Alan Bowden

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. Startled civil servant, baffled former press officer, and prelapsarian ex-bookseller. Books, art, strategy

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@FMelroseWriter Oh, it will be great and probs raining.

And hello! Life is all quite full and I don’t have PhD procrastination to spend here any more. I’m always lurking though.

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@FMelroseWriter And here am I about to drive to Devon.

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@FMelroseWriter And may I add that the pair of cypress trees is Perfect.

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@FMelroseWriter This is glorious.

[Fiona Melrose @FMelroseWriter]

The new permanent home of my writing retreats and workshops in Italy. If you aren’t already on my mailing list and would like to be added either DM or mail [email protected] I am a little bit beside myself with excitement about this and can’t wait to share more.

[A Cambridge Diary @acambridgediary]

The West Door at King's College Chapel was opened especially for me tonight so I could take this picture of the sunset over the wildflower meadow - which was nice :) and if you look closely you can see the college cat!

A picture of Cambridge every day since 2010. (No 4869) Thursday 27th July 20
@Kings_College @ChoirOfKingsCam

[Ben Landau-Taylor @benlandautaylor]

Of course orcs have menus. Restaurants are the tip of the iceberg. Think about it. Mordor sends out gigantic armies with well-drilled formations and excellent discipline, which clearly require a sophisticated logistical operation to keep them fed and supplied, and with a terrific siege train to boot. This means at least the officer class is highly literate, you absolutely cannot use that strategy at that scale otherwise. Any civilization that can produce armies like Mordor’s will necessarily have extremely sophisticated art and culture, and may well be on a trajectory towards decadence. Of course you won’t see most of this by looking at an army in the field—you won’t see the heights of American culture at a forward operating base either—but we do get a few glimpses. We see their monumental architecture at Barad-dur and the Black Gate, which are ornamented in a well-developed style which is clearly distinct from the artistic tradition of Numenor. These are massive undertakings requiring a well-organized workforce, not to mention a tremendous logistic capacity as Gorgoroth is far too barren to supply the laborers so food must have been brought from elsewhere (probably Nurn), and even so the laborers may well have suffered casualties comparable to the Qin Emperor’s levees for building the Great Wall. Mordor’s turn towards decadence is visible in the splendid and impractical armor of commanders with political functions, like the Witch-King of Angmar or the Mouth of Sauron, even if it hasn’t yet reached so far as to affect the dress of purely military field commanders, whose gear is still utilitarian. To produce these sites and artifacts, Mordor must have a large and competent artisan class. They must have an urbanized and highly stratified population. The Nurnen slave plantations are entirely capable of supporting a society like this—compare the latifundia of Rome. In any case we can be confident that the cities of Nurn are on par with the great cities of premodern Earth. Mordor is more than sophisticated enough for restaurants, and wealthy enough, and cosmopolitan to boot—just going by the fragments we see through the lens of war, we can safely assume that Mordor gets the finest spices from the Corsairs of Umbar, expert chefs from the Haradrim, exotic recipes from the Easterlings, and who knows what else. The restaurants must be incredible, and that’s the least of it. Mordor probably has, like, great novelists writing comic adventure stories about an orcish explorer who gets lost among the hobbits. Astounding poets who will make you weep with despair as they describe being trampled by Sauron. Grand and incredibly racist operas about the crimes of the elves.

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

"Everything changes, nothing is lost", stone mandala by land artist Katie Griesar #WomensArt

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@john_self Oh that’s great fun. I have a floppy US edition somewhere.

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@Isabelwriter What a day to attempt productivity.

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@EwaSR Was expecting it to be Frankfurt am Mane.

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

German installation artist Cornelia Konrads,
Still Life With Tree. (2008) #WomensArt

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

Yayoi Kusama,
Infinity Net Painting, 1961 #WomensArt

[Musa Okwonga @Okwonga]

1/ I was asked yesterday by someone to give examples of men who represented healthy masculinity and I thought, "well, it's men who don't think that being a man ultimately involves dominance over everyone in your surroundings".

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@arrroberts Blueybeard

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@HutchinsonDave @EwaSR It's pronounced "Wodehouse"

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@arrroberts

[Alan Bowden @WordsofMercury]

@Isabelwriter Lovely word. Luvverley

[Ed Conway @EdConwaySky]

🎾THREAD🎾
Have you ever wondered how they keep the courts at Wimbledon so pristine?
Much of it is the hard work of the groundspeople.
But there’s another secret ingredient too.
A mysterious crystal we dig out of the ground.
There’s literally ONE place in the world you can get it