I’m at “give up and go to bed early” levels of cold.

I’m fun at parties.

Interviews with two of the handful of people to have seen the Edmund Fitzgerald on the lake bottom. Eerie stuff: www.freep.com/story/news/l...

What sucks about dragging Imane Khelif into the transgender sports thing again and again is she so dearly and articulately wants girls (especially Muslim girls) to feel strong and like they, too, can box. And we keep making her thing about our own anxieties and fears.

I remember, vaguely but solidly, when getting accepted to conferences to present papers was a mystery to me and to my peers in grad school. (The ones not lying about their competence.) Now I'm at the "suddenly in charge of something because of a friend of a friend" stage of paper giving.

“Revan” was actually a political position in the Old Republic, similar in nature to the “dictator” of the Roman Republic on Terra

my TL right now is a bunch of Star Wars references to real theories about how historical texts function and I couldn't be happier to have this tab open while I edit a bunch of tiny things.

revising some writing set to be published over on Syndicate for a symposium sometime in the next year. should be fun!

Lyle Enright's essay: earthandaltarmag.com/posts/dionys...

When I think of scholarship as cooperative, I include stuff like this. Not EVERYONE has to be interested in rehabilitating Western tradition by rendering it in more complex ways. You do need SOME people interested in it. Others can take up other attitudes. But it's cooperative, not zero-sum.

thinking of the pure cacophony of that clip of Donald Trump speaking at that NFL game, which felt like the confused American soul speaking its wretched paradox

But they also said that Trump is facing far, far more public opposition today than the government ever saw during the McCarthy era. American civil society is weaker than many had hoped, but it's also stronger than it once was. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Of the historians, lawyers, and scholars I spoke to while writing this, many said the same thing: What's happening now is worth than McCarthyism. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

The Greeks did have a particularly-constrained and separated social role for women, at least at the level of the (literate) urban elite. Romans, hardly models of gender equality, found it almost literally unbelievable. Euripedes may not be endorsing that social role however.

High rates of literacy are one of the most immense of modernity's miracles and people insist on complaining about it. It's so weird.

Sometimes I think there's nothing more "monstrous" to the classical Greek imagination than a powerful woman with her own ideas, tbh. "I know the full Horror of what I am about to do, but my anger, The spring of all life's horrors, masters my resolve."

Tired: “Does God exist?” Inspired: “Is God an asshole?”

I know that Medea isn't "monstrous" in the modern sense and it's partly because I have Frankenstein on my mind, but her otherness really stands out to me as I finish rereading Euripides's play: woman, foreigner ("Asiatic"), sorceress.

I think it's part of Shelley's strong reaction to Milton, and the ambivalent depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost. Frankenstein, like Dr. Moreau later, is also a critique of the Christian concept of God and His relationship to Creation, including Satan and Mankind.

Wandering fan spaces to see what people are fixating on re: Frankenstein and… I don’t think people know what monsters are like.

worst review about Frankenstein was one that complained that Mary Shelley was haunted by her mother so why is this story about fathers and sons best review actually knew stuff and pointed out how much Paradise Lost governs the movie’s interpretation of Shelley’s text

Is this a golden age of sculptures of, and by, women? Licoricia of Winchester, Jewish business women (d. 1277) & her youngest son, Asser. Sculpture by Ian Rank-Broadley, Jewry Street, Winchester (Hampshire) installed in 2022. Photo: Pat Goodall / Art UK.

ya-ha-ha

Some of the color elements also reminded me of Hammer movies. He had a lot of callouts

It's no coincidence that many consider the Creature to be the true hero of the story, and Victor the villain. (Note: a villain can be the protagonist of the story, and the hero the antagonist who opposes the protagonist.)

At last we have a Frankenstein movie that gives a shit about the creature. Mary Shelley did! He gets whole chapters!

Putting on Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”

“We will not compromise or promise to compromise but it’s your fault the government is closed.”

this album is insane. it’s great. I see your “God Is a Woman,” Ariana Grande, and I raise you Catholicism and the Tao.

(gets out box of notecards) I have prepared a speech in defense of Rogue One. The other box next to me is a defense of the concept of lightsabers and any movies with lightsabers in them. Both speeches will take two hours. Now…

Waiting in the wings of Grimserious Star Wars like Andor, there’s the story of Padme and abusive relationships. Way less inspiring than Andor. So they’ll never tell the story. Make it a book, cowards. Pick a great writer. Reinterpret a role that gave Natalie Portman of all people nothing to do.

which face makes me more irrationally and instantly angry Face of the Smug Money Man With The Glasses Always Explaining That Bad Money Is Good Money Actually Face of the Lady With The Hair Extensions and the Ballcap Always Saying That Racism Is Very Cool If You Look Pretty Enough Around Goons

These eels are strange and beautiful and I love them. I’d have an army of eels if I could.

side note but “regarding Dilexi te, here are my complaints about migrants” is like showing up to Thanksgiving dinner to tell your mom that you never liked turkey anyway. okay but what did you think this dinner would involve.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic but the US bishops have been pretty vocal, including at the USCCB level. This statement is from last week. www.usccb.org/news/2025/ar...

“Should we take an easy win and fund food for children and the elderly across the nation using funds we already have?” “No l. We pay for troops and ballrooms and that’s it.” apnews.com/article/snap...

ANNE! The way the vinyl unfolds.

Rosalía: a Catholic imagination. In this essay,

Just generally speaking, when an army of Catholic theologians show up excited, you know the party might be wrapping up

(an army of Catholic theologians show up, excited) The Enlightenment thesis of progress needs to be modified, you say? Well well well. Have we got approximately four centuries of books for you.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

I learned a saying once: “some people are saints; other people are so trying that they make other people saints.” So hey, if you manage not to hit JD Vance with a sledgehammer, heaven rejoices and you get slightly less time in Purgatory.

It’s pretty easy to say: JD Vance is a Catholic and he’s being a bad one. He is directly contravening the Church’s stance on human dignity in multiple ways, but his refusal to disavow antisemitism is especially disturbing given the Church’s own history and its own repentance of that history.

See the poetry of Timothy Murphy: gay, Catholic, alcoholic. The last lines here hit so hard!

fascism is always tacky as shit this is tacky as shit

He looks like an idiot.

Initial 'A'(pocalypsis) formed of a peacock at the beginning of the book BL Add MS 11852; Pauline Epistles, Epistle to the Laodiceans, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Revelation (the 'Codex Ulmensis'); 3rd quarter of the 9th century; St Gall, Switzerland; f.193r

Portrait of a young man. A stunning image by Alessandro Longhi, the son of Pietro Longhi of Venice.