Chiang, author of the short story that was turned into the movie Arrival, is only the second SF writer to win the PEN/Malamud Award, a lifetime achievement award for short stories. - Associated Press
Nakayama was “a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who broke through to become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and gained international attention.” - The New York Times
"The main beneficiaries this week are smaller films in dire need of the attention the tastemakers provide” - for instance, Drive My Car a couple of years ago. - Vulture
A lot depends on the incoming administration. “The TikTok ban could take effect as soon as one day before Trump is inaugurated next month. In reality, the app is most likely to survive a few more months.” - Wired
It’s because Interstellar was super good, right? Maybe, or maybe it’s because Christopher Nolan sure knows how to train his audiences to find, watch, and enjoy his movies (and then obsessively share about them online). - Slate
Brain rot is marked by a “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” - The Atlantic
This paucity of first-person storytelling is striking. Among the best writing of our current century, have so few people written well enough about their lives to qualify? Where are all the memoirs? - The Walrus
It came as Sir Keir Starmer and his Greek counterpart met for talks in Downing Street on Tuesday - though it is unclear whether the Elgin Marbles were discussed. - BBC
In the late 20th century she was seen as an exemplar of well-meaning but extreme ascetic mysticism. Now she's either a prophet of, and antidote for, American political and spiritual malaise or "a mascot for misguided youths seeking to blend a fetishized Catholic ritualism with aestheticized eating disorders." - The Drift
Kevin Killian published over a million words on Amazon, across almost twenty-four hundred reviews, before his death, in 2019. The products he evaluated included DVDs of classic twentieth-century cinema, literary biographies, and experimental poetry collections—but also toiletries, Halloween costumes, and a chestnut tree. - The New Yorker
Play is something that predates humans. It’s fundamental to how animals engage in and understand the world. It’s how we test and figure out the rules of our environment, how social relationships work. - LA Review of Books
"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. 'But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.'" - The Guardian
Some Giller winners state that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders of so many arts prizes and organizations in Canada — banks such as Scotiabank — to divest from companies whose products are currently being used in mass killing.” - The Conversation
As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. - Works in Progress
It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces you to think. Which is anyway your job, if you’re a teacher. As Samuel Johnson said of the death penalty, it concentrates the mind. - Plough
