Tootfinder

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.

The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines.
The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines.
The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines.
...

Mass layoffs likely to remain blocked, for now, thanks to a Supreme Court footnote - Government Executive
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/06/mass-layoffs-likely-remain-blocked-now-thanks-supreme-court-footnote/406381/

An Amazon backed AI blackmails engineers when it discovers that it'll be replaced when given access to E-Mails which state so...
„In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through [...]”
From a BBC article talking about this. All the companies worki…

There was somebody fussing in my replies to my last link to my blog post about Medium (I don’t see them now; they probably blocked me, but their specific words don’t really matter), and the gist of their message was that they didn’t like that site. On the modern internet, if you have an issue with content written by humans, with no surveillance ads, that doesn’t allow AI scraping or AI slop content, with a business model that makes money… I don’t know how to help you. Honestly.

Andrew Cuomo to drop NYC mayoral bid after blistering primary defeat to Zohran Mamdani: sources (New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/andrew-cuomo-to-drop-nyc-mayoral-bid-after-blistering-primary-defeat-to-zohran-mamdani-cant-run-a-loser/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250625/p143#a250625p143

Pretty amazing. And yet, the majority of Americans won’t see this story because the truth is paywalled but the bullshit is free. Which feels more and more to me like one of the world’s most important problems.
https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/114580574368958399

Anthropic launches the Anthropic Economic Futures Program to bolster research on the impacts of AI and encourage new proposals on how to mitigate the downsides (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/06/27/2025

Anthropic launches new effort to study AI’s economic impact
CEO Dario Amodei has warned of massive job losses because of AI and hopes research will help the world prepare.

Calamus 14 Not heat flames up and consumes
A declaration of love, eroticism mixed with nature imagery. Something of a theme in Calamus! It didn't really grab me though, I think because so many of the lines start with negations and it distances me from the meaning.
The sexy line here:
the flames of me, consuming, burning for his love whom I love!
I also like the imagery of seeds wafted in the wind, then heading to "my Soul is borne through the open air".
This musical performance by the Erato Ensemble is a nice interpretation.

Quotes that have evolved over time to add a twist

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.
The original first half is by Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think (1820).
The second half was made up by Twitter and then falsely attributed the entire quote to Oscar Wilde, it's still a great addition, I think.
Jack of all…