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June 29, 2025



June 28, 2025
woodcut 
of a cathdral, submerged up to its rose window, ripples 
emanating from, and a schooner in the foreground, 
approaching. The constellation Orion is visible in 
the background night sky
MC Escher's take on Debussey's prelude, The Engulfed Cathedral, from 1929



June 27, 2025
Silver-fern leaf and a kiwi bird emitting a green laser beam
  • Seems there was a public referendum in New Zealand in 2015 to select a new flag, but all the entries were rejected, including this striking design by Lucy Gray. I recognize the silver-fern frond logo of their All Blacks rugby team, since somebody at work had their flag hanging in their office. Similar designs were submitted for the 2023 contest to redesign the flag of Minnesota, featuring a loon with laser eyes; as well as the 2025 contest to redesign the flag of Illinois, featuring a cardinal with laser eyes.

  • Chris Ware's 250 Years of Delivering stamps available July 23rd.

  • The Seychelles Nut, or Coco De Mer: The Magical Derrière of the Sea. I first saw one of these in the hilltop Randall Museum of San Francisco.



June 25, 2025
Starfield photographed by Rubins Observatory in Chile
First images from the Rubin Observatory released; this is a segment of the Virgo Cluster.
Web-site, Wikipedia, Interactive browsing.



June 24, 2025



June 21, 2025
Painting of a young woman walking along the flagstones, 
observed by two shadowy figures to her left; while in the 
background, two or three other people sit in conversation
  • The cast-steel axle from the first Ferris Wheel was located in 2019, underneath St.Louis. Erected first for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Wheel was dismantled and rebuilt in St.Louis for their 1904 expo. And speaking of, Rest Of World reports on the China pavillion at this year's, in Osaka.

  • How to turn off "Search the Web" when using the Task Bar's Search in Windows 11. Worked for me; but still seeking an effective way to suppress Google's annoying requests to log in, at so many websites.

  • Also in Japan, a Van Gogh show has just opened at the Pola Museum, near Tokyo.

  • Today's image by John Singer Sargent. A certain girl gave me a copy of this painting, which I immediately put on the wall of my first apartment, in old Greenbelt; a parting gift before I went off to Europe the first time.



June 18, 2025



June 16, 2025
stylized atom centered between white wreaths 
on a field of UN blue, with motto: Atoms For Peace
  • It's the International Atomic Energy Agency's flag. Flags of the World has a long list of these rarely-seen UN flags.

  • Two new artists: Daniel Rich translate photographs into paintings, of buildings and cityscapes; and Thibault Drutel makes photos of symmetric subway platforms.

  • I linked to this sequence of vintage cars demonstrating their retractable headlights previously, when it was on Twitter. Watching it again on Reddit I don't see the early 60s Corvette so here's a '66 Sting Ray doing its thing.

  • A lot of programmers are now using LLM "AI"s to generate sub-routines and code they'd previously write themselves. In fact people are talking with these ChatGPT AIs, falling in love with, even believing they've found a channel for conversations with God. Scary, perhaps; and now I understand those programmers' frustration with the software, spending hours tweaking their prompts to get just the right output. Like I do: here's my current 'achievement', courtesy Perchance.org.
AI output when prompted with 'Generate a 
heraldic device: on a dark blue starry background, 
a purple-and-white checked escutcheon 
with a honeybee charge, supported by a cat on the 
left clutching an orange feather while a blue 
dragon to the right holds a bicycle wheel; and a 
mantle of Marijuana leaves, surmounted by an 
empty space helmet. The motto, underneath, 
Quidlibet Non Fixum Est' 
(anything that ain't nailed down)



June 12, 2025
woodcut of a skeletal figure in bed, reading 
and smoking



June 11, 2025
Lucy Knisley drawing of herself, in bed, with a pillow over her head
This is from Displaced by Lucy Knisley, just read it again, where she accompanies her grandparents on a Caribbean cruise. She's also posted a 17-years-later Part 2 sequel to her wishful song about time travel, The Last Time.



June 10, 2025
smiling cartoon figure with caption: 
ENOS
sticker-graffito spotted in Fremont, California
  • More about this Barbara Kruger at Art Net. (It's called Questions.) A member of Pussy Riot involved also, she's in a cell inside the museum, right now; doing a performance called "Police State."



June 9, 2025
WHO IS 
BEYOND THE LAW? WHO IS BOUGHT AND SOLD? WHO IS FREE TO 
CHOOSE? WHO DOES TIME? WHO FOLLOWS ORDERS? WHO SALUTES 
LONGEST? WHO PRAYS LOUDEST? WHO DIES FIRST? WHO LAUGHS 
LAST? Barbara Kruger mural at the Temporary Contemporary 
behind an apparent confrontation between journalists 
and Law Enforcement in downtown LA a couple days ago
What's going on in LA? Who knows, really; but there's a connection between a 1990 tale I wrote about my life there called 'A Trip Downtown' which explains the setting of this recent confrontation there, between law enforcement and the media.
* Reminding me of the Gary Snyder:
    Stay Together
    Learn the Flowers
    Go Light.



June 5, 2025
  • Navigation within, a learned skill, but Weimar Berlin.com (by the mysterious "Al") is worthwhile, many fascinating things therein (including this painting from 1930 by Hanns Kralik, "Out My Window"). Inspired by Babylon Berlin, which I'm now catching up on, courtesy the Internet Archive. Challenge! As it's a German production, natürlich, keine englischen, spanish sub-titles only! Summaries available online enable some level of comprehension, and library DVDs are coming.

  • More Weimar at Secret City Travel.


  • Two words for truth, istina and pravda; and also, two words for lies: lozh and vranyo. The Conversation delves into vranyo, Russian for when you lie and everyone knows it, but you don’t care. Meanwhile, according to the BBC, one should beware pokazukhas and zakazukhas in Russian media — empty spectacles, and paid propaganda.
painting of an acute city corner with a yellow tram



June 2, 2025
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