Just Interesting
The “glossy magazine” category. Nothing too deep.
Cornelius’s 1839 photograph of himself. The back reads, “The first light picture ever taken”. The Cornelius portrait is the first known photographic portrait.
I just tried to catalog the running programs in my mental background, the ones that hover just below conscious attention. I can become aware of each process by thinking of it but like most healthy patterns you aren’t really supposed to bother yourself with anything that’s running properly. Conscious attention is a costly resource and your living system respects that. Most of these app-like status monitors will send you a little “throat-clearing” style please notice me signal when discomfort in that area requires your attention, – when it literally requires your conscious attention – even it that is just shifting your butt because your legs are tired.
Basically, they stand politely in the background like a row of servants on Downton Abbey until they are sufficiently pressed to interrupt us as we read our very important memes.
“Ahem.”
“Damn it all, Pennyworth? What is it now, I’m a busy man!”
“Pardon me, M’lud, I believe you have a rather pressing poop to attend to.”
These are some of the conditions being monitored unconsciously by my mind:
- Safety/Danger (no active threats, scanning)
- Sleepy/Awake (tiny bit sleepy but well slept, mid-morning)
- Hungry/Full (recently eaten, comfortable)
- Pain/discomfort/comfort (tiny headache, sitting too long)
- Muscle fatigue/readiness (feel able to move, respond…expend consistent energy over time, restless)
- Mouth, teeth, tongue (clean? comfortable?)
- Need to poop? – need to pee? (some fullness, not ready yet)
- Balance, equilibrium (maintaining)
- Ambient noise – and exceptions (normal sounds, fridge, shower, distant cars)
- Hormonal regulation ( I feel male, somewhat interested in sex, prefer dominance…not stressed)
- Time of day (day underway, not far advanced)
- Time of year (Spring ending – Summer beginning)
- Recent memory clips (yesterday driving, sleep, breakfast)
- Anticipation scenarios – the future imagined – disparate upcoming events (What to do today, next week: Love, friendship, family, work)
- “Don’t forget” (Occasional anxiety reminders)
- Happy/Sad (calm and mildly happy, wistful traces)
- Long term memory flickers (old girlfriend, my family, teaching, random places and moments)
- Ambient smells (Due to being home the smells are too familiar to notice, only hot spots stand out)
Each of these is the organized synthesis of several mental and physiological subroutines. They cooperate and appear as a discrete process.
“Oh man, I’m starving” requires the cooperation of multiple “moving parts” of our neurophysiology and organs functioning smoothly and silently until some silent version of our executive function gives the order to inform the conscious mind to get off its ass and eat.
…is responsible for the beautiful, dynamic ice crystals that swirl around a bubble’s surface as it freezes. It is caused by a surface tension difference, which can be generated by a solute gradient, a chemical reaction or – as in this case – temperature variations
Lysimachus Tetradrachm. Byzantium, Posthumous. 190-110 BC. 16.18g.
Lysimachus was a Macedonian officer and successor of Alexander the Great, who became a King in 306 BC, ruling Thrace, Asia Minor, and Macedon. He began as a bodyguard to Alexander before becoming a trusted friend and rising through the ranks.
The coin is a tetradrachm, meaning that it was worth four drachmas; one drachma, in turn, was worth six obols. It is a high-value coin representing, in the mid-fifth century BC, four days’ pay for a skilled laborer or for a hoplite soldier, or two days’ pay for a sculptor working on a public building.
I love how sharp and clear it is. I wonder how many times, and for what exactly, it was passed from hand to hand.
Ball of carbonized thread of linen or nettle dating from the Middle Neolithic (3,900 – 3,300 BC) from the Marin-Epagnier / Préfargier site, France.
After Joëlle Bregnard Munier/Romain Pigeaud
Book-shaped French cipher machine, with arms of Henri II of France gilt brass and gold. 1547–1559
Enciphered letter from Gabriel de Luetz d’Aramon, French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, after 1546, with partial decipherment
Foreground and background mutually define each other.
‘In the landscape of spring, there is neither better nor worse. The flowering branches grow naturally long or short’.
Ryōkan Taigu
I promise you this is the coolest and most dramatic film (~ 2 min) about water droplets that you have ever seen. Probably much better on a monitor (sound on) than on a phone.
I just up and wrote a tiny children’s book! Not a book for tiny children, though they are welcome to it, just a tiny book. Copyright me, this year.