many thoughts, head full

I went, "What. no. she/her."

"How does that work? With she/her/hers and they/them?"

I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Well you came out as-" and I said, "I'm asexual."

She replied, "Like an amoeba, I know."

"Oh. My god. No. Mom. It doesn't- it's not the asexual you learned about in biology. I didn't come out as a single celled organism."

With heavy relief, she said "Oh, it has a different meaning?"

Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic

the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal

this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately

somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large

following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor

today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea

This article by professor Kehinde Andrews clarifies more about the story of racist harassment Arday has been suffering since he fucking got a teaching job at Cambridge in the first place, in 2023, as the FIRST Black professor in that fucking stupid institution, who sure is taking it's sweet time defending their worker, despite already fucking checking his work for plagiarism and saying he didn't do it:

https://www.voice-online.co.uk/opinion/comment/2026/08/07/ardays-resignation/

1. He wasn’t the first Black Professor at Cambridge, but he WAS the youngest X

2. He was ALSO autistic, and nonverbal for the first 11 years of his life X

Like it’s so jarring for real historical stuff like the sea people and the Bronze Age collapse being explicitly mentioned in the text existing in the same movie as vaguely medieval peasant core Circe and batman-esque Agamemnon. You can’t decide to ground the odyssey in a specific time period but then include visuals that are distinctly not from the chosen time period.

It was also crazy to see how moments that are often overlooked in other adaptations of the odyssey were almost 1:1 translated on screen (such as beggar Odysseus getting a stool thrown at him, the inclusion of the bow being a recurve bow, the shades drinking blood) but then also major iconic moments such as ‘nobody’ and the windbag were completely removed.

Sure there are little Easter eggs to the same often overlooked moments nolan included in his movie, and the plot changes + character designs are sometimes questionable, but epic doesn’t try to be historically accurate and imo by the end of the first saga it’s clear that it’s doing its own thing

"things are getting bad again" -> "im just like the character"

"i dont feel like myself" -> "the character is here"

"i dont feel connected to reality" -> "i am immersing myself in the character's world"

"who am i" -> the character! the character.

> look inside