Zak Jarvis
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zakjarvis.bsky.social
Zak Jarvis
@zakjarvis.bsky.social
870 followers 280 following 6.7K posts
Artist, writer, extremely niche historian. He/him.
Links to my published fiction can be found on http://voidmonster.com

My collected writings on straight razors can be found at http://theshiveringbeggar.com

Tabula rasa accounts are auto-blocked.
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zakjarvis.bsky.social
This is what was taken from us.

The original 1837 Cooke & Wheatstone electric telegraph.
A photograph of the telegraph device. It sits in a gorgeous wooden base carved to resemble a harp. Mounted where the strings would be is a polished nickle diamond with the alphabet engraved into a diamond grid. A row of 5 needles in the middle can be actuated so two needles point to a single letter at the intersection of the grid points. There is a small group of keys for input at the bottom with ivory or porcelain buttons.
November 11, 2025 at 7:50 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
She smiles and says "I will always love you."
A still from the Claire Denis film "Trouble Every Day". Béatrice Dalle smiles faintly and looks just past the camera. She has dark hair in a somewhat short cut. The background is blurred out sky with a hint of city.
November 9, 2025 at 12:02 AM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
The forest I was wandering around in today near Moss Beach.
A panoramic photograph inside a dark pine forest. The sun weakly penetrates the canopy. The forest floor is all pine duff, seemingly downy soft (in reality, these are nut fun to sit or lay on at all). In the distance, a residential neighborhood's landscaping vines have begun to take over and the bare, brown trunks of the tall pines are vividly green. The entrance to the pine forest. Light filters through tree trunks and branches. This is approaching what feels like the disphotic zone of the forest, where things are permanently darker. What we are seeing appears peaceful, but represents the violent victory of conifers over ground-based deciduous plants. This is the species of pine which sprouted all the slippery jacks. It has branches beginning low to the ground and largely bare limbs. Many of its branches lay on the ground.
November 8, 2025 at 11:46 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Another very pleasant mushroom hike. Found many mushrooms. Still no Laccaria amethysteo-occidentalis.
I believe this is a species of pine rust. It looks like a lump of shit stuck to pine needles with a dusting of powdered sugar. It is extremely woody -- enough so it made a loud SNAP when I pulled it free of the ground litter. The cap of a slippery jack. I *believe* these are pungent slippery jacks, but none of the ones I found smelled like much. They were, however, all growing over the root systems of specific pine. The picture makes clear why it's called a slippery jack. It's a dark brown, extremely slimy, goopy mushroom with large holes from the critters that eat it. A pair of absolutely lovely amanita mushrooms. They are the absolute characteristic red-fading to yellow at the edge caps with a dark pattern that mirrors the gills on the underside. One has a very visible stipe, and both are glistening and covered in crunchy white flakes. The stalk and underside of one of the slippery jacks showing the spotted stalk and sponge-like structure of the cap. The underside of the cap is vividly yellow, while the stalk is the color of perfectly cooked meringue with a dusting of chocolate.
November 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
I know JUST enough about mushrooms to never eat ANYTHING I find.

Especially ones that look like this:
Most likely amanita muscaria. It is a vividly red mushroom with sugary white clumps on the cap, rising out of pine needles. The cap is dome-shaped and the red color shifts slightly to yellow near the edge.
November 8, 2025 at 2:09 AM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Many mushrooms on my hike today! None of what I was looking for though.
Probably a variety of amanita mushroom. It has a light tan cap that is dark brown at the center with a pale ring surrounded by a band of dark, fine stripes to the edge of the cap. A closeup of what’s likely a bolete of some kind. It’s a yellow bleb of fleshy mushroom springing from leaf litter. I’ve seen many boletes in the area, but never any earth balls, so I’m going with bolete. A cluster of likely agaricus mushrooms. They have flat, light brown caps and are densely clustered, erupting from a thick bed of pine duff. Likely one of several possible amanita mushrooms. It stands proud of the soil and pine duff on an embankment, showing the delicate while gills. There is no volva visible.
November 8, 2025 at 12:39 AM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
We are *owed* a Magnus the Robot Fighter movie with production design by Phil Hale.
A painting by Phil Hale of Johnny Badhair in an improbable ten foot leap up to smash the head of a damaged robot with some kind of bat against a wispy blue sky and khaki landscape. Johnny is in shorts and a shirt, both the same color as the earth. His namesake hair is as much a smudge of black smoke as what rises from the dying robot.
November 4, 2025 at 10:55 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
A screencap of my Strava stats for the hike. 4.5 Miles, 513 feet of elevation gain, one hour 47 minutes moving, 10,736 steps and 1,121 calories burned. A picture of a trail wending through a dark copse of trees. A view of the demolished wall of an abandoned structure of some kind filled with graffiti. A single ray of light penetrates in from the left making a section of red paint seem to glow. A promontory overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacifica ocean. They sky and sea blend together at the horizon. The ground looks very dark.
October 23, 2025 at 11:57 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Maps of imaginary cosmologies.
An image showing the circular money flow of AI investing, with NVidia at the center of the universe. A flowchart labeled "Should I be using AI for this?: Nonprofit AI Treasure Map". For all those treasure-seeking nonprofits out there. 13th century map of the cosmos as commentary on Ovid. It shows a series of interconnected rings with Nvidia in the middle. A late 18th century diagram of the Gnostic Sophia from "Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer", showing Nvidia at the center of a series of interconnected rings.
October 22, 2025 at 8:37 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
No, really. Very equal opportunity.

This is a tree.
Treebeard's Tom Hardy in Bronson moment. A closeup of a convoluted puckered surface on a tree with an extraordinary resemblance to a particular piece of human anatomy, regularly used as an insult, yet beloved by millions.
October 18, 2025 at 10:22 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
This is an equal opportunity shitposting environment.

If you would prefer a different blessing, here is the Joshua Tree "I just woke up this way" rock.
A stone formation in Joshua Tree National Park which looks for all the world like standing on the belly of a giant sporting a thick erection, complete with glans.
October 18, 2025 at 10:22 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
You have been blessed with the Carlsbad Caverns cave titty.
A photograph of a very large limestone stalagmite which has somehow grown as an anatomically correct human breast. I must emphasize this is a 100% natural formation, though there are likely large quantities of silica involved, the matrix is very different I assure you. It is, after all, *stone*.
October 18, 2025 at 10:13 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
A gray cat laying in a cat bed on my desk, pushing her head back while our very large black, tan & white tabby rubs his head against her. An exceptionally rare moment of these two being almost snuggly.
October 18, 2025 at 10:10 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Looking at the numbers I've run up on my bikes makes me feel pretty good.
A screenshot from my Strava page showing the number of miles I've put on each bike. Velocipes gracilis (my thoroughbred French carbon fiber 1337 bike) has 5,211.7 miles. Velocipes harrijasotzaile (my Basque-made EBike) 1,213.1 miles. And Velocipes robustus (my tank-like gravel bike) 2,576 miles. Yes I pretended there is a zoological taxonomy of bicycles. They're my bikes.
October 11, 2025 at 9:21 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Left the house before dawn. Couldn’t easily stop until well after sunrise to get a picture, but I still got to watch the sun come up over the bay.
Just after dawn over the San Francisco Bay. A transmission town stands to the right of the water, the sky golden with sun just behind it.
October 11, 2025 at 4:44 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Man, this is a legit perfect depiction of how I feel ten months into this year.
A cropped screenshot from Escape From New York showing the actor Frank Doubleday in his Romero getup for the film. The man looks like a haunted pipecleaner. His hair looks like it's trying to flee from his scalp, his eyes are sunken and bruised, his teeth are filed down and he is holding a rag with a severed finger. His facial expression is the embodiment of feral goblin.
October 10, 2025 at 5:35 AM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
I’ve read *the first page*.

Poster’s Madness is eternal.
First page of the book: “To the reader. I have been present sometimes at some discourses, and have lighted also upon some relations, in print, concerning Visions and Revelations, that have happened unto some. I did not apprehend them always, as they seemed unto me to do, that were partakers with me of the same whether relations or discourses. But…” (The page mercifully cuts off there.)
October 9, 2025 at 11:03 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
I bet everyone thought Méric Casaubon was super fun to hang around with.
A screenshot from his Wikipedia page which reads: “Controversy In A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme (1655), Casaubon wrote against enthusiasm, and circumscribed the domain of the supernatural. The”
October 9, 2025 at 10:52 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Evaporation lives in my head, coloring everything I see or do.
“ Those dark eyes conceal their life within them Buried secrets - the flesh won't keep Only motion makes him And he grows more still A stronger impulse sinks more deep And the sky grows white above us Our love a fact Like any other Like a muscle pulsing in a seabird's wing These welcoming doors close above us”
October 9, 2025 at 6:51 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
A random selection from my photos.
A wall mural in the town I live in. The two story building is two-tone gray with the lower half darker. There are two windows on the lower floor and a third painted on the second. In the imaginary window is the vividly red head of a large octopus. Two of its arms appear to burst out of the lower floor spilling bricks of the same red color everywhere and revealing a dark space full of smaller octopuses on the other side of the wall. In the lower right is the artist’s name: Mateo Joseph. A poster for the 2025 Hastings Pirate festival. It reads, innocently or not: NEW FOR 2025! COMING TO 2009 PIRATE FESTIVAL HASTINGS PIRATE FESTIVAL PEG OR BE PEGGED! A PIRATE FESTIVAL TRADITION The idea is to secretly peg someone without them knowing - "just because" Maybe you like their outfit, attitude or personality - any reason or no reason - YOU CHOOSE HOW IT WORKS: 1. Buy your peg 2. Go Peg someone, if possible without them knowing 3. If you find you've been pegged, know that someone was impressed by you! 4. Keep one as a Pirate Festival memento Support the cause and buy yer pegs from "The Dutchess" AKA The Peg Lady SUPPORTING HASTINGS PIRATE FESTIVAL ONE PEG AT A TIME A photograph of a dead bird’s neck. It is mostly skeletonized. A picture of our large (17 pound) tabby cat laying in my lap looking at the camera. You can see he has markings like thigh-high boots on his hind legs and little half gloves on his front paws. His belly and neck are similarly white, with the stripe continuing up his boss’s the rest is dark brown with black stripes. I have a tattoo of lizards around the arm holding the cat.
October 8, 2025 at 5:36 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
FYI, if your scryer tells you the angels have said anything remotely like this, then either someone else picked up the phone on the other end or your scryer has a plan he hasn't told you about.
A quote from John Dee's diaries with the argument the angels made for why he should let Edward Kelley should swap wives. Kelley reported this response was written on a white crucifix: "If I told a man to go and strangle his brother, and he did not do it, he would be the son of sin and death. For all things are possible and permitted to the godly. Nor are sexual organs more hateful to them than the faces of every mortal. Thus it will be: the illegitimate will be joined with the true son. And east will be united with the west, and the south with the north." The cross then vanished, per Kelley.
October 5, 2025 at 10:18 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
An 1800's illustration of Captain Swing, captioned: "An Original Portrait of Captain Swing". It shows a being made of hay bales, pitch, tar, turpentine, gunpowder and other flammable ingredients all of which are beginning to bloom with fire. It holds one clawed, burning hand above it's flame-crowned head. Fire jets from its eyes and gaps in the bale's cover on its chest.
October 5, 2025 at 7:41 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Didn’t find what I was looking for, but it was a lovely short hike all the same!

I‘ll just need to go hiking somewhere else. Oh no!
The ocean as seen through trees and hanging moss. A sprawling tree on a gentle slope, copiously garlanded with moss. A banana slug on pine duff.
October 3, 2025 at 11:12 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
Not what I’m looking for, but quite a show all the same!
A eucalyptus tree with bright orange, quite robust shelf fungus (no way I could get close enough for anything like a proper ID).
October 3, 2025 at 10:17 PM
zakjarvis.bsky.social
SKULL ART! QRP with yours!

These are my life size 3d printed, hand painted skulls.
A stack of 5 printed skulls in various stages of paint. A single skull in a near-final paint job. It’s on a 3d printed stand that let me put UV sealant on both skull and mandible in one go. I then cure them in a cardboard box with a hair drier stuck in it. Two different finished skulls. I go for slightly different paint schemes on each skull to keep it interesting to do. A closeup of one of the finished skulls with an antique (made between 1795 and 1810) straight razor between its teeth.
October 1, 2025 at 9:40 PM