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pynchon
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5
.gitignore
vendored
@@ -1 +1,6 @@
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**/build/*
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.DS_Store
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/.hugo_build.lock
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/.hugo_cache/
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/public/
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/resources/
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@@ -1,174 +0,0 @@
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||||
@import "variables.scss";
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@import "mixins.scss";
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.bergamot-exercise {
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counter-increment: bergamot-exercise;
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.bergamot-root {
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border: none;
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padding: 0;
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margin-top: 1em;
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}
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.bergamot-exercise-label {
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.bergamot-exercise-number::after {
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content: "Exercise " counter(bergamot-exercise);
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font-weight: bold;
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text-decoration: underline;
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}
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}
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||||
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||||
.bergamot-button {
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||||
@include bordered-block;
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||||
padding: 0.25em;
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||||
padding-left: 1em;
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||||
padding-right: 1em;
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||||
background-color: inherit;
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||||
display: inline-flex;
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||||
align-items: center;
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||||
justify-content: center;
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||||
transition: 0.25s;
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||||
font-family: $font-body;
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||||
@include var(color, text-color);
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||||
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||||
&.bergamot-hidden {
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||||
display: none;
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}
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||||
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||||
.feather {
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margin-right: 0.5em;
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}
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}
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.bergamot-play {
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.feather { color: $primary-color; }
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&:hover, &:focus {
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||||
.feather { color: lighten($primary-color, 20%); }
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||||
}
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
.bergamot-reset {
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.feather { color: #0099CC; }
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&:hover, &:focus {
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.feather { color: lighten(#0099CC, 20%); }
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}
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svg {
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fill: none;
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}
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}
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||||
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.bergamot-close {
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.feather { color: tomato; }
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&:hover, &:focus {
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||||
.feather { color: lighten(tomato, 20%); }
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}
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}
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.bergamot-button-group {
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margin-top: 1em;
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}
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}
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.bergamot-root {
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@include bordered-block;
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padding: 1em;
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||||
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.bergamot-section-heading {
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margin-bottom: 0.5em;
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font-family: $font-body;
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font-style: normal;
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font-weight: bold;
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font-size: 1.25em;
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}
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||||
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.bergamot-section {
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margin-bottom: 1em;
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}
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textarea {
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display: block;
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width: 100%;
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height: 10em;
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resize: none;
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}
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input[type="text"] {
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width: 100%;
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@include textual-input;
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}
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.bergamot-rule-list {
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display: flex;
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flex-direction: row;
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flex-wrap: wrap;
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justify-content: center;
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}
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.bergamot-rule-list katex-expression {
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margin-left: .5em;
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margin-right: .5em;
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flex-grow: 1;
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flex-basis: 0;
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}
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.bergamot-rule-section {
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.bergamot-rule-section-name {
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text-align: center;
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margin: 0.25em;
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font-weight: bold;
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}
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}
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.bergamot-proof-tree {
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overflow: auto;
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}
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.bergamot-error {
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@include bordered-block;
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padding: 0.5rem;
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border-color: tomato;
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background-color: rgba(tomato, 0.25);
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margin-top: 1rem;
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}
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.bergamot-selector {
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button {
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@include var(background-color, background-color);
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@include var(color, text-color);
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||||
@include bordered-block;
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||||
padding: 0.5rem;
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||||
font-family: $font-body;
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||||
border-style: dotted;
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||||
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||||
&.active {
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||||
border-color: $primary-color;
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||||
border-style: solid;
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||||
font-weight: bold;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
&:not(:first-child) {
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||||
border-bottom-left-radius: 0;
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||||
border-top-left-radius: 0;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
&:not(:last-child) {
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||||
border-bottom-right-radius: 0;
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||||
border-top-right-radius: 0;
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||||
border-right-width: 0;
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||||
}
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
button.active + button {
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||||
border-left-color: $primary-color;
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||||
border-left-style: solid;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
margin-bottom: 1rem;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
.bergamot-no-proofs {
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text-align: center;
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||||
}
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||||
}
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||||
@@ -1,47 +0,0 @@
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||||
@import "variables.scss";
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||||
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||||
body {
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||||
background-color: #1c1e26;
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||||
--text-color: white;
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||||
font-family: $font-code;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
|
||||
text-align: left;
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||||
font-family: $font-code;
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
h1::after {
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||||
content: "(writing)";
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||||
font-size: 1rem;
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||||
margin-left: 0.5em;
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||||
position: relative;
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||||
bottom: -0.5em;
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||||
color: $primary-color;
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||||
}
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nav .container {
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justify-content: flex-start;
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a {
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padding-left: 0;
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||||
margin-right: 1em;
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||||
}
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||||
}
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||||
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||||
.header-divider {
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||||
visibility: hidden;
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}
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||||
hr {
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||||
height: auto;
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||||
border: none;
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||||
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||||
&::after {
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||||
content: "* * *";
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||||
color: $primary-color;
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font-size: 2rem;
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||||
display: block;
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||||
text-align: center;
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||||
}
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||||
}
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||||
@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
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||||
baseURL = "https://danilafe.com"
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||||
theme = "vanilla"
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||||
pygmentsCodeFences = true
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||||
pygmentsUseClasses = true
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||||
summaryLength = 20
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||||
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||||
defaultContentLanguage = 'en'
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||||
@@ -22,6 +20,9 @@ defaultContentLanguage = 'en'
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||||
home = ["html","rss","toml"]
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||||
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||||
[markup]
|
||||
[markup.highlight]
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||||
codeFences = true
|
||||
noClasses = false
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||||
[markup.tableOfContents]
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||||
endLevel = 4
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||||
ordered = false
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||||
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||||
@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ by one, leading to another `suc n` in the final type. This makes sense because i
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||||
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||||
Here's my definition of `Graph`s written using `Fin`:
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||||
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 24 39 >}}
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{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 23 38 >}}
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I explicitly used a `size` field, which determines how many nodes are in the
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||||
graph, and serves as the upper bound for the edge indices. From there, an
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||||
@@ -176,7 +176,7 @@ we will connect each of the outputs of one to each of the inputs of the other.
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||||
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||||
This is defined by the operation `g₁ ↦ g₂`, which sequences two graphs `g₁` and `g₂`:
|
||||
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 72 83 >}}
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{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 71 82 >}}
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||||
The definition starts out pretty innocuous, but gets a bit complicated by the
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||||
end. The sum of the numbers of nodes in the two operands becomes the new graph
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||||
@@ -238,7 +238,7 @@ operation when combining the sub-CFGs of the "if" and "else" branches of an
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||||
`if`/`else`, which both follow the condition, and both proceed to the code after
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||||
the conditional.
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||||
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 59 70 >}}
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{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 58 69 >}}
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||||
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||||
Everything here is just concatenation; we pool together the nodes, edges,
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||||
inputs, and outputs, and the main source of complexity is the re-indexing.
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||||
@@ -250,12 +250,12 @@ from the graph for `while` loops I showed above; the reason for that is that
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||||
I currently don't include the conditional expressions in my CFG. This is a
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||||
limitation that I will address in future work.
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||||
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 85 95 >}}
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 84 94 >}}
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||||
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||||
Given these thee operations, I construct Control Flow Graphs as follows, where
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||||
`singleton` creates a new CFG node with the given list of simple statements:
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||||
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 122 126 >}}
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||||
{{< codelines "Agda" "agda-spa/Language/Graphs.agda" 121 125 >}}
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Throughout this, I've been liberal to include empty CFG nodes as was convenient.
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||||
This is a departure from the formal definition I gave above, but it makes
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||||
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||||
BIN
content/blog/08_spa_agda_forward/thumbnail.png
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@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
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||||
---
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||||
title: "On Spiders"
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||||
date: 2026-03-22T01:03:00-05:00
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||||
type: onspiders
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||||
description: "Whenever I stay still, I feel the spiders weave their webs around me."
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||||
custom_css:
|
||||
- style.scss
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||||
body_start_partial: "spiderweb.html"
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||||
---
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||||
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||||
```
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||||
144
content/writing/pynchon/index.md
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
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||||
---
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||||
title: "Everything's Touch"
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||||
date: 2026-05-14T18:01:27-07:00
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draft: true
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||||
custom_css:
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||||
- style.scss
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||||
---
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||||
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||||
{{< halfpage >}}
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## Everything's Touch
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"Do you guys have any deuterium water?", he said to a baffled lab manager.
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||||
"You know, heavy water?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No... We don't have that...". She didn't recognize him as a student.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know where I can get some?", continued his barrage of questions,
|
||||
"What's a good chemical company? How do I go about ordering heavy water from them?"
|
||||
|
||||
What could this guy possibly have to do with heavy water? Why is he so determined?
|
||||
When he finally turned and left empty-handed, she breathed a sigh of relief.
|
||||
|
||||
Until, that is, another man arrived and made the same request: he wanted heavy water.
|
||||
Again, the lab manager refused him. For the rest of the day, she had
|
||||
a knot in her stomach. Having failed once, in order to remain under the radar,
|
||||
had some shadowy cabal switched representatives, and tried again to attain
|
||||
their goal?
|
||||
|
||||
Uneasy still the lab manager had dinner, opening YouTube™ on her phone to pass
|
||||
the time. On the front page, a video was waiting for her: "the ice cube
|
||||
is too heavy!". When frozen, you see, heavy water sinks instead of floating.
|
||||
|
||||
There was no plot. Two men, having both seen this video, had independently
|
||||
decided to replicate the trick. On the same day, believing it was their
|
||||
free will, they visited the same lab and spoke to the same lab manager.
|
||||
They felt the touch.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
> Roland too became conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him.
|
||||
> Discovered it so. ...so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> -- Thomas Pynchon, *Gravity's Rainbow*
|
||||
|
||||
Today, we live amidst an invisible ocean, but not in a physical sense;
|
||||
its tides don't pull us out to sea or push us towards the shore; no
|
||||
warm undercurrents alternate with cool water as we bob in the waves.
|
||||
Standing on a hiking trail and looking out at the path ahead, the world
|
||||
might look exactly as it had forty years ago. However, the ocean is
|
||||
there, mediated by
|
||||
|
||||
{{< /halfpage >}}
|
||||
{{< halfpage >}}
|
||||
|
||||
electromagnetism instead of fluid. Looking up at the sky,
|
||||
nowadays we are reminded of this by the numerous hurtling dots delivering
|
||||
the internet to practically every corner of the planet.
|
||||
|
||||
Reminded are we of its existence, too, when we hear it speak; when people talk
|
||||
about Geese and Velvet Underground; when friends repeat nearly verbatim the
|
||||
top post on /r/bald; when men show up to a teaching lab and ask for deuterium.
|
||||
Sometimes, these ideas are deliberately planted. Sometimes, they are analogous
|
||||
to your classic trends™. Sometimes, they just appear. An enormous behemoth
|
||||
stirs deep beneath the waves, and we sway with the current.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
> If it is in working order, what is it meant to do? The engineers
|
||||
> who built it . . . never knew there were any further steps to be taken.
|
||||
> Their design was "finalized", and they could forget it.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> -- Thomas Pynchon, *Gravity's Rainbow*
|
||||
|
||||
In _The Age of Surveillance Capitalism_, Shoshana Zuboff
|
||||
powerfully reframes the actions of tech giants like Google
|
||||
from the perspective of _behavioral surplus_. Google
|
||||
and Meta's gluttony for traffic patterns, written sentiment, satellite data,
|
||||
identified faces seen by smart glasses, all of it is the endless hunger of an
|
||||
influence-machine. Zuboff decries the "priests of the shadow texts",
|
||||
Skinnerian manipulators bent on seizing human agency for utopian or,
|
||||
more likely, capitalistic ends.
|
||||
|
||||
I don't think that's the whole picture.
|
||||
|
||||
The surveillance-manipulation machine, running at incredible scale and
|
||||
nudging us every moment we search or share or scroll, is ultimately
|
||||
unconcerned with truth. Truth is secondary to human behavior. While it
|
||||
reaches and connects a double-digit percentage of the world's population,
|
||||
the machine lacks any constraint or fundamental purpose beyond engagement.
|
||||
It's driven by unfathomably large probabilistic models entangled through
|
||||
several orders of interactions with other models.
|
||||
|
||||
This enormous amalgamation, joined nowadays by (probably) well-intentioned
|
||||
and only-moderately-grounded-in-reality AI™ agents™, is armed with state-of-the-art
|
||||
tools and unprecedented influence. With "engagement" its only loose target,
|
||||
it ceaselessly perturbs our daily thoughts like Maxwell's demon. Whole
|
||||
cliques of people revisit old shows, "discover" a new band, and try Science™.
|
||||
|
||||
{{< /halfpage >}}
|
||||
{{< halfpage >}}
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Among _Gravity's Rainbow_'s
|
||||
numerous subjects and themes is an intricate and densely
|
||||
connected network of markets, influences, and hidden agendas that overlays
|
||||
the political conflicts of World War 2. Individuals pursued their own economic
|
||||
gains; dealers replaced cocaine with powdered milk; Phoebus intentionally limited
|
||||
the lifetimes of lightbulbs; a man dressed like a Rocket smuggled hash past
|
||||
an international gathering on behalf of one Sour Bummer. All of this, though, the whole system, took
|
||||
on the life of its own: it was the Rocket-state. It acted in ways that were
|
||||
inscrutable, mysterious, and yet behind which, in moments of panic or paranoia,
|
||||
one could suspect intent.
|
||||
|
||||
The Rocket-state, as Pynchon described it, may or may not have existed.
|
||||
It certainly does not exist today. However, beyond Zuboff's cycle of
|
||||
dispossession, beyond the powerful surveillance state exposed by Snowden,
|
||||
today lies the Attention-state. It is the entity stirring occasionally under
|
||||
the surface of the internet's ocean.
|
||||
|
||||
I think this is the missing piece. Yes, Google and Meta are selling your
|
||||
Gmail inbox's contents to the highest bidder. Yes, the US government is
|
||||
in on this. Yeah, Meta's Ray-Bans™ are going to be cataloguing every face
|
||||
you encounter on the street, and yeah, the age verification laws are probably
|
||||
going to be used to further associate your identity with the rest of
|
||||
your data point-cloud. But these are just glimpses of the larger system.
|
||||
Those "priests of the shadow texts" are like GR's Freemasons: they perform
|
||||
the rituals, but the magic is elsewhere.
|
||||
|
||||
This is the closest we've ever been to a truly "unified consciousness".
|
||||
We've built ourselves a noosphere, but it's not what we thought it would
|
||||
be. It's not _just_ the "world at our fingertips".
|
||||
It's not entirely a reflection of human minds. There is an impurity,
|
||||
an additional active force that decides which whispers are carried across
|
||||
the ocean and which shouts succumb to the inverse-square law.
|
||||
|
||||
There it sits, this impurity, mixed in with most human knowledge, with the
|
||||
immediate awareness of nearly every event as it occurs in most of the developed
|
||||
world. It coats our facts like film, and when an acquaintance hands you
|
||||
his packaged opinion, it remains in his handprints, and your heart sinks
|
||||
like deuterium ice.
|
||||
|
||||
{{< /halfpage >}}
|
||||
93
content/writing/pynchon/style.scss
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
|
||||
@import "variables.scss";
|
||||
@import "margin.scss";
|
||||
|
||||
body {
|
||||
text-align: left;
|
||||
background-color: white;
|
||||
color: black;
|
||||
|
||||
/* reset to light mode */
|
||||
@each $varName, $varDefault in $css-vars {
|
||||
--#{$varName}: #{$varDefault};
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
|
||||
font-family: "Times New Roman"
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
h2 {
|
||||
font-size: 18pt;
|
||||
margin-bottom: 0.2in;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
.warning {
|
||||
max-width: $container-width;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
.halfpage {
|
||||
width: 5.5in;
|
||||
height: 8.5in;
|
||||
padding: 0.25in;
|
||||
box-sizing: border-box;
|
||||
border: $standard-border;
|
||||
flex-shrink: 0;
|
||||
margin: 0.25in;
|
||||
|
||||
h2 {
|
||||
display: block;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
@media screen and (max-width: 5.5in) {
|
||||
width: auto;
|
||||
height: auto;
|
||||
margin: 0;
|
||||
border-left: none;
|
||||
border-right: none;
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
p {
|
||||
margin-top: 0;
|
||||
margin-bottom: 0.1in;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
html .container {
|
||||
max-width: 12in;
|
||||
position: static;
|
||||
|
||||
&:not(main) {
|
||||
@include below-two-margins {
|
||||
padding: 0 $container-min-padding 0 $container-min-padding;
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
main.container {
|
||||
font-family: "Times New Roman";
|
||||
font-size: 12pt;
|
||||
line-height: 14pt;
|
||||
|
||||
display: flex;
|
||||
box-sizing: border-box;
|
||||
flex-wrap: wrap;
|
||||
justify-content: left;
|
||||
|
||||
& > h2 {
|
||||
display: none; /* copied title is on the page */
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
@media screen and (max-width: 5.5in) {
|
||||
display: block;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
@media screen and (max-width: 12in) {
|
||||
justify-content: center;
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
hr {
|
||||
padding-top: 0.1in;
|
||||
padding-bottom: 0.1in;
|
||||
line-height: 0.1in;
|
||||
}
|
||||
207
content/writing/spirits/index.md
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,207 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Persistence of Vision"
|
||||
date: 2026-04-18T23:26:00-07:00
|
||||
description: "Humid air swirls with colorful spirits."
|
||||
custom_css:
|
||||
- style.scss
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Humid air swirls with colorful spirits. They trace its invisible currents
|
||||
in spirals through open spaces, cling to branches, drip down stone faces
|
||||
and, awakened by the first beams of the rising sun, ooze newly out of trees
|
||||
like sap. Lulls of wind leave them gliding gently downward to be picked up
|
||||
again. From a distance, eddies of the spirits' malleable confetti travel
|
||||
along plains. With translucent jellylike hands and fingers they wave at
|
||||
each other in passing or hold each other in breeze-perturbed waltzes. Big
|
||||
luminescent white eyes take in with wonder and awe the only day they are
|
||||
ever to see.
|
||||
|
||||
Among them, Hex. An exception within the colorful milieu, he remembers, if
|
||||
vaguely, the mornings that precede this one. He feels an unbroken thread
|
||||
of identity dissolved somewhere within his red-pink body.
|
||||
|
||||
Spirits disappear at
|
||||
dusk, bursting like soap bubbles while the last rays of the setting sun
|
||||
still caress from behind horizon-clouds the darkening sky. They are born
|
||||
each day, leaping with passing fish out of streams and accumulating in
|
||||
drops of dew. An apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and a spirit from
|
||||
its genitive landscape. Again and again Hex encounters similar motifs.
|
||||
|
||||
Take Molly, who hangs now with Hex from a grapevine, the both of them agitated
|
||||
by the wind resembling pennants on some carnival string. The
|
||||
first Molly he met, who serves now for him as a departure point for a whole
|
||||
lineage of kindred spirits, was a deep red: she was born during a Fire.
|
||||
That day, overburdened clouds covered the sky like dense wool and
|
||||
unleashed after much unwanted loitering their promised downpour and
|
||||
lightning. Flames spread quickly through the birch forest beneath. The
|
||||
Fire raged for days, sucking in the surrounding atmosphere its gluttony
|
||||
and spewing it upwards mingled with ash. A haze of purple, pink, orange
|
||||
and yellow replaced the thunderclouds.
|
||||
|
||||
Hex was swept then by the Fire's incessant breath towards the birches.
|
||||
Flames danced among charred silhouettes that used to be trees.
|
||||
A great many spirits were being born, sizzling out of ember-glowing
|
||||
stumps and erupting in geysers above the flickering dance to drift upwards
|
||||
like hot-air balloons. Molly was among them.
|
||||
|
||||
They sat together on a ledge. His pink hand held hers. By some trick of
|
||||
their geometry, the surrounding cliffs gave them refuge from the wind. Hex
|
||||
sensed for what felt like the first time the weight of his body, a sort of
|
||||
agency. He wanted Molly to understand. He kept stumbling, espousing one
|
||||
flawed analogy after another, sketches of a painting that he didn't know
|
||||
how to finish, unable to get across the _feeling_, no, "comfort" isn't
|
||||
quite right, nor is "boldness", nor... She might have vaguely understood.
|
||||
|
||||
Molly herself wanted weightlessness; he saw the spark in
|
||||
her eye when she talked of waking up in the arms of a great column of air,
|
||||
carried up towards the ash-filled sky, one of the first that day to glimpse
|
||||
the whole ball of the sun. She spoke heatedly of the warmth and excitement,
|
||||
but also of the danger, of the many ways in which the Fire was capable of
|
||||
reclaiming the lives it just spawned. That's what she was doing, her face
|
||||
lit from behind him by the setting sun, when the first Molly popped out
|
||||
of existence.
|
||||
|
||||
For days the Fire and its remnants precipitated reddish spirits among whom
|
||||
Hex often heard tales of burning, rising, destruction. Thoughts
|
||||
of the Fire were in the air, exchanged by passerby spirits carried in
|
||||
currents for brief moments along similar trajectories. He found a Molly
|
||||
and reminded her of the day before, and saw that same spark in her
|
||||
eyes. They spent that day rolling like tumbleweeds through a nearby valley,
|
||||
talking in voices oscillating with their rotation.
|
||||
|
||||
Recent days replaced the dying Fire with anxious winds. Though the sun at times
|
||||
still paints fields white-gold and turns trees' leaves to verdant haloes,
|
||||
the air feels heavy. Newborn spirits are a deep blue. Molly's latest iteration
|
||||
is an iridescent cornflower-cyan. Words that used to evoke in her a subtle smile,
|
||||
imagery that resonated with her, things that Hex has long since learned to
|
||||
sprinkle into their chats to see her light up --- all this seems now to have lost
|
||||
its potency. A knot forms in his stomach at the swelling thought that soon he
|
||||
will have nothing to say at all.
|
||||
|
||||
It's the wind. It strengthens even now, augmented with dust, fragments
|
||||
of bark, torn leaves, fireflies. Dark clouds in the distance turn in circles
|
||||
on a pillow of rain-streak straw. Colored spirit-dots rush with helpless
|
||||
violence on the horizon. The storm draws nearer.
|
||||
|
||||
They talk --- Hex still clumsily searching for words --- but it is becoming
|
||||
harder and harder to hear. The sky is polluted at first by pioneering clouds,
|
||||
then enveloped completely. The sun is shut out. The rain, not straw anymore
|
||||
but billowing sheets, beats against their faces. There is no way to see
|
||||
and speak except by facing away from this relentless onslaught. Water runs
|
||||
in miniature rivers down their faces. Their hands tightly grip their
|
||||
anchor-vine.
|
||||
|
||||
Hex goes first. Slapped in the face with surprising force by a flying branch,
|
||||
he loses his grip and is carried immediately downwind. Molly grabs him
|
||||
with dexterity but halves thereby her own hold on the branch and mere
|
||||
seconds later is dislodged herself. The two cling to each other for a few
|
||||
moments before impacting rock and bouncing in different directions.
|
||||
|
||||
Having joined the assembly of dislodged detritus Hex tumbles upwards.
|
||||
Ground alternates with sky in his vision, interspersed occasionally with
|
||||
glimpses of Molly's cyan. In a customary spirit gesture he reaches out his
|
||||
hands for something to grab but finds nothing but raindrops and hail. All
|
||||
the while he accelerates towards the clouds, his gravity bizarrely
|
||||
inverted; precipitation and debris increasingly obscure ground. At
|
||||
breakneck speed a yellow spirit beaten to foam whizzes past him to collide
|
||||
into a wind-blue byflyer in a pine explosion spewing polychrome droplets.
|
||||
The newly-acquainted pair exchange introductions that Hex can't make out
|
||||
over a deafening howling.
|
||||
|
||||
With each crazed revolution around his axis he glances heavier objects in
|
||||
his vicinity. An entire birch, a survivor of the Fire unceremoniously
|
||||
uprooted by the Wind, scoops him with its willowy fingers and finally
|
||||
dilutes his momentum. The act of moving his head reacquires its familiar
|
||||
meaning. Hex dares to look around. Searchlight sunbeams pierce blackened
|
||||
clouds in rapid sweeps; lightning retaliates against the incursions in
|
||||
blinding, sprawling nets. Glimpses of brown flicker behind dense clouds
|
||||
and curtains of rain. Its orderly guidance of gravity and sunlight
|
||||
replaced by disagreeing gusts, a new forest orbiting an unseen center
|
||||
points in all directions at once. There is no sign of Molly.
|
||||
|
||||
Above is indistinguishable now from below, and left from right. Directions
|
||||
other than _inward_ lose their meanings. Inward too flies Hex's
|
||||
birch-mount, and he with it. Lightning-lit glimpses of brown stretch
|
||||
finally into a continuous window.
|
||||
|
||||
A vast beige clot levitates among the clouds, its colossal mass allowing
|
||||
it the luxury of unshakeable inertia. Dozens of armlike appendages
|
||||
protrude from its core, enormous in size compared to a single spirit's but
|
||||
spindly relative to the whole. A meteor of pine still engaged in
|
||||
conversation impacts the planetoid, sending a ripple through its body and
|
||||
forming a crown that is pulled as if by surface tension into a crater that
|
||||
rapidly narrows into nothing. A green band lingers on the giant's surface,
|
||||
then assimilates into the whole.
|
||||
|
||||
The colossus endlessly speaks. Its low voice rumbles in competition with
|
||||
thunder. Hex is shaking either in feverish terror or in resonance
|
||||
with the creature's speech. "`nonlinear turbulence approximated with
|
||||
a third-order term,`" it espouses in a choral superposition of
|
||||
spirit-voices, "`a butterfly with no wing scales climbs yet towards the
|
||||
cosmos`". Then suddenly a flash of lucidity: "`selena, the wind, the
|
||||
wind's everywhere...`". In the pauses between its phrases and words,
|
||||
a rebellious mutter of overlapping conversations reasserts itself only to
|
||||
drown again in the giant's estimation of language. Its arm grasp the air
|
||||
in that same customary gesture but there is an uncanniness to their
|
||||
movement; Hex can't help but suspect that the intent behind them is
|
||||
entirely alien.
|
||||
|
||||
With a sluggish wave "hello" towards no-one in particular, the giant sends
|
||||
Hex's tree into a new spiral just as the cycles of sunbeams all arrive at
|
||||
their individual troughs. The darkness drops again. The world spins
|
||||
dizzyingly around him while he clutches desperately for stability. When
|
||||
his vessel rights itself again, veering through some aerodynamic mystery
|
||||
into a semblance of stability, he listens once more to the colossus'
|
||||
endless tirade. At some point it must have given way to thunder. Specks of
|
||||
brown flicker in the distance. A spot of cornflower bobs nearby.
|
||||
|
||||
Molly rides unsteadily on her own arborous steed. She has already spotted
|
||||
him, and waves excitedly, then reaches out her hand. It is now or never.
|
||||
Hex plants his feet on his birch, having finally found his sea legs in the
|
||||
atmospheric ocean. He feels his outwards-directed weight, tries to stand,
|
||||
wobbles, tries again. At last he musters whatever spring his sloshing body
|
||||
is capable of, and leaps.
|
||||
|
||||
The spring turns out more than sufficient; he arrives with momentum to
|
||||
spare, grabbing Molly but dealing the final blow to her tentative hold on
|
||||
her tree and setting them both once again at the storm's mercy. She smiles
|
||||
and tries to speak, but he still can't hear. Hex wonders if she is
|
||||
remembering the Fire's column that lifted her that first day above the
|
||||
clouds. During his own birth, the flames had already cooled, but the hot
|
||||
air's purposeful ascent was not unlike the storm's lateral tug. But wait,
|
||||
he was born before Molly...
|
||||
|
||||
Their eternity suspended in the directionless void gives way. Features of
|
||||
the landscape drift into view. Rain abates; clouds part. Lightning turns
|
||||
to distant flashes in the corners of their eyes and thunder's rumble
|
||||
fades. Still nearly weightless they remain swirling in the air until by
|
||||
some trick of their geometry familiar cliffs cut off the wind altogether
|
||||
and leave them to splash with their remaining speed into their ledge.
|
||||
|
||||
They sit together in silence. His red-pink hand holds hers. For some time,
|
||||
they watch the landscape. Water drops from trees disturbed by wind as if
|
||||
from green straggler clouds. The setting sun colors the clearing horizon
|
||||
peach. The air is cool and crisp. Spirits form from pools of rainwater,
|
||||
flow along streams, and point luminescent eyes in wonder at the departing
|
||||
hurricane. An umber newborn's first words: "Magnificent! I just hope the
|
||||
butterflies are safe." Another responds, "I'm glad the turbulence is dying
|
||||
down".
|
||||
|
||||
Molly and Hex have not moved from where they were deposited by the last of
|
||||
the storm's force, and this time he squints against sunlight that streams
|
||||
from behind her.
|
||||
|
||||
"That was the strongest wind we've ever had! I'm glad I found you," Molly
|
||||
says. "There was so much chaos, but you seemed _at ease_ in the end.
|
||||
I guess it turned out pretty fun, but after all that floating, isn't it
|
||||
good to have some _weight_ again?" He can tell she's hinting at something,
|
||||
but he has no idea what that might be. Instead, he brings up the colossus
|
||||
in the clouds. What is it like to think the melange of thoughts of all
|
||||
spirits, each life enveloping the next like onion layers and tinting the
|
||||
final image? When it speaks its words, does it know what it means?
|
||||
|
||||
Hex still can't find the right words. Molly saw the giant, but didn't
|
||||
think too much of it. He wants her to feel the mystery, the awe, the
|
||||
unease at its incomprehensible gestures. This is what he is doing, his
|
||||
face lit from behind her by the setting sun, when Hex pops again out of
|
||||
existence, leaving behind a gentle scent of soap.
|
||||
25
content/writing/spirits/style.scss
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
|
||||
$color-muted-plum: #3d2b3d;
|
||||
$color-ashy-orange: #4a3428;
|
||||
$color-storm: darken(#1e2a3d, 5%);
|
||||
|
||||
html {
|
||||
background-color: $color-storm;
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
body {
|
||||
background-image: linear-gradient(
|
||||
180deg,
|
||||
$color-storm 0%,
|
||||
$color-muted-plum 5%,
|
||||
$color-ashy-orange 15%,
|
||||
$color-storm 100%,
|
||||
);
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
||||
code {
|
||||
background: none;
|
||||
border: none;
|
||||
padding: 0;
|
||||
font-family: serif;
|
||||
font-variant-caps: small-caps;
|
||||
}
|
||||
@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Untitled Short Story"
|
||||
date: 2024-08-01T20:31:18-07:00
|
||||
type: thevoid
|
||||
description: "The Everpresent Void was first discovered at a children's birthday party."
|
||||
custom_css:
|
||||
- style.scss
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
> I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and\
|
||||
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
|
||||
{
|
||||
"agda-spa": "https://dev.danilafe.com/DanilaFe/agda-spa/src/commit/828b652d3b9266e27ef7cf5a8a7fb82e3fd3133f",
|
||||
"agda-spa": "https://dev.danilafe.com/DanilaFe/agda-spa/src/commit/913121488069a20cdfd40777a8777eb3744c415e",
|
||||
"aoc-2020": "https://dev.danilafe.com/Advent-of-Code/AdventOfCode-2020/src/commit/7a8503c3fe1aa7e624e4d8672aa9b56d24b4ba82",
|
||||
"blog-static-flake": "https://dev.danilafe.com/Nix-Configs/blog-static-flake/src/commit/67b47d9c298e7476c2ca211aac5c5fd961637b7b",
|
||||
"compiler": "https://dev.danilafe.com/DanilaFe/bloglang/src/commit/137455b0f4365ba3fd11c45ce49781cdbe829ec3",
|
||||
|
||||
4
layouts/_partials/spiderweb.html
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
|
||||
<svg class="spiderweb" viewBox="0 0 197.21727 106.16592">
|
||||
{{ $spiderweb := resources.Get "svg/spiderweb.svg" | resources.Fingerprint }}
|
||||
<use href="{{ $spiderweb.Permalink }}#mainlayer"></use>
|
||||
</svg>
|
||||
|
After Width: | Height: | Size: 207 B |
2
layouts/_shortcodes/donate_css.html
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/donate.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}" integrity="{{ $style.Data.Integrity }}">
|
||||
2
layouts/_shortcodes/gmachine_css.html
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/gmachine.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}" integrity="{{ $style.Data.Integrity }}">
|
||||
3
layouts/_shortcodes/halfpage.html
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
|
||||
<div class="halfpage">
|
||||
{{ .Inner | markdownify }}
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
2
layouts/_shortcodes/stack_css.html
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/stack.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}" integrity="{{ $style.Data.Integrity }}">
|
||||
@@ -1,25 +0,0 @@
|
||||
{{- /* Note: changing the baseof template because the title, tags, etc. of a regular post are still valid. */ -}}
|
||||
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||||
<html lang="{{ .Site.Language.Lang }}">
|
||||
{{- partial "head.html" . -}}
|
||||
<body>
|
||||
{{ $writingcss := resources.Get "scss/writing.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $writingcss.Permalink }}">
|
||||
{{ $spidercss := resources.Get "scss/onspiders.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $spidercss.Permalink }}">
|
||||
<svg class="spiderweb" viewBox="0 0 197.21727 106.16592">
|
||||
<use href="{{ (resources.Get "svg/spiderweb.svg").Permalink }}#mainlayer"></use>
|
||||
</svg>
|
||||
{{- partial "header.html" . -}}
|
||||
<div class="container"><hr class="header-divider"></div>
|
||||
<main class="container">
|
||||
|
||||
{{- if .Draft -}}
|
||||
{{- partial "warning.html" (i18n "postDraft") -}}
|
||||
{{- end -}}
|
||||
|
||||
{{- block "main" . }}{{- end }}
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
{{- block "after" . }}{{- end }}
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
@@ -1,2 +0,0 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/donate.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}">
|
||||
@@ -1,2 +0,0 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/gmachine.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}">
|
||||
@@ -1,2 +0,0 @@
|
||||
{{ $style := resources.Get "scss/stack.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.Permalink }}">
|
||||
@@ -1,22 +0,0 @@
|
||||
{{- /* Note: changing the baseof template because the title, tags, etc. of a regular post are still valid. */ -}}
|
||||
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||||
<html lang="{{ .Site.Language.Lang }}">
|
||||
{{- partial "head.html" . -}}
|
||||
<body>
|
||||
{{ $writingcss := resources.Get "scss/writing.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $writingcss.Permalink }}">
|
||||
{{ $voidcss := resources.Get "scss/thevoid.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify }}
|
||||
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $voidcss.Permalink }}">
|
||||
{{- partial "header.html" . -}}
|
||||
<div class="container"><hr class="header-divider"></div>
|
||||
<main class="container">
|
||||
|
||||
{{- if .Draft -}}
|
||||
{{- partial "warning.html" (i18n "postDraft") -}}
|
||||
{{- end -}}
|
||||
|
||||
{{- block "main" . }}{{- end }}
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
{{- block "after" . }}{{- end }}
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||