Dmitri Gheorgheni
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dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Dmitri Gheorgheni
@dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
280 followers 260 following 1.2K posts
Editor of the h2g2 Post at h2g2.com. My fiction has been labeled 'poignant and humorous'. https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Dmitri+Gheorgheni&page=1&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=
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dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · Oct 17
I am happy about the little pictures in my new book. Which you can buy here. www.lulu.com/shop/dmitri-...
Page 179 of the book, which includes a small picture of TJ the cat looking smug while wearing a little Roman helmet.
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #montonous
the tick, tick, tick of the metronome marking the moments in the empty room: why doesn't it run down? some ghost must wind it up again. dust motes swirl in lazy dance: monotony, though monotonic, is not, in and of itself, monotonous. space: waiting for a story to fill it up again. Image: Vilhelm Hammershøi, Moonlight, Strandgade 20. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
December 14, 2025 at 1:51 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Snow and other seasonal sights. Stories, commentary. The Canary Islands. The Netherlands. A woodpecker. And lots and lots of ducks. Come take a look.
h2g2.com/entry/A88078...
This week's title is December Tales. Clockwise from upper left: A mallard duck swimming, a wadingbird on a moonlight night on a beach in the Canary Islands, a Dutch woman in folk costume laying a wreath at a graveside ceremony for fallen RAF crewmembers from the Second World War, a Christmas illumination with a snowman in earmuffs and scarf standing on an igloo, a stained-glass window with a Christmas decoration on the sill, A snow-covered tree with houses in the background, a rainbow bokeh of holiday lights, a sketch of a Christmas tree with tiny dancing figures beneath, a large statue of a woman, called Mamandyou, in the Canaries, an orange cat asleep wiht his head in his paws, and a strangely-streaked sky about chimneypots in Scotland.
December 14, 2025 at 1:16 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #apogee
Flirtations Selene pulls away: they both feel the tension. she is slightly elated, a dancer's high. she looks back, dizzy, sighs in coquettish ecstasy. draws closer, and the tides move up and down. apogee and perigee, distance and proximity between heavenly bodies can make waves for sure. in the meantime Gaia is busy working toward her own aphelion Image: Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan dancing. Project Gutenberg.
December 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
To the people who go to great lengths to make sure their website appears on the first search page, right under the AI slop, & prepare to assault my computer with 1500 trackers while hiding the content & then get all huffy about my adblocker - bite me. I take notes and cross you off my reading list.
December 13, 2025 at 12:02 AM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #successor
On Hearing the New Poet Laureate Read His Verses Aloud successor to bardic laurels will he sing the terribly beautiful songs young mothers know or tell us how the moonlight's dream is past pleasure or past pain or even a road not taken? it is obvious he has a thesaurus and is not afraid to use it he also knows lots of bird names and flower names and when to throw us off by tossing in a startling word like leaf blower he probably paid attention in school every syllable of his work proclaims 'I have deep thoughts' must do: he's won all the prizes but I miss the music from before: such islanding from grief and Gwendolyn's small communion with the master shore thank god for the internet Image: Man reading by firelight, Library of Congress
December 12, 2025 at 4:11 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #illicit
All the earnest discussions here in the 21st century make me want to cry. 'Were the Flintstones Christians?' 'Is a romcom about love in the Hereafter Properly realistic?' What have we done to the world, friends? Nobody gets a joke. because we're too busy listening for an illicit opinion. Imaginations do not soar. Our mental images are all tainted. We can only tell it's AI if there are too many fingers, but not when the smiles are frozen. Our smiles are frozen, too. Possibly in terror. All I can say is: have confidence in yourselves. You, too, have worlds inside you. Worlds no algorithm could possibly dream of. Someday the flim-flammers will burn out. Your light will shine again. Image: Omar Khayyam writing, Project Gutenberg
December 11, 2025 at 5:42 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #bewitched
Fans of hip-hop and techno may not know it, but there's a thing called the The Great American Songbook. It's an unofficial canon of songs from the mid-twentieth century that form the standard repertoire of jazz musicians. They're a key part of our musical heritage. The songs don't only influence the thinking of musicians. They sneak into our cultural heritage in other ways. Take the song 'Bewitched'. It's from a Broadway musical you may never have heard of called 'Pal Joey'. It has very dodgy lyrics for 1940: 'Horizontally speaking He's at his very best. . . Vexed again, perplexed again Thank God I can be oversexed again. . . ' O-k-a-y. . .but you've heard this song somewhere before. Maybe in a cocktail lounge. Maybe a saxophone solo. Maybe as a weird pun in a cartoon. Image: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bemildred from Walt Kelly's Pogo. Paper piano by Hallmark.
December 10, 2025 at 4:44 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Okay: I'll add my two cents to the font debate. I would never have dreamed they would get politicized, but I prefer Times New Roman because I have unusual visual problems and find sans serif fonts hard to read. I know everybody hates Papyrus, but I like it, so there.
December 10, 2025 at 4:11 AM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Some keyboard for you.

www.youtube.com/shorts/NpCWb...
Be Thou My Vision #h2g2
YouTube video by Dmitri Gheorgheni
www.youtube.com
December 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #consolation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONWd...
Consolation Number Three brings a rush of feelings Franz Liszt never intended the bubble of internal laughter the way the old gent's right hand so casually bobs over the moving left to give that low note a patronizing pat on the head as if to say Don't interrupt, you, and then moves on in a smooth flow the flood of mingled joy and sadness at the memory of Miss C whom I loved who first told me to watch Horowitz on the tiny portable tv in her parlor born in 1888, she missed nothing of significance in the world from the first airplane to the moon landing to the complex physiology of piano playing who taught me to talk like a German and play like a Romantic now my consolation for the loss of her and all the others is to watch Horowitz patronize piano keys Image: hands on keys, DG
December 9, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
archive.org
ENSHITTIFICATION in action 💥

Cory Doctorow on the Future Knowledge #podcast tells how a few firms captured the inkjet market & kept raising prices until ink became the most expensive fluid you can buy at $10,000 a gallon. 🐎

🎧 Listen & subscribe ⬇️
futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/ens...
December 8, 2025 at 4:45 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
AIs like Copilot insist that one of my major themes as a writer is the way people are consistent throughout time. This is probably a fair cop, which is why I really love this song that just showed up on my YT TL:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zGf...
If Stayin' Alive Had Been Written in 16th Century
YouTube video by Jonasquin
www.youtube.com
December 8, 2025 at 4:29 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #soliloquy
the famous actor stands in front of the green screen and recites the even-more-famous soliloquy while the camera moves in and in (so the backdrop added in Post will have its effect the music too will be added later manipulative loud) a soliloquy is a convention of the theatre the director told me we pretend the actor is talking to himself over there in the corner of the stage and that nobody hears him even though there's a whole audience out there mentally prompting 'to be. . . ' can't you see I'm soliloquizing? says Ko-Ko you have interrupted an apostrophe, sir! we soliloquize all the time we commune in our own heads we think no one is listening we are wrong there's an angel audience prompting 'to be. . . ' Image: Robert B Mantell as Hamlet, 1890. Library of Congress
December 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
h2g2postoffice.bsky.social
In this week's h2g2 Post: an exploration of citizen-solder responsibility not to commit war crimes, from Henry V to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice. See? We're not just cat pictures. (Yes, we have cat pictures.) High-type discourse at h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/bru...
Two 15th-century courtiers studying the Uniform Code of Military Justice and being surprised and skeptical about it. Montage by DG.
December 8, 2025 at 2:55 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #magenta
What's that? Oh, the Battle of Magenta, 1859. What do you think of it? Not enough red. Aniline dyes made money. Yes, chemistry was the AI of the late 19th century. What? The crypto. The thing that was going to make them all rich. It certainly made them more colourful. Why did they name the new colours after battles? Enthusiasm. Ironic, really. How so? All that chemistry made World War I really nasty. I see what you mean. Image: The Battle of Magenta, Wikipedia.
December 7, 2025 at 1:57 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
Snow, snow, beautiful, annoying snow. Scary stories. Funny stories. International policy analysis. (What?) More Egyptian jokes. Cats, cats, and more cats. Also a possum. You have to see this.
h2g2.com/entry/A88078...
This week's title is Winter Winds Blow. Clockwise from upper left: A black-and-white kitten in front of a fire, a snowy field, a grey-striped cat looking up from the sofa. a black cat with narrow yellow eyes giving the photographer the stinkeye for disturbing it, a black-and-white cat, ditto, a rock that looks quite alien on the Cleethorpes beach, a possum at the bottom of the (now empty) food storage bin, a red and a yellow apple hanging on a snow-covered tree, a snowscape in Austrian with mountain, and one more cat: this one's calico and standing alertly in the kitchen waiting for food to materialise.
December 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #augury
Starlings must have been the favorite birds of ancient augurs there's nothing like a good murmuration to conjure up some future forebodings okay, bird godlets: do your stuff Image: A mumuration of starlings that landed in the tree in my backyard one winter. And just sat there, making noise and looking at me.
December 6, 2025 at 3:52 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #chic
Coco Chanel was so chic she defined cutting-edge in style, in clothing, in comme-il-faut pity she was a nazi Eleanor of Aquitaine also stylish defined courtly love shame about the crusades Livia oh Livia grand dame of ancient Rome everybody copied her hairdos poisoned all her relatives do we sense a theme here? fashion is not a victimless crime Image: Ancient Egyptian woman dressed to the nines holding some kind of ceremonial axe, Project Gutenberg
December 5, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
daletudgehumor.bsky.social
Professor Worthington projected an image of a bat.

"The Vespertine Rabbit concerns a twilight creature who learns that becoming Real requires embracing darkness—"

"It's Velveteen. The fabric. For toy rabbits."

The bat, being a projection, offered no assistance.

#vss365 #vespertine #writing
December 5, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
debmaluk.bsky.social
hide and seek 😂 #birds
A House Sparrow leaning over on a branch trying to spot the Downy Woodpecker that is on the tree trunk on the right.
December 4, 2025 at 6:20 AM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #vespertine
Beuel, 1975 L'heure bleue: the sky makes your heart ache and your breath catch. Walk across the vulgar bridge that spans the river, the one where the little stone figure moons the opposite bank. Take a seat on the bench beside the slow-flowing Rhine. Surreptitiously slip off your shoes, feel the evening dew between your toes. The people over there in the romanesque church called it humor vespertine. Decide to go and ask them about it. On your way notice the twittering of the bats as they slalom down the row of poplars. Reflect on how much better a memory is than a photograph. Image: Guido F. R. Radig
December 4, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
h2g2postoffice.bsky.social
Tired of snow, and it's only December? Join us for some aesthetic appreciation of the white stuff. Then escape with us to more interesting prospects. h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/bru...
Snow, a metal fence, two skeletal trees, two snow-covered bushes. The tree on the left has a broken branch, hanging upside down. A long-tailed tit perched on a branch, illuminated by very low sunlight.
December 4, 2025 at 3:06 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
#vss365 #chivalrous
My First Chivalry Picture Book Behold GODFREY DE BOUILLON, the perfect gentle knight of the First Crusade. 'Gentle' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here: it means he graduated from knight finishing school. Mostly he turned the Holy Land into a hellhole for fun and profit, while leaving the women at home to do the boring things like farming, food preservation, and the production of clothing and medicines. Here he is with his bros, knocking down some castle gate or other. Super chivalrous, was Godfrey. See DON QUIXOTE in action. Half a millennium has passed, but men are still dreaming of the glory days: when all a dude had to do to be cool was ride around on a horse wearing a tin suit and fight other dudes for pinks. Don Quixote got this way by too much media consumption: all those chivalric novels and courtly love songs went right to the old geezer's head. The next thing anybody knew, he was terrorizing this poor barber and calling his shaving bowl the 'Golden Helmet of Mambrino,' a clear precursor to an outline quest, if you ask me. This is KING ARTHUR, who was very chivalrous, even though his wife was messing around with his best friend. Actually, it's William Warder. Mr Warder was a porter at the docks on the Isle of Wight in 1874. It was a community project, you see: photographer Julia Margaret Cameron was helping her next-door neighbor, Lord Tennyson, with his book about knights and ladies. So Idylls of the King was acted out in their backyards. Which version of knighthood do you find most chivalrous? My vote goes to the cosplayers: dressing up beats starting wars.
December 3, 2025 at 4:33 PM
dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
What I learned on social media today:

Tom Stoppard's play helped treat breast cancer.
Poetry can break an AI.
The Secretary of Homeland Security thinks the president can chase away hurricanes.

O brave new world that hath such people in it.
December 2, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Dmitri Gheorgheni
neilpollyticks.bsky.social
Alt text for those who need it. This is amazing.
Saved by Stoppard Sir, In 1993 my wife and I went to see the first production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (obituary, Dec I), and in the interval I experienced a Damascene conversion. As a clinical scientist I was trying to understand the enigma of the behaviour of breast cancer, the assumption being that it grew in a linear trajectory spitting off metastases on its way. In the first act of Arcadia, Thomasina asks her tutor, Septimus: "If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?" With that Stoppard explains chaos theory, which better explains the behaviour of breast cancer. At the point of diagnosis, the cancer must have already scattered cancer cells into the circulation that nest latent in distant organs. The consequence of that hypothesis was the birth of "adjuvant systemic chemotherapy", ", and rapidly we saw a striking fall of the curve that illustrated patients' survival. Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia. Michael Baum Professor emeritus of surgery; visiting professor of medical humanities, UCL r.
December 2, 2025 at 9:42 AM