Category: language

this and its lived consequence

dig

art is one of the primary human activities, and that it can succeed in articulating not just the imposed or constitutive social or intellectual system , but at once this and an experience of it, its lived consequence , in ways very close to many other kinds of active response, in new social activity and in what we know as personal life, but of course often more accessibly, just because it is specifically formed and because when it is made it is in its own way complete, even autonomous, and being the kind of work it is can be transmitted and communicated beyond its original situation and circumstances.

Raymond Williams, CULTURE AND MATERIALISM
1123162013a

Constructing a Regular Pentagon with Ruler and Compass

dig

A step-by-step ruler and compass construction of a regular pentagon. The construction is due to H. W. Richmond, “A Construction for a Regular Polygon of Seventeen Sides,” Quart. J. Pure Appl. Math., 26, 1893 pp. 206–207.

A regular pentagon is a five-sided polygon with sides of equal length and interior angles of 108° (3?/5 rad). Because 5 is a Fermat prime, you can construct a regular pentagon using only a straightedge and compass.

Love Potions

dig

I remembered this short story, more comically but with a pointed criticality.

No, I’ve never personally used them (never needed to, thank you very much). But I know that every fetish priest in every village sells them. The potions are made according to a recipe passed down from an unidentified ancestor, with a list of ingredients that we mere mortals are not allowed to know. The fetish priests all store their potions in similar-looking white bottles, and charge the same ludicrous fee to those who come to buy them—a goat, a pig, and three hens. But who has that kind of wealth to spare for the sake of love? Do you? I didn’t think so. That is why I’m going to give you invaluable directions on how to obtain a love potion for free and get yourself a romance that will leave your face brighter than the morning sun.

The Case for and Against Love Potions, Imbolo Mbue, March 15, 2021.
AG2020-RosesinCA_1110554aa

The rose is the beloved, the beloved is a destination, and the human lover a little like a bee pursues and celebrates this … at the center of [their] walled garden.

RS

Matter

dig

The contemporary world’s work has become policing, forming policy regarding, and trying to administrate the perpetual movement of people. Nationhood—the very definition of citizenship—is marked by exile, refugees, guest arbiter, immigrants, migrations, the displaced, the fleeing, and the under siege. Hunger for home is entombed among the central metaphors in the discourse on globalism, transnationalism, nationalism, the breakup of nations, and the fictions of sovereignty. Yet these dreams of home are frequently as raced themselves as the originating racial house that has defined them. When they are not raced, they are, as I suggested earlier, landscape, never inscape; utopia, never home.

Toni Morrison, Race Matters, The Source of Self-Regard.
0404150742
040415, Aquin, Haiti.