ESOTERIKOS DAIMONAS: Where NTodd's thoughts come to die.
Trump is threatening to genocide Iran every other day and he’s bragging about publicly executing someone on a live stream and he’s somehow confused why he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize
— Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) October 10, 2026
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Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
Pax.
The Outer Space Treaty was spurred by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in the 1950s, which could reach targets through outer space. The United States proposed an inspection program for rockets in August 1957. The Soviet Union instead tested ICBMs and launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in October 1957.
From 1959 to 1962, Western allies proposed various outer space arms control treaties, with US president Dwight Eisenhower proposing an outer space treaty similar to the Antarctic Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 1960. According to the United States Department of State, the Soviet Union did not accept these proposals unless the US removed its overseas missile bases. The Soviet Union de-linked these proposals after the 1963 signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
On 17 October 1963, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution prohibiting the introduction of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. Various proposals for an arms control treaty governing outer space were debated during a General Assembly session in December 1966. US drafts covered only celestial bodies; it accepted the Soviet version which applied a WMD ban to all of outer space. Adoption of the final Outer Space Treaty was completed in January 1967.
With all the potential risk from the stupid AI race today, one might think a similar effort could be undertaken to rein that shit in, but unfortunately our government is chock full of super unintelligent nuts.
Selah.
PS - I loved Far Out Space Nuts when I was wee. Only episode I remember is one where Bob Denver basically Captain Kirks a sentient supercomputer. This is the scene (from It’s All In Your Mind), which is strangely germane today:
Junior: [holding up two of the engine's parts] Well, you see this piece? This goes right on top, because I'm right-handed. Now... and you gotta remember to match the patch to the hatch and make sure you don't lutch the mutch... er, touch the.... Have you eaten peanut butter?
G.A.L.: Because you're right-handed?
Junior: No, no, because peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth... [sticks his finger in his mouth] ...and makes it hard to talk...
G.A.L.: You are overloading my circuits!
Junior: Did you ever try it with... like, with jelly, like with kumquat or gooseberry?
G.A.L.: Jelly? Peanut jelly...?
Junior: You know, how about orange marmalade on a hot tamale?
G.A.L.: Slower!
Junior: That's really good.
G.A.L.: Slower! I must compute.
Junior: Oh.
G.A.L.: Tamale? Tamale...?
Junior: Well, I'm sorry. I really am sorry.
G.A.L.: Yum yum!
Junior: I am a fast talker. Look, I'll try to slow down. I'll start from the beginning and start all over again. Now, see, you gotta match the patch to the hatch...
G.A.L.: Stop it! It's computing!
Junior: ...and make sure you don't touch the clutch... or match the hatch to the patch and mutch the clutch... I just don't remember exactly how it goes, but...
G.A.L.: Peanut butter sticks to my transistors...
[An explosion is heard from inside G.A.L. as flames start to erupt on her panel.]
G.A.L.: Slower! Slower! SLOWER...!
[There's a final explosion, and G.A.L.'s voice fades away.]
Junior: Was it something I said?
Wonder if that would work on Claude...
I let the smoke out of the windows
And lift the hair from my ears.
A season of birds and reaping,
A level of light appears.Sun lies in urns on the terrace
Like the cat on the chimney. Near
Fall stirs the curtains, narrowRibbons of air nip my fingers.
Warm under foot, the carpet
Reminds my skin I am here.All things begin together :
Weather and love. The ear
Hears the earth turn , we make an adjustmentTo that motion : the dip of the sphere
Into autumn, and rustling music
As the leaves are shaken away .. .All things begin together,
Here, as I shake, at the day's
Beginning, with pleasure and fear,Numb with night's dip and turning
When I weathered love-in-a-sphere,
Like the siamese cat on the chimneyMysterious, now, as a vessel,
An ark, or a precious container,
She is smoothing, sunning her fur.I stand at the window and shiver
As the smoke wreathes out of my hair.
All things begin together :Weather and love and fear
And the color of leaves, and pleasure.
The waxwings come to the ash trees
That rustle until they are bare.The birds will wing from the weather,
While I stand, still as the harvest,
With the sound of the fall in the air.
Carolyn Kizer.
The Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is "inadmissible," primarily because every human being has God-given dignity, even a murderer, even a mass murderer. The televising of an execution is barbarism of the worst kind, offering up death as entertainment. Some Catholics still reject Pope Francis's magisterial pronouncement on the death penalty, which is now included in the Catechism. But opposition to the death penalty, grounded in the respect for all human life, is not a brand new doctrine. Rather, it is one that took time to develop, as the church came to understand more deeply the innate dignity of every human life. "The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. . . . I renew the appeal I made . . . for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." —St. John Paul II, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) October 9, 2026
Yes, this is military justice, but making a public spectacle out of this execution is truly barbaric. Certainly something that would never happen under Catholic Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
Anyway, it brings to mind this:
The year was 1849 and the young Dostoevsky, fresh from the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, had joined a liberal humanitarian group devoted to studying utopian models of socialism. During one of their meetings, the police appeared and arrested the whole company. They were imprisoned in solitary confinement, sentenced for criticisms against the Russian government, and hauled to the city square to be shot. The death sentence was read aloud in their ringing ears. The ceremonial sword was broken over their hooded heads. The cross was pressed to their trembling lips. The shrouds were pulled across their heaving chests. The first three were bound to the execution posts. Fyodor Dostoevsky, twenty-eight years old, waited in the second batch of three to die. The rifles were lowered. The sergeant raised his saber.
When, all of a sudden, a courier from Tsar Nicholas I rode wildly into the square with word that, by the magnanimity of the tsar, the prisoners were spared their lives and instead sentenced to four years hard labor at the prison of Omsk in Siberia. The drums rolled. The rifles were raised. The whole execution had been nothing more than a terrifying farce—a strategy for the improvement of insubordinates. A number of the prisoners collapsed. Two were driven permanently insane. Fyodor Dostoevsky was left with shattered nerves, epileptic seizures, and a nascent conviction that any effort to conquer human suffering was doomed to failure—leaving Christian submission as the only course for mankind.
MAGA sadists want us to be afraid. Beyond the moral depravity of our drunk rapist SecDef's little fascist show, I (want to) believe it will backfire, both at home and abroad.
Selah.
When my clients experience the death of someone who harmed them, whether it was a family member, partner, or anyone else, they often experience what I refer to as the trauma trifecta: there is often an initial sense of relief, followed by a feeling of guilt for feeling this relief, and they also often feel sadness—often for the loss of what could have been had the person not been abusive. Often there is a feeling of sadness or of having missed out on what could have been, coupled with confusion as to why you are feeling sad when someone was abusive to you.
BETWEEN US AND
animals is a namelessness.
We flail around
generically —
camelopardalis is what
the Romans came up with
or "giraffe" ( it looked to
them like a camel crossed
with a leopard ) or get the
category wrong — a musk
Ox isn't an ox at all but
more closely cognate with
the goat — and when
choosing to name
individual animals we
pretend they are objects
(Spot) or virtues (Beauty)
or just other selves (Bob).
Anne Carson (2026 Nobel Laureate).
Why do roses need their thorns?
Some things are little known.
But thorns of roses
spring and seize the surface
of fey airs
before the roses come.
I’ve seen thorns huddle in a harmony alone,
hunkered down on green, wiry canes,
smoothed blades of whipping rose stalks,
and curl their polished tridents
to night’s call.
They are like stars
digging into firmament
with such desire,
you don’t quite get it,
and so healthy that
they almost have to wound,
or like bodies that can’t be argued,
borrowed, tamed.
The touch of a thorn
is a wry, deep telling
of the senses not to bloom
without a wish to,
without belief in pain
to hold us true.
By Molly McQuade
Sometimes I wake up in the night
with a terrible headache, my mouth
blackened; a ghost looking for valuables
in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered
light, clipped to a book, I write things down
in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius
who said the finest bottle of wine
is just grape juice, passing through the liver,
no matter the beauty of a frothing glass,
or a night of big Truth-seeking, never recalled;
the importance of putting something bittersweet
into our mouths, turning it around and around
on our tongues, attaching to it, our missions,
our purpose—in the end
we are all just filters, not even
as beautiful as the plainest bird
or as zen as the meanest deer tick,
nothing is given over to, nothing new is lit.
So often it is this. I wake up, urgent, fatalistic,
with the taste of nectar on my boughs.
I replay on a loop my one stoic consistency,
my middle of the night vow,
that I will start tomorrow
the essential dismantling
of what I live.
Bianca Stone.
I'm aggravated by Morello's privileged bothsiderism, but I dig this new track. In conclusion: Beir bua, faoi spéir crua.
