was already feeling insane from the Trump/Mamdani meeting but I now worry that my brain chemistry will simply never be the same

Zohran Mamdani: (wearing Phantom of the Opera mask) I’m pleased to announce President Trump has made me Prime Minister of the United States

big bugs bunny getting elmer fudd to marry him vibes in the white house currently i see

Pope Leo XIV understands technology and its relationship to art better any executive or AI-pilled techbro running the conference circuit.

on all levels i am haunted (complimentary) by h.d. rankin writing that "cicero's hatred [of clodia] in the pro caelio is not pure and distilled, it still shows by its intensity the attraction that he had once felt, and a horrified fascination"

one of my favorite ciceroisms is when he says something like "but that particular topic... there's no need to say more about it now" and then he says more about it for three paragraphs

On this eve of fifty Novembers the winds still howl the bell still tolls. My breath turns heavy as we drift into the long cold night. The Fitzgerald stirs beneath. I harbor their echoes and cradle her steel. My waves bear the sorrow of all I have taken.

edmund fitzgerald day is tomorrow but unfortunately i was listening to the gordon lightfoot song while driving b to the vet, unaware of the doomed x-ray i would be seeing in under an hour!! so probably i will never listen to that song again

newsletter update for all six of my loyal followers: i have an essay in the works that will almost certainly be completed late december (due to grief brain + work project deadline) and i think 2026 will shift to more of a translation focus w/ a fun little catullus series and (i hope) a cicero series

terrible grief day. my eyes are actually swollen from crying so much 👍

i am once again asking skincare companies to stop putting hyaluronic acid in everything

i went to a new allergist today for an updated patch test and it was wild... he didn't rush me, he listened to my questions, and he answered all of them thoughtfully & thoroughly. is this real life

HOT LIBRARY INTEL: you can ask your library to purchase specific titles for their collection, usually right through the library's website. Librarians can't know every single new title, nor can they mind-read what their patrons might want to check out. Give it a shot!

Today's a perfect day to post some beautiful blue glass! A gorgeous #Roman flask in the form of a shell, mold-blown from dark blue glass. It was used to hold perfume. Dating 1st century AD. On display at British Museum. 📷 me 🏺 #archaeology

[Exit Clown.]

b passed away on a tuesday and every tuesday since has been a horrible ramped-up grief day for me. i just finished crying again and angrily thought to myself "why am i doing so badly now when i was doing better yesterday" well, grief comes in waves and also it is tuesday

previously i wrote a lot of these sad existential thoughts on my private twitter account but i guess you guys get them now. i hope they add to my mysterious, melancholy aura

i struggle with such a constant fear of "not doing enough" or more specifically "not doing anything cool enough," and REALLY specifically "not doing anything cool with writing or translation." like i worry that i'm not doing anything that "matters" in a legacy sense... which is stupid!!!

this is one of my favorite lines in all of roman oratory

Japan's "Mundane Halloween" costume contest is back! Each year website DailyPortalZ holds a contest where people dress up as something super duper ordinary. Here's a thread of some of my favorites from the 2025 contest! #MundaneHalloween

the ecosystem of two random women giving each other compliments is one of the only things holding society up

today is my newsletter anniversary!!! honestly can't believe i have stuck with it (relatively speaking... i missed august/september) for a full year. sometimes i feel weird about it and contemplate pausing, but for the most part i am cautiously excited to continue writing my silly little essays

For #Halloween, here's the reclining skeleton mosaic from San Gregorio on the Via Appia. The Greek aphorism ΓΝΩΘΙ Σ(Ε)ΑΥΤΟΝ ('Know Thyself') is said to have been inscribed at the Temple of Apollo on Delphi (Pausanias 10.24.1). 🏺🦇 Image: Museo Nazionale Romano (Baths of Diocletian)

i took a nap this afternoon so my annual joke about being sleeping beauty for halloween remains evergreen. i am indeed at home, asleep

going to reply to comments later, but thank you so much to everyone who read this and held the grief with me for a little while 🩷🩷

not sure what to say about this one. i wrote it and i think it helped me. "grief is love with nowhere to go"

to be very real and vulnerable for a minute... i've struggled with social anxiety for much of my life and ESPECIALLY public speaking anxiety. as recently as 2020, i would barely be able to sleep the night before. to now be in a place where i can comfortably do it - and enjoy it!! - feels insane

the only thing i have been able to focus on in the past two weeks is acnh. i am very glad to have a source of distraction and temporary happiness. however the only thing i want to do now is play acnh

Today's "actually decent conversion into living space" real estate listing: www.redfin.com/MD/Baltimore...

pleased or dismayed to report: my aesthetic today is a cross between young dwayne johnson and laura ramoso’s german mother

chairing a committee sounds so glamorous but it’s actually a glorified way of saying it is your established job to do most of the work. it’s a deliberately unbalanced group project

sorry to anyone who followed me because i said something smart or funny one time. the moments are few & far between. i just love to yap

i do think cicero was so funny unfortunately but not necessarily in the sense of "guy who was trying to be ha ha funny"... at times he certainly did try and i mourn the loss of his compiled joke book. man loved a pun. but the peak of his humor is in his dramatic storytelling and chronic exaggeration

how incredible to be a modern caretaker of ancient literature.... i am abruptly feeling so emotional about and grateful for translation!!! it's a relationship between two people but it's also a one-sided conversation. i understand what they're saying and yet i will never fully understand

wowwww…. frankenstein (2025)……

got a little sign from b tonight 🩷

i have so many essay ideas both fun (my romans...) and depressing (my grief). wrt the grief-centric pieces i have both written & contemplated writing, i am so fearful of pity party and navel-gazing undertones. and so i have not written as much on the subject as i set out to at the beginning

in the midst of a real "i did not sufficiently appreciate being able to breathe through my nose" episode. i would rather have the sore throat from the beginning of the week

i miss my dog :(

and for my next essay i will collect excerpts of cicero letters that would have killed as social media posts e.g. tweets

rip cicero you would have loved voice to text writing tools. and the quote retweet

i’ve worked remotely so much over the past 5 years that i have completely lost my intuition for (1) how many items i can feasibly carry from parking structure to office (2) how long it takes me to walk from parking structure to cafe to office

Stolen from the Latin teacher FB group.

there is genuine comfort in knowing that i, in my misery, am merely another link in the chain of miserable people dating back thousands of years

The Latin adj. “pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum” and the Ancient Greek adj. “καλός, καλός, καλή, καλόν” should just be translated as “beautiful”regardless of gender (I.e. don’t switch to “handsome” for masc. (or n.) nouns. The Grks and Romans used a single term; we shouldn’t code switch.

crawling out of my first week without b. i miss her so much it feels like i'm bleeding from an open wound. she was the sweetest, smartest, funniest, most opinionated dog i've ever met and i was beyond lucky to spend 16 years with her. i'm trying to sit in the middle of those things. both can be true

I note that the Roman Emperor Vespasian made himself immensely popular by completely burying Nero's Golden Palace and building the Colosseum and public gardens on top of it. He was also known for being able to laugh at himself.

i am in fact doing terribly and would love to focus on literally anything. ideally a book or the clodia/clodius essay i abandoned in september but even work would do

absolute workhorse of a reaction image from over 100 years ago