Fractal leaves of Heuchera “Red Lightning”
Fractal river network in Shaanxi province, China
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
Because “Heuchera” comes from the name of the German botanist J.H. Heucher (1677–1747), it should strictly speaking be pronounced something like “HOI-keh-ruh”. But people often say “HYOO-keh-ruh” or variations thereon.
Green-Gold Moss with Ivy-Leaved Toadflax
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Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
I assume I got the name “Slanted and Enchanted” from a subconscious memory of an album of the same name by the American band Pavement, though I might just have come up with it independently.
The Great Beast writes:
I witnessed a remarkable sight on the road to Chabanjong, which was here a paka rasta (that is, a road made by engineers as opposed to kacha rasta, a track made by habit or at most by very primitive methods) wide enough for carts to pass. I had squatted near the middle of the road as being the least damp and leech-infested spot available and got a pipe going by keeping the bowl under my waterproof. I lazily watched a leech wriggling up a blade of tall grass about fifteen inches high and smiled superiorily at its fatuity — though when I come to think of it, my own expedition was morally parallel; but the leech was not such a fool as I thought. Arrived at the top, it began to set the stalk swinging to and fro; after a few seconds it suddenly let go and flew clean across the road. The intelligence of and ingenuity of the creature struck me as astonishing. — The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography (1929), ch. 52
John Gould’s illustration of Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo, Cacatua leadbeateri (now Lophochroa leadbeateri) (1865)
If you thought the keyly committed core componency of Covid-19 was bad, please park your peepers on the Satan Bug dot dot dot:
In its final form, the Satan Bug is an extremely refined powder. I take a salt-spoon of this powder, go outside in the grounds of Mordon and turn the salt-spoon upside down. What happens? Every person in Mordon would be dead within an hour, the whole of Wiltshire would be an open tomb by dawn. In a week, ten days, all life would have ceased to exist in Britain. I mean all life. The Plague, the Black Death – was nothing compared with this. Long before the last man died in agony ships or planes or birds or just the waters of the North Sea would have carried the Satan Bug to Europe. We can conceive of no obstacle that can stop its eventual world-wide spread… The Lapp trapping in the far north of Sweden. The Chinese peasant tilling his rice-fields in the Yangtse valley. The cattle rancher on his station in the Australian outback, the shopper in Fifth Avenue, the primitive in Tierra del Fuego. Dead. All dead. Because I turned a salt-spoon upside down. Nothing, nothing, nothing can stop the Satan Bug.
Previously pre-posted (on Papyrocentric Performativity):
• God-Finger — a radical review of Alistair MacLean’s The Satan Bug (1962)…
Jelly-ear fungus, Auricularia auricula-judae
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Good noise, bad noise: White noise improves hearing
Summary: White noise is not the same as other noise — and even a quiet environment does not have the same effect as white noise. With a background of continuous white noise, hearing pure sounds becomes even more precise, as researchers have shown. Their findings could be applied to the further development of cochlear implants. — Good noise, bad noise, ScienceDaily reporting research from the University of Basel, 12xi2019.
A white-eye bird, Zosterops sp., on a blooming cherry, Guiyang, China (viâ The In-terms-inator)
Green Pitcherplant, Sarracenia oreophila (Kearney) Wherry (1933)
“Adonis, M. Cytheris, and M. Menelaus, is indescribable; the eyes are pained as they gaze upon it; yet there is said to be an unnamed species from the emerald mountains of Bogota, of which a single specimen is in a private cabinet in London, which is far more lustrous than these.” — The Romance of Natural History (1861), Philip Henry Gosse
