Katherine Anne Porter

“She has simply an eye and an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork. She has given to this little story all her wit and observation, her blistering humor and her just cruelty; for she has none of that slack tolerance or sentimental tenderness toward symptomatic evils that amounts to criminal collusion between author and character. --From Katherine Anne Porter's Introduction to A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty (Doubleday, 1941) in The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne Porter (Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte Press, 1970).

I sought out Katherine Anne Porter because Austin science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor spoke at Kyle’s Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 West Center Street, 78640) and a review in the Hays County Free Press popped up for scrolling in my Kyle email. When I read the story, I merely recognized Porter’s name, not having read her before, but was nonetheless surprised that she is considered a local Kyle author. So, I went to the library. 

I found her pleasurable. Katherine Anne Porter is good company. I love listening to her  across our distances. In addition to a dozen essays here, some several times, I also read short stories and poems in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (Harvest/Harcourt Press, 1965, et seq). I read “Pale Horse/Pale Rider” through three times because that is what it took to understand the sequence of events. Clearly, even  though I read several other stories ahead of that, I was not prepared for a serious engagement. Nonetheless, she was an inspiration. I could have fattened these two anthologies with post-its bearing exclamation points or quotation marks tagging the juxtapositions, the clever and insightful phrases. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet 

Neighborhood Book Kiosks 

When Worlds Collide

Dealers Make the Show: ArmadilloCon 41 Day 3 

Dude, I am so Asian.

In my family, we always knew that we Hungarians are Asian, originating in the vast steppes between the Himalayas and the Urals. A recent publication in Nature pushed our ancestral homeland even farther east: “Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples,” by Tian Chen Zeng, Leonid A. Vyazov, et al., (2 July 2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09189-3. 

"Uralic languages, distributed from Western Siberia to Central Europe, are geographically separated from languages of the Eastern Steppes and far Northeast Siberia, but linguists have discovered ... high levels of typological similarity with languages in the ‘Altaic’ language area (Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic) ... To resolve this conundrum, some linguists have suggested a recent eastern origin of the population giving rise to later expansions of Uralic speakers (for example, a “pre-proto-Uralic spoken further east… probably somewhere… near both Mongolia and the watershed area between the Yenisei and the Lena, possibly as recently as 3000 bc”60)—a scenario compatible with our results. Future ancient DNA sampling from this region would allow for a more precise determination of the archaeological identity of the Proto-Uralic-speaking community, and illuminate the relationship between it and the wider social world of the West Siberian Bronze Age." (ibid)

They still name boys Attila. Among very many, consider Attila Losonczy, MD, PhD,  neuroscientist at Columbia University (briefly at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Losonczy). Bela Lugosi and Bela Bartók were named for Attila’s brother, in whose honor the village of Beda/Buda was dedicated. When I was about eight or ten, at our branch library, I found The White Stag by Kate Seredy, which was honored with Newberry Medal and Lewis Carroll Shelf awards. In that retelling, when the Magyars are surrounded, the Huns come riding out of the sky to turn the battle. 

Sometime in my mid-thirties to mid-forties, my brother sent me some references to the Samoyed, Ostyak, and Vogul languages of western Siberia and I found cognates to words such as "dog" and the numbers one, two, three, that I knew in Hungarian.

(Wikimedia. Marotta Commune.)

As for the paternal line, Marotta is a commune on the east coast of Italy, opposite Croatia. How they got to Sicily is lost to history. My father told me that his parents “came from Palermo.” Decades later, my half-brother explained that Palermo was just where they got on the ship that brought them here. They really came from a village called Sant’Agata on the east side of the north coast of Sicily, near the Straits of Messina and the "toe" of Italy. 

That the commune of Marotta lies across the Adriatic from Croatia touches on the fact that my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kovanics (Covanič); her father was Croatian having moved into the Hungarian realm of the Austrian empire to pursue business in pottery. Her mother and her husband were ethnic Magyars. That easy interaction across tribes defines the first Asian ancestors of the Hungarians. 

“… we show that the Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harboured a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal. …Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers.” (ibid)

I have B-positive blood.

As the various tribes were disrupted by as-yet-undiscovered forces, individuals migrated west and merged into new, admixed populations, now tagged for convenience as Admixed Inner Eurasians, “a term designating all populations in Central and Northern Eurasia that are the product of Holocene admixtures between West Eurasian ancestries and East Asian ancestries, including present-day and ancient Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic and Uralic populations, as well as ancient Scythians, Sarmatians and pre-Scythian nomads of the Iron Age Steppes.” (ibid) 

We have a big family. 

I believe that everyone does. Every ethnic tree you trace has tangled taproots and evidence of cross-pollination. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Problem of Cultural Patrimony

The Atlatl

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma 

Morality and the Philosophy of Science 

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

Humor

Martin Perscheid "Ceres Science" on Facebook
15 August 2024; see also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Perscheid

Previously on Necessary Facts

Tom Lehrer, Ashleigh Brilliant, and the Limits of Humor 
Big Bang Theory: More Friends Than Seinfeld 
Gilda Radner: It's Always Something 
Merry Newtonmas 2025 

One Million Pageviews

Because I get paid to write what other people want, I write whatever I want here. And I am cognizant of the fact that other people read this. I put the URL on business contact cards and in email signature blocks. Lately, more hiring applications ask for links to portfolios and other social presence. Now, I more carefully inspect my attire before I step out into public spaces. Some market decision-maker might not like my opinions but they would find out the truth eventually. So, we are better off not starting a relationship. 

And I do take pride in writing what other people need. I love the craft of writing. I understand technical writing—procedures, plans, policies—as stories because if a machine operator has to call their boss at 4:00 AM, then reading a meter can be socially impactful, and maybe the best way to make the story stop is to hit ctrl-z. 

Last Seven Days Most Popular Posts and Locations

Last 30 Days Most Popular Posts and Locations

Last 12 Months Most Popular Posts and Locations

All Time Most Popular Posts and Locations

Top Referrering URLs Past 12 Months

One common phrase used against AIs is they are “scraping the web” and not being truly creative. “Scraping” sounds bad. I prefer the word “gathering.” The word “harvesting” implies “planting” or “seeding” and for that, we have no evidence, but gather—not scrape—is what they do. It is likely that many of the million pages viewed were touched by non-sentient programs, gathering information. Some of those might have been malicious seekers of exploitable vulnerabilities. That is why NecessaryFacts is closed to comments. I also rely on Google’s Red Team/Blue Team because when we lived in Ann Arbor, some of our colleagues in user groups touted their reward payments from Google for finding those vulns.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Supplies and Demands 

Money as a Crusoe Concept 

Mutiny Aboard the San Antonio 

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Why I Served 

Setting Up and Using Three Small Telescopes

21-March-2026 General Observing - 14:00 - With a weather forecast of clear and warm (70F) tonight, I took out my usual telescope, an Explore Scientific 102mm doublet refractor. I also unpacked my 5-inch Celestron tabletop Dobsonian reflector from Astronomers Without Borders. I even took out the Sears 6307B/4 60-mm refractor that Laurel found on the street in 2023. My goal was to use this one with my iPhone 15 on a NexYZ adapter to take pictures, at least of the crescent Moon. 

The extra gear was too much weight for the 1962 hardware. I did get to see the Moon at 35X with the 20mm Huygens and then 46X with the 15 mm Kellner oculars. I had other telescopes set up and waiting for use, so I stopped fussing with the camera. With clear nights ahead and no work in the morning, this could be a project. All of us old guys on the astronomy boards started with telescopes like this. (See Mr. Olcott’s Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession by Thomas Watson, on Cloudy Nights as desertstars.)

I am going to make this joke again: With a 60mm doublet refractor and Huygens eyepieces, I can see what the universe looked like in 1750. 

The AWB Newtonian needed collimation after over a year in storage. The process was the easiest it has ever been. I went in to the archives here under \Astronomy\OtherInstrumentManuals\Collimation and found 63 files. I chose Astro Babys Guide to Collimation. After the introductory materials,  they say on Page 3: 

Rule 1 – Before starting collimation don’t assume that anything is out of kilter and check each element before adjusting anything. About 90% of collimation errors are down solely to the primary mirror so don’t jump in and start meddling with the secondary unless you are sure that there is a problem. Each stage of this guide will show you how to check the various elements – only if they are out

of alignment will you need to make adjustments.[The red is in the original.] 

They continue with a reminder to get all the tools you need before you begin and allow enough time to work this through slowly and do not over-tighten anything. Then on Page 4, they jump right in adjusting things that don’t need attention. “Collimation Step 1 – The Spider Vanes and Secondary Mirror Holder.” So, I put that aside and went to my bookshelf. Philip S. Harrington’s Star Ware: The Amateur Astronomer’s Guide to Choosing, Buying, and Using Telescopes and Accessories.  A quick look at his directions agreed with Astro Baby’s preface. Sighting through the collimating eyepiece and rotating the three adjustment screws and their set-screws, it was easy to put the donut in the center view. 

21:23 - with Meade 5000 14mm 82-degree. Messier 41. 

21:55 Messier 42 - Trapezium sharp. Then, Messier 41, Sigma Orionis, and. Mintaka. 

(There was a lot of playing with the Red Dot Finder on the AWB. I finally got it aligned into agreement with the telescope.)

Put the reflector on a different tripod and put it back in the storage shed with the Sears.

Continued with the ES-102. 

22:29 - Jupiter. wavery; in and out of focus; lots of atmosphere. 

Spent ten minutes lying on the picnic table bench looking up at Leo because it was not distinct at first. The view did not get any better with exposure.

22:32 - a last look at Sigma Orionis; another look around: the Big Dipper was behind the oak tree. I put everything away.

Overall, although I made no personal discoveries it was a good night out following an afternoon of setting up two telescopes that I had not used in over a year. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Observation Log (December 28, 2023) 

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Generative AI and Pseudographic Feynmans

The ability to train generative AI to impersonate humans is an example of something that can be done now because of new technology but which perhaps should never be done. 

I watched part of a video that is allegedly a lecture by Richard Feynman on why it will be impossible for explorers to Mars to return to Earth. In fact, there are many of these fake Feynman lectures on YouTube. They apparently do identify in the first seconds that they are an AI generated voice or graphic. They also match Feynman’s spoken delivery style, his turns of phrase and lecture pacing. I now appreciate the problem in textual forensics that confronted medieval scholars when they sorted out Pseudo-Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius.

By Greg Alleman from LinkedIn to YouTube.
Alleman has a career as an aerospace engineer.

These fake videos are intentional falsehoods which by their nature will replicate themselves particularly and others in general by creating an ecosystem that supports those lifeforms. Based on what I know about the evolution of life on Earth, I can only say that while some generative AI may be beneficial and others neutral, the impersonation of real humans is toxic. Videos from writers using generative AI will thrive creating and nourishing populations of pseudographia. It is inevitable that students who want to learn from The Feynman Lectures on Physics will land on one of these pseudo-Feynman lectures.

Two More Fake Feynmans

Yet Another Pair of Fake Feynmans

It is also true that each of us is responsible for determining the truth or falsehood of any assertion, even of our own assumptions. I never saw a P. F. Chang’s until I moved to Austin in 2011. I thought that it was local. I first saw a parody of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks as a hip or campy wall poster back in the late 1960s before I learned the original in an art history class at Case-Western Reserve University in the summer of 1969. The first YouTube video I saw was Weird Al Yankovic’s “White and Nerdy” in 2005. A classmate in a criminal justice class at Washtenaw Community College showed it to me and I really identified with it. The kids in the class explained the other half of it. 

One Archive of Genuine Old Feynman Videos

I enjoy surfing YouTube videos because I like to admire the creative works of others and I learn a lot from them. Looking for printing and typography, I found Elle Cordova’s “Fonts Hanging Out” and “Punctuation Marks Hanging Out.” I also watch Mathologer and Numberphile and I have been going to sleep with David Miller’s series, Quantum Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers in my earphones. (I am testing hypnopedia. I will post here when I can speak the vocabulary.) I also subscribe to Rob Words, Audiomachine, Microbe Hunter, Jordan B. Peterson, and to Dwarkesh Patel interviewing Sarah Paine, among a dozen others.  

A friend who got tired of the AI-created misrepresentations of historical fact warned me about YouTube. Now I understand.

Granted the warning, these simulacrae could prove valuable. Perhaps we cannot have too many copies or reconstructions. Civilization is fragile and literacy is even more delicate. 

Aristotle’s own library was regarded as a royal treasure by the Macedonian ruling family. When they fell out amongst themselves, the scrolls were buried to keep them from competing claimants to the throne. When they were recovered, they were found to have been eaten through. Later scholars reconstructed them, but not well. Fortunately, those were not the only copies; Christian monasteries had preserved others. The Renaissance began when Petrarch and Dante visited those scriptoria to recover the lost writings of antiquity. However, they started with Latin, which they could read. Greek texts did not reblossom until the Renaissance took root in Venice, where Greek was known. Since then, scholars have improved the correctness of our reconstructions. In addition, other works have been unearthed. Aristotle’s lecture “On the Athenian Constitution” was rediscovered among the Oxyrhyncus Papyri. Similarly, in our time The Archimedes Palimpsest was recovered and lately one more page was found astray. But all of that only provides more evidence about what we know to be a huge body of lost works. “Oxyrhynchus yielded a huge random mass of everyday papers — private letters and shopping lists, tax returns and government circulars ... maybe 50,000 in all.” — https://oxyrhynchus.web.ox.ac.uk/waste-paper-city The Archimedes Palimpsest is another recovery with story of several losses and rescues**. 

(https://archimedespalimpsest.org/). So, these AI simulations could prove valuable.

The reason that I listen to Prof. David A. B. Miller’s lectures on quantum mechanics is that I found the textbook in the stacks at the Kuehn Math, Physics, and Astronomy Library when I was working at the University of Texas. It was perfect for me, a good midrange guide for college sophomores with clear narratives that are integrated with the relevant and necessary mathematics and instructive problems. I looked for a video and found the series. 

Image from Amazon. The book is no longer available
from Cambridge Press. Miller has a new volume out,
Modern Physics for Engineers and Scientists 
https://purl.stanford.edu/hr256mp8317

On that basis, imagine that some catastrophe has erased much of our collective electronic memory. Disastrous as the losses would be, they could not be complete. A later generation could scan the books and other printed media and also use AI to rebuild  the videos from fragments. The future could enjoy reconstructions of significant portions of our achievements while inevitably deploring the losses which they know only from inferences. 

** On 6 March 2026, the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik reported the discovery of a lost page of the manuscript, now held by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Blois. The text corresponds to page 123 of the Palimpset's version of the On The Sphere and Cylinder, Book 1, Proposition 39-41. The reverse depicts a painting of Daniel surrounded by two lions.— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

About Richard P. Feynman

Genius by James Gleick 

Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow 

Observable Genius 

Merry Newtonmas 2019 

About Generative Artificial Intelligence

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights

ArmadilloCon versus Artificial Intelligence

Invisible Cheating and Visible Rights

Digital Literacy and Artificial Intelligence