Vance Maverick
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vancemaverick.bsky.social
Vance Maverick
@vancemaverick.bsky.social
1.1K followers 940 following 8.2K posts
Computer programmer and composer in San Francisco

vancemaverick.com
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vancemaverick.bsky.social
the personification of Italian literature (Dante, by Botticelli, with laurels, cleanshaven)
October 30, 2025 at 4:17 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
My cat has just gotten home from a few days at the vet. He’s still a bit woozy, but apparently recovering (a kidney/bladder thing). He’s not ready for pictures, so here’s one from a few days ago.
White/tabby cat snoozing between my legs on the couch. He’s not tucked up loaf-style but sprawled lengthwise, one of his own hind legs sticking out.
October 29, 2025 at 2:39 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Fair. Here's the kind of thing I was thinking of (from op. 15 no. 2):
Three bars from a melody the first time around, with an athletic leap of a tenth The second time around, with the tenth now expanded by an octave. But! it comes back to the same register, rather than continuing in the stratosphere.
October 28, 2025 at 12:11 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse! Post a beautiful or adorable thing, please.

www.life.com/people/andre...
Andreas Feininger, Route 66 in Arizona, 1947. High-contrast black and white photo of a huge sky with many small clouds, over a highway and a low-rise townscape, centered on a Texaco station with the old star logo.
October 25, 2025 at 5:37 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Obligatory excerpt from Cage's "Silence":
From Cage's preface to the article "Four Statements on the Dance", in "Silence": While I was studying with Adolph Weiss in the early 1930's, I became aware of his unhappiness in face of the fact that his music was rarely performed. I too had experienced difficulty in arranging performances of my compositions, so I determined to consider a piece of music only half done when I completed a manuscript. It was my responsibility to finish it by getting it played.
October 24, 2025 at 7:35 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Somebody asks “which liberals?” and OP responds, “Do your own work.”
October 22, 2025 at 2:35 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Wow, can't believe he would write something so harsh and provocative! /s
Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995
October 21, 2025 at 4:59 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Quote-post with a frog to scare ICE

images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5...
The frog of a violin bow. Very subtly insubordinate, if at all.
October 11, 2025 at 12:45 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa
Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait as a Tehuana, 1943 Kahlo appears swaddled in elaborate traditional dress, with only her face exposed. On her forehead, above the iconic unibrow, appears the face of Diego Rivera
October 10, 2025 at 7:52 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Good point, yes. Looking her up, it's her maiden name, and I don't think it was consistently used in her time....but it is now.
Cover of a score printed in 1694 credited to "Mademoiselle DE LA GVERRE"
October 2, 2025 at 3:10 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
You’d think there’d be some clips of tennis action
Schoenberg and friends after doubles, LA, 1937
October 1, 2025 at 2:32 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Post something random or have an awful October.
Labels on a drawer in a file cabinet, reading “Worship” and “Resuscitator Bag”
September 30, 2025 at 8:22 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Is @lewis-carroll-bot.bsky.social constantly searching for quotations to like?
Lewis Carroll Bot was among those "liking" a post of mine reading Even the idea that you end up where you start makes sense, for a standard essay (“what I tell you three times is true”)
September 28, 2025 at 10:04 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
I’m having trouble visualizing this diagram of the school essay form. Are all the arrows pointing clockwise? (So it’s a six-point cycle with two of the points more important than the rest?)

(The word “shooting” might be the crux.)

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
An English teacher took me aside and drew a rectangle on a piece of paper, placed a shooting arrow on each corner of the rectangle, plus one halfway along the horizontal top line, and a final arrow, in the same position, down below. “Six points,” this teacher said. “Going clockwise, first arrow is the introduction, last arrow is the conclusion. Got that?”
September 28, 2025 at 7:47 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
The really good one is the Football Players, on the Berkeley campus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas...
Tilden’s “Football Players” (really more rugby in the details). The one on our right kneels to bandage up the calf of the other, who’s supporting himself with a hand on his friend’s back.
September 27, 2025 at 8:27 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
I know of three sculptures by Douglas Tilden. Two are sensitively posed sports scenes, like the baseball player in Golden Gate Park.

The other is the carnival of bulging flesh downtown, like a celebration of Soviet industry by Tom of Finland.

artandarchitecture-sf.com/golden-gate-...
The Baseball Player, near the Conservatory of Flowers. He’s pitching with a relaxed old-school motion.
September 27, 2025 at 8:13 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
www.eb-j.org/browse-artwo...
September 21, 2025 at 4:39 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
These were written to go on tapestries, with figures by Edward Burne-Jones:

www.eb-j.org/browse-artwo...
Flora tapestry, from a Burne-Jones site, but credited: "After Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, After John Henry Dearle, After William Morris, By Morris & Co."
September 21, 2025 at 4:39 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
For #smallpoemsunday, two motto-like poems of William Morris.
Flora I am the handmaid of the earth, I broider fair her glorious gown, And deck her on her days of mirth With many a garland of renown. And while Earth's little ones are fain And play about the Mother's hem I scatter every gift I gain From sun and wind to gladden them. Pomona I am the ancient Apple-Queen, As once I was so am I now. For evermore a hope unseen, Betwixt the blossom and the bough. Ah, where's the river's hidden Gold! And where the windy grave of Troy? Yet come I as I came of old, From out the heart of Summer's joy.
September 21, 2025 at 4:39 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Nobi is curious

#caturday
Face of white/calico cat looking down at the camera
September 20, 2025 at 6:54 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy. Not a selfie.
Cover of William Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity". It's a great book, but possibly more famous for its intensely nerdy title
September 19, 2025 at 9:00 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
They would mockingly print little excerpts from the provincial or lesser press, in small type at the foot of articles.

Here's one that I think contains a typo...
From 1941: Block That Metaphor! [From the Christian Science Monitor] These observers who have watched Mr. Countway maneuver, since 1913, Lever Brothers from a relatively minor producer into second place in American soap sales have long expected he would one day fling down the gauntlet in the floating soup domain. To have him bombed out from the rear just as the fray began didn't seem cricket.
September 15, 2025 at 7:02 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Love the rail remnants. Some vanished lines are visible as traces in online maps. Here's one in the Mission District of SF:

www.google.com/maps/@37.751...
Trace of a rail line visible in Google Maps, running diagonally across an orthogonal street grid. Zooming in closer shows how houses were built around it.
September 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Mutuals, you seem to be inflicting bad diets on yourselves. Could you maybe get together to enjoy ice cream, potato chips, dried figs and monkfish in one meal?
Three posts from mutuals (with one in the middle that doesn't seem to be about dinner): Mike Berry‬ ‪@professorberry.bsky.social‬ · 32m I’m in the running for either best or worst dad. Took the kid to the beach and the state fair today and he had ice cream for two of three meals today… -- ‪🧿kika🧿‬ ‪@the17thqueen.bsky.social‬ · 45m potato chips and dried figs is dinner, right? -- ‪pony pony huckabuck‬ ‪@spindlypete.bsky.social‬ · 49m i'm with o'brien, replicator monkfish is a fucked up breakfast
September 15, 2025 at 4:39 AM
vancemaverick.bsky.social
Surely I’m not the first to remark on the way the logo looks in a mirror
Image flipped vertically, revealing 69
September 12, 2025 at 5:34 AM