lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs (and analysts) as readers of signs and wonders.

adam phillips, on flirtation

— Heather O’Neill, excerpt from When We Lost Our Heads

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

and finally…

cannot stress enough that donating to the internet archive to help them appeal this without going broke is the most important thing you can do right now. my day job revolves around fulfilling digital article and book scan requests at an academic library and a huge part of that is borrowing from other libraries that do controlled digital lending (incl. the internet archive!). copyright law is already hugely restrictive on what we can and can't lend, and we absolutely don't have the option to pirate anything for our patrons due to being a large academic institution. it's difficult to overstate just how bad this ruling could end up being for libraries that have digital lending programs, esp ones that rely on CDR for old/archival/hard-to-find texts.

hey so i made a patreon cos my income is very unreliable and absolutely about to dip after next week. no pressure, obviously + you can pledge as much or as little as you like; i also haven't made any tiers or anything like that because i want to continue to facilitate equal access to my writing rather than sticking it behind a paywall. if however you have the money to spare and you've found my writing (on here, on substack, wherever) helpful or enlightening or anything else, it would be hugely appreciated :~) thanks!

i also have a ko-fi if you'd rather just like tip me a couple of quid as a one off, lol. i just made the patreon bc my ko-fi tends not to get used very often and i'd rather something a bit more reliable

if i had tiktok i would make one where i lie and say that shirley jackson knew cottagecore would happen and cite the sundial as an example and i would lie about it in the most sensationalist condescending way and then after posting i would delete the app

“What you want is someone to take hold of you. Gently, gently, with love.”

— Tennessee Williams, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Collected Plays (Library of America, 2011)

Shirt that says "I ❤ PDFS"

Aeschylus’ The Persians (tr. Seth G. Benardete)

thinking about ariadne calling the minotaur her brother

Really interesting here is that Ariadne calls the Minotaur germanus, which not only means brother, but specifically "full brother" or "true brother" and is sometimes even used to refer to twins, when technically the Minotaur is a) her half brother and b) considered a monster. Like this quality that killing the Minotaur was a mistake, and that in the end the 'monster' who was her brother meant more and she shared more with than Theseus, who for all appearances is a good and heroic man, but in his abandonment and deceit is monstrous; and how that for that she thinks she's doomed to die alone (familyless! no one to bury her!), stranded forever on Naxos.

Peter K. Garrett, Gothic Reflections: Narrative Force in Nineteenth-Century Fiction