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yonderdavid.bsky.social
David
@yonderdavid.bsky.social
530 followers 180 following 2.3K posts
Tomorrow ere fresh morning streak the east
With first approach of light, we must be risen,
And at our pleasant labour, to reform
Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green
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yonderdavid.bsky.social
I am reminded of an excerpt from an essay I quite enjoy, adapted by Camus from a speech he was invited to give at a monastery after the war.
And why shouldn't I say here what I have written elsewhere? For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation when faced with force. It seems that that voice did speak up. But I assure you that millions of men like me did not hear it and that at that time believers and unbelievers alike shared a solitude that continued to spread as the days went by and the executioners multiplied. It has been explained to me since that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that it was in the style of the encyclicals, which is not at all clear. The condemnation was voiced and it was not understood! Who could fail to feel where the true condemnation lies in this case and to see that this example by itself gives part of the reply, perhaps the whole reply, that you ask of me. What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of men resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally. Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought, and I know that certain men at least have resolved to do so. I merely fear that they will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and that after an interval of two thousand years we may see the sacrifice of Socrates repeated several times. The program for the future is either a permanent dialogue or the solemn and significant putting to death of any who have experienced dialogue. After having contributed my reply, the question that I ask Chris-tians is this: "Will Socrates still be alone and is there nothing in him and in your doctrine that urges you to join us?" It may be, I am well aware, that Christianity will answer negatively. Oh, not by your mouths, I am convinced. But it may be, and this is even more probable, that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago. In that case Christians will live and Christianity will die. In that case the others will in fact pay for the sacrifice. In any case such a future is not within my province to decide, despite all the hope and anguish it awakens in me. I can speak only of what I know. And what I know which sometimes creates a deep longing in me—is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices millions, I say—throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for men.
November 12, 2025 at 2:24 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 7:22 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Ominous.
A message in a Reddit inbox, labeled "Because you visited r/Huel," has the all caps subject line "DON'T BE LIKE ME."
November 6, 2025 at 10:44 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Sherlock, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, imagines garlic.
October 30, 2025 at 9:01 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
@andimgladofit.bsky.social had an excellent entry in this genre.
A tweet by user @andimgladofit reads: "venmo froze me and 6 friends' accounts for a month because every transaction we sent to each other in 2022 had the message: 'scheme to obtain money by fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises via wire under 18 USC § 1343'"
October 29, 2025 at 1:35 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
October 28, 2025 at 12:06 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
You can just do things.
A close-up image of part of President Trump's famous marker edit to the landfall map for Hurricane Dorian.
October 24, 2025 at 5:22 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
@moultano.bsky.social Have you ever wondered if microblogs might have the equivalent of drums, drums in the deep?
The body of a dwarf, trapped in the depths of Khazad-dûm.
October 23, 2025 at 12:59 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Furthermore always happy to add to my store of topic deviations obscured by "View fill thread" below one of Ryan's posts.
October 22, 2025 at 3:24 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
I transitioned from mostly nonverbal thought to very frequently verbalized thought, and some folks have transitioned in the other direction (as perhaps I someday will). Einstein did a pretty good job of explaining the monologueless experience in a letter in reply to Hadamard.
A letter from Einstein reads as follows. MY DEAR COLLEAGUE: In the following, I am trying to answer in brief your questions as well as I am able. I am not satisfied myself with those answers and I am willing to answer more questions if you believe this could be of any advantage for the very interesting and difficult work you have undertaken. (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in pro- The letter continues, starting mid-word: ductive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. (B) The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will. (C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for. (D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage, as already mentioned. (E) It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins). Remark: Professor Max Wertheimer has tried to investigate the distinction between mere associating or combining of reproducible elements and between understanding (organisches Begreifen); I cannot judge how far his psychological analysis catches the essential point.
October 19, 2025 at 1:02 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Related.
A tweet from YonderDavid reads: "One mathematician I know regarded it as something of a rite of passage to have a Russian speaker at a conference inform you that the result you just presented had been proven in some never digitized and never translated Russian journal."
October 17, 2025 at 5:18 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
October 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Not that one needs the goggles. There's a meadow between the boulders with a mirror pond and small wildflowers bending in the breeze.
A Bruce Banner meme reads: "That's my secret, Cap: I'm always in the mountains."
September 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
The Metaverse solves this.
"Reality" by Eran Fowler, posted at the following URL by the original author: https://www.deviantart.com/eranfowler/art/Reality-78861805
September 18, 2025 at 6:46 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
A Google search for "directions to lake o'hara."
September 18, 2025 at 6:39 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Also, "staff."
The Major Hellstrom sees three fingers meme.
September 13, 2025 at 4:46 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Every time I drive I move millimetrically closer to this.
In the "thing, Japan" meme format, a wojak is unhappy with traffic but excited for traffic in Japan.
September 11, 2025 at 1:24 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Ah yes, I remember those.
The original Pixel Buds, described in 2020 as "Babel-Fish Earbuds," in this case by MIT Technology Review.
September 10, 2025 at 2:53 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
He suggested taking care of walls and roofs before the revolution. So hasty.
A tweet from @SrslyWrong reads: "message to my enemies: when the revolution comes you're not just gonna get the wall, buddy, you're gonna get four walls, a roof, clean clothes, good food, education, and quality health care because that's what every human being alive deserves"
September 6, 2025 at 2:54 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In my lane. Focused. Flourishing.
Meme illustration of John Jones stuck in a cave.
September 1, 2025 at 4:18 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Another old timey footnote that occasionally impinges upon my memory.
A screenshot of the Google Books scan of the second footnote from the preface to JJ Sylvester's "The Laws of Verse." The footnote is on a topic the author had, in the main text, just said he'd be skipping. It reads as follows: "I cannot resist the temptation of quoting here from a daily morning paper the following unconsciously chromatic descriptive of the total eclipse of the moon, that grand spectacle of nature, which I witnessed and watched yesternight from Woolwich Common in front of my house, which in a few days I am to quit:—'The last portion of the shadow of the earth had been passed through by the moon, which then again sailed "in its full orb of glory through the dark blue depth."' The beauty of sound in this description is almost as delicious as the impression of the sight of nature which it recalls."
August 27, 2025 at 10:22 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Variations on a theme.
August 27, 2025 at 6:03 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Everybody wanna be a transfluvial salt merchant, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy ass.
From the 1919 book "The Æsop for Children," an illustration of a salt merchant and his donkey fording a river. Image obtained from Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm
August 27, 2025 at 4:04 AM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
Um actually
A Wikipedia article titled "Dreyfus affair."
August 26, 2025 at 4:00 PM
yonderdavid.bsky.social
They made me feel pretty cool when they disavowed me.
A screenshot of part of a website has the header "Resource Sharing" and below that a message starting with the sentence, "You have been disavowed."
August 26, 2025 at 3:26 PM