Maybe you want to know where William Duffy's Farm is? Or the Indian River? Or perhaps Xanadu? Or where The Garden lies? Or MANAHATTA? No matter what poetic place you're seeking, The Poetry Atlas knows the way.

Organized by Poet, Poems by title, or Poems by first line, or search for a location. [Unfortunately, the full text of the poems is usually not available right there on the site; most can be found at the Poetry Foundation or Poets.org] Here are the poems mention above: Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota Indian River Kubla Khan A Bird, came down the walk MANNAHATTA

To mark Pride month, Pornhub collaborated with the LGBTQ+ culture site pride.com to round up data on what kinds of gay porn have amassed popularity with viewers, although they didn't release exact information about their data collection or sample sizes. As we've noted before, yassified masturbation surveillance isn't exactly the most ideal scenario, but it's here and it's certainly queer. from Vintage Cowboys and Cruising: What Gay Porn Viewers Are Searching For by State [Them] [CW: PornHub, Big Data]

Arash Missaghi seemed immune from consequence. His voluminous court records show no convictions, no jail time and no successful lawsuits against him in Canada, while providing few – if any – indications why criminal charges against him were withdrawn on multiple occasions. from Businessman killed in Toronto triple shooting defrauded hundreds of victims, netted at least $100-million, records show [CW: suicide, murder, fraud]

'He was everywhere and nowhere all at once': The elaborate web of triple shooting victim Arash Missaghi [The Star; ungated] Arash Missaghi and Canada's Largest Abandoned Mansion [Freaktography] Paradise Lost [Toronto Life, 2018] Law Society of Ontario v. Mehta, 2019 ONLSTH 154 [CanLII] This post sponsored by seanmpuckett's #LinkMe

For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of their career. For editors, if a writer's first book doesn't perform, it's hard to make a financial case for acquiring that writer's second book. And for you, a reader interested in great fiction, the fallout from this challenging climate can limit your access to exciting new voices in fiction. Unless you diligently shop at independent bookstores where booksellers highlight different types of books, you might only ever encounter the big, splashy debuts that publishers, book clubs, social-media algorithms, and big-box retailers have determined you should see. from Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch? [Esquire; ungated]

The idea had come to Queneau on a visit to Greece in the early 1930s. There he learned about the dispute between adherents of the two rival forms of the Greek language: the archaic, revivalist Katharevousa, harking back to classical Greek, and the modern, vernacular Demotic. Queneau recognised a similar gulf between literary French and the contemporary spoken language: 'I came to realise that modern, written French must free itself from the conventions that still hem it in.' What was needed was an overhaul, an attentiveness to everyday speech, which would bring about a new written language, a 'néo-français', corresponding to the language as it was actually spoken. from How to Speak Zazie [London Review of Books; ungated]

The article is eventually a review of Queneau's The Skin of Dreams Queneau, previously

Military contractor Erik Prince started a private WhatsApp group for his close associates that includes a menagerie of right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists. We got their messages. from Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat [The New Republic; ungated] [CW: the quiet part, out loud]

Among the group's hottest topics: • The "Biden Regime," which a consensus of Off Leash participants who weighed in view as an ally of Islamic terrorists and other anti-American forces that needs to be crushed along with them and its partners in the deep state, such as former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who "deserves to burn in hell," Lara Logan shared with the group chat. • The shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists. "The West is at best a beautiful cemetery," lamented Sven von Storch, whose aristocratic German family fled the country after World War II to Chile, where their son was raised before returning to the land of his ancestors, where he married the granddaughter of the Third Reich's last de facto head of state, who was convicted at Nuremberg. • Israel-Palestine, a problem that Michael Yudelson, Prince's business partner at Unplugged, which markets an allegedly supersecure smartphone, said should be handled by napalming Hamas's tunnel network. "I would burn all those bastards, and have everything above ground, everything left of Gaza, collapse into this fiery hell pit and burn!" he wrote. • The Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom Yoav Goldhorn, who was an Israeli intelligence officer until last year and now works for a Tel Aviv–based security contractor headed by former senior national security veterans, thinks should be "dealt with" as soon as possible to ensure they don't grow from "an inconvenience to a festering mess [that] will eventually require an entire limb to be amputated." • And most of all, Iran, which participants agreed, with a few exceptions, also needed to be wiped out. Saghar Erica Kasraie, a former staffer for Republican Representative Trent Franks when he served on the House Armed Services Committee and whom, according to her LinkedIn profile, she advised on Middle East issues, urged that the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders be targeted by weaponized drones that "take them out like flys ."

The vision is as ideological as it is practical. Prospective shareholders purchase a plot and commit to live a self-sufficient lifestyle — growing your own crops, pumping your own water, building your own house. Each resident has his own reason for joining. Some, Gleason says, are drawn for health reasons — they want to grow their own clean food. Others seek safety, "away from the craziness." Gleason reasons that most people are drawn by some combination of the two. "They just want a safe place to raise family and food," he said. The "craziness," Gleason admits, was a major factor for his own move. "We seem to be undergoing a cultural revolution in the U.S.," he said. "When we first came out here, we thought it might be too far away." He shifted his truck into park, turning his face to meet my eyes. "Now, with everything that's happening, we wonder if it's far enough." from Sick of politics? Move off the grid [The Deseret News] [CW: Mormons, homophobia, home-schooling]

Climate Zones [The Pudding]

"There's something really dangerous happening to us out there," he told the audience. "We're slowly getting split up into two Americas. Things are getting taken away from the people that need them and given to people that don't need them." from Red, White, and Misused: How "Born in the U.S.A." Became an Anthem for Everything That It Wasn't [The Ringer]

Includes An Incomplete Guide to the Most Misused Songs in Modern Music

Modernity refers, for Barba-Kay, chiefly if not exclusively to the unfolding of technological progress culminating in the digital. Whereas in the ancient world technē was seen to imitate and aid nature in the realization of its ends, as the physician uses his art to nurse the body to health, early modern thinkers wondered whether art could overcome natural limitations altogether. Medicine might vastly extend human life; the modern state, properly designed, might never die; the bomb, through the threat of mutually assured destruction, might obviate war. Digital technology is not just one more attempt to resist, artificially, the indifference of nature to human happiness. Instead, "the digital is a 'natural' technology, that is, a technology so useful as to serve as a paradigm for usefulness itself, a technology that achieves the goal implicit in technology as such." from This Irresistible Revolution [The Point; ungated]

A review of Antón Barba-Kay's A Web of Our Own Making by Daniel Schillinger Antón Barba-Kay gives the keynote speech during the 2024 Student Conference on Core Texts and Classes at American University's School of Public Affairs.

The recruitment cycle is slow and methodical, and the core step is the development of a Subject, which can last months or years. There are specific milestones a "developmental" must meet before moving to the next stage. At first, the acceptance of an expensive meal may be an indicator but over time, these financial benefits increase. A timepiece, whether luxury or affordable, is an ideal gift. It's immediately recognizable, and it's something that the agent can wear as a constant reminder of the friendship with the Case Officer and thus the greater relationship with the US Government. Further, the soon-to-be agent's acceptance of an expensive gift from an American official is a strong indication that the individual is willing to move in the direction of a clandestine relationship. from Bribes & Operational Gifts - The Role Of Timepieces In Clandestine Operations [Watches of Espionage via The Morning News]

*This article has been reviewed by the CIA's Prepublication Classification Review Board to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

A surreal but entirely real photograph called 'Flamingone' by Miles Astray (real name, I kid you not) impressed judges of the prestigious 1839 photo contest to be awarded bronze and claim the people's vote award, which comes with a cash prize. Trouble for the contest organizers is that Astray's winning image was entered into a newly formed AI category.

As he began observing and talking to the inmates, he realised that he had it all wrong. The teenagers joked and played around with each other, as millions around the world at that age do, and Oshagan found their demeanours instantly relatable. from Fragile, intimate portraits of California's imprisoned youth [Huck]

Christ may be able to live on cheeseburgers and Cokes, but Salinger wanted something more. This is his power and his downfall—his vampiric need to drain the potential of the young. Whether through his bohemian characters or the very real women in his own life, he was always ready to give a lecture and take power. Cute as Salinger's characters are, they live under his thumb. They're playthings, like dolls. We enjoy judging their powerlessness, but his fetish for purity was often what he tried to use to get off the hook for his ghoulish behavior. Marrying young women until they were no longer ingenues, feeding on the genre of YA as a source for so-called serious literary fiction, devouring Eastern prayers without regard for their context or specificity. YA is his Trojan horse. This is a grim realization. from Hagiography of a Narcissist: On J. D. Salinger's "Hapworth 16, 1924" by Grace Byron [LARB; ungated]

On any reasonably sunny day, the pool would by then be echoing with the names of well-known people being called to the phone, as well as with the names of unknown people being called to the phone by themselves in the forlorn hope that one day this would help them become well known, too. From his vantage in front of his cabana, Irving could not only watch the parade go by but get the parade to sit down with him and play cards. from The Man Who Spent Forty-two Years at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool [The New Yorker, 1993; ungated]

Irving Link, 90210 [LA Times, 1996] Irving Link obituary [Legacy, 2007] The Beverly Hills Hotel [Wikipedia]

Fifteen-year-old Darlene hadn't been in a classroom since fourth grade. She worked 11-hour days at a chicken restaurant, a step up from the slaughterhouse where she'd worked when she was younger. Every paycheck went to her parents who turned it over to the prophet. Everything the hardworking people did was in service to the prophet and to build up the church. Darlene's future was determined for her: She'd be a wife and mother, and serve the church and her husband. from This Is Not an Escape Story [Runner's World; ungated]

Telepathy might initially seem a much softer, psychological proposition, tainted with a sense of the supernatural. Yet both Campbell and Clarke were lifelong advocates of the view that telepathy was highly probable, the scientific proof of its existence likely just around the corner. The promise of telepathy – soon to be achieved, not far off, only a few test subjects away – feels very familiar when reading Musk's boosterish announcements on Neuralink's latest breakthroughs. The promise that telepathy is just about to be realised is not confined to entrepreneurs and science-fiction writers alone. For more than a century, there have consistently been figures in the scientific establishment who have entertained similar hopes that telepathy would soon reach the threshold of proof, promising everything from opening a new evolutionary phase of human development to a new psychic front in the global arms race. from Tomorrow People [Aeon; ungated]

To most people, pulling into a highway rest stop is a profoundly mundane experience. But not to neuroscientist Rita Valentino, who has studied how the brain senses, interprets and acts on the bladder's signals. She's fascinated by the brain's ability to take in sensations from the bladder, combine them with signals from outside of the body, like the sights and sounds of the road, then use that information to act—in this scenario, to find a safe, socially appropriate place to pee. "To me, it's really an example of one of the beautiful things that the brain does," she says. from How Do We Know When to Pee? [Smithsonian; ungated]

In our technological age people are often caught between two worlds, forced to choose between what is pleasurable and what is beyond pleasurable. Activity A may be a genuinely enjoyable activity, but as an ordinary pleasure it comes with certain discomforts and limitations. Activity B, on the other hand, promises to move past those limitations, satiating our desire for maximal pleasure. Who wouldn't want to choose Activity B, then, when the option is presented so readily? from The Rise of Hyperpleasures by Samuel C. Heard (Mere Orthodoxy; ungated)

We might now be on the cusp of a similar sea change, with American policymakers, especially Democrats and the broader center-Left, beginning to craft a new industrial policy and seeking to decouple economically from China. This decoupling is accompanied by an ersatz new Cold War with China—reminding us of how an earlier era of more activist liberal government required the Cold War to legitimate and underpin it. Whether such efforts will take hold is, for now, unclear. But understanding what these efforts are designed to overturn requires returning to the pivotal years of America in the 1990s. from What the 1990s Did to America [Public Books]

But this isn't really about the software. It's about what software promises us—that it will help us become who we want to be, living the lives we find most meaningful and fulfilling. The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It's not about the formal credentials. It's fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it's just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas. from research as leisure activity by Celine Nguyen [Personal Canon]

There are two elements in all this that seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand, things like a proverb, a symbol, or—as in Borges' story—a novel have some sort of universality. They transcend the ages and remain applicable in different contexts. On the other hand, they acquire a unique flavor every time, dependent on the specifics of the people and times involved. This is not a paradox, though, but a typical result of chaotic processes. from Borges on Chaos Theory [Aether Mug]

When, last year, I saw in my prose that falseness and false formality, I wondered where it had come from. I seemed to be a few minutes away from using whence. I seemed to be searching for a rhythm that wouldn't come, and reading over tatters of drafts later, I realized I was attempting to write prose in what was basically iambic pentameter, as if this classic formal constraint contained within it the key, the one key, to a sense of writing well, a sense so rare that year for me to find at all. From whence this sense of language-pressed-through-sieve? from I Cannot by Lucy Schiller [The Paris Review; ungated]

People are flipping out over Leopold Aschenbrenner's gargantuan look at the current and future state of AI in Situational Awareness [PDF]. Is it the start of the world? Is it the end of the world? When? 2027! Summary by ChatGPT.

Maybe you can see the future first in Dallas? [Previously] Or is the future no more than what the markets will pay for?

Starring the Computer is a website dedicated to the use of computers in film and television. Each appearance is catalogued and rated on its importance (ie. how important it is to the plot), realism (how close its appearance and capabilities are to the real thing) and visibility (how good a look does one get of it). Fictional computers don't count (unless they are built out of bits of real computer), so no HAL9000 - sorry.

Starring the Computer previously [2012], now with 12 additional years of computers, organized by title of Movie/TV Show and brand of computer.

Today, QAnon exists in a vastly more complex media ecosystem and seems to be addressing a wider, more amorphous set of concerns. But its rough function is the same: The family order is again seen as being threatened, this time by attacks on gender norms. Q gives people a way to feel they are protecting the traditional atomic family. By devouring fresh posts from QAnon influencers, donning Q gear, or spreading word online about the impending arrest of the cabal, Q faithful felt like they were doing everything they could to support the welfare of children and usher in a new era of conservative family values that would put them in charge. from How Q Became Everything [Mother Jones; ungated] [CW: Q, conspiracy, Felonious Trump, Epstein, pedophilia etc. etc.]

Occasionally, people make music, and then wildly different people cover that music with wildly different sounds and results. I like when this happens. I especially like when it happens without changing the pronouns of the original piece. "Look into his angel eyes..." hits differently when it comes from a sparsely accompanied, gravelly male voice, instead of, ah, ABBA. from Genderswap.fm by Eva Decker

Covers, previously

The North American Crash, the Atari Shock, or whatever else you want to call it, was an incredibly traumatic event for game development in the US. Most of the companies that had been making games just years prior closed their doors, laying off hundreds or thousands of people in the process. These were designers, programmers, artists, marketers, assembly workers, and more who found themselves out of work and trying to pick up the pieces. Some were able to pivot to the home computer space, find work at the surviving developers and publishers, or form new game companies. Others left video games behind entirely. In many of these cases, the projects they were working on were simply and quietly canceled, regardless of how close they were to completion, never intended to be seen again – just a failed product that didn't make it to market. Like Tarzan. from The Long-Lost Tarzan Atari Game, Preserved [The Video Game History Foundation]

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre's worked, it would revolutionize humanity's endeavors across the universe, allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it's four light years away. from A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Gave Humanity the Keys to Interstellar Travel [Popular Mechanics]

The Alcubierre Warp Drive, previously

What are the load-bearing posts of our time? Obviously 'facing god and walking backwards into hell' and 'miette' are up there. Does Ed Balls still count? PS if you can parse this you should probably log off [X]

If These 15 Tweets Make Any Sense To You, Then It's Definitely Time To Log Off [Digg] 'The load-bearing posts of our time': People are sharing Internet moments that are seared into their brains forever [Daily Dot] Load-Bearing Posts [KnowYourMeme] [CW: Unfiltered X, maximal shitposting, very likely NSFW]

"Well, the time has come to say goodbye ... It's been an incredible privilege to be invited into millions of homes night after night, year after year, decade after decade. I always felt that the privilege came with the responsibility to keep this daily half-hour a safe place for family fun. No social issues, no politics, nothing embarrassing I hope, just a game." from 'The Time Has Come to Say Goodbye': Pat Sajak Bids Farewell to 'Wheel of Fortune' [NY Times; ungated]

Pat Sajak leaves Wheel of Fortune with these final words [BBC] 'Wheel of Fortune' host Pat Sajak delivers speech during final episode [Fox] Vanna White sends tearful farewell to Pat Sajak on 'Wheel of Fortune': 'I love you, Pat!' [USA Today] 43 Years Ago, Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune Made a Brilliant Introduction. Here's Why [Inc.] Counterpoint: Don't Pour One Out for Pat Sajak, Wheel of Fortune's Die-Hard Right-Wing Host [The New Republic; ungated]

The mullet is alive and well in AFL [ABC]

Maj. William A. Anders, who flew on the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, the Apollo 8 "Genesis Flight" of Christmas Eve 1968, and took the color photograph "Earthrise" credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, died on Friday morning when a small plane he was piloting alone dove into the water near Roche Harbor, Wa., northwest of Seattle. He was 90. [NY Times; ungated]

Nasa 'Earthrise' astronaut dies at 90 in plane crash [BBC] NASA Remembers Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders [via] JoeZydeco's LinkMe

"The defendants marketed to investors most in need of income and least able to afford a loss by advertising their schemes as a train to 'financial freedom' and 'freedom from the plantation,'" the suit said. "Cynthia Petion knew that 'it's never the ones who grew up rich who invest in these programs.'" from 'Jesus was the best affiliate marketer in the world': How a 'Reverend CEO' allegedly stole $1 billion in a crypto scam [MarketWatch]

Attorney General James Sues Cryptocurrency Companies NovaTechFx and AWS Mining for Defrauding Investors of More Than $1 Billion [NYAG] New York Sues Novatech Over $1 Billion Crypto Pyramid Scheme [Finance Feeds]

The idea that food can turn you gay speaks to the depth of how food is coded. Food is used as both a signifier of the self and fuel for the body, the singular act of digestion taking what you see on the outside and literally turning it into yourself on the inside. You don't just enjoy ice cream. Ice cream becomes you. What does that make you, and in return, what do you make it? Maybe the fear goes deeper, and finally smacks against something it's been circling around in the dark. We know ice cream cannot make you gay. But if we are what we eat, there is the chance then, that what we eat could reflect, or affect, who we are. And could make us realize, in terror and glory, that who we thought we were is not so fixed. from The Food That Makes You Gay by Jaya Saxena [Eater]

Unzip companies across a range of industries ... and you will find financial companies lurking inside. This week we reprise the theme and spotlight five "banks in disguise": Starbucks, Carnival, Naked Wines, Delta Air Lines and Travel + Leisure Co

Wickwire recalls instances where other climbers lied about their ascents and were quickly banished. "No one would climb with them or believe what they said," he points out. But when it came to stories about Barrett's violence against women, people were too willing to look the other way—even after Barrett was arrested and a detailed indictment from a federal investigation was posted online. "There is a dissonance between how climbers think of themselves and what they actually do," says Kimbrough Moore, a longtime climber, a guidebook author, and a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University. "In my experience, the climbing community has been hostile to women who have come out saying they were assaulted." As for Barrett, Moore says: "I have never heard of anyone doing more to harm the climbing community than Charlie. He has used his status as an elite climber to hurt people for a very long time." from How Did This Climber Get Away with So Much for So Long? [Outside; ungated] [CW: rape, sexual violence, violence to animals, stalking, harassment, enabling]