If you enjoy cannibals, may we introduce you to our own in Volume 2?
Category: Gabbler Recommends
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: “Chuck Palahniuk Is Not Who You Think He Is”
“And then I age into this culture,” he continues, “where if you aren’t completely out in every aspect of your public life and personal life, then you’re somehow damaged and shameful and raw. So within my lifetime I’m supposed to transition from being a person that has really created this whole guardedness not just for my own protection, but for the protection of the people I love and for my family who are still in that small town. Then I’m expected to automatically step out of that into a kind of joyous, flag-waving outness that is completely at odds with the entire way I’ve been raised, where that was my shell and my armor. You don’t just give that up. You don’t give that up overnight. And people say if you don’t give that up overnight, then you’re self-hating, all these wrong things. So I’m fucked either way. I’m just trying to be one person and live a life. And I’m sorry: I’m just not ready to be completely out and just put it all out there.”
[Via]
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: Automata: The Extraordinary “Robots” Designed Hundreds Of Years Ago | Mechanical Marvels | Timeline
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: “Tania James on Trust, Truth, and the Desire to Create Something That Lasts”
From the podcast:
Tania James: Yeah, I don’t think he actually commissioned the elephant clock. I kind of created this moment. But I think he would’ve really responded to that object that was created and designed by a 12th-century Muslim polymath. His name was Al-Jazari and he is well known in the Arab world. I don’t know. But when I discovered this thing, this was a whole other world of automatons that I had not read about.
I had only associated automatons with Europe, but here he was doing it in the 1100s. And I think that Tipu Sultan would’ve been really attracted to this idea behind the elephant clock, which is that each part of it represents a certain part of civilization, but none of those civilizations he’s mentioning are European. So I felt that he would really have been attracted to that, but I didn’t find that anywhere in the historical record. I just made up that he had that commission.
[Via]
Mentioned in the podcast is Tipu’s Tiger automaton:
Gabbler Recommends: Ancient Historian Reads PERCY JACKSON (+ Book Haul)
I particularly think it’s weird how Medusa still has a head in Percy Jackson. – Gabbler