Étienne Fortier-Dubois

Aug 28, 2024 | hopefulmons.com | Étienne Fortier-Dubois

What does evil look like? Darkness. Tones of black and purple and gray, dulled, lifeless — evil looks like death. It looks like the absence of anything good. It looks like emptiness. It looks like The Void. Quite often evil also has the brown or bluish guise of foulness: buzzing insects and spreading fungus. But equally often it looks like danger. If a bright color is involved it shall be red: the red of blood, the red of violence.

Aug 8, 2024 | etiennefd.substack.com | Étienne Fortier-Dubois

The Olympic Games, probably the most prestigious sports event of all, are going on in Paris as I write this, in 2024. The Olympic Games were also created in Paris, in 1894, at a congress convened by Pierre de Coubertin at the Sorbonne, which would evolve into the International Olympic Committee. The first games were held in Athens in 1896 and the second in Paris in 1900, during the Universal Exhibition. In 1894 Paris was the center of the world, more or less tied with London.

Jul 31, 2024 | etiennefd.substack.com | Étienne Fortier-Dubois

Sometimes life sends you a sign that, try as you might, you are an inferior blogger than the ones you look up to. I wrote a big review of a book about pharaoh Akhenaten, entered it into the ACX book review contest, and didn’t make it to the finals. I know why: my review was missing some contemporary insight that would transcend the book and make it more than just a retelling of Akhenaten’s story, which is already well-known (among history nerd types, at least).

Jul 11, 2024 | etiennefd.substack.com | Étienne Fortier-Dubois

Many if not most magical artifacts from mythology are weapons. Many more consist of some other type of equipment or jewelry, like shields and rings. They usually have impressive but ultimately boring powers that have to do with violence, like protecting the wearer from the negative effects of violence, or allowing the wielder to cause violence with great efficacy. Much more interesting, but also rarer, are the mythical artifacts that create infinite resources.

Jun 20, 2024 | etiennefd.substack.com | Étienne Fortier-Dubois

I participated in the Astral Codex Ten book review contest thrice. The first time I wrote about the history of the scientific journal Nature and became one of the fifteen finalists. The second time I wrote about Jane Jacobs, cities, and separatism, and somehow I was a winner, although barely: I got third place, and only because Scott Alexander, who runs the contest, disqualified his own entry, which readers had voted as the winner.