“It all depends,” says the tired old pendulum.

In 1951, David Attenborough overslept while filming in Australia after a night of heavy drinking, and missed the bus to site. Panicking, he invented the platypus; and since then (and at his own cost) he has continued to perpetuate the myth of their existence to maintain his national treasure status.

😂

JFK's Head just did that

Whoa 🤯

Forgetting now the golden bough, she gathers yellow squash.

The first results of using UV light to recover text on the damaged folios of Biblioteca Angelica gr. 116: 'Prolegomena to a new edition of Didymus (?), De Trinitate: With a special focus on the first three folios of Biblioteca Angelica gr. 116'

It seems to me that your discipline arose to purge theology of its endless “maybes,” but ended up just adding more. As it should, or must, be.

Call it “Saturday’s Grief, for piano arranged.”

The forest resounds in perpetual shadow.

Sounds like a fascinating project!

Yes, same.

I sympathize. I hate this so much. I finally convinced my family to travel without me; no sense in them waiting for me to be able; but it was hard. And missed school events galore. Ugh. I’m sorry.

I post on:

1. Research & advocacy on Long Covid and ME/CFS, cursed conditions in need of treatment and of greater public awareness.

2. Things related to my (former) career of research & teaching in the history of theology, philosophy, and literature.

3. Poetry & jokes

4. Politics

Image of a person walking up the stairs showing microclots in the muscles.

Mark Faghy shares an update on Submaximal exercise-induced changes in microclot and cytokine profiles - shaping what we know about Long COVID rehabilitation.

#COVIDrehab

Coming soon... Our book was written in community sharing our experiences of living with myalgic encephalomyelitis

Ever stitching something primordially riven

Drawn image of the U.S. Capitol dome, with the words underneath: Long COVID patients have waited too long for TESTS, TRIALS & TREATMENTS. #FundLongCOVID

📣U.S. Action Item: #pwLC #POTS #pwME #NEISVoid we need your help! Will you contact your Senators & ask them to sign on to the FY27 Senate “Dear Colleague” Letter for over $210 million to #FundLongCOVID in 2027 Appropriations using our EASY low-spoons call/email tool?🧵

In Pursuit of Understanding the Crash What Post-Exertional Physiology Tells Us About ME/CFS

#MECFS

Important piece from @sunsopeningband.bsky.social detailing what’s known about post-exertional malaise and what science must take into account in order to advance research on this critical phenomenon.

My terror, as a toddler, of the chickens in his yard

For the “Rome” part of your question, check out Theodor Haecker’s Virgil: Father of the West. Good discussion of this and T S Eliot in Frank Kermode’s The Classic, chapter 1. Brague cites Haecker.

An incredible book

Oh, thank you! ☺️

Nature tucks her sweet things in, in folds of silk and husk.

JD Vance tomorrow, probably: There was when the Son was not.

Thanks to Anne Carpenter @catholickungfu.bsky.social and others, there was actual, spirited discussion of *IDEAS* on Bluesky today. Almost like prelapsarian Twitter.

Also, a search of Eccentric Civilization on Google Books shows that Brague traces the Athens/Jerusalem typology to Tertullian.

Because he wrote the sentence “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” He’s the one who paired the two city names as stand-ins for their respective cultural traditions. Then his sentence got lifted out of his work and became a cliche, losing any link with his whole body of thought.

Oh it’s just the use of the terms “Athens” and “Jerusalem” as metonyms or types that I trace to Tertullian. This does not mean that a later author who uses those terms in that way cares about Tertullian. Shelley: certainly not! Somewhere one hears the cities used in this way and that’s sufficient.

Ok, but then how does Athens come in to the phrase and how do Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch drop out? Why would a modern author refer to the latter three patriarchal sees with the name “Athens”? And what gives us the idea that the author is thinking about sees as the basis of West Civ?