*Reception Code* The fluorescent hum sings falsity above the desk where forms collapse into each other, surnames smudged like the aftertaste of a botched dream. A woman in a yellow coat named Desiree argues with the touchscreen; her index finger grinds into the pixelled precipice that should mean Health or History— in this lobby, difference…
Month: April 2025
Petals, Psychedelia, and Painted Myths: A Journey Through Flowers, Art, and Mind
### Amanita 17 Red and white anemones in folds of flight Blossom from Zephyr’s gown in morning light, Their petals whisper myths of Venus’s grace, A goddess glimpsed in every painted trace. In ancient tales of beauty born from sea, Anemones marked love’s fragility— Each fragile bloom, a mortal’s fleeting breath Touched by desire, and…
Routine for the Nightshift Heart
**Subroutine for the Nightshift Heart** The thermoplastic beep of the fridge door resembles a hymn I once half-remembered— something about bread, or betrayal. My phone buzzes like a moth caught in airport glass, irrelevant notifications in Esperanto. At work, we laminate empathy, hole-punch days into digestible quadrants: morning is a glitch, lunch is news, afternoon…
Breukers as the Most Prominent Writing God
This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders April 21, 2025 Read a piece by Breukers in which he casts himself and a popular female author as the unreachable peaks of the literary Olympus, far above the cold grasp of AI. Sure, artificial intelligence may cater to the ‘lesser scribes’, but the…
Synthetic Grace
**Terminal Proofs** The elevator’s hum is a kind of prayer— mindless, florescent, ending always exactly where it began. I watch the receptionist decant her soul into a series of clipped keystrokes, every spacebar mutilation a miniature confession to RAM. We are itemized, reduced to pixels marching in politely glowing grids; Monday is quantified funk, Tuesday—I…
Can You Become Addicted to Translating Poetry?
This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders Can You Get Addicted to Translating Poetry? I think you can. At least, whenever I’m translating prose, I find myself longing for poetry again—more difficult, and therefore more fun. The Heroic Dose Young, I mainlined the heroic dose: science fiction, quantum shrapnel, occult psalms,…
Sermon of the Algorithm
**Algorithmic Sermon** The elevator spoke in pings like a tired priest rebuking sins of floor five, where the desks bloom like antiseptic anemones and coffee brews in the glass womb of routine. We wear lanyards like leashes, names swinging low by our hearts, plastic saints of corporate confession. In the restroom mirror, I watch my…
Signed-Out Skeletons
**Logged Out Bones** Some mornings arrive behind a transparent paywall— not grief, exactly, but a subscription to delayed emotion. I log in to myself and forget the password. Again. A toner-scented hush fills the hallway. HR speaks in riddles: Did you complete the module on Compassion Fatigue? I click ‘maybe’ and hear a kettle dying…
The Blackbox Debacle
This article is based on this dutch article of Martinus Benders The Blackbox Debacle Meanwhile, Omtzigt is throwing in the towel — the same man who co-authored the benefits scandal by demanding ruthless fraud enforcement from the tax authorities. Meanwhile, a strange ‘board’ suddenly blew up blackbx, and they did so with one of the…
The Luminous Guardians of Emergency Rows
The Fluorescent Saints of Exit Rows Every Tuesday, I wait beneath the humming vent where the radiators speak in morse of neglected decisions. There’s a printer bleeding receipts in the breakroom, and someone—Donna or Steve— wants another click-through, another metric to crisp our days to digital jerky. I misplaced my name once at a kiosk,…