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/382/838/975/original/3e7dee43c637a0ac.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/039/923/877/original/7bd65444dab554a9.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/216/970/469/original/b1a5d570998e1af5.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/761/796/332/402/original/06bdff5a533c687b.jpg

2026-06-18 15:25:56 CEST

I don't know about y'all but it seems like I'm living in a world where most people and companies are not doing the job I pay them to do.
So god bless the barber who just cuts hair, without delay, app, upsell, AI, IPO, lack of skill, substitution, franchising, tracking, loyalty card, conversation, updates to terms & conditions, or scheduling/staffing errors. That ol' geezer is going to get my business til he's dead.

2026-06-14 15:40:25 CEST

How perfect is this water on the plumbago today!?
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/748/739/161/635/377/original/923441076d15acef.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/748/739/384/667/315/original/faad5e4841da0778.jpg

2026-06-07 17:53:34 CEST

Ciambotta season began today at my house.
#Recipe
https://thisitaliankitchen.com/ciambotta/
(Don't worry about proportions, additions or substitutions. That's the whole point! Flat beans, fennel, even chickpeas and salami - it's just a simple fast peasant summer stew, and imo generally more forgiving than ratatouille or caponata.)

2026-06-05 22:04:52 CEST

The light was only like this for a few short minutes. No regrets.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/699/287/412/692/326/original/7eb4cf916efde3ea.jpg

2026-06-02 15:49:29 CEST

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this is a gorgeous photo. Thank you for sharing. I have a special emotional connection to these flowers not worth going into here but it made me choke up with sentimental joy remembered. Thanks again.

2026-05-29 19:34:07 CEST

A friend just told me what she's being asked to pay for an assisted-living care facility in the USA. It's literally 11 times what I imagined as the top cost possible. I'm going to start parking American old people in wheelchairs on my porch and serving martinis and hors-d'œuvres. I'll get top ratings and they will have a better time.
More seriously it brings up so many issues, from quality of life to impactful living and legacy, but most of all the insane cost of medical care for profit.

2026-05-25 09:13:37 CEST

Tis the season:
A few years ago someone told me that it's not an accident that cyclists hog the roads and move out into the lane and don't give way to cars. Far from being simply obnoxious it's because it is safer to be visible and seen in the center of the road than to be side-swiped riding the shoulder. This completely changed my perspective. With the way people drive all summer, I feel almost protective now when I have to slow down to a crawl for cyclists. The king of patience!

2026-05-21 09:13:10 CEST

I'm sorry but if someone steals a wristwatch worth €700,000 at the Festival of Cannes, my concern is minimal and you don't need to feature it on the news. It must be intended more as human interest at that point, rather than a crime, a version of lifestyles of the rich and famous, and we are meant to root for the thief.

2026-05-15 17:45:12 CEST

https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/357/803/816/316/original/9e743c1ed1768a8f.jpg

2026-05-15 16:19:01 CEST

Like the back of my hand. Like the back of my hand I have not seen in a long time...
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/014/130/377/201/original/5f3c51c27c9b3c4d.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/014/242/031/218/original/8bc8842c6a429447.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/014/411/592/842/original/2c6431cfe2bfe252.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/014/483/715/967/original/f7859c9e873f647e.jpg

2026-05-15 13:58:41 CEST

My old friend the Devil.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/457/928/698/917/original/2b6a9708ed9ea013.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/459/696/507/217/original/1d30dd0b7c7f6219.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/460/836/491/441/original/74192b2cbfdb4bd4.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/461/326/233/267/original/70e6a9d81f334f44.jpg

2026-05-04 09:39:22 CEST

Kees van Dongen. Woman with a Large Hat, 1906.
1906 was quite a year for boobs in painting. Why women's bare chests went suddenly so viral that year is hard to say. I speculate that old strictures had collapsed, Greek Revival was having a revival, women's lib was growing and a new generation of rowdy young post-impressionists (not all men) were looking hard for challenges and shock value.
I post it today because someone marked a breast as CW yesterday and I don't want us to go back.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/515/125/549/783/841/original/5e2016876fd1f979.jpg

2026-05-02 16:57:46 CEST

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A generation later Thomas Biggers was even more overt in the layers of symbolism. If you've been around me much you know that he's one of my favorites, and this is my favorite of all.
Thomas Biggers. Shotgun, Third Ward # 1, 1966.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/505/561/602/486/145/original/de584048d1ce9b22.jpg

2026-05-02 16:52:42 CEST

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I share your wondering. This was right after his wife died and of courae WW2 (like the Wikipedia article describes, he had a very hard time) and right before he was committed to an asylum for the rest of his life, so there could be a combination of forces at work, but I like to think that he knew exactly what he was doing. It makes me want to go look more closely at others of his works, to see if there are clues there, too, to deeper meanings.

2026-05-02 08:02:57 CEST

William H. Johnson. Portrait of Woman in Rocking Chair, ~1945.
There a A LOT going on here - in paint, in abstraction, in self-taught vs. naive, in African survival and subversion in America, in balance and contrast, in matriarchy and serenity, in atavistic satisfaction. I have stared at it for two days.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/503/431/994/128/101/original/4d99147a8ed3677d.jpg

2026-04-29 20:57:25 CEST

Poussin. The Adoration of the Golden Calf, 1633-4.
I challenge you to find one single example in his oeuvre that does not remind you of a party you vaguely remember from the 1990s.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/489/504/627/702/486/original/a311acf6fe206b0f.jpg

2026-04-27 06:43:43 CEST

My own research leads me again and again to put any money I'm spending on vitamins and supplements into real whole diversified quality nutrient-rich food, which absorbs better and has other corollary benefits at the same time (plus the pleasure of eating well).
We've never seen an era with more access to diverse foods. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

2026-04-26 17:27:37 CEST

Drove some distance yesterday to a preregister-only event advertized as an "unusual plant sale." Upon arriving there was a ropeline like a nightclub to scan the email QR admission code (I used a burner email) in front of a dense hipster-bland urban gallery space. It was crowded and everyone else was under 30. Most importantly there was a big banner that said the only way to pay at checkout was by a new cash app called Scannipayy or something. There was a live DJ, a popup... Cont'd 1/2

2026-04-23 09:26:45 CEST

I'm seeing a lot of verbs misused today, mostly present continuous when other tenses are more accurate:
"Tim Cook is destroying his legacy."
~Tim Cook destroyed his legacy.
"The USA is becoming fascist."
~The USA became fascist.

2026-04-20 08:52:45 CEST

I add 3 bay leaves and at least 1 clove to just about everything savory I ever make. Sometimes I even leave the bay leaves on the stem for extra flavor. People who don't believe "laurier-sauce" adds flavor are inexplicable!
I've even come to wonder if, like cilantro tolerance, it might be a genetic thing, because I get such fantastic sensations from it when others seem to not even notice.
#Recipe

2026-04-08 07:57:00 CEST

It's not Trump. He's just a symptom and figurehead. It's the Americans. They are not going to fix this. They are every one going to work this morning to keep it going. They're filling out their taxes to pay for it.

2026-04-07 10:21:43 CEST

Trying to explain to a foreigner that there's practically nothing in Europe that will hurt you in the wild, they get all excited before you can add that it's because humans have obliterated every possible threat. There's nothing *left* that can hurt you.
We're down to hornets, hogweed, a few rare mushrooms, and Lily of the Valley.

2026-04-02 15:12:59 CEST

The African immigrants who run my barbershop have a bonsai and somewhere they also found a small gold giraffe about the same height to graze it. I am endlessly charmed by this quirky tableau.

2026-03-24 10:54:57 CET

Someone is coming to visit me from the Western Hemisphere who was adamant about the Imperial System of measures, and so naturally I've been brushing up my arguments and sharpening my fangs. This debate has run through our entire lives. However the more I read about the 24-hour day and 12-month year and 60-minute hour and 60-second minute, the more their argument of human scale is self-evident. Like the French Revolution, I may just have to cede regarding useful measures of time. Touché.

2026-03-22 10:57:52 CET

As long as I'm in the bed no one can call it unmade.

2026-03-18 09:58:45 CET

Editor's note: One of the hallmarks of current AI/LLM writing is repetition or looping, which can look like fishing or begging, restatement, belaboring points, or reiteration (see what I did there?). One way to distinguish your own writing as superior is to say what you mean once, clearly and finally. Boil it down, clean it up, let it stand.
#Writing

2026-03-15 16:21:35 CET

Philip James de Loutherbourg. An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803.
Here is the very epitome of "staffage" in painting: Insignificant as they may seem, without those tiny human and animal actors for scale and drama, the effect of all the rest would be entirely lost. It's a word we don't use enough: staffage! Once you know it, you see it everywhere in action.
This is also early Romanticism, starting to push back hard against industrialization and the rational Enlightenment neoclassical.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/233/860/530/999/440/original/55c5a2ad04c53478.jpg

2026-02-06 06:22:29 CET

I'm looking for folk singers and musicians to pass on a song a friend wrote for Minnesota. Please dm.

2026-02-01 16:08:30 CET

Every day abroad is an adventure. Today it's explaining Bob Ross to a bunch of young video game set designers and... I might as well have thrown a ball of elemental phosphorus onto the table. They exploded in incandescent sizzling! "What, what, WHAT IS THIS???" I have either created magic or a monster. Why not both?

2026-01-31 08:37:33 CET

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:possum_blush:

2026-01-30 18:05:09 CET

I just want to say thank you to the Americans on here who have evidently made a concerted effort to start putting an F to specify when they are talking about Fahrenheit degrees.
I can't imagine what prompted the recent shift, but it makes a difference, it's clearer and respectful to the rest of the world, and I for one have noticed the change.

2026-01-30 10:39:49 CET

Anyone expecting the USA to have free, fair, uncontested elections at this point is being intentionally obtuse. If someone is building a battering ram in your front yard right in plain sight, it's unreasonable to believe they're not intending to use it on your door.
Before laboring to get out the vote, I think we might need to labor to get out the fash, sine qua non.

2026-01-25 16:42:30 CET

Just off a group call with Americans. Liberal New England older females, educated, some bgltq+... Wow. They still don't get it. They are talking about calling their Senators. They are talking about voting harder, impeaching Trump, and then "he'll have no choice, that's the law."
Oh dear. While one of their daughters adopted from China is refusing to go outside.
There's also a weird subtext of "I can always run to Canada/Europe" - like that option is taken for granted and they'd be welcomed.

2026-01-25 01:39:34 CET

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fyi it's on heavy rotation in Europe. Every detail. Often before they show up here or in the American press.

2026-01-24 10:19:37 CET

There was an unprecedented actual cyclone in the Mediterranean 2 days ago that caused billions in damage to heavily populated coastal areas most everyone has heard of if not been to personally (Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, etc.)
I mention it because big as it was, this event barely made the news. And because it's evidence that even if we are politically victorious in pushing back fascism, we still have the problem of climate change. Existently speaking it's far more important.

2026-01-24 10:04:39 CET

Alt-text images get more boosts because alt-text facilitates equal access, automatic translation, screen readers, low-bandwidth access, and searchability.
#AltText

2026-01-24 08:10:02 CET

One big change this week is we can stop having the constant conversation about whether it's really fascism.
Americans in general now seem awake to their real situation and how dire it is, already past the point of no return. Even my most die-hard "hands-across-the-aisle" liberal friend admitted it this week. She was the last holdout. She believed the courts or congress or the Dems would rise to help. She sees now we're way past that limit.

2026-01-21 09:38:54 CET

General Strike as a vector cartoon.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/932/179/175/761/749/original/5f0cc98897524a42.jpg

2026-01-19 15:24:05 CET

Paul Klee. The Last Still Life, 1940.
He died within months of the completion of this work, and today I learned that his tombstone is engraved with his credo:
"I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough."
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/922/196/280/287/634/original/081f00cc7e53fb00.jpg

2026-01-15 07:41:28 CET

Release the Epstein Files.

2026-01-13 10:48:42 CET

Please give Scrivener a free trial. I have this one writer friend who put it off for almost 2 years but after all my begging she finally relented last summer. Now she's a non-stop torrent of praise and thanksgiving, telling me how grateful she is for the recommendation. I didn't do anything except say what I had found: a writing program made for writers. (By the way, she's discovered several features I never knew about, and shared back with me.)
#Writing #Scrivener

2026-01-12 08:18:07 CET

Please Alt-Text your own images, thanks.
Searchability, translation, inclusion, explication.
#AltText

2026-01-10 12:52:48 CET

EPSTEIN.

2026-01-10 08:20:32 CET

When someone cuts down a fruit tree before its (relatively short) course of life is run, it makes me sad as few other things can. I know this comes from my grandmother, a specific event of her childhood, wherein the TVA seized and cleared their peach orchard for flooding just as it came into maturity. I've written about it, carried it as a myth, considered it from every angle. Those trees would have died naturally in 20 years, but in her grief they lived 70 more, and now on in me much longer.

2026-01-09 16:08:43 CET

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leave X now!

2026-01-09 10:18:39 CET

The capitalists themselves have dismantled the capitalist project. They've stolen too much.
If you have a day job, count up your past labor and costs and compare that to what you have today, and if what you have is secure, both investments and stable currency (they're undermining the money). If you are net in debt then the answer is obvious. But even if you are solvent, add in quality of life, like time, housing, food supply, and healthcare. You can see they've extracted you like a stripmine.

2026-01-05 14:00:18 CET

Please boost.
Once again, I'm putting out the call: Anyone with contacts among Mexican, Central/S. American, Caribbean or Indigenous voices who may want to contribute (paid) to an anthology on poison plants focusing this issue on DATURA (prose, experiences, science, ethnobotany, ritual, art, folklore, interviews or anything else of interest to subscribers), please contact me privately. We are looking for Western Hemisphere material. Thanks.
Image: Georgia O'Keeffe. Jimson Weed, 1932. #Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/842/592/095/924/873/original/966688ed25a671d9.jpg

2026-01-05 00:01:53 CET

Americans have tolerated too much at home without personally sacrificing anything to stop it, and now the deadly chaos is spilling over on the whole world, making it everyone's problem. Burning down your own house is one thing. Burning down the whole village is a different level of crime.
It's time to divest.

2026-01-04 22:27:37 CET

As a reminder, "Nutella kills orangutans!" (And also a lot of other wildlife, too.) It's owned by private mega-corp Ferrero, "one of the most secretive companies in the world," and Ferrero steadfastly refuses to switch out palm oil in its products, such as Nutella, even knowing the environmental cost. It's a huge consumer. So maybe buy another brand of spread, palm-oil-free? There's lots.

2026-01-03 18:47:45 CET

I'm assuming USians here are hearing it, but Europeans are enraged against the USA today in a way that hasn't happened before. Even normally moderate voices are posting things that I didn't think you could say in public. People are scorching tepid politicians and most importantly are calling for a Canada-style boycott of everything American, including against those who "didn't vote for Trump" but are now letting this chaos spill onto the rest of us through inaction. It's a palpable new anger.

2026-01-03 12:56:51 CET

Let's please stop misusing the word Luddite.
Read up on who they actually were and how 95% of us would have agreed with them. In fact it might be time to bring back some of their tactics.

2025-12-30 22:10:44 CET

A day's little treasures.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/992/075/425/original/f270ecfd80620069.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/914/968/616/original/4c5d5fc2f4854347.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/961/666/646/original/d641eba8c3aada58.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/551/018/759/614/original/2e8c7c53934a52f1.jpg

2025-12-28 21:56:43 CET

Scrapin' around the VR.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/175/852/384/540/original/80499bd71f7fb80e.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/061/307/631/original/b501671bdb50ec36.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/230/675/553/original/b298e2ac5eba6c81.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/392/415/176/original/edf9d4399830dd25.jpg

2025-12-25 21:37:48 CET

Paul Klee. Bird Wandering Off, 1926.
It's been a very foggy, wandering-off sort of day.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/782/105/821/905/760/original/db107410614cc715.webp

2025-12-23 15:24:24 CET

Ahmed Yacoubi. King Solomon's Ring, 1963.
Here's another artist whose life story reads like an adventure novel. He was discovered in Morocco by Paul & Jane Bowles, and then shot like a rocket through artistic high society worldwide. Of all his works which I've seen, this is the one that arrests me. Are these roots, shrapnel, vessels, neurons, heaped laundry? As the Wikipedia article mentions, he had a secret way of layering paint to create extraordinary depth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Yacoubi
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/769/287/588/907/393/original/3d0e2556dfeb3bcf.webp

2025-12-20 09:32:18 CET

Vuillard. Friends Around the Table, 1909.
1. There's no substitute for seeing art in person. Particularly as optical light & color theory pervaded painting, reproductions become harder and harder to get just right. Here's a painting that looks totally different depending on slight color adjustments in the repro.
2. We tend to miss it today but he was obsessed with 'modern' lighting in his designs, and I think that's the source of those pale blank glares often seen in this period.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/750/917/427/684/536/original/09e39b005b152176.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/750/917/447/135/659/original/db763e1719c1ef70.jpg

2025-12-19 18:24:04 CET

Where is all the Crème de Pruneaux disappearing to? It used to be cheap as dirt and in every store, but now I can barely find it.
Young people today don't eat prune cream?? I consider it a basic food group! Was it a generational glitch and I just happened to become addicted out of cycle right as the consumer-base died out?
I'm actually reading recipes about how to make it at home.

2025-12-07 19:10:36 CET

All the shrieking "If you don't like AI, don't use it, but quit trying to control others who do," is actually an ancient debate. It goes back to Hammurabi's Code and the Commandments of Ma'at: DO NOT POLLUTE THE COMMON WELL. It's the most ancient law we have. You can't pollute the river upstream and call it individual prerogative. Watch how fast you go down.

2025-12-07 18:54:40 CET

When I bombed the stairwell with a guerilla "interpretive" mini-Nativity Scene in an unused fusebox it was cool. What I did not expect was the retaliation... or cooperation? I came home tonight to find blinking stars lining the staircase and a small Christmas tree perched on the balustrade! I've been raised.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/679/558/998/962/690/original/dd07f208e7abcb49.jpg

2025-12-01 18:17:23 CET

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I sympathize. You rest now! I'm watching it in others now up close, and it's so hard.

2025-12-01 17:40:32 CET

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is that you? I salute you big! Big hugs.

2025-12-01 17:39:34 CET

I can't help but notice that I cook best when I'm depressed. Why is that? Sure as shootin', when I'm glum I start churning out the greatest hits, even when I don't feel like eating them myself. Is it because I go slower, am less distractible, or pickier? Or maybe it's an evolutionary adaptation to keep good friends close through hard times. They are eating well lately, with lots of warm smiles returning with the tupperware. That helps.

2025-12-01 17:28:10 CET

Americans are missing the cries of pain from public school teachers right now, and from what I can see it means they are quitting in droves, starting with the best first - from physical endangerment, lack of pay, and burnout from struggling in the middle against arbitrary and constantly changing metrics on the one hand and parents who never take their side on the other. It's a sad situation. There's no more important profession in the world and they're valued lower than just about anyone.

2025-12-01 10:59:53 CET

I started out trying to distinguish Greek Revival from Edwardian, soon got caught up in the history of English landscaping, and well, this seemed more interesting by far:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_List_of_Covent_Garden_Ladies

2025-11-29 19:52:30 CET

YouTube is Google. We have to get off it. All of it.

2025-11-28 09:55:02 CET

You know that Umberto Eco character in The Name of the Rose who speaks in many different Romance languages at once, all jumbled up? That's what it sounds like in our house every day: Poor-Man's Esperanto.
Thus fresh out of the gate this morning:
"Don' not mettre them boxes di cartone per il mio Presepe in your poubelle no anymore - merde, once again one time ho bisogno di all of them tutti !"
"Ahaokay. I'm agree."

2025-11-26 20:55:52 CET

As an American I was never charged extra at any park worldwide for being a foreigner.

2025-11-25 09:59:24 CET

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yes yes yes. These are exactly the lessons I hope we can all remember. All of that is still available if we just refuse to go back to their 'normal'.

2025-11-25 09:25:49 CET

I hate covid and don't believe it's over, but I want to say what's getting lost to history:
I'm grateful for the lockdowns in 2020. I spent months in seclusion and came out with the clearest mind I've ever had. In my case it was a blissful reset, however shadowed in fear and even as it wrecked my business.
It proved that whenever we want to, we can change the economy. It can be changed overnight. It already was. Neoliberal excuses are unmasked. It's one reason they support mass amnesia since.