[cerebral-lust]

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

—WERNHER VON BRAUN

[cerebral-lust]

"Oil is the most Lovecraftian thing ever. It's a goop made from ancient life,that is drilled and pumped from the ground,and refined into thousands of different products that are killing us. It has powered every human advancement,but destroys the planet every time it's used."

[philosophybits]

“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.”

— Albert Camus, “Helen’s Exile”, Lyrical and Critical Essays

[itsfullofstars]

ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY December 06, 2025 Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater Fifty three years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor. The image shows Schmitt next to the lunar rover parked at the southeast rim of Shorty Crater. That location is near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. And for now, Cernan and Schmitt are the last to walk on the Moon. Image: https://ift.tt/Bg5p1E2 via NASA https://ift.tt/8ef74HR APOD --> https://ift.tt/AdiBXSO

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Rhea and Janus With Saturn's Rings

[cerebral-lust]

A much more nuanced and accurate advice (often attributed to Napoleon but actually from German general Kurt van Hammerstein-Equord) when choosing officers:

 I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage

[cerebral-lust]

Eternally, the real work is always internal.

[workinprogres5]

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

[workinprogres5]

There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming.

[cerebral-lust]

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

ó Herman Melville

[apocryphics]

[cerebral-lust]

"It's not what you build, it's what you maintain."

[cerebral-lust]

Brevity is the soul of wit.

-Shakespeare

[mournfulroses]

Ottessa Moshfegh, from "Eileen: A Novel," originally published in 2015

[cerebral-lust]

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

[cerebral-lust]

If you can keep your head when all about you        Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,     But make allowance for their doubting too;    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,     Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,     And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;        If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster     And treat those two impostors just the same;    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,     And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings     And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew     To serve your turn long after they are gone,    And so hold on when there is nothing in you     Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,        Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,     If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute     With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,        And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[cerebral-lust]

The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.

J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come