na-vidya-na-avidya - Tumblr blog

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

But maybe the real ghosts were the friends they made along the way.

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

I think... I want to make a burrito with the chicken salsa, rooster sauce, and duck sauce.

How far can I take this?

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Cat, knocking bottle to floor: You don’t deserve gochujang!

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

ANYWAY

(1) So we run security in this house by regularly forgetting our passwords which is sometimes inconvenient when it requires two passwords to get to a thing.

(1 the second) Apparently the app has fully changed while I just occasionally popped into your pages via browser to check up on you so this is interesting.

(2) But it is not as if I had much time or energy to put things together for the newsletter, so it remains a gleam in my eye.

(2, an aside) Like the salty comment about driving back from picking up blank flash cards and a standing dustpan I had about listening to Radiolab on the Montreal Screwjob (is that a tm? I think that’s a tm) and there was a comment about how the Renaissance caused an explosion in meta fiction because science caused philosophical “minds blown” sensations all over Europe and the old ways would not stand and what was even real anymore and Darwin and Einstein did that for us now too etc etc and I’m like child, you’re not allowed to make any, any more assumptions about the progress of human thought without bringing the history of Buddhist philosophy in anymore at the very very least.

(2, furthering the aside) But that reminds me of when I made a similar comment of “oh, well, the East has that” to a medievalist and getting a “stop trying to make it all about you you damn bitch” from that corner and it’s like whoa, okay, fine then. So I don’t know I even want to play this game anymore. Apparently we weren’t playing the game I thought we were, which was “test the hypothesis.”

(3) Anyway I was getting the flash cards from that aside because I’m studying languages again for no reason other than I enjoy it and my brain is back in the game for it now. I’ve been reviewing my first year German since the start of the year, but I started Korean yesterday and have blown through 26 levels of Duolingo lessons (which is less impressive when you realize how much of that is Hangul drilling but, yeah, I’m on a tear and loving it). But then my response to 9/11 was Macedonian and Somalian, although not well, so that’s How It Be.

(4) The brain being into it may be the result of a new migraine medication which mostly works, although I’ll note that with the kinks in the arctic jet bringing constant fronts coming through the south, I can tell you that my auras have not been as pink, vibrant, or present in the dark of my room as they have been lately for years now.

(4 addition) But ibuprofen mostly helps with the pain so maybe I can stick with it. I hope so, because this switch was preceded with the equivalent of my neurologist yelling at me “do you want permanent migraines? because this is how you get permanent migraines.”

(5) The dustpan is because of the decoration habits of the other addition, a Formerly Feral Feline. Who is so ridiculously human oriented you wouldn’t know it, to be quite honest. The only thing he likes better than people is bottle caps, and if humans could turn into cats and bottle caps on demand all his wishes would be answered. The silly thing purrs when I say his name. He follows me around the apartment. He puts up with the German and Korean, but knows Japanese means a parting or a phone call. Those mean a diversion of attention from him, and that is awful.

(5 the finale) I mean he purrs when I point a finger at him, just ridiculous.

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

An explanation by way of two recent anecdotes:

(1) My rumor-loving sempai texted me some hiring news this morning, and while I didn’t doubt his intel, wondering where he got the information from had me logging into Facebook for the first time in months, if not over half a year, if not nearly a year, to check whether the subject of the rumor himself had posted about it. (He had.)

That’s Facebook, but I’ve been (mostly) off tumblr of late as well. (I have hit some pages semi-regularly as web urls on the tablet without the app installed or the password saved.) Texting has largely taken the place of that, but even that’s been sporadic for some. Hence: newsletter. (I’d heard the ads in NPR because Old and also Demographic, but didn’t really start considering until petronia. And, so.)

(2) I was in the mailroom this week with a kohai when another sempai came in and said: Oh, some elevated conversation here. He had not been expecting that. (We’d been quickly discussing Franz Boas and evolutionary views of race before I had to run off to teach, which I hadn’t realized was a topic to discuss with kohai until I read my way through The Mind of Primitive Man in hopes of finding some points in the intellectual history of anthropology for class.)

And: yes. This is what frustrates both my mother and therapist, but is where my mind is lately. While there is a bit of a place for this sort of nerdery in tumblr, indeed, I... mostly have been keeping this stuff off the blue site hell? But it’s where my mind is, and so late capitalism and epistemology and more references to My Actual Job for this newsletter. Thing. Ish.

First one to go out this weekend. (Expect more late capitalism.)

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Belly, “Artifact”

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Belly, “The Bees”

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

2018 May 13

Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Rietze (Alien Landscapes on Planet Earth)

Explanation: Why does a volcanic eruption sometimes create lightning? Pictured above, the Sakurajima volcano in southern Japan was caught erupting in 2013 January. Magma bubbles so hot they glowed shot away as liquid rock burst through the Earth’s surface from below. The featured image is particularly notable, however, for the lightning bolts caught near the volcano’s summit. Why lightning occurs even in common thunderstorms remains a topic of research, and the cause of volcanic lightning is even less clear. Surely, lightning bolts help quench areas of opposite but separated electric charges. Volcanic lightning episodes may be facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust. Lightning is usually occurring somewhere on Earth, typically over 40 times each second.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180513.html

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Not wisdom...er...ing, and not un... wisdom...ing....

(It’s a bad backtranslation from Classical Chinese to Sanskrit that I found on the internet a long time ago, and that amused me. And so.)

Write your url in your native language

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

This quote exemplifies both (1) why Hesse got interested Buddhism and (2) why he was so crap at it.

(Yes I am a bit bitter from re-educating bright kids who read Siddhartha in high school, why do you ask?)

“Every person is more than just themselves; they also represent the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”

— Hermann Hesse, (1887 - 1962), German-Swiss novelist and poet (via panatmansam)

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Antarctica is a country now?

The true size of the five biggest countries centered on the equator.

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

2018 May 2

Moon Halo over Stone Circle Image Credit & Copyright: Alyn Wallace Photography

Explanation: Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens. Because most of the crystals have a similar elongated hexagonal shape, light entering one crystal face and exiting through the opposing face refracts 22 degrees, which corresponds to the radius of the Moon Halo. A similar Sun Halo may be visible during the day. Exactly how ice-crystals form in clouds remains under investigation. In the featured image, the ice circle in the sky is mirrored by a stone circle on the ground. Taken just over a month ago in Pontypridd Common, Wales, UK, the central Rocking Stone survives from the last ice age, while the surrounding stones in the circles were placed much more recently – during the 1800s.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180502.html

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

2018 April 30

Total Solar Eclipse Corona in HDF Image Credit & Copyright: Nicolas Lefaudeux

Explanation: How great was the Great American Eclipse? The featured HDR image shows it to be perhaps greater than we knew. On August 21 of last year, the Moon blocked the Sun for a few minutes along a narrow path across the USA. Although one of the most photographed events in human history, this image – only recently completed after an extraordinary amount of digital processing – shows one of the most detailed depictions of a solar corona ever taken. Composed of extremely hot gas, the solar corona is only visible to the unaided eye during a total solar eclipse. The featured image combined over 70 images of different time exposures. The series of complementary HDR images recovered enough detail to see motion of the solar corona. The images were taken in Unity, Oregon in the morning to get steady atmospheric seeing conditions. The next total solar eclipse visible on Earth will be in 2019 July, while the next one visible across North America and the USA will occur in 2024 April.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180430.html

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

見ネーこ、聞かネーこ、言わネーこ

Okay, not your standard -ざる (why was it monkeys? BECAUSE IT IS A PUN), but this does work on both levels.

“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Man Found to Be Unusually Tasty, News At Eleven

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

Cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia)

With a wingspan up to 7 inches (18 cm), this moth is North America’s largest native moth. It naturally occurs in hardwood forests from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast, ranging as far north as Nova Scotia and as far south as Florida. (x)

A post shared by Hlee Xiong (@hleexyooj) on Jun 15, 2017 at 9:24pm PDT

[na-vidya-na-avidya]

A black cat crossing your path is actually good luck on account of you get to see a cat