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Raphael Hythloday

@eshuelegbara.bsky.social

110 followers 1.3K following 1.5K posts

Abyss-gazer, monster-fighter, part-time bartender. Full-time movies, philosophy, books, chess, and baseball. when i'm not skeeting into the abyss, I write here: https://substack.com/@eshuelegbara

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · Aug 28

A Quick Intro (for anyone curious)

Here’s how I’m using each platform:

🌀 Blue Sky — quick hits, personal thoughts, jokes, politics, music, media, and the occasional chaos. If it touches my brain and doesn’t need a whole essay, it lands here.

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 3h

Demeter shown bright across the land,
until a valet came to drive her out.

The steward wrote, smote, and brand—
and after, Hephaestus unleashed his shout.

With Promethean fire and Melkoran briar,
it was Demeter who laughed the loudest last,
with the son of smithers, remembering the past.

Betty Pinto @bettyp-art.bsky.social · 16d

#acrylic painting on 8x10 canvas panel.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 4h

Beneath the breath of Toyokumono,
A beauty lies in waiting, white as snow;
Vented by clashes, married to rays,
She pulls the tempest, shortens my days.
Stray not long from my gaze, I pray —
Be not gone longer than one day.

#Poetry #LiteraryArt #MythicVerse

John Douglas @johndouglasart.com · 5h

Full Moon on a cloudy night
gouache and aquarelle pencils
#art #painting #mixedmedia #nature #peaceful #Cairns #Australia

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 4h

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10h

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Reposted by Raphael Hythloday

R.E.M. @remhq.bsky.social · 4h

“It’s been a bad day, please don’t take a picture.” 📸 🚫

Live at Rock am Ring, 2003

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIMx...

R.E.M. - "Bad Day" (LIVE @ Rock Am Ring)

YouTube video by remhq

www.youtube.com

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 5h

Love laced with smidgeon of hope
Kept from the depths, toward a soap
What happened — dashed by doors —
Now Cupid lays, drunk on a floor.

#Poetry #Art #Romanticism #AdaLovelace #WritersOfBlueSky

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 5h

The next addition of Bending Back Barthes is out now:

Shock Photos — from the photographer’s horror to the meme’s irony.
How Gaza reveals our loss of feeling.

🔗 open.substack.com/pub/wittgens...

#Barthes #Gaza #Palestine #Mythologies

Bending Back Barthes: Shock Photos

From the photographer’s horror to the meme’s irony: how Gaza reveals our loss of feeling.

open.substack.com

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 15h

“Guidelines, not rules.”

Part II of The Natural Society of the Sea arrives tomorrow at 12 PM:
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Artificial Society of Law

Burke’s satire became prophecy. The artifice became the world.

#Burke #Foucault #Philosophy #FilmCriticism #Substack #Politics

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Artificial Society of Law

Part II of V in The Natural Society of the Sea

open.substack.com

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 17h

🕊️ Blind Faith with a Gnostic Deist
Freedom, Love, and the Law

“What you are aware of you are in control of.
What you are not aware of is in control of you.” — Anthony De Mello

⏰ Live 5 PM EST
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/wittgens...

#Utopia #Faith #Justice #Awareness #DailyReflection

A painterly scene inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s The Good Samaritan: a man carries an injured traveler onto a horse beside a glowing, textured hillside. The image symbolizes compassion, mercy, and the call to love one’s neighbor above all law. Text overlay reads: “Blind Faith with a Gnostic Deist — Freedom, Love, and the Law: Building Utopia One Aware Soul at a Time. Available October 14th, 2025.”

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 18h

🌊 Daily Tao Reflection 37:
The Lion, the Lover, and the Lesson

Fool’s gold isn’t gold by another name,
but a golden fool believes it all the same.

⏰ Live today at 10 AM EST
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/wittgens...

🖼️ Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) — Public Domain

A painterly scene of a sculptor embracing a marble statue that has come to life. The statue’s body is luminous against a dim studio backdrop; behind them, a small cherub aims an arrow from the shadows. The image evokes love, illusion, and creation — the moment when desire mistakes its own dream for reality.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

Crazy what happens when you tell the truth.

onion person @junlper.beer · 1d

watching the UKs green party elect an actual unafraid leftist into leadership and see party membership double in under a month is once again endless proof that if you stand up for leftist causes and treat the electorate like adults, you’ll win people over easily

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

I'm attending No Kings's event, “NO KINGS Athens” - sign up now to join me!

NO KINGS Athens · No Kings

**In America, we don’t put up with would-be kings.** Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and stronger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan—it’s the foundation our nation was built upon. B...

www.mobilize.us

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you for the inspiration

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Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

Red man, white man — won’t you stop it, please?
Red man, all the devil did was blanket you with disease.
He stole your crops, he took your women,
Your kids? They taught them in houses of pinon.
And besides, you have your homes, cordoned off —
Isn’t that all you wanted, in deals with a Luftwaffe?

A painted elk hide by Cadzi Cody depicting a ceremonial and battle scene. Plains warriors on horseback, adorned with feathered headdresses and spears, ride among buffalo and vividly painted horses. Yellow tipis stand near the center, surrounded by animals in black, red, yellow, blue, and pink. The hide’s irregular edges recall its living source — a canvas of endurance, ceremony, and memory.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

A poem below for the stolen, the silenced, and the surviving — for the nations that still sing beneath the noise of empire.

Elk Hide Painting by Cadzi Cody (Wind River Reservation, Shoshone, ca. 1880–1900). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.

a poster that says invasion is not discovery celebrate indigenous peoples day

ALT: a poster that says invasion is not discovery celebrate indigenous peoples day

media.tenor.com

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

May as well just go with Leif, but I'm a sucker for Irish myth.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

Hoot, hoot, here I am
As I am wise and strong
Do you question wrong?
Just and proud, forever
Broken, humbled, whatever
Athens had it first
Carolina to a second
Where I go?
It gets reckoned.

Rosehr Photography @rosehrphotography.bsky.social · 1d

Sentinel of the Substation: An Owl Watches Over Daisy Hil

#photography Hans-Joachim Rosehr
#Australia #street #art #painting

A strikingly lifelike owl painted on a utility pole in Daisy Hill, Queensland, gazes out with piercing yellow eyes. Its feathers, rendered in soft grays and whites, evoke twilight stillness. The pole’s background fades into lush greens and blues, echoing the surrounding foliage and sky. This street art transforms infrastructure into a perch for nature’s wisdom, blending urban grit with wild serenity.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

✝️ Blind Faith with a Gnostic Deist (10/13)

Jeremiah’s warning. Jonah’s surrender. Proverbs’ patience.

One reflection on the fall of nations and the return of faith.

🌑 Available 5 PM ET → open.substack.com/pub/wittgens...

#BlindFaith #Faith #Prophecy #Tao #Jeremiah #Jonah #Proverbs

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 1d

⚡ Daily Tao Reflection 36 — “The Expansion Before the Shrink”

Zeno’s paradox. The Big Crunch.
Hendrix, Lao Tzu, and the Tao breathing through history.

🌄 Live at 10 AM ET → open.substack.com/pub/wittgens...

#DailyTao #Philosophy #Cosmos #Hendrix

⚡️ Daily Tao Reflection 36

The Expansion Before the Shrink

open.substack.com

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Follow for the series.

#PiratesOfTheCaribbean #Burke #Foucault #FilmAnalysis #LawAndPower

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Part I sets the stage. Part II: Burke (pastiche → prophecy). Part III: Foucault. Part IV: synthesis. Part V: design.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Burke: no natural bond; we stitch with law. Foucault: schools/barracks/clinics do the stitching. If it’s engineered, we can re-engineer.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Parley → even thieves have a code. The Brethren’s Code = counter-constitution. Barbossa: “guidelines.” That’s the regime.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Will = talent in chains. Elizabeth = grace in a cage. Hierarchy throttles both.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

Pirates is a parable: codes pretend to be “nature.” Barbossa enforces; Jack exploits. Same game.

Raphael Hythloday @eshuelegbara.bsky.social · 2d

New tomorrow: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Natural Society of the Sea — how “guidelines, not rules” exposes law as power.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Natural Society of the Sea

How “guidelines, not rules” exposes law as power

wittgensteinsmonster.substack.com