Reblogged
“Self Organization” (Bronze, 3'x3’) by Courtney Brown, Oakland ✐ Eight arms rewriting the machine age
Lowering his mask, the Duke revealed another, more subtle mask: his inscrutable, handsome features, serene brow, and charming smile. He could turn on, in his magnificent eyes, whatever light he chose; tender, menacing, ardent, imperious. No one actually knew what went on behind this façade, what dark councils and daring plans; but it was not hard to guess that an utterly cold, perfectly tempered will supervised each change of expression. Andrea Orsini, who had long studied him, conjectured that the mainspring of Borgia's nature was an egotism so intense as to be almost passionless, except for scorn of scruples and shortsightedness.
Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger
So how is it that second-hand embarrassment is the single most powerful and weakening emotion one can feel from media?
Tragedy? Delicious.
A hard-earned happy ending? Wonderful.
A convoluted narrative? Keeps you glued.
Simple slice of life? It’s entertaining.
Second-hand embarrassment? Hang on, g, I gotta pause this for fifteen minutes, no, I cannot continue watching this right now, I am just not strong enough.
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“The flying Dragon is somewhat troublesome to compose…”
From The Mysteries of Nature and Art (1634) — an illustrated manual for building devices relating to water works, fireworks, drawing, painting + miscellaneous experiments “confusedly intermixed”: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-mysteries-of-nature-and-art
Reblogged oldshrewsburyian
Tyrone Power with Basil Rathbone in The Mark of Zorro, 1940
'Clouds!' Albert yelled, suddenly. Such uncharacteristic behaviour for this reserved, immaculately mannered individual! 'Clouds!' He was pointing upwards. For a moment I saw clouds, visible masses of water droplets suspended in the air according to the logic of their relative density. But then the ghastly reality struck me, a modern-day Saul on the road to a ghastly Tarsus – for water must always be heavier than mere air, and no structure of such size and evident solidarity could support itself overhead. What we had thought clouds were not. They were something else. They were gigantic amoeboid beings, creatures of monstrous otherness. A venus-shell of silver mist, animated by some incomprehensible will or mechanism, swooped low over Mayence's crenulations and spired roofs. It was a device, a machine constructed on principles quite different to steam engines, or electrical capacitors; a chariot for cleaving the high sky, a throne set about with rods and lights. Weapons? And seated in its heart, wraithed about by the very device it piloted, was a creature unlike any I have seen – like the meat at the centre of a cockle, but the size of a bullock, orange and quivering with life. I looked about me, my heart galloping, a hideous anticipation of perdition in my whole body. Every cloud was a chariot, and in every one monsters of various sizes were enthroned – from cattle-big to whale-big. They thronged the sky. 'O strange!' I howled. 'Strange strange strange!'
The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts
Reblogged
Fennec foxes from Zoogoer v.6:no.4 (1977). Full text here.
Reblogged xphaiea
This volcano in Indonesia produces blue lava. This is caused by the combustion of sulphuric gasses at very high temperatures.