All Hail Zeus, I Suppose

The most popular link last week by far was this take on Meghan's Netflix series, with this piece by Sage Sohier about her best photograph second.

1. Caitlin Dewey on choosing not to be pregnant on the internet. "My first child is now arriving in a matter of days, and most of my social and professional networks have no earthly idea. Apart from a single vague post to an alt Instagram account, I’ve largely hidden this pregnancy from social media." I hope we are moving towards a place where the people doing the performative online announcements about life events are the outliers, not the other way around.
2. Bells On Sunday is a podcast that feels like it is made for me and about five other people who also think The Nine Tailors was Dorothy L. Sayers' best novel. It is simply a recording of some bells, from a church, minster or cathedral somewhere. I like these, from Saint Milburga in Stoke St Milborough, Shropshire, but they're all good.

3. Katherine Duclos makes beautiful art with Lego. If I'm ever in a city where she has an exhibition, you won't be able to drag me away.
4. Why is everything so mid? Because, as a society, we simultaneously replaced human gatekeepers with automated platforms and incentivised people to homogenise their taste.
5. I tried to find my personal style and all I got was this existential crisis.
6. Beware custard powder — it might explode.

7. I have been winding wool for a new knitting project recently, which is probably why encountering Frederick Leighton's 1878 painting "Winding the Skein" tickled me so much. It does not look like this when I'm doing it.
8. Useful step-by-step guide on how to help someone who has fallen out of their wheelchair. This is the key point: "Do what they ask, NOT what you think would be helpful."
9. Reflections on the "Day in the Life" format of social media video, now that the AI slop version of it has appeared.
10. Hellenic Polytheism is... back? All hail Zeus, I suppose.

11. This is one for the 2016-era subscribers to my newsletter: 20 Essential Tools of a Medieval Scribe.
12. Why do they play up-tempo pop music in the supermarket? Because it supposedly makes us buy more things at a faster rate.
13. I'm nine months late to this Emily Gould piece about monster romance books, but it's still well worth reading, especially if you think you don't want to read books about horny-yet-loyal blue aliens.