Blog Count -- September 27, 2022

September 27, 2022: 270 days.

Blog count: 3086 to date this year.

3086 / 270 = 11.42963

363 * 11.42963 = 4,172.

Previous record:

• 2013: 4,313.

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Literary Hub

Yesterday's "Literary Hub" was particularly good.

• Best and worst writing advice.
• On writing.
• The Rosenbergs.
• Midlife crisis and male violence. 

Earlier:

• Longleaf pine. Particularly good.
  

Today's "Literary Hub" was even better.

• "The Lost Ecological Paradise of the English Fenlands," Annie Proulx. 
• "The 'Infinite Lack' In Our Search for Love," -- Diary, Annie Ernaux. Wiki entry.
• "What Don Quixote Reveals about an empire at its peak." Giles Tremlett.
• "Writing Space." Kamila Shamsie.
• The Rosetta Stone, JSTOR Daily.
  

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Elsewhere

WSJ: Disney+ review -- cross-species cooperation. 

Ordinarily, the rule in nature television is that humans should be heard and not seen. And unless you’re David Attenborough, even that may be going too far. But humans are animals, after all. Shouldn’t they be among the players? Or even the played?

The latter, in the six-part, state-of-the-art “Super/Natural,” involve the vampire spiders of Lake Victoria in Kenya, which use the “perfume” of human blood to attract a mate; in order to get it, they go on what narrator Benedict Cumberbatch calls a “bloodthirsty killing spree.” (Their victims are well-fed mosquitoes.) The former include fishermen who’ve created a symbiotic alliance with bottle-nosed dolphins in the waters off Laguna, Brazil. There, mullets abound but are hard to catch, so the dolphins let the humans know where they’ve herded the smaller fish; the fishermen toss their nets in those designated spots; the throwing of the nets startles some fish into the mouths of the dolphins. Everybody wins. Except the mullets.

This National Geographic documentary series is about a lot of things, but it emphasizes throughout the cooperation that exists between species, either inherent or learned. James Cameron, no doubt deeply involved with his multiple “Avatar” sequels (the first, “The Way of Water,” is expected in December), serves as an executive producer on “Super/Natural,” which is no small thing: His deep-sea documentaries have been astounding (“Aliens of the Deep,” notably). Not surprisingly, the Nat Geo series contains no shortage of revelations, at least for this viewer, who had no idea that the whistling acacia even existed on the African savannah, much less that cocktail ants (their backsides full of toxins) bore holes in the trees so the wind sounds like swarming bees—which scares away foliage-eating elephants. Or that male Mexican fireflies on the make form their own kind of flash mob, blinking in unison to gather their mates.