Giovanni Riccioli and the [Black] Moon

July 16, 2022

Born in 1598, Giovanni Riccioli was a Jesuit Italian astronomer who liked to throw stuff down from towers (we can’t say he experimented with gravity: in the Western world, we’ll have to wait for Newton in 1684). Among his researches, he introduced the scheme for naming lunar geography that we still use today, a system endorsed by Giovanni Cassini over its competitor system developed by Johannes Hevelius.
He was a fierce supporter of geocentrism, putting forth clever scientific arguments such as “if the earth were rotating, we would feel it”, “buildings wouldn’t stand”, and “birds couldn’t fly”. His arguments are so confused that some scholars believe he was “a secret Copernican” who just had to make bullshit up to avoid trouble with his fellow Jesuits.

He’s today’s profile on my Patreon.

movies and tv

The End of Oak Street

By the life of me, I don’t understand how’s possible that this movie was ever cleared for production. The concept is simple, and shamefully Stephen King-esque: a portion of a small suburban town gets teleported into a not particularly well-defined “age of dinosaurs,” and the

September 14, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieau

I had forgotten how much I was bored by Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I trust I’ll like other stuff by the same author and, before tackling Piranesi, I decided to finally approach this one. Not remembering these are spin-off stories from Jonathan

September 13, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

The Singing Hills Cycle

The Single Hills cycle is a group of short novels by Nghi Vo, a queer Vietnamese-American author, and they centre around the character of Chih, a non-binary monk whose job is to record stories with the aid of their familiar spirit with a perfect memory.

September 12, 2026 9:00 am