So now there are 22 cases of dengue in my town in Italy. I got it once many years ago, visiting PR, and it was no fun, but I sure didn't think I'd encounter it here. Thanks, climate change

I do have serious issues with the choices the Radical Party has made in terms of alliances over the years, but Bonino was a giant

Emma Bonino, radical Italian politician who stood up to Vatican, dies aged 78

Militant feminist led campaigns to legalise abortion and divorce and went on to become foreign minister

theguardian.com

"Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterly’s Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, ...

Dr Anna Clark@drannaclark.bsky.social · 6d ago

D.H. Lawrence, English writer, author of Sons and Lovers (1913), was born #OTD 1885. His novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was privately printed (1928), banned, & published unexpurgated in 1960 after an obscenity trial. It was memorably spoof-reviewed by Ed Zern in 1959 in Field & Stream. Portrait NPGL

Bi visibility month! This one goes out to the long-ago psychologist - not mine, drug study - who brightly told me that in his view bisexuality doesn't exist. After long conversation he finally admitted in this strange, soft voice that I, at least, probably exist. Have kept existence thing up so far

Slightly surprising, but then again my part of PA was south of the Mason-Dixon in other ways, too, whatever the maps may have said: mydialect.us/quiz-standar...

Pro tip: when you have a sore throat from acid reflux, tipping your head back and snorting (sterile) saline solution from a piece of (sterile) gauze may help. Inhaling a (by definition not sterile) probiotic oral suspension that was in an identical little vial, not so much

tfw when John the Baptist gets dressed up all special for you

A little shocked to see that traffic to my rather dumb, out-of-date website has *quintupled* over the last month. It's clearly spiders and/or other bots: there's no other conceivable reason, plus it's all from the US (random, non-publishing-related places) and all visits to just the homepage. WTF?

It’s taken a year, but I’ve finally gotten it through my head that on a promontory, as on an island, what really matters is the wind direction. 33° C and scirocco (floor is damp, water is dirty, air is dirty, you want to die) is nothing like 33° and maestrale (water is limpid, life is hot but good)

Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter, my first love, the guy I wanted to be when I grew up (didn't quite work out that way). You’re going home, I guess 😢

Over the years I’ve gotten email for many Johanna Bishops: the county councilwoman in NC (nice lady, my favorite!), the yoga instructor in Sweden, the behavioral science professor in DE. A new one seems to have requested plumbing estimates in CA and I feel moved by this addition to our family

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Translator: Context please ffs. [Receives context.] Two sentences earlier this person seems to be pouring water into headgear, might there be a typo?

Because Language (becauselangpod)@becauselanguage.com · 4w ago

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Linguist: Now would you say that this one is a cup, a glass, or a mug?

Now and then I think about Gabriele D'Annunzio's penis shoes and wonder what on earth Eleonora Duse was thinking. I mean, there were also things like the invasion of Fiume and the fact that he looked like a rat, but those shoes, Jesus

This must be the third video of wonderful voices singing global scales I have seen, and each is mesmerising and has taught me things I didn't know. Such as: That these scales exist and how they, the bare backbone of tunes, reflect and unlock whole world regions' music. This is amazing.

New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

404media.co

After "five heatwaves" (please everybody stop calling them that and counting them), the cat now runs up meowing when I approach with the cat-dampening washcloth. She's not one of those pro-water cats. Cute but depressing

L'éclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon), realizzato e diretto da Georges Méliès (1907) Méliès utilizza la dissolvenza incrociata per sovrapporre progressivamente la luna e il sole, giocando con il concetto stesso di eclissi.

Somebody please make a map app that charts the shortest way to walk from point A to point B while maximizing shade at a given hour

It was cloudy up to an hour before, but sometimes things do work out the way you hoped

Frozen grapes will see me through

Today I swam over a mile in open water without fins or snorkel for the first time ever. It took me... a while (I'm small, slow, and over 50) but I'm so proud of myself that the world has to know

not to be confused with quesadilla

One thing about living outside your country of origin for decades is that you're prone to suddenly remembering phenomena you haven't thought about for years, which once seemed normal but have become profoundly alien and unfathomable, shattering your self-continuity. Grape-Nuts.

To everyone frustrated about how this part of their life has slipped away (3/4 of the once avid readers I know), I can't stress enough that you can retrieve it. A couple of years ago I had to read 30 books in 3 months; my attention span was soon back to pre-scrolling length and has stayed that way

Could a couch-to-5k for books get you back into reading?

With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit

theguardian.com

Thought I’d be getting out of the Lav Diaz adaptation of the Odyssey around now, but Telemachus (not sure who the actor is, the camera’s always 200 yards away) is still in Ithaca, walking towards his ship in real time, so we may be here a while

Anise K. Strong@anisekstrong.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just got out of Greta Gerwig's adaptation of the Odyssey. Opening with Calypso (Saoirse Ronan) was a fascinating choice, especially given the mic drop of Suzanne Vega that centers the opening storm & shipwreck where she rescues Odysseus (David Tennant). Timmy C as Telemachus chewed too much scenery.

I loathe everything Amazon stands for and have never bought anything on their site. But twice now I've ordered stuff from other websites and it's arrived in a goddamn smiley package. What's up with that? Is there a way to find out online who actually relies on Amazon fulfillment? I'm in the EU

I just found myself using the Velvet Underground song "Heroin" to explain a point of English grammar to a client and now I'm wondering how professional-sounding that was, on a scale of one to ten

This summer reminds me of covid in terms of the realization—here—that life can and will become very different from what you’re used to. That abstract fear of a "distant" threat can turn into concrete experience overnight. It's human to not get that till our noses are pushed in it, but it's awful

I only just noticed the name of a pizzeria in my neighborhood: "Pathos." Restaurateur, I do not think it means what you think it means 🍕😿🤔

I won't say the Tates' arrest is the best news ever because that's a descriptor reserved for other things, but it's pretty close. After reading that New Yorker article I have such a violent reaction to the name that just getting Tate Collection posts in my feed has prompted moments of distress