Happy 120th birthday in emptiness to Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, founder of San Francisco Zen Center, where I was a Zen student. Here he is in the early 1960s, teaching Sunday school at Sokoji, the sole Soto Zen temple in SF at the time. [via cuke.com]
"Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else." - Suzuki-roshi
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Say what you will about generative AI, it's certainly crammed all of my timelines with creepy fake-looking images that my friends keep posting as "Amazing!!" -- even friends who are art aficionados and I thought would know better. It's having a strange effect on me, which is a growing distaste and distrust of images themselves, as if the whole visible universe is being covered with some kind of slime.
Just posted: Incandescent live #JoniMitchell version of "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire," one of the most haunting songs ever written about addiction, with a wild, brilliant Tom Scott solo. A-plus performance. https://youtu.be/8f-vy1LeVxY?si=b5Sxj4vRumV1NKY4
Babyman Fakesavant's latest act of shitting all over the former Twitter is deleting headlines from linked news stories to make it even less useful for distinguishing fact from nonsense. This stuff only seems "chaotic" if you don't look close. It's all deliberate, and in the same direction.
New report shows advertisers fleeing X after Elon's transformation of the formerly thriving Twitter community into a churning toilet of white supremacist propaganda, Nazi bootlickers, anti-vaxx nonsense, and anti-trans hatred. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N3BA253
While the chimpanzees of the Republican party were flinging poo and screeching at each other, the first #Black openly #LGBTQ+ Senator was making history. https://youtu.be/MjJGbVn4elM?si=1fRrTXmdVkO7SCf7
This.
@djrothkopf
Welcome to the day in American history where the gag order placed on the former president of the United States at the trial at which he has already been found guilty of persistent fraud is neither the biggest story nor the greatest sign of dysfunction in that man's party.
Steve Reich was born OTD in 1936. His "Music for 18 Musicians" is my very favorite piece of modern composition. It's oceanic, beyond psychedelic, like overhearing God's thoughts or the permutations of DNA. If you ever have a chance to see it performed, don't miss it. https://youtu.be/71A_sm71_BI?si=WeqR9mUAJ9o8rPSy
Excellent, wonderful news for anyone who followed the dune shack saga in #Provincetown: Frenchie's shack has been returned to the care of the Del Deo family. I hope @CapeCodNPS does the right thing with all of them. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx4LQqesP-7/
Today in my email from an anti-neurodiversity type: “Your whore of a mother should have aborted you. You don’t speak for me with your social justice crap.”
Such a wonderful time to be alive!
Rapist? Pedophile? Workplace harrasser? Wife beater? Child trafficker? No worries, bro. Just start nattering on about the "woke mind virus" and being "cancelled" and an army of Republicans and incels will rally around you, waving flags.
How prominent fascist enabler and erratic bumbler Elon Musk has destroyed #Twitter/X's usefulness for #science and scientists by flooding it with garbage. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02554-0
Tired of stewing in anger and bitterness? Take a break with this gorgeous new cover of Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes" featuring brillant world musicians like Zakir Hussain. https://youtu.be/VQPD17v6eLU?si=OYh0xhFPUvCpnxDj
Any pundit working on another "centrist" think-piece about "Biden's cognitive decline" should be strapped into a chair and forced to watch this on an endless loop with eyelids pried open "Clockwork Orange" style. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1702866508693618997?s=20
Librarians and #neurodivergent patrons sue after creepy, bigoted right-wing freaks in Kansas (hi Ruth Splitter, you're famous!) fire librarians for displaying a pro-#neurodiversity symbol that they confused with an #LGBTQ+ rainbow. https://news.yahoo.com/kansas-town-axed-librarians-confusing-162943798.html
As Florida reports more new #COVID19 hospitalizations than any other state, #GOP sociopath #RonDeSantis demands more sickness and death as surely as if he wrapped his cold, creepy hands around the throats of his constituents and started squeezing. https://wapo.st/3LltbuZ
I used to be thrilled to get #GratefulDead tickets by mailorder. Now I'm thrilled to get an online appointment for my next #COVID19 booster. Life is weird.
If you're thinking well, of course Elon Musk is an asshole, he has Asperger's and was bullied as a kid, you DESPERATELY need to reread this 2021 piece in Slate by #autistic journalist @slooterman.bsky.social. Every writer opinionizing about him should read it. https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/elon-musk-aspergers-snl-autism-spectrum.html
Prominent @GOP asshole Rep. Lauren Boebert, one of the most grating, strikingly ignorant, and unpleasant people in public life, booted from theater for disturbing showing of "Beetlejuice." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSwq_AIg-tE
@cf713a4e Stop judging others. I'm still on the platform because I have a lot of disabled followers who tell me they have trouble transitioning to other services. I'll probably leave soon, but no one else knows what issues are in play.
@235af3fc "Neurodiversity" does NOT sound medical to me. It sounds like "biodiversity," a simple fact about the state of living things and an essential element in the ecology of the world.
@21f813a4 Glad to hear it's not a race thing, but to be honest, as it's one of the most special places in the world to me, I utterly don't care that a couple of Marines felt "uncomfortable." They're *Marines* for Christ's sakes; if a bookstore makes them uncomfortable we're all fucked.
Fascinating obit for Walt Curtis, Portland #poet who read with Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg and was the source of the story idea for "Mala Noche" by Gus Van Sant, the first truly hip new take on being gay for GenX filmgoers. https://www.wweek.com/arts/2023/09/06/in-memoriam-walt-curtis-1941-2023/
@21f813a4 "Uncomfortable with the store's atmosphere"? Too many black and brown faces on the books or something? I honestly can't even imagine the type of person who would be uncomfortable in that store. Good luck.
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