( via / via )

"More and more rationalists and fellow-travelers were yearning to address personal existential crises alongside global existential risks...They even had a word for such impulses... They called it 'pica,' after a compulsion that causes people to eat dirt or other non-food objects, and that is often a sign of nutritional imbalance."

"There's a strong founding father element in game creation, chunks of code that turn up over and over, appearing on your screen as wooden crates, railway sidings, rusted metal sheds; vaguely identifiable South West Seaboard US cityscapes: but that doesn't completely explain it. Why are the games so sure?, I wondered, somewhat spooked. The Apocalypse mooted in Fall Out isn't seriously 'Nuclear'. It could just as well have been Zombie Plague that did the damage. 'Nuclear' is a convention, a shorthand. It covers a lot of things, the intractable truth about how we got where we are now. What we see ahead, and how poor in solutions we find ourselves." --Gwyneth Jones on Livejournal, 9/2013

Crystal lion.

"X.

Pristine and ultimate stone of groundless
adventure has just died
soul and all, October lodging with child.
From three months of absence, ten of sweet.
How destiny,
mitred monodactyl, dies laughing.

How behind they oust pairs
of opposites. How number peeks
from under every avatar.

How whales plunge to doves.
How the latter cleave their beaks
cubiquitous to the third wing.
How we saddle up, before monotonous haunches.

We tow ten months toward ten,
toward one more beyond.
Two at least are still in diapers.
And the three of absence.
And gestation's nine.

There is not the slightest violence.
The patient sits up
and seated preens tranquil pomades."

--Magda Bogin's Trilce

BRSF57.