Stories

So says Oxford Languages, publisher of The Oxford English Dictionary. "'All these other vaccine words increased, but nothing like vax,' said Fiona McPherson, a senior editor for new words. ... 'It’s a short, punchy, attention-grabbing word.'" - The New York Times

Not to mention our own. "In horror, there is no ultimate triumph at the end. Even if the characters survive or defeat the monster, there’s no going back to the people they once were. That’s what grief feels like." - LitHub

As one might suspect, one author says that "when we learned of one another’s existence, it felt a little awkward." - The New York Times

Oh, it's a joy to hate the Roys on Succession. How refreshing! "Likeability is an odd requirement, as well as a sterile and stifling one. ... Unpunished, remorseless wickedness—like the Roys’—is becoming a no-no." - The Economist

A Melbourne gallery director says that along with years of massively shrinking arts funding, "the pandemic lockdowns left the industry on its knees. ... 'We have lost a generation of artists’ work,' he says." - The Guardian (UK)

One expert on challenged books: "Beloved is an extremely violent book, it’s absolutely true. But that is the point of the book. This mother ? She’s absolutely right—it’s extremely difficult to read. It gets stuck in your head." - Slate

Honestly, you might think, who cares about James Corden or Nicki Minaj? Some people really care, and frankly, it's a little scary. "Fan culture, of course, goes back hundreds of years – but mass media has warped the obsession into something much larger." - USA Today

No Modernism Without Lesbians is the title of Diana Souhami's most recent book - and the "hugely enjoyable" history of queer women like Stein, Toklas, Natalie Barney, and Sylvia Beach has won an LGBTQ-specific prize in Britain. - The Guardian (UK)

Hundreds, perhaps more, of artists of all cultural areas have fled. One artist, whose murals have been whitewashed: "The future of art and culture seems bleak. ... It is not possible for the Taliban to live with art." - The New York Times

One choreographer - a former econ major at Macalester College - says, "If I walk out of here in downtown Minneapolis, I don’t know what will happen to me. Will I be stopped? With Atlantis, my power is beyond what I see. It’s the idea of conquering death." - Sahan Journal

Henry Adams once wrote that “nothing in education is more astonishing than the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.” Literature shows us how to animate facts, and still more how to make them cooperate, to work and dance together toward revelation. - The American Scholar

Backed by CJ Live City, a subsidiary of Korean entertainment conglomerate CJ ENM, the venue is designed for mega-scale concerts with 20,000 indoor seats, and capacity for a further 40,000 outdoors. It is scheduled to open in 2024. - Variety

The show in many ways shatters the norms of techno-illusion. A two-minute deep fake is one thing. The dead dancing for us is another. - Washington Post

Choreographer Madeline Hollander has brought together New York City dancers, from big and small companies and from Broadway shows, and given them a task: to perform choreography that was canceled or postponed during the pandemic. - The New York Times

Ai’s trajectory is impossible to understand without knowing about his late father, Ai Qing. Regarded as one of China’s greatest poets, Ai Qing was a leftwing hero, having been imprisoned in 1932 for his links to communism. - The Guardian