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tak.notapattern.net
Kat
@tak.notapattern.net
9 followers 4 following 110 posts
maker of many things, mostly lists. armchair #cloud documentarian.

🎭 i love any and all live #theatre and try to see every show on #Broadway

🇯🇵 […]

[bridged from https://weatherishappening.network/@kat on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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tak.notapattern.net
not all heroes wear capes
one of those annoying gas station screens that plays obnoxious audio at you while you’re just trying to get some overpriced gas in peace, except you can’t because we live in a capitalist dystopian nightmare where every surface must be yelling at you at all times. something is scrawled on one of the otherwise unlabeled buttons. what is it…? close-up of the button, alongside which someone (HERO) has helpfully scrawled “MUTE” in permanent marker. readers, i pressed the button and i am here to tell you that it WORKED and i was able to spend the next few minutes in blessed, silent contemplation of how much it costs to fill the gas tank of the vehicle i am forced to own because of decades of under-investment in public transit infrastructure
October 7, 2025 at 9:21 PM
tak.notapattern.net
okay so the word "demogorgon" has been bothering me for awhile. i finally looked it up and it turns out to be a *fourth century* typo/misreading of the Latin for "demiurge".

this is such a good line: “Demogorgon is a grammatical error, become god.”
Wikipedia's "Etymology" section for demogorgon reads: The origins of the name Demogorgon are not entirely clear, though the most prevalent scholarly view now considers it to be a misreading of the Greek δημιουργόν (dēmiourgón, accusative case form of δημιουργός, 'demiurge') based on the manuscript variations in the earliest known explicit reference in Lactantius Placidus (Jahnke 1898, Sweeney 1997, Solomon 2012). Boccaccio, in his influential Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, cites a now-lost work by Theodontius and that master's acknowledged Byzantine source "Pronapides the Athenian" as authority for the idea that Demogorgon is the antecedent of all the gods. Art historian Jean Seznec concludes that "Demogorgon is a grammatical error, become god."
May 29, 2025 at 10:51 PM
tak.notapattern.net
very nice 5BBT with @dominic today! i haven’t verified if this is a record, but it was definitely one of our fastest tours yet. total time on the bike was almost exactly 4h. my favorite ride and my favorite way to kick off summer ✌️
start line selfie, we’ve got our helmets and sunglasses on and there is a huge crowd of cyclists behind us waiting to roll GPS track of the ride: 38.5 miles, 1250ft elevation gain, and a moving time of 3h 12min. the route of the 5 Boro Bike Tour does indeed visit all five boroughs of NYC: starts in downtown Manhattan, rides through midtown and Central Park, briefly ducks into the Bronx, then back down into Queens, Brooklyn, and finally over the Verrazano bridge to Staten Island.
May 5, 2025 at 4:44 AM
tak.notapattern.net
delighted by this poem that Rebecca Solnit quotes in her memoir.

“You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology”

—Diane di Prima, “Rant”

full text: http://home.insightbb.com/~gardner.j/rant.html
There is no way out of the spiritual battle There is no way to avoid taking sides There is no way you can *not* have a poetics no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher you do it in the consciousness of making or not making yr world you have a poetics: you step into the world like a suit of readymade clothes or you etch in light your firmament spills into the shape of your room the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves
May 2, 2025 at 5:36 PM
tak.notapattern.net
@timbray @ColesStreetPothole oh this is weird, i aced it? while expecting to do badly (i answered that i think my resistance to misinformation is “poor”). perhaps my own skepticism about my ability to discern the truth is itself helpful here 🤔
Congratulations! You're more resilient to misinformation than 96% of the US population! / Your MIST-20 results: 20/20 Veracity Discernment: 100% (ability to accurately distinguish real news from fake news) Real News Detection: 100% (ability to correctly identify real news) Fake News Detection: 100% (ability to correctly identify fake news) Distrust/Naïvité: 0 (ranges from -10 to +10, overly skeptical to overly gullible) - Your ability to recognize real and fake news is great! You are neither too skeptical nor too gullible when it comes to the news.
May 2, 2025 at 3:59 PM
tak.notapattern.net
spotted the new subway map in the wild for the first time this weekend! the S has em 😍
the new MTA subway map, installed in one of the display cases on a train
April 6, 2025 at 2:58 PM
tak.notapattern.net
my collaborator is demonstrating laudable commitment to our shared project, but also a rather dismaying insistence on continuing to explore a very limited set of themes. additionally, the rather appalling lack of attention to detail has me […]

[Original post on weatherishappening.network]
the previous chalked slogan, STRUMPETS GET CRUMPETS, has been annotated with an attribution, — SACRED LIZARDS. i’m sorry to have to report that this was originally “CRID” followed by the aforementioned tedious slur for liberals. to be quite honest, even spelling “CRIED” correctly, which i have to assume was the intent, doesn’t really succeed in making this statement function as an insult, or in fact communicate anything whatsoever. DALTON TRUMBO TRIED TO WARN US, as it turns out, ABOUT GLIB BEARS. i don’t know what to tell you, some of those bears have real honeyed tongues (sorry not sorry). GLIB is such a nice word, i should really try to use it more often. ON NOV 5TH 3084 THE ALIENS WILL ARRIVE. was this previously a different date? who knows, i have no time for questions, i’ve decided to become a Y3K alien invasion truther. there’s also a cute little UFO. anyway, a thing about numbers is they are awfully easy to turn info different numbers, a fact i never thought that much about before now. GLIB DOORKNOB CULTISTS GET A GRIP. look, don’t ask me, i’m just trying to get a handle on what’s going on around here. i suppose i should think of some words other than GLIB, i just really like it and i think it deserves more love.
March 12, 2025 at 2:12 AM
tak.notapattern.net
a few more. i am gonna need more chalk… a lot more chalk…….
sidewalk chalk reads “ELEPHANTS TRUMPET TO HONOR THEIR DEAD #NeverForget” sidewalk chalk reads DALTON TRUMBO TRIED TO WARN US! (sorry for the blurry photo) sidewalk chalk reads TRAMP STAMPS FOR MY TRUE FRIENDS and yeah the A in TRAMP is a bit wonky but art is all about embracing the imperfections in the raw materials the inevitable partner to the previous, TRUE STAMPS FOR MY TRAMP FRIENDS
March 11, 2025 at 2:21 AM
tak.notapattern.net
speaking of praxis, did you know sidewalk chalk is cheap and you can just throw some in your bag in case anything in your environment needs improving?

please enjoy these small acts of alchemical warfare, as i hope a few of my neighbors will. i […]

[Original post on weatherishappening.network]
sidewalk chalk reads STRUMPETS GET CRUMPETS. part of the first word might be smudged in a way that makes you think it predates the rest of the text sidewalk chalk reads EVEN TRUMPET PLAYERS GET THE BLUES sidewalk chalk reads ❤️ BARDS PLAY LYRES AT FUNERAL PYRES. the heart makes you think perhaps it is an elision of earlier text, like, just for example, the first part of a grade-school level slur commonly used to describe liberals and cast aspersions on their mental capacity. sidewalk chalk reads WIZARD BANANA PEEL CULTISTS ARE A TRIP”. WIZARD, as you may note, shares the ARD ending with BARD. i admit that my unwitting partner in this collaboration did set me a nasty puzzle with this one, which originally began with the slur and ended with “CULT RIP”. but the thought of a small child reading these missives spurred me out of despair and i am pleased with the end result. (i’m not actually sure what is written upside down here, as it was hastily scrawled and perhaps previously vandalized, but rest assured that i did not neglect to turn it into a similarly nonsensical phrase, namely “WHY? CRIED THE 3 BEARS”
March 11, 2025 at 1:59 AM
tak.notapattern.net
i got out on my bike today and it was slow and icy and exhausting and absolutely necessary. i have GOT to figure out how to get more exercise during the winter months but i say that every year and i haven’t cracked the code yet. but today was a good day.
a paved trail curving under an underpass, quite icy. the entire rest of the photo is basically various shades of ice and snow and cement and gray sky and bare wintry trees. but there is a narrow path where the ice has thawed and sometimes a small window of opportunity is all you need. we broke 50 degrees today and i have some hope that spring will come eventually and with it, a thaw, green growing things, sunshine, outdoor dining at cute restaurants with patios, warm evenings, vacations with friends. it’s around the corner. keep the faith.
February 25, 2025 at 11:45 PM
tak.notapattern.net
same tbqh. Hookland on re-enchantment as resistance:

“I am not here for the voyeurism of destruction. You'll not get any of it
trom me.”

https://bsky.app/profile/hookland.bsky.social/post/3limvqvszcc26
@hookland.bsky.social Re-enchantment as resistance means actual re-enchantment and actual resistance, not endlessly sharing posts about the latest terrible thing because that makes you feel better, makes it feel like you're doing something. I am not here for the voyeurism of destruction. You'll not get any of it trom me. I once interviewed Bill Hicks who talked about the pornography of doom. I refuse the pornographers of doom. I refuse to turn the terror of the now into a spectacle, into engagement farming. We can be engines of kindness, connectivity and wonder online, so forgive me for concentrating on that.
February 21, 2025 at 5:10 AM
tak.notapattern.net
“For example, letters, numbers, leaves, and rocks are all asymmetrical.”

okay, Google, how many possibly-symmetrical pine cones did you burn in order to generate this incredibly pointless list?
✨Al Overview (screenshot from Google dot com) Asymmetry is when two sides of something are not identical or match up. For example, letters, numbers, leaves, and rocks are all asymmetrical. Examples of asymmetrical objects • Leaves: Many leaves are asymmetrical. • Rocks: Many rocks are asymmetrical. • Pine cones: Many pine cones are asymmetrical. • The American flag: The American flag is an example of asymmetry. • Google's wordmark: The first three letters of Google's wordmark are wider than the last three, creating an asymmetrical balance.
February 21, 2025 at 3:39 AM
tak.notapattern.net
i’m tired of February but i did see this *incredible* sundog today so i guess all the ice crystals hanging around in the atmosphere do have a few redeeming qualities ✨
the winter sun is low in the sky over a graveyard, the irregularly-shaped stones casting long shadows over a ground so covered in smooth, shiny ice that it looks like it’s been polished. the lens has added rays of light to the sun that extend outward like a child’s drawing, all the way to the edges of the frame. bare tree branches reach into the shot from the left, and the horizon is the silhouette of more trees, including a few tall pines. but now the reason we’re here: to the left of the sun is a small, bright, glittering arc of a rainbow, pleasantly gleaming behind some wispy clouds, which extend outward in a gentle upswept curve as if painted there with a brush. per wikipedia: “Sun dogs are caused by the refraction and scattering of light from horizontally oriented plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals either suspended in high and cold cirrus or cirrostratus clouds, or drifting in freezing moist air at low levels as diamond dust. The crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. As the crystals gently float downwards with their large hexagonal faces almost horizontal, sunlight is refracted horizontally, and sun dogs are seen to the left and right of the Sun.” a close-up of the sundog itself, looking like a sideways slice of rainbow just at the horizon. the absurdly aesthetic wispy clouds are still present, swooping from one edge of the image to the other and shining with white light at the outer edge of the sundog. there’s an obelisk (actually a gravestone) silhouetted in the foreground, along with some more wintry type trees. the overall effect is almost like a watercolor painting. i risked life and limb to get these photos, randomly veering off the road into the nearest parking lot (which just happened to be a graveyard because of course it did) and then crossing a busy road and slipping around on a VERY icy sidewalk. 100% worth it though, i regret nothing in this photo the sun is behind one of the gravestones (a kind of ornate lamp post looking thing) which reduces the saturation and lens flare, bringing out the long shadows the graves and enclosing fence are casting on the frozen ground. with more contrast the colors of the sun dog look brighter and the wispy clouds take on an effect almost like smoke. this is the photo i had to walk on the icy sidewalk to get, and istg i came pretty close to going ass over teakettle a couple times, but — as all great artists know — sometimes you have no choice but to risk it all in the pursuit of beauty! in this last photo the colors of the sundog have started to fade, but it’s zoomed out a little more (emphasizing the long shadows of the graves, which as you might have learned in art class, are functioning here as a form of memento mori, a term which here means “there is such beauty in the world, and we are all gonna be dead and buried sooner or later, so, hey, do your best to enjoy having eyes that can see rainbows, even if it’s currently so cold out that you can’t feel your face”). (eyes, or, to be less ableist, whichever organs you use to appreciate the beauty of the world, though i apologize on behalf of rainbows that they are pretty much a visual-only phenomenon and don’t normally come with alt text in the wild, which honestly might be for the best…) anyway the thing i like about this photo is that you can also barely see a larger, much fainter halo around the sun. i don’t know if it’s a true 46 degree halo or a different optical / lensing effect but it’s very pretty.
February 20, 2025 at 5:01 AM