Things go wrong in acquisition—it’s a hard problem, and a certain amount of grace is warranted—but a fair number of folks ought to be recalled to AD and flogged for this debacle. Reductions in retired grade should be the minimum punishment.
arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...
I can’t speak to the original list, but I think it depends on the intent of including the title. Meyerson is excellent.
Trust Pirani, a TERRIBLE player, to put a bow on the collapse.
For a decade, to be a @dcunitedofficial.bsky.social fan has been a trial. Nothing you do is right. Nothing you do is positive.
Everything you do is an insult to your fans.
My daily experience since Sep.
What’s the one thing I must not forget when approaching the line of departure for a student trip?
Loading appropriate regional packs for Merlin and eBird, obviously!
The rain is raining all around Chevy Chase, Maryland my Maryland, and Granny by no strange coincidence is reading aloud "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" out of Journeys Through Bookland. We are en route to Ivanhoe. Rebecca, you are lovely as yellow ivory, while as for you, the ugly one, ugh. Now we are in Paris, Virginia, where the only place to piss in private is a full bucket in a sodden room. The mock orange bush is in fruit. We are en route to Old Point Comfort.⁵ Where the gray and booming surf ("Make him put his clothes on: his lips are blue") shoots ashore a giant skewer. A telephone pole. My those long, big, pointed wooden things are dangerous. And Granny? Granny is mighty sore. Somebody used her personal towel. So am I. It is raining on the Fourth of July. No rockets. Slap. Drat the mosquitoes.
“Quick, Henry, the Flit!”
James Schuyler
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-...
Out of the blue today, a mentor of mine called. He’s someone who made a difference at an important time for me. He’s not doing great, but he wanted to check in and tell me how proud he is.
I’ve been very lucky.
I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct. Gull feathers of glass, hidden in white pulp: the bones of squid which I pull out and lay blade by blade on the draining board— tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce the heart, but fragile, substance belying design. Or a fruit, mamey, cased in rough brown peel, the flesh rose-amber, and the seed: the seed a stone of wood, carved and polished, walnut-colored, formed like a brazilnut, but large, large enough to fill the hungry palm of a hand. I like the juicy stem of grass that grows within the coarser leaf folded round, and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory opens blue and cool on a hot morning.
“Pleasures”
Denise Levertov
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise...
I think mine is Bleu Kidless.
Rachel says, “Caesar Marriage.”
To be fair, I thought she’d say “Caesar Eric.”
A dilettante and a mediocrity at all those endeavors…with much enjoyment in all. I’m ok with that. My hopes for the value of my life, when it’s measured, are modest.
Twice upon a time there was a man who had two faces, two faces but one profile: not Jekyll and Hyde, not good and bad, and if one were cut, the other would bleed— two faces different as hot and cold. At night, hung on the hooks on the wall above that man’s minatory head, one wants brass where one wants gold, one sees white and one sees black and one mouth eats the other until the second sweet mouth bites back. They dream their separate dreams hanging on the wall above the bed. The first voice cries: “He’s not what he seems,” but the second one sighs: “He is what he is,” then one shouts “wine” and the other screams “bread” and so they will all his raving days until they die on his double-crossed head. At signposts he must wear them both. Each would go their separate ways as the East or the West wind blows— and dark and light they both would praise, but one would melt, the other one freeze. I am that man twice upon this time: my two voices sing to make one rhyme.
Death I love and Death I hate, (I’ll be with you soon and late). Love I love, and Love I loathe, God I mock and God I prove, yes myself I kill, myself I save. Now, now, I hang these masks on the wall. Oh Christ, take one and leave me all lest four tears from two eyes fall.
“Duality”
Dannie Abse
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dannie...
The man who married Magdalene Had not forgiven her. God might pardon every sin ... Love is no pardoner. Her hands were hollow, pale, and blue, Her mouth like watered wine. He watched to see if she were true And waited for a sign. It was old harlotry, he guessed, That drained her strength away, So gladly for the dark she dressed, So sadly for the day. Their quarrels made her dull and weak And soon a man might fit A penny in the hollow cheek And never notice it. At last, as they exhausted slept, Death granted the divorce, And nakedly the woman leapt Upon that narrow horse. But when he woke and woke alone He wept and would deny The loose behavior of the bone And the immodest thigh.
“The Man Who Married Magdalene”
Louis Simpson
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louis-...
I guess we only have to comply with a judge’s order if the judge has an army to enforce it.
Shades of an apocryphal Andrew Jackson: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes? The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet slough off, in spring, the dead rind of the shoes’ leather detention, the big toe’s yellow horn shines with a natural polish, and the whole person seems to profit. The opposite appears when dead sharks wash up along the beach for no known reason. What is more built for winning than the swept-back teeth, water-finished fins, and pure bad eyes these old, efficient forms of appetite are dressed in? Yet it looks as if the sea digested what it wished of them with viral ease and threw up what was left to stink and dry. If this shows how the sea approaches life in its propensity to feed as animal entire, then sharks are comforts, feet are terrified, but they vacation in the mystery and why not? Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?: what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back.
“Plague of Dead Sharks”
Alan Dugan
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alan-d...
I’ve never heard the word “romantasy” before. Great word. It’s not my cup of tea, but that’s just a preference. LOVE the word.
It was almost 30 years ago, and it was one of the coolest jobs I ever had.
I like the feeling that in the tiniest of ways, from the deep recesses of the past, I played a part in bringing that pilot home.
My first job in the AF was in operational testing, and I spent 3 years doing OT on the CSEL system. Fun fact: the picture in the manual showing how to hold the radio is me, taken at Ft Huachuca, AZ (though now turned into an anonymized drawing).
www.ndtv.com/world-news/u...
thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2...
A #review I did for Strategy Bridge. If you can get a physical copy, do so!
So I would hear out those lungs, The air split into nine levels, Some gift of tongues of the whistler In the invalid’s bed: my mother, Warbling all day to herself The thousand variations of one song; It is called Buckdancer’s Choice. For years, they have all been dying Out, the classic buck-and-wing men Of traveling minstrel shows; With them also an old woman Was dying of breathless angina, Yet still found breath enough To whistle up in my head A sight like a one-man band, Freed black, with cymbals at heel, An ex-slave who thrivingly danced To the ring of his own clashing light Through the thousand variations of one song All day to my mother’s prone music, The invalid’s warbler’s note, While I crept close to the wall Sock-footed, to hear the sounds alter, Her tongue like a mockingbird’s break Through stratum after stratum of a tone Proclaiming what choices there are For the last dancers of their kind, For ill women and for all slaves Of death, and children enchanted at walls With a brass-beating glow underfoot, Not dancing but nearly risen Through barnlike, theatrelike houses On the wings of the buck and wing.
“Buckdancer’s Choice”
James Dickey
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-...
Yeah. There isn’t much cosplay about my truck game. I owned an old-school single-cab Ford Ranger for over a decade. It’s a utility question.
Many thanks!
Hang around the military academies the week after graduation. Or track ROTC statistics. It’s a niche population, but it’s important.
But OUR fanaticism is TRUE. Which rather leaves someone like me as a “them” rather than an “us,” and I find that offensive after 29+ years of active service, the son and grandson of military officers the Secretary would also categorize as “them.”
I’m a little ashamed to not know of this oath.
Gonna go look this up…not as a Latin exercise, but for civ-mil fun.
I tend to find most places have a reason to visit.
Shout out to Portales and Lubbock. And I kinda love Albuquerque.
