May 9 2022 Journal (Patreon)

Finals are trampling me like an oliphaunt that's looked into a palantír just a little bit too long. I haven't had time to read much news, but here's what I've caught lately.

ProPublica says that Intuit is going to pay TurboTax users millions of dollars it finagled from them.

The Democrats' only anti-abortion congressman fired a pregnant employee, who subsequently miscarried.

The State of Tennessee has effectively kidnapped a trans 16-year-old.

Not a lot of happy stuff there, but certainly these are stories you should pay attention to.

Otherwise, my Greek mythology kick has continued. I've been re-reading Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis' masterpiece which retells the story of Cupid and Pysche from the perspective of the latter's sister. It strips Lewis of his usual conceits and vices, forcing him to turn his source material to fascinating and sublime ends. After a few years of disliking Lewis, this book has me reconsidering him.

I recently read Hesiod's Theogony, the delightfully weird de facto Greek creation myth, possibly the apex of that body of literature. Hades takes a lot from it, which is no small part of that game's genius.

Oh! And I finally finished Cryptonomicon. Really lived up to the hype I built for it by waiting to read it for five or six years after I bought a copy.