User talk:MinorProphet

This is (unsurprisingly) my talk page. MinorProphet (talk) 06:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Knights for the body

Hello, MinorProphet. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, "Knights for the body".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Try again?

Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13

• Hi, I'm MinorProphet, and I would like to request the undeletion of this draft, which was deleted under CSD G13. You might consider restoring the page so that I can make edits to it. Thanks for your kind assistance. MinorProphet (talk) 16:00, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Yay, Draft:Knights for the body is back, thanks. Now, about those other 20 un-finished drafts (ahem) ... MinorProphet (talk) 11:36, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Welcome back!

And happy new year! Viriditas (talk) 02:28, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Thank you, much appreciated. Have you read any more Iain M. Banks? HNY to you too. MinorProphet (talk) 03:47, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Made it half way through Matter (the eighth book in the ten book series) and stopped and never picked it up again. The writing was kind of boring and predictable but visually a feast. He tends to reuse words and phrases over and over again and that bugs me. I hope to pick it up again soon. Viriditas (talk) 05:03, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I just figured out why Banks writes this way, and it makes perfect sense. He isn't writing for people like me, who are going to read all ten books in the series. He's writing for someone who is going to pick up one book and read it, and decide later if they are going to read others. This is why each book stands alone in the series (I think). In other words, you can pick it up at any point in the series, so Banks isn't worried about repeating himself or going over the same ideas. Also, maybe it is expecting too much. There are about 1.4 million words in the series, so some repetition is likely. Viriditas (talk) 23:39, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I bought it in 2009, read it once and haven't really thought about it since. I just hauled it off the bookshelf (not a slim volume, eh?) and realised I didn't remember a single character or anything that happens in it. Next on the list, then. I do most of my reading on the bus (30 minutes each way into town), but it will barely fit in my bag... MinorProphet (talk) 11:50, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

My copy has 593 pages, with an additional ten pages of extras (an interview with the author). However, quantity has never been an issue for me. If you like the material, it goes fast. I think the Three-Body books (Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy) took me a month, as it was highly enjoyable. It was around 1700 pages or so. Viriditas (talk) 21:15, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

And there it is..."coped and crenellated parapet".

@Viriditas: So I made it to page 100 or so, and still reading. It appears to be an expanded digest/compendium of every space opera ever written, with knobs on. Vast amounts of intense detail, apparently deliberately irrelevant to 'the plot' (usurped heir to the throne etc.), perhaps just excessive info for the sake of it (super-detail being in itself a plot device of modern fiction) but since the reader can't confirm or deny the truth or otherwise, you have to go along with it... PS No hint of an unreliable narrator so far, since it's all in the third person... Help? NB No spoilers, plz. MinorProphet (talk) 04:31, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Fun fact: turn randomly to any page in any Culture series book and you will likely land very close to a character standing on a balcony or parapet of some kind. Banks is obsessed with that and it drives me crazy. Viriditas (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Yup, thanks for pointing this out, I've already come across the idea several times in Matter without consciously being aware of it. But thinking about it–which I normally don't do–isn't this the essential viewpoint of the disinterested narrator/novelist, directing our gaze over the entire panorama from afar (as in the first few pages) either with the ancient binoculars of Djan Seriy Anaplian or equipped with the multiple vidscreens which the tuttingly deprecating Turminder Xuss deploys to reveal in HD the carnage dealt to the approaching war-party? Similarly, the Ambassador and the Oct (or something, or someone) look down on Sursamen, which allows Banks to explain what shell-worlds are for ten or twenty pages. It's just a narrative device. Why not write your own novel if so unhappy...? Have you watched Primer? Just as unsettling in its own way. MinorProphet (talk) 07:37, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm not unhappy. But whenever I think of the Culture series, I'm immediately on a balcony surrounded by a parapet looking out over the view of the landscape. He does it so much it's kind of silly. Does North Queensferry have a lot of balconies and parapets? I bet it does! Also, why do I have to read to the exact middle of every book to find out the meaning of the title? Maybe I'm just simple-minded, but at least tell me what the title means before I'm finished reading the damn book. Oh, and if you want to find out what Matter means, open the book exactly in half. You're welcome. Viriditas (talk) 08:18, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Isn't that half the fun, *not* knowing what the title means? It's a little puzzle, you are meant to be intrigued, I suspect. You plough your way through a book, often almost to the end, and suddenly *there* is that telling phrase, the very nub of the matter which you had almost forgotten about but which has been slowly explained with maybe a subtle clue or two along the way. Isn't that part of the skill of the novelist? Anyway, it's only a diversion from boring reality. I can't believe that you prefer Dan Brown, who tells you on almost every page what's just happened, and what's going to happen next. I can't speak for North Queensferry, never having been there: but wherever there is a view, people will build a house which overlooks it just so they can entertain guests who gaze out of the window/balcony/parapet and think "Aaaah, isn't that lovely, you're so lucky", etc. MinorProphet (talk) 09:37, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I'm not going to defend Dan Brown's writing style. What does interest me is why Brown's writing didn't translate to film so well; you would think the simplicity of it would have made for an easy adaptation. But the films are pretty poorly done. Poor Tom Hanks. Anyway, can you imagine a film adaptation of The Culture? That would make for like 7 seasons of 70 episodes. They are trying something similar with Foundation on Apple TV, and it did have some successful episodes and characters, but something got lost on the way to the writing room. Lee Pace is pretty much the only reason anyone watches the show. His transformation is remarkable. But if you watch the show closely, you can see a ton of Culture references, and maybe Banks got them from Asimov in the first place. Viriditas (talk) 00:07, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Brown's books are horrendously, clunkingly bad, and trying to imitate them on screen only makes them seem even more ham-fisted than you might ever have imagined. Asimov, of course, is the grandpa, and H. G. Wells had even more imagination, but slightly more thinly spread. Sleep beckons. MinorProphet (talk) 02:06, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I just re-watched Primer, the second time since it was released in 2004, which was more than 20 years ago. I'm sorry to hear about Shane Carruth's recent personal problems, as this film demonstrates Carruth was a budding auteur at the time, having unbelievably written, directed, produced, edited, scored, and acted in the film. Has anyone ever done that before? Anyhoo, I'm aware of the cult-like obsession people have with this film, as I've followed most of the zany discussions about it on Hacker News, which border on religious worship. With that said, some things stand out to me on the second watch which I never really noticed before on the first: the Super 16mm format naturally produces some interesting scenes that are mostly digitally created today, and the reality is that the modern digital version of this kind of thing lacks a kind of veritas that Primer brings to the foreground. (But I'm not the first person to notice this; Tom van der Linden talks a lot about this limitation of digital film on his YT channel, Like Stories of Old. If you haven't seen it, do check it out, it's one of the best film channels out there.)

As I've said, I'm familiar with the many different discussions about this film, about the technical aspects of the time looping, and the hacker or engineering culture that people find attractive. But for me personally, there's two major things that turn me off from this film the most, and while I'm not a contrarian by any means, it's not a favorite film of mine. For one, the dialogue is terrible. Not just the writing, but the timing. Also the derivative nature of the overdubbed, analog recording of the narrator sounds a lot like a homage to Fight Club or The Matrix, which makes it trite; I can get past that, it's not a dealbreaker. But having hung out with a lot of hackers and engineers in the deep past, I wonder if my personal experience was different because it was in California and not Texas. This film seems to have a Texan aesthetic that just doesn't speak to me. Which brings me to the second major thing that turned me off: I found the characters unlikable, shallow, and frankly uninteresting. And perhaps, that's written into the story, so that's of no surprise. Maybe my reaction was expected.

The initial scenes of invention in the garage are compelling and shot really well. You get the sense that you are standing right there next to them, and I notice that Carruth does it throughout the film, from the self-storage hallway shots to the scenes outside the storage unit in the dirt field, to the confined space of the device itself, to the scenes looking out of the balcony of the industrial park. The film is shot as if you are a participant, and that's a great way of facilitating immersion. But I couldn't really suspend disbelief with the device, as I could see it was just cheap PVC and maybe just plastic. But who cares, this film is more of an idea that you are supposed to work out, and the actual tech doesn't really matter. But at the end, it just feels like a mind fuck of sorts, bordering on some kind of hyperfocus that is taken to an extreme level. And that's interesting, as it keeps people coming back to the film to find out more and see what they missed the first time around, contributing to its success. Viriditas (talk) 10:15, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

@Viriditas: "But I couldn't really suspend disbelief with the device, as I could see it was just cheap PVC and maybe just plastic." Hey, It's a super-low budget indy film: the budget was $7,000 in 2004. It's genuinely filmed in a garage - a bit like Rick and Morty. The box will do, the science is nonsense anyway. Have you seen John Carpenter's Dark Star? Also PVC and duct tape, and the hilarious alien.

"I found the characters unlikable, shallow, and frankly uninteresting." I think that's part of the charm - they aren't meant to be profound, just a couple of ornery college grads who stumble on something astounding. The documentary style is deliberately off-putting, same sort of feel that Louis Theroux engenders. Again, I feel the dialogue/soundtrack is fairly confusing for a reason - it's very much like real conversation: interruptions, random thoughts, people speaking out of turn when the camera isn't even on them. I'm fairly sure it owes something to Brecht's technique of audience alienation. I enjoyed the way the characters slowly get pulled inside the monstrous mess they have almost unwittingly created. It *is* clunky, laboured even. Maybe I'll watch Upstream Color next.

I'm still making my way through Matter, at p. 200 or so. Enjoying spotting the 'balcony conversations', must have been about ten up till now. No-one is particularly interesting: perhaps the drone Xuss is more 'sentient' than any of the humanoids. But it seems hugely conventional thus far, much less intricately plotted than, say, Excession - I really enjoy having to make lots of notes to understand who's with who - another hugely complex book I had to makes notes for is William Gibson's The Peripheral. Have you read it, or watched the single-run TV series? May have mentioned it before... I don't think I've ever seen any adaptation of any book that so successfully recreates exactly how I imagined it to be. MinorProphet (talk) 11:46, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

FYI... I'm not ignoring you. It's just that I'm going to have to re-watch Dark Star, brush up on Louis Theroux, check out Upstream Color, and read Gibson's The Peripheral and watch the show just to respond to you. Viriditas (talk) 20:21, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Fair play, I still have to watch Upstream Color and re-watch Dark Star. Matter proceeds, although it's barely even interesting most of the time. Sentient Special Circumstances knife missiles disguised as dildos barely make me smile. Sometimes writers just go through the motions, and I'm still not convinced Banks is doing anything else. A friend of mine from what you would call 'high school', 6th Form for me, went to Jesus College, Oxford to read English, and her tutor was William Boyd. He told her that once he became an 'established novelist' he would churn out three or four pot-boilers to keep to the publishers happy, and occasionally he would produce one of the books he really wanted to write. I think Banks is guilty of the same thing, just to pay the mortage. I know that other people's recommendations often don't work for other people, but for me The Peripheral is one of the most intense and involving sci-fi books ever. MinorProphet (talk) 15:52, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Actually, the uninterrupted view from a high hill, especially if you have climbed up there yourself, can be utterly stunning: and maybe Banks likes to remind his readers of this 'Top of the world, Ma' feeling. MinorProphet (talk) 15:52, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Just re-watched Dark Star which I apparently first downloaded in 2008 (possibly via eMule?) when I was simultaneously warning everyone I spoke to about sub-prime (self-certification of your own mortgage agreement, even in the UK...???) ("In 2010, it was estimated that there were 800,000 dial-up users in the UK" (see Dial-up), I was probably one of them @56 kbit/s.

Bow down ye, heathen, and believe. I saw the entire financial crisis coming. I read all the news feeds, told everyone, and no-one quite got it. Ah, well... Maybe I had a been a bit too OTT re the Y2K bug. MinorProphet (talk) 20:53, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

So many parallels between Primer and Dark Star. MinorProphet (talk) 20:53, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

You said: "I'm sorry to hear about Shane Carruth's recent personal problems, as this film demonstrates Carruth was a budding auteur at the time, having unbelievably written, directed, produced, edited, scored, and acted in the film."

Well, I managed to get through about 45 minutes of Upstream Color before switching off for good. Quite frankly, that was some of the most appalling genuine horror material I have ever subjected myself to. Even if you hadn't drawn attention to Carruth's 'personal problems', I doubt that I would have gotten any further: the whole thing seems like a real-time template for how to conduct a horrendously, thoroughly abusive relationship.

Any comments? MinorProphet (talk) 02:15, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

I got myself a copy of Gibson's book, and because I couldn't wait, I watched the first episode of the series. I have to say, Moretz is a delight, and a true professional. I was thinking at first I would hate it, but I was genuinely surprised at how it made every effort to keep my attention. Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

I remember the series being being tightly directed - will have to re-watch. There are a number of significant differences between book and series: the book is considerably more complex, and the series skates over how and when the apartment death happened. Which, I think, is the whole point. Hey, it's an adaptation, and none the worse for it. I really would stick with the book first. Have you come across Fallout? It's really not too bad up to S02E06, and then it falls apart, setting the viewers up for S03... Which is why I hate most series. At least it doesn't deteriorate into a relationship dramaaaaa. MinorProphet (talk) 10:59, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Re sub-prime: "First-time buyers enjoy biggest choice of low-deposit mortgages in UK since 2008". (The Guardian, Friday 13 February 2026). Best of luck, eh????

Made it to the second ep. A bit disappointed they resorted to the quantum tunneling angle, as I thought that was pretty played out at this point. But the acting isn't bad, and Moretz is a great actor. I wasn't aware of her before this. I finished Fallout last week. I enjoyed it. I feel like both shows are trying to re-capture the Westworld magic, but I think that was a one-off. Anyone who says they stopped watching Westworld after season one is a silly person. And I do want to say, as someone who watched the entire Westworld series, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The chemistry between the actors is something the writing, directing, and music, cannot bring to the table alone. That's the magic, as it isn't something tangible you can point to or even describe. And this brings me to Theseus's Paradox. It's no longer a paradox, it's been solved. The ship is not the same if you replace the parts. Original art works are original precisely because the people and ideas are uniquely positioned in time and space and can never arise in the same way again. Derivative culture advocates just don't get it. We don't need any more reboots and re-imaginings. We need new, original content, not from the "mind" of an LLM or some yet-to-be-invented AI, but from the minds of humans. I think everyone knows by now that LLMs are a backdoor attempt to undermine human labor and ingenuity and to rollback democracy and regulations to solidify power and money in the hands of an elite technolibertarian class, while reducing everyone else to feudal serfs. Anyone who hasn't realized this yet is about 20 years behind. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Hahaha! At last, after 300 indescribably boring pages, which I almost had to force myself to keep ploughing through - so many bloody balconies, eh? - on p. 338 Banks finally wakes up out of the J. K. Rowling-like, near-fatal torpor of excessive, onananistic, nerd-like, ultra-detail which has literally no meaningful plot function whatsoever (they could make [as you suggested earlier] at least seven TV series out of that lot, and best of luck) - and suddenly Banks actually writes something thought-provoking, leading swiftly to 'The Matter' in hand: "How do we know there is still a greater reality external to our own into which we might awake?" [Answer: Do loads of shrooms, and death shall have no dominion.]
"We are information, gentlemen, all living things are. However, we are lucky enough to be encoded in matter itself..." (p. 340.) "[The greater game] cannot be fully modelled, not reliably, not consistently. That you need to play out in reality, or the most detailed simulation you have available, which is effectively the same thing." (p. 348.) It's almost a Platonic dialogue.
And then we are back in Excession territory, all that underhand plotting, all the surreptitious messaging, all the SC tricks are suddenly thrust centre stage and you actively want to find out what's going to happen. The whole thing could be trimmed to about a third of its length, and then you would have a hard-hitting, grabs-you-by-the-balls novel instead of (so far) a load of lazy, self-indulgent wank. I'm not surprised you gave up. Now on page 478, and at last eager to read more. Again, no spoilers, please... MinorProphet (talk) 20:48, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Good review so far. I might pick up the book again thanks to you. I am about to start episode five of The Peripheral. Really enjoying it so far. I suspect the book might be really good at this point, so I'm going to have to read it. The breakfast scene in the future got me thinking about why people eat toast with the crust cut off. I'm weird like that. I like to focus on details nobody gives a second thought about. Viriditas (talk) 22:23, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Ah, looking into it, I see it is part of British tea culture. No wonder I'm so confused. Viriditas (talk) 22:25, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Lev Glubov is one of the most horrendously sinister characters I have ever encountered. The non-crust thing is a heavily parodic insight into the excessively pampered lives that certain elements of wildly over-privileged society continue to contrive to lead. It is not 'British tea culture' - more like the fact that King Charles III had/has a valet who squeezes the toothpaste onto his majesty's toothbrush in the morning (yah, really.) Ask Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, the ketamine-snorting, zonked-out Elon Musk, Prince Andrew, the ghost of the late J. Epstein - entirely divorced from any sort of reality that we mere mortals could ever hope to glimpse: horrendous, ultra-aristocratic disdain, utterly appalling attitudes. ;-) MinorProphet (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

The equally ill-intentioned Director is even more vile, if that's possible. I earlier mentioned a death in an apartment in The Periphal - oops, completely wrong book, similar sci-fi author, maybe Gibson again? Can't begin to remember... MinorProphet (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

BTW, I forgot to tell you: you had great insight into the balcony image up above in this discussion. I just watched the great film Frost/Nixon the other day, and what you said applied in spades. Viriditas (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, makes perfect sense now that you describe it. I knew it was a commentary on the upper class (or what was left of it) in future England. Viriditas (talk) 23:11, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I urge you once more, most sincerely, to put the very watchable series aside, and actually read the book. Make notes. You won't be disappointed, although the series will have already altered your perceptions. 'Watch now, read later': most fatal. MinorProphet (talk) 23:46, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

That's funny. Do you hang out on the writing or book subs on Reddit? That's a popular opinion there. I'm not so orthodox. I can read a book first before seeing the work (which is what I did with the Dark Forest series before watching the Chinese adaptation followed by Netflix's version) or inversely, I can watch the film adaptation first, which I did with all the different adaptations of Simulacron-3 and the film version of many of Crichton's works, whose books I only came to after watching the films. Viriditas (talk) 00:05, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I am almost entirely off-grid: no smartphone, absolutely no social media, no wanky alerts, no swipe right, nothing except WP, The Guardian, El Reg, the very British Daily Mash and the glorious Stephen Colbert on YT. Haven't owned a TV for almost 9 years, no set-top box, no Sky, no Amazon, but torrents (ahem). Thus, watching Frost vs. Nixon atm @ 00:08:36 - stunning aerial shot of London as I remember it in around 1980 (as a motorcyle despatch rider) - Bankside Power Station still making smoke at the end of the gleam of the River Thames (now the Tate Modern), St. Paul's Cathedral just visible if you know what your're looking for, the BT Tower, the white elephant of Centre Point: no Canary Wharf, no The Shard, no The Gherkin, no London Eye ... HMS Belfast just behind the left-hand pier of Tower Bridge: and this panning shot is followed immediately at 00:08:40 by a view of LWT South Bank studios (conveniently ignoring the utter urban wasteland car park in front of it), where I used to deliver professional video tapes almost every day. Dude, I was there. MinorProphet (talk) 02:06, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

That's awesome. The balcony motif plays a major role towards the last part of the film. You will get a kick out of it as it illustrates exactly what you said in the earlier discussion. Viriditas (talk) 02:17, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

V/O: "Richard Nixon's face - swollen and ravaged by loneliness - self-loathing in defeat - the rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist."
"Those parties of yours, the ones I read about in all the papers: do you actually - enjoy those?"
"Of course."
"You've got no idea how fortunate that makes you. Liking people. Being...liked. Having that.. uh.. facility. That lightness, that...charm. I don't have it. I never did. It makes you wonder why I chose a life that hinged.. on _being liked_." ... "Er..That phone call...did we discuss anything.. important..?
"Cheeseburgers."
He had that nose exactly right. Absolutely stunning film-making, thank you. MinorProphet (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm happy that I was able to give you a few madeleine moments. Viriditas (talk) 22:43, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Update: I only just finished getting around to watching Dark Star. This was really a fun film! Carpenter was brimming with ideas. Viriditas (talk) 21:04, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Yep, hilarious, low-key fun. I think the alien is just fantastic. Glad you watched and liked it. Assault on Precinct 13 is also claustrophobic, Big Trouble in Little China is also quite funny, and Escape from New York is just good old cheesy future schlock. Haven't seen Black Moon Rising, the car (1980 Wingho Concordia II) looks really smart if you like that sort of thing. Other films: have you seen The Death of Stalin? Also hilarious in its own way. I think the actors really do look like the original politicians. Another power play film I really enjoyed recently is Conclave - every single shot is beautifully framed and composed, and the colours are simply luxurious. Surprisingly intense, given the subject-matter. MinorProphet (talk) 10:37, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Not a fan of Big Trouble, but I know there are a lot of people that are! Escape has always been a great film, no matter what anyone says, and it was decades ahead of its time. I know it's a big, splashy production, but do check out Project Hail Mary when you are able to do so (it will be very soon, I think, hint hint). The film is surprisingly good, and while it is a pastiche of Contact meets Interstellar meets Arrival, Weir brings a lot of original ideas to the well-worn table, and for me, that is worth checking out. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the film. The book, not so much. Weir tends to write pretty boring prose (here come the fanboys to attack me), so his work is not much of a page turner. But he does focus mostly on math problems embedded into the narrative, which is a different way of approaching fiction, so he needs to be given credit for mixing things up and taking fiction in an entirely new direction. But his prose is really uninspiring. Anyway, the film is great, go watch it. You'll love it. The Death of Stalin was a good film; I did not see Black Moon nor Conclave. Viriditas (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Film interlude, may move to end...

What's wrong with Big Trouble if Escape is super-fabuloso? Same star, same director, same cheese - 1 minute, 32 secs. to torrent d/l completion of both films, about to re-watch both, will let you know.

OK, you try Conclave and I'll try Hail Mary. MinorProphet (talk) 23:15, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, if Escape is cheesy shlock (still waiting to be watched) then Big Trouble is appalling triple cheese wankburger with fries, ketchup and a large Pepsi to go. Totally hilarious, the dialogue just gets worse and worse, mind-blowingly pathetic SFX, everyone obviously had a whole load of fun. MinorProphet (talk) 01:28, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I will try to watch Conclave tonight. I own Big Trouble and could never figure out what people liked about it. Viriditas (talk) 01:52, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I have Conclave queued up, but probably won't watch it until tonight or tomorrow. Still reading Vineland (1990), which I'm really enjoying and was way, way ahead of its time (it reads as if it was written today with all of its references to computing and surveillance). One Battle After Another is very loosely based on this book, and the two are so different that this is an example of what I was talking about here or elsewhere, namely, reading the book before or after seeing the film doesn't make any difference as the stories are vastly divergent. Pynchon is such an incredible writer in the American tradition. He is able to tell overlapping stories, with each story nested within the other in the space of a page or two, simply as a form of dialogue. I think this style has been lost as of late, as you rarely see it anymore. For example, he will have one character talking to another, and then within the space of that discussion, either flashback or flashforward, as the discussion between the two characters is still occurring. He really understands storytelling at a very deep, almost primeval level of the human mind. With all the latest news about the generational decline in literacy likely due to screen adoption and use, I think reading has become more important than ever before. Just heard one of the ladies from Pussy Riot tell the story about how The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was passed around in secret during her Russian prison sentence. My guess is that books are going to become more and more valuable as the tescrealists impose their dark enlightenment on the planet in the coming years. Viriditas (talk) 22:58, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Two disappointments, sadly. Escape from L.A, which I hadn't seen for easily 20 years, I found totally lacking in drive and suspense. Most of it is filmed in semi-darkness a bit like Se7en, and I've never enjoyed watching Donald Pleasence. Surprised that I enjoyed it first time round, I switched it off about 3/4 of the way through, I was frankly bored stiff. Hail Mary started off really well, but when Rocky the alien starts talking English it becomes really annoying, like Wall-E. Never watched E.T., and I just can't stand 'cute' in any form. Apart from the exciting bits Hail Mary just gets slower and slower, and towards the end I was hitting FF all the time. My favourite character was the enigmatic East German project leader. There was one hilarious moment when Grace taps out the theme from Close Encounters. MinorProphet (talk) 23:35, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Escape from L.A. sucks. I was referring to Escape from New York, which is one of my faves. Rocky doesn't speak English, that's the machine translation, and it's part of Weir's science-y passages from the book, summarized for the screen. The honest truth is that the alien isn't supposed to be cute at all, and if you look at the larger story, the cuteness is mostly projection from Grace to keep him sane. There's a lot going on here. It isn't what you think. As for Stratt, she does come off as likeable in the film, but in the book she's far more of an antagonist who commits some pretty heinous acts that the film skips over because nuance doesn't work in cinema. Viriditas (talk) 23:54, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Update: I am halfway through Conclave and not only is this a great film, this is, in some respects, and also quite literally, a chamber film, which is my fave kind of film. Not sure I will be able to finish tonight, but I wanted to thank you for the recommendation. Viriditas (talk) 08:27, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I did actually mean Escape from NY, sorry: agree LA is terrible, but if I now think Esc. from NY is very bad, what must LA be like? May have to re-watch, although I swore never to. Conclave is rather like the archetypal train movie where everyone is artificially shut off from the outside world, and events unfold inside a closed environment. Also, I coincidentally bought Andy Weir's Artemis a month or so ago, it's next on my list. MinorProphet (talk) 15:28, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Just finished. Had no idea it would end up in Pope Joan territory. It is good to see the art of filmmaking is alive and well! Viriditas (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, the end is quite surprising. MinorProphet (talk) 21:19, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

It really was, although you can see they kind of gave us hints along the way. I'm getting ready to watch Spielberg's Disclosure Day later tonight. I wish all films were as good as Conclave! Viriditas (talk) 23:36, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, Duel is the only genuinely gripping Spielberg film IMHO. The rest is all Entertainment™ with multi-million dollar budgets, sometimes OK, sometimes genuinely abysmal, eg Minority Report, possibly one of the worst PKD adaptations ever. Have you come across Electric Dreams? Generally arresting and thought-provoking. MinorProphet (talk) 01:14, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

I have not seen Duel, you are a wealth of great recommendations, thank you. Minority Report bears little similarity to the short story, just as Blade Runner is loosely adapted from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I've come to believe that "true" adaptations are like unicorns, and are rarely made for good reason. Most literature does not translate well to cinema, but of course, there are some exceptions. I thought the film adaptation of Cloud Atlas was as close as they could get, which was quite a feat. As expected, this alienated many film audiences, who likely don't read all that much. You can't win! Electric Dreams is great, although I've only seen maybe four episodes? In that same vein, I enjoyed Black Mirror immensely, and I found "San Junipero" was the best of the lot. That ep touched on something very deep, something every writer tries to get to and usually misses. This was a bull's-eye, and it was, in my mind, a remarkable achievement. This is somewhat simplistic, but in my mind "San Junipero" is a perfect episode of Black Mirror, much in the same way that "The Inner Light" is a perfect episode of Star Trek. Viriditas (talk) 01:54, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Step away from whatever you are doing, and make a date with Duel. There are better road films, eg Two-Lane Blacktop (and everything else from Monte Hellman besides); Vanishing Point - and then the car's the star, Bullitt, The Driver and most everything else Walter Hill made; Baby Driver; the original Taxi; Gone in 60 Seconds remake, etc. etc. Cloud Atlas, yep, one of the best if you like that sort of thing, not read but was utterly entranced by the film... MinorProphet (talk) 05:12, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Tokyo Drift, even?

Hmmm, I watched the first 2 eps of Black Mirror S1 some time ago, and thought "Really? Give me a break" and gave it a miss. Brooker was fantastic with his Screen Burn column in the Guardian many years ago, so much more palatable in small doses and not 'in your face, look it's me, I'm Charlie Brooker, off my face on coke and you best believe I'm hugely talented and hilarious as well...' MinorProphet (talk) 05:42, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Not so far off the mark, which is why I only mentioned "San Junipero" as the best ep. If you haven't already seen it, please do. I just re-watched The Game. It's surprising how well it holds up. Did you ever get a chance to see Fincher's Mindhunter series? Unlike most people, I'm really not a fan of crime thrillers, but holy mother, he takes it to another level. Great show. I think there's a companion book to the series that I have been meaning to read. Viriditas (talk) 20:01, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

I had been meaning to ask you, but completely forgot, did you ever see The Congress (2013)? What a ride! Not for the faint of heart. This disturbing film has many different levels to it. On the one hand, it is a low-budget film made for $8 million that made almost nothing at the box office. On the other hand, it is a rich, very loose adaptation of Stanisław Lem's totally bizarre The Futurological Congress (1971), which has PKD and Ursula K. Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven (1971) overtones, and yet also comments directly on the film industry, neoliberalism, and the death drive towards enshittification and teacreal visions of the future, which appear utopian on the surface, but are in reality a gnostic dystopia once you open your eyes and see it for what it is, without the cultural blinders of authority. I really like this film. Max Richter scored it, and Robin Wright gives a nested, matryoshka-like, self-referential reading of the lead part that is enough to make one's head explode. The Congress had a serious impact on my consciousness. I couldn't stop thinking about it for about four days after seeing it. Reviews are just as strange. People either hate it or love it. Viriditas (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Anecdote

You said "I would rather herd cats for free than organise even five wiki-editors to do anything" in a recent discussion.

Awhile back, I encountered an editor/article subject who needed help with "his" WP-article. He was refreshingly polite, reasonable, patient and cooperative, so me and another editor put some effort in, re-wrote it mostly from the ground up, even spoke to a couple of admins on his behalf. A bit into the exercise, I noticed he was the author of Herding Cats: Being Advice to Aspiring Academic and Research Leaders. Based on how he "handled" Wikipedians, it's a pretty good book. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:54, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Thanks very much for your thoughtful message. Similarly, a few months previously I came across a comment somewhere that WP has–in a certain way–become an unacknowledged interface between academia and the general public: and that the more scholarly (?better-reffed?) articles reflect this interchange of concepts. In connection with a question on the Ref Desks a year or more ago, I was privileged to have a zoom call with a Professor of Medieval German, and he said that he was a regular contributor on WP in other subjects than his own. Personally, I think that the Wikipedia Library is one of the greatest advantages open to us mere mortals (failed B.A. in Russian, Hull University). If I cite an article on jstor it is often supplemented by someone/a bot{?) with a doi, for example. I'll hunt around for the publication you mention. HNY, MinorProphet (talk) 05:52, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Sorry to disappoint, but it's the sort of thing you would find in an airport bookshop, aimed at grasping, aspiring HR wannabes. I spent too much time with corporate types who would sell their granny's soul at a profit if it would improve their chances of slithering up that greasy pole. I have to admit I gave up after 50 pages or so. Too many university vice-chancellors for my liking. Academics are famous for their back-stabbing tendencies (what, who, me?) and I strongly disagree with even the premise of the book. Maybe you can persuade me otherwise. Best wishes as usual, MinorProphet (talk) 04:51, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Ignoring Sock

I saw your comment about ignoring the sock, but that isn't common. For example, everyone is very happy to answer questions from vChimpanzee. I know the kid. He is almost 20 now. He gets his kicks by asking weird computer questions, usually involving computers at his library (which is a blatant falsehood), and when anyone answers, he tries to see how long he can stretch out the interaction. Nobody is willing to ignore him and they chastise anyone who suggests doing so. ~2026-29536 (talk) 18:53, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. Was it you who posted this? The Computing Ref Desk currently seems to be taken up by either said vMonkey or that supposed computer programmer Robert McC who would apparently have difficulty programming the timer on a VCR, and whose sole purpose of existence is to fall prey to Micro$oft's marketing strategy: and then to be confused when its latest so-called operating system fails, and then to complain without giving full and comprehensive details. I gave up some time ago. These people are immune to sarcasm, let alone irony. Ah well.. :> MinorProphet (talk) 20:38, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-29536, why do you keep coming back across multiple TAs (e.g. @~2026-91009-6) to just keep posting on multiple user's talk pages (including mine) about Vchimpanzee and Robert McClenon in negative ways? Yet you haven't done anything else but post in the Reference Desk, the place you criticize? Stop it. I fail to understand how you haven't been blocked as WP:NOTHERE.

And @MinorProphet, I'd like to remind you to assume good faith. Not everyone is old enough to know what a VCR is. Not everyone is as tech savvy or as you or me. TheTechie^[she/they] | talk? 15:59, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

@TheTechie: Oi, This my talk page, and I would appreciate it if you could limit your negative comments about other users to elsewhere. I happen to be in complete agreement with User:~2026-29536, and my comments about VCRs (I even linked it for the retards) were intended for readers of this page alone, and not for a load of technologically ignorant Gen Z AI script kiddies. Thank you for your recent contribution, it's taken you nearly a month to find this. I worked in IT for 20 years. Everyone goes on and on and on about good faith, but I have been reading the computing help desk and answering posts for many years: and in the end you are drawn to the inescapable conclusion that you are dealing with fuckwit assholes who do not deserve an answer. Some people are right off the scale. Trolls, don't you just hate'em? MinorProphet (talk) 18:49, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Gen Z AI script kiddies   you are dealing with fuckwit assholes who do not deserve an answer Again, making stereotypes. You are free to agree with a user, but I would reconsider how you view other users who aren't tech savvy. TheTechie^[she/they] | talk? 18:53, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

@TheTechie: I'd like to make it plain that I was having a conversation with a specific user. How I feel is immaterial unless I put it into words against a specific user. This is not a help desk or mainspace. Thanks for your concern. I don't know why you are raising these issues here, since I haven't accused anyone of anything since I was banned last June, with good reason. I consider this exchange of views closed, since I have nothing more to add. Very best wishes, :> MinorProphet (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

January music

story · music · places

Mozart music for today - good to see you back! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:53, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

You've joined the club

Greetings, O MinorProphet. I've just spent some time enjoying your user page, and feeling very much at home. I award you immediate Full Membership.

I've stolen a couple of bits and pieces to use in something I'm working on. I hope you don't mind, but I don't really care either way: what's done is done. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:05, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

"Dreaming the same Impossible Dream"		The Like-Minded Persons' Club
		For displaying here common sense and uncommon good taste by agreeing with me or saying something I would have said if only I'd had the presence of mind, I hereby bestow upon you Provisional Membership of the Like-Minded Persons' Club. To qualify for Full Membership, simply continue to agree with me in all matters for at least the next 12 months. (Disagreements are so vulgar, don't you think? And, as Bruce Chatwin said, Arguments are fatal. One always forgets what they are about)

@JackofOz: Honoured, flattered, etc. As I'm sure you know, literally everything on WP is editable, free to use and up for grabs. I'm glad you found something of use. Best wishes - or as they are rumoured to say on your side of the globe, bloody bonzer, mate! :> MinorProphet (talk) 03:23, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Long time since I've heard that, but it used to be a thing. My great-uncle Norbert used to say it a lot. I bet he said it when he discovered the East Pole. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:27, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Is that anywhere near East Damboring? MinorProphet (talk) 09:41, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Stuff

@Viriditas: Hi again. As I mentioned, I finished Matter. No spoilers. If you were still interested in Louis Theroux, The Guardian today has a rundown of his 20 best documentaries (he's made over 100). Your Sousa question on WP:RDM still has me wondering - who might have penned such a diatribe, and why didn't the author ref it? I'll keep digging. Best as usual, :-> MinorProphet (talk) 19:51, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, friend! You've gone above and beyond. Should I pickup Matter again, or not? It's sitting right here in front of me like a paperweight. Viriditas (talk) 21:27, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Try it. Otherwise, beware: semi-spoilers

Basically, it's Grand Guignol. Most of the rest of the book is really quite exciting. There's an extensive appendix toward the end if you had forgotten who or what, etc. Any sense of existential desperation with the book and the author you may have felt so far is—IMHO—wholly justified. It's generally self-congratulatory wank, as I previously opined (most of which you have already waded though), and Philip Dick would have disposed of it in under 100 pages. There are a few genuinely intellectually arresting moments where one of the 'minor' characters begins to "think above his station", and Banks throws some meaningful philosophical thoughts his way. If you felt that most of the players are wholly undeserving of their part in the play, Banks is (as you originally observed many moons ago) being that supreme unreliable balcony-based narrator (or novelist): it's a family gathering of self-interested, mostly worthless (or psychologically/emotionally abused) shits. Almost no-one is in the slightest bit likeable. I watched approximately 2.5 episodes of Breaking Bad before switching off for good, for pretty much the same reason. In the end, at someone gets to do well, but you wouldn't have expected it for all the tea in China. MinorProphet (talk) 22:34, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Good analysis. As for Breaking Bad, you're correct, but I do recommend watching the whole thing through. Better Call Saul, which is the prequel, is amazing and takes the franchise everywhere it was supposed to go because they figured out to improve the process by the time BCS came off the ground. Viriditas (talk) 09:08, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I just finished watching The Peripheral. Definitely going to read the book now (which I have in front of me). I liked the show, bu the last episode was pretty silly and unfulfilling. Otherwise, I had fun. Viriditas (talk) 06:28, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, I did recommend that you should read the book first, and since it's 'merely' TV you have no cause for complaint... I still have no intention of watching BB, but I'll give BCS an episode or three. Just finished watching Blade Runner 2049, possibly the best 5+1 sound ever in almost any film, even on my mobo's lo-fi integrated sound card. Almost worth getting my Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi going again. Do you have a fave film based on a Philip Dick book? For me, A Scanner Darkly absolutely captures the insane, self-obsessed, hallucinatory, drug-induced, hauntingly un/real world that Dick attempts to capture between the physical pages. Hmmm perhaps too many commas there. MinorProphet (talk) 08:02, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the sound was great in BR2049. A Scanner Darkly is not just fun, it's funny AF and incredibly sad at the same time. PKD's dark conspiracy theory vis-à-vis the denouement showing the complicity between the government and the criminal syndicate flooding the streets with drugs isn't so far off from things that actually happen in the US every day. For example, the school-to-prison pipeline and the kids for cash scandal. PKD had his finger on the pulse of America for some time. Which is a good segue to Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. SSDD, but in the context of tech bros, AI-inspired technofeudal dystopian prisons of the mind that we are all heading to like a teenaged biker riding downhill out of control without brakes on their cheap-ass Huffy. Great film! There's something about Haley Lu Richardson. Love her! And before I forget, if you haven't already grabbed a glass of your favorite beverage, turned the lights down low, put on a comfortable pair of headphones and sat down in your favorite spot to listen to Mike Hodel's Hour 25 interview with Philip K. Dick from 1977,[1] then you are missing out. If you aren't familiar with the history of radio in the US, this is a show that was on KPFK, which is Pacifica Radio, the closest we ever got to commercial free, unbiased and unfiltered radio broadcasting in this country. It kind of went downhill after 2001, but 1977 was the height of great radio and this show reveals that at one point in time, the airwaves were fresh, educational, and real. Hearing PKD read the best part of Scanner in his own words (Charles Freck's attempted suicide) shows just how much Dick loved this book and is a frisson-inducing moment. It's no wonder Dick was more popular outside the US. This country never understood what he was writing about. Viriditas (talk) 22:41, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I'll check out the radio interview. "There is no prophet without honour except in his own country," as a rather greater prophet once said.... MinorProphet (talk) 12:25, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

There's a lot of shop talk in the first 20 minutes, so if that kind of thing doesn't appeal to you, fast forward. Viriditas (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Good Luck just now ready for viewing, PKD chat likewise, plus Alita: Battle Angel if I get bored (shades of Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924), which knocks Metropolis (1927) into a cocked hat)... Will report back. NB Scanner was first published in 1977, same year as the PKD interview. Maybe just a puff piece...(!) MinorProphet (talk) 23:16, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

The interview took place before the book was published, but after it was written. Viriditas (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Good Luck: Wow. Simply. Wow. Possibly the most arresting beginning to a film I have ever experienced. I remember the very first time I was aware of literally everyone looking constantly at their cellphones. I was very unreally, most randomly in Reading, Berkshire, England, perhaps 2016 or 2017, probably a Friday. I was going through a genuine PKD-type life-changing episode myself. Utterly exhausted, in the evening, in the very town centre, I lowered myself down on the pavement/sidewalk next to a homeless guy, amidst a screech of sirens and riot police arresting a load of pissed-up aggressive revellers, and asked him, "What the fck is going on? Literally everyone is just glued to their phones, totally divorced from reality. Has everyone gone mad?" As usual, people who sit on the ground all day have the best view of humanity, and we had one of the best down-to-earth chats ever. I can't exactly remember what we talked about, but at least there was at least one other sane person there that evening. I felt much better afterwards. He was very, very like the wild protagonist. Only 30 minutes into the film so far, it's totally up to date, even intellectually stunning, eh? Keep you posted. MinorProphet (talk) 01:30, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

It's interesting how you pinpoint 2016 or 2017 as the saturation moment. The weird thing is that I have never stopped to even think about it. Now you're going to keep me up wondering about the exact tipping point. Viriditas (talk) 02:41, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I'll have to check my diaries... I should be able to pinpoint the exact day it happened to me. The tipping point must have happened a little before then, perhaps 3 or 6 months previous? Major explosion of so-called smartphones.

Back to the film... Ingrid's story. A long time ago there was a girl who claimed to be allergic to the 20th century. Made the news in 1981-ish - Sheila Rossall(?) former Brit pop singer, died in 2006(?) Maybe fake news...

Haha, 01:11:30, just after half way through, that exact moment I was talking about book titles, when the hitherto unexplained, latent Matter is made patent, explicit: "Good luck, have fun, don't die." It's a thing we say, like 'Aloha'.

"It's been a load of weird shit before, but it's never been ... Teenagers." Segue into a hilarious direct rip-off of Night Of The Living Dead, or Dawn Of The Dead, perhaps.

"Lay off the Cheetos, kid."

Totally stunning, made only last year. Laughed my tits off, spat my drink out at least three times (practised at this, straight back in the glass)... 10/10, top marks, dude. MinorProphet (talk) 04:04, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, I remember there were absolutely no planes in the sky (Reading is only 30 miles away from Heathrow Airport), adding to the weird unreality I was experiencing, which reminds me of the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull, but it was definitely several years after that. Hmmm. MinorProphet (talk) 04:22, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I blame the weasel at the LHC. Nothing has been the same since that time. And the death of Harambe. Viriditas (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

OK, it was definitely the weasels. But certainly between summer 2015 and autumn/fall 2016. Still searching for the diaries. MinorProphet (talk) 16:54, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

So, I found my diaries, and it was apparently 12 July 2013 (memory playing tricks again), and Heathrow was indeed closed for an hour due to a fire on a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner.[2] MinorProphet (talk) 12:53, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

@Viriditas: See Timeline of social media#Timeline by year. Well, in 2012 Facebook went public, Snapchat launched 10-sec. video sharing, Tinder launched, and Facebook acquired Instagram; in 2013 Twitter filed for its IPO, Instagram launched video sharing, Yahoo bought Tumblr, Telegram launched, and Myspace re-launched with a mobile app. Also (History of smartphones), the Galaxy S4 Zoom was released, and the BlackBerry 10. Plenty to keep the sheeple occupied. MinorProphet (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

You're right, the first 20 mins. of the interview with PKD is mind-blowingly boring: but this seems to be his public persona. I had to give it a rest, it was literally doing my head in... Poor ripped-off SF author, never made a penny - my heart bleeds, <Pulls out tiny violin> etc. Get a better agent. Alita: Battle Angel beckons. MinorProphet (talk) 22:47, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Oh, he got a better agent! He talks about that later. What he was talking about was how science fiction didn't pay well when he started and how it was looked down upon until he died. After his death, it became much more respectable in the US. It basically wasn't even allowed in the curriculum (outside of Bradbury, Orwell and Huxley) until after the 1980s. I think the first major college courses started at that time. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, it turns out that our Battle Angel Alita does actually come from Mars, so for me the connection is hugely obvious, except apparently not to anyone connected with the film or the article. It's basically just a noisy reboot of Rollerball with James Caan, with knobs on. They even pronounce her name correctly, 'Aelita'. Huxley was the original acid-head, read most of his books, esp. The Doors of Perception (about which I have a tale to tell another time...) Well, how about now?

NB A load of messages have got totally out of sync, I might attempt to put them in a vague semblance of chrono order, and perhaps restore my hidden episode re Huxley's Doors of Perception. Hmmm, anything to do with The Doors? Oh, I just had a look, and it is indeed the case. Hahaha MinorProphet (talk) 16:35, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

See this revision for what this page looked like before. MinorProphet (talk) 23:55, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Oh, go on then, I'm sure you're just itching to know... My experience with The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

Background

It must have been while I was in Reading in 2013 that I finally became aware that certain people could actually hear what I was thinking. It's not a case of random listeners vaguely overhearing my internal dialogue: I am what is termed a psychic broadcaster, and those who have internal ears to hear are in no doubt (about 10% of the population). Anyway, I started to enjoy reading aloud (often poetry, or even entire books) to my invisible audience. Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur is one of my faves.

Anyway, a year or two after the aforesaid Reading-based incident, I pulled a double-bladed lock-knife on my bone-headed dad (lately deceased) because he was being a complete twat, and I said, "Your money or your life." He literally gulped theatrically, and said, "If you do that, you'll never get a penny." And I said, "I don't want your money, you old fool. An ounce or two of love might have helped," and walked out. And because he was a bully and a coward and didn't like being upstaged, he called the cops and I was arrested, charged with knife crime and ended up in the nonagonal Gloucester Crown Court, dating from 1816. It hasn't changed much. Because I had my wits about me at the trial, I quietly dismissed my state-appointed lawyer and spoke for myself. Nevertheless, the judge had to find me guilty, since I had thus pleaded: I was convicted on at least one trumped-up charge, and received the absolute minimum: a suspended sentence of 2 years in prison, with 1 year's probation. So, every week I reported to the local police station and had an hour-long session with my probation officer, with whom I slowly developed a friendly and meaningful relationship. William Evans-Gordon was the eventual outcome, completed in a week (know your enemy, etc.), and he was actually impressed, and said so. Anyway...

Huxley

Towards the end of my probation period, I became somewhat emboldened and one day brought The Doors of Perception with me to read while I waited for my interview at the cop shop. The opening pages are wholly unequivocal and talk about the benefits of hallucinogenic drugs. Within a minute or so of my beginning to read to myself, there was the most almighty banging and crashing from beyond the security door, as if several people were very, very unhappy and and at least slamming doors, if not actually throwing things around. I continued to read. The 'noises off' increased. Very soon after, a very large and stolid police officer arrived at the front door of the police station, and simply stood there, looking out. I carried on reading silently and knowingly. This had never ever happened during the previous year I had been attending my weekly sessions. Mind you, I had never tried reading anything quite so provocative. I mean, a silent but very audible paean to drugs emanating from the very bastion of authority, determined to stop this sort of thing. I have absolutely no doubt that if anyone had tried to enter the police station he would have simply refused them entry, saying, "I'm sorry sir, we are closed at the moment" or similar. Eventually I was called into the interview room, and all interruptions suddenly ceased.

Towards the very end of our weekly sessions together, my probation officer actually said to me, "I wish all my clients were like you." I wish I could have bought him a drink, but the rules don't allow that sort of thing. I'm fairly sure that Huxley went out tripping. MinorProphet (talk) 00:31, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

End of Huxley interlude...

I possibly have a first edition or two? He became great friends with Stravinsky, they collaborated on some Carlo Gesualdo motets etc. I must have read Bradbury's Martian Chronicles at some point, and obviously the film of Fahrenheit 541 451, otherwise not much. Orwell tends to leave me cold, it's often humourless satire except for Down and Out in Paris and London, which is I why I enjoy sitting down with homeless types on the street (see above). Also, Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by W. H. Davies covers a similar lifestyle. MinorProphet (talk) 03:06, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

The part of Nineteen Eighty-Four that talks about how intentionally creating Newspeak to prevent independent thought is still chilling. Viriditas (talk) 03:11, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

We have always been at war with Eastasia. It is double-plus ungood to believe otherwise. I have never tried to write a novel of any sort, mostly because I can't do people talking/yakking. Huxley was the first writer I came across who almost completely eschewed dialogue, eg Crome Yellow where everything mostly happens inside peoples' heads: the intense internal monologue if you like. The speech of PKD's characters, of course, is wholly other, weirdly filtered through a sort of disguising speech synthesiser. MinorProphet (talk) 15:38, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

It's weird how things that I have been thinking about make their way into the papers (often people in touch with the zeitgeist); here, for instance, is The Guardian's political sketch writer, John Crace (ex-heroin addict etc.), quoting "The night of the living dead."[3] He's completely dead-pan hilarious, hugely literarily aware, throwing in quips like "This could have been her Downfall bunker moment." He's talking about British failed political nonentities. The event took place in the café in the crypt of St John's Smith Square (a few minutes' walk from the Palace of Westminster), a stunning 18th-century London church converted into a concert hall I have been to many times. Sacrilege, I suppose. MinorProphet (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, but the real question is, have you ever had banana ice cream? This came up during a DYK review, and it occurred to me that I had never tried it. Weird. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

No, and not likely to, either. But I bake a delicious banana bread. Anyway, I pulled A Scanner Darkly off the shelf, already half-way through re-reading it. I had forgotten how frighteningly intense the whole book is, completely chock-full of totally paranoid fantasies and trippy, spaced-out junky 'conversations' where no-one is actually listening to anyone else. Plus, people deliberately trying to do the junkies' heads in. I'll be certainly watching the film again afterwards, I remember how the Rotoscope process adds a layer of wild unreality to the live action. Spying on yourself - isn't that a known psychological activity? MinorProphet (talk) 18:06, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

A few posts back I mentioned how PKD's characters talk is "weirdly filtered through a sort of disguising speech synthesiser". Isn't that exactly the Scanner scramble suit? MinorProphet (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Got any opinion on the Foreigner series. Thinking of starting after running across this. I will completely disregard that opinion however if you add raisins to your banana bread. fiveby(zero) 16:15, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, this started well, and then I came across the name of Noam Chomsky. I used to read rather more widely than I do now, and I often used to come across his essays being at least name-checked, and I somehow felt in touch with the intellectual spirit of the times. Now, having read through Noam Chomsky bibliography and filmography, I don't recognize a single title, nor remember reading a single page of his. And feel somewhat disinclined to rummage through his dirty laundry. MinorProphet (talk) 19:36, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Raisins? Raisons? We don't want no stinking reasons, just give us them wholesome juicy sultanas. Not familiar with Foreigner, might glance at S01 Ep01 MinorProphet (talk) 21:35, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Midway through S01E02 and mostly disappointment so far, skipping past lots of events i would find interesting. Many words expended trying to convince me these "aliens" (really just humans in makeup and elevator shoes) with a culture almost exactly human are somehow so inherently different thinkers. Promise of a human-alien romance (ick!) and maybe some hard science tech development, exploration and colonization of the solar system and space battles (not assured but hopeful). What did i get myself into, twenty and one half episodes to go. fiveby(zero) 14:35, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Baby Globe

Hi, you might want to express your opinion here. Or maybe not, i don't want to tempt you towards voiding your continued existence here. I got a lecture on being respectful towards knowledge just for wondering what sound it might make if stepped on. fiveby(zero) 15:34, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Totally hilarious, a bit like watching Apple fanboys ooh-ing and aah-ing, but on steroids. If it looked like getting consensus, I might stick my oar in, but Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering appears to give me some sort of choice... MinorProphet (talk) 19:36, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

On a different track: "I thought y'all might begin your tour...here." MinorProphet (talk) 21:51, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

"Take California" would make excellent background music for a video game. Should i continue the tour? Viriditas says my tastes should be taken as superficial and not as an indication of who i am as a person (in case you take offence about Propellerheads or he disagrees about raisins.) fiveby(zero) 14:35, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Quot homines, tot setentiae: "There as many people as there are opinions." (From Phormio by Terence.) Meaning, I do not take offence about peoples' taste in music, I'm totally into classical from Bach to Boulez and beyond, plus techno/rave & drum'n'bass. However, if you betray a liking for Blur or Oasis I will probably simply blank you for ever... Viriditas will most likely make an issue of the particular variety of grape that goes to make the raisins which you dislike your banana bread to be filled with. MinorProphet (talk) 04:03, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Well, if you've watched The Matrix you will have enjoyed the lobby shootout... One of the very few times I've watched a film in the cinema for the first time, and exclaimed, "Fuck, I know this track! I actually bought the CD!" Actually twice, I had previously watched Lethal Tender (1997 film) with Carrie-Ann Moss, and I said, "Fuck, it's her !" (Track it down, no-one rates it in the slightest, it's full of Shakespeare and vicious one-liners...) By the way, take everything Viriditas says with a few pinches of salt. But if you'd like a vaguely serious conversation about who you are and what you like, and how your musical/food/literary/film/TV tastes inform your deepest personality, let's do that. MinorProphet (talk) 16:35, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Spoiler: The lobby shootout scene features "Spybreak! (Short One)" at 01:42:13. MinorProphet (talk) 04:03, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Quotes from Lethal Tender, which is a pun on the term legal tender since the baddies are stealing banknotes/bills of credit due to be cancelled and burned.

• "Why are there things, instead of nothing? If we sit perfectly still, will the answers come?" 00:04:45
• "Silence is the beginning of wisdom." 01:04:00
• "Good night, sweet prince. What a traitorious [sic] dog I am. But a rich traitorious dog." 01:11:40
• "...And the transition from life to death is swift: so enjoy yourself." 01:22:22
• "Bullet-proof vest - never leave home without one." 01:22:36
• "Wow - what a rush!" 01:25:00

Cast list - 01:26:20 MinorProphet (talk) 04:03, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Darkly

@Viriditas: Once again, slightly after half-way through a novel, the writer spills the beans on the title. That St. Paul has a lot to answer for, eh? And exactly like Banks in 'Matter,' PKD finally gets the whole thing going, gathering pace. It really was in danger of disappearing up its own tripped-out fundament. I wondered if the German poetry from p. 177(?) was Hölderlin or Schiller, but it's a bit like not recognizing a massively famous chunk of Shakespeare: Faust, Part 1. I really ought to have known, I had a hand in deciding on the article's title... Still haven't plucked up the courage to listen to the rest of the radio talk: but perhaps now the film. "Re-read, then re-watch" or something. MinorProphet (talk) 19:36, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Cool. This article might interest you. Viriditas (talk) 00:03, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

What about a hugely angry remake of Fahrenheit 451 - 452? "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

I get the impression with Darkly that they were all spying on each other. It all goes downhill very swiftly. MinorProphet (talk) 00:34, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's about right. Dick talks about how specific passages from the book are based on real events. Viriditas (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

What do you make of One Battle After Another explaining the meaning of the title at the 13 minute mark, instead of waiting 1.5 hours to do it? Kind of an exception to what we were talking about with book titles. Viriditas (talk) 11:45, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Ahem, old friend, I seem to remember that it was you who first complained about this secret privilege of the author/poet/film director/auteur. "Also, why do I have to read to the exact middle of every book to find out the meaning of the title? Maybe I'm just simple-minded, but at least tell me what the title means before I'm finished reading the damn book."[4] You should be grateful that you were put out of your existential misery so early on. ;) In many cases the titles of poems/books/films are wildly obvious to their well-read audiences, and it is thus made plain that their latest attempt is in fact a hidden reference/homage to some onlie begetter.
I'm literally just about to watch Darkly again, I remember being totally creeped-out by it. The attempted suicide of Charles Freck in the book (as you mentioned in the PKD interview) is totally hilarious. Still haven't listened to the rest of the radio interview...
I never rated di Caprio until I watched The Aviator, so I'll hunt around (ahem) for One Battle and get back to you.... Which has also just arrived thanks to the magic of the interwebs. Best as always, MinorProphet (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

So, I watched Darkly. It sticks very closely to the book, and it absolutely gets the mood of PKD's writing. They all have huge fun with the tripped-out junky episodes, Woody Harrelson is hilarious. I left my copy of the novel at a friend's and don't have it to hand, but I don't remember if Donna is actually shown to be Hank as in the film. Anyway, it's pretty much what I thought was the case, and it allows the film to make more sense. Cinema audiences would probably tend to mark it down if Hank's identity wasn't revealed. It's a pity the German Faust excerpts were left out, Fred/Arctor making a deal with the devil, etc. But trying to explain all that would add a whole extra layer or two of complexity, and the film keeps it simple - it's freaky enough already. Frenk's suicide attempt isn't nearly as funny as the novel, but we see him very briefly at the New Plan rehab auto-critique session without the hair, which I liked. Yup, easily the best adaptation of PKD, very simply done, pared right down to essentials and absolutely no Spielberg-type directorial nonsense: just good old-fashioned acting. There's little to choose between film and book, both excellent in their own right. Definitely sinister. MinorProphet (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Who am I, and how do I know this isn't a dream?

@Viriditas and Fiveby: Hi, I'm sorry, this page became very confused, mostly because I hid the episode about Huxley's Doors. I attempted to put everything in some sort of order. I haven't deleted anything, but I moved a number of posts around. This is totally unapproved, but I hope you aren't offended. Please revert anything and everything if unhappy. Best, MinorProphet (talk) 23:55, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

My dude. It's your talk page. Feel free to dance naked and shout at the Moon if you must. Viriditas (talk) 00:22, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

BTW, I got a nice chuckle from your headline. For the last two weeks I've been exploring the whole "how do I know this isn't a dream?" argument on a very granular level, but admittedly, I've been thinking about it seriously since around 1986. It occurs to me that if it is a dream (and you can define that any way you want, i.e. simulation, video game, etc.) things wouldn't be any different than if it wasn't a dream. Some people do take this a bit farther and engage in various aspects of what is called reality hacking (but that link doesn't truly cover the more interesting varieties). And some writers like Gary Lachman seem to point to a larger game afoot, but this is generally dismissed by the so-called intelligentsia and thought leaders as occult nonsense. And yet, we keep finding evidence for this kind of active engagement when you drill down into social history. Most popular culture touches upon it in very interesting ways.

Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly, by Ike no Taiga

Which reminds me, I have been meaning to work on and expand Dark Star Rising. I'm still trying to process the weird coincidences and synchronicities that have been documented between the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Murphy Ranch, and all the unusual connections, such as with Axel Wenner-Gren. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered only recently that the film One Battle After Another points to this in a very roundabout way, so obliquely that most people would generally miss it (see "Hail St. Nick", from the "Christmas Adventurers Club", quite a rabbit hole to fall down into...read on, my friend).

There's also a blogger online who spent like a year or more documenting all the related connections on this topic on Medium, but they eventually abandoned it for some reason or another. I think they said they were going to publish a book, but they traced almost every connection they could find, which is pretty mind blowing. I don't have the link handy but if you search for "Murphy Ranch" on Medium you should be able to find it. It's a series of many different, long-form blog posts, and they are all really well done. I've been meaning to write about this in the Murphy Ranch article, but there's been a huge debunking campaign at work to de-legitimize the underlying story as some kind of fringe conspiracy theory when there's a huge amount of evidence showing that in fact it is real. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Let's do this! (do not watch if you haven't seen the film first). Viriditas (talk) 02:24, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

"Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery. I was not afraid to be born, and I am not afraid of dying." Frederico Garcia Lorca

@Fiveby: Over to you... MinorProphet (talk) 16:44, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Books. My mum always read to me, and eventually to all of us four children, as we grew up, especially at bedtime. Certain endlessly repeated phrases, illustrations, book covers, entire volumes became an indistinguishable part of me. Who else am I, apart from what I have read, marked, learned and inwardly digested? (Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer, 1549.) And here I am, attempting to edit Wikipedia. Whether I prefer chocolate or lime juice, The Beatles or Drum'n'Bass, sunsets or the dawn is immaterial, although I enjoy all of them. Although my mum also did her best to make a Christian out of me, she failed utterly, and I am become an Olympian, believer in nine (or perhaps 10) planetary gods and godesses (and various chtonic beings) and thus an astrologer to boot. No priests for me, no bishops, archbishops, no kings, no popes. No holy books for me, an ephemeris will do and a table of houses. I have done enough magic mushrooms to know that the moment of death is little different to leaning on a half-open door down a long corridor full of similar doors: and suddenly there you are in the next room, and everything just carries on; possibly a bit weirdly, but otherwise much the same. I expect I'll be singing the same tunes: if not, I'll make up some new ones. MinorProphet (talk) 23:55, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

My fave holy book is this talk page. Viriditas (talk) 02:29, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Sólo el misterio nos hace vivir. Sólo el misterio

— Garcia Lorca, Federico (1962). Obras Completas. Madrid: Aguilar. p. 1086.

Written under a drawing in 1934. I wanted a recommendation on a SF series, didn't know i'd have to do any work! fiveby(zero) 19:10, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

The sailor is another visual symbol through which Lorca explores the question of identity. Here again, as with the severed hands, sexual freedom is identified with the notion of creative freedom...he is an exile by choice rather than by birth. In the drawings he is sometimes associated with love or is represented with wings, able to fly...One drawing of a sailor bears the caption, 'Only mystery keeps us alive, only mystery'. The inference seems to be that love is best when confined to the mind...Another feature of the sailor drawings is that flowers grow out of the eyes...describing an imaginary time in the future, or a long-lost paradise in the past. The sailor's eyes, without pupils, empty except for flowers, suggest this dream-like frame of mind.

— Oppenheimer, Helen (1986). Lorca: The Drawings. The Herbert Press. pp. 53–6.

not very comfortable as to where this is headed MinorProphet...not that there is anything wrong with that. fiveby(zero) 20:47, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

La creación poética es un misterio indescifrable, como el misterio del nacimiento del hombre. Se oyen voces no se sabe dónde, y es inútil preocuparse de donde vienen. Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir. Escucho a la Naturaleza y al hombre con asombro, y copio lo que me enseñan sin pedantería, y sin dar a las cosas un sentido que no sé si lo tienen. Ni el poeta ni nadie tienen la clave y el secreto del mundo. Quiero ser bueno. Sé que la poesía eleva y, siendo bueno, con el asno y con el filósofo, creo finalmente que si hay un más allá tendré la agradable sorpresa de encontrarme con él. Pero el dolor del hombre y la injusticia constante que mana del mundo, y mi propio cuerpo y mi propio pensamiento, me evitan trasladar mi casa a las estrellas

— Frederico Garcia Lorca from an interview by the caricaturist Luis Bagaría. Bagaría, Luis (June 10, 1936). "Diálogos con un caricaturista salvaje". El Sol.

From here. fiveby(zero) 19:25, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Wow, that's amazing! Thank you very much. I really wasn't intending for you to hunt those quotes down, it was just something I came across while looking up some Lorca poems for a friend, specifically about oranges. I think his avant-garde stuff is great, it's much better in the original than most translations. For some reason I thought the Foreigner books had been adapted for TV. However, I found a copy of S1E1 (ahem §) and will have a go. Anyway, Who are you, and how does that differ from your tastes? What makes you fundamentally you - if you felt like answering? MinorProphet (talk) 11:19, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

There was a ^{[citation needed]} and i couldn't resist that. I'm a editor that enjoys hunting down and providing references. I'm without an adequate theory of mind and am stumped by the problems, but will default to materialism and positivism the meanwhile. Not much of an 'I' there, just the current state of some bag of chemicals. Some contents of that bag are probably ore fundamental than others such as those which record experience and provide an ability to reason. The diabolic neurosurgeon could probably figure out tastes and preferences by disabling and restoring function of parts within the bag. Determine which parts contributed to writing something about the raisin content of quick breads and the likelihood of further comments about raisins in pastries and cookies(biscuits?)

This bag seems to be undergoing constant degradation (including some fundamental parts) and will one day cease to function and release its contents to the world. Preference toward dualism and to be more than the 'it' of the bag chemicals seems natural. If reason or wishful thinking have created a more fundamental 'I' there doesn't seem to be anyway to convincingly demonstrate or adequately communicate that 'I' to other bags.

But to be pragmatic, i would say something like my preference towards humanism would be more fundamental than my aesthetic tastes. fiveby(zero) 14:16, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

That's very open and generous, thank you. Would you call yourself a scientist in any way? (I vary rarely look at peoples' user pages: to me almost every editor here is just a ~~~~ at the end of a post or on a history page.) An old friend of mine got a BSc degree in straight Chemistry at UMIST, and he is absolutely certain that when he shuffles off this mortal coil that'll be it: his body will revert to random atoms, stardust, and for him there is absolutely nothing 'after'. But he is utterly determined to get the very best out of this existence while it lasts: he's done pretty well so far. Also, I notice that you use 'i' rather than 'I' - do you know the poems of e e cummings? MinorProphet (talk) 18:03, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Damn, have been busy, I only just now looked at How sticky are our personal preferences?. That diabolic neurosurgeon Daniel Dennett for some reason occupies a space for me in close proximity to Freddie Ayer, whose Language, Truth, and Logic I ploughed my way through many, many moons ago and found myself considerably less informed than when I started. It's all just a footnote to Plato, if you ask me. Welcome to The Cave. MinorProphet (talk) 19:01, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Moi-même, das Ich an mich selbst, io solo, я сам

                   Thought

   O I can move the mountains
   And I can empty the seas
   I can paint the leaves green on the branches
   For I may do what I please.

   I am in love with the world
   And I have given my love wings
   To fly above rivers and cities
   And it lights up the world as it sings.

   I hate the ordinary life
   That ordinary people lead
   I look for a higher pantheism
   Detesting their mindless greed.

   But my eyes are the blue of the sky,
   My limbs are the branches of trees,
   My song is the jubilant cry of the birds
   And I may do what I please.

         Kingston upon Hull, October 1979 (Aged 18)

———

"So here I am: my self, the world, myself the prime reality, filled with the love and light of the Goddess who dances most gracefully at the still centre of this turning void." (7th April 2005, very nearly 21 years ago)

Hmm, an obvious candidate/sucker for mystical pantheistic solipism. MinorProphet (talk) 18:03, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

               Us

Matsuo Bashō by another poet (and artist)
Yosa Buson

                    Us

     We are the timeless ones
     We are the walkers in the rain
     We are the seekers of knowledge
     We have the whole world to gain.

     We are the listeners to the wind
     We are the watchers of the sky
     We are the lovers of melancholy
     We have no-one to tell us why.

     For only we can find out
     We are the only ones who may know
     We are the wandering searchers for truth
     And we have nowhere to go.
 
                           Hull, October 1979

Nailed it. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go. Viriditas (talk) 09:25, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but it is necessary to do something, talk to stones, perhaps, or just be, or meditate on koans... Welcome to the goose/bottle interface. I came across The Narrow Road to the Deep North many years ago. Time for another read, maybe. Plop! MinorProphet (talk) 23:18, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

An award for you

		The WikiJaguar Award for Excellence
		So glad that I didn’t humiliate myself to just one person (sincerely) - coolgurl5555 ✈︎ (she/her) ✈︎ 23:24, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

April music

story · music · places

Thank you for mentioning me the other page, and for poem inspiration here! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:54, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Today's FA is Bridge, - a broad topic by many. My father loved bridges, and I wrote a few articles with that in mind (Empress Elisabeth Bridge, adding to Chain bridge and Müngsten Bridge, the latter for childhood memory), and also thinking of bridges between people. - I brought two bios to the same page, Christian Schwarz-Schilling and Bill Ramsey whose regular Swingtime I used to hear in the car driving to choir rehearsals. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:25, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

I thought of adding some films to the 'Art and culture' section, and Bridge to nowhere to the non-existent 'See also' section, and realized how much censorship <!-- Hmmm --> had taken place (see also Talk:Bridge) to bring the article to the self-congratulatory, wholly humourless and utterly anodyne WikiWank™ that it has become: and I understood my efforts would have been pointless. Ja, sicher, Brücken sind toll (see also toll bridge, Englischer Wortspiel...) but I sometimes despair. Mit besten grüßen wie immer, MinorProphet (talk) 22:53, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

For me, FA is Frederic Austin, my great-grandfather, who was a much better composer than a singer, and I would love to put on and conduct an entire concert of his music - but alas, I am essentially penniless. MinorProphet (talk) 01:36, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Austin is impressive! Would you mind me making some homourless formatting changes, such as linking to Les Beatitudes instead of the composer? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:03, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Frederic Austin: Organ Sonata in one movement (c.1935–1939). MIDI rendition using 'Jeux' soundfont.

Newport Transporter Bridge, opened 12 September 1906

Thank you. Done - I have absolutely no editorial connection with the article, I have just added a very few wikilinks and snippets over the years. Please feel free to hack about with it as you wish. I compiled the List of compositions by Frederic Austin, but haven't done anything with it since 2011. FA's Organ sonata is being performed in Waltham Abbey Church next month - I discovered Austin's MS in an old metal trunk belonging to his son Richard Austin and transcribed it into Sibelius: this is the third time it's been performed in recent times. One of my favourite bridges is this one. → MinorProphet (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, and I like the bridge! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:18, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

... and the playful sonata! - In our next choral concert, a concerto for organ and strings will be performed, and I found it difficult to find sources for it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:27, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

No rhyme, no rhythm

             Lines in March
                For Elizabeth

If ever you found a better morning,
sun-shot skies beckoning the spring
and wayward clouds uncertainly blowing
this way, and that; when the wind whips
your mind into remembrance of those
sort of things that get remembered on
these sort of mornings: then you may ask:

Did anyone ever watch you, randomly, unseen,
and try to write a few lines encompassing
your entire life, and all your loves, and
some of those you may not yet have lost...?

Then you may crumple this page and
remember other times I will never know,
like the scent of certain flowers; the look you
waited for, for centuries, across a crowded room;
variegated sunsets brighter than any artist would
ever dare to paint... If on such mornings you stared
into furthest, faintest blue – further even beyond......

                                         Smith Place, 2015

Vae, puto deus fio

                         Pome
Farewell, O life! Let the new life instantly begin
 at a happenstance, a mismatch of time and space
Where all things cease to matter much, when ideas
 and thoughts all drown in the all-feeling ocean :

Farewell, O spirit! you who have denied my feet
 the chance to touch this Earth of clays and rocks,
Who danced me a haphazard tango among the clouds
 in search of stranger musics and the perfect friend :
 
Farewell, O stone!* whose shining light drew me on
 careless of my cares - Sophia, my secret pink lover,
Begetter of my highest joys and deepest pains, and of
 the wisdom of the flaming rose-bush in the garden :

Therefore to horse, O soul! A familiar rush
 of irridescent white wings shatters the atoms of inchoate air;
All things change shape and pass on the instant,
 bound up for ever in this mysterious and utter becoming.

                                                    6 October 2015
                          Rev. 9 April, and 28 September 2016


(Supposed last of words of Vespasian: "Oh no, I'm afraid I am becoming a god.")

* That would be the true philosopher's stone, and nothing to do with that useless Potter boy.

Sophia, for those who dare enter into the Magnum Mysterium

Nichts sagenswert        —       Nothing to be said

         Selige Sehnsucht

Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Weil die Menge gleich verhöhnet,
Das Lebend’ge will ich preisen,
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.

In der Liebesnächte Kühlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Überfällt dich fremde Fühlung,
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.

Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finsternis Beschattung,
Und dich reißet neu Verlangen
Auf zu höherer Begattung.

Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt,
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du Schmetterling verbrannt.

Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.

                       Goethe (1814)

           Blissful Longing

Tell no-one except the philosophers,
For the masses would soon ridicule it:
I would praise whatever lives,
Whatever yearns for flame-death.

In the cool of the love-nights,
Which begot you, where you did your begetting,
A strange feeling comes over you,
While the still candle glows.

No longer do you tarry ensnared
In gloomy shadows,
And a new desire wrenches you
Towards a higher coupling.

Distance shall not make you weary,
You arrive flowen and spellbound,
And at last, desirous of the light,
You, soul-moth, are burnt to death.

And until you understand all that,
Think on this: Die and grow!
You are merely a moping guest
Upon the dark earth.

                            ~~~~ (2006)

MinorProphet (talk) 11:43, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Really? Really, really, really?

Walter Cronkite with Weather Computer.
(NB! Commons description: "Walter Cronkite with meteorologists from NOAA on early weather computer.")

So many things are wrong with this photo on the right and its caption, I can barely begin to explain. Well, it is Walter Cronkite, but that's about it.

Photograph of computer UNIVAC I being used to predict result of U.S. Presidential election of 1952 for CBS, with Harold Sweeney of the US Bureau of the Census (left), engineer John Presper Eckert (center), & journalist Walter Cronkite (right).
(NB! Mea culpa, partly...)

Why two pics on Commons, even (see left), with wildly different explanations? Why the greatly reduced quality of the pic on the left? Hint: Vast amounts of genuine nonsense await the unsuspecting viewer. It's a UNIVAC I, at least.
OR IS IT???

MinorProphet (talk) 23:58, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Research

Sooo, I came across the above left-hand lo-res pic on Commons several years ago and updated the description to include Sweeney and Eckert. A couple of days ago I came across the hi-res pic at top right, thought it was the same lo-res image, and wondered "hey, what happened to my description?"

And thereupon a mystery appears. The 1952 US Presidential Election took place on November 4, 1952. Since I was aware that the UNIVAC I was used on the election night, the descr. of the hi-res pic really didn't make any sense. ("Walter Cronkite with meteorologists from NOAA on early weather computer".) This is sourced to the the U.S. Department of Commerce Photographic Services which, despite the efforts of the Wayback Machine, appears to be a {{permanent dead link}}. And anyway, according to NOAA it was only formed under its present name in 1970. Stranger still...

• Well, the US Weather Bureau, now a department of the NOAA, formerly the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) had its communications center in the Suitland Federal Center, same location as the US Census Bureau; lots more early computing history if interested. But they don't seem to have used UNIVACs, they were more IBM oriented. Anyway...

Nice pic for Gerda of the Ridge Avenue bridge, Philadelphia

The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, with HQ at 3747 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia, Penn., inventors of the BINAC, ENIAC and the UNIVAC I, became the 'Eckert–Mauchly Division of Remington Rand' after it was acquired in 1950. But the main CBS radio and TV studio was located above Grand Central Station, NYC (see History of CBS#Television years: Expansion and growth) and they couldn't possibly have installed the entire computer just for one night. So began the search for where the UNIVAC actually was on election night, and what on earth was going on.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Univac I Census dedication. The descr. reads: " On June 14, 1951, we dedicated UNIVAC I, the nation's first commercial computer built for a civilian government agency at the Eckert-Mauchly Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA." The author is given as 'U.S. Census Bureau employees'.

Following cites from our article UNIVAC I § Installations:

Automatic Computing Machinery: UNIVAC Acceptance Tests. "On March 23rd [1951] the first UNIVAC successfully passed its acceptance tests in the presence of representatives of the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Standards." (p. 176) "The machine will remain on the premises of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation for about a year, performing computations for the Bureau of the Census and operating 24 hours a day." (p. 177)

Automatic Computing Machinery: Eckert-Mauchly Division, Remington Rand Inc. "The first UNIVAC, which was constructed for the Bureau of the Census, under NBS contract with Remington Rand, was delivered by Edward U. Condon, Director of the National Bureau of Statistics, to Roy V. Peel, Director of the Bureau of the Census, on June 14th. During the elaborate ceremonies which took place in Philadelphia on that occasion, the UNIVAC was busy on a typical task of the Bureau of the Census—the tabulation of information about John Q. Citizen."

"UNIVAC was accepted by the US Bureau of the Census in 1951 [June 14, 1951]. The machine was accepted from Remington Rand, who had absorbed EMCC [Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation] the previous year. Census people, who were relying on Univac for help with the 1950 census, operated the system in the factory to postpone the substantial down-time of a move."

So, the very first UNIVAC I definitely remained at the laborarories of Remington Rand's Eckert-Mauchly division in Philadelphia.

UNIVAC Acceptance Tests. "On February 4-5, 1952, the second UNIVAC, constructed by the Eckert-Mauchly Division of Remington Rand under NBS contract for the Office of the Air Comptroller, USAF, passed a magnetic tape reading and writing test which was the final test for its acceptance. The machine is now being moved from the factory in Philadelphia to the Pentagon Building in Washington, D. C, where its primary activity will be computing logistic programs." ...
..."In the Bureau of the Census's year of experience with the first UNIVAC the computer has been remarkably reliable except for rather frequent tape reading errors." (p. 119)

Thus, (from our article, Univac I#Installations): "The machine was not actually shipped until the following December, because, as the sole fully set-up model, it was needed for demonstration purposes, and the company was apprehensive about the difficulties of dismantling, transporting, and reassembling the delicate machine."

• Hmm, it seems likely that whichever editor made this cite may have been confused. The only relevant mention of December 1953 in the above Bruemmer ref is on p. 81, but this apparently relates to the installation for GE Appliances: but according to UNIVAC I#UNIVAC installations, 1951–1954 this didn't happen until 1954, but yech again, dead link...

"DELVES: [i.e. Eugene L. Delves, from Arthur Andersen, later Accenture]: That's right, because the first one [i.e 600 line per minute 'Uniprinter'], was scheduled to be delivered, like December of 1953, and it was. Some of you all know this better, but it was still in [production] in Philadelphia. So December 15 (whatever date it was) they just crated it all up and brought it to Louisville [ie HQ of GE Appliances] and delivered it along with all the engineers who were still building it. [laughter] So that met the delivery date. There's a funny story, John. You might remember, the engineers would get it to go and then they would put the skin all back on it and it wouldn't work anymore. Somebody... I don't remember whether it was you, perhaps, John, or somebody else that said, "Gee, it probably is afraid to work in the dark." [laughter] We just laughed about that, but the engineers put lights in it and it worked fine. [laughter]"

• "When UNIVAC I was installed at the Census Bureau in 1951, computer operations were housed in the basement and wings of the agency's Federal Office Building 3 in Suitland, MD." Hmm, even the Census Bureau's official website seems confused, and again here: but at least we know where it ended up... But when was it actually installed?

• Blimey, the nonsense people write: "The first UNIVAC was delivered to the Census Bureau on March 31, 1951, in Suitland, Maryland, and dedicated on June 14, 1951, amid public fanfare. It immediately processed parts of the 1950 population census, reducing years of manual work to months, and by 1954, handled the entire economic census. A landmark event was its 1952 prediction of Dwight D. Eisenhower's landslide victory for CBS, using a 5.5% vote sample with 3.5% accuracy, boosting its fame despite initial media skepticism." The article even has a section entitled "Controversies and Misconceptions." Is this in fact AI slop?

Long quote from our article, UNIVAC I#Market positioning:

"To promote sales, the company partnered with CBS to have UNIVAC I predict the result of the 1952 United States presidential election live on television. The machine predicted that Dwight D. Eisenhower would win in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson at a chance of 100 to 1, receive 32,915,949 votes and win the Electoral College 438–93. It was opposed to the final Gallup Poll, which had predicted that Eisenhower would win in a close contest. The CBS crew was so certain that UNIVAC was wrong [ NB! No, it was the EMCC operators in Pennsylvania] that they believed it was not working, so they changed a certain "national trend factor" from 40% to 4% to obtain what appeared more correct 268–263, and released that for the television. It was soon noticed that the prediction assuming 40% was closer to truth, so they changed it back.

Unfortunately, Ira Chinoy's book cited just above, Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting isn't online, but there is a Youtube video of a presentation he made, via the Computer History Museum website blog. Chinoy is great, comes across as personable, really genuine and speaks really well.

• GB CHM Live: Predicting the President: Origins of Computer Forecasting, No ads, even... Some excerpts:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo&t=1014s Chinoy in V/O: "Eckert wasn't even there... Remington Rand didn't even share the initial results with CBS since they were "so freaked out" about the predicted landslide...

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo&t=1258s Shot of Charles Collingwood. V/O: "See the lights blinking there? The whole thing was a mock-up - they attached it to something like Christmas tree light timer."

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo&t=2117s Quoting Professor Robert Friedel, Uni of Maryland: "The blessing and the curse of the historian is to know how things turned out."

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo&t=2170s Shot of Unisys History Newsletter - investigate?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo&t=2646s Shot of Mauchly's sales pitch for potential uses of computers, July 19, 1952.

But still nothing on the damn photo... Aha! Chinoy's book isn't online, but his original thesis, on which he based the book, is:

• Chinoy, Ira (2010). Battle of the Brains: Election-Night Forecasting at the Dawn of the Computer Age (D. Phil. thesis). University of Maryland. p. 252 [pdf 267]. Retrieved 25 April 2026.

"The story of CBS teaming up with UNIVAC – as the “Electronic Brain,” the “Electronic Robot” and the “Machine with Memory” – was picked up by the Associated Press and the United Press and made its way around the country to run in newspapers on Oct. 15. It turned up in some places as a front-page story and in others as a news brief.
Both wire stories carried a Philadelphia dateline of Oct. 14, and the content suggests that Remington Rand put out its own information for the press. Philadelphia newspapers ran their own stories noting the UNIVAC as a hometown product. There was even a publicity photo. It appeared in at least one Oct. 15 edition of The Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia, showing UNIVAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert and CBS’s Walter Cronkite conferring over a computer printout as UNIVAC operator Harold Sweeney sat at the machine’s console in the foreground.[32] [n. 32]This photograph appears under the caption “Network ‘Drafts’ Univac for Election Coverage” in an edition of the Evening Bulletin online at http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mauchly/img/11cronk.jpg as part of an exhibit, “John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC Computer,” [dead link].

I also found this ultra-lo-res clipping, along with five very clear publicity photos: Christie's auctions...

Result!

But a little of applied Google-Fu turns up this:

• Aranda, Vicente Trigo (2004). "Las generaciones de ordenadores". Revista Digital (in Spanish) (31). Autores cientifico-técnicos y académicos (Acta): 40. NB url for direct download of pdf

And here, at last, is the offending article and super-lo-res pic... The text is clear enough to be read and transcribed. The headline for the pic reads "Network 'Drafts' Univac for Election Coverage'

Intended cite, finally:

• "CBS to Use Electronic Robot to Forecast Election Results" (PDF). The Evening Bulletin. Philadelphia, Penn. October 15, 1952 – via Acta (pdf in Spanish).

And confirmatory original super-hi-res pic from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin:

• "Network 'Drafts' UNIVAC for Election Coverage". Temple University Libraries. George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection. October 15, 1952. Retrieved 25 April 2026. UNIVAC, the electronic computer which will be used by the Columbia Broadcasting System in its television coverage of the November 4 elections, gets a test run under the supervision of (from left) Harold Sweeney, chief operator; J. Prespar [sic] Eckert, one of the machine's inventors, and CBS commentator Walter Cronkite, at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.
  • In fact the photo from the website is slightly different to the ones on Commons. It is uncropped, showing more of the equipment: and Eckert is merely looking at the printout, rather than leaning in towards Cronkite, which makes him seem actively interested.

Walter Cronkite with Weather Computer (lol)

Sooo, the pic needs a description something like this:

This is a publicity shot taken in October 1952 of the UNIVAC I computer with: Harold E. Sweeney of Remington Rand, operator of the UNIVAC (left); J. Presper Eckert, co-inventor of the UNIVAC I (center); and Walter Cronkite of CBS News (right), at EMCC's laboratories in Pennsylvania. CBS and Remington Rand had teamed up to use the computer to predict the results for the 1952 US Presidential Election, which took place on November 4, 1952. The 'computer' installed for election night in the CBS studio above Grand Central Station, NYC, was only a mock-up, with the console wired up to "something like a Christmas tree flashing light timer".[ref Chinoy thesis and video ] The computer itself was still at Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation's premises.[refs from above] Although the predicted results were correct, the operators in Pennsylvania couldn't believe them, fudging the figures and the typed printout, and kept CBS in the dark.(ref. Murphy 1953) The true result was only communicated later, with corresponding "operator error" apologies.

See also UNIVAC Becomes a Household Word - A reading from Harry Wulforst's 1982 book - Breakthrough to the Computer Age - includes another shot from the same photo session. According to this book, Remington Rand may have used up to three UNIVACs on the night, including one for a backup.

Aftermath

Franklin Life Insurance Company (not) - actually Franklin Institute, Philadelphia

The lede of UNIVAC I has this pic →
with an interesting comment: "This picture is the Univac I installation at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA., not an insurance company in Illinois. The operator in the photo is Art Bidwell, the lady is Lynn Murray and the man standing is me, Larry McGinn. This photo was taken in the late fifties or early sixties. Source: Department of the Army, Ballistic Research Laboratories - Maryland, A third survey of domestic electronic digital computing systems, Report No 1115, 1961, The UNIVAC II [NB Lots of pix of UNIVAC (UNIVAXEN?) + peripherals]

From the above ref it turns out that both Franklin Life Insurance Company, Springfield, Illinois, and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia both had a UNIVAC.

MinorProphet (talk) 14:06, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Wow, it seems we really can Handle the Truth. Thanks for your dedication. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:36, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Only took a couple of days to sort out... MinorProphet (talk) 19:13, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Very, very, occasionally I actually spend money on a physical book to improve WP. I recently ordered Wulforst, Harry (1982). Breakthrough to the Computer Age from a French online bookseller, and will let you know whether it was worth it, if it ever arrives... MinorProphet (talk) 01:24, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

References

...a familiar rush of irridescent white wings

                              Unicorn
                               For Marilyn
  
To what far outcrop of fantasy have we scared you,
Frail spirit of our saddled and bridled imagination?
Did not old suns shine on you we do not dream of?
If through distant meadows once you cantered,
Fantastically garlanded (saner and wilder than any Lear)
With cornflowers and poppies, breathing primæval freedom
And air so fresh and bright it hurt to heave lungfuls
When, tired of gallop'd joy you came to a reluctant halt;

And looked about, eyes staring suddenly, ears flat,
Snorting with uncomprehending fear—was it not
At some escaped pre-conscious notion of ourselves?
For we are reasonable men, seeking different truths.
So, if one midsummer morning we glimpse a hornéd head
Toss and dart between reddening rocks, would we not doubt
The tattered remains of all our souls' desire, and
Spur you further into the recesses of our turbo-charged oblivion?

                                                           14th June 1985

WP:NOTABLOG

Like a road to some kind of heaven

      Perhaps the night, silence and rain
      Fill an underground cavern in my heart,
      A place to discover sometimes; a refrain
      Echoing through empty chambers
      Needing to be filled; glowing embers
      Of a memory that was there from the start.

      Seeking bright angels, I live the days
      As if something greater were in store;
      Not like going out in a wild blaze
      Of glory, but slow and firm,
      An accretion of parts. Turn
      One day, finding what was not there before.

      But does it work? Am I wiser
      Through more than time and age?
      I gather messages of the sun, a miser
      Of miracles of light and tears,
      Searching blindly through the years,
      And all I get is scribbles on the page.

                                      September 1993

Now see wot u done

             Supernova

      Here in the diamond core
      Light bursts out in plumes of flame,
      Out from my very heart of being,
      Beyond the dark horizon's quiet glitter,
      Further than the mind of any god
      Could ever want to penetrate.
      Aloud into the wild heavens
      I shout for joy, and these hills echo
      From the stone dancing-places to the sky.
      Love is my master; into his fond embrace
      I sink unquestioning, where ocean-currents
      Reflect bright messages of infinite fire.

                            03:00 am, 29 January 2005

"Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb"

                         Confrederation

      Why should we not merge, O past self and I?
      Being always in the future, so far ahead of you,
      I have tired of this waiting as of centuries:
      So close have you come to this treasured spot,
      This joyous circumstance of light and shade,
      Where world within and world without are one,
      A hypercosmos of innumerable stars —— Ah,
      Join with me now, bold and foolish traveller,
      Here, I hold out my hand to you, my grasp
      Uplifted and uplifting, pulling you closer
      Towards the bright fire of my inmost heart.
      Welcome, voyager, through the strait gate that
      Leads to life, lived only here and now for now:
      The flame in the rose flares up, reddening.

                            18:45 pm, 27 October 2005

Notes

Palm reading

                                Psalm

      I seek only wisdom: for I am the fool of love.
      Yet little did I think the path would be so hard
      Or unrewarding, so generous with its pain.
      I reward myself therefore with promises of joy,
      Of early morning worship of the earth and sky,
      And happy voyages in unending realms of light.

                             1:30 pm, 15th November 2005

Paean

                     Hymn

         The Goddess is the world
         At whose still centre
         Dances the flame of divine grace.
         Whisper her name, ye nations
         To the earth and sky : murmur
         Sweet love-songs in her praise.

         The sun half-rises, kneeling
         Before her bright herald,
         The angel of the morning.
         Moon and stars and distant suns
         Worship her endlessly,
         Unstintingly, unceasing.

                          10 April 2006, 17:53
                         rev. 28 April 2026, 00:30

MinorProphet (talk) 00:39, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Sophia, my secret pink lover

The Mystical Sophia

Attempted rendering: (top to bottom, left to right)

               The heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures in the heavens and on earth.

                                        The star of the philosophers from the lands of the morning.

 
God is an eternal, unchanging, in-
finite, supernatural, independent,
heavenly and intrinsic spirit, and
has become, in Nature and in Time,
a visible, incarnate, mortal
human being.

 
Nature is a created, natural,
temporal, finite, intrinsic
and corporeal spirit, a parable,
picture and cloud, according to the
uncreated, unending, eternal Spirit,
hidden and also visible.

 
          THE DIVINE EYE
by which God sees and creates
               all things.

          THE EYE OF NATURE
or, the heavens, by which Nature perceives
         and rules all earthly things.

 
                              The Sun                     of Justice

 
Every thing has its departure!
[and] proclaims its beginning

Living, deadly/capable of death/mortal?,
real/actual, pernicious/perishable,
capable of being reborn

 
      VIRGIN         SOPHIA

 
The Light of Grace, the Work
                       Are two

The Light of Nature, the side-hustle
                        brothers.

 
Heavenly Eve,
the newly born.

Earthly Eve,
the ancient of days.

 
                                                                                                    

 
O man, O man, bewail how
God the Word has become Man.

 O man, O man, consider
how Nature is become a great world,
and a human being.

<Skip>

 
                    THE ROSY CROSS
                       O come.

OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
            O come.

 
They who have eyes to see, they can
and shall rightly see.

They who have ears to hear, they
should not shout it abroad.

                     7 Eagles                                7 lions                                7 ravens                                7 spheres

At five o'clock from the central χάος is John Dee's Monad.

Notes

References

MinorProphet (talk) 12:06, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Obviously lost it

   I am become the bright herald of the angel of the morning, the bringer of truth and light.

MinorProphet (talk) 19:58, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Shield

Shield

I am giving you a "Shield" Award You stood up to someone who criticized my conversational "Thanks tons for helping me with this topic." after stating I was a beginner at this. I never thought it would get me chewed out by someone. That individual has caught me the day after chemotherapy, where I am struggling to process information, which is hard on its own, but that comment put me on the verge of tears. Thankfully, I saw your response to that user, and I really appreciated it. Going forward I will make sure I use formal language in any request. Thank you for being my Shield today! BuzzGnat (talk) 20:32, 18 June 2026 (UTC)