Martin Blythe (@twomileshigh) — Bluesky Profile | bskyView

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6 days ago

Some books should never be made into movies Italian filmmaker Fellini once said "All movies are autobiographical." So, by this logic, it could be argued that Oppenheimer is about Christopher Nolan and his preoccupations, not Oppenheimer's. Is t...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/some-books-s...

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1 week ago

The Great Spa Towns of Europe - 3 that didn't make the cut When I travel, I look for ghosts, where I can imagine a past in the present. Today's great cities do not have many ghosts, but a few do: I like to think Lisbon's Bairro Alto and Rome's Trastevere and ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/the-great-sp...

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2 weeks ago

Stories with giant disembodied heads, sometimes floating... It is a curious thing: there are giant disembodied heads that pop up in stories. What's the symbolism here? I'm not thinking of giant video screens or holographs (The Wizard of Oz, Nineteen Eighty-Fou...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/stories-with...

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3 weeks ago

Leonardo da Vinci: wedding planner, and Isabella d'Este One of those little known things about Leonardo da Vinci is that at age 40 he was hired as a wedding planner. While it confirms that he was a man of many talents, it also shows a man who enjoyed life ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/leonardo-da-...

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1 month ago

Gen Z and psychic anxiety: blame boomers I believe young people are almost invariably right about political matters and that older people are almost invariably wrong. I am old but I'm right about this. I like to think I'm a fox who can be a ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/gen-z-and-ps...

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1 month ago

Before Cervantes there was Beatriz Bernal Graphic novels are the best way to teach literature in high schools. For a number of years I taught Romeo and Juliet with a really good one. Why must students have to stagger through "classics" in the...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/before-cerva...

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1 month ago

Mechanical toys from Leonardo to sexbots I once had the pleasure of being a publicist - briefly - for the world's first sex robot (sexbot). Her name was Roxxxy. That was 20 years ago and sex robots have come a long way since then, especially...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/mechanical-t...

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1 month ago

Who was the most racist Western philosopher? The answer is: All of them, beginning with the Greeks and continuing to the present day. Individual candidates for who was the worst? It doesn't really matter, but those usually cited are Immanuel Kan...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/who-was-the-...

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2 months ago

Water spirits in European art Mermaids, fairies, nymphs, sprites, sirens, kelpies, selkies and xanas are consigned to children's entertainment nowadays. This wasn't always the case. In 1917, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by th...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/water-spirit...

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2 months ago

Cairo - al-Qāhirah (القاهرة) She needed to walk the Cairo streets at the time she loved them most: early on a Friday morning in October, when the summer’s heat had finally subsided, replaced by a crisp breeze just cool enough to ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/cairo-al-qah...

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2 months ago

Semiramis and Bathsheba In the hilariously operatic painting above, Assyrian beauty Semiramis seems to have killed herself after the death of her second husband, King Ninus. This didn't happen of course because, in the legen...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/semiramis-an...

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2 months ago

'Un Chien Andalou' It may only be 16 minutes long but it's better entertainment than most films these days. It was Luis Buñuel's first film and he shot it in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, with each subsequently clai...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/un-chien-and...

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3 months ago

'The Kissing Ceremony' Russian artists in the late 19th century excelled in narrative storytelling. Take Konstantin Makovsky's The Kissing Ceremony (at the Feast of Boyar Morozov), for example. Romantic, idealized and nosta...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/the-kissing-...

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3 months ago

The weirdest headdresses If there were a contest for the weirdest headdresses, I would nominate the escoffion, hennin (a broader term) and wimple which were popular in Europe 1250–1500, especially among the royals and the sma...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/the-weirdest...

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3 months ago

Madrid Madrid has many nicknames but at this time of year it is the city of Las Meninas, whether all the locals like it or not. Every Fall since 2018, the city is home to 50 or more Las Meninas sculptures ar...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/madrid/

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3 months ago

Three wise and learned cats from folklore We have a new cat. I'm told he's a Nebelung, which apparently means the same thing as Nibelung from the Germanic legends. When the house next door was demolished, he adopted us instead of going with h...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/three-wise-a...

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4 months ago

Thresholds, crossroads and gateways I have always been fascinated by train stations and I travel by train whenever I can. The best stations capture that sense of "in between" that we can get - well, I do - from waiting rooms, antechambe...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/thresholds-c...

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4 months ago

The drowned city of Kitezh Russia is rich in folktales, but one of my favorites is about a city that disappeared under a small lake when threatened with an attack by Batu Khan and the Golden Horde (the Mongols). There are many ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/the-drowned-...

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4 months ago

The most beautiful gay man ever? Are there lots of candidates? A giant head known as Antinous Mondragone was unearthed back in the early 18th century, in an old ruined Roman city near today's Frascati, south of Rome. His giant head -...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/the-most-bea...

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4 months ago

Diane de Poitiers and drinkable gold As gold prices surge to historic highs, perhaps investors might consider drinking some of it to make themselves better looking? Both the U.S. and the E.U. have long authorized gold as a food additive ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/diane-de-poi...

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5 months ago

Vulva imagery and the Virgin A secret seemingly known only to Reddit (the Sexuality subreddit), Instagram and Queer religious scholars is that sexual meaning can be found in, gasp, of all places, the iconography of the Virgin Mar...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/vulva-imager...

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5 months ago

Gretchen is the hero of Goethe's 'Faust' In Germany these days there is a debate about whether schools should stop teaching classics like Goethe's Faust. After all, "in Berlin for example, 55% of all children and teenagers have familial root...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/gretchen-is-...

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5 months ago

Roman Monster found dead in the Tiber River This is really a story about money and riches, but more on that in a minute. Even today it reads like a tabloid headline but, in January 1496, after the Tiber River flooded the city of Rome, a rumor ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/roman-monste...

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5 months ago

Beautiful women who brought down China's empires Well, they didn't really. In Chinese mythology, the "Four Beauties" were beautiful women who were said to have brought about the downfall of empires, but it was mostly wishful thinking dreamed up by people in the early 19th century. That said, these women were important figures at the Chinese imperial

two-miles-high.ghost.io/beautiful-wo...

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6 months ago

Can we find lesbian scenes in famous paintings before 1850? Well, yes we can. By looking before 1850 I can exclude Gustave Courbet, Gerda Gottlieb Wegener, Toulouse-Lautrec (above), Simeon Solomon and many others where it's obvious. But, also, we can't assume ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/can-we-find-...

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6 months ago

Can 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Song of the South' be updated for today? When Disney classic animated films are updated as live action movies, they generally make a token effort to shake up old ways of thinking, in order to meet contemporary audiences where they are, even including confronting White Nationalism. This is something all corporations have to do. The most recent Snow

two-miles-high.ghost.io/beauty-and-t...

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6 months ago

Venetian ceruse and toxic Whiteness What was the most toxic cosmetic ever used? Lead would be the favorite. Lead White carbonate was used in cosmetics because it could be caked on easily. It also was used by painters of frescoes, manusc...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/venetian-cer...

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6 months ago

Milan I went daily to the cathedral of Milan, that singular mountain which was torn out of the rocks of Carrara. I saw the church for the first time in the clear moonlight; dazzlingly white stood the upper ...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/milan/

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6 months ago

Can Melusine be freed with a kiss? As everyone knows, Princess Fiona in Shrek was cursed to be transformed into an ogre every night, and only at the end of the movie with Shrek's kiss is she freed from the curse, to be her true self. L...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/can-melusine...

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7 months ago

There was a Chinese sequel to the Oz books When L. Frank Baum died in 1919, his Oz novels were continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson and illustrated by Baum's illustrator John R. Neill. Their very first collaboration, The Royal Book of Oz (1921) i...

two-miles-high.ghost.io/there-was-a-...

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