Motley Kamuka

Vanishing Cultures Photography . Mushroom photography Lovers of Trees curious ordinary : Japanese folklore.  NY Times Pitchbot has always been a favorite of mine. I loved the NY Times my whole life, until last year, and now I'm wary of it, and dislike the managing editor. 

Your curls’ breeze revives Jesus’ breath;      your face’s glow reveals Moses’ vision. Head for the garden to drink dew at dawn;      the breeze reports the flower to the nightingale. Spiritual yearning revokes physical craving,      Desire the Beloved; reject the manna and quails. If only you'd emerge from behind the veils      to burn the cloak of pretence and deliver the truth. My heart demands the touch of your curls      but with hearts in each hair, what need for mine? I’m abstinent for thirty years, but Ill become a wine-seller      should you reflect your splendour in my cup. If my Beloved would throw aside the veils      Mani’ gallery would be splendidly adorned. If my Beloved would raise the veils      youd see only the pious at the tavern. In the pits of Hell ‘Attar will be in your debt      if youd shine us your glory from Heaven.  from ...

This is the year of migration, away from X, Google. A while ago they stopped putting wikipedia as a top result even though that's what I always want, and I have to scroll down past like 10 Amazon links to get to it. And it flashes the old style, and then switches, which helps me to know what they've done. You can read about it . I'm going to list some and you can comment if you like one. I'll be trying them out and updating. DuckDuckGo . It has it's own browser and you can migrate easily, so I did it. Piccard . Can't get it to work. Freespoke : Like this one so far.  Perplexity : Leans more into the AI, only gives 5 links.  Bing is Microsoft, so not as interested in that. It's like going from X to Threads, doesn't make sense to me. From one fascist jerk to another.  Million Short Yandex 2/3/25. Noticed that wikipedia entries above the break, down about 10 entries, don't work. They've joined Musk in loathing the free information. 

We call him Rumi. He probably wasn’t called that in his life, probably by honorific names or pen name, maybe Jalal by intimates, Mowlana was what Shams called him. Quick outline of his life(1207-1273): He was born in what is present day Afghanistan in Balkh  or maybe  Sangtuda Tajikistan, which is a 6 day walk or 350 km distance. It was part of greater Iran at the time in the 13th century. At age 5 the family moved to  Samarkand . Like his contemporary Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), they founded the Mevlevi Order after his death. When the mongols invaded, the family moved to Nishapur, Baghdad, to Hejaz and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman for seven years. Rumi married Gowhar Khatun in Karaman and had 2 sons when he was 18. His wife died and he remarried and he a son and a daughter.  He moved to Konya in Turkey in 1228 where he lived until 1273, with a 4 year soujourn in ...

Derrida's Grave There's a wikipedia page for this article, a lecture given at Johns Hopkins University on 21 October 1966. Here is the summary on Wikipedia: "Structure, Sign, and Play" identifies a tendency for philosophers to denounce each other for relying on problematic discourse, and argues that this reliance is to some degree inevitable because we can only write in the language we inherit. Discussing the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Derrida argues that we are all bricoleurs , creative thinkers who must use the tools we find around us. Indeed bricolage is a wonderful word.  The essay starts out with the quote: We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things. (Montaigne). It's about playing with the history of philosophy but also with Structuralism and Heidegger, who are Derrida's two great sources in this essay. He wants to show the axioms, the center, the structure cannot hold, indeed confounds itself.   "one cannot in fa...

Reddit post,  leads to a reading group, Zoom meeting Thursdays at 7,  and discord group. First reading assignment is:  Structure, sign and play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (1966) ( PDF ). Jacques Derrida lived 1930 – 2004. He was born in Algeria and died in Paris. "In most of the Anglosphere, where analytic philosophy is dominant, Derrida's influence is most presently felt in literary studies due to his long standing interest in language and his association with prominent literary critics from his time at Yale." (All quotes are from Wikipedia) "His parents named him "Jackie", "which they considered to be an American name", although he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris." Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar . "On the first day of the school year in 1942, French administrators in Algeria—implementing anti-semitism quotas set by the Vichy government—expe...