Pelagic Argosy
@anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
"I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism." – Metropolitan | Academic Librarian | Information, (open) data and knowledge | Interested in the history of queer, feminist and marginalized SFF | they/them
John Crowley wrote a fascinating novel, Flint and Mirror, about Hugh O'Neill and the Flight of the Earls where Dee tries to use this mirror to magically connect O'Neill+his loyalties to the Queen, while he obtained the titular flint from the Tuatha Dé Danann for opposite reasons.
Queen Elizabeth I's in-house alchemist John Dee somehow acquired an obsidian Aztec mirror, which he used for scrying (to talk with angels) with his assistant Edward Kelley.
Eventually, the angels would demand Dee and his wife enter a toxic polycule with Kelley. Gotta watch out for that with angels.
Eventually, the angels would demand Dee and his wife enter a toxic polycule with Kelley. Gotta watch out for that with angels.
November 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM
John Crowley wrote a fascinating novel, Flint and Mirror, about Hugh O'Neill and the Flight of the Earls where Dee tries to use this mirror to magically connect O'Neill+his loyalties to the Queen, while he obtained the titular flint from the Tuatha Dé Danann for opposite reasons.
Watch out, Brother Fredegar will take you for all the tithes you collected. His dice are Providential.
October 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Watch out, Brother Fredegar will take you for all the tithes you collected. His dice are Providential.
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
*everybody knew even back then that type theory was repugnant*
October 24, 2025 at 8:00 PM
*everybody knew even back then that type theory was repugnant*
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Unfortunately I have found out. Fuck!
October 20, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Unfortunately I have found out. Fuck!
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
one of the minor frustrations of the 2020s internet is how many sites now don't respect boolean commands in search, like they'd rather give you a bunch of unrelated content to sift through than turn up only a handful of results
October 3, 2025 at 1:44 PM
one of the minor frustrations of the 2020s internet is how many sites now don't respect boolean commands in search, like they'd rather give you a bunch of unrelated content to sift through than turn up only a handful of results
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
An old military maxim often attributed to Napoleon is “an army marches on its stomach” and I feel the same way that a university thinks via its library. The slow and steady financial diminution of research libraries and the librarians who staff them is, to me, a slow-rolling higher Ed catastrophe.
October 1, 2025 at 1:32 PM
An old military maxim often attributed to Napoleon is “an army marches on its stomach” and I feel the same way that a university thinks via its library. The slow and steady financial diminution of research libraries and the librarians who staff them is, to me, a slow-rolling higher Ed catastrophe.
Someone stole my argument from when I was 8 and tried to convince my mom that eating whipped cream straight out of the can was healthy because it had air.
“[Parr] believed the N2O dispensed to have nutritional value because of the traces of other elements that might be present and because, as a gas which formed a component of air, it sustains human life.”
Prime @louisashworth.bsky.social bait 👆 on.ft.com/3IHC4Rk
Prime @louisashworth.bsky.social bait 👆 on.ft.com/3IHC4Rk
Is nitrous oxide food?
UK courts continue to tackle the big questions
on.ft.com
September 25, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Someone stole my argument from when I was 8 and tried to convince my mom that eating whipped cream straight out of the can was healthy because it had air.
People should use more sumac.
September 22, 2025 at 9:17 PM
People should use more sumac.
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
I’d never really experienced it much before but holy shit now I know what people mean when they say Opus Dei has a war on Christmas problem
September 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM
I’d never really experienced it much before but holy shit now I know what people mean when they say Opus Dei has a war on Christmas problem
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
some douchenozzle with a handlebar mustache in 1912 decides that they just won't do an annual report that year because he's too busy campaigning for Taft or whatever and more than a century later I'm paying for it
September 11, 2025 at 6:40 PM
some douchenozzle with a handlebar mustache in 1912 decides that they just won't do an annual report that year because he's too busy campaigning for Taft or whatever and more than a century later I'm paying for it
Got some questions for the minister who decided to dig up his college crush's corpse
Robert D. Richardson is not convincing me that it was TOTALLY NORMAL for Emerson to dig up his (Emerson's) late wife and open her coffin.
September 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Got some questions for the minister who decided to dig up his college crush's corpse
You might think this is a joke, but think of the centuries of harm from Plato playing sockpuppet with his dead advisor. What were the peer reviewers thinking!
While this might seem like a low number of acceptances, it is justified by the overwhelming danger posed by publishing even a single bad or wrong philosophy paper
There were a number of articles accepted by one top philosophy journal in the first six months of 2025, and that number is...
September 8, 2025 at 1:27 PM
You might think this is a joke, but think of the centuries of harm from Plato playing sockpuppet with his dead advisor. What were the peer reviewers thinking!
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Now die, die, die, die, die.
August 30, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Now die, die, die, die, die.
I crave warren-thriller Watership Down. Tom Clancy would explain the hell out of brutal rabbit-on-rabbit tunnel warfare. I need to know precisely what gas the farmers used, the physiological effect on a variety of small mammals and a 3 paragraph digression on how dangerous it is to manufacture.
Tom Clancy's Watership Down
Ruin any book by adding "Tom Clancy's" to the title
Tom Clancy's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
Tom Clancy's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
August 27, 2025 at 11:21 PM
I crave warren-thriller Watership Down. Tom Clancy would explain the hell out of brutal rabbit-on-rabbit tunnel warfare. I need to know precisely what gas the farmers used, the physiological effect on a variety of small mammals and a 3 paragraph digression on how dangerous it is to manufacture.
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Forthcoming in SHPS 'A pink lie in French medicine' where I tell you the story of Spasfon/phloroglucinol - a pink shiny pill created in France in the 1960s - and one of the most prescribed pharmaceutical drugs in France, especially to women philpapers.org/rec/FERAPL-3
Juliette Ferry-Danini, A pink lie in French medicine - PhilPapers
This paper sets to explain how one of the most prescribed and sold pharmaceutical drugs in France – Spasfon (phloroglucinol), introduced on the French market in the 1960s, became and remained so succe...
philpapers.org
August 21, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Forthcoming in SHPS 'A pink lie in French medicine' where I tell you the story of Spasfon/phloroglucinol - a pink shiny pill created in France in the 1960s - and one of the most prescribed pharmaceutical drugs in France, especially to women philpapers.org/rec/FERAPL-3
Feeling lazy, okay if I just bring Bentham? Less digging.
ME, HOLDING A MUCH-USED SHOVEL: okay, got 'em all, where's my conversation
going to go out on a limb and imagine this guy's not actually very good at conversations
August 18, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Feeling lazy, okay if I just bring Bentham? Less digging.
Author. Co-weaver. Visionary. Plus actor.
For those curious, this is the description of the session being led by an AI at Eden Mills (it's also the first event of the festival in the program after the launch party). the "fellow co-weaver" is the ED of the foundation that provided funding to create the chatGPT powered AI that wrote the "book
August 17, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Author. Co-weaver. Visionary. Plus actor.
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
I want to spotlight the clarity and beauty of the language Kelsey uses: the dead have a right to stay dead.
They do. We're going to need to develop standardized, universal, opt-out-only legal means to allow them to.
To allow /us/ to, for we will all be citizens in the kingdom of the dead in time.
They do. We're going to need to develop standardized, universal, opt-out-only legal means to allow them to.
To allow /us/ to, for we will all be citizens in the kingdom of the dead in time.
The dead have a right to remain dead. An animated skin put over a computer model and given the same name as the dead son of grieving parents is a cursed golem and a full delusion. By interviewing the computer model, Acosta has asked us to accept this as true or real. Gun control deserves better.
At 4p ET/1p PT, I’ll have a one of a kind interview with Joaquin Oliver. He died in the Parkland school shooting. But his parents have created an AI version of their son for a powerful message on gun violence. Plus TX Rep. @jamestalarico.bsky.social - see you soon on Substack and later on YouTube.
August 4, 2025 at 7:57 PM
I want to spotlight the clarity and beauty of the language Kelsey uses: the dead have a right to stay dead.
They do. We're going to need to develop standardized, universal, opt-out-only legal means to allow them to.
To allow /us/ to, for we will all be citizens in the kingdom of the dead in time.
They do. We're going to need to develop standardized, universal, opt-out-only legal means to allow them to.
To allow /us/ to, for we will all be citizens in the kingdom of the dead in time.
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Something you might now know about Vancouver Island is that it is covered in feral cottontail rabbits. they are *everywhere*. and this morning i was witness to BUNNY VIOLENCE
August 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Something you might now know about Vancouver Island is that it is covered in feral cottontail rabbits. they are *everywhere*. and this morning i was witness to BUNNY VIOLENCE
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
Is disruption in science decreasing? Maybe not...
"Due to a factual plotting mistake, database entries with zero references were omitted in the CD index distributions, hiding a large number of outliers with a maximum CD index of one, while keeping them in the analysis"
the classic Seaborn bug 🫣
"Due to a factual plotting mistake, database entries with zero references were omitted in the CD index distributions, hiding a large number of outliers with a maximum CD index of one, while keeping them in the analysis"
the classic Seaborn bug 🫣
Dataset Artefacts are the Hidden Drivers of the Declining Disruptiveness in Science
Park et al. [1] reported a decline in the disruptiveness of scientific and technological knowledge over time. Their main finding is based on the computation of CD indices, a measure of disruption in c...
arxiv.org
July 17, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Is disruption in science decreasing? Maybe not...
"Due to a factual plotting mistake, database entries with zero references were omitted in the CD index distributions, hiding a large number of outliers with a maximum CD index of one, while keeping them in the analysis"
the classic Seaborn bug 🫣
"Due to a factual plotting mistake, database entries with zero references were omitted in the CD index distributions, hiding a large number of outliers with a maximum CD index of one, while keeping them in the analysis"
the classic Seaborn bug 🫣
Can't go around in the middle of the night knocking heads off Obelisks, can you?
Herms are much funnier than obelisks. Gotta hand it to the Greeks.
July 16, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Can't go around in the middle of the night knocking heads off Obelisks, can you?
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
"berlin alexanderplatz" episode of "wishbone"
July 11, 2025 at 4:46 PM
"berlin alexanderplatz" episode of "wishbone"
Reposted by Pelagic Argosy
The island was concrete so the protagonist could pull sick tricks in futile attempts to be noticed by drivers
JG Ballard's skater ghost disgusted by these stone-cairned weed-choked vacant lots and their utter lack of possibility for frontside grinds. "Probably can't even pull an axle stall here," the translucent New Wave revenant was heard to mutter.
JG Ballard loved empty swimming pools. I remain an enthusiastic tourist of vacant, stone-cairned, weed-choked vacant lots.
July 8, 2025 at 9:02 PM
The island was concrete so the protagonist could pull sick tricks in futile attempts to be noticed by drivers