Aaaand here’s a functional preorder link! geni.us/TheOdysseyBook
10.03.2026 15:33
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A promotional image for a new book, the Odyssey a Modern Retelling by Liv Albert with the caption coming June 2026. The book is brightly coloured and illustrated.
Hi 👋 I wrote (retold) a book… you may have heard of it? Preorder now! Geni.us/theodysseybook
In all seriousness, I am SO proud of this. It’s the Odyssey, for children, but most of all it’s THE Odyssey. Faithful to Homer, contextualized and nuanced… and brightly coloured just like the ancient world!
They couldn’t have found a better example of the profound lack of understanding these machines and their promoters have of language, literature, and human communication styles if they had been trying to discredit AI!
LITERARY LANGUAGE IS NOT NORMATIVE THAT IS ITS ENTIRE THING IT’S NOT A MISTAKE IT IS THE ENTIRE POINT AAAAARGH
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Also, side note, how is that “clunky” sentence caused by an “aversion to punctuation”? What punctuation is missing? Does the bot (or worse, human!) who wrote that blurb think it should be “As well, ask men what they think of stone”? Because it surely doesn’t mean that!
“So fluid, in fact, that finding any traces of distinctiveness, creativity, or meaningful and intentional variation could be a sign that it wasn’t written by our pablum-creating machines”
Oh, sorry! I’m easily confused 😂. I don’t think I’d heard about what he’s working on next, somehow. But he seems to have the golden touch right now (pun intended!) so fingers crossed!
Honestly I don’t know! They clearly have some clever way of directing the energy, to end up with such flat faces.
I think it’s a good thing, surely? I don’t really have a strong view on the books or show (haven’t read or seen either) but I’m loving how much people are loving both!
The side of a road with an exposed flat face of rock with parallel vertical lines along it. There are trees with autumn colours on top, with a blue sky.
A highway through the windshield of a car. At the side of a road there’s a tall exposed flat face of rock with parallel vertical lines along it, and a few trees along the top.
The side of a road with an exposed flat face of rock with parallel vertical lines along it. A seam of orange and white rock cuts across it diagonally.
A highway viewed from inside a car going between two exposed flat faces of rock with parallel vertical lines along them.
When you build a highway in northern Ontario, you’re building through Canadian Shield. So sometimes, if you want to keep the road mostly flat, you blast through an awful lot of #SundayPixStone. Note the vertical lines—that’s where they drilled holes for the dynamite/blasting. (This is hwy 69).
A row of sculpted marble heads, seen in profile. The one closest to the camera is of a woman, with soft curls framing her face. The rest are further and further out of focus as you move away from the lens, due to the shallow depth of field used.
Two ancient and battered parish boundary stones, the oldest ones left in London. The one on the left is for St Clement Danes, and has an anchor carved into it. the one on the right is for St Dunstan's in the West, and has SDW carved into it.
Black and white photograph of a row of wooden groynes heading down to the sea. The beach is pebbles of various sizes.
Part of the stone circle and ramparts at Avebury. There is a large tree in the back right corner, and sheep are grazing amon the stones.
Here's your early warning for #SundayPix, it's #SundayPixStone. Show us sculptures, your favourite rock, rock formations, dry stone walls...
Remember alt text if you can.
my first piece (cowritten with Catriona Innes) in a print magazine comes out today: we interviewed 13 people, mostly trans women, about how the Supreme Court ruling has affected them for Cosmo UK
www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a...
Oh, I agree. There’s blame enough to go around!
And not to mention time pressures (often because of low wages/multiple jobs) and structural barriers preventing people from doing active hobbies/going to the gym/walking to work and school etc. Education solves very little when you have no time/energy/money.
I've admired @kevinsolez.bsky.social since he contributed expertise on Homer to Pharos when we were writing about the casting of David Gyasi to play Achilles. He's now hosting expert guests, including @sentantiq.bsky.social, at his "Homer Hotline" on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30u...
And no severance pay of course.
It’s a brutal country.
My understanding is that it depends on the state to some extent and is different if you’re unionised (though few are), but yes, in many cases in the US you can fire workers for any reason (*except discriminatory ones*) at any time, and little to no notice. “At-will employment” I believe it’s called.
Reminder that the Vocal Fries @vocalfriespod.bsky.social is a woman AND minority hosted podcast (which is actually rare in the podcast space!) about linguistic discrimination.
Our latest episode, because women know what’s up, is called:
Stop Protecting Chomsky
Kash Patel’s impromptu trip to celebrate with the US men’s hockey team at the Olympics set a poor example as Director of the FBI when an important kidnapping and ransom case should have been his primary responsibility, and etymologically that’s fitting. The word example came into English from Old French essemple “sample, model, example, precedent, cautionary tale”, with its spelling re-Latinized from the original Latin exemplum “a sample, specimen; a copy, transcript”, literally meaning “that which is taken out”, from the verb eximere “to take out, take away, remove”, made up of the prefix ex- “out” + emere “to buy, purchase” (from the Proto-Indo-European root *em- “to take”). When this Latin verb is instead combined with the prefix pro- “before, forward, for” we get promere “to take out, give out, bring forth, produce”, with its past participle promptus producing the noun promptus “readiness, facility” and the phrase in promptu “in readiness”, becoming the French and then English word impromptu in the 17th c. When this same Latin verb is combined with yet another prefix, re(d)- “back”, we get redimere “to buy back, repurchase, redeem” and its noun form redemptio “a buying back, releasing, ransoming, redemption”, which both came into English as redemption and transformed in Old French to ranson “ransom, redemption”, borrowed into English and eventually becoming ransom. But I guess that’s what happens when you have unqualified and contemptible government officials, demonstrating that famous Latin proverb caveat emptor “let the buyer beware”.
The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is RANSOM/IMPROMPTU/EXAMPLE #wotd #ransom #impromptu #example #KashPatel
Oh no! Fingers crossed for him to get out of there soon, and I hope he’s ok in the meantime.
Absolutely. Really frightening to be caught up in something you are entirely powerless to affect and that can’t possibly help you, just harm you.
Antiquité grecque et romaine : Dominique Côté a confirmé avec le vice-recteur à la francophonie que le programme « était désigné [en vertu] de cette loi ontarienne » (LSF).
L'Université cite un «avis juridique» pour passer outre.
buff.ly/hUwKjq6
#SOSÉtudesAnciennesUO #ONfr #DroitsLinguistiques
Timeline of harm to Franco-Ontarian students:
Oct 2025: French classics program suspended
Jan 2026: "Reinstated" after pressure
Feb 2026: Re-suspended after 10 weeks
buff.ly/UtgW0vq
#SOSClassicsUO #ONfr #LanguageRights #uOttawa #Ottawa
I don’t have any close friends/family who live there. But a colleague just told us that her father, flying back to Canada from Bangladesh (where he’s from) has had his flight diverted and an emergency landing in the UAE. So now he’s stuck there indefinitely. Very scary!
Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.
That's so cool! Congratulations!
Oh, I’m firmly with you on the annoyance of everyone clamouring for Instagram worthy shots instead of enjoying the actual site!
(I am not judging other approaches, I’ve just realised I maybe don’t think of it the same way as others)
Not to defend influencers, but I actually don’t understand why anyone would want a pictures of a landmark *without* themselves (or family/friends) in it. My own picture of a landmark is never going to be as good as a professional one, the only reason I want a shot is to remember being there. 🤷♀️
Tristan's first video back as a full time content creator! This video gives hope and practical calls to action. His voice is so needed for the times we're in.