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jack the nonabrasive

@karabaic.org

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John Karabaic. he/him. BLM. NYC/BOS/USAF/CIN/PDX USA/Croatia Recovering engineer. The gurney is the reward. What is protest, if not rage persevering? #TCMParty #NoirAlley @bonbpdx @level4isgoinggreat @[email protected] https://brooklynbike.org

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jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · Jan 1

Welcome to A Year of Anna Karenina

We’ll be reading 5 chapters a week, Mon through Fri, with the weekend to catch up.

Posts will be scheduled to drop at midnight US ET on the day the chapter is scheduled with an additional catchup post on Saturday for a weekly catchup discussion.

💃🚂 #AK2025 /1

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 23m

Charlie Hunnam & Laurie Metcalf deserve _some_ award for infusing both inhumane characters with a kind of humanity capable of creating audience empathy in this season's Monster.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 2h

"even as I watched Warren Beatty, with maybe the most outrageous haircut I’ve ever seen on anyone, buy a plane ticket—with cash—on the damn airplane—in The Parallax View, it never felt entirely unreal"

I have actually done this, multiple times, on People Express & the Eastern Shuttle, in the 1980's

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 1d

pls read @davidjroth.bsky.social's review it is SO good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

flaminghydra.com/issue-416/

Struggle cinema

David Roth on 'One Battle After Another'

flaminghydra.com

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 2h

gee if only you didn't donate to Republicans who made that $189M necessary

An in-app alert from USAA Federal Savings Bank that says, "As of now, USAA has provided over $189 million in no-interest loans to about 51,000 members through our Government Shutdown Program."

Reposted by jack the nonabrasive

Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 5h

We are now a country the United States would send emergency CDC aid.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

I am so glad you enjoyed this because I talk anyone's ear off about it. I fell in love with Tolstoy last year with War & Peace, and Anna Karenina is a better _novel_, but not a better _work_. As I say, Lev Tolstoy & Sophia Tolstaya don't make mistakes, they make choices. Hugo, I'm undecided on.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

Appendix:

Anna Karenina

Levin Venus: www.reddit.com/r/yearofanna...

Levin Clouds:
www.reddit.com/r/yearofanna...

Levin Capella:
www.reddit.com/r/yearofanna...

Les Mis drops at 9PM US PDT tonight.

There's also a three-baptism image system for Alexei Vronsky, Anna Karenina's lover.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

I'm not finished with either book yet, but I'm hoping to get in touch with the translators and flesh this out more when I'm done to see if there's actually something here

All this is in the reddit subs r/yearofannakarenina and r/ayearoflesmiserables that I'm moderating, and in my reading guide./FIN

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

accompanied by Levin getting wet or damp from rain, mirroring theRussian custom of plunging three times into icy waters on the Feast of the Epiphany in January, which celebrates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist

I can't find any scholarship that mentions the anomalies, only sky events. /9

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

when Capella would be setting, indicating his change in fortune due to the charioteer (Capella is in Auriga, the Charioteer) in the prior sky event. He's in an almost manic state here, with a description of his physicality very closely matching someone on Ecstasy.

These three sky events are... /8

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

Then, months later, just before he is to ask for her parent's approval, after she has already deciphered his coded marriage proposal (another great story!), Levin is staring through the ventilation window in his Moscow hotel throughout the night, Levin sees a rising Capella above a gilt cross /7

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

Then, just before the girl he loves happens to pass him in a carriage on her way to her sister's dacha, lenticular clouds in the morning sky arrange themselves similar to events in the baptism of Jesus by John, indicating divine favor on his match. He sees her pass and realizes he still loves her /6

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

Obviously the goddess of love is rising for him, as the evening star would be setting at that point. Tolstoy, I think, was inspired by both Hugo, as described, and Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where he has a star within the nether tip of a crescent moon to indicate supernatural events /5

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

In Anna Karenina, there are three major sky motifs during pivotal moments for the character Kostya Levin, who's a stand-in for Lev Tolstoy. The first is Venus rising at sunset, with the other stars motionless, as Levin is told by his friend Stiva that the girl he loves may be available again. /4

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

It's an otherwise cloudy sky, only the western horizon is visible. My theory is that Hugo needed to have the symbolism of the father of the gods rescuing this child, as opposed to the huntress or a feminine god, as that's what happens at the end of the chapter: a male protagonist rescues her. /3

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 19h

The Les Mis chapter will drop in the subreddit tonight, 2.3.5. In it, the child protagonist sees Jupiter setting along the horizon near Paris on around midnight on Christmas Eve, 1823. In actuality, Jupiter was rising, near its zenith, at that time, but the waxing quarter-moon was rising, as well /1

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 20h

So I found this fascinating pattern of deliberate astronomical mistakes—Jupiter, Venus and stars—setting when they should be rising in Les Miserables and Anna Karenina that indicate deliberate intent on the part of the authors to create a magical unworldly symbolism in their hyperrealistic works.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

hey just a foreign military base on us soil from the america first crowd

www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth...

Hegseth announces Qatar will build air force facility at U.S. base in Idaho

The move is a sign of increasingly close ties between the U.S. and Qatar.

www.cbsnews.com

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

A per se pussy, one might say

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

I keep thinking le chat avocat, the lawyer cat.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

is that a medical collar?!

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

Every day I summarize a chapter each of Les Miserables and Anna Karenina. I sweat over them, trying to tease out what's important in my own voice, entertainingly. For short chapters, I write a haiku.

I could use some LLM. But I'd rather Sam Altman put a gun in his mouth.

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 2d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 1d

Didn't they give the prize to a guy who was behind the secret bombings of Cambodia in 1969-70?

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 2d

They did use the best shots of the dog in the previews. The first few minutes are excruciatingly creepy though, at least if you're a dog owner.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 2d

Nelson has to have the record read to him. Perhaps he should get some remedial reading help.

jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 2d

This makes a good complementary reading if you're listening on @opb.org

Gabriel Malor @gabrielmalor.bsky.social · 2d

I will be live-posting Oregon v. Trump, which will be heard before the 9th Cir. shortly.

Gabriel Malor @gabrielmalor.bsky.social · 2d

The family has been gathering for a wedding this weekend, so mostly I'm cooking a lot and playing host until Sunday.

I am going to try and make time to listen to this oral argument tomorrow in the National Guard to Portland case.