In a bar in Toledo across from the depot

Eh, why not?

PS - Greyhound and Amtrak run out of the same station.  Been there a number of times, but not to any bar across from it.

Disquiet

It’s That Time:

The silence of night hours

is never really silent.

You hear the air,

even when it doesn’t stir.

It’s a memory of the day.

Nothing stirs. Memory lags.

No traffic hushing up

and down tricky hills

among the camphor trees.

No foghorns, no streetcars’

shrilling phantoms before

they emerge from tunnels.

These absences keep us alert.

No rain or street voices,

nobody calling to someone else,

Hannah, you walk the dog

tonight yet or what?

Only certain things to hear:

The sexy shifting of trees,

the refrigerator buzzing

while Cherubino sings

the best of love is enthusiasm’s

intense abandon, a voice

in song that preys on no one

and is unconscious of its joy.

W. S. Di Piero.

Searching for something to say

The lads played this at the show friends and I saw in Toledo way back in '86 (Chicago 18 tour).  The t-bone section's favorite to play at our HS basketball games, too.

Κύκλωπες

Cyclopean:

A mountainous and mystic brute

No rein can curb, no arrow shoot,

Upon whose doomed deformed back

I sweep the planets’ scorching track.

Old is the elf, and wise, men say,

His hair grows green as ours grows grey;

He mocks the stars with myriad hands,

High as that swinging forest stands.

But though in pigmy wanderings dull

I scour the deserts of his skull,

I never find the face, eyes, teeth,

Lowering or laughing underneath.

I met my foe in an empty dell,

His face in the sun was naked hell.

I thought, ‘One silent, bloody blow,

No priest would curse, no crowd would know.’

Then cowered: a daisy, half concealed,

Watched for the fame of that poor field;

And in that flower and suddenly

Earth opened its one eye on me.

G. K. Chesterton.

Our Rockets Always Blow Up

SpaceX, especially @elonmusk and @blueorigin need to stop emphasising as many launches as possible and concentrate in getting something reliable now. Worry about rapid reusability later. Artemis will probably be delayed because of these setbacks. 4/n

— PebMets (@PebMet1) May 29, 2026

Yeah, they really iterated on the wrong stuff first from where I sit.  Anyway, let's switch to something happier and historical...

Astronaut Ellen Ochoa floats through the tunnel that connected the STS-96 crew to the International Space Station (ISS) for several days in late May and early June 1999. 

Real iterative development:

STS-96 marked the first Space Shuttle docking to the International Space Station (ISS), which was successfully accomplished on May 29, 1999 at 12:22 a.m. EDT.

Astronauts Jernigan and Barry conducted a 7-hour, 55-minute spacewalk to inspect and service the ISS exterior.

Funny thing, I was looking for pictures that showed Discovery docked with ISS, then it dawned on me that there weren't so many vehicles coming and going back then, so nobody was available to take a family portrait.

Selah. 

We Really Could Use Some Organic Intelligence

the pope wrote a 42,000 word manifesto declaring war on AI. we are so freaking back. https://t.co/mOVLRNnWef

— Georgia Coley (@artwithinpod) May 25, 2026

Yeah, no, it ain't a call for Butlerian Jihad:

It is indeed a very balanced contemplation of the tech, not weighed down anti-AI hype. It's more about re-centering humans and ethics in the discussion, rather than emphasis on the tools (e.g., Altman's concern over saying "please" wasting tokens/$). https://t.co/WGVK5QIwhz

— NTodd - Antifa IT Support 🇺🇦🐸 (@ntoddpax) May 27, 2026

People should actually read the encyclical, rather than merely reacting to what they think Leo wrote.

In conclusion: ahem, ah...he hasn't.

Well, I heard about the fellow you've been dancing with all over the neighborhood

So why didn't you ask me, baby, or didn't you think I could?

PS - I really can't.

Space is the place.

Something Like We Did IV:

Wind in the leaves

of the live oak next door

and the June bugs

click-click

hard bodies

hitting the screen.

Couldn’t tell how much

time had passed.

Light from traffic

on the ceiling.

Late   that sound

in the sky   soft.

Thinking out loud

then inside my head:

they were still there—

the way they walked

that bright flicker

in their chests.

Sometimes I have believed

I don’t belong

here—   I mean

it’s not just

the American insanities

but everywhere: the sense

of having been left

on Earth

with no explanation—

a mouse dropped in a maze

Tim Seibles.