iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 08/08/2026

Because I’m usually late to trendy titles, finally starting Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. I’m only about 15% in but this is a **very** interesting book so far. I see why it got so much buzz!

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 06/08/2026

I saw “Kit Conner cast as Cyclops” trending and my brain is still in Odyssey mode and I genuinely thought for a second that another Odyssey adaptation had been announced

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 30/07/2026

I read Discontent by Beatriz Serrano in one afternoon. I really enjoyed this book, and may identify with this protagonist than I’d like to admit. 😅 It truly put to words the existential dread of having to work in a capitalist world with such snark. I definitely recommend! #booksky

Me holding “Discontent” up against my shelf

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 27/07/2026

Robert Pattinson's Antinous is definitely one of the best parts of the movie The Odyssey. I'll be the annoying friend in the group chat using this GIF to death:

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 25/07/2026

"I have learned that you get a lot more out of classics if you allow it to be a disruptive challenge to self-serving modern certainties, rather than turn it into an untouchable ancestor in whose shadow you should count yourself lucky to sit." Seems poignant to remember as folks watch The Odyssey.💙📚

Me holding up My copy of Mary Beard’s “talking classics”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 22/07/2026

Another great thread from a translator of The Odyssey, this time on the cover which features the “Ladies in Blue” fresco from Crete.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 20/07/2026

Finishing this weekend by continuing “Son of Nobody” by Yann Martel—which I’m enjoying immensely. It’s one thing for a novelist to retell a Greek epic, but another thing to create their OWN epic *and* tell the story of the translator at the same time. #booksky #currentlyreading

Me holding My copy of son of nobody by Yann Martel

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 07/07/2026

I see that Athena not only beautified Penelope in the Odyssey, but that extended to Anne Hathaway as well because she looks absolutely gorgeous.

Anne Hathaway in a blue gown holding her bump looking gorgeous

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 06/07/2026

Come join “one of the most intellectual channels on Twitch” today (7/6) at 6:00 pm CST (4:00 pm PST / 11:00 pm GMT) for a Co-Working and Study session! 🧵 1/3

Banner image with the divine comedy translated by Michael Palmas in the back ground with two comments from recent viewers that reads, "This is one of the most intellectual channels on Twitch." with a response that reads, "Yess, I felt like I have found gold. I even told her too"
With text at the bottom that reads, "Research & Marginalia co-working stream on Twitch. twitch.tv/themythicglass "

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 03/07/2026

The ancient Phoenicians didn’t just give us the alphabet, but they’re using it to control us from Hell. 😆 Thank you @realinfowars.bsky.social and I hope Alex Jones is absolutely hating what's happening to Info Wars now youtu.be/tnz6PTSXiI0?...

Screen grab from the new infowars video from the Onion “Phoenicians control the world from hell”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 02/07/2026

Oh hello my beautiful new friend! My collection of @princetonupress.bsky.social books continues to grow! #booksky #currentlyreading

How women became poets: a gender history of Greek literature by Emily Hauser

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 02/07/2026

It's usually never a good thing when something's trending on Bsky. So, seeing Obsidian on the list freaked me out. I use @obsidian.md to store ALL my notes and writing projects. Thankfully, it seems like it was for a different Obsidian than the notetaking software! 🙏 Crisis averted.

A screenshot of Bluesky's "Trending" featuring: 1. Google Fine, 2. Obsidian 3. AnthroCon 4. Democratic Primary and 5. Israel Opposition

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 29/06/2026

I'm hosting a Co-Working and Studying stream tonight from 6-8:30pm CST! It'll be three 40-minute working segments and 5-minute breaks in between. Tonight, I'm adding Marginalia from Canto X of The Divine Comedy and Careless People for an upcoming article I'm working on! twitch.tv/themythicglass

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 28/06/2026

In the introduction of this “Talking Classic by Mary Beard, she writes, “Don’t imagine that there are pure nuggets of truth waiting to be discovered in classics. It’s the debate between us and antiquity that I’d important.” 🧵 #classicsbluesky #currentlyreading

Holding a copy of Mary Beard’s “Talking Classics”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 27/06/2026

🎮 Everyone’s talking about preorders for GTA6. I’m over here eagerly waiting for a God of War Laufey release date. 😭

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 26/06/2026

Odysseus says something very interesting in the tragedy, Hecuba, by Euripides: >"You know, this is how cities go wrong: when some brave and ready of heart wins no more glory than inferior men." (Lines 315-317 from Anne Carson's translation in "Grief Lessons") 🧵 #ancientbluesky #classicsbluesky

My copy of "Grief Lessons: Four Plays, Euripides" translated by Anne Carson, is on my bookshelf with my replica of an Ancient Greek vase.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 25/06/2026

I just got this Odyssey retelling from @mythsbaby.bsky.social for my nephew and after excitedly texting a bunch of pictures of the illustrations to his parents, they’re excited to read it too! (I told them that this book is their homework before the Nolan movie comes out.) #booksky

A copy of Liv Albert’s “the odyssey: a modern retelling” on my shelf next to my salt lamp

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 23/06/2026

"War between fellow citizens tends to become an accustomed condition, once a city's divided." - Euripides in his (not lost) play, Antigone #currentlyreading #booksky

the book "Since You're Mortal..." against a brick wall

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 16/06/2026

All it took to start the Trojan War was this and one golden apple.

Social media post that says, “you can just comment ‘you two look nice’ on a photo of 3 people. It’s free and legal.”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 13/06/2026

Lyra, seen here, is giving me a book recommendation, making her opinion well known. #caturday

My cat Lyra sitting in front of my bookshelf

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 13/06/2026

Watching the livestream of talking Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center on the same day as musk becomes a trillionaire because I crave some happy news..

A still on a tv of the livestream of the Kennedy center

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 12/06/2026

Earlier this week, I annotated Hecuba and The Odyssey. So today, from 5pm to 9pm CDT, I'm live-streaming putting my annotations into Obsidian! If you've got a to-do list to knock out, feel free to join this co-working stream! We'll be doing 50-minute focus working sessions with 10-minute breaks!

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 11/06/2026

I was already excited for this Catullus translation by @stephaniemccarter.bsky.social to come out next month. But also, last night on stream, someone mentioned that if Catullus were alive today, he'd be the *worst* on X/Twitter, and that reminded me of "Dumb and Poetic" by Sabrina Carpenter.

The cover of Stephanie McCarter's translation of "The Poems of Catullus: a dual-language edition with parallel text."

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 10/06/2026

In preparation for the Christoper Nolan movie in July, I’m rereading the Odyssey and streaming annotating my copy and filling it with marginalia!

My copy of The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson on my shelf with an orchid, a Greek vase and an incense holder

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 08/06/2026

I’m going to start with the Greek tragedy, Hecuba, translated by Anne Carson in her collection Grief Lessons!

My hand holding up "Grief Lessons: Four Plays, Euripides," translated by Anne Carson, against my bookshelf.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 06/06/2026

Fenrir is helping me organize my research material. #caturday #TheDivineComedy

my cat, Fenrir, laying next to my translations of The Divine Comedy.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 31/05/2026

Not my usual type of content, but I wanted to share in the internet void that this week was Week 1 of training for a 10k. I have always told myself that I’m not a runner or athletic. (In high school, I was allergic to sports and gym class.) #running #runner

Screenshot of my 5k run from the app "Runna" showing my stats from that run.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 18/04/2026

I’ve never been to Coachella, but it’s got to be cathartic. With an endless deluge of digital ~content~ to rot your brain (that’s mostly AI-generated), seeing art performed in real life and forgetting about everything happening in the world - even for a moment - has got to be fucking exhilarating.

Image from Coachella 2025 from the event website: https://www.coachella.com/photo-gallery

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 11/04/2026

Spending my Saturday getting all my notes set up and linked in my #Obsidian vault. I previously kept all my Zettelkasten notes inside a different service that didn't link ideas very well, so I switched to @obsidian.md I'm OBSESSED with the graph view. I giddily look at it after I link notes.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 09/04/2026

I’ve never read a book like Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu before. It’s written in a TV script style with a second-person perspective; it's a satire that examines how Chinese and Asian people are typecast into specific roles to make their "foreignness" more palatable to other Americans. 🧵 #booksky

Me holding a paperback version of "Interior Chinatown" in front of my bookshelf.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 06/04/2026

A cofounder of Anthropic wrote in a Substack article that spending time with family rather than asking AI to absorb research papers made him feel guilty. Although Dante didn’t live in the age of AI, I’ve read this in The Divine Comedy. 🧵

Jack Clark, co founder of Antropic, wrote this in a Substack essay: "This palpable sense of potential work - of having a literal army of hyper-intelligent loyal colleagues at my command - gnaws at me. It’s common now for me to feel like I’m being lazy when I’m with my family. Not because I feel as though I should be working, but rather that I feel guilty that I haven’t tasked some AI system to do work for me while I play with Magna-Tiles with my toddler."

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 04/04/2026

Every time I read the Divine Comedy and all the ways Dante punishes the sinners in Inferno, I always think of the Robot Devil from Futurama.

A meme of Futurama with the Robot Devil telling Bender, "We know all your sins! For each one, we've prepared an agonizing and ironic punishment!"

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 02/04/2026

Just got these two new reads! THE WHITE PEDESTAL: How White Nationalists use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate by Curtis Dozier And EPIC OF THE EARTH: Reading Homer’s “Iliad” in the Fight for a Dying World by Edith Hall Both from @yalepress.bsky.social!

A photo of Both “THE WHITE PEDESTAL” and “EPIC OF THE EARTH” on my bookshelf

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 28/03/2026

Another successful No Kings in Kansas City! Saying no to this small dicktator energy administration.

Me with a protest sign that reads “It’s giving small dicktator energy”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 14/03/2026

I just finished “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque. There is the person I was before reading this book, and there is the person I am now, having read it. This book, one of the first books to be publicly burned by the Nazis, is one that I won’t soon forget. #booksky

Cover of “All Quiet on the Western Front”

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 13/03/2026

It’s a hell of a time to be reading the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” while this Iran war is going on.

The cover of “all quiet on the western front”

Text from “all quiet on the western front” that reads: "True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were."
"Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.
Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom
the war is useful."

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 09/03/2026

Spent the first day of warm weather with the windows open reading “Stories from Ancient Canaan” All in all, a lovely way to spend a lovely Monday afternoon. #booksky

Stories from Ancient Canaan, second edition

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 06/03/2026

I FINALLY have all the plays by Euripides in my possession! With that, I think I finally have every Ancient Greek tragedy and comedy! Now begins the process of having more than just one translation of each 👀 #ancientsky #historysky

My bookshelf showcasing all 5 volumes of university of Chicago press collection of Euripides plays

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 01/03/2026

Boy it’d sure be nice to have a president again with more basic decency than a Dreamworks villain.

Top: Trump saying: the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost. That often happens in war.
Bottom: Lord Faarquad in Shrek saying: some of you may die. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 24/02/2026

As the State of the Union happens tonight and a wannabe dictator is flanked by two self-professed men of god, I think of a quote from the ancient Greek tragedy Agamemnon by Euripides. "...Great wealth gives birth to great woe. Now here's my own opinion: One unholy deed breeds another unholy deed."

Black and white photo of Vance, Johnson, and Trump during a state of the union address

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 28/01/2026

The threat of AI is not some fantastical sci-fi spin of “Machine becomes sentient and takes over humanity” but rather “Humanity willingly gives up sentience to become a machine.” Artificial Intelligence encourages us to have artificial humanity.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 27/01/2026

R.I.P. Dante Alighieri, you would have loved this protester’s sign. #DivineComedy

A protestor's sign that reads: "I HATE A NEUTRAL ASS BITCH!! STAND FOR SOMETHING HOE!!"

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 17/01/2026

Weekend Reading: Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park! North Korean spies, U.S. CIA agents, and a South Korean restaurateur. A spy novel about identity, diaspora, and exploring what loyalties “home" raises. I finished this slim (about 220 pages) in two days! I definitely recommend! #booksky

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 14/01/2026

I just finished "The Cleopatras" by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and really enjoyed it! Before reading this, I was only familiar with Cleopatra VII, the famous last queen of Egypt and infamous thanks to Roman propaganda. #booksky

Audiobook cover of "The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt" by Lloyd Llwellyn-Jones

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 20/11/2025

New photos of the East Wing's demolition have emerged. It looks as though the White House, the seat of power in the US, has suffered a traumatic amputation. And instead of blood lost, the US is losing integrity, the respect of other nations, and the trust of its own citizens.

Photo of the demolished East Wing of the White House. Photo by Andrew Leyden.

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 15/11/2025

What’s happening inside the GOP and MAGA reminds me a lot of the death of Scar in The Lion King. 🧵

Scar with his back against the wall in the Lion King

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 02/11/2025

Because I’ve been obsessively playing Hades 2, I FINALLY got a translation of The Orphic Hymns, and I CAN’T believe I waited this long to dig into the Orphic Myths.

The Orphic Hymns translated by Apostolos Athanassakis and Benjamin Wolkow

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 29/10/2025

In fact, forget the Wikipedia and the blackjack. ...Eh, screw the whole thing.

Bender from Futurama meme "... with blackjack and hookers."

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 24/09/2025

🧵 Outsourcing your vengeance doesn’t absolve your complicity. The mental gymnastics of Christian Nationalism is astounding in how awful it is. Allie Stuckey offers her audience comfort in their complicity, allowing them to hate others, even though their scripture tells them to do the opposite.

Stuckey's post on X that reads: "There was a big contrast between Erika's forgiveness speech and Stephen Miller's
"destroy our enemies" speech. Exactly as it should be. It is our job to forgive, not the government's. Christians give grace; the government wields the sword (Romans 13). We turn the other cheek; the government punishes evil."

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Monica Vale @themythicglass.com · 15/08/2025

Ahhh the epic cycle is finally complete! #ancientbluesky

My copies of Wilson’s translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey along with the correlating Aeneid

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