A word can suggest my likeness as a painting suggests distance

[sovay]

The weather remains, technically speaking, too darn hot. Have a lot of links.

1. Courtesy of shewhomust: the Pineapple. I feel confident in saying that I find little to admire in a late eighteenth-century colonial governor of Virginia and the Bahamas, except that on his return home to Scotland he built himself a two-storey Gothic stone pineapple and it's hilarious. I was unable to think about it without laughing for at least a day after learning about it. I keep trying to imagine the reactions of the unknown architect confronted with such a commission. It is a national treasure in both the official and colloquial senses of the word. If I lived in the right country to stay in it, I would.

2. Courtesy of isis: "Know your Hrvatski from your Old Norse?" As it turns out, I do, as well as my Russian from my Tok Pisin, but I was wrong about the language with the most native speakers and had no idea about High Valyrian. I appreciate deeply that if you answer the question about Polari right, the quiz briefly takes on the personality of Julian or Sandy.

3. Courtesy of looking for contemporary Burmese fiction and poetry: the complete time sink of the archives of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. Now I have an even longer list of books I wish I could afford.

4. The title may as well stand as a content warning, but I loved this short story: S. Qiouyi Lu's "As Dark as Hunger."

5. I had never seen the beautiful autochromes taken of Christina Bevan in 1913 and in fact had no idea that a photographic process based on potato starch had ever existed.

6. Nor had I realized that the question of what happened with Orson Welles' unfinished film of Charles Williams' Dead Calm (1963) was actually kind of a rabbit hole. I would have watched a sea-thriller with that cast. The HFA could have screened it last fall for their all-night marathon of dark waters that I was too ill to stay for more than the first film of, which I still resent.

7. I may never see the musical remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), but I am really charmed by the technical notes from the headmaster of its filming location, Sherborne School: "I was last at Paestum when Katherine and Chips were there, so I have only vague memories. Can it be visited the same day as Pompeii? Are there broken pillars? Is it a temple of Apollo? Is the inscription there? I assume you will check the spelling in Greek, of 'Gnothe Seauton'. This anglicised form contains one mistake."

8. Just in case anyone has not seen the recent proof-of-concept: "Low-cost measurement of facemask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech."

9. I had not read this sonnet before: Hartley Coleridge, "Long Time a Child."

I have been re-reading Sayers when I can't sleep—the Harriet Vane novels, specifically. My body is behaving in ways that are cranking my dysphoria up to eleven in addition to ordinarily hurting and there are a couple of things in these books that are not exactly consoling, but are useful for me to be reminded of. It is an unexpected side effect.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Too darn hot here to with attendant cloudbursts!

[rmc28]

It was so hot yesterday my fitbit thought I was actively exercising for 10+ hours! No, I was just existing in Too Much Heat.

Today it just started raining Quite Hard with thunderstorms.

Edit: forgot to mention that the Pineapple looks amazing, so much so that I went far enough to see whether we could get there by public transport (answer: only with a lot of walking, hmm).

[shewhomust]

We had similar results to yours on the quiz (was misled over the 'most native speakers' question by a vague memory that English no longer tops the list. Which is true, but not relevant.) What does it say about the setter that they ask about High Valyrian but not Sindarin?

[asakiyume]

The language quiz was fun!

What prompted you to look for contemporary Burmese fiction and poetry?

The Lulworth Cove photos are so *modern looking*

Speaking of tourist attractions

[nodrog]

I was reading just the other day that the Western Front of the Great War is a tourist attraction now, which bothers some people.

But more, that it always was:  Thomas Cook took tourists on package tours of the Front during the War (!!), and only stopped in 1915 when the French got hot about it!

[anna_wing]

U Pe Myint is currently the Myanmar Union Minister for Information. 'Union' refers to the central government in Nay Payi Taw rather than regional governments.

[lauradi7dw]

2. 13/20, but what a biased group of languages. The indigenous languages of entire continents (like ours, Africa, and Asia) are not represented, but two choices from Papua New Guinea? (I got moustache right).
6. I have seen Dead Calm, not to be confused with the X-files episode Død Kalm, which I have also seen.
8. I had seen that, and had also seen some skeptical responses on twitter. My immediate reaction to the part about neck gaiters being worse than nothing was scoffing as well. That's what I wear to run (specifically, one with John Snow's cholera map printed on it). It definitely holds in water vapor and snot, but of course I can't see aerosolized particles to be able to tell if they are getting out while all those body fluids stay next to my face.

DLS have you read The Mutual Admiration Society? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44287172-the-mutual-admiration-society
I could loan you a copy, but I'd want it back, as it's autographed and the author is a friend.

[gwynnega]

The Pineapple is hilarious. Those autochromes are beautiful and so contemporary looking. I had never read anything by Hartley Coleridge before!

I love the Harriet Vane novels.

[selkie]

Is it possible they removed him from his post because he wasn’t horrible ENOUGH? I haven’t had the fortitude to look.

[anna_wing]

Just read "Long Time A Child". A very pointed bit of work for the middle-aged! The bit about manhood being painted on his cheek struck me as a reference to theatrical, rather than women's make-up (would a decent woman of that era been wearing visible make-up anyway?), and adulthood as a performance. It actually made me think of the ending of "The Tempest".