Would you rather be eaten by a Cyclops or fall off a roof and break your neck? Here’s how the plucky adventurers perish during the course of the story
If you have watched or read the Odyssey then you are aware that – SPOILER (do you need spoiler warnings on a 2,700-2,800 year-old poem?) – all of Odysseus’s crew die, some in strange and horrible ways.
In this chart, I have tracked the decline in the crew over time, as well as the causes of death, until only one man is left.
Continue reading...The tale of the women who came together to unpick the destructive swathe that one man cut through his local dating pool is woefully lacking in the detail you need to understand their plight. It feels voyeuristic and misguided
I’m beginning to suspect that the feminist movement is operating a covert psyops wing. I like to think that this is the motive force behind the slew of true-crime documentaries that show us, time and again, what bad men do and how they go about it. Perhaps the repeated stories of women – often unhappy with parts of their lives, or otherwise emotionally vulnerable – being love-bombed by apparent male saviours then finding themselves isolated, controlled, coerced, destabilised and battered into submission and sometimes killed that form the predominant subject of this popular modern genre are a way of teaching the young (especially) what is out there. Maybe it’s a way to help them spot the earliest signs of a predator’s approach and arm the innocent against them.
Otherwise, you know, it’s just voyeuristic filler for the ever-gaping schedule maw.
Continue reading...A century ago, compounding pharmacies helped people get bespoke drugs. Now these less-regulated businesses are fueling the peptide boom
Robert F Kennedy Jr is sitting stiffly in Joe Rogan’s podcast studio, inside the influencer’s enormous Texas mansion. Atypically for Rogan’s guests, Kennedy still cloaks himself in the trappings of authority; in a blue suit and pink novelty tie featuring kayakers paddling upstream, he is a stark contrast from Rogan, who sports a biceps-hugging T-shirt depicting a cowboy and an outline of Texas, from the “regenerative wellness” brand Ways2Well.
This was in February, when Kennedy, amid his nationwide Take Back Your Health tour, was pushing his new red-meat-heavy food pyramid on to Americans. For an hour and a half, the two chatted casually about everything from soda pop to medical scams that supposedly fund Boko Haram.
Continue reading...The US military has carried out a wave of airstrikes against Iran in response to Tehran targeting American bases in Jordan. The strikes were launched after Donald Trump vowed to hit Iran ‘very hard’ following a days-long pause in fighting. Iran has expanded its military strikes in the region, raising fears of an all-out war. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian senior international correspondent Peter Beaumount
Continue reading...Water levels across several of Europe’s major waterways have dropped to exceptionally low levels, setting new records in some areas.
Extreme heat exacerbated by the climate crisis is intensifying the drought hitting the continent as record-breaking heatwaves means the hot atmosphere is evaporating water from rivers, lakes, soils and plants quickly.
The Danube has hit the lowest level of water in 30 years in several countries including Hungary, Serbia and Romania, and the Rhine has dropped to its lowest recorded level in some sections and is expected to drop further due to drought
Continue reading...The novelist suggested Wilson should have been ‘a wee bit more thoughtful and respectful’ towards a film-maker who may have helped boost her book sales
The off-screen drama surrounding Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version of the Odyssey stepped up a gear overnight, as the novelist Joyce Carol Oates sought to defend the film-maker from an attack by classicist Emily Wilson.
Writing on X, Oates took issue with the style as well as the rhetoric of Wilson’s essay published earlier this week in the London Review of Books, in which the academic, who published a landmark translation of Homer’s epic poem in 2017, wrote that Nolan’s film lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth” and had “nothing convincing to say”.
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