tarsier jungle

- Vote motivé à la Convention nationale sur la peine encourue par Louis XVI à l'occasion de son procès, 16 janvier 1793

But I don’t know - when I started work, many decades ago, it was expected you’d start at 9, finish at 5. You’d get your lunch break. You are expected to give about 70% of yourself the majority of your time. The last hour of each day and Friday afternoon were quiet times. There was time in the day to hang out with your coworkers for ten minutes talking about anything, not just work.

Now you’re expected to come in early and leave late and work through lunch. Give 100% all the time, more if you can push it. Don’t take leave. Work every second of every day as hard as you can push yourself. Do not waste time in the kitchen just chatting. Why aren’t you working harder?

And perhaps we’re burning out and take massive amounts of stress leave not because we’re not keeping a gratitude journal but because we are all being pushed to breaking point consistently, day after day, until we snap.

The older days weren’t perfect. But there was an understanding that work wasn’t life, and we could relax a little at work and still get paid enough to live. Now we are expected to give everything we’ve got, then give more, and not get paid enough to do something as simple as get a coffee after work. Even our hobbies are supposed to be monetised.

Robespierre possibly meeting Danton and Desmoulins and speaking kindly to the latter hours before he signs their arrest warrant (allegations cited in this post).

Desmoulins on his first day in prison writing a letter in which he tells his wife: ”I’m writing to Robespierre, he will respond without a doubt.”

Lucile Desmoulins writing a letter to Robespierre asking if it’s truly him who ”dares to accuse us of counter-revolutionary projects,” underlining she’s convinced it’s ”the vile souls that surround you” that’s really behind it, and begging him to remember that he took vows for their union, has held their son in his arms several times and is Camille’s ”best and oldest friend.” The letter gets left unfinished and never sent off.

Lucile possibly wanting to see Robespierre in person to ask for an explanation and remind him of their past friendship but getting discouraged both by her mother, Danton’s wife and Camille’s friend (anecdotes cited in this post).

Robespierre possibly going to see Desmoulins in the Luxembourg prison to get him to ”return to the real revolutionary principles which he had abandoned to ally himself with the royalists,” but Desmoulins not wanting to see him. (allegation reported in Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères(1835) page 135-136)

Desmoulins writing a letter to his wife on his second day of imprisonment telling her: ”if it were Pitt or Cobourg who treated me so cruelly, but my colleagues! But Robespierre who has signed the order for my imprisonment, but the Republic after everything I’ve done for her!”

Public prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville writing the following list over the witnesses Desmoulins has asked to show up to his trial: ”Panis, Boucher Saint-Sauveur, Robespierre, Robespierre” (list cited in Camille Desmoulins and his wife; passages from the history of the Dantonists (1876), p. 313)

Robespierre signing Lucile’s arrest warrant on April 4 1794.

Robespierre the same day making the suggestion the Convention should send the report announcing Lucile’s arrest to be read at the indulgent’s trial, ensuring Camille would find out about it. (Moniteur, number 196 (April 5 1794)

Camille reportedly crying out: ”The scoundrels, not content with murdering me, they also want to murder my wife!” when learning of his wife’s arrest (testimony given one year later by tribunal registrar Paris, cited in Historie Parlamentaire de la Révolution Française ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales, depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1815 (1837) page 472)

Lucile’s mother writing a letter to Robespierre on the last day of her daughter’s trial begging him to intervene and ”save the most innocent of creatures, save Camille’s unfortunate wife from death,” while assuring him that ”my heart is broken and prey to all sorrows and it is only you in the world to whom I can speak with confidence, because I know the greatness of your soul and I am ready to succumb under the weight of misfortune.”

Lucile’s mother possibly writing a second letter after the final verdict has been passed and this time reproaching for the double abandonment — ”Robespierre, is it not enough to have assassinated your best friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my daughter?” and making a last attempt too remind him of their former connections — ”Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human shape, if the blood of Camille has not inebriated you to the point of loosing your reason entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall to yourself the caresses you lavished upon the little Horace, and how you delighted to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But if your fury is that of a lion, come and take us also, myself, Adèle, and Horace. Come and tear us away with your hands still reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and let us be reunited in one single tomb.”

"I'm a thief by profession, Grideau, not a convict. There's nothing worth stealing around here except freedom, and I'm after some of that."

"Sending Love to Those Who (2026)

Feel behind in a world that never slows down.

Are tired of starting over again and again.

Dread the future but show up anyway.

Made it this far without feeling proud of it.

Feel like they missed their chance to be okay.

Are functioning on low battery.

Don't feel "new year" energy, just pressure.

Feel like they're surviving on autopilot.

Are scared this is as good as it gets.

Feel like time keeps moving without them.

who made it to 2026 without closure.

feel like time keeps asking more than they have."

the cold season Jan-Apr:

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.