iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

rose novick @rosenovick.com · 15/08/2026

self-insert character in his semiautobiographical novel young törless 😇

rose novick @rosenovick.com · 14/08/2026

anyway, when a "woman" says "by the time I was six I was sure that I was born a man" that isn't "readily acknowledg[ing] her sexual ambivalence". it is a man expressing the exact opposite of ambivalence

Once out of the South and enjoying considerable fame as the young author of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers readily acknowledged her sexual ambivalence. To poet Louis Untermeyer she said in 1940, "By the time I was six I was sure that I was born a man." McCullers often fell in love with women, but such infatuations seldom led to physical relationships.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 14/08/2026

you can know carson mccullers was a boy because he said so explicitly but you can also know it because he kept writing "girl" characters who dress like boys and use boy names and say things like "wouldn't it be so cool if people could change sex and also if there was War Island"

The world of Berenice was a round world, and the old Frankie would listen to the strong deep singing voice, and she would agree with Berenice. But the old Frankie's world was the best of the three worlds. She agreed with Berenice about the main laws of her creation, but she added many things: an aeroplane and a motorcycle to each person, a world club with certificates and badges, and a better law of gravity. She did not completely agree with Berenice about the war; and sometimes she said she would have one War Island in the world where those who wanted to could go, and fight or donate blood, and she might go for a while as a WAC in the Air Corps. She also changed the seasons, leaving out summer altogether, and adding much snow. She planned it so that people could instantly change back and forth from boys to girls, whichever way they felt like and wanted.
But Berenice would argue with her about this, insisting that the law of human sex was exactly right just as it was and could in no way be improved. And then John Henry West would very likely add his two cents' worth about this time, and think that people ought to be half boy and half girl, and when the old Frankie threatened to take him to the Fair and sell him to the Freak Pavilion, he would only close his eyes and smile.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 13/08/2026

what's the big deal, all my philosophy papers are coauthored with Clod

Sir Mottled said:
When Big Clod belches breath,
Its name is wind. If only it didn’t rise!
Rising, and the ten thousand apertures rage—
Have you alone never heard their roaring?
Mountain forests’ crags and scarps,
huge trees, hundreds of spans round,
their apertures and hollows
like noses, like mouths, like ears;
like sockets, like bowls, like mortars;
like sinks, like sloughs—
spouters, whizzers,
bawlers, suckers,
shouters, howlers,
wailers, screamers—
the leaders chanting gwraaa,
the followers chanting qrommm—
a cool breeze makes a small harmony;
stormwinds make a big harmony;
the rasping winds cease,
and the manifold apertures empty—
Have you alone never seen this sinuous swaying,
this flittery flutter?

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 09/08/2026

we need a version of this comic for philosophers reading daily nous comments sections

Three-panel crudely drawn comic in MS Paint style on a white background, black hand-drawn panel borders, the figures outlined in orange and green. Panel one: a thin orange stick figure faces a thin green one; the orange says "I've been on gel that makes you orange for three years but I still greyscalemode in public" and then "My spectral decomposition is too close to homogeneous everyone can see it," to which the green replies "huh?" Panel two zooms in on the orange figure, now a slumped angular blob with a stubby arm, saying "I have accepted my fate as an orangecel desaturatoid," "luckchromatic primaroids such as yourself could never understand," and "I simply will never be orange"; the green figure, offscreen at right, manages "what-". Panel three shows only the green figure's head and shoulder at the right edge: "I think whatever website you're getting this jargon from is hurting you.".

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 24/07/2026

any philosophers of action working on this?

lebron james saying "This is my last decision."

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 23/07/2026

world's #1 anti-fan of my organization's email settings

This message wasn't sent to spam due to your organization's email settings.

[Move to spam] button

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 06/07/2026

guys let's all go hunt frogs in the cornfield

Frogs in Artificial Light

Along the confield’s concrete rim
they’re scattered, poisonous and poised,

watching the two fakes of the moon:
inert and distinct, diffuse and wavering.

Halogen columns crumble, godlike,
in wind, are replenished by wind.

It’s nearing, the hour when everything
eidetic must be left behind.

Rising, by the splash I learned
just what it was I would come to lack:

not fear, not misplaced prudence, but
the plunge, the swerve, the curving back.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 02/07/2026

the above extracts are from the private printing (mentioned in the editor's note below), but when it was published publicly it was published in four parts, and the conjunction of the editor's note accompanying part II and the opening text of part II is very funny

XI. On the Dying Struggle of the Dichotomous System. By
W. S. MACLEAY, Esq. M.A. F.L.S. In a Letter to N. A.
VIGORS, Esq. F.R.S.
[Continued from p. 445.]

[Upon the reconsideration of this article, we cannot but re-
gret, in common with many others who take interest in
the discussion, that so much personality should have been
introduced into a scientific controversy; and Mr. Mac-
Leay's paper having been printed entire for private circu-
lation, we have, in acquiescence with the general opinion,
omitted, in the continuation which follows, and which will
be concluded in the next number, many paragraphs, &c.,
irrelevant to the subjects discussed. The portions of the
paper, therefore, which our readers have now to peruse,
must be considered as consisting only of a series of con-
nected extracts from the original; containing, however, all
the arguments advanced respecting the Dichotomous System.
Our opinion of the unfairness of the article in the Quarterly
Review, had been expressed (See Phil. Mag. and Annals,
N. S. vol. vii. p. 379.) before Mr. Macleay's paper had been
received; but what authority our much esteemed friend has
for ascribing it to Dr. Fleming, is wholly unknown to us.
Articles in favour of the Dichotomous System have repeat-
edly appeared in our pages*.—EDITORS.]

I DO not know that Dr. Fleming has ever enlightened the
world on the construction or anatomy of any one single
animal: all he has published of value he has gathered from
books. Now that any man, aware as he must be that the
little acquaintance he possesses with Natural History he owes
entirely to a perusal of the works of Linnæus, Jussieu, and
Cuvier, should not have the modesty to distrust himself when
differing from them on so essential a point as unity of plan in
the creation, is most astonishing.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 02/07/2026

shoutout william sharp macleay, the best to ever do it

MY DEAR VIGORS,
SOME years have now elapsed since a gentleman, the sable
hue of whose vesture, if not the smile on his countenance,
betokened that he should be in peace with all men, came up
from the North to London, and announced himself to me as
the Rev. John Fleming, D.D., Minister of Flisk, N. B. Con-
sidering him to be entitled to my services, as being a labourer
in the same vineyard with myself, I of course showed him all
the attention in my power. I knew him indeed at the time
only by two or three articles in the Supplement to the Ency-
clopædia Britannica, which, if they be not fair specimens of a
Scotch D.D.'s usual quantum of Greek, will at least remain a
monument of his talent for writing on animals that he not
only never saw, but would not even now know if he saw them.
In addition to these truly novel specimens of Entomological
knowledge, I knew him also by a subsequent compilation,
called with much modesty "The Philosophy of Zoology;" the
first volume of which contains nothing new but some miser-
able plates, and the second, little original except a genus termed
Homea, and some names which have been framed in a proper
independent spirit, and with a noble contempt of Priscian*.

* Thus we have Trochusidæ, Gordiusidæ, and Ptinusidæ; Gyrinedæ, Cicin-deladæ, and Scirtesidæ, cum multis aliis in dæ of similar calibre. Having two Ds tacked to the end of his own name, the worthy minister doubtless thinks that he has a right to clap one to the tail of any thing. On the other hand, there is no end to old friends disguised under such appellations as Thaphozus, Ornithorinchus, or Ophisthocomus, &c.; which might pass for slovenly printing, were they not accompanied by such new words as Aluco, Cistuda, Coriudo, and some hundred of equally classical value. Luckily, however, no great harm is done; for few naturalists place the Doctor's names even in their list of synonyms.

Some good-natured friend seems lately to have shown
him that his system was annihilated by anticipation; but when
what does this worthy clergyman do, but in the most orthodox
spirit of theological hate vent his rage, through the medium of
the Quarterly Review, on me, who never so much as thought
of him! How he got his article inserted there I know not;
but, I suppose, that, trusting to his universally applicable
binary system, he knew that editors must be either asleep or
awake, and with cautious modesty preferred to catch the King
of the Quarterly napping.

But Dr. Fleming, not content with the
Mosaic authority, says, "In the writings of Aristotle equally
obvious traces of this method may be perceived, not only in
the construction of his different classes, but in the numerous
accurate subdivisions which he announced." Let us here di-
chotomize. Either Dr. Fleming has read Aristotle or he has
not. If he has read him, he has stated what he knew to be not true;
since the Stagyrite has not, as may be seen from the synopsis
I have given of his System in the Linnæan Transactions,
considered it more necessary to divide animals into twos,
than Lamarck, Cuvier, or Linnæus: and if the Doctor has
not read him, what shall we say to the modest assurance of
this minister of Flisk?

Methinks I hear the veriest clodpoll that ever rang the
kirk-bell of Flisk here exclaim—
"Minister, why I'll rhyme you so, eight years together;
dinners and suppers and sleeping hours excepted: It is the
right butter-woman's rate to market. For a taste.
[Diagram: a nested dichotomous key with "Man" at the far left, split rightward through seven successive binary brackets — each level pairing a positive category (Scotch, Breeched, Dominies, Of Flisk, D.D., Fleming, John) against its negation (Not Scotch, Not Breeched, etc.). The positive branch is always carried forward one more level, so the whole thing marches diagonally from lower-left to upper-right and terminates at "1. John / 2. Not John" — reducing the category "Man" to "John Fleming" by exclusion.]
Thus there is no clodhopping lout in his parish that may
not always obtain, according to Dr. Fleming's wonderful plan,
two groups "or inferior divisions, the first distinguished by a
positive character, and the second by a negative;" and who
may not thus ultimately make out John Fleming, Doctor of
Divinity and Dominie of Flisk, to be a breeched Scotchman,
or any thing else, provided always that the said lout does not
fall into "the error which Linnæus committed, in neglecting
to arrange his groups so as to preserve their subordinate
relations." This evil Dr. Fleming thinks not likely to be
removed "until distinct conceptions shall prevail respecting
positive and negative characters." Although there be too
much reason to fear that his own distinct conceptions are de-
ferred ad Græcas calendas, I still indulge some hope of his
granting that in the above "dichotomous arrangement" a
very distinct conception of positive and negative characters
has been shown. Man in this system may be compared to
the trunk of a tree, Dominies and D.D.s to the branches, and
John Fleming to the bud or leaf on the spray.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 26/06/2026

oh you're a philosopher of action? you study what it is to Φ? name these two musicians

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 24/06/2026

new knuckle tats just dropped

In the simplest terms, this book in its entirety is an exposition of the philosophical implications of a single eight-character sentence in a letter written by this monk: "Other than the devil there is no Buddha; other than the Buddha there is no devil" (魔外無佛；佛外無魔).

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 20/06/2026

here are some other tuckerman sonnets i like

IV.

NOR looks that backward life so bare to me,
My later youth, and ways I've wandered through;
But touched with innocent grace,—the early bee
On the maple log, the white-heaped cherry-tree
That hummed all day in the sun, the April blue!
Yet hardly now one ray the Forward hath
To show where sorrow rests, and rest begins;
Although I check my feet, nor walk to wrath
Through days of crime, and grosser shadowings
Of evil done in the dark; but fearfully,
Mid unfulfilled yet unrelinquished sins
That hedge me in, and press about my path,
Like purple-poison flowers of stramony,
With their dull opiate-breath, and dragon-wings.

VII.

DANK fens of cedar; hemlock-branches gray
With tress and trail of mosses wringing-wet;
Beds of the black pitch-pine in dead leaves set
Whose wasted red has wasted to white away;
Remnants of rain, and droppings of decay,—
Why hold ye so my heart, nor dimly let
Through your deep leaves the light of yesterday,
The faded glimmer of a sunshine set?
Is it that in your blindness, shut from strife,
The bread of tears becomes the bread of life?
Far from the roar of day, beneath your boughs
Fresh griefs beat tranquilly, and loves and vows
Grow green in your gray shadows, dearer far
Even than all lovely lights, and roses, are?

XXVIII.

NOT the round natural world, not the deep mind,
The reconcilement holds: the blue abyss
Collects it not; our arrows sink amiss;
And but in Him may we our import find.
The agony to know, the grief, the bliss
Of toil, is vain and vain! clots of the sod
Gathered in heat and haste, and flung behind
To blind ourselves and others,—what but this
Still grasping dust, and sowing toward the wind?
No more thy meaning seek, thine anguish plead;
But, leaving straining thought, and stammering word,
Across the barren azure pass to God;
Shooting the void in silence, like a bird,—
A bird that shuts his wings for better speed!

XVIII.

AND Change, with hurried hand, has swept these scenes:
The woods have fallen; across the meadow-lot
The hunter's trail and trap-path is forgot;
And fire has drunk the swamps of evergreens!
Yet for a moment let my fancy plant
These autumn hills again,—the wild dove's haunt,
The wild deer's walk. In golden umbrage shut,
The Indian river runs, Quonecktacut!
Here, but a lifetime back, where falls to-night
Behind the curtained pane a sheltered light
On buds of rose, or vase of violet
Aloft upon the marble mantel set,—
Here, in the forest-heart, hung blackening
The wolf-bait on the bush beside the spring.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 20/06/2026

seriously tho tuckerman has a claim to be the greatest american writer of sonnets

Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips

Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips
Against the land. Or on where fancy drives
I walk and muse aloud, like one who strives
To tell his half-shaped thought with stumbling lips,
And view the ocean sea, the ocean ships,
With joyless heart: still but myself I find
And restless phantoms of my restless mind:
Only the moaning of my wandering words,
Only the wailing of the wheeling plover,
And this high rock beneath whose base the sea
Has wormed long caverns, like my tears in me:
And hard like this I stand, and beaten and blind,
This desolate rock with lichens rusted over,
Hoar with salt-sleet and chalking of the birds.

An upper chamber in a darkened house,
Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood's brink,
Terror and anguish were his cup to drink,—
I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close;
But dimly dream upon that man alone;—
Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass;
The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone,
And greener than the season grows the grass.
Nor can I drop my lids, nor shade my brows,
But there he stands beside the lifted sash;
And, with a swooning of the heart, I think
Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs,
And—shattered on the roof like smallest snows—
The tiny petals of the mountain-ash.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 12/06/2026

speaking about this magnificent poem

These Lacustrine Cities
John Ashbery

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing
Into something forgetful, although angry with history.
They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,
Though this is only one example.

They emerged until a tower
Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back
Into the past for swans and tapering branches,
Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love.

Then you are left with an idea of yourself
And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon
Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others
Who fly by you like beacons.

The night is a sentinel.
Much of your time has been occupied by creative games
Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you.
We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert,

To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air
To you, pressing you back into a startled dream
As sea-breezes greet a child’s face.
But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project.

The worst is not over, yet I know
You will be happy here. Because of the logic
Of your situation, which is something no climate can outsmart.
Tender and insouciant by turns, you see

You have built a mountain of something,
Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument,
Whose wind is desire starching a petal,
Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

040

rose novick @rosenovick.com · 05/06/2026

my wife's answer: "they both resemble symbols that were used to mean 'and' in european manuscripts/printing"

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 03/06/2026

probably gonna top out here

020

rose novick @rosenovick.com · 02/06/2026

reposting, with much more readable formatting, the Ye Hui I posted a draft of a couple days ago. I also improved the translation maybe

Ye Hui, 陌生的小镇, Strange Small Town

丢失家园的人，远眺群山
尽管那里不是他的家
One who has lost his homestead looks off to the mountains
though that is not his home

鹭鸶吃饱后，站在湖边
等待着太阳落下
After an egret eats its fill, it stands lakeside
waiting for the sun to fall

每一道墙的阴影里
总有人小声地交谈着
In every wall's shadow
there are always people softly talking

一个月前，我父亲去世
房子外面站着一个人，正在等车
One month ago, my father left the world
Outside the house, standing, a man is waiting for a car

那人手里擎着一枝花，旁边蹲着
一条带链子的狗
that man holding up a flower in his hand, beside him crouching
a dog on a chain

车来了吗……
看来，我们已经各就各位了
Has the car arrived...
It seems we are all already on our marks

看来，枯树枝
已经指明了所有方向
It seems withered branches
have already pointed out all directions

Notes
1. Throughout: This poem's relationship to time is crucial. The first three stanzas are timeless generalizations. With stanza four, time is notated: the father's death one month ago. The man outside the house, however, is described as 正在等车: 正在 identifies the waiting as in progress *now*—the moment of waiting has, it seems, become frozen in time. This sense of suspension is reinforced by the persistent use of 着 to indicate ongoing action in each of stanzas two through five. Then, in stanzas six and seven, the three actions (the car arriving, everyone taking their places, the branches pointing) are all modified by 了—they are all completed actions. Action is suspended in progress, waiting for the arrival of the unidentified (but inferable) car, and yet everything has already happened.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 01/06/2026

this façade js very cleverly painted to appear like there is a full structure, but i am not fooled

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 01/06/2026

this is what it sounds like when arriving at the end of your grand vision you still believe in it right?

Notes for Canto CXX

Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972

I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 29/05/2026

update: i killed nina protocol

Nina Protocol is an American audio streaming and media service provider founded in New York in 2021 by Jack Callahan, Mike Pollard, and Eric Farber. Emerging during the 2020s NFT-boom, the platform is a decentralized, blockchain-based music distribution service, forum and marketplace that allows independent artists to sell music directly to fans and retain all of their revenue. On May 28th, 2026, it was announced that Nina would be shutting down in phases over the succeeding six weeks.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 28/05/2026

my favorite celebrity birthday i share? i dunno, probably greek philosophy

The eclipse of Thales was a solar eclipse, which was, according to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (writing about 150 years later), accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. If Herodotus' account is accurate, this eclipse is the earliest recorded as being known in advance of its occurrence. According to Herodotus, the change of day into night was interpreted as an omen, and interrupted a battle in a long-standing war between the Medes and the Lydians in Anatolia (present-day Turkey). The only solar eclipse matching the presumed place, era, and conditions of visibility necessary to explain the historical event is the eclipse of 28 May 585 BC.[a] How exactly Thales could have predicted a solar eclipse remains uncertain, however, and modern scholars are skeptical of the story's veracity. Some have argued for different dates, or for other interpretations of Herodotus's account.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 27/05/2026

there's a zhuang for that

« Speaking is not puffing,
speakers have speaking. »

What they speak is strangely unfixed.
In the end, is there speaking?
Has there never been speaking?
We consider it different from nestling cries—
is there a distinction?
is there no distinction?

020

rose novick @rosenovick.com · 25/05/2026

changing the very last words from a motion to a static object reads as a huge tonal change to me! especially at the start and end i get most insistent about word order preservation here is mcdougall's translation for comparison

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 24/05/2026

i've periodically been translating chinese poems. here is one i did this morning. feedback is welcome

Bei Dao, 关于传统, On Tradition

野山羊站立在悬崖上
拱桥自建成之日
就已经衰老
在箭猪般丛生的年代里
谁又能看清地平线
日日夜夜，风铃
如文身的男人那样
阴沉，听不到祖先的语言
长夜默默地进入石头
搬动石头的愿望是
山，在历史课本中起伏

A wild mountain goat stands on the precipice
An arched bridge, from the day it was completed,
already grown old
Amid years grown dense as an arrowpig
who still can see clearly the horizon
Day after day, night after night, windchimes
like tattooed men
overcast, unable to hear ancestral speech
The long night silently enters stone
The wish to shift stone is a
mountain, in history textbooks rising and falling

*The Rose of Time* (2010), pp. 42–43

Notes:
1. Line 4: Translating the component characters of 箭猪 (jiànzhū, porcupine) to capture the menacing resonance of the years as a thicket of arrows.
2. Line 7: In a classical (hence "traditional") context, tattooing is associated with marginal status; e.g., prominent tattoos were used as a punishment for crime, forever stigmatizing the guilty as a criminal.

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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 13/07/2025

i wrote yellow dusk in late 2021, as i was right in the middle of realizing i was trans. the poem is about that, and about communication and imagination and the unquenchable desire to be Known. it asks obsessively what a poem is and might be. in it i name myself