“Not every mystery is a crime,” said the Commander. “But every crime starts as a mystery." [p. 76]
Gamache has come out of retirement to take the role of Commander at the Sûreté Academy, which has lately been turning out new police officers who are aggressive, brutal and not up to Gamache's standards. He has to root out the source of the corruption, which -- in typical Gamache style -- he does by keeping on some known troublemakers on the staff, and recruiting his old friend-turned-nemesis Michel Brébeuf as another teacher. Of course everything goes swimmingly, ( Read more... )
“It is not possible to find medicine to bring life to the dead.” οὐκ ἔστιν ἀποφθιμένοις ζωᾶς ἔτι φάρμακον εὑρεῖν -Ibycos
“Only Zeus has medicine for everything” Ζεὺς πάντων αὐτὸς φάρμακα μοῦνος ἔχει -Anonymous Elegy
After Zeus wakes up from his post-coital nap at the beginning of 15, he sees right away that his plans have been subverted and focuses in particular on Hektor. The narrator notes that he saw “Hektor lying there and his companions were /seated around him, as he struggled with a ragged breath / losing his mind a bit while he puked up blood” (15.9-12). Hektor’s health and survival is directly connected to the survival of the city and Zeus’ plans, So his wounding during book 14 and his declining situation is a clear reason for concern.
Yet, Hektor’s revival is not narrated in the same way as other. In other divine interventions (Paris rescued by Aphrodite or Aeneas rescued), the audience witnesses how a god’s agency changes the natural course of events. Even when Sarpedon nearly dies in book 5, the language of the scene is marked in such a way as to show it is remarkable. Yet, in this scene, we hear Zeus talking repeatedly about Hektor needed to be healed, only to have the action in some way skipped over.
When we next see Hektor in the middle of the book, it is alongside Apollo who “found Hektor, the glorious son of god-fearing Priam / seated–he was no longer stretched out, but he was regaining his spirit again / he recognized the companions around him, and his gasping and sweating / was relenting, since the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus was awakening him” (15.239-242).
The phrase “the mind [noos] of Zeus” does not occur frequently in Homer, but it seems to indicate either a part of Zeus’ general plan or his intention in the moment. Consider 16.103 where the narrative says that Ajax did not remain because “the mind of Zeus and the proud Trojans hurling [weapons] overcame him” (16.103) or later in book 16 when the narrator laments Patroklos ignoring Achilles’ warnings and provides the proverbial sounding judgment “the mind of Zeus is always stronger than men” (688), a phrase repeated by Hektor when speaking to Glaukos in book 17 (176). Indeed, it appears that these references do seem to correlate to moments where the overall plan of Zeus is being enforced.
One of the most important parts of book 15 comes after Zeus awakens and summons Hera. As he upbraids her, he outlines the plot for the rest of the epic.
Homer, Iliad 15. 63-68
“[The Greeks] will fall among the many-benched ships of Peleian Achilles, after they flee there. He will send out his friend Patroklos. Shining Hektor will kill him with a spear In ground of Troy after he has killed many other strong men Among them will be my own son, glorious Sarpedon. In a rage over him, glorious Achilles will kill Hektor.”
Some Alexandrian editors marked this passage as questionable (athetizing up to 20 lines of this speech). “because [the poet] needlessly repeats about the events that will immediately proceed and the verses inside are simplistic in their composition” (Schol. A ad 15.56a). Within the scholia as well, however, is the proposal that this device is “foreshadowing” (προανακεφαλαίωσις) as when “Odysseus outlines to Telemachus the murder of the suitors”.
The primary point here is that there is an overlap between Zeus’ function as a divine figure and his control over narrative devices. In the Iliad his plan is one of the most important ‘maps’ for the epic’s plot. One way to think of his speech in book 15 is as a corrective measure, pulling things back into line and pointing them back on course. From a similar perspective, if we return to the idea of the Iliad being performed in three parts, this speech is prolepsis (foreshadowing) of the type that we might see at the end of a weekly television drama: NEXT TIME, ON the Iliad….
But we also can’t lose sight of the numinous impact of his speech. Zeus’ noos–his thought about the plot–is so potent that merely be articulating the future, he sets it into action. Hektor does not need healing because as soon as Zeus has articulated what will happen next, Hektor becomes what he needs to be to serve Zeus’ plan. It is almost as if the world itself at this moment of the Iliad is a story unfolding in Zeus’ mind, a dream corrected or altered upon waking.
A short Bibliography on Zeus and Hektor in book 15
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Barker, Elton. (2022). Die Another Day: Sarpedon, Aristodemos, and Homeric Intertextuality in Herodotus.
Hunter, Richard. “39 Some Problems in the ‘Deception of Zeus’”. The Layers of the Text: Collected Papers on Classical Literature 2008–2021, edited by Antonios Rengakos and Evangelos Karakasis, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 787-808. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110747577-039
De Jong, Irene. 2004. Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad.
Last year, Honda gave Ars a tour of some of its manufacturing facilities in Ohio. The Anna Engine Plant and Marysville Auto Plant had undergone a transformation that added to their capabilities: a massive die cast operation to make electric vehicle battery packs alongside the lines that make engines at Anna, and a gleaming new section of Marysville filled with robots, ready to incorporate three new Honda and Acura EVs into the production mix alongside Accords and Integras.
Only now, they won't. Earlier today, Honda announced that it's facing heavy losses for the financial year: between $5.1 billion and $7 billion (820 billion–1.12 trillion yen). To help stanch the flow, it's sacrificing the Honda 0 SUV, Honda 0 sedan, and the electric Acura RSX, EVs it revealed at CES last year in "nearly production" state.
Honda says there are several reasons for killing off its new EVs before they even reach the market. The first is extremely predictable: the ongoing chaos of the trade war and its tariffs, which have eaten into the profitability of the cars it imports into the US. A second is the US government's revanchist decision to cease enforcing emissions and fuel economy standards on the auto industry. Although Honda says that "striving for carbon neutrality" is a "responsibility Honda... must fulfill for the future," it seems that responsibility only applies when being forced by a government.
Google Maps is one of the company's core products, which means it hasn't escaped the shift to Gemini. There will be more opportunities to converse with a robot in Google Maps starting today, but there's also a new navigation experience on the way. The revamped navigation isn't as explicitly focused on the AI revolution, but Google stresses Gemini is still key to making it work.
The latest AI shift in Maps is called Ask Maps, and you can probably guess what it does just from its title. Ask Maps is a Gemini-powered conversational system that can plan trips and answer complex questions about locations across the app's millions of cataloged points of interest.
Ask Maps, Reservation
The new chatbot will be accessible via a button up near the search bar. You can ask it anything you're likely to find in Google Maps without jumping into another app. You can ask for directions, of course, but it can also plan out road trips and vacations from a single prompt. Ask Maps works like a chatbot, so it accepts follow-up prompts to refine and expand on its suggestions.
Netchoice filed the motion for preliminary injunction on March 9. It isn't available on the docket in RECAP yet (and I'm over my threshold for PACER fees that will get refunded for the quarter, or else I'd put it there!) but it is available on Netchoice's litigation page: Motion for Preliminary Injunction. They haven't included the declarations, but here's Dreamwidth's declaration as filed, authored by yours truly. Because of the wild incoherence of so many of the provisions of this law, many of which were new because a lot of states have switched to using different model legislation, I had to write almost all of our declaration for this one from scratch (while recovering from a lumbar puncture, lying flat on my back in bed: never let it be said I am not completely extra about the lengths to which I will go to fight against this bullshit), so much less of it will look familiar than usual, but boy was I mad.
We'll let you know when the judge makes a ruling on the PI! And three cheers as always for the Netchoice team and for the outside litigation counsel, who is Lehotsky Keller Cohn for this one and who put in massively heroic effort to get this filed as fast as possible thanks to the law taking immediate effect.
Happy March!! If you’re looking to grab a bunch of queer titles to help you march into April, check out this fab bundle of 63 queer stories for $60 – A Very Queer March itch.io bundle! We’ve got two titles in this one – The Salt in the Sea by J. D. Rivers and Lightbringer by boneturtle.
Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.
This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)
(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)
So what cool fancrafts/fanart/fics/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.
BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.
I'm halfway through season 2 of H2O: Just Add Water and as expected I'm not enjoying it as much as season 1. It still has some fun episodes (the girls get their new powers, the wish episode, Emma gets a scale sickness and in the last act it turns into a delightful mini horror movie) and some meatier ones (Rikki gets to stretch her chops with an emotional story that introduces her dad), but the main problem for me is that on the scales of wacky shenanigans there's been a tip away from mermaid-specific shenanigans and towards teenage love triangle shenanigans instead, courtesy of Charlotte. (Whose actress gets billed first in the end credits, presumably because the four actresses are listed alphabetically, but is still kinda weird.)
I grew up in a Star Trek household, not a Star Wars one. More to the point, I wasn't even allowed to watch Star Wars when I was a kid, so I didn't see the original trilogy until I was nearly an adult—about 17 years old, as I recall.
For my then-fundamentalist Christian family, the so-called "Eastern mysticism" of Star Wars was a bridge too far, something that could apparently corrupt my impressionable young evangelical mind irreversibly. Star Trek was OK, though, because my parents didn't feel it condoned witchcraft, or what have you, and they liked the original series from when they were younger.
Because of all that, my first true immersion in the Star Wars universe wasn't the movies, it was the video games, and one in particular—Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, which you can nab on GOG.
Regardless of your interest in motorsport, you've almost certainly heard of the Monaco Grand Prix, Daytona 500, and Indianapolis 500. These iconic races are easy to spectate, with grandstands lining the course and a camera or two at every turn. Video feeds from the race can be transmitted live thanks to the infrastructure of the populated areas surrounding the tracks.
But what if your course is 100 miles (161 km) from nowhere? It's 1,000 miles (1,610 km) long, and the only way to access it is on bumpy, dirty access roads that require four-wheel drive and plenty of clearance. If you want to watch the whole race with your own eyes, you’ll need to hire a helicopter. And broadcasting it live on TV? Good luck.
All that is changing with the advent of StarStream, a video and content streaming service that can be used with Starlink, the low-Earth-orbit satellite Internet system that has changed the way off-road race teams communicate. But George Hammel, a former motocross and UTV racer, saw even more potential: a way to bring fans into the cockpit, live.
I asked a women named Sonnet director of a poet's palm conservancy what it was like to be in asynchronous conversation with someone who was no longer there the poet had risen each day to meditate in silence and wanted silence for his mornings planting palms now many unpublished manuscripts were being found (as were many loving post-its from his wife Paula working around his need for morning silence) and his late-life handwriting was slowly, painstakingly being decoded and transcribed was it like finding seeds waiting like time capsules for someday growing in the forest floor or was it like being haunted
She spoke of the hundreds of books needing care after decades' nurturing in that humid house opening a book of eastern philosophy almost beyond saving riddled with holes from book beetles' eatings and finding on the next page a note in the margins from the poet addressed tenderly to the beetles, saying 'you can have the binding, but please leave me the pages'
The palms he spent his life planting and the poems he spent his life planting and the pages of all those silent mornings seeding words we are eager to hear now may they continue growing in their season may William and Paula Merwin's names stay living on our tongues
Marsh looks at the history of AIDS denialism, and its apparent burgeoning resurgence through the world's most listened to podcast. Meanwhile, Alice buys a new car that she is unable to drive.
Triggered by a couple of things recently where people were shocked that people would tell them that they were in love within the first few months.
And my general view is that if you aren't incredibly excited to spend loads of time with me and wander around holding hands while grinning a lot within the first few weeks of dating then we are probably not compatible.
This Sunday, the Isocracy Network will be holding its AGM and, in addition to our usual AGM business, we will have a guest speaker and discussion on "Imperialism, Colonialism, Internationalism," which is particularly relevant to current events. The discussion will be led by Kevin Huynh, JD, who is an avid observer of current world events. Reflecting this interest, Kevin has a honours degree in Politics and International Studies from the University of Melbourne, and holds a Juris Doctor from Monash University. The meeting will be held in person and online. Please message for online details. Unsurprisingly, I have tentative definitions for consideration and discussion.
Imperialism is the control, direct or indirect, of another country. With direct imperialism, a foreign country imposes direct political rule over another country (e.g., French West Africa, British India, Spanish America, Dutch East Indies, Belgian Congo). Indirect imperialism occurs when one country controls the affairs of another country through political influence and economic dependency, for which there is no viable alternative to the sovereign country (e.g., the United States over Latin American countries). Indirect imperialism can also include vassal states, where a country is provided local autonomy for internal affairs but international relations and defence depend on the imperial power (e.g., Tibet and the Chinese Qing Dynasty Empire).
Indirect imperialism can change to direct imperialism and revert back again depending on the rise and fall of independence movements (e.g., Iran under Mossedeq was subject to a US/UK backed coup, indirect imperialism with the Consortium Agreement) or it can result as a concession to the controlled country (e.g., the Unequal Treaties imposed on China, Korea, and Japan). With the dominant power controlling and exploiting the human and natural resources of the foreign country, imperialism was often justified as part of a "civilising mission" (e.g., "mission civilatrice") to bring improvements, stability, education, etc. A famous (and astoundingly racist) example was Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden".
Colonialism is separate but often a part of imperialism. Colonialism involves the deliberate migration of one ethnic group into another country, which may already be populated by indigenous people. Colonial efforts in these circumstances often involve supplanting or subjugating the original population (e.g., the British to Australia).
Now for some trickier questions; how does imperialism relate to globalisation, in a world economy and a world system? Is globalisation replacing nation-state imperialism? Is foreign military intervention justified for humanitarian reasons (e.g., responsibility to protect)? What are the procedures in which this should occur? What is the difference, if any, between globalisation and internationalism? A lot to cover in a two-hour meeting, but one thing is for sure; we're still seeing a particularly nasty side of imperialism occurring to this very day.
Current Mood:determined
Current Music:Cut Copy, Live an Enmore Theatre 2026
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
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