Very Dubious

And while it’s true that sometimes the two words are used interchangeably, I think it would be even more interesting if their understanding of each other’s languages eventually improved to the point where the subtle differences in the connotations of “grace” and “mercy” could actually be appreciated.

“Mercy” is most often is used when someone deserves a punishment or other consequence, but they are spared by someone in a position of power, who chooses to withhold the punishment that would otherwise be just.

“Grace” usually refers to when an undeserving person receives something good (a gift or help or kindness) that is bestowed upon them by some other benevolent person or force.

The fuck it isn't and yes we will infact we have already done that.

In the 1970's and 1980's the commercial use of CFC gas in our refrigerator, AC and other sectors was destroying our ozone layer.

If we let it go on the ozone layer would've been completely destroyed and catastrophic things would've happened.

Because we wouldn't be protected from the UV rays. Skin cancer rates would skyrocket, our eyes would be damaged, human immunity system would be damaged, crops would fail and animal dna would be damaged to the point the food chain would collapse and a max extinction event would be triggered.

And guess what the world leaders did?

They listened to the scientists and every single country I repeat every single country signed a treaty to ban cfc gas use in commercial factories and cooling systems.

So yes, if a crisis like astrophage comes, we WILL work together as an intelligent species to solve the problem.

Humanity is cruel yes. But we are also kind and compassionate. We have enough courage to work together to save our species.

this is my best friend, the dipylon oinochoe. its a beautiful little wine jug from the late geometric period. 22cm tall. you may know it from such hits as “paper talking about the early greek alphabet,” or “paper talking about the early greek alphabet,” etc etc. i’ve been researching him for a project lately. and i think i’m the only one who understands him now.

anyways it’s one of the oldest longer inscriptions we have from the late 8th/early 7th cent BCE. everyone and their mother wants to translate this little guy. they’re all reading it and going “oh wow! its got a perfect hexameter at the start! ‘whoever of the dancers dances most delicately!’" and then they all go "Wait What Do Those Last Signs Mean.”

there are 24 different interpretations. but thats fine. whatever. beef over the last signs seems normal enough. you see that a lot. personally i think its too broken to really tell for certain (those fractures are a bit unfortunately placed tbh) but i fear i am also just a very skeptical guy when it comes to definitive translations so my take on that should be considered with a grain of salt.

but because im researching this oinochoe, i'm reading all these articles arguing over what it Means and what the Implications Are. and you would think… its 2025… we’ve kinda all agreed “pots aren’t people” for several decades… surely there’s an analysis somewhere that focuses Solely On This Pot’s Context... idk like trying not to focus solely on its inscription for once???

but no. no, this is too much to ask for apparently. everyone’s going “well it must've belonged to a dancer! lets talk about dance competitions and homer and the gymnasium how this is all reflected in this one jug!” someone even dropped this one line theorizing it was “passed around at a party,” like it has just been consistently assigned as belonging to a dancer you cannot escape this idea. i tried to find any different ideas. i could not.

so i’m stuck here going “Where Is The Context” because it seems to be, uh, Not Discussed Anywhere. every article is citing back towards stephanos koumanoudes (the guy who purchased it in 1880) but they are Also saying “yeah it was found in 1871! source: koumanoudes!” But He’s Not The Guy That Excavated It, Guys, Where Is It From? nobody is giving me the answer. my favorite one is culhed, he just says “under obscure circumstances,” which is quite possibly the least helpful way to describe this somehow nebulous provenance. but then culhed offhandedly cites someone else. just in the footnotes, as you do. and that someone is yannis galanakis, my new hero.

now yannis galanakis (2011) does not give a single flying fuck about the dipylon oinochoe. he is here for one thing and one thing only: an unpublished stirrup jar that was bought by a totally different guy. most of his article is just concerned about this stirrup jar, how it was sold with a skull (??), and Who Sold That Skull. but galanakis’ stirrup jar is, coincidentally, from this same excavation in 1871. so in his article, where he’s referencing all these people associated with private excavations northeast of the dipylon gate (around modern-day plateia eleutherias), galanakis casually drops the line “among the finds associated with these excavations are some of the most important examples of late geometric pottery, like the dipylon oinochoe.” this is 1) more than Literally Everyone Else I Have Been Reading has been saying and 2) PROVIDING PRIMARY SOURCES FOR THIS DIG?

and these sources.... these primary sources have never been mentioned in Any Other Publications re: the dipylon oinochoe??? except MAYBE one from 2013 (coulié) thats in french, apparently only available in print, and the nearest copy is a library 2hrs away from me (so i cant actually verify what she says yet). but every other article about the dipylon oinochoe is basically like “yeah, see powell 1988” -> “yeah, see koumanoudes 1880” -> “i bought this from some guy named ioannes, lol” and its just created this Massive Echo Chamber where the provenance is "Koumanoudes" and the context is "Dancer." when... we have... two publications... written by people who were actually involved in this private excavation (which to be clear here was very much illegal at some points, but ioannes palaiologos do not care abt the government saying Stop Excavating Please). these two sources are hirschfeld (1872) and rayet (1888).

the provenance that these 1870s/80s accounts are providing isnt Actually That Detailed, but there are parts that line up pretty well (ie, swords/spears/knives being found in the graves, murex on top, several layers of successive tombs) which are Totally Absent from later articles talking about the purpose of this vessel, of its inscription, and of its owner/transcriber (which i dont think can be determined Anyways [cf Arrington 2024, this is just a Normal Take i think] but like whatever i guess Pots Are People Now, according to Powell 1988+Binek 2017+Osborne 2006). i phrased it in my paper and my presentation as “its like this oinochoe been totally disconnected from its context” and its to the point where its so egregious that someone will, in one article, drop a reference to galanakis’ research on the excavation of 1871 (where he cites two eyewitness accounts) and not. Not Once have they looked into it.

because if they had. and this is the fucking crazy part ok this is where i Lost My Shit For A Solid Week. there is, in hirschfeld 1872, an identical oinochoe (number 48, page 147 in this journal) with the same damn height (22.5cm; powell 1988 says the dipylon oinochoe is about 23cm) and decoration (a grazing deer) and concentric lines its a goddamn identical piece just judging from the description of it (and hirschfeld very unhelpfully did Not include this jug among his plates). deers grazing arent very common in late geometric pottery, its mostly just the dipylon workshop cranking them out AND theres only a few oinochoe attributed to dipylon workshop so This Is Quite Possibly The Same Vessel (or so i thought, we'll get to that). the one problem is that this vessel is just NOT from dipylon??? its from the old military hospital in athens??? which was built south of the acropolis in 1834??? and they found roman mosaics during that construction??? so this mentioned vessel could actually have been found in the 1830s??? and again nobody has said jack fucking shit about this connection, afaik i am the only one who has ever actually sat down with these Implications all lined up in a row, so i had to try and disprove myself on my own like it was 5d chess. i was the “I Want To Believe” meme but if it was about the dipylon oinochoe being from somewhere near dipylon.

and i'm digging through as many sources as i possibly can find to prove there's a mysterious second jug that might be from this hospital area (which, granted, was still a funerary space during the geometric period). i went through all of hirschfeld's references to alexander conze's plates showing pottery shapes, but they just ended up also being oinochoe, which made me lose my mind even more. hirschfeld would be like "yeah this deer was in this position from conze taf VII-2" and you go "ok so whats conze taf vii-2 look like? oh my fucking god its a GRAZING ANIMAL AGAIN." at some point i ended up reading a phd dissertation from the national and kapodistrian univerisity of athens to know more about this military hospital?? and then i switched gears and went searching through coldstream 1968’s list of geometric pottery (it might be outdated now, but it was the only thorough source i could find atp) and went through Every Single Oinochoe from the dipylon workshop and almost every single one was totally different. like they just could not be this mystery oinochoe (in which case, I Would Have Some Really Bad News About The Dipylon Oinochoe).

until i found my second best friend. munich CVA 3 taf 112. who literally nobody except me gives a shit about. its taf description is 2 paragraphs long. its the exact same height as these two aforementioned oinochoe. it has the exact same deer grazing motif. fuck it, its even got an unknown provenance because it was acquired from Some Guy Named Paul in 1907 (who also has connections to people like furtwängler [most unfortunate last name ever], another guy who wrote about the dipylon oinochoe in 1881). so in my quest to achieve some sort of emotional resolution here i possibly found a sister vessel to the dipylon oinochoe??? and maybe even that jug's provenance. who knows. i dont wanna say anything definitive yet. also if anyone has access to paul julius arndt's personal papers and especially his financial records, hit me up, because where the fuck did he get this identical looking jug.

however. most modern scholarship about the dipylon oinochoe does not care about munich cva 3 taf 112 (and its similarities to the dipylon oinochoe), or the few references to the 1871 excavations at palatia eleutherias several blocks northeast of the dipylon gate (and what little context/descriptions they provide of funerary remains), because they do not care about the dipylon oinochoe. they care about the letters inscribed on it, and they want to debate the meanings of those letters in a self-inflicted vacuum devoid of all other evidence beyond 35 legible signs and 11 fragmentary/illegible ones.

I wish they would realize that universal healthcare doesn’t mean they HAVE to get healthcare through the state, just that it is there. You can still pay millions of dollars out of pocket for your own treatment at a private hospital.

America actually has terrible healthcare compared to a lot of nations with socialized medicine:

‘Don’t you two FUCKING dare!’

And leaves.

Several large coffees, bottles of wine and a pile of Eccles cakes and a very long reading and interpretation session later Crowley sits back.

‘Beelzebub and Gabriel, huh? Did not see that coming.’

‘Never mind that, dear,’ Aziraphale says, as he continues carving symbols onto the floor. ‘There. That should do it. The Metatron can’t get in here now.’

‘And you?’ Crowley asks delicately. Aziraphale stands up and primly clasps his hands across his stomach.

‘I have no intention of going up to heaven under any circumstances and especially not now I know how it ends.’ He says. It’s his I Will Not Be Moved tone. Crowley knows it well. He is reassured.

‘Well, maybe pop up and get Muriel. But after that we seal up that lift, agreed?’ Crowley adds.

‘Agreed.’

‘Excellent. Dinner at the Ritz called for I think, to celebrate a very lucky escape. Coming, Angel?’

‘One thing…’ Aziraphale says, and Crowley notices the cheeks of his Angel have gone a little pink, and he is turning that ring on his finger round and round. ‘Prophecy number 547.’

‘547? Was that the one with the butterflies the size of giraffes?’

‘It was not,’ Aziraphale says.

Crowley takes a step closer. He always did enjoy this bit of the temptation, although he was not quite sure who was being tempted right now.

‘Ah, the one with the Welsh Choir serenading the Kraken with excerpts from popular musicals.’

‘No, not that one either.’ Aziraphale appears to have flushed a deep red.

Crowley takes a step closer now. He can feel it - the tingle in his fingers and on his lips.

There’s another first time coming. To add to the Wall, and the Temptation of the Ox Ribs and the Rescue of the Books and all those other first times that have led them step by step to this place.

A first time they had in any timeline, but this would their first time - they, Aziraphale and Crowley in this world, their world.

‘Oh, I know, the one with the crystal the exact size and shape of…’

‘Crowley!’ Aziraphale snaps. ‘You know which one I mean.’

‘Oh,’ Crowley says softly. ‘The one where I tell you there’s an us.’

‘That’s the one,’ Aziraphale says, glancing down at the ground. ‘Of course, if you’d rather not, I understand, it’s asking too much, it’s…’

‘Angel,’ Crowley says, and he steps forward, taking off his glasses, and looks down at his angel, his enemy and ally, his closest friend. His love since he knew what love meant. ‘We have always been an us. We don’t need a prophecy for that.’

And Aziraphale, a soft and gentle angel, not a soldier or a leader, becomes a hero for that moment, and clasps Crowley’s collar and pulls him in for a kiss.

It is, by any metric, a small country masquerading as a city.

It governs more lives and more wealth than most nations. If democratic socialism — housing reform, public banking, equitable taxation — functions here, it obliterates the myth that such governance can’t work at scale. The fear isn’t ideological. It’s empirical. Because if Mamdani can keep the lights on, reduce homelessness, and maintain economic growth without catering to Wall Street, then the capitalist gospel collapses under its own dead weight.

What terrifies the establishment isn’t failure. It’s feasibility.

If it works in New York, there’s no reason it can’t work in Nebraska. If it works in Queens, it can work in Kansas City. And once proof exists, belief becomes irrelevant. The ship of democracy, fully refitted, will keep sailing — and no one can claim it isn’t American."

From 1983 until 2010, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" remained the most watched television broadcast in American history, passed only in total viewership (but not in ratings or share) in February 2010 by Super Bowl XLIV. As of 2010, it stands as the most-watched finale of any television series, as well as the most-watched episode as of 2018.

Sixty percent of households with TVs watched it

Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.

Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly

Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?

And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn

And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it

And she was like, explain

So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.

She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.

So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.

It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.

We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.

At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.

Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.

And rolled a 20.

So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.

Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.

The aforementioned snake regurgitation bit. What I didn't mention was that at first, when I said she now needed to lie down and digest, her attempt to resolve it was "Nana, you need to find me a heat lamp" and I had to be like, "Nana has bigger problems right now because she is fighting the coin monster, and also you're both trapped down here." Why were they both trapped? Because rather than finding the stairs down to the basement, they chose to hack a hole in the floor and drop through

When they found their first enchanted coin, Niece picked it up with her bare hand. This made her hand swell up to five times the size and turn blue with orange polka dots. Her response? To immediately pick up the coin with the other hand so they could match

Niece decided very suddenly and randomly that slipping on banana skins was funny, and periodically she would competently enter a new room and she'd interrupt me to say "And then I stand on a banana skin!" This is why I made the banana skin modern art installation. Purely for her to enjoy getting through the room

At one point as the witch they decided to jointly fly on the broom to a new location. "You don't need to roll for that," I said, but Niece was enjoying rolling by then, and so did anyway, and somehow rolled a 20. It was the world's greatest broom ride. They had in-flight entertainment, free snacks each, they napped, and they landed 20 seconds before they took off