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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚
@acfick72.bsky.social
1.4K followers 560 following 2.5K posts
Reader; Emperor of Solitude; self-ironising Don of #NorthJozi; Anarchosyndicalist Czar of All Tolstoyan Russian Multiverses; House Fuller-Hallim; Mr Havisham.
🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝☕️🌍
An isolate losing hearing and sight in the twilight of this incarnation. Embracing ennui.
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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚 @acfick72.bsky.social · 27d
I am too old
to learn the names
of the new killers
This one here
looks tired and attractive
devoted, professorial
He looks a lot like me
when I was teaching
[…]
the hopelessly insane
▫️Leonard Cohen, 2006

Thus we begin November in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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View into a room lined with books (volumes of fiction alphabetised by author surname, and the ones in frame are from Willa Cather through F. Scott Fitzgerald), a table with two fruit bowls, and a Calendario Romano in the foreground open to November, showing a man dressed as a priest reading a copy of El Pais as light streams in through a window behind him to his right. View into a room lined with books (shelves holding nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, the volumes that can be seen from Teresa de Lauretis through Todd Gitlin), two cluttered desks, and in the foreground, a copy of the Calendario Romano open to November, showing a very young man dressed as a priest inside a tiled room with a sculpture in a recess in the wall next to a large wooden door behind him. View of two cluttered desks with laptop, typewriter, printer, dictionaries, and bibelots, surrounnded by bookcaaes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from John Kenneth Galbraith and Eduardo Galeano through Pankaj Mishra and Franco Moretti. View of cluttered desk with dictionaries, CDs, DVDs, stationery, and bibelots, surrounded by bookcases (nonfiction shelved alphabetically by author or editor surname: on the left from Tillie Olsen to Bertrand Russell; in the middle from Theodore W. Allen through Gena Corea; and on the right from Richard Dawkins through Cécile Fabre).
acfick72.bsky.social
Ik ben ik. Karakter is noodlot. Geschiedenis is G-d. Gepikeerd, altijd maar gepikeerd.
▫️J.M. Coetzee, 1977 [1976]
Portrait of the non-artist on the brink of 53, feeling as if he may as well be 303, an anachronism, vestigial at best in these odd times among these odd people.
November 28, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
groundup.org.za
A gag order against Open Secrets was overturned in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday afternoon by Judge Nathan Erasmus.

Read groundup.org.za/article/gag-... by Liezl Human
Gag order against Open Secrets lifted
Case brought by Integrated Convoy Protection, which sells armoured vehicles to UAE, dismissed
groundup.org.za
November 28, 2025 at 7:32 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A world that shrugs at one kind of slaughter has developed a terrible immunity. No atrocity is too great to shrug away now, the muscles of indifference having been sufficiently conditioned.
▪️Omar El Akkad, 2025
Extracts from ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad (Canongate, 2025). Colonialism demands history begin past the point of colonization precisely because, under those narrative conditions, the colonist's every action is necessarily one of self-defense. The story begins not when the wagons arrive, but only after they are circled. In this telling, fear is the exclusive property of only one people, and the notion that the occupied might fear the doing of their occupier is as fantastical as the notion that barbarians might be afraid of the gate. Any population on whom this asymmetry is imposed will always be the instigators, the cause of what is and, simultaneously the justification for what will be. The savage outside does, the civilized center must respond.
November 28, 2025 at 1:10 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: VI.
a man with a beard is making a funny face while wearing a black shirt .
Alt: GIF of Idris Elba looking both exasperated and disdainful.
media.tenor.com
November 28, 2025 at 11:35 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Rainy end of November in #NorthJozi; remaining cloistered in the #LateImperialLibrary, clearing correspondence and plotting how to close off this 23rd month of the year . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖💻🗃☕️🗝🚪🌍🌧
Looking into the nonfiction room of the Late Imperial Library, the dictionariea and thesauruses seen from the opposite side (their spines facing away from the viewer) among bibelots and stationery, and bookcases on which the volumes are alphabetised by author or editor surname. Through a door on the right of the frame, a short bookcase with volumes of fiction similarly organised can be seen in another room. A view of the main desk in the nonfiction room of the Late Imperial Library, with dictionaries and thesauruses, thotchkes and stationery, a printer, and a desklamp, surrounded by bookcases on which the volumes have been alphabetised by author or editor surname. A door in the middle of the frame leads onto a north-facing balcony. Volumes of fiction on various shelves and bookcases surround a table covered with a white cloth on which two bowls of fruit and a red mug of tea can be seen. Two sets of shelves arranged perpendicularly; on the left volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Susan Sontag through Gore Vidal and Oscar Wilde; on the right anthologies of poetry similarly arranged, from Anna Akhmatova through Chaucer to Rustum Kozain.
November 28, 2025 at 9:29 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: V.
November 27, 2025 at 7:45 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books got from a donation sale in support of the Sandton public library (a block over from where the G20 summit was held last weekend) for R20 each (MT 74.46 or €1 or PRC ¥8.25 or P16.41).

Rainy day sale in #NorthJozi.

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From left to right: (1) top row: copies of Richard Wright's AMERICAN HUNGER (paperback), Maya Angelou's RAINBOW IN THE CLOUD (hb) and SINGIN' AND SWINGIN' AND GETTIN' MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS (pb), George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM (2 copies); (2) bottom row: Peter Wilhelm's LM AND OTHER STORIES (hb sans dust jacket), Don DeLillo's WHITE NOISE (pb), Richard Wright's BLACK BOY (pb), and a copy of STAFFRIDER magazine (Vol. 7 No. 2, 1988). The two volumes of THE READER'S DIGEST GREAT ENCYCLOPAEDIC DICTIONARY, bought out of nostalgia as we had a copy of this at home in my 1970s childhood.
November 27, 2025 at 4:24 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A friend occasionally asks for the recipe of something one would recently have cooked, and then one always has to make up the steps and ingredients from (mis)memory as one does not cook following or taking inspiration from recipes . . .

👨🏾‍🍳🤷🏾‍♂️🫣📝🍲🥗🥧🥂
a bald man wearing a grey sweater is making a face
Alt: GIF of Ainsley Harriott mugging for the camera.
media.tenor.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:41 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: IV.

🤴🏽📚🤓📖
November 26, 2025 at 7:38 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Without empathy we risk the breakdown of relationships, we become capable of hurting others, and we can cause conflict. With empathy we have a resource to resolve conflict, increase community cohesion, and dissolve another person's pain.
▫️Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011
Extracts from THE SCIENCE OF EVIL: ON EMPATHY AND THE ORIGINS OF CRUELTY by Simon Baron-Cohen (2011) Empathy is a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with a neighbor. I hope you have been persuaded that this resource is a better way to resolve problems than the alternatives (such as guns, laws, or religion). And unlike the arms industry, which costs trillions of dollars to maintain, or the prison industry and legal system, which cost millions of dollars to keep oiled, empathy is free. And unlike religion, empathy cannot by definition oppress anyone.
November 26, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
oliver48.bsky.social
via Anti-Reform
November 26, 2025 at 9:16 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: III.
a man says it 's not a great time in front of a hbo logo
Alt: GIF from TASK (2025) of Mark Ruffalo saying "It's not a great time".
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:49 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
☎️
Still from THE SOPRANOS showing James Gandolfini as Tony, on the telephone, saying, “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” Still from DALLAS showing Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing on the telephone at the foot of the Southfork stairwell, saying, “I know, I know.”
November 25, 2025 at 7:25 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: II.
a close up of a man 's face with the netflix logo in the corner
Alt: GIF from KALEIDOSCOPE in which Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap, saying "Next" as he walks through a room.
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 6:55 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: I.
a woman wearing a black jacket and a pearl necklace is standing in front of a wall .
Alt: GIF from THE COLBYS showing Stephanie Beacham as Sable Colby wearing a black fur coat and elaborate jewels on.her ears and neck, her lips parted in surprise, then changing her expression to one of judgement and pursing her lips.
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Felled by illness. This is definitely not #NorthJozi summer weather. This twenty-third month of 2025 . . . and now it would seem someone has been cocking up the order of the volumes on the shelves of the #LateImperialLibrary.

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The view northwards as rain rolls in (at times in near-horizontal sheets). The trees at the bottom of the garden and the multi-storey art deco building downslope can be seen through the rain-spattered window, but the horizon is obscured by rain.
November 25, 2025 at 8:25 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Many rivers to cross: hamba kahle, Jimmy Cliff (1944-2025).
Jimmy Cliff, 1944-2025.
November 24, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
theguardian.com
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now
www.theguardian.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
yvanspijk.bsky.social
The English word ‘blue’ is a horse of a different colour.

While ‘blue’ is related to the words in its Germanic sister languages, such as German ‘blau’ and Swedish ‘blå’, it took a different route.

Its Germanic ancestor was loaned to French, where it became ‘bleu’, and then borrowed into English:
November 23, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
rhaplord.bsky.social
African-Ottoman borderlands during the early modern period: stories from the frontier.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/african-ot...
African-Ottoman borderlands during the early modern period: stories from the frontier.
In 1574, the first of two embassies from the kingdom of Bornu in the Lake Chad basin arrived at the Ottoman sultan’s court in Istanbul, seeking, among other aims, to delineate the frontier between the...
www.africanhistoryextra.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:02 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. […] Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.
▫️Omar El Akkad, 2025
Extracts from ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad (2025) One day the killing will be over, either because the oppressed will have their liberation or because there will be so few left to kill. We will be expected to forget any of it ever happened, to acknowledge it if need be but only in harmless, perfunctory ways. Many of us will, if only as a kind of psychological self-defense. So much lives and dies by the grace of endless forgetting. But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging one's own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.
November 23, 2025 at 9:53 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Pace Rutger Kopland, "[l]ichaam, denk ik, als je mijn eigen lichaam bent" . . . en pace Frank Houtappels, "Wanneer ik voor de spiegel zit / Dan denk ik: wat is dit? / Is dit nou mijn lijf?"

youtu.be/rDN8h7FYCFI?...
Jenny Arean - Dit is mijn lijf (Gedeelde Smart, 2022)
YouTube video by Brigitte Kaandorp
youtu.be
November 23, 2025 at 6:34 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Sunday evening in the #LateImperialLibrary, contemplating clearing up after the Imperial Lunch in #NorthJozi.

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Cluttered desk with laptop, dictionaries and thesauruses, bibelots, books, and notebook. Second desk with typewriter, laptop, bibelots, photographs, and volumes of nonfiction from Edward Gibbon through Richard Hoggart. Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname; on the left Karl Marx to Czesław Miłosz, and poetry in the corner from Fleur Adcock to Edward Lear; facing the viewer, from Helen Nabasuta Mugambi and Tuzyline Jita Allan through Bertrand Russell and Richard Russo. A grained wooden table with portable typewriter, potted ficus, bowl, photgraph, and the collected works of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde in large format hardback.
November 23, 2025 at 5:13 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Just when it seemed the political and media institutions of the United States could not get weirder or more debased and debasing . . . Someone wrote about who doing what to whom after they did what? In a mainstream outlet? Why? Why?!

🤮😵‍💫😵☠️⚰️🪦
Still from BIG BANG THEORY showing Regina King as Janine Davis, the HR officer, staring at her laptop, saying, “Oh, come on.” Still from THE SOPRANOS showing Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano, saying, “I don’t know that world.” Still from FRIDA showing Valeria Golino as Lupe Marín saying, “I mean, look at this! What the hell is this?” Still from MUJERES AL BORDE DE UN ATAQUE DE NERVIOS, showing Juliet Serrano as Lucía, wearing a 1960s pink Chanel suit, being accosted by three uniformed Spanish policemen, one holding the pistol she discharged in the airport, saying, “Take me back to the clinic. That’s where I live.”
November 22, 2025 at 2:55 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
North, south, east, west: Saturday before the afternoon summer storm breaks over #NorthJozi.

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Cumulonimbus clouds to the south with the top of the Hillbrow tower just visible at the bottom of the frame towards the right. Clear blue sky to the north over the lift shafts of the neighbouring building downslope from the ridge of the Witwatersrand formation north of the Johannesburg city centre. The sky to the west over Johannesburg. Clouds in the sky to the east.
November 22, 2025 at 1:41 PM