Avant Guard Dog Studios

08/07/2024

⚡️📸 Lovely Photograph of a Japanese Bee Fly! 🐝❤️ The Japanese beefly (Bombylius japonicus) is a species of fly native to Japan and other parts of East Asia. These flies are known for their resemblance to bees, with hairy bodies and a suspended flight pattern. They are often found in open habitats such as fields and grasslands, where they feed on the nectar of flowers. Despite their bee-like appearance, Japanese bee flies don't sting and are harmless to humans. They play a role in pollination, as they visit flowers to feed, which makes them beneficial insects in their ecosystems. 📷: Unknown

08/03/2024

A jar of sea salt rests on the table     Of the woman whose home is at the edge      of the pavement in middle Vermont.Close..

08/03/2024

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. He is considered one of the most important figures in 20th-century science fiction...
Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is real and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies, as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion assembled by powerful external entities, such as the suspended animation in Ubik, vast political conspiracies or the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality", writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely."
Alternate universes and simulacra are common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroes in Dick's books", Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."[64] Dick made no secret that much of his thinking and work was heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung. The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory. Many of Dick's protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms.

08/02/2024