#polymath

[theabigailthorn]

in 2024 i had one breakups

in 2025 i had two breakups

if this pattern continues, by 2033 i will be experiencing 1.4 breakups per day

by about 2060, assuming I haven't dated anyone twice, i will have broken up with everyone on earth

[moredarkthanshark]

Brian Eno, London, September 18, 1972 by Brian Cooke

[nemfrog]

Psychography, marvelous manifestations of psychic power given through the mediumship of Fred P. Evans. 1893.

Internet Archive

[cosmicportal]

In May 1921, American polymath Walter Russell entered a 39-day coma-like state, during which he claimed to have accessed “the source of all knowledge.” Upon awakening, he frantically wrote down what he had seen — pages filled with philosophical, scientific, and spiritual revelations that would later form the foundation of his manuscript *The Universal One*. Though he sent his findings to 500 leading minds of the time, nearly all dismissed him as mad — except one. Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor, was so struck by Russell’s insights that he urged him to seal the work away for a thousand years, insisting that humanity was not yet ready for its truths.

Walter Russell’s revelations reimagined the very structure of reality. He argued that matter was not solid but crystallized light slowed by thought — that everything around us, from rocks to human bodies, was composed of light patterns, shaped by consciousness. He believed the universe was fundamentally mental, not material, and that all things moved in rhythmic cycles — expansion and contraction, like breath. He dismissed opposites like good and evil as illusions, asserting instead that everything sought harmony and balance. To Russell, death wasn’t an end but the release of compressed light returning to its source. Even time, he claimed, wasn’t linear, but a spiral where past, present, and future coexisted.

These ideas were radically ahead of their time, blending metaphysics, wave dynamics, and a deep sense of universal unity. He believed electricity was a living spiral of energy, not merely electrons in motion, and that the vacuum of space was in fact a vibrant sea of untapped potential. Health, in his view, was the natural rhythm of the body, and disease was simply a disruption of that flow. Though ignored or ridiculed during his lifetime, Russell’s work now draws new attention in an era where quantum physics and consciousness studies begin to echo the same questions. To many, he is no longer a forgotten eccentric, but a prophet of a paradigm yet to come.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Polymath Cover Art by Attila Hejja

[sgiandubh]

Author! Author!

@craighnadonuts' recent post on *urv's encomiastic delerium about Madam Mao's polymath virtues inspired me to look a bit further into what obviously is adorned, yet empty prose:

An author? Crickey, how thought-provoking. We are then told that she wrote and published, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a children's book and donated all its profits to charity. If true, that would obviously be a solicitous, yet impossible to substantiate, gesture. At the time of writing this post, and with no other available data, perhaps calling it an 'intention' or a 'claim' would be more faithful to reality.

That being said, the book's existence can be traced:

[Source: https://www.amazon.com/When-Will-Hug-Again-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B088HFPK9D]

However, while the above information is factually accurate, I can't help but find the troll's message embarrassing and manipulative. Especially if we consider a wee detail that never made it into her post:

Like the famed days of Christmas, Madam Mao's book is twelve pages long. Kudos to the eagle-eyed friend who noticed this and alerted me - siempre, 💖.

Do twelve pages, out of which we must subtract the illustrations, an author make?

My question is honest. Its answer might be unsettling, though. Especially for the troll's audience, whose North Korean level of automatic praise is unparalleled, at least in this fandom.

[scottheim]

nine photographs of the dashing FRIDTJOF WEDEL-JARLSBERG NANSEN (1861 - 1930), Norwegian polymath (explorer, zoologist, writer, sportsman, scientist, and winner of the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize, among other awards)

[blondebrainpowered]

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), the anatomist behind the artist.