Chladni patterns, created by salt grains arranging themselves in response to harmonic vibrations
John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (in ascending glory)
mirror cube “invisible” treehouse
My God, armies slaughtered one another across the plains of Europe, popes hurled anathemas, emperors met, hemophiliac and incestuous, in the hunting lodge of the Palatine gardens, all to supply a cover, a sumptuous facade for the work of these wireless operators who in the House of Solomon were listening for pale echoes from the Umbilicus Mundi.
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
kill switch
PROTECT IP is a lunatic proposal, penned by a dinosauric industry concerned solely with the preservation of its own profits. It will do nothing to curb piracy while at the same time eroding fundamental freedoms of the internet.
The only people who can possibly be in favor of this bill are either ignorant of its implications or stand to gain by its passage. This desperate power grab by a diminishing elite fails to even comprehend the problems it aims to solve, and its blunt force methods are wide open for abuse, and very possibly unconstitutional.
The Psychic Paramount – “Intro/SP”
II
While not as mind-shatteringly intense as the near-nuclear Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural, The Psychic Paramount’s new album is still louder and more powerful than 99% of music. The songs lack some of the traveling I liked on their previous album – the tripartite “Para5,” the ambient freakout of “Ex-Visitations,” the hypno-slow-build of the title track. There isn’t as much of that here, but there are plenty of moments where the noise and the drums and the chaos and the noise seem to transcend themselves and achieve something akin to cosmic glory, and if you were hearing it live, your eardrums approaching the limits of their durability, you would fall on your knees and worship.
Vocabulary: Unfeeling Entitlement Edition
heliograph: a device with shutters and mirrors used for sending Morse code via sunbeams
auscultation: listening to internal organs for medical purposes (e.g. with a stethoscope)
erethism: physiologically or psychologically, abnormally sensitive or irritable
appanage: something one is entitled to by rank or position, real or figurative
arras: a tapestry or hanging, or a gift given by the husband at marriage
trepidant: characterized by trepidation (an uncommon adjective)
indurate: to make enduring, unfeeling, or hard, or to accustom
strathspey: a type of slow Scottish dance
corant: a quick but stately dance
pleach: to interweave or braid
