November 8th, 2024 ― A few months back, I wrote this thing. The idea of it came to me by surprise one night while I was fussing in the kitchen, watering plants, like a message beamed into my brain from outer space: “They asked the machine that’s killing the world about chess, and it said Black has a forced win in ▒▒▒,▒▒▒,▒▒▒,▒▒▒.”
If you’re very-online, you may be familiar with this phenomenon in relation to microblogging. You spend so much time cooking up weird little zingers (perhaps this is a condition that mainly affects people who were really into twitter between 2010‒2016) that they start creating themselves...
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October 22nd, 2024 ― A story about psychic communion with giant bugs, colossal flesh golems, and our spiritual relationship to fungus may not immediately cry out to you for any sword-focused analysis. I would agree that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is not really asking you to think about the swords, and the reason I love it so much has almost entirely to do with the bugs, the fungus, and the golems. However, there is a lot of talk in Nausicaä about materials for weapons and armor―the actual substance of swords breaking...
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October 15th, 2024 ― This the first issue of “Swords Broken,” a series of blog posts about broken swords in media, reality, myth and tradition, parable, et cetera. I’ve got roughly 15 more of these TK in a planning doc. Let me know if you have a broken sword moment I should cover!
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