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*sigh* Its that time of year where freshman high school classes start reading Romeo and Juliet.
And I'm just so tired of the "well they werent REALLY IN LOVE they were just dumb teenagers with hormones" take.
What do you mean "not really" in love? They werent real people. They are fictional characters. The story says they are in love. The omniscient chorus says they are in love. The themes of the entire play are built on the fact that they are in love.
So what does it add to undermine that except as an excuse to not engage authentically with the story? To suggest that actually it's the two teenagers fault that they died because they were being stupid and hormonal, rather than society and their families for the senseless hate that forced them to extreme measures? Does that seem like Shakespeare's intent? Does that seem like an interesting or useful reading, or as a cop out reason to role your eyes and refuse to engage with the play at all?
I understand that we are now in an age where "love at first sight" isnt really a valid literary trope anymore. Even Disney is taking shots at it. But this play was written in 1597- when the omniscient chorus tells you that they are in love, it isnt tongue in cheek.
romeo and juliet is about a certain kind of love that isn’t adequate, and it’s not the love of romeo or juliet!
it’s about the way their parents and families failed to love them enough, or failed to demonstrate that love adequately. it’s about how putting pride and honor and revenge above things like “love” and “the safety and happiness of your children” is a shitty way to parent.
idk i think it’s really interesting because that’s actually kind of a subversive message! the message “children have a responsibility to respect and obey their parents” was fucking everywhere in Shakespeare’s day, even more than it is today. it’s kind of a big deal to say “hey also, parents have a responsibility to love their kids more than they love themselves.”
Romeo and Julliet were a pair of teenage dumbasses. But teenage dumbasses grow up to be functioning adults all the time. Being a teenage dumbass is a step on the path to adulthood. It is the adults' responsibility to create an environment in which being a teenage dumbass is not a death sentence.
But I do want to push back on the idea that Romeo and Juliet are "dumbass teenagers."
The things people generally point to as them being dumb tends to be fast/impulsive decisions, but there are reasons in the narrative for why they are forced to make those decisions quickly. The violence and Juliets impending arranged marriage put them on a timer that they didn't choose. If they had waited, not gotten married, not been together on their wedding night- they might have lived, but they also wouldn't have had even those few fleeting hours together.
Juliets feigned suicide with the sleeping potion is supposed to allow her to sneak away with Romeo without escalating the bloodshed by getting Romeo accused of kidnapping, and without her being forced into the *deadly sin* of adultery if she were forced to marry while already being married. She BEGS her parents for more time, to delay the marriage to Paris so she can think of something better, and is told no.
And the plan WOULD have worked if the messenger had successfully reached Romeo- but didn't because of plague slowing travel.
So you know, they tried. And I think while it may appeal to teenagers to characterize them as dumbasses (teenagers love to criticize other teens, and then they can engage with the story by listing all the things THEY would have done differently), I don't think it's particularly fair to do so. And more importantly, I think the more emphasis we put on Romeo and Juliet being impulsive or dumb, takes away from the tragedy of the circumstances they were forced into, and undermines that their love was true. Their first conversation forms a sonnet, the rhyming couplet at the end is sealed with a kiss. They *should* have been together, and...come hell or high water....they would be together.
Students that I work with actually get really invested in criticizing the adults in the story, and the circumstances. Gen Z / Gen Alpha High schoolers care a lot about like the rights of children and youth, how adults treat them, how external circumstances impact characters pov and actions, and they pick up on all of it, and it’s so much fun every year.
To see kids go from ‘I don’t want to read Shakespeare, love is gross, school is dumb’ to boldly debating who’s more at fault for what happened to Romeo and Juliet, and also other characters like tybalt ! oooh the kids always love tybalt. and they blame Romeo a little for his death, but they also blame the adults, and the culture, and the messaging that both Romeo and tybalt are given as young men.
One student, a struggling reader I was working with, who is also one of our EL students, was completing an assignment this year where for part of a class, students take a character, write a paragraph about how that character would translate to the modern day, and then draw the modern day version of the character. He didn’t know where to start with the writing, so I told him to start with the drawing first, then we would work on the writing together. At first he didn’t know which character to even start with, so I read some of the shorter lines from some of the characters in the most recently assigned section, and I forget exactly what it was but it was something about Tybalt being described by another character, he stopped me. He said he wanted to do Tybalt. I asked him why and how he wanted to make Tybalt modern.
He started the drawing and while he worked, he told me about his older brother who taught him to play soccer, a fast and skilled athlete, who hasn’t been able to play much recently because he took a part time job to help out the family. Who laughs loudly and takes every opportunity to be active, but who also cares deeply for his loved ones and would defend them. He sketched out a (very rough sketch, he’s an athlete at an arts school, he’s doing his best) drawing of a tall boy in a soccer jersey, shin guards, cleats, and wrote in pencil at the bottom, ‘[his brother’s first name] prince of cats’ all lowercase. Then we worked on talking through his paragraph. At the end of class, when students could pick up their phones from the phone holder, he wanted to show me a picture of his brother, mostly joking with me, to try to convince me that he did actually put effort into his very quick very rough sketch. But also probably because I let him tell me about his older brother, who he clearly idolizes, as younger brothers sometimes do.
When the class got to the death scene and were reading and discussing it, this student spoke up and said he didn’t blame Romeo. He wanted to know how were the characters supposed to know that they are defending the same family (since Romeo had married in to the family secretly right before this fight scene) and wanted to know why no one taught them to talk things over first before fighting. He referred to Romeo and Tybalt as family a few times in that discussion, getting so specific about reminding other students that they’re related to each other now, and didn’t get the chance to figure that out because they always have to be fighting.
I think after this year, every time I read or teach R + J, I will always picture this student’s older brother playing the role of Tybalt.
Rothko wanted to paint basic human emotion.
So he painted red over red over red. Behind the colour
he was looking for light. In 1942 he painted
The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, where Iphigenia
is not a girl, but a black pine already
resined in grief. Above her the amnesia of light,
an umber sky, shadows spilling white,
the only motion the white hands of the wind.
The story of Iphigenia was never about the girl,
but the men who called for the blood of a girl
knowing that the winds would one day change.
The forest charred, the air stilled, deranged, and
the truth beneath it all is fear, was always
fear, the open grave, the charcoal line, the dead
growing out of the living like lichen, the pine
a blood-eyed child, the pyres loose stones
and living rooms. Dress it up in the white hands
of the wind. Call it need. Call it necessity.
Rothko wanted to paint basic human emotion
so looked behind the light and found blood
rushing to no end and no knowledge of end.
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The bill requires companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to have third parties confirm they’re following safety standards. Illinois go
The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday requiring frontier AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to have their safety practices audited by a third party. If signed into law, AI safety experts tell WIRED, it would be the nation’s leading check on the power of major AI companies.
The bill, SB 315, now heads to governor JB Pritzker’s desk. In a post on social media on Wednesday, Pritzker said he plans to sign the bill, citing a need to hold Big Tech accountable.
Since Congress has yet to pass any meaningful AI safety legislation, state lawmakers have happily stepped up in recent years to promote bills that show their constituents they’re keeping Silicon Valley in check. As AI tools become increasingly popular, and the companies behind them race toward massive IPOs, polls show that American voters are looking for more AI regulation.
As a result, safety advocates and tech companies have zeroed in on state legislatures as the primary battleground to hash out how these laws should look. OpenAI’s chief of global affairs, Chris Lehane, told WIRED last week that the company’s AI policy is now oriented around passing a series of similar state laws.
California and New York have the strongest AI safety laws, requiring tech companies to provide information about model guardrails and to publish reports on safety incidents as they occur. Illinois’ bill goes a step further, requiring independent auditors to verify that an AI lab is adhering to its own safety standards. Previously, no independent body was required to keep an AI lab accountable to its own safety claims.
“We're in a situation where the AI companies grade their own homework,” says Scott Wisor, policy director at Secure AI Project, a nonprofit that supports SB 315. “Should SB 315 become law, Illinois would require an independent auditor to check whether the AI labs in fact adhere to their safety commitments.”Got a Tip?Are you a current or former government employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at mzeff.88.
Wisor says it’s broadly expected that, under SB 315, AI labs could use the Big Four accounting and auditing firms—Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC—to audit their safety practices. He also says it’s possible that AI labs could tap members of the AI Evaluator Forum—a coalition of smaller research organizations including METR, Transluce, and Averi—to assess adherence to safety standards.
Illinois state representative Daniel Didech, a sponsor of SB 315, tells WIRED that state legislatures are playing an important role by shaping America’s AI policy and acting as a testing ground for any federal laws that might come in the future. “Laws like this create a world where it’s more likely for the federal government to pass something,” Didech says.
Corporate Interests
Illinois has emerged as a major arena in the ongoing fight over state AI laws. OpenAI previously supported a bill in Illinois that would let AI labs dodge liability if their models caused catastrophic harm. However, Lehane has since said the company’s blanket support for the bill was an oversight, and it never supported the liability shield in the bill. More recently, OpenAI endorsed SB 315.
“The Illinois General Assembly has shown real bipartisan leadership in advancing SB 315 and developing a thoughtful framework for frontier AI safety. As AI systems become more capable, clear expectations around safety, transparency, incident reporting, and accountability matter,” Lehane said in a statement to WIRED.
it really is quite bad for your military to have an image of itself as a warrior class. what you really want is for your soldiers to think of themselves as boring professionals who will fill out a report form if someone gets a little too warrior ethos out there
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Vellamo (also known as Wellamo) is the goddess of water, lakes and seas in Finnish mythology. She is said to be tall and beautiful, and is much respected by fishermen, who pray to her for good fishing luck. Vellamo can also control the winds to help sailors, and she controls the storms and waves. Vellamo has magical cows that live on underwater fields. Sometimes, during the morning mist, she brings her cows above the surface to eat water hay. Vellamo wears a blue dress that is made from sea foam. Her name comes from the Finnish word ‘velloa’, which means ‘movement of water and waves’. Vellamo’s husband is the Finnish sea god Ahti. She is sometimes described as “cold-hearted.”
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