#ChthonicThursday: Asphodelus

February 22, 2024

The asphodelus is a perennial plant with tall, white clusters of flowers that resemble a pinecone, and Homer’s Odyssey indicates it as a plant connected to Hades and the afterlife. When the Romans thought the Greek vision of the afterlife was a tad too bleak and came up with something to convince people to die in battle for King and Country, they divided the afterlife between a place for the bad and a place for the good. Somehow, fields of asphodelii ended up being the place where you keep people who haven’t been neither good nor bad. A place for useless people, you might say.

SciFi Friday — The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien (1858) — Part 6

I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my microscope, I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded by its moderators, burning when I went to bed

February 27, 2026 3:13 pm

books and literature

In the (Digital) Swarm

Byung-Chul Han is a contemporary German philosopher born in Korea whose work explores the transformation of subjectivity, power, and social relations in late modern and digital societies. In the Swarm fits within this broader inquiry, focusing specifically on the effects of digital communication on perception,

February 27, 2026 9:00 am

architecture, engineering and construction

One can easily say Dynamo

1. Prologue: The Add-On Debate (or, a False Choice) 1.1 “Use an Add-On” vs “Everyone Should Code” There are two stock answers that reliably surface whenever automation in BIM is mentioned: The second one is disarmingly simple: spend those five bucks and just use an

February 25, 2026 9:00 am