Matt Austern

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

Was watching Buffy’s Anya backstory episode. Friend asked why I sighed. “She’s not of a sufficiently high social class to have domesticated rabbits that far north in Europe in that century, but the writers couldn’t know, the paper was only presented at a conference yesterday.” Accuracy is fleeting.

I'm reading Tristram Shandy and I've now gotten to the Author's Preface, which is in Chapter XX of Volume III. This is a very strange book.

Books I read in September: • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey • Jane Austen, Love & Freindship • Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife • Jane Austen, Persuasion • C. J. Cherryh, Cuckoo's Egg • Roy Horniman, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal • Robert Jackson Bennett, A Trade of Blood

From the 1907 British novel Israel Rank, by Roy Horniman: "I suppose a guilty wife must always be in dread of disclosing her secret in the hours of sleep, like the lady in the opera." What opera is this referring to?

Did you know that Kind Hearts and Coronets was based on a book? It's _Israel Rank : The autobiography of a criminal_, by Roy Horniman, published 1907. There's also a 21st century musical based on it, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. We saw a fun Palo Alto Players production of it last night.

here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.

A little boggling to see that Horace quote appearing unironically on a WWI memorial. I find it completely impossible to read it, especially in this context, without thinking of the poem where Wilfred Owen calls it "the old lie".

Drawing all 16,777,216 possible 12 bit RGB colours in one 2D image, each exactly once. Pixels are mapped from the 256³ colour cube, following a three dimensional Hilbert curve, to a two dimensional Hilbert curve filling the square. so nearby colours stay close.

I've told my cat a million times to stop opening interdimensional portals in my house....

Philosophers often bring up the "principle of charity": a willingness to assume good faith in an interlocutor and treat them accordingly. It's good to do in many circumstances. But it is worth formulating a principle of not being a fucking mark. If not during the rise of fascism, then when? 12/

"He won't steal your pen" is right up there with "I pledge to build at least one affordable house" as campaign promises you can believe in.

For your convenience, the Pride and Prejudice live-posting super-thread 📚

You could get mad about dead senator discourse *or* you could enjoy this video of sea lions who have retaken an island with a decommissioned lighthouse off the coast of Oregon and now use the staircase as a giant slide.

More people need to read this. There is no such thing as a "historically accurate Odyssey," because the 'Odyssey' is not set in a real historical time. It is set in the mythic Age of Heroes, not the real-life Bronze Age. #Odyssey #Homer #classics kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2026/07/odys...

I spoke to Mitch McConnell for twenty minutes today and he said, “I leave the mills in Signa to my dear friend Gianni Schicchi.”

I dreamed I saw Mitch McConnell last night, alive as you and me.

(1/√2) (❘🐢⟩+❘💀⟩)

I still haven't spotted the emu.

TIL another one-syllable English word I'd never heard before: salp. (I also learned that salps are really weird animals in several ways.) Salp - Wikipedia share.google/iWhAtTxddzqa...

June books: Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting William Faulkner, Flags in the Dust Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots Freya Marske, Cinder House C. B. Lee, Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe Naomi Novik, The Summer War Nnedi Okorafor (writer) & Tana Ford (art), Space Cat Rachel Hartman, Among Ghosts

🐈🐈‍⬛🐈😹

In a 5-4 split decision the Supreme Court has ruled that grass is green, the sky is blue, words have meaning, and the first sentence of the 14th Amendment is part of the Constitution.

Those are rookie numbers. They need at least twice as many shells if they're serious about cutting the barbed wire in preparation for the infantry offensive.

Ur-Ishtaran gets better customer reviews than Ea-nāṣir.

Tonight's cocktail will feature absinthe.

“There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.” — George Eliot