"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

#MermaidMonday: Atargatis of Ashkelon

Atargatis, also known as Ataratheh and redubbed Derceto by Pliny the Elder, was a chief goddess in northern Syria, with evidence of her cult being discovered at Palmyria. She was a fertility goddess but also presided over her city at Aleppo, called Hierapolis by the Greek, where she was the baalat (the “mistress”) and presided over the welfare of her people: doves were sacred to her, as a testament to her role as love goddess, but she’s also connected to fishes and it’s said she turned into a fish herself. She’s today’s profile on my Patreon.

music and theatre

Suzanne Vega in Milan

Yesterday, we went to see Suzanne Vega, one of the greatest artists and musicians of all times whom occupies a special place in my heart next to Tori Amos. It was a packed house at Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi here in Milan, with people belonging to

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books and literature

Isaac Asimov’s Gold (and other stories)

It’s unfortunate that I’m coming to this after the very unsatisfactory collection of “fantasy” stories (Asimov never wrote fantasy: he wrote satire), because this was another disappointment. The book is half short stories and half non-fiction, for random reasons, and the non-fiction half is random writings

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books and literature

The Murderbot Diaries: Rogue Protocol + Exit Strategy

I’m not crying: a piece of some murdering bot must have gotten in my eye. Rogue Protocol is the third novella in the Murderbot Diaries, and deals with the titular character going deep undercover to figure out what happened in the “mining incident” that was

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