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Matthew King

@cincinnatusc.bsky.social

390 followers 310 following 850 posts

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane birdsandbeesandblooms.com

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 2d

Pic of the week: Drinking Up the Cosmos
birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2025/10/06/d...

Drinking Up the Cosmos

Drinking Up the Cosmos: photo of bumblebee in pink cosmos flower taken near Marmora, Ontario. Copyright Matthew King. E-mail [email protected] to inquire concerning use or purchase.

birdsandbeesandblooms.com

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 17h

Anyway, one of those things I probably would have tuned into back in the old magazine rack days (which for me ended right around the time this was becoming a thing), ah well

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 17h

But I'd venture (among other things) even talking about the possibility of nuke use, incl the need to do stuff to prevent it--which used to mean left-coded hippie protests, now means right-coded airstrikes etc.--makes some people feel like nothing else (incl climate change) is really that big a deal

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 17h

When the possibility of nuke use in Russia/Ukraine became a hot issue I felt like there's some inclination in some people to be ok with nuke use because it makes a lot of other problems--especially climate change--irrelevant
In some way these things must be related but hard to say how

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 17h

Somehow did not know until today that concern with catastrophic electromagnetic pulses, from either nukes or the sun, more or less explicitly as opposed to concern with climate change, became a right-coded thing 1-2 decades ago (linked article is from 2016, to be clear)

pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

Conservative media sustain alarm about a possible electromagnetic-pulse catastrophe

National Review and others emphasize an “existential threat” in an EMP from a high-altitude nuclear burst—but solar activity stirs the fear too.

pubs.aip.org

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 18h

Went out to find one of my feeders empty but for an acorn, can only suppose a blue jay wishes to trade me this fine acorn for some seeds

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 2d

Pic of the week: Drinking Up the Cosmos
birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2025/10/06/d...

Drinking Up the Cosmos

Drinking Up the Cosmos: photo of bumblebee in pink cosmos flower taken near Marmora, Ontario. Copyright Matthew King. E-mail [email protected] to inquire concerning use or purchase.

birdsandbeesandblooms.com

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 2d

Happy to be back in the place where there is talking about strawberries all of the time, with three light? dark? poems about squirrels and chipmunks, including one stupid chipmunk

talking-time.bsky.social @talking-time.bsky.social · 2d

The sixth day of our fifteenth issue includes new poetry by Lavana Kray, Matthew King and Rushika G. Ramani, and The art of writing #121: an interview with Sheila Murphy
talkingaboutstrawberries.blogspot.com

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

The faint disappointment of discovering the microbrew bottles you've been using an opener on are actually twist-offs

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

A very good team, man.

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

Mmyup

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

When you see the odd European hornet around here you get why God says he's gonna send hornets ahead of the Israelites to drive out their enemies, being used to our native bald-faced hornets you're like eh that's not so tough

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

The one death-trap paper topic I ever offered (among others, nobody took it) was: is Aristotle right that there can be no knowledge of unique individuals? (I thought somebody might want to say "*I'm* a unique individual and *I* know me!")

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

And then on the other hand "Quel effet cela fait-il d'être une chauve-souris?", which I see is the translation of Nagel's title, really takes the question of what it's like to be a bat right off the rails, you'd think the French would all be pragmatists talking like that

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

It struck me recently that the English idiom "what is it like", which we use where other languages more usually use "how is it" equivalents to ask about natures of things, just casually unreflectively gets at Plato's whole problem about "forms": things are what they are in relation to other things

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

I say "was" because prose has obviously largely ceded that ground, but not entirely: years ago I saw Rick Salutin saying, re another columnist saying they hadn't written on some topic bc they hadn't decided what they thought about it yet, that that's exactly why he wants to write about something

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

In the tradition going back at least to Montaigne, that was an, if not the most, important thing about writing essays. In both form (as I was saying at the other place a year or two ago) and content, over the last century+, poetry has taken over what used to be the higher terrains of prose.

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 3d

I wonder how long people have been saying that "discovering things you didn't know you knew" is an, if not the most, important thing about writing poetry. (The screenshot is Stephen Dunn's blurb on a poem of his that appeared in Rattle in 2002, which was the POTD a couple of days ago.)

Stephen Dunn

“The poetry that ends up mattering speaks to things we half-know but are inarticulate about. It gives us language and the music of language for what we didn’t know we knew. So a combination of insight and beauty. I also liken the writing of it to basketball—you discover that you can be better than yourself for a little while. If you’re writing a good poem, it means you’re discovering things that you didn’t know you knew. In basketball, if you’re hitting your shots, you feel in the realm of the magical.”

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 4d

Ok this ad I just heard with a guy talking about tooth senSITivity pretty much confirms the suspicion I've been developing the last couple of years that it's now a thing for words in ads to be pronounced weird to get your attention

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 4d

Are you ready for this?! I am now the poet laureate of a lady's house but I did not answer my phone in case I create a binding contract to hire an elephant and the game is over cuz it turns out that once I get the trivia team broken up the only thing is that the Jays game is at a dog Day Care center

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 6d

Oddly coincidentally I saw my first one in a couple of years this morning, close to 2500 miles away from you I think! (I'm in south-central Ontario.)

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 7d

It's important to have goals, more than that to have achievable goals, e.g. my goal today was for my paint job to look like it was done by a moderately competent eight-year-old, which I did not realize was my goal before I started but now that I'm done I'm quite pleased with how well I achieved it

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 8d

See Will Vest! See Will Vest!
His bat speed is second-best!
Throws few gophers, makes bats loafers,
At that speed, runs need three chauffeurs

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Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 9d

Pic of the week: Hoverfly Wings with Aster Flowers
birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2025/09/29/h...

Hoverfly Wings with Aster Flowers

Hoverfly Wings with Aster Flowers. Photo taken near Marmora, Ontario. Copyright Matthew King. E-mail [email protected] to inquire concerning use or purchase.

birdsandbeesandblooms.com

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 10d

Given the droughtiness of the summer this song hasn't had much opportunity to get into my head this year but after last week's rain it has sprung to life along with the bees (is this the best Rheostatics song, not necessarily, but it is the one with by far the most bees)
youtu.be/1X2xPoRp6kY?...

Bees (Live)

YouTube video by Rheostatics - Topic

youtu.be

Matthew King @cincinnatusc.bsky.social · 10d

...so for a couple of minutes I'm staring at this quivering bat wrapped around the end of my line trying to figure out how I can possiby extract my lure FROM A BAT with all the rabies-related and other complications that entails--and then it slowly unfolded itself, let go of the lure, and flew away