#ChthonicThursday: Mefitis

January 25, 2024

Mefitis was a Samnite and Oscian goddess from before Roman times, presiding over poisonous gases emitted from the ground, particularly in swamps and volcanic vapours. The area of her sanctuary is mentioned by Virgil as the entrance to the Underworld, boars were sacred to her, and she’s sometimes associated with healing. Marcus Terentius Varro, a famed Roman scholar, mentions a Grove of Mefitis on the Esquiline in Rome alongside an altar to Mala Fortuna (misfortune) and Febris, the goddess of fevers.

She’s today’s profile on my Patreon.

books and literature

Project Hail Mary

I really wanted to like this book, having liked The Martian and… well, we don’t talk about Project Artemis. I enjoyed the movie just fine, and I hoped the book would fix some oversimplifications and convenient occurrences depicted there. Also, the main character is a

April 17, 2026 8:00 am

architecture, engineering and construction

The Standard, the Tooling, the Agent: Three Futures for BIM

Some people asked me what I think of AI in the new Revit 2027. Other people asked me what I think of the entire Autodesk Cloud ecosystem being rebranded as Forma. More people requested I express an opinion on the lack of mention to agentic

April 15, 2026 8:00 am

movies and tv

Unveil: Jadewind

Well, I did something unusual: I watched a Chinese TV series that has no English dubbing, just subtitles. Which makes it hard to do it while I work because I have to pay more attention to the subtitles, but I guess it’s useful to hone

April 12, 2026 6:24 pm