literablesmell.bsky.social
@literablesmell.bsky.social
O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

The Sphynx
February 6, 2026 at 6:55 PM
the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

Stubb’s Supper
February 6, 2026 at 4:28 PM
[…] yet there is no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them [sharks] in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm-whale, moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about /
February 6, 2026 at 4:28 PM
no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.
February 5, 2026 at 8:57 PM
Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from him in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and […]
February 5, 2026 at 8:56 PM
For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way.

Surmises
February 5, 2026 at 8:53 PM
God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
February 5, 2026 at 7:16 PM
Reposted
Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”
February 4, 2026 at 6:43 AM
Strong chins create good times
Good times create weak chins
Weak chins create based poasters
January 31, 2026 at 1:41 PM
… keeping a busy schedule and is still a little backlogged, though be patient, schmuck, you’re at the top of the list, it’ll be your turn before you know it.”

Shadow Ticket
January 25, 2026 at 5:34 PM
Jarvis, show me the refs bank accounts
January 18, 2026 at 1:12 AM
fwiw I think “monthly” is frequent enough for people to notice.

Otoh, there is the social contagion effect. I saw many posts on my city’s subreddit over the summer about electricity prices. Even if they don’t really track their own pricing ppl talk about it which matters for perception
December 12, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon
October 15, 2025 at 8:43 PM
The guy with the auger isn’t too happy. “Dammit, you dynamite hounds,” he screams, “this is sinful, don’t you know the Angler’s Creed forbids this kind of thing?”

“Missouri Synod Lutheran, myself,” Hicks in a shaky voice he almost doesn’t recognize.
October 15, 2025 at 8:43 PM
to cover most of Milwaukee, then returning in a downpour of Friday-night supper ingredients which a sudden crowd have showed up with buckets, bags, and hats to collect.
October 15, 2025 at 8:43 PM
KA-BOOM. And then some. Addressing every bone in Hicks’s body, including the one just under his hat. A colorful and earsplitting fountain of ice, blood, silt, factory waste, and pieces of perch, pike, whitefish, and two or three varieties of trout meanwhile hurtling skyward, the echo racketing away
October 15, 2025 at 8:41 PM