"And an altarpiece was never a portrait of God. It shows what a church wants you to believe about God."
In the 1960s public schools had special classrooms for the “educable mentally handicapped.” Most of those kids had lead poisoning.
Lead paint was banned in U.S. in 1978.
Leaded gasoline was banned in 1996.
Kids’ blood levels dropped by 95%.
Bans work. We should ban shit again." —@ssteoingraber1.bsky.social
"As I look about,
no blossoms, no autumn leaves,
only a thatched hut by the shore
in the autumn dusk."
—Teika via
"Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted." —Emmet Fraizer via
Rubik's Cube-solving robot dog.
Lines for LBG-30, Computer, Poet.
"We shall find the cube of the rainbow..." —Emily Dickinson via
ullagethrist pastime
pert gen'ralship bulwark
minstrel botch
egghead fathom
Ouachita Parish · pagbeast wristwatch
misplaced grimoire moiré
marrow of roam homeward
minstrel botch
stone bothering
ullagethrist thronged · pantherish hush
"Casino IV
‘Whichever way we decide, there are risks.’
Citizen, you’ll never understand House
if you think of it in ontic terms. Don’t name me
such-and-such a statistical law, this or that shady
bookmaker, or rows upon rows of rigged machines.
House is the presence that allows all houses to come
into being. Even this house is but one of House’s
many wagers, on which it has staked our nation’s
savings. Fear not though: House always wins."
—Caleb Leow in Bad Lilies
His book on teaching a computer to draw is fascinating & important.
"...in the year since it’s exploded to 6.8 million, which means there are now more people subscribing here than to the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker combined. I’m read on a scale that’s usually reserved for people who write novels in which it all turns out to be the husband’s fault." —Sam Kriss via
I'd like to see average new york rents added to the same graph. Artists & writers got priced out of the city following the 60s. In fact, when it comes to concentrations of creativity, i'm a geographic determinist. I saw it happen here, in Deep Ellum & then Oak Cliff.
"TPMS"
undertowbeneath Nabi
annul mirthless surface
absent even converse
instress of red guesswork
wraith citadel southpaw
sibtchidna, Charon's Yiddish
trauma of the not-yet named
gray maroon Ardbeg
rubber covered carframe
words underwater
i snatch them like minnows
livingroom rabbits
gray maroon Ardbeg
rubber covered carframe
Jane.
"Nowadays it covers a broader spectrum, as the meanings of 「詩」 (shi) and 「歌」 (uta) shifted, but the term itself, in that earlier sense, was like an aiaigasa (相合傘), the umbrella shared by two lovers, under which stand poetry governed by Chinese tonal and rhyme rules and poetry governed by Japanese mora count." —@vstokyo via
Looney Tunes AI boomerslop on Facebook.
No matter how nihilistic i become—it's never enough.
The Times They Are a-Changin'.
"war dogs"
crookfief
dim ammo, used
stompface coign—
why allow moth
rest
Joan Didion on John Huston's The Night of the Iguana.
"the mild endurance"
five cop cars at Kroger
man on the ground shackled
move along, nothing to see
i go to my car parked
i go to my car parked
not even phone photo
affords me unGordian
move along, nothing to see
another day dithering
another day dithering
five cop cars at Kroger
call across the fall air
move along, nothing to see
the nether world pearled here
the nether world pearled here
not even phone photo
to fend my shush socials
move along, nothing to see
go back to murk noting
go back to murk noting
five cop cars at Kroger
two weeks & then what
move along, nothing to see
Cloudcuckooland wants me
Cloudcuckooland wants me
not even phone photos
"Note that contemporaries like Laibach, Coil, Psychic TV, and Whitehouse were pursuing different types of musical and conceptual provocation during this period, and all were muddled/scattershot in their approach, though in the case of Laibach it might have been more deliberate." —@burningambulance via
"The worst thing about using a phone in the dark is that it lights your face without lighting your surroundings. Scrolling, hyper-visible but blind; I like to pretend I'm an anglerfish lure, the beacon of a predator much greater than myself" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
woolen tool
high azure's aid
go cop real squelch
moisthaunt town
Rewriting the history of the Incas.
skywound with its dark bandage
have i even seen
the egg of a robin
rescue paper
follow the chromotrail
room full of ev'rything
that-way coded
find a pen thought finished
out of the floor-jumble
bin knocked over in the night
At first i thought this was a put-on. Respect!
But one drop of Plotinus would cause Nick Land to go the way of the wicked witch in Oz.
"and wears Don's smirk and shares Don's smell..." —Andrew Frisardi via
plant tilted, pawn to King Rook Four
dull turquoise
cranium tree topper
who can speak for us?
what weldbook fair?
Cisquatch's vine
foil gown
We should be forced by law to give up all other cars & everyone gets one of these for free.
"I felt that Monica Vitti embodied the sublime..." (More.)
God made Trump
to out-scourge Attila
go stymie God
"We misread [Jeffers] if we think Inhumanism is all about the denial of the human. It’s about the problem of being human." —David Mason via
Georges Perec’s Palindrome on the windows of the BnF Mitterrand.
"Replacing my hardwood flooring with a planar black hole. With fire. With a deep pit of plastic globes, with wax the color of raw chicken, with medieval tapestries, with numbers so small they cut your feet" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
What music is, where it comes from, & where it goes.
"avid diva"
1.
bezique
played upon the felted green
dark machine & weather tide
from now on
bezique
heretic of desert sands
Ashgabat my ticket hence
& wizened throng
bezique
bezique bezique
2.
dead, dead, & very dead
three stops on the ferryman's journey
violet ceramic
urn, collector of earth grievances
emptied each stop more
I see what i see, & i know what i know.
gray world diver
speedball script
sad bots gloze
hounds' wood
void fuse
James Baldwin:
"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us." (via @aarikdanielsen.bsky.social)
One of my illustrations from Lovecraft's Brood: The Beholder's Share by Caitlín R. Kiernan.
Letter to a student who wants the credentials.
“Reading Milton is like dining off gold plate in a company of kings; very splendid; very ceremonious, and not a little appalling.” —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp (1863)
lilac-pink, turquoise sunrise
runing for my life
crossing barricades
i have to imagine the burning
poundcheap & pennywise
painting my exile in shades
of sundry unreturning
lilac-pink, turquoise loaf
men in hot lime vests
by the shattered overpass
working
this is no time for parking
the bitter versts
skelping, the bitter peace
My Attorney Picked by a Head Shot.
( me / via )VIOLA SMITH was the “fastest girl drummer in the world” and promoted as the original “hep girl” in the 1930’s. She was a pioneer blazing a path for women in what had been an entirely male preserve. Viola passed away in October of 2020 aged 107. A special & talented lady.
— Michael Warburton (@michaelwarburton.bsky.social) October 19, 2026 at 7:57 AM
[image or embed]
"Play anonymously published in 1596 was collaboration between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, according to computer analysis." (Interesting, but in my opinion mere statistics cannot establish causality. I want to see documentation that they even met.)
predawn
roar, thinking of
derelict cicadas
their sound hanging in the air like
a threat
Bruch's Violin Concerto #1 in G minor (Op 26). Just heard it today on WRR!
"everyone at this dmv seems so depressed lucky for them i brought my harmonica"
—@sixfeetofcandy.bsky.social
'Erebus' Passing through the Chain of Bergs.
"This liminal space where everything general seems too vacuous and everything particular seems irrelevant" —@hyoyoonkang.bsky.social
"tea going in no time"
arc of history
no skyhook
crowds fought
through Soylent Beige
Expo '70 on my mind again...
"The fact that 'do-gooder' is a put-down tells you everything you need to know about the human race." —@johnlyon.bsky.social
"Typhoon
Cloud has crunched on · the crowns peerless,
skyscraper scalps. Skin of city
lies rinsed entire; rain makes merry,
gutters gabble. Engorged façade
is typhoon frowning · face at weak-set
works of humans. In such a woven murk
thread-mist thrusts one · to throw footstep,
mislay the lines, linger endangered
in the roadway’s rush, lose the selfhood
that beats boundaries · between beast and soul."
—Thaliarchus via
to ride the suicide machine
obscenely born, obscenely hawked
no wizard prior could concoct;
unlocked, Pandora's octave white.
recitals of our plight be moot,
permutes heists of loot galore
which we may garner nevermore
nor ford cold river's portal back.
"Vampire getting ready for a party by mixing all the blood types in a punch bowl"
—@prufrockluvsong.bsky.social
America now has second-generation school shooting survivors.
"...it was the Enlightenment philosophes who most shaped what became the modern image of Byzantium."
"All the noise I make in this life isn’t mine but rather part of some discordant harmonizing to which, season after season, I hum along."
—Steve Edwards via
(tr Mallarmé: Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui)
Never-before, this sunrise: will it be the one
to jailbreak us · with one sozzled wingflap
this tarn stern forgot · where under ice
a plain glacier broods · of flights not braved!
Erstwhile Swan, that glory recall
hopeless to · deliver you
for never ululating · livable realms
when from bare winter · boredom coruscates.
Its neck wholly free · of this frigid grief
imposed by space · on the skeptic bird—
but not the disgust · of a feather-held field.
Phantom by its panoply · to this land appointed
it's snagged in a dream · of cold contempt
that robes in bootless · banishment, Swan.
"green star green ink"
groundcovering sip
labyrinth of anthems
traversed. viral forecasts
invest with loud powder
the inchmeal isles faunching
four cents on the dollar
"Early hominins didn’t march out into the savanna to become grassland obligates; they became the ultimate opportunists. They exploited whatever the shifting Pliocene landscape threw at them." —Seth Chagi via
"It originally appeared as a closing narration in the 1962 Amazing Fantasy #15."
"The dreams of earth blaze at a terrible height,
a green star is burning."
—Brown & Merwin's Mandelstam
"flying car"
the min'ral glitter · on the cellar floor
in this cage far from home
cold cases · rung up by machine
& the lugies of moguls
flying car · from a future without hands
This thread eventually turns into palindromes.
I kept every kloon I ran across.
wild swimsun
roostbook squeal
launch set at home
they vow carboy
Toy car made of nothing but staples.
"In every man sleeps a prophet and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world."
- Emil Cioran via @rabihalameddine.bsky.social
