New math New math It won’t do you a bit of good to review math …

Greg Martin 🇵🇸@yablonowitz.bsky.social · 1h ago

I’m surprised more people aren’t bringing up the poorly phrased line re: the Sirens: “What you most want is what you most can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you once had but lost.” There are things you can’t have but then there is the thing you MOST can’t have!

When Damon stared right into the camera and said "The Age of Bronze is Dying" and then Hathaway is like "A New Civilization Will Arise" I laughed out loud in the theater. Those were some CLUNKERS.

Pants ARE bad. The Greeks were correct.

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 2h ago

“Odysseus and his men and Telemakhos, are portrayed as wearing pants for significant parts of the film. In historical reality, the Greeks never wore pants during any period of antiquity and regarded pants as a quintessentially barbarian garment.” PANTS ARE BAD SIGN ME UP!!

Yes! It’s this phenomenon and I REALLY do not want it to be happening here bsky.app/profile/nogo...

Jillian@nogoodwyfe.bsky.social · 2d ago

the erosion of consent & user preference on social media started long before AI got added unsolicited to everything. nothing has ever asked if I want to see short form video (I do not).

A long time ago Zeynep wrote a brilliant post (yes, I know she's now Lab Leak Central Media, but ...) I thought about twitter making likes public, and why that started a kind of breaking of the system. It adds something to have likes as a counter but not individualized, vs the RT which is.

Litbowl@litbowl.bsky.social · 2h ago

Yeah dear god the two mutuals immediately showing up below THIS post. It's distracting, it's unnecessary, and it feels slightly violating. Sure, I could go click into the list of who liked every post, it's not private, but why would I do that?

THIS.

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 2h ago

hey @joshuajfriedman.com if there's one thing I might beg you to communicate internally - the (a?) core of bluesky users want opt-in instead of opt-out, because we don't trust social media corporations to ever do good thngs. It's a learned distrust, and it might not be fair, but it's there.

As others (including Wilson!) note - It's fine to make a modern guy with modern guy problems but call it The Odyssey. That's wholly in line with how myth is used. It's not fine (with me) to write really bad sentences. That's when I nope out.

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 2h ago

"I also cringed when Odysseus says to Penelope during their first meeting when he is disguised as a beggar, “Our age of bronze is collapsing.” ... no one during the Bronze Age knew they were living in the Bronze Age." This to me is when I gave up on actually liking the film overall.

how do I turn off the "liked by <mutals>" thing Bluesky just added. I don't fucking want that

there are so many works of classic lit that i read as a kid and never returned to. but every time i do re-read them having, you know, lived in the world for a while, i'm so glad i did. i was a smart kid, but there's no substitute for context.

My ice-cold boring take that will definitely not go viral is that a primary result with a margin of victory of roughly 1 percent tells you precisely nothing about The Future Of The Party.

Ok this is great. Enjoying reading while I have my coffee.

Spencer McDaniel@spencermcdaniel.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have a master's degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, I've studied the 'Odyssey' in Ancient Greek, and I've been writing about the ancient world for over a decade. This is my exhaustive review of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. #Odyssey #classics talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/a...

Congress is FILLED with much more adroit fakers who would have made an absolute meal of that shit, and would have trounced the scary buff Muslim. She just came off *wrong.*

Politics is fun because it's like THE FORCES OF SOCIETY and TEST OF THE ZEITGEIST and then it's a one percent margin that could have broken differently if the role of Haley Stevens was played by someone not cast for "weird and off-putting intensity" who raves about Israel coming to her in her dreams

I saw the Odyssey last night, went looking for takes, and read this link because a friend had shared it. SO FASCINATING. (It's long.)

Spencer McDaniel@spencermcdaniel.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have a master's degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, I've studied the 'Odyssey' in Ancient Greek, and I've been writing about the ancient world for over a decade. This is my exhaustive review of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. #Odyssey #classics talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/a...

She was amazing, I strongly agree with everything in this post. Also I got asked at an event a few weeks back to fantasy cast Dr. Liz in a pretend movie of OBSTETRIX and I've got a good answer now if I get asked that again 😂

Pajiba@pajiba.com · yesterday

Somebody Hire Samantha Morton!

"Emily Wilson doesn't understand this very basic thing," says the elite university professor, sure he's the one who is correct and is immune from the tides of sexism washing across both this specific discourse and the broader era of history in which we live.

That’s right

Caitlin Gibson@caitjgibson.bsky.social · 3h ago

I wrote about my bird son (and human daughter) in the newspaper 🐦‍⬛ Gift link for fellow corvid admirers: wapo.st/4q7fkvp

Some professional news ... I've been spending some time in the archives and am looking forward to having cake at all the events for this book.

So excited about this; I kept thinking Erin (and my own research) were wrong that there hadn't been a book on this before..?!

Erin Keane@erinkeane.bsky.social · 3h ago

Some professional news ... I've been spending some time in the archives and am looking forward to having cake at all the events for this book.

i know votes are still being counted but the more i look at this michigan senate map the more it becomes clear that it kind of looks like a mitten

hey guys maybe chill out about drawing conclusions about a state with notoriously bouncy county-by-county results before even 40% of the votes are in

Come see me at the Mill Valley Library THIS THURSDAY in conversation with Angela Hennessey! Super excited to talk about grief, culture, capitalism, and building inclusive death movements with her.

Author Talk: s.e. smith in Conversation with Angela Hennessy

All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture That Fears Mourning is a book about grief and mourning as collective activities best undertaken in community....

millvalleylibrary.libcal.com

We used to have standards

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 16h ago

This is the “toga party” on Bravo’s Summer House. Noooooooo.

11. these days i read a lot of non-fiction, and that is mainly down @lollardfish.bsky.social and @profgabriele.com, whose Bright Ages convinced me to look again at the middle ages in the light of modern research (as opposed to the weirdly constructed history in high school) so medieval scholarship

If your winning issue is trans women in sports, and you're struggling to uncover trans women in any league that anybody has ever heard of, then how do you keep trans athletes at the top of people's minds? Answer: You invent them. defector.com/the-right-ha...

The Right Has Created Their Perfect Trans Athlete | Defector

A lot of people in and around the WNBA are talking about trans women. In the aftermath of Indiana Fever role player Sophie Cunningham’s negative comments about trans people playing sports in an ESPN…

defector.com

One of the things I don’t think some get about the Wilson critiques of The Odyssey is that one of the only and best ways academics can make our work and expertise relevant and available to the public is to pick a hot topic or newsworthy story and use it as an entry point to that expertise/research

Today I had a giant buffalo (it’s a kind of fish. Ask @solomonrdavid.bsky.social for more info) on a light line and … after ten minutes it broke the line. I was trying to net it. I should have opened a beer and just sat down and let it swim around I guess.

could do worse looking for god

Derek Faraci@whwoolhat.bsky.social · 2d ago

Bet you didn't know that the Little Morton Salt Girl is an immortal being who existed before there was life on Earth.

I mean it's one banana, Michael dot meme

Ken Tremendous@kentremendous.bsky.social · 2d ago

That's what taxes are, man. That's the definition of taxes. "You are subsidizing things you might never use" man shut the fuck up. My taxes currently subsidize like oil company exec private jets, you think I'm upset at low-income people eating inexpensive bananas?

"I don't understand why you, a fantasy writer, don't appreciate the value of making bargains with the fae."

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 2d ago

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude