The Broke Medievalist.

A traffic camera in Montreal

I'm pretty sure that's an owl actually

cracked and bleeding hands are not more tolerable than the feeling of lotion

This account has just punched me in the face like 12 times

Wanna watch an adaptation of the Iliad where the gods are people who appear out of nowhere in modern business attire for some reason

feels somewhat tediously like the “office gods” trope seen most recently in Good Omens, I’d rather have the protagonists in business attire and the gods keep showing up in cheap togas that look super cringe

Otherwise straightforward Homer adaptation in which the gods are all dressed up as anime characters, all from different works and without any obvious and coherent theme, and with greatly varying costume quality

Poseidon canonically has blue hair, after all.

But anyway, I wasn’t thinking of office gods, I was thinking of the gods as a bored rich family living in a fancy modernist mansion in the mountains, with nothing better to do but mess with each other and others. That I think brings out how gods and men in the Iliad are cruel in different ways. The men are alternately cowardly, bloodthirsty, and fanatically honor-bound, while the gods are casually cruel, as they lead lives of perfect ease and as a result are incapable of real empathy. Bloody vs. bloodless, which is mirrored by ancient kings vs. modern wealth.

It is a bit too “Shakespeare adaptation set in modern times”, but it’s better to be disconcerting than goofy, as most filmed depictions of the Greek gods are.

Zeus as billionaire real estate investor, Ares as military contractor CEO, etc.

Francesca Woodman

Gwyn can't touch this

Back in the 90s they'd make a movie or tv show about a skater who went back in time and became The Skater Knight

I need to get around to watching Six String Samurai one of these days...

There's a remastered version of Six String Samurai that you (every one of you reading this) needs to watch.

Can we maybe stop making shows for people who don't watch shows and writing books for people who don't read books and making video games for people who don't play video games and making sports for people who don't like sports and making music for

Serge Pellé

When I became freelance, one of my first marketing contracts was fixing my boss' blog posts and articles that he had 'written' with ChatGPT.

It was the single most soul-sucking task I have ever done in my life. I could have ghostwritten it for them faster than it took me to edit it.

ChatGPT would often hallucinate features of the product, and often required more fact-checking than the article was worth.

It is absolutely no surprise that 77% of employees report that AI has increased workloads and lowered productivity, while 96% of executives believe it has boosted it.

The reality is that it's only boosted the amount of work employees have to do which leads to increased burnout, stress and job dissatisfaction.

Source.

In the words of Cory Doctorow, AI can't do your job, but AI salesmen can convince your boss that AI can do your job.

Previously unknown three-eyed gecko fossil unearthed by Yale paleontologists in Utah

Yale University paleontologists have discovered a previously unknown three-eyed gecko ancestor in fossil remains unearthed in Utah.

https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/yale-paleontology-gecko-fossil-north-america-18547677.php

Looking for a (very cheap, <£10 per person) day out in London - anyone have ideas of things to do? It would be with my best friend :D we don't see each other very often and I want to have a nice time! Last time we just walked around Regent's Park for a few hours, but maybe we won't do the same thing this time...

Maybe this is too obvious an answer but MUSEUMS. There are the big hitters (British Museum, Science Museum, V&A, Natural History Museum) but also a whole bunch of smaller ones.

I like the Museum of the Home, which shows rooms through time, the Treasures Gallery of the British Library, which has an enormous array of incredible books and manuscripts, and the Sir John Soames Museum, which is the house of a rich eccentric collector as it was at the time of his death in 1837.

All free to visit, bar special exhibitions.