Pelagic Argosy
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anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Pelagic Argosy
@anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
410 followers 1K following 970 posts
"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
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anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
You say regression, I say re-embrace of long neglected communication technology
List of symbols used in a copy of the Domesday book that includes daggers of various orientations, a hand, different crosses, and so-on
November 12, 2025 at 6:45 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Or to be the "supervisor" to a large number of robots that work well enough to only need occasional human intervention.

Cetainly not the only example, but a recent one I saw: restofworld.org/2025/philipp...
At Astro Robotics, engineering and computer science graduates supervise the robots, which use an AI model to fill shelves by computing the distance between each item. Each tele-operator earns between $250 and $315 per month, roughly the same as a call center agent, an employee told Rest of World. Their job is to monitor the robot and prepare reports about its performance. In the rare cases when the bot makes a mistake, they strap on a VR headset and use joysticks to manually control grasp and place the drink back on the shelf, the worker said. Tele-operators in such roles face immense pressure to resolve errors quickly, said Robert. “The minute one thing stops, your job is to get that back online and hope that while you’re doing that, something else doesn’t go wrong at the same time,” he said. The worker said they often feel dizzy and cross-eyed from cybersickness, a type of motion sickness associated with VR. Its occurrence is related to how much they use the headset: In a typical eight-hour shift, they take over the robot about 50 times, and it takes up to five minutes each time to resolve the error.
November 3, 2025 at 3:03 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
I don't know why they picked the name, but they were started by a lead company as an application for their product. Some ads don't look, uh, great in retrospect.
The front cover of a promotional booklet. The background is a yellow-orange sunburst. A boy in blue overalls is riding a "horse" whose torso is an ingot labeled lead. The boy is holding a paintbrush, carrying a ladder and with a bucket of Dutch White paint balanced on the front of the "horse". The text reads "The Dutch Boy's Hobby A Paint Book for Girls and Boys". In the top right is a heraldic device, white and red background, with a paint bucket, ladder and three brushes. The scrollwork motto reads "Lead. All Lead Paint"
October 31, 2025 at 4:09 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
ON DIVERS GEOMETRIES Euclid, Riemann, other geometers, invented ideas of space. Regarding them, elation astonishes us: discreteness, shape, the measure of distances, as though the world had order in it which were discoverable. But hardly so; their order is not the world's, their separately premised spaces not congruent, as though, besides their spaces, there were space, not spoken of, unspeakable. Geometers, all measures measure themselves, none measures the world. Premise and axiom are terms of the limited case, to limit it. There is no limited truth: there is no truth.
October 9, 2025 at 1:47 AM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
William Bronk has you covered.
THE OUTCRY What I want to do is shout. Happiness? No. Outrage? No. What I want to do is shout because we were all wrong, because the point was not the point, because the world, or what we took for the world, is breaking, breaking. We were wrong and are not right. Break! Break! We are here! What I want to do is shout! Break! Shout!
October 9, 2025 at 1:31 AM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
People should use more sumac.
The painting Freedom of Speech by Norman Rockwell. A man is standing up with his hands on a wooden railing, surrounded by others seated looking on. He's wearing a rugged leather jacket with a folded paper in the pocket and a blue and black flannel shirt. His face is serious and proud, mouth open as if speaking.
September 22, 2025 at 9:17 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Moved on from extorting ducks have we.
Title page of a book that reads Enlarged and Revised Edition, Containing interesting new matter and illustrations DUCKS : and How to Make Them Pay. By William Cook
August 12, 2025 at 1:38 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Finally something to go with my new wall!
Screencap from the show Fleabag of a wall of sculputure penises, with the artist walking towards two people with champagne looking at the wall confusedly.
July 30, 2025 at 2:48 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
There's an interesting article by the author Vajra Chandresekera about being 'unbuddhist' which talks about just this as why the very Christian 'atheist' doesn't fit.

tricycle.org/article/unbu...
Screenshot of a paragraph from the linked article: Why do I say “unbuddhist” instead of “nonreligious”? Why අබෞද්ධ instead of නිරාගමික? Mostly, it’s that the latter tastes like cardboard to me. An airless word, a nothing word of studied neutrality: That isn’t what I’m getting at. People also say “atheist” here sometimes, by analogy with the popular Christian version, but that is entirely meaningless in this context, since the (non)existence of gods is not at issue. I like “unbuddhist” because it’s a pejorative to reclaim, perhaps, but also because it signals both opposition and proximity, in the same way that an atheist is someone who exists in a theistic framework and opposes it.
July 28, 2025 at 7:52 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Still the image of Bill in lots of people's heads, not the last 15-20 years.
Still of 90s Bill Clinton playing the saxophone in sunglasses and a suit, next to Arsinio Hall in a large, extremely 90s green suit pointing at him and smiling
June 22, 2025 at 12:21 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Yes.
A screencap from the movie In the Mood for Love of the two main characters, played by Tony Leung and Leslie Chueng, tangoing in their shoddy apartment kitchen
May 19, 2025 at 9:39 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Just one more thing...
Screencap of Peter Falk as the disheveled detective Columbo, with messy brown hair, a worn wrinkly tan coat and a slightly confused look on his face. He's holding up a hand and in the middle of speaking
May 9, 2025 at 2:25 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
The priests are nervous about the oracle. They’ll need
all their experience to decide how to express it tactfully
...
They do not know that yesterday the envoys heard serious news:
the “oracle” was pronounced in Rome; the partition was decided there.
www.onassis.org/initiatives/...
Image of a poem by C.P. Cavafy: Envoys from Alexandria For centuries they hadn’t seen gifts at Delphi as wonderful as those sent by the two brothers, the rival Ptolemaic kings. But now that they have them, the priests are nervous about the oracle. They’ll need all their experience to decide how to express it tactfully, which of the two— of two brothers like these—will have to be offended. And so they meet secretly at night to discuss the family affairs of the Lagids. But suddenly the envoys are back. They’re taking their leave. Returning to Alexandria, they say. And they don’t ask for an oracle at all. The priests are delighted to hear it (they’re to keep the marvelous gifts, that goes without saying) but they’re also completely bewildered, having no idea what this sudden indifference means. They do not know that yesterday the envoys heard serious news: the “oracle” was pronounced in Rome; the partition was decided there.
May 6, 2025 at 7:00 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
photo portrait of HP Lovecraft
February 26, 2025 at 2:11 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
I'd second obsidian, used it a while and despite not going down organizational rabbit hole it targets (zettelkasten cultists) or used all the features, it's simple, lightweight, open, does what I need and customizable w/ plugins. random example note but please reply/DM if more details would help!
Screenshot of the notetaking program Obsidian. Working from left to right the main content is a vertical column of icons, a folder+note hierarchy and the main note screen. The selected note has a separate title, a properties pane w/tags and the main body of the note is a nested list of meeting notes. At the top of the screen there are tabs for different notes.
February 25, 2025 at 8:05 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Reminds me of Delany's Triton, it nails both women's new unwillingness to put up with what they had to in the past and men's response of blaming women for it. The whole book foresees so well that reaction against feminism and was written directly in dialogue with feminist SF to explore those issues.
Lawrence laughed. “My dear boy! I have observed you intimately now for six months, and you are a sweet and familiar creature—alas, far more familiar than six months should make you. Let me tell you a secret. There is a difference between men and women, a little, tiny one that. I’m afraid, has probably made most of your adult life miserable and will probably continue to make it so till you die. The difference is simply that women have only really been treated, by that bizarre, Derkheimian abstraction, ‘society,’ as human beings for the last—oh, say sixty-five years; and then, really, only on the moons; whereas men have had the luxury of such treatment for the last four thousand. The result of this historical anomaly is simply that, on a statistical basis, women are just a little less willing to put up with certain kinds of shit than men—simply because the concept of a certain kind of shit-free Universe is, in that equally bizarre Jungian abstraction, the female ‘collective unconscious,’ too new and too precious.”
February 25, 2025 at 2:39 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
John Crowley's exceptional second novel Beasts has this going on in the background, with the federal government's drive to reassert control a major force behind events. Too overlooked compared to his later work
A book front cover. The text reads: Beasts John Crowley Doubleday Science Fiction and the cover art is of a grayscale anthropomorphic lion looking over a cracked concrete wall and through a locked gate whose bars are broken. Plants are budding out of the breaks in the bars.
February 13, 2025 at 5:20 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Photograph of the philosopher Paul Feyerabend sitting with papers in his lap. He is sternly looking over his glasses at the camera
February 12, 2025 at 7:33 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
I would like to be generous, but this painting is seared into my memory
A family portrait of 13 family members, all of whom, from child to grandparents, man and woman, have almost exactly the same face. The perspective is also fucked.
February 7, 2025 at 9:43 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
My only exposure to Oliver Twist is the Wishbone episode, public television educates the youth.
A still from the show Wishbone with a Jack Russell Terrier (Wishbone) standing on a wooden table in a low-rent Victorian orphan costume holding a bowl in his mouth. There's an equally low-rent human orphan sitting at the table
February 7, 2025 at 9:19 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
straightforward, jumpy, lots of missiles. I know what I want from a battlemech
black and white drawing of a Catapult battlemech, bipedal with no arms and a prominent central cockpit. It has two large banks of missiles on each shoulder, one of which is firing
January 29, 2025 at 2:50 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Hitting like a ton of bricks.
Screencap from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With me of David Lynch as Gordon Cole, holding his hand splayed in front of his face while looking between his fingers
January 16, 2025 at 7:00 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
The study (that Guardian actually linked, refreshing) has the list of tested brands in the supporting info, but not which tested positive. They massaged their narrative in a kind of annoying way, burying some important stuff in the supporting info.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
A supporting information table which reads: Table S1. List of watch band brands tested Brands tested: Apple, Apple/Nike, CASETiFY, Fitbit, Google, KingofKings, Modal, Samsung, Tighesen, Vanjua
January 16, 2025 at 4:12 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
Once a producer saw his hair could be like this it was inevitable he'd be played by whoever the young, curly brown haired darling of the moment happens to be
January 15, 2025 at 3:33 PM
anarchicaesthete.bsky.social
An infinite number of food blogs will not change my mind
Norman Rockwell painting of a man in a leather jacket standing up proudly in the middle of a public meeting with the text Freedom of Speech underneath
January 10, 2025 at 6:19 PM