Cats are such a gift. Living with little wild creatures that self domesticated but only on their own terms is such an amazingly ancient human tradition.

My newest tattoo. Added to my recent Bartók tattoo is Ditta Pásztory, his wife. My piano teacher when I lived in Japan as a teen was Erzsébet Tusa, who performed a lot of Bartók with his widow, Ditta. Erzsébetnéni was an incredible interpreter of Bartók so my connection to Bartók is through Ditta.

I got a new set of dishes for the first time in my life. I feel like my cooking has instantly leveled up. Easy weeknight supper with adjika and yogurt-roasted chicken, stir fried long beans with basil, roasted tiny eggplants with a tahini lemon yogurt dressing, and freekeh. Local veg and chicken.

School's back in session and that means lunchboxes for my 5th grader a couple of days a week. Tomorrow's lunch is adjika-marinated Gulf red snapper and spicy gutti vankaya curry (a South Indian baby eggplant curry with a spicy masala), made with tiny local eggplants.

Right? Like, I'm jealous! Last year I hired the guide to take me on exactly the kind of activities he was taking the kids on and did an adult half day fish camp. Planning to do it again this year when it's not quite as hot. The adult version included beer. It was fantastic.

This is him after I found him on my pillow. Eventually I regretfully told him he had to leave and he left. But I love him.

This is him earlier in the street. He climbed onto my lap without prompting.

In Istanbul on holiday and came back from sightseeing to find this cat in my bed on my pillow. I had snuggled him earlier on the street. He must have sauntered in the front door of the building, through the barred metal door to the flat, up the stairs and into my room. I was shocked and delighted.

Today I took my kid, his friend and his mom to the Delta to do a tour of Emmett Till sites. My kid has been many times but as he grows older he remembers more and it hits harder for me as he inches closer to the age Emmett Till was when he was brutally murdered.

Finally read @xiranjayzhao.bsky.social's Heavenly Tyrant after my kid has been bugging me to read it for months. It's incredible. For a 10 year old to enjoy an amazing action sci fi story with a lot of political theory that he grasped as such because of the context is amazing.

My child's 4th grade English test. A passage about the Irish potato famine that doesn't mention the English and suggests that landlords also suffered from the potato famine. Ignores forced exports of cash crops, and the criminalization of the Irish language by the English. How history can be erased.

Forthcoming in Albany Law Review - International Law by Corporation, which looks at the role corporations play in creating international law. The article looks at the Facebook Oversight Board and space law as examples. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Here is what Iggy is up to while the neighbors worry about him.

Our neighbor, who I'm not friends with on social media and don't really know, sent me this incredibly sweet message about our cat Iggy today. #wholesome

This book by Veronica Martínez-Matsuda is fabulous. I had to read it for one of the history classes I'm taking. It's one of the best books I've read this semester. Gives a nuanced look at the ways the FSA tried to improve migrant farmworker conditions and the ways it failed or was undermined.