I read somewhere that...

[i-read-somewhere-that]

A new translation of The Odyssey.

There’s a famous problem in Book 1 when Zeus talks about how mortals always blame the gods for their problems. And he says, No, it’s always their own fault, and as an example he cites a character called Aegisthus. He says, “Look at Aegisthus! He seduced Agamemnon’s wife, then murdered Agamemnon. We told him not to do it, and he got in a lot of trouble and was killed.” Now Zeus uses a certain adjective to describe this very dastardly character, amumôn, and the usual translation, the sort of obvious way you would translate this adjective, is “blameless.” The problem is that of all the things that Aegisthus is, blameless is not one of them...

...The a- part means ‘without,’ and the -mumôn part has to do with blame. So yes, it can mean ‘without blame.’ But it has an active as well as a passive sense—it can mean not only that you cannot be blamed but that you cannot blame other people.” In the end, the phrase I used is “a man who was not one to blame,” which you can read either way.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

David Lynch’s top five sandwiches.

Rereading the story now, I’m kind of astonished at how seriously Lynch took this whole assignment — meticulously describing the ingredients of each sandwich and how it should be prepared. I remember the way he would announce each name of the sandwich on his list with such gusto and force. “ONE: BLT!” he shouted. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lynch was so sincere, and while his films hold a mirror to societal rot and evil, they also delight in the ordinary pleasures of American life: diners and dives, coffee and pie, tractors and trailers, The Wizard of Oz and Elvis.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

Vanilla isn’t boring at all.

But almost none of the vanilla in global circulation comes from beans at all. More than 99 percent of the world’s vanillin — the chemical compound in vanilla that is predominantly responsible for its aroma and flavor — is artificially synthesized, mostly from guaiacol, a viscous oil commercially produced using petrochemicals, and a smaller amount from lignin, a waste product in the processing of wood pulp into paper. (A trace of lignin may be found in every book’s pages, which may explain why antique bookstores and the musty back shelves of libraries smell so comforting as their volumes decay.)

[i-read-somewhere-that]

The Erewhon story is a wild ride.

Aveline and Michio were not businesspeople; they were ideologues. They taught that their diet could cure basically any malady, cancer in particular. They started Erewhon in the bunkerlike underground space in Boston and mostly left it to a bunch of young men, none of whom had business experience beyond the psychedelic-light-show industry. A man could show up for the first time on a motorcycle and be running Erewhon shortly after. ... The world that Butler’s hapless, misguided narrator comes upon, the world of Erewhon, is an ironic reflection of the England Butler abandoned. The most notable aspect of Erewhon is this: People are prosecuted not for ethical breaches but for the crime of being ill. Citizens hide their illnesses at all costs. Doctors are illegal. And so this is the question I confront in Silver Lake: Could it be that America’s buzziest grocery store, its wellness mecca, was named in honor of the idea of incarcerating sick people? And no one noticed?

[i-read-somewhere-that]

Tilda Swinton’s partner made the Rosenthaler’s art for The French Dispatch.

Along with his gifted assistants Sian Smith and Edith Baudrand, Kopp relocated his studio to the abandoned paper mills in the French town of Angoulême to work on the paintings amid the frenetic atmosphere of the film shoot. Here, with the input of Anderson, he created Rosenthaler’s entire oeuvre, drawing on influences such as Frank Auerbach, Willem de Kooning, and Francis Bacon while retaining a distinct style capable of acting as the catalyst for a radical rethinking of painting itself. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

Scotty invented Klingon.

The Motion Picture is notable for being the first time in Star Trek history that Klingons speak Klingon, rather than conversing in English. An initial Klingon dialect was created for the movie by UCLA linguist Hartmut Scharfe, but wasn’t felt to be alien enough, so James Doohan (aka Scotty) volunteered to work on an alternative. Doohan’s skills with accents were already well known—after all, he played a Scotsman, despite being a Canadian with Irish parents—and he helped come up with a number of nonsense phrases that formed the basis of the movie’s Klingon language.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

On travel writing.

No book has made me think more deeply, more uncomfortably, about the impertinence of describing a place that is not your home – about what is owed to your subject, and what is owed to your reader, and about whether those twin obligations can ever be reconciled. ... Few travel writers have so guiltlessly delighted in their own subjectivity, and nowhere is Lawrence’s delight more evident than in Sea and Sardinia. He perceives the island with a clarity that electrifies him, like a person with new glasses, a new hearing aid, newly in love. It is the book – at least among his nonfiction – in which he allows himself to be most visible to his readers. Visible at the expense of the place itself, it’s true. Visible to the extent you sometimes want to look away.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

An ode to bad coffee.

I’ve never felt like I’ve succeeded in loving myself, at least not with any consistency, but some mornings I wake up very early and I’ve left a big mug of yesterday’s coffee in the fridge overnight because I knew I would want it in the morning. Maybe it tastes good or maybe it tastes bad but most importantly it tastes cold, and it helps me wake up, and I get to be grateful for it. Imagine being able to give yourself exactly the thing that you need. It doesn’t matter how small the aperture is, or whether this gesture leads to some larger consistency. It usually doesn’t; after all, it’s just coffee. But for maybe ten minutes or maybe a whole hour, love is a fixed point of arrival. Someone left coffee for me to find in the morning; someone loves me.

One of my favourite essays ever. Read it.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

At The Movies.

The bathroom mirrors made me and everyone else ugly but I didn’t mind; the way the lights in a movie theater bathroom pull at all the circles and shadows on my face has always made me feel glamorous, like a woman having a nervous breakdown in a film with subtitles. We settled into our disgusting seats with our popcorn bucket the size of a small body of water. 

We were in Delaware, not at the Lincoln Square AMC, but every movie theater is the same movie theater and all of them are the Lincoln Square AMC. ... It’s always four in the afternoon on a weekday at the Lincoln Square AMC, the most paint-chipped, decaf-coffee, senior-discount hour of any day. At the Lincoln Square AMC, it’s always the fuck-around century; streaming has never been invented, and no one has ever seen an iPhone. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

Obviously, the band was well rehearsed from playing constant gigs at The Cavern Club, but because of Lennon’s cold and the effect singing the song would have on his voice, the band only got one shot at recording ‘Twist and Shout’. McCartney and Harrison stay perfectly in tune and add their howling falsettos, and Lennon is giving his all. The result is simply one of the most exciting recordings of all time.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

But less has been written about those who work inside the machinery of the cloud. Though often forgotten, this community of technicians, engineers and executives is integral to the functioning of our increasingly digitised society. They are the caretakers of the digital, the wardens of our data, and the unsung heroes working tirelessly to sustain an ever-expanding array of digital objects, including our emails, cat videos, maps, non-fungible tokens, metaverse avatars, digital twins and more. The idea of digital caretakers might conjure science fiction images of empty, towering warehouses stacked with racks of automated machines. But these workers are very much flesh and blood. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

For the historical center, on the other hand, Beruto called for a series of interventions that closely resemble the notorious “gutting” proposed by Baron Haussmann for Paris: strategic demolitions aimed at rationalizing the circulation network, leading to the destruction of many neighborhoods. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

[From 2017]

Britain’s commercial radio stations have a network of blue “obit lights”, which is tested once a week and supposed to light up in the event of a national catastrophe. When the news breaks, these lights will start flashing, to alert DJs to switch to the news in the next few minutes and to play inoffensive music in the meantime. Every station, down to hospital radio, has prepared music lists made up of “Mood 2” (sad) or “Mood 1” (saddest) songs to reach for in times of sudden mourning. “If you ever hear Haunted Dancehall (Nursery Remix) by Sabres of Paradise on daytime Radio 1, turn the TV on,” wrote Chris Price, a BBC radio producer, for the Huffington Post in 2011. “Something terrible has just happened.” ... In the nine days that follow (in London Bridge planning documents, these are known as “D-day”, “D+1” and so on) there will be ritual proclamations, a four-nation tour by the new king, bowdlerised television programming, and a diplomatic assembling in London not seen since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. ... In 2014, the National Association of Civic Officers circulated protocols for local authorities to follow in case of “the death of a senior national figure”. It advised stockpiling books of condolence – loose leaf, so inappropriate messages can be removed – to be placed in town halls, libraries and museums the day after the Queen dies. Mayors will mask their decorations (maces will be shrouded with black bags). In provincial cities, big screens will be erected so crowds can follow events taking place in London, and flags of all possible descriptions, including beach flags (but not red danger flags), will be flown at half mast. The country must be seen to know what it is doing. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

The entirety of the TV show Russian Doll takes place at three am, even the parts in the daytime. From the early ‘70s to the mid-’90s, three am was the primary time of day in New York City, and for the whole second half of the twentieth century, more of San Francisco than not existed in a permanent three am. It has never once been three am in Silicon Valley. The four years I spent in college took place exclusively at three am, mornings and afternoons and subways and classrooms all crowding together into one long, forgetful, sleepless hour. ... This year has been a party and it has been a trap, a slow and ongoing three am. We stumble out into the sunlight, trying to forget what we’ve learned, trying to tell the story of a tragedy as thought it were a good joke, trying one more time to pretend that celebration could be a means of forgetting. I try to pretend that somewhere it is not still three am, that at the heart of every sweaty party all the remembering is not waiting patient as a monster, the fact of the next day closing in fast. 

[i-read-somewhere-that]

She is the Costume Designer for the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die ...

“Many of Daniel’s suits are required for incredible action sequences, of which we need 33 plus multiples of the same suit with slightly different sizing and technical requirements,” Larlarb explains.

And yet the tie pin always aligns with the pocket square. Flawless.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

That’s because lol and lmao have evolved, and are now predominantly used as tone indicators, explains John Kelly, the Associate Director of Content and Education at Dictionary.com. ... So what are we trying to communicate when we sign off our text messages with a lol? It’s not because we’re literally laughing out loud; rather, we’re using this lowly little acronym to try and soften the tone of our messages.

[i-read-somewhere-that]

So much of our digital world feels ephemeral by nature, passing by us at warp speed, but screenshots are like little fossils preserved in amber that allow us to slow down and capture pieces of our online lives.