Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, to conclude what I’ve been saying.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:[1] “Signs,” Wednesday Blog 1.10.[2] “On Servant Leadership,” Wednesday Blog 6.15.[3] Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” Poetry Foundation.

This week, for the penultimate post of the Wednesday Blog, how machinery needs constant maintenance to keep functioning.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:[1] Surekha Davies, “Walter Raleigh’s headless monsters and annotation as thinking,” in Strange and Wonderous: Notes from a Science Historian, (6 October 2025).[2] “Asking the Computer,” Wednesday Blog 5.26.

This week, how living in a culture is required to speak a language in depth.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources: [1] “A Letter from San Juan,” Wednesday Blog 3.29.[2] “The North American Tour,” Wednesday Blog 5.34.

This week, bringing together my research and my life through wine.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:[1] Thevet, Singularitez, 14v.[2] Thevet, Singularitez, 15r.[3] Thevet, Singularitez, 159r.[4] Thevet, Singularitez, 15v.[5] Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols., (Paris, 1873-1877) s.v. « mignol. »[6] Florike Egmond, Eye for Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500-1630, (Reaktion Books, 2017), 30; Mackenzie Cooley, The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance, (University of Chicago Press, 2022), 101.[7] Thevet, Singularitez, 18v.[8] Thevet, Singularitez, 19r.[9] Thevet, Singularitez, 19v.[10] Thevet, Singularitez, 19v-20r.[11] Homer, Odyssey 9.403, trans. Fagles.

This week, recent events have inspired me to think about the wide, wide world on a smaller scale.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Click here to buy a copy of my book Travels in Time Across Europe which tells the stories from my year living in London that began 10 years ago this week.

This week, on the current round of redistricting sweeping through Missouri.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources[1] “On Democracy,” Wednesday Blog 5.39.[2] “We, Irish Americans,” Wednesday Blog 6.10.[3] “On Servant Leadership,” Wednesday Blog 6.15.[4] “Freedom from Fear,” Wednesday Blog 2.6; “Embodied Patriotism,” Wednesday Blog 6.26.[5] “Governor Kehoe announces special session on congressional redistricting and initiative petition reform,” Office of the Governor of the State of Missouri, 29 August 2025.[6] “A Scary Time For Chicago | Trump Gets FOMO Over China's Military Parade | Donald's Life Lessons,” The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (3 September 2025), YouTube.[7] “A Defense of Humanism in a Time of War,” Wednesday Blog 6.24.

This week, comparing the benefits of pleasure with the rewards of good work.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:Photo: © Juan Valentín CC BY-NC 4.0 https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/427040191. No modifications made. Available under public license. Image slightly cropped length-wise for podcast episode art.[1] André Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, (Antwerp, 1558), 4v ; Aristotle, Situations and Names of Winds 973b, 12–13.[2] Homer, Odyssey 9.106–110, trans. Robert Fagles, (Penguin, 1996), 214.[3] Homer, Odyssey 9.110–117, trans. Fagles, 214.[4] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1118a.[5] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1118a, 8.

This week, how the greatest wisdom is simple in nature.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:Photo by Elizabeth Duke.[1] Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek: The Saint’s Life of Alexis Zorba, trans. Peter Bien, (Simon and Schuster, 1946, 2014), 81.[2] “Elephant Tails,” Wednesday Blog 5.24.[3] “Asking the Computer,” Wednesday Blog 5.26.[4] “On Political Violence,” Wednesday Blog 5.17.

This week, I reflect on the flexibility of the word world.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, I argue that we must have some degree of artifice to organize our thoughts and recognize the things we see in our world.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:[1] For my recent essays referring to this current historiographic project see “On Sources,” Wednesday Blog 6.22, “On Writing,” Ibid., 6.27, and “On Knowledge,” Ibid., 6.29.[2] Lee Alan Dugatkin, Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose, (University of Chicago Press, 2009).[3] Staffan Müller-Wille, “Linnean Lens | Linnaeus’ Lapland Journey Diary (1732),“ moderated by Isabelle Charmantier, virtual lecture, 12 May 2025, by the Linnean Society of London, YouTube, 1:04:18, link here.[4] Jason Roberts, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, (Random House, 2024), 45–49.[5] Roberts, 20.[6] Roberts, 115–125.[7] Roberts, 109.[8] André Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, (Antwerp, 1558), 16r–16v. The translation is my own.[9] Roberts, 109.[10] Damião de Góis, Chronica do Felicissimo Rei Dom Emanuel, 4 vols., (Lisbon, 1566–1567).[11] Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 190.[12] Roberts, 110.[13] Michael Wintroub, A Savage Mirror: Power, Identity, and Knowledge in Early Modern France, (Stanford University Press, 2006), 42.[14] Roberts, xii.[15] Roberts, 107.[16] Roberts, 96–98.[17] Michael Allin, Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris, (Delta, 1998).

This week, I want to address how we recognize knowledge in comparison to the various fields of inquiry through which we refine our understanding of things.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkaneArtRaphael, The School of Athens (1509–1511), Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums, Vatican City. Public Domain.Sources“On Writing,” Wednesday Blog 6.27.Surekha Davies, Humans: A Monstrous History, (University of California Press, 2025).Marcy Norton, The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals After 1492, (Harvard University Press, 2024), 307.Dead Poets Society, (1989) "What will your verse be?" Video on YouTube.

This week, I discuss some of the things which are common to all of us, problems we all share, and why I think we ought to look at solving those problems.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some words about the art, and the craft, of writing.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Links in this episode:Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman, and Natan Odenheimer, “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power,” The New York Times Magazine, (11 July 2025).John McWhorter, “It’s Time to Let Go of ‘African American’,” The New York Times, (10 July 2025).Bishop Mark J. Seitz, D.D., “The Living Vein of Compassion’: Immigration & the Catholic Church at this moment,” Commonweal Magazine, (June 2025), 26–32.“On Technology,” The Wednesday Blog 5.2.“Artificial Intelligence,” The Wednesday Blog 4.1.

This week, on the patriotism we live in our ordinary lives.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

In honor of Independence Day, here is a recitation of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some words on endings.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, why we should not lose sight of our common humanity in a time of war.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---This week's sources:[1] “Masks,” Wednesday Blog 4.15.[2] Luke 10:27 (New American Bible).[3] St. Augustine, Confessions 8.7.[4] Joan-Pau Rubiés, “The Renaissance of Encounters and the Renaissance of Antiquities,” Renaissance Quarterly 78, no. 1 (2025): 1–41, at 12.[5] Philippe Desan, Montaigne: A Life, trans. Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal, (Princeton University Press, 2017), xxxiii.[6] “On the Cannibals,” Wednesday Blog 4.20.

This week, the coalescence of my thoughts over the last few months about how the way we communicate today in 2025 is so rooted in our technology.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, the fourth in several scribblings about my research: borrowing from Oscar Wilde, the importance of being earnest with one’s sources.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:Ologies Podcast: https://www.alieward.com/ologies"Metropolis," Wednesday Blog 3.20: https://wednesdayblog.org/2023/01/11/metropolis/.Marie V. Alessandro, "The Workers of Metropolis" in Cinema at UMass Boston, (6 November 2020), https://blogs.umb.edu/cinemastudies/2020/11/06/workers-of-metropolis/Surekha Davies, “Here be black holes: Like sea monsters on premodern maps, deep-space images are science’s fanciful means to chart the edges of the known world,” Aeon (13 July 2020), https://aeon.co/essays/how-black-holes-are-like-sea-monsters-at-the-edge-of-our-vision.Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Ed., Notes-Bibliography System Quick Guide, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html.Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, (London, 1878): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2074.

This week, the third in several scribblings about my research: how studying Thevet and his world fulfills a need to find purpose in life.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane