Tootfinder

Calamus 23 This moment as I sit alone
A promise of global unity, Whitman sharing his adulation for men in other countries.
I guess this is an antidote to Whitman's nationalism? His celebrations of America seem sweet and sincere but they are very American-centric. Here he's explicitly saying men of other lands can be just as wise, beautiful, or benevolent as American men. It seems unusual that he feels he has to say it explicitly.
As for the queer reading, his conclusion is
I know we should be brethren and lovers
There's that word, "lovers". It's so brash it's hard to understand. It seems uncharacteristically direct even understanding Whitman as a gay poet. Maybe this is some 19th century romantic language, mixing what feels very gay in with a more general celebration of brotherhood? Or maybe it is literally what it says, Whitman eroticizing international men.

I’ve been hungry for seeing these days, hungry especially for color—wild, deeply saturated, mood-altering color. It has me looking up—as I always do when I’m lost—at the sky. Celeste blue. Blue of infinite depth. Ultra-blue.
https://salrandolph.substack.com/p/ways-of…

Ways of Seeing: Blue
Taking inspiration from Maggie Nelson's book, Bluets, this Ways of Seeing encourages you to take the color blue as your oracle and guide.

In announcing her resignation from the National Science Board, Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social details #DOGE interference in National Science Foundation #NSF grant making. «

On the genericity of irreducible subfactors
Yoonkyeong Lee, Brent Nelson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01838 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.…

On the genericity of irreducible subfactors
We show that finitely generated irreducible $\mathrm{II}_1$ subfactors are generic in the following sense. Given a separable $\mathrm{II}_1$ factor $M$ and an integer $n\geq 2$, equip the set of $n$-tuples of self-adjoint operators in $M$ with norm at most $1$ with the metric $d(x,y) = \max_{1\leq i \leq n} \|x_i - y_i\|_2$. Then the set of $n$-tuples that generate an irreducible subfactor of $M$ forms a dense $G_δ$ set in this metric space. On the way to proving this result, we show…

@merlelaperle.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy hallo Merle, ich habe dir jetzt seit einigen Tagen hier im fediverse zugehört. War skeptisch ob deinem engagierten Fürsprechen für Threema - und kann dir trotzdem inhaltlich oft folgen, aber … die Empfehlung jemand möge an einem Galgen hängen, finde ich, für die Wahl seines persönlichen Messengrs zu überspitzt. Mögen seine oder deine Argumente stimmen, wird damit egal. Schade.

Calamus 15 O drops of me!
It's a remarkably morbid poem for Whitman, literally about blood dropping from wounds, corrupting his poetry.
stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops
But he turns this blood into a sort of virtue that infuses his poem, starting with an inversion. It's not "saturate yourself with the drops". Instead it's saturate them with yourself.
Saturate them with yourself, all ashamed and wet,
Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,
Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.
I can make a case for a queer reading of recognizing gay shame and overcoming it. To take the stigma of homosexuality and turn it into a virtue, "let it all be seen in your light".
But I think I may be out on a limb with that interpretation. Whitman's not typically a writer about shame. And I think "gay shame" doesn't apply well as a concept in the 1850s, that's a malady that comes with a backlash against modern gay identity.

I usually don't bother with writing about #AI, but after seeing an interesting post about "The Era of the AI Idiot", it made me think of the "Expert systems" #AI boom in the 1980's.

Calamus 16 Who is now reading this?
A funny little poem, omitted in later editions. On the surface it's a challenge to the reader and a chance for Whitman to establish himself as self-aware. Claiming his own flaws.
But the text drips with some latent queer meaning
as if I do not secretly love strangers!
(O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it ;)
A secret love that you can never avow? Hello! At least it's tenderly and a long time.
This seems as good a time as any to link Whitman's Boys, a good recent piece considering Whitman as a queer man and what that means to us in current times. It's a nice overview of some queer theory and is even-handed.

I usually don't bother with writing about #AI, but after seeing an interesting post about "The Era of the AI Idiot", it made me think of the "Expert systems" #AI boom in the 1980's.