Faria Basher

In a final Anthony-Bourdain-wannabe act of unemployment, I’ve written a Substack post on my time in Edinburgh. Alba gu bràth! Happy reading! 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/fariabashe…

Fascinated by the ethics and history behind state-sanctioned euthanasia. Would love to read up (and maybe even write something) on it.

The Decay of a Corpse in Eight Panels and Monument for the Dead (Kusōzu). Artist: Kitō Dōkyō. Culture: Japan, 19th century. Medium: Ink, watercolor, and gouache on silk, mounted on paper. Private Collection*

The ultimate act of spiritual masochism is women supporting religions and "gods" that permit child marriage, forced pregnancy, beatings, rape, and self-erasure in the name of "modesty." It's the strangest phenomenon. All pointing to a terrifying lack of critical thought.

To elaborate: Project Hail Mary is an incredibly earnest film. It's about a guy who needs to save the world meeting an alien who also needs to save it's world. Because it has themes of friendship and self-sacrifice to save others, those with a reflexive jerk against anything sincere in sci-fi - everything must be couched in millennial irony and self-aware postmodernism - see it as gauche and "heartwarming", and because it has humour it's seen as 2013 Reddit. But it's really a fun, powerful film, great for adults and young people alike. The writing is very good, the cinematography a d effects are excellent, and it provides a more satisfying approach to themes which Interstellar tried to explore but struggled to. It's a very well-made film about the power of love and friendship. If that makes you want to hurl, so be it. It's probably not for you!

'Like a trap you can't escape': The women who regret being mothers bbc.in/4baAm6E

Detail from "Ascent of the Blessed" - Hieronymus Bosch, 1504

Keeping the Louise Glück party going with this signature poem

“Every day I have different beliefs.” A poem by Alvaro de Campos (one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms), translated by Richard Zenith.

Desire is evil and illusory, yet without desire we should not seek for that which is truly absolute, truly boundless. We have not experienced it. Simone Weil Gravity and Grace

the modern professor's feeling of warm relief and gratitude at encountering artisanal, human-crafted bad writing while grading papers

from "First Child"

from "Sacred"

Highlights from Sharon Olds' "Arias." Olds writes extensively of the abuse she faced from her parents, specifically her mother. As a creative who's very interested in how the theme of abuse is tackled in prose and poem, it's simultaneously heartbreaking and fascinating to read.