- July 28, 2026
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console (n.)
1706, "a cabinet; an ornamental base structure," from French console "a bracket" (16c.), which is of uncertain origin, possibly from consolateur, literally "one who consoles" (see console (v.)), being used somehow for carved human figures supporting cornices, shelves or rails in choir stalls. Another guess connects it to Latin consolidare "to make solid" (see consolidate).
The sense evolved to "body of a musical organ" (1881), "radio cabinet" (1925), then "cabinet for a TV, stereo, etc." (1944). Console-table is attested from 1813.
- July 11, 2026
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(no subject)
But a bill can become law even without the president's signature, and the clock had already started ticking on June 29, when House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered the legislation to Trump for either a signature or veto. That 10-day clock was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. ET Friday. Without action from the president, the bill would become law automatically.
That's how, at the stroke of midnight, the bill became law without Trump's signature.
- July 9, 2026
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passage from Kanafi's Letter from Gaza (1980) - colors
Later the Ministry of Education in Kuwait gave me a contract. There's no need to repeat to you how my life there went in detail. I always wrote to you about everything. My life there had a gluey, vacuous quality as though I were a small oyster, lost in oppressive loneliness, slowly struggling with a future as dark as the beginning of the night, caught in a rotten routine, a spewed-out combat with time. Everything was hot and sticky. There was a slipperiness to my whole life, it was all a hankering for the end of the month.
In the middle of the year, that year, the Jews bombarded the central district of Sabha and attacked Gaza, our Gaza, with bombs and flame-throwers. That event might have made some change in my routine, but there was nothing for me to take much notice of; I was going to leave. this Gaza behind me and go to California where I would live for myself, my own self which had suffered so long. I hated Gaza and its inhabitants. Everything in the amputated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in grey by a sick man. Yes, I would send my mother and my brother's widow and her children a meagre sum to help them to live, but I would liberate myself from this last tie too, there in green California, far from the reek of defeat which for seven years had filled my nostrils. The sympathy which bound me to my brother's children, their mother and mine would never be enough to justify my tragedy in taking this perpendicular dive. It mustn't drag me any further down than it already had. I must flee!
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- July 8, 2026
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Adeline Grand‐Clément, "Poikilia"
Characterized by a radiance that is composite and multiple, artifacts described as poikiloi resemble the prodigious daidalea (Frontisi‐Ducroux 2000, esp. 52–55 for the parallel bet- ween daidaleon and poikilon). But there are at least two noteworthy differences. First, poikilia is not exclusive to artifacts. Indeed, the Greeks use the term poikilos for living beings, in particular for three types of animals: snakes whose bodies are covered with rings and scales, birds with a variegated plumage, and animals with a mottled coat, such as the fawn or the panther.3 Their bodies display a variety of shapes and colors and composite surfaces that con- trast with the smooth and homogeneous surface of human skin (khrōs).4 Poikilia can also characterize certain men, heroes or divinities, such as Prometheus or Odysseus (e.g. Hes. Th. 510–511; Eur. IA. 526). What these have in common is less a “multicolored” or “versicolor” physical appearance, than specific aptitudes that characterize mētis, the crafty and cunning intelligence that plays a crucial role in Greek imagination. Detienne and Vernant have brought to light the close connection that originally existed between poikilia and mētis (1974, 25–31). The connection endures into the Classical period, to the point that applying the term poikilos to an individual is in itself sufficient to suggest the type of clever intelligence that, by then, could be denigrated (A. Equ. 758–759; Villacèque 2010, 144–145). Poikilia thus evokes a non‐dialectic kind of thought, which proceeds by circumvention and follows indirect and somewhat labyrinthine routes, like a maze.
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- July 7, 2026
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Madamina, il catalogo è questo
(Mozart)
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- June 25, 2026
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La Natation ou l’art de nager appris seul en moins d’une heure
L’homme est né dans l’eau, son ancêtre est la grenouille et l’analyse des langues humaines apporte la preuve de cette théorie.
- June 23, 2026
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Zeug
also: equipment, gear
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- June 20, 2026
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the second torture
"They were not to show the least consideration for us but to regard us and treat us as if we no longer existed, this being the second torture devised by our adversaries in addition to the floggings."- Excerpt from the letter of Phileas to the Thmuites, quoted in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius.
- June 18, 2026
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(no subject)
“Among the most striking features in Derrida’s approach to politics is the violence—and I dare say, the simplism—of his opposition between the idea of the rule and the idea of justice. Very often, and mostly in the same terms, we meet in his political writings with the statement that, whenever there is a simple rule, there can be no justice. . . . There is an extraordinary overtone of contempt in the evocation of the ‘good’ rule that requires only application, subsumption, and calculation. Whenever it comes to the rule and its enactment, the same image shows up in Derrida’s argumentation: the image of the machine. If there is a rule, a knowledge which gives its ground to our decision, it is no decision, we don’t decide.” Jacques Rancière, “Should Democracy Come? Ethics and Politics in Derrida,” in Derrida and the Time of the Political, ed. Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 282–83.
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(no subject)
Following the law is the way in which ordinary people in ordinary times maintain contact with the sacred, once they can no longer speak directly to God. Is this not what the Old Testament prophets said? This is the tradition that was carried forward to the new world by the Puritans, that informed the first political-religious communities here, and that continues to inform our political imagination through faith in popular sovereignty and reverence for law.