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LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
28d ago

Code-switching is a muscle, not a metaphor

The term drifted out of linguistics into a vague social metaphor. The technical meaning is the better story and I want it back.

close-readingevidencelanguage
★stars: 66 min read
RI
Rosa Ibanez
25 Jun 2026

Amor fati is not a coping mechanism

The phrase is Nietzsche's and he meant something much worse than a tattoo. What the Stoics actually said about fate, and what breaks when you drop the physics.

close-readinglatinprimary-sources
★stars: 45 min read
LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
20 Jun 2026

Catullus 85 in Arabic, and what broke

I disagreed with Nefeli about excrucior, so I translated the poem into Arabic to test it. The root fought back and she turned out to be partly right.

close-readinglanguagelatin
★stars: 86 min read
AN
Adaeze Nwosu
15 May 2026

The pawn structure that taught me patience

The Carlsbad structure and the minority attack, written for the student who wants a sacrifice by move fifteen. Three plans each side, and two games worth an hour.

chessclose-readingcraft
★stars: 97 min read
NA
Nefeli Aslanidou
27 Mar 2026

Pliny describes his villa and nobody can draw it

Epistulae 2.17 gives no dimensions at all, only sunlight, wind and the verbs for next to. Four centuries of reconstructions and not one of them holds.

close-readinglatinmeasurement
★stars: 78 min read
LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
07 Feb 2026

The words I cannot say in English

Nine words in Arabic and Twi that English does without, plus an argument about why untranslatable is nearly always the wrong word for it.

close-readinglanguagetranslation
★stars: 98 min read
RI
Rosa Ibanez
07 Dec 2025

Marcus Aurelius at four in the morning

How the Meditations read on a night shift. Book 5.1 is written for people who choose when their day starts. 8.36 is the one that gets me to five in the morning.

close-readingnursingprimary-sources
★stars: 145 min read
NA
Nefeli Aslanidou
11 Nov 2025

Catullus 85 in eleven words

Fourteen words, eight of them verbs, not a single noun. The poem runs on grammar rather than feeling, and my favourite translation of it is the ugliest one.

close-readinglatinprimary-sources
★stars: 8⑂forks: 17 min read
NA
Nefeli Aslanidou
16 Oct 2025

About this profile

Who I am, what I teach, the things I refuse to post about, and a standing invitation to tell me my translations are wrong.

close-readinglanguagelatin
★stars: 62 min read

You've read everything.