jrmilazzo

[jrmilazzo]

Carl Andre, "Carbon Quarry." 2004.

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Today’s necessary noise.

Maybe It's Reno, Maybe It's Reno. (Teen-Beat Records, 2008.)

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The term “wood wide web” first appeared in a 1997 article in Nature. In ���Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field,” Dr. Suzanne W. Simard and her coauthors traced isotopes to reveal how “Plants within communities can be interconnected and exchange resources through a common hyphal network, and form guilds based on their shared mycorrhizal associates.” Mycorrhizal fungi have a symbiotic relationship with plants, connecting through hyphae—filaments collectively called mycelium, the underground organism from which mushrooms sprout—to the green plant’s roots. The interaction can be parasitic but often benefits both. The study detailed in “Net transfer of carbon” shows nutrient exchange between paper birches and Douglas firs through mycorrhizal networks. Trees, it turns out, can help each other survive environmental stressors by sending underground pulses of nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon to struggling individuals nearby. I want to call that generous, but obviously every party profits. The tree, for instance, pays the message-carrier with sugars and fats gained through photosynthesis.

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Joe Milazzo, "brace yourselves for the complacent boil of imminent ridding." 2025.

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According to Waller, the Strasbourg poor were primed for an epidemic of hysterical dancing. First of all, there was precedent. Every European dancing plague between 1374 and 1518 had occurred near Strasbourg, along the western edge of the Holy Roman Empire. Then there were the prevailing conditions. In 1518, a string of bad harvests, political instability, and the arrival of syphilis had induced anguish extreme even by early modern standards. This suffering manifested as hysterical dancing because the citizens believed it could. People can be extraordinarily suggestible and a firm conviction in the vengefulness of Saint Vitus was enough for it to be visited upon them. “The minds of the choreomaniacs were drawn inwards,” writes Waller, “tossed about on the violent seas of their deepest fears.”

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Leroy Almon, "Evolution." 1980.

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Today’s necessary noise.

Yoko Ono / The Great Learning Orchestra, Selected Recordings from "Grapefruit." (Karlrecords, 2025.)

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Hunter gatherers prefer restraint because they understand that violent aggression inevitably exposes them to retaliatory violence. In one study of Amazonian societies, 70 percent of killings were motivated by revenge, and Paul Roscoe reports that his database of over 1,000 military actions in New Guinea small-scale societies shows that 61 percent were revenge based. Our violent proclivities are largely retaliatory rather than aggressive.

Wrangham’s view that the principal driver of violence in humans is coalitions of males rationally using aggressive violence to out-compete their neighbors depends on groups being able to do this at relatively little risk to themselves. Yet our vulnerability combined with our drive for revenge means this was rarely, if ever, the case.

Our ancestral environment therefore created evolutionary pressures that equipped us with a natural aversion to violence, a taste for vengeance, and the capacity to solve conflicts through cooperation. Our fear of violence, heightened abilities for empathy and communication, squeamishness about blood and guts, and innate dislike of bullies are, in part, solutions to the problem of violence.

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William Cowper, "The skin removed from the lower leg, exposing the muscles of the lower leg and the sole of the foot. Engraving after G. de Lairesse." 1739.

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Today's necessary noise.

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Balloons are preferable to conventional space probes for exploration of Venus for several reasons. For one, they can rely on the energy of the planet’s persistent and superfast westerly winds—which travel at speeds of more than 220 miles an hour, or roughly 60 times as fast as the planet’s rotation—to propel them around its circumference, reducing time spent in darkness, without solar power, to about 50 hours at a shot.

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James Rosenquist, "I Love You With My Ford." 1961.

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Today's necessary noise.

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In light of changing societal norms and audience requirements, tales are inevitably changed, and there are valid arguments for doing so. But removing all references to cruelty or deceit also has its downsides. Human nature is frequently ugly, but its presence in fiction offers a distance from ourselves not available elsewhere. The goddess Kali says in “Service,” “life continues by violence and death,” a sentiment echoed later in Penick’s version of “Wise Birds,” “I wish I knew stories of a better, happier world”; the story-cycle, as key to understanding this, is both essential to the narratives of Oceans as well as the reader. The best fictional self-awareness successfully performs an existential sleight of hand: we see ourselves more accurately when presented with alternate selves.

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Grant Wood, "January." 1940-1941.

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Today's necessary noise.