Anitya Pool

A museum is an exhibition of things that aren't broken yet. They're interesting to us because they've made it this far, and we're holding our breath to see how much longer they'll exist.


(Photo of Imperial War Museum, London – specialising in exhibits that had even longer odds of reaching our time than most – courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Mystery mostly solved

(Last week I posted a photo of feathers mysteriously left by an extremely fastidious predator. Just a few days later I found, 50 yards away, the above remains. So whatever left the feathers seems only to have plucked its prey on that log before transporting it to a less exposed position to eat.

Still no skull, but most of the other bones are here. So though the exact culprit remains unidentified, given all the data points, I'm leaning toward a raptor. Likely a great horned owl or bald eagle.)

Skilful Inaction

This is a meme that's been going around. Or rather, it's an artist's re-rendering of some AI slop that turned up in my social media.

Nothing makes my day like humans scraping AI content. I move we erect huge art centres that suck the electricity out of whole towns so legions of Homo sapiens can adversely possess mountains of AI data and use it to dominate the world.

Hey, folks: it's unethical to block that. Or even vote on it. It's business. Whatever that means.

Anyhow, I know a thing or two about religious faith. So let me reiterate what this meme is pointing out: your religious practice is about you.

What others do falls into the category of "stuff beyond my power". Whose power it falls into, depends on the worldview of your specific religion, but all of them teach that attempting to usurp that entity's sole right to order the universe is sinful.

The Buddhist term is "unskilful".

I'm not suggesting that Buddhists are any better at respecting that line than anybody else. Just that we agree with all other religions that patrolling the morality of others is useless, pointless, and a giant waste of time and effort you were supposed to spend patrolling your own.

When you ignore that teaching, you land in the red column as just another problem that whatever you call the Source of Creation must solve.

Which It tends to do by eliminating the context that gave rise to the problem.

In this case, Homo sapiens.

Now, we could get all Jesuit about this commandment: which behaviours we may morally patrol, which we may not, and how many hypocrites we can dance on the point of a pin.

But the principle – that religious practice is a precept that's broken when forced on others – is universal.

So it's safe to say it's enlightenment.


(HI-generated meme courtesy of Reddit user u/Ampersand37.)

WW: The Case of the Absent Hen

(A few days ago I was walking around a crumbling, overgrown abandoned farm near my house when I happened on a mass of feathers piled on a fallen tree trunk. Even more intriguing: no sign of their owner. No bones, no flesh, not even blood. Just a nearly complete, completely empty, suit of feathers.

I can't think of a local predator that surgical, though my experience in such forensics is far from exhaustive.

On another account I'm more confident: these are hen feathers. So whoever this neat and thorough raider was, he or she will have come over, under, or through the fence just out of frame.)

Rock Groups 2026

Here meet we again, at the end of another July, and I still haven't dropped the annual list of rock groups. (For the uninitiated, the meaning of that incoherent statement will be found here.)

So I'm going to let the embedded link above do the heavy lifting and dive right into this year's harvest.

Rock Groups Waiting to Happen, 2026

Hellbender
Arrow Stork
The Socks (nerd rock)
The Gorn
Hellschrieber
The Fulfillment Centre
Catflap
Zingibro
Die Schreibtischtäter
Knife
Aftermath
Rolling O
Fork
Medium Large
Little Tiffany and the Friend Zone
Shakuhachi
Stryx
Point No Point
Fox 3
The Shoals of Heaven
Widdershins
Yclept John and the Bystanders
Whackbat
Tigidou
Racer X
Mzungu
Roland
Letter Man
Spearcat
Pterry and the Pterydactyls


(Photo courtesy of Kameron Kincade and Unsplash.com.)

WW: 2026 teeshirt

(Here's this year's teeshirt. I suspect fellow meditators will get it.)

Words To Live By

"If you find life is whizzing by you, move away from the urinals."

Me, channelling Bashō.


(Photo of Jin dynasty chamber pot courtesy of David Straub and Zhangjiagang Museum.)