I've been gathering my thoughts about the much-discussed upcoming "documentary" from Channel 4, which, based on the title and press release, appears to be yet another piece of absolutely irresponsible ragebait content, "challenging" the validity of ADHD diagnoses. As always when neurodivergence is questioned, and the rights of neurodivergent folk to access accommodations and treatment …
On the suffering of those reading the headlines from the safety of our homes
I've been sitting on what I'm about to say for a long time, and in the past few days it has been pleading to be let out. This is because, whether I'm online, scrolling through social media, or offline, talking to people face to face, I'm increasingly hearing the same things: "You're just suffering because …
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Who do you think you are?
I first got the idea for this blog posts a few months ago, and it surely would have been quite a different kind of post, had I written it then. So much has happened since then that has now altered the flow of my thoughts, and the framing of my original idea. I am writing …
“You can’t post this here”: The story of a poem
"We don't do politics here.""Personally, I don't support any particular ideology." These are two phrases I've frequently heard when issues connected to discrimination have come up. Most recently, the first was shouted at me by a very irate building manager who affected not to understand why her migrant-background neighbours might feel upset by the Prime …
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Crying in bookstores, thinking of borders
Today, I teared up in a bookstore. Today, I bought a book because the first two paragraphs of its final chapter made me feel like crying. I picked it up and leafed through it to kill time, and because the title, Borderlines, caught my eye. I picked it up with some cynicism, wondering what this …
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Musings on a summer holiday
I went to Spain for the first time recently - it was a truly wonderful holiday, even better than expected. The sights were delightful, the food delicious, and the people friendly and accommodating. I spent a week there, looking at things through the eyes of a traveller, and here is what I saw. Poster reading …
Happy Easter, Cooking Throws Me Into a Rage
Today is Christian Orthodox Easter. I don't celebrate for religious reasons (I'm not religious), but like many I fall prey to nostalgia and find myself wanting to reacreate the Easters of my childhood: the special foods, the treats, the smells, the excitement of egg dyeying, the joy of coming together with loved ones over meticulously …
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Iulia HaÈ™deu: the Cult of the Dead Girl-Prodigy Who Wasn’t
Let's talk about one of the strangest, creepiest literary landmarks of Romania. About an hour and a half's drive north from Bucharest, lodged among the hills, lies the rather sleepy town of Câmpina, once upon a time a key transit point on the commercial route linking Transylvania, the mountainous northern region of what is now …
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My 5 best-loved books in 2023
It's that time of the year again: the time I look back on what I've read over the past 12 months and reflect on what I loved the most, and what I want to read more of in the year to come. I will have read over 40 books in 2023, many (most?) of them …
Attitude of angry-tude
How do you feel today? How do you really feel? To be honest, I'm not feeling that great. In fact, every day I feel myself getting angrier, more heartbroken, more disappointed. How could I not be, knowing what I know? Dead bodies keep piling up in Gaza. In Ukraine, a madman threatens with the ghost …
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 