Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

Since the summer, I've been trying to find ways to deal with severe chronic fatigue, which has really cut down on the activities I've felt up to doing. It has, however, upped my intake of audiobooks and other things I can listen to. I recently discovered Audiobooks.com, which seems to have the largest selection of audiobooks and podcasts to search from, while also being very accessible and, as in the following instance, if it is a podcast, you have the option of either purchasing it to download or listening to it for free through the app.

So yesterday, while searching for new audiobooks, I came across this BBC Radio 4 series by Natalie Haynes and, being the classics and myth geek that I am, I listened to her Series 5, which began with Aristotle. I'm always interested in hearing more about Aristotle due to my obsession with _The Name of the Rose_. Since I've read a number of her books, I was quite prepared for Natalie Haynes to be witty and fascinating, but I had no idea that she was so *funny*!!! In addition, she has other classicists as guests who are *also* funny!

Haynes also makes it a point to feature as her subjects women of the classical world and recent archeological discoveries which support broadening our ideas regarding diversity in Western Europe. I can see how this show led her to write _Pandora's Jar_, in which she explores ideas regarding the role of women in Greek epic and drama, including lost and obscure works (note that _Pandora's Jar_ and other books by Haynes are available on NLS and on Bookshare).

Two episodes which I absolutely must recommend are "The Amazons" and "homer." During the latter, she announces that, since we really don't know anything about Homer, she will, instead, give a summary of all twenty-four books of "The Iliad" in the next twenty-four minutes and this turns out to have so many insights and poetic highlight that I am feeling excited about rereading the entire thing again.

You can find Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics online, including an episode list here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077x8pc/episodes/player

and you can also ask Alexa "Alexa, play Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics.," although I'm not sure if Alexa has access to all the episodes that are available on the BBC website.

Elon Musk fires Twitter's accessibility team

Kes: Now that Twitter is used as an everyday tool for government, educational, and research use, I wonder if it falls under the ADA? I suppose we'll find out when the blizzard of blind lawyers descends upon Musk's head and files a law suit through the DOJ.

The following tweets are from Girard K. Cohen, who identifies himself as the former engineering manager of Twitter’s accessibility experience team.
Original source
https://twitter.com/gerardkcohen/status/1588584479072714752

I am officially no longer the Engineering Manager for the Accessibility Experience Team at Twitter. I have words.
As hard as things were they would have been impossible without our beloved Nightingales, accessibility champions that helped expand our reach.
Please, show them some grace. We heard & listened to all of you, good & bad, & we felt it all genuinely. I hate
the way this ended, but I’m so very proud of everything we were able to accomplish together. Now I have other places to help make accessible 💪🏽
We also got to work with qualityisking taking care of us as our tester. Peter was extremely thorough and his
reports were beautiful.
So, the Accessibility Experience Team at Twitter is no longer. We had so much more to do, but we worked hard! There aren't
very many people that have had the opportunity to make such an important global platform like Twitter accessible, but we understood the mission.

Kes: Also, from Wired:

Elon Musk Has Fired Twitter’s ‘Ethical AI’ Team
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-ethical-ai-team/