The K Sound by Michael Portnoy
Acéphale
A secret society including Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, and Callois. Because of its very nature, it is difficult to describe the society’s acts. Bataille referred several times to Marcel Mauss who had studied secret societies in Africa, describing them as a “total social phenomenon”. On this model, he organized several nocturnal meetings in the woods, near an oak which had been struck by lightning. Members of the Acéphale society were required to adopt several rituals, such as refusing to shake hand with anti-semites and celebrating the decapitation of Louis XVI, an event which prefigured the “chiefless crowd” targeted by “acéphalité”. Members of the society were also invited to meditation, on texts of Nietzsche, Freud, Sade and Mauss read during the assemblies. There was discussion amongst members about the possibility of carrying out a human sacrifice, but these discussions were never put into action.
PangramTweets is a bot (a computer program that runs on its own) that searches Twitter for, and then retweets, pangrams—texts that contain every letter of the alphabet. A famous pangram, sometimes used as a typing test, is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” […]
Here’s a sampling of what has turned up so far.
I’ve just (with the help of google) realized I wrote about the wrong experiment in my 12 mark psychology question oops
— s (@bricktop___) May 13, 2014
It’s official: Arthur Sulzberger names Dean Baquet executive editor of The New York Times, replacing Jill Abramson.
— Vindu Goel (@vindugoel) May 14, 2014
Looking for a new job is exhausting. Every one I want requires a bazillion years of experience I don’t have. FML.
— Ryan Stephens (@Integrity1stziB) May 16, 2014
Thanks JMM for boosting my boxing prediction confidence again. The Mayweather card did a number on a lot of boxing fans. #MarquezAlvarado
— E.J.O. (@ElioOrtiz11) May 18, 2014
SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE “FRIENDZONE”. MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST VALUE A WOMAN’S FRIENDSHIP AND QUIT EXPECTING THEM TO FUCK YOU. JESUS FUCK.
— ・。。・゜☆゜・。。・ (@chrstnmchd) May 19, 2014
Juan Manuel Marquez boxes Alvarado on weekday to line up fifth fight alongside Pacquiao @SportsMomentz http://t.co/e5CyDwDXFd
— Rinaldo Jonathan (@testeronline12) May 19, 2014
Maybe Joe needs to take some advice from Iceland and arrest the rich people who are stealing from the rest of us tax paying citizens. #qanda
— Toby Owens (@TehMegaWiz) May 19, 2014
From Language Log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/
By Ben Zimmer
In Other Inquisitions, Borges writes of a strange taxonomy in an ancient Chinese encyclopedia:
On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, © those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g), stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
This is fanciful, but it has the ring of truth — different cultures can classify the world in surprisingly different ways. In traditional Dyirbal, an aboriginal language of Australia, each noun must be preceded by a variant of one of four words that classify all objects in the universe:
bayi: men, kangaroos, possums, bats, most snakes, most fishes, some birds, most insects, the moon, storms, rainbows, boomerangs, some spears, etc.
balan: women, bandicoots, dogs, platypus, echidna, some snakes, some fishes, most birds, fireflies, scorpions, crickets, the hairy mary grub, anything connected with water or fire, sun and stars, shields, some spears, some trees, etc.
balam: all edible fruit and the plants that bear them, tubers, ferns, honey, cigarettes, wine, cake
bala: parts of the body, meat, bees, wind, yamsticks, some spears, most trees, grass, mud, stones, noises and language, etc.
“The fact is that people around the world categorize things in ways that both boggle the Western mind and stump Western linguists and anthropologists,” writes UC-Berkeley linguist George Lakoff in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987). “More often than not, the linguist or anthropologist just throws up his hands and resorts to giving a list — a list that one would not be surprised to find in the writings of Borges.”
“World View” from Futility Closet
Antikythera mechanism