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D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

250 followers 1.3K following 60 posts

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, /Make ... thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand on end / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

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D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

The New York Times always provides the laughs.

June 25, 2025 at 3:06 PM

D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

A good test of whether X or Y constitutes "bad writing" is to ask yourself how often Virginia Woolf did it. And in the case of beginning sentences with "and" or "but," she did it a lot.

And so, striding unconcernedly from one idea to the next,
we traverse a large stretch of ground; observe that a wound in
the solicitor is a very serious thing; that Mary Queen of Scots
wears surgical boots and is subject to fits near the Horse Shoe in
Tottenham Court Road; take it for granted that no one really
cares about Eschylus; and so, with many amusing anecdotes and
some profound reflections, reach the peroration, which is that,
as he had been told not to see more in Cheapside than he could
get into twelve pages of the Universal Review, he had better stop.
And yet obviously Butler is at least as careful of our pleasure as
Stevenson; and to write like oneself and call it not writing is a
much harder exercise in style than to write like Addison and call
it writing well.
But, however much they differ individually, the Victorian
essayists yet had something in common. They wrote at greater
length than is now usual, and they wrote for a public which had
not only time to sit down to its magazine seriously, but a high, if
peculiarly Victorian, standard of culture by which to judge it. It
was worth while to speak out upon serious matters in an essay;
and there was nothing absurd in writing as well as one possibly
could when, in a month or two, the same public which had welcomed the essay in a magazine would carefully read it once more
in a book. But a change came from a small audience of cultivated
people to a larger audience of people who were not quite so
cultivated. The change was not altogether for the worse. In
volume iii. we find Mr. Birrell and Mr. Beerbohm. It might even
be said that there was a reversion to the classic type, and that the
essay by losing its size and something of its sonority was approaching more nearly the essay of Addison and Lamb. At any rate,
there is a great gulf between Mr. Birrell on Carlyle and the essay
which one may suppose that Carlyle would have written upon
Mr. Birrell. There is little similarity between A Cloud of Pinafores,
by M…

March 22, 2025 at 7:10 PM

D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

Grainy photo of Neil Gorsuch as an irritating teen reading a book in a white shirt and skinny tie. Gavin Newsom as an irritating adult reading Beloved by Toni Morrison with the look of a stock photo model for a shot tagged "THOUGHTFUL." Kevin Kline as the character Ott from the film A Fish Called Wanda reading Nietzsche.

Photo of Pam from The Office as a signal for the "They're the same picture" meme.

March 14, 2025 at 10:26 AM

D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

Neil Gaiman's statement is basically a cut-and-paste job from Matt Lauer's in 2017.

I would bet Gaiman's is just as truthful.

Breaking the Silence
Posted by Neil Gaiman at 10:20 AM
Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I've always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I've now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.

I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.

And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's.

I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.

Like most of us, I’m learning, and I'm trying to do the work needed, and I know that that's not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I'll continue to g…

'I am truly sorry': Matt Lauer responds to sexual misconduct allegations
The former TODAY anchor addressed sexual misconduct allegations that led NBC News to fire him.

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Nov. 30, 2017, 8:05 AM EST / Source: TODAY
By Eun Kyung Kim
A day after allegations of sexual misconduct led to him being fired as the long-time anchor of TODAY, Matt Lauer broke his silence to express “sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions.”

Lauer, one of the best-known personalities to have his career crash in a storm of sexual misconduct claims involving news media figures, was fired Wednesday after NBC News received a detailed complaint from a female colleague who accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior that started during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

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Matt Lauer: 'There are no words to express my sorrow and regret'
04:18
“There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions. To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry. As I am writing this I realize the depth of the damage and disappointment I have left behind at home and at NBC,” Lauer said in a statement that also addressed the allegations made against him.

“Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed. I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly.”

January 14, 2025 at 11:33 PM

D. Porpentine

@dporpentine.bsky.social

I'm glad the @publicdomainrev.bsky.social decided to make the internet good again since everyone else seems hell-bent on destroying it. This is the only webpage anyone needs: pdimagearchive.org/galleries/th...