MaeveWriter

Writer, reader, walker. History matters.

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@amandafortini I love Astral Weeks

[erika @yeeeerika]

the human spirit was not designed for this many passwords

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

So, I took multiple classes on Moby-Dick as an undergrad & one of the first things you learn is that Ishmael is NOT his name; it’s an allusion to Ishmael from the Book of Genesis (the exiled son of Abraham, of whom it was prophesied, “His hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him”). The narrator imagines himself an outcast, rejected by society & forced to seek his destiny on the high seas. His self-understanding is beautifully transformed during the scene in which he shares a bed with the cannibal harpooner Queequeg, who becomes his bosom friend. As his heart softens, he writes, “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.” Love has come to redeem him. He is Ishmael no more.

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@CLT_Exam What is one book you would recommend for a girl, an avid reader, who is turning 11? I really need your advice! Best regards, her grandmother

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The reason we think dandelions are weeds is because of a 1950s marketing campaign.

Dandelions, native to Europe and Asia, were brought to North America in the 1600s by European colonists who grew them deliberately.

Every part is edible. The leaves are a salad green, the flowers were made into wine, and the roots were roasted as a coffee substitute and used medicinally for liver and kidney conditions for thousands of years. They were a kitchen-garden staple well into the 1800s.

The shift happened after World War II, when 2,4-D (originally developed for chemical warfare research) was approved as a residential herbicide. Companies like Scotts built the modern lawn-care industry around the idea that a perfect green lawn meant zero broadleaf plants.

Dandelions, being bright yellow and resistant to mowing, became a visible enemy, and the campaign worked. By the 1970s, "dandelion-free" was synonymous with "well-kept."

They aren't native, but they aren't doing significant ecological harm either. The herbicides used to kill them, on the other hand, kill bees, contaminate groundwater, and have been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans.

If you hate dandelions, it's most likely due to a marketing campaign that ran before you were born.

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

So simple, so good, thank you @mtaibbi https://t.co/46KEIjzzPF

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@newstart_2024 most powerful positive health change by far: intermittent fasting

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@IanJaeger29 What are they protesting? Chanting?

[The Book Land @the_book_land]

Boris Pasternak died on this day in 1960.

Have you read Doctor Zhivago?

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@SamaHoole I'm appreciating this post from the state of Minnesota, US, where, in our household, we children were given that same teaspoon of cod liver oil each and every winter morning. (I'm still taking it.)

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@newstart_2024 No. I turn my phone off at night and put it in another room, but it still feels invasive

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“When Friedrich Froebel coined the name ‘kindergarten,’ he meant it literally – ‘a garden of children’ – where each child is nurtured with the same love and care given to a seedling.” —Johann Christoph Arnold

https://t.co/PDwFPISmVA

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@ianmSC This was such a powerful inducement to skip the shot.

[Poetic Outlaws @OutlawsPoetic]

"I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere."

~ Leonard Cohen

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see. — Ayn Rand

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@DrGrimmMD i.e., we shouldn't brush our teeth soon after every meal?

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5,000 years.

[Alex Imas @alexolegimas]

This from @TuhinChakr is brilliant. That prize winning story from Granta? Turns out it's just a bunch of random whole phrases taken directly from existing text on the internet. Tool allows you to trace those n-grams directly to their source, which is mostly random fanfiction.

https://t.co/Bi03nvSHnx

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@TrialsiteN Absolutely not. I was hoping the story about these ticks was paranoia. This morally shocking, and in every other way.

[MaeveWriter @MaeveWriter]

@paul_jkrause Jane Eyre