#terrypratchett — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #terrypratchett, aggregated by home.social.
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#FediArt52 20. Shine
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Now free through #creativecommons! Heaven, Hell, And Everything In-Between - anthology of Critical Perspectives on #GoodOmens #booksky #academicsky #NeilGaiman #TerryPratchett #GoodOmensseason3 is out today! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Heaven, Hell, and Everything I... -
Now free through #creativecommons! Heaven, Hell, And Everything In-Between - anthology of Critical Perspectives on #GoodOmens #booksky #academicsky #NeilGaiman #TerryPratchett #GoodOmensseason3 is out today! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Heaven, Hell, and Everything I... -
Now free through #creativecommons! Heaven, Hell, And Everything In-Between - anthology of Critical Perspectives on #GoodOmens #booksky #academicsky #NeilGaiman #TerryPratchett #GoodOmensseason3 is out today! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Heaven, Hell, and Everything I... -
Now free through #creativecommons! Heaven, Hell, And Everything In-Between - anthology of Critical Perspectives on #GoodOmens #booksky #academicsky #NeilGaiman #TerryPratchett #GoodOmensseason3 is out today! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Heaven, Hell, and Everything I... -
Now free through #creativecommons! Heaven, Hell, And Everything In-Between - anthology of Critical Perspectives on #GoodOmens #booksky #academicsky #NeilGaiman #TerryPratchett #GoodOmensseason3 is out today! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
Heaven, Hell, and Everything I... -
A quotation from Terry Pratchett
The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 7, Pyramids (1989)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8392…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #audience #listener #listening #response #retort
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 7, Pyramids (1989)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8392…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #audience #listener #listening #response #retort
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 7, Pyramids (1989)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8392…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #audience #listener #listening #response #retort
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 7, Pyramids (1989)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8392…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #audience #listener #listening #response #retort
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don’t listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they’re going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 7, Pyramids (1989)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8392…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #audience #listener #listening #response #retort
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
One of the hardest lessons of young Sam’s life had been finding out that the people in charge weren’t in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/6953…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #nightwatch #samvimes #vimes #behindthecurtain #bureaucracy #chaos #control #government #incharge #officials #planning #power #rulers #thinking
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Das beste, was du in einem völlig überfüllten und verspäteten Zug machen kannst:
Den Worten von Terry Pratchett lauschen (BBC Radio Drama Collection).
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Somewhat regular reminder that I quoted Sir Terry Pratchett in my dissertation.
https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/3455662
#GNUTerryPratchett #TerryPratchett #AcademicChatter #AcademicMastodon #Bookstodon
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For folks unaware of the reference, it's from a conversation between Granny Weatherwax and Rev. Mightily Oats, in Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum. Quoted:
“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” [Granny Weatherwax]
“It’s a lot more complicated than that –” [Rev. Mightily Oats]
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” [Granny Weatherwax]
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –” [Rev. Mightily Oats]
“But they starts with thinking about people as things …” [Granny Weatherwax](speakers added for clarity)
#GNUTerryPratchett #TerryPratchett #GrannyWeatherwax #Sin #Things #CarpeJugulum
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch [Vimes] (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/3061…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #nightwatch #discworld #vimes #counterrevolution #cycleofviolence #government #history #instability #politicalinstability #politicalviolence #radical #revolution
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch [Vimes] (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/3061…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #nightwatch #discworld #vimes #counterrevolution #cycleofviolence #government #history #instability #politicalinstability #politicalviolence #radical #revolution
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch [Vimes] (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/3061…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #nightwatch #discworld #vimes #counterrevolution #cycleofviolence #government #history #instability #politicalinstability #politicalviolence #radical #revolution
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch [Vimes] (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/3061…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #nightwatch #discworld #vimes #counterrevolution #cycleofviolence #government #history #instability #politicalinstability #politicalviolence #radical #revolution
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Sometimes understanding can feel like a trade-off — the more clearly you can see how something moves, the less room there is for mystery.
Tracing the movement — attention shifting, trust moving, something passing through and coming out changed — doesn’t seem to take anything away. If anything, it makes it harder to miss how alive it already is, even in places that didn’t register before.
This week’s reflection https://emotus.substack.com/p/maps-and-money
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 29, Night Watch (2002)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/2978…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #samvimes #danger #death #defiance #desperation #gallowshumor #humor #laughter #mortality #nothingtolose #threat
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A Sense of Doubt blog post-4040 - Did Alzheimer's Affect Terry Pratchett's Discworld? https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-4040-did.html #Discworld #Alzheimers #writing #GreatBooks #TerryPratchett
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long.*
* This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noises in attics, and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 9, Eric (1990)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8226…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #eric #amazons #battleofthesexes #chores #genderroles #household #males #masculinity #men #trope #women #jungle
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long.*
* This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noises in attics, and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 9, Eric (1990)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8226…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #eric #amazons #battleofthesexes #chores #genderroles #household #males #masculinity #men #trope #women #jungle
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long.*
* This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noises in attics, and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 9, Eric (1990)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8226…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #eric #amazons #battleofthesexes #chores #genderroles #household #males #masculinity #men #trope #women #jungle
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long.*
* This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noises in attics, and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 9, Eric (1990)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8226…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #eric #amazons #battleofthesexes #chores #genderroles #household #males #masculinity #men #trope #women #jungle
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8210…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #consideration #fear #panic #terror #thinking #thoughtfulness
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
“I’ve never seen Death actually at work.”
“Not many have,” said Albert. “Not twice, at any rate.”Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 4, Mort (1987)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8191…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #mort #death #experience #fatality #lifespan #mortality #uniqueness
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 2, The Light Fantastic (1986)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8163…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #acceptance #bias #chauvinism #feminism #fighter #hero #heroine #prejudice #sexism #takeseriously #sexdiscrimination #battleofthesexes
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 2, The Light Fantastic (1986)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8163…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #acceptance #bias #chauvinism #feminism #fighter #hero #heroine #prejudice #sexism #takeseriously #sexdiscrimination #battleofthesexes
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 2, The Light Fantastic (1986)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8163…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #acceptance #bias #chauvinism #feminism #fighter #hero #heroine #prejudice #sexism #takeseriously #sexdiscrimination #battleofthesexes
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 2, The Light Fantastic (1986)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8163…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #acceptance #bias #chauvinism #feminism #fighter #hero #heroine #prejudice #sexism #takeseriously #sexdiscrimination #battleofthesexes
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 2, The Light Fantastic (1986)More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8163…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #acceptance #bias #chauvinism #feminism #fighter #hero #heroine #prejudice #sexism #takeseriously #sexdiscrimination #battleofthesexes
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A tale of two pairs of boots shows how the rich get richer in ways poor people simply can't
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/boots-theory-why-rich-get-richer-ex1
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#ThreeGoodThings of yesterday:
😀 went to the cinema with friends*
😀 fixed the car wing mirror again (the first time the mirror back had the wrong colour)
😀 cooked spaghetti with salmon sauce
* We saw the German film #Zweigstelle and had some good laughs. It's also very #spiritual and #shamanic with hints of #HHGTG and #terrypratchett
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/7995…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #beer #brainstorm #brilliance #drunkenness #epiphany #genius #idea #inspiration #intoxication
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/7995…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #beer #brainstorm #brilliance #drunkenness #epiphany #genius #idea #inspiration #intoxication
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/7995…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #beer #brainstorm #brilliance #drunkenness #epiphany #genius #idea #inspiration #intoxication
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/7995…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #beer #brainstorm #brilliance #drunkenness #epiphany #genius #idea #inspiration #intoxication
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 22, The Last Continent (1998)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/7995…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #rincewind #beer #brainstorm #brilliance #drunkenness #epiphany #genius #idea #inspiration #intoxication
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 27, The Last Hero [Leonard] (2001)More info about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/4715…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #constraints #imagination #impossibility #limits #possibility #reality #safety #limitations
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The Small God of the Internet
It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.
He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.
Guide for Constructing the Letter S from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (15611596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.
ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**
Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.
Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.
His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.
These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.
A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.
Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.
Heavily edited sloptraption.
- He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
- The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
- Old Google Reader People ↩︎
- On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
↩︎ - He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎
#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing
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The Small God of the Internet
It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.
He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.
Guide for Constructing the Letter S from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (15611596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.
ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**
Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.
Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.
His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.
These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.
A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.
Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.
Heavily edited sloptraption.
- He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
- The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
- Old Google Reader People ↩︎
- On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
↩︎ - He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎
#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing
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The Small God of the Internet
It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.
He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.
Guide for Constructing the Letter S from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (15611596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.
ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**
Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.
Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.
His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.
These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.
A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.
Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.
Heavily edited sloptraption.
- He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
- The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
- Old Google Reader People ↩︎
- On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
↩︎ - He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎
#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing
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The Small God of the Internet
It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.
He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.
Guide for Constructing the Letter S from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (15611596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.
ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**
Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.
Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.
His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.
These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.
A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.
Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.
Heavily edited sloptraption.
- He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
- The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
- Old Google Reader People ↩︎
- On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
↩︎ - He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎
#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing
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The Small God of the Internet
It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.
He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.
Guide for Constructing the Letter S from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta or The Model Book of Calligraphy (15611596) by Georg Bocskay and Joris Hoefnagel. Original from The Getty. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.
ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**
Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.
Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.
His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.
These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.
A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.
Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.
Heavily edited sloptraption.
- He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
- The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
- Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
- Old Google Reader People ↩︎
- On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
↩︎ - He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎
#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing
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A quotation from Terry Pratchett
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 28, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, ch. 8 [Malicia] (2008)Sourcing, notes: wist.info/pratchett-terry/5956…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #control #narrative #protagonist #selfactualization #story
