Humanoid robot wins Beijing half-marathon, defeating the human world record This year's race featured over 300 robots from more than 100 teams, including international participants. The competition highlights China's advancements in a technological competition with the U.S.

so many ideas; so many developments:

www.pbs.org/newshour/wor...

My photo shows a frontal view of a buff-coloured Minoan pottery jug with a dark-red, stylised octopus painted beneath the dark red pouring spout. The jug has a rounded body with very short neck with out-turned rim, the body tapers downwards to a slightly turned out flat base also painted red. On each shoulder there’s a small chunky loop handle. The octopus is stylised and looks cartoon-like with a vertical dumbbell shaped body, with two large circular eyes with central red dots staring out at the viewer. From the top of the head emerge eight suckered arms. Four arms hang symmetrically downwards on each side of the body, writhing and curling at the tip. There is a similar red octopus on each side of the jug not shown in my photo.

A 3,500 year-old Minoan jar with a cartoon-like octopus under the spout! 🐙

From Kommos, Crete. Heraklion Archaeological Museum 📷 by me

#Archaeology

a map from 1918 showing the interurban network sprawling across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio

One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.

The photograph, taken within a museum setting, depicts two remarkably well-preserved Roman barrels of substantial size. They appear largely complete, with the exception of their upper sections.

XXL transport containers: Two huge #Roman wooden barrels in an outstanding state of preservation, found in Xanten. Both had a capacity of approx. 1250 l and were used to transport #wine from the Mediterranean region to the Lower Rhine. They were recycled for lining wells.🧵1/2

📷me

🏺 #archaeology

A surprising number of crucial academic decisions get made by people who don't know how to weigh, so merely count.

A scatter plot titled Sentiment Comparison displays data points for three cities—London (blue), New York (red), and Tampa (yellow)—across three distinct clusters on the x-axis, labeled approximately 1, 2, and 3. The y-axis represents a numerical value ranging from 0.0 to 0.8. The chart uses dashed connecting lines to indicate significant relationships between specific city data points: Cluster 1 (Left): Values range from roughly 0.2 to 0.4. A green dashed line connects New York to Tampa, labeled "Sig: NY-Tampa (Pos)". Cluster 2 (Middle): Values range from roughly 0.5 to 0.8. An orange dashed line connects London to Tampa ("Sig: Lon-Tampa (Neu)") and a teal dashed line connects New York to Tampa ("Sig: NY-Tampa (Neu)"). Cluster 3 (Right): Values are low, near 0.1. A light blue dashed line connects London to Tampa, labeled "Sig: Lon-Tampa (Neg)". The x-axis coordinates for each city are slightly offset within each cluster (e.g., 0.9, 1.0, and 1.1) to prevent the dots from overlapping.

A scatter plot titled Emotion Comparison shows data points for three cities—London (blue), New York (red), and Tampa (yellow)—plotted across seven numerical clusters on the x-axis, ranging from 3.9 to 10.1. The y-axis represents values from 0.0 to 0.5. The chart highlights three statistically significant relationships with dashed connecting lines: Cluster 1 (x ≈ 4): A green dashed line connects London (the highest point in this group) to Tampa (the lowest), labeled "Sig: Lon-Tampa (Joy)". Cluster 5 (x ≈ 8): A short orange dashed line connects London to Tampa at the bottom of the scale, labeled "Sig: Lon-Tampa (Sur)". Cluster 7 (x ≈ 10): A teal dashed line connects New York to Tampa, which sits at the highest point on the entire graph (above 0.4), labeled "Sig: NY-Tampa (Fear)". Other data points for the three cities are scattered throughout the middle clusters (labeled 5, 6, 7, and 9 on the x-axis) without connecting lines, indicating no marked significance for those specific emotional variables.

Spending some time with the new sentiment analysis component of _City as Text_.

Comparison of sentiment and emotion analysis of stanzas generated by AI in response to photos; differences are p-tested for statistical significance.

existent text:

_Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage_
by Haruki Murakami

openlibrary.org/books/OL2835...

I used to keep copies of the unhinged emails and other communications (for a while, the postcard was a popular medium) I'd received from randos. I stopped. It got too macabre.

#processing

A starfield filled with thousands of stars and shining clouds of dust. The Milky Way\u2019s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy\u2019s spiral arms, about halfway from the center. Credit: NASA

OH. MY. GOD.

THIS IS THE MILKY WAY SHOT BY THE ARTEMIS II CREW. LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS!!!!

This is a stacked bar chart titled "Emotion (Sorted by City)" that visualizes the distribution of various emotional states across different dates and times for three major cities: London, New York, and Tampa. Chart Structure Y-Axis: Represents percentage, ranging from 0.00% to 125.00% (though the data bars cap at 100%). X-Axis: Lists specific timestamps categorized by city (e.g., "London - 2023 - US 2024 - 9 December 2023, 10:00 AM"). Legend: Seven color-coded emotional categories are located in the top-right: Emo_Fear: Black Emo_Ang (Anger): Red Emo_Sur (Surprise): Purple Emo_Dis (Disgust): Green Emo_Sad (Sadness): Blue Emo_Neu (Neutral): Grey Emo_Joy: Gold Visual Style The chart uses a vertical orientation with thin, crowded bars on the x-axis, making it a dense data visualization. The background is white with light grey horizontal grid lines.

This is a stacked bar chart titled "Emotion (Sorted by Photo Year)". It visualizes the percentage distribution of seven emotional categories across various dates and locations, specifically sorted by the "Photo Year" indicated in the x-axis labels. Chart Structure Y-Axis: Represents the percentage from 0.00% to 125.00%, with each bar totaling 100%. X-Axis: Contains detailed timestamps that include the city, a primary year, a "US" or "UK" reference year, and the specific date and time. Legend: Seven color-coded categories are listed at the top right: Emo_Fear: Black Emo_Ang (Anger): Red Emo_Sur (Surprise): Purple Emo_Dis (Disgust): Green Emo_Sad (Sadness): Blue Emo_Neu (Neutral): Grey Emo_Joy: Gold Visual Presentation The chart uses narrow, vertical bars packed closely together, creating a dense field of color that transitions from a multicolored palette on the left to a predominantly dark (black) palette on the right. The background is white with light grey horizontal grid lines at 25% intervals.

This is a stacked bar chart titled "Emotion (Sorted by Gen Context)". It displays the percentage breakdown of emotional states for specific instances, categorized by city, year, and precise timestamp, with the sorting based on a "Generation Context" variable. Chart Structure Y-Axis: Scales from 0.00% to 125.00%, measuring the proportional composition of each bar. X-Axis: Lists various data points labeled by location (New York, London, Tampa) and time, ranging from December 2023 to December 2025/2026. Legend (Top-Right): Seven emotional categories are defined by color: Emo_Fear: Black (Top-most layer) Emo_Ang (Anger): Red Emo_Sur (Surprise): Purple Emo_Dis (Disgust): Green Emo_Sad (Sadness): Blue Emo_Neu (Neutral): Grey Emo_Joy: Gold (Bottom-most layer) Visual Presentation The chart uses narrow, high-density vertical bars set against a white background with thin grey horizontal grid lines. The visual weight shifts heavily toward the darker colors (black and blue) as the viewer moves toward the right side of the x-axis.

Spending some time with the new sentiment analysis component of _City as Text_.

Same sentiment data points of stanzas generated by AI in response to photos: sorted by city photographed, by photo year, and by generative (AI) context.

An open-access resource centered on teaching with text generation.

TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies
Edited by Annette Vee, Tim Laquintano, and Carly Schnitzler

wacclearinghouse.org/repository/c...

A Severed Head : Murdoch, Iris : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.125344dc.contributor.author: Murdoch, Irisdc.date.accessioned: 2015-07-03T13:17:39Zdc.date.available:...

Murdoch, I. (1961). A severed head. Chatto & Windus. archive.org/details/in.e...

The implications/possibilities of Hedberg's work still fascinates Me:

Hedberg, William C. "How Do We Have Eighteenth-Century Japanese Fiction? Hermeneutic Mitate, Unreadable Novels, and Tension in Translation." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 37.1 (2025): 53-76.

generative engagement with unreadability:

Yanping, Sun. "Bridging Unreadability: AI Empowerment in College Foreign Language Literature Teaching." Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature 9.2 (2025).

technological engagement with material unreadability:

Jonathan Bourne. Reading the unreadable: creating a dataset of 19th century English newspapers using image-to-text language models. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2025;, fqaf151, doi.org/10.1093/llc/...

"Imagine a humanoid named Willard Van Orman Quine...."

Event | Everyday Resistance online conference, 25 March 2026 CDH is pleased to share the programme and registration details for the second installment in the Everyday Resistance conference, to be held online 25 March 2026. Everyday resistance: Thinking, maki…

This morning I'm participating in _Everyday Resistance: Thinking, Making, and Living in the Material World (ONLINE EDITION)_ hosted by University of Brighton.

Always wonderful to participate in spaces like this one.

blogs.brighton.ac.uk/centrefordes...

My poetry is included in #Ranger Issue 14, alongside audio/music work by Studies in Sound (studiesinsound.bandcamp.com).

www.rangermagazine.net/issue14

My poetry is included in #Ranger Issue 14, alongside audio/music work by Studies in Sound (studiesinsound.bandcamp.com).

www.rangermagazine.net/issue14

#Ranger Mag just dropped yet *another* double issue (#14 and #15)! As usual, it's jam packed with the best experimental #poetry, #art and #music of the international avant-garde. Check it out!
www.rangermagazine.net/issue14
www.rangermagazine.net/issue15

Deer enjoying cherry blossoms in Nara, Japan: #AGoodPlace

Source: www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s...

Most caregiving in the U.S. occurs unpaid within households. This work is essential to families and the labor market, yet remains largely invisible and under-supported. Tracking participation and hours shows care is widespread, time-intensive, and vital to the broader economy.

Blurring the Borders in Fiction: On Mapping and Naming, Unmapping and Unnaming A novelist explores the decision to name real places in fiction, the way maps circumscribe those places, how locales heavily defined by tourism are susceptible to those projections, and what it means ...

some reading material:

"Blurring the Borders in Fiction: On Mapping and Naming, Unmapping and Unnaming"

by Natalie Bakopoulos
www.pw.org/content/blur...

Yutaka Matsuzawa. Untitled (White Circle Collage), 1967

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland.

And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

Theory & Practice WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZEA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "Theory & Practice is a thrillingly original hybrid work that seeks truthful answers to the most difficult questions of the day—...

existent text:

_Theory & Practice_
by Michelle de Kretser

www.google.com/books/editio...

"Xiangyang[:] the internet is not[...]external and inert, but an active flow entering the body, an ‘electronic substance’ that the contemporary mind both consumes and is consumed by."

from _Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition_
by Paul B. Preciado
www.graywolfpress.org/books/dyspho...

existent texts:

"[...] all statues must fall [...]"

_Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition_
by Paul B. Preciado

www.graywolfpress.org/books/dyspho...