"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."
Every few months it comes back. A pencil drawing of a bee, a quote in a serif font, and different authorities invoked as the source: aerodynamically speaking, the bee cannot fly, but it doesn’t know that, so it flies anyway. It gets shared and liked,...
A few pictures from the recently closed exhibition on Beauty and Ugliness as an aesthetic paradigma in which what’s ideal and what’s grotesque melt together as sides of the same coin. The exhibition featured works by Brueghel (lent from the other exhibition at Palazzo Reale),...
On outsourcing to AI agents without losing more than you gain Last week, I promised a colleague that, by the end of an article, she’d understand what everyone means when they say they “connected an AI agent to Revit via MCP”. I also promised she’d...
A.k.a. How a Flemish Family Invented the Franchise and redefined pictorial genres Let’s get the bad news out of the way: the new exhibition on the Bruegel family at Palazzo Reale is small. Not intimate, not focused: just… small. You walk in, you meet the...
This week I was talking with a colleague about Agentic AI (no rest for the wicked, I know), and she was expressing a bit of frustration at some of the dynamics at play in the AEC industry, ’cause she’s not a programmer and she claims...
I’m in Denmark, these days, at the International LEGO® Serious Play® Conference set up by IntHrface with co-creator Johan Roos, and I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, but I wanted to follow up on what we saw last Wednesday about the...
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“Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.”
I wouldn’t have started this book on my own, and for many reasons. One of them is that in Italy it’s marketed as Young Adult Fiction, and I hate most of that stuff, and the other is its im...
Well, you might now it by a different name, because The Violin of the Madman (Il Violino del Pazzo) is just the Italian title for Selma Lagerlöf’s 1899 novella En herrgårdssägen, usually translat...
Ah, Selma Lagerlöf. I haven’t read anything of hers since I was a kid and now, all of a sudden, I find myself reading three works of hers in two months. The first one was Men and Troll, a colle...
Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) was the most popular and influential writer in modern Yiddish literature, best known for creating Tevye the Dairyman, who inspired the popular musical Fiddler on the Roof...
I have a very fond memory of Selma Lagerlöf‘s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson, but I approached this collection of tales with cautious optimism, being what they are. If you take a l...
Two women in Rome, harbouring a resentment over something that seems shallow at first and then, little by little, it becomes spoken and plain, and terrifying. I didn’t know what I was getting into, ...
kyklàda.press is an independent, Athens-based publishing project founded in 2020 by artist David Bergé. It produces small books about the Aegean archipelago and the wider cultural, ecological, polit...
I rarely review the classics, because Time is a better judge and there must be a reason if they’re classics, which doesn’t mean you’re bound to like them but it does mean that our op...
Byung-Chul Han è un filosofo tedesco contemporaneo nato in Corea, la cui opera esplora la trasformazione della soggettività, del potere e delle relazioni sociali nelle società tardo-moderne ...
You might say that this is a historical novel about two pioneer women hunting for fossils on the famed beach of Lyme, one of them being paleontology legend Mary Anning and the other being the less fam...
This is a really splendid collection of stories, some shorter than other, and I wouldn’t have collected them this way: you have proper sci-fi stories and fairy tales, stories about science (with ver...
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 suburba...
So, aside from these last few entries, I did a summer reading list for architects with hardly any book about architecture, didn’t I? Loads of them were poetry, some were non-fiction on anthropol...
This is another book that was foundational in my intellectual development and it’s actually at the crossroads between architecture, level design and user experience. Francesco Careri, its author...
Lewis Mumford never finished a degree, which is one of the main reasons I am attracted to his work: after chronic illness interrupted his studies at the City College of New York, what became one of th...
Christopher Alexander was born in Vienna in 1936, to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, and left with his family for England after the Anschluss in March 1938 (which is a fancy name for when Hitle...
We’re closing out the month a little differently than we opened it, and we’re circling back to the city since many of you will be doing just that. What’s left of August won’t b...
We already encountered W.G. Sebald with his The Rings of Saturn, and today I’d like to bring you his last novel, Austerlitz, published in 2001. The story follows a man named Jacques Austerlitz w...
Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, and translator, born in 1923 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 for poetry marked by a sharp, ironic awareness of human life and history...
Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–1987) was a Belgian-born French novelist, essayist, poet, and translator who became the first woman elected to the Académie française in 1980. No, I’m not kidding....
Anne Michaels is a Toronto‑based Canadian writer who first gained attention as a poet before becoming internationally recognised for her fiction. Her writing is poetic and meditative, blending philo...
Born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria in 1863, the poet known as C.P. Cavafy is regarded as the greatest modern Greek poet, though he spent much of his life in the cosmopolitan world of Alexa...
Zbigniew Herbert was a major 20th-century Polish poet, essayist, and dramatist, born in Lviv in 1924 and associated with a strong moral, anti-totalitarian voice in postwar Polish literature. Report fr...
These last six days have been about materiality: one object, one specific made or found thing, and its exact physical fact being conflated with everything that’s accumulated on top of that fact ...
We Were Always Here: on Memory, Erasure, and the Persistence of Queer History All month long, we have journeyed through scroll and scripture, painting and poetry, ruin and reliquary, gathering voices,...
Letters in Exile: Rumi’s Longing for Shams al-Din Tabrizi “Since Shams appeared,my heart has been a hundred thousand burning lamps.The world is a candle, and I am the wick:I am consumed in the fla...
The Love That Wrote Itself: Hadewijch and the Ecstasy of the Unknown Beloved “And she beheld me with love,and made me forget all my suffering.”— Hadewijch of Brabant, Visions and Poems (13th...
Saint Wilgefortis and the Bearded Woman of Lützen: Gender Miracles in Devotional Art A crucified female saint — dressed in noble garments, arms outstretched, and crowned with an improbable beard ...
Christina of Sweden: The Queen Who Refused to Be a Woman Crowned queen at the age of six and ruling in her own right by eighteen, Christina of Sweden stood as one of the most enigmatic and transgressi...
She Knew Better than Any Man: Female Lovers in Brantôme’s Courtly Chronicles “This reminds me of certain women who love their companions so dearly that they would not share them for all the wealt...
The Noble Knight: Gender Ambiguity and Queer Aesthetics in the Portrait of Doña Catalina de Erauso Known as “La Monja Alférez” (The Lieutenant Nun), Catalina de Erauso defied every expectation o...
Veiled in Wit: Queer Subtext and Gender Play in The Heptameron Often dubbed “the French Decameron,” The Heptameron is a collection of 72 stories told by a group of noble travellers, written by Mar...
Not by Nature, but by Habit: Christine de Pizan and the Complexity of Gender Roles “If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as boys are taught, they woul...
The Sword and the Stage: La Maupin, the Scandalous Virtuosa of Baroque France Julie d’Aubigny, better known as La Maupin, was a French opera singer, expert swordswoman, and outlaw who lived as boldl...
As Blossoms Fall: The Poetry of Ephemeral Love in Nanshoku Ōkagami “Their sleeves were soaked with tears, not from shame, but from knowing they had only this one night. In the garden, plum blossoms...
In the Courtyard at Dusk: Female Intimacy in Mughal Miniature Painting In the world of the Mughal court, the zenana was a secluded space that offered elite women both constraint and community. Mughal ...
Chapter 5 Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh — v...
Chapter 3 After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think about the monk. But a minute later Tanya came in. “Here, Andryusha; read fath...
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian physician, short-story writer and playwright, and I’m not particularly fond of him, though he’s widely regarded as one of the greatest masters of ...
Continues from yesterday… ATORRENT of rain held us marooned the next day. Miss Leahy was confined to her room, with a nurse in constant attendance and the house doctor making hourly calls. She w...
“The Phantom Farmhouse” is a short story written by Seabury Quinn, first published in the October 1923 issue of Weird Tales. It is one of Quinn’s most famous standalone works outside...
“The Immortal Hand” is a supernatural short story written by pulp author Arlton Eadie (the pseudonym of Leopold Leonard Eady). It was originally published on March 1929 in Weird Tales and ...
Continues from yesterday… CHAPTER II. Before the autumn was at an end, and while the brown leaves still stood thick on the beeches in our park, my brother and Bertha were engaged to each ot...
“The Lifted Veil” is an 1859 Victorian horror and science fiction novella written by George Eliot. It originally appeared anonymously in the periodical Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine...
Herman Melville needs no introductions, and “The Bell-Tower” is one of his darker short stories, first published in August 1855 in Putnam’s Monthly, and later included in his collect...
“A Tropical Horror” is a 1905 short story by William Hope Hodgson and one of his earliest published fictions. It first appeared in The Grand Magazine of June 1905, and it is Hodgson’s second pub...
“Lot No. 249” is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in September 1892 and later included in the collection Round the Red Lamp (1894). It is one of ...
“Bal Macabre” (1908) is one of Gustav Meyrink’s most striking occult short stories: a hallucinatory, symbol-laden tale set in a decadent nightclub that turns into a vision of death, pois...
This is not a celebration. Every year, November 25th marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and it opens the door to the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Vi...
Today is Human Rights Day and the last day on my reading list. I’ve got a treat for you. And tomorrow I’ll give you a sneak peek of the BIM notebooks. Drawing Power: Women’s Stories ...
I don’t have much time today (it was bound to happen) but I can still throw something out there as part of the reading list. We’re almost there. Tomorrow is Human Rights Day. Chlorine Gard...
On October, 10th – International Mental Health Day – I had the chance of writing how unsafe and unhealthy the construction industry can be. I skimmed again on the surface of this topic on...
After Lighter than my Shadow, and as I feel that body shaming is one of the forms of violence and abuse we often overlook, on today’s reading list I have another graphic novel about eating disorders...
As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gilman Melanie Gillman’s webcomic about a queer, black teenager who finds herself stranded in a dangerous and unfamiliar place: an all-white Christian youth backpack...
It’s December 5th and I know I should be remembering something, but I can’t remember what. I probably forgot someone’s birthday and if you’re reading this… sorry, I think...
On November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I announced taht I am going to collect all the articles I wrote on BIM since 2015 and that all profits from the ...
It’s December (can you believe it?) And I’m struggling with my committment of providing you with a little something every day, going from November 25th to December 10th, from the Internati...
Happy 1st day of December, darlings. I continue with my reading list of comic books by artists talking about gender biases, integration and diversity. Today on the reading list… Passing for Hu...
I continue along the line of what is becoming a reading list on graphic novels around the subject of diversity, gender-based violence and integration in general. Today… The Hookah Girl and Other...
Day 6, my reading list continues. November, 25th was the International Day for the elimination of violence against women and I‘m trying to bridge it together with December, 10th (International Hu...
Fifth day of my committment. November, 25th was the International Day for the elimination of violence against women and we try to make a run for December, 10th (International Human Rights Day) by mak...
I follow through my committment, on this fourth day. November, 25th was the International Day for the elimination of violence against women and we try to make a run for December, 10th (International ...
Take It as a Compliment by Maria Stoian Bringing together the voices of males and females of all ages, the stories in this collective graphic memoir reflect real life experiences of sexual abuse, viol...
Michael Godwin’s farm lay tucked away comfortably in a hollow of the South Downs. The downs swept up-wards in all directions around it, and on one side beyond was the sea. The sound of it as it ...
A small crowd of gold-diggers stood in front of Lowry’s shanty as a horse and sulky rattled up the sand track through the mulga. The driver was Lowry, and a murmur of excitement ran through the ...
It was the last house in Beauchamp Row, and it stood several rods away from its nearest neighbour. It was a pretty house in the daytime, but owing to its deep, sloping roof and small bediamonded windo...
When Joe Darby chucked his billet down in golden Ballarat,And set out with many others for the rush at Hard-up Flat,He was not exactly worried with those monetary caresThat accumulate like rabbits on ...
“I never heard of a woman’s bein’ saxton.” “I dun’ know what difference that makes; I don’t see why they shouldn’t have women saxtons as well as men sax...
No one knew who had admitted the old man. He was suddenly there, in the chimney corner, warming his hands before the glow of the Yule log. The guests were a little weary with singing and laughing. The...
“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,“September 8th, 1911. “DEAR OLD BRUCE,—What wondrous weather we are still having! I have shoved this delightful desk close up to the open window, to see a bit more of ...
“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,“September 7th, 1911. “DEAR BRUCE,—I do believe I’ve got it! If so it’s a great deal more (or less) than I deserve for one of the rottenest things I ever did in al...
“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,“September 7th, 1911. MY DEAR BRUCE,—The day before yesterday I finished that thing for the Christmas number of the Vivid, after nearly a fortnight’s hard grind; late ...
NOTHING could have been more neutral, more dull; the scene was the lecture hall of one of our most learned societies, as austere and grim a place as the cold mind and lifeless taste of Science could c...
Tom Mountstephen was dressed in his very best—a black coat, a tie of blue satin studded with veritable planets, and in it a new zodiacal sign—a fox in full career, that formed the head of a pin. T...
Linley was fond of collecting what he called “raw material” and, as a fairly successful barrister, he had good opportunity for doing so. He despised novelists and romancists, yet one day h...
“Wonder what’s goin’ on in the church?” Gilman Marlow stopped and stared slowly over at the church. It was a little white building with five pointed windows on each side. The w...
The following story is found in the Gretla, an Icelandic Saga, composed in the thirteenth century, or that comes to us in the form then given to it; but it is a redaction of a Saga of much earlier dat...
I was born at Sawley, where the shadow of Pendle Hill falls at sunrise. I suppose Sawley sprang up into a village in the time of the monks, who had an abbey there. Many of the cottages are strange old...
A considerable time ago I was invited to a little evening gathering, where our friend Vincent was, along with some other people. I was detained by business, and did not arrive till very late. I was al...
“I don’t s’pose you air goin’ to do much Christmas over to your house.” Mrs. Luther Ely stood looking over her gate. There was a sweet, hypocritical smile on her little t...
She who had been Florence Flannery noted with a careless eye the stains of wet on the dusty stairs, and with a glance ill used to observance of domesticities looked up for damp or dripping ceilings. T...
The Chrightons were very great people in that part of the country where my childhood and youth were spent. To speak of Squire Chrighton was to speak of a power in that remote western region of England...
Martha Pym said that she had never seen a ghost and that she would very much like to do so, “particularly at Christmas, for you can laugh as you like, that is the correct time to see a ghost....
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