This is Diving into the bookmarks, sporadic posts where I share links to various places online with some brief commentary (and quotes!) Enjoy.

• Fell down a rabbit hole reading through Patricia McConnell’s (my incomplete reading notes on her wonderful book The Other End of the Leash live on my wiki here) fantastic blog and read this wonderful 2009 blog post, “Oxytocin Increases When Your Dog Looks at You” which then led me to read up on this 2019 study by Marshall-Pescini et al. which was not able to duplicate those findings, suggesting that it is harder to both measure and conclude meaning from the presence of various neurochemicals; that science is always trying to refine our understanding of cross-species relations; and perhaps that different dogs respond to human touch and presence in myriad, unsimple ways: “The Role of Oxytocin in the Dog–Owner Relationship”:

In this study we measured oxytocin levels in dogs and humans before and after they interacted with their closely bonded partner (dog–owner dyads) and with a partner they were familiar with but with whom they did not have a close bond. Based on previous literature we predicted that dogs and owners would show an increase in oxytocin after a positive social interaction, and that this increase would be higher when the dog and owner were interacting with each other than when the interaction occurred with a partner that was just ‘familiar’. In fact, overall we did not find an increase in either, dogs’ or humans’ oxytocin level, although there was a lot of variability in the response. We discuss various reasons why our results are not in line with other studies.

• “These are numbers are just — wow”: This winter was warmest in Canadian records by a huge margin* writes reporter Kate Allen for the Toronto Star. As I’ve expressed ad nauseum this winter, I don’t like to use the term “climate anxiety” when talking about the emotional despair that these warm, icy winters inspire. Anxiety presupposes some sort of hypothetical. Instead, I much prefer using “climate grief,” “climate stress,” or even, often, “climate rage.” (Read the article in full on Archive.is.)
• On the far (very far) fringes of literary and historical thought, Felice Vinci proposes that the origin story that inspired Odyssey took place in northern Europe; that Homer took an older Dorian tale and adapted it to the Mediterranean for his audience. This is one of those historicaliteral theories that — to me — don’t hold much water, but are thought-provoking enough to be fun to dig into: “Was the “Odyssey” originally set in the Baltic?” Also I haven’t read the complete Odyssey yet (unfortunately, Joyce’s Ulysses doesn’t really count), maybe I should throw it on my TBR pile.
• I tend to enjoy any writing critical of Ian Bogost (no real reason, I just enjoy low-to-no-stakes philosophical conflict) and this blog post by Manuel Moreale definitely fits: “It’s Time to Give Up on Everything but Email.” As someone who prefers email to every other kind of communication (with the exception hand-written letters), I feel very validated.

There’s a reason why emails are still here. They’re still here because they work. Is email perfect? No. Is there a better alternative? Also no.

• I have a definite soft spot for Judith Butler, but whether or not you care about gender, I recommend throwing your eyeballs towards this article from the NYT examining Butler’s latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, on gender panic (and social panic contagion in general): Judith Butler Thinks You’re Overreacting. As Butler jokes :

It’s funny, I have a friend, a queer theorist. I told him the book’s name and he said, “Everyone! Everyone’s afraid of gender!”

(If you want to check out the various bookmarks collected from the online francosphere, click here.)