Obsidian Wings

Paris burning

by Doctor Science

Notre Dame de Paris, one of the greatest artworks and religious monuments of European culture, is in flames as I write. None of my words are adequate.

In the first campaign of the web D&D series Critical Role, Percy (a human aristocrat and fighter) is asked by an elf how long he'll live. He talks about the history of the town they're trying to protect:

PERCY: This place is the human soul. This is what we have built with our tiny moments. To lose a place like this, we don’t feel it immediately, but it would ruin everyone in small ways. ... This is good we’re doing here. This is great good. And it’s not about idolizing ourselves; it’s about a very long story, which we are, even you, a tiny part of.

MATT, the Dungeon Master and Narrator: At this moment, you look down and notice that, while you guys were having this talk, a small child has walked up to the wall and where Percy has stopped the carving, the child has picked up a piece of wayward chalk that was on the ground and has begun to draw little stick figures on the wall where you stopped. And in a little bit of the quiet, he stops and looks up over his shoulder at the two of you and smiles, and then just goes back to writing on the wall.

A full transcript of the episode is here. Its title is "Hope".

Here's my hope, that loss of lives will not be added to the loss of historical record. The history already happened, it can't be burned. Paris will have to go back to writing on the wall, saving what can be saved and making a new world out of the rest.

The North rose window of Notre-Dame. Not clear if it will survive.

Focus on Nothing

by wj

There's something to be said for us not losing track that there are great things happening in the world beyond politics. Like this one:
Image of a Black Hole

I admit that my first thought was :How can they take a picture of something that absorbs all light and reflects nothing?!?!?" But, of course, what they actually imaged was the shadow it causes in the glowing gas around it. Still, way cool.

It's the Cruelty Stupid

by Ugh

Poor now former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen quit yesterday (or, rather, was shoved out the door) as it seems that, despite separating thousands of children from their parents at the border and then admitting it might take two years to reunite them all (which, really, if you were 2 when you were separated from your parents is only 100% of your life, so shruggy), she wasn't quite as cruel as Trump and salt of the earth adviser Ramsay Bolton Stephen Miller wished her to be, and now she shall ascend to the great Fox News commentariat post in the sky.

Two years ago I thought noting the United States might put up a sort of reverse Berlin Wall on the border where machine gun nests were set to shoot anyone crossing the border on sight was (kind of) an absurd illustration of Trump's approach to the border.  Not so sure anymore.

When W left I worried that the worst dregs of his administration would return to play significant roles the next time the GOP "won" the presidency.  If only.