According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000. And writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019. The advent of text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard is giving writers across the country even more cause for worry. - NPR
Does it sound like a Christie plot? "That joke was not lost on the nerve-rattled people left with nothing to do but wander around her property sipping calming beverages, eating sausage rolls prepared by the staff and playing croquet on the front lawn." - Salon
"If you do two, you might as well do three! But when Harlem Shuffle came out I didn’t say it was the first in a trilogy, because what if I got bored? I wanted to give myself an out. I didn’t want it in my obituary." - The Guardian (UK)
"The 2023 iteration was expected to draw thousands of attendees to Washington in early August. But just weeks before writers from across the world were due to land, the Smithsonian abruptly canceled the event, citing 'unforeseen circumstances'" - possibly "controversial" content. - Washington Post
"State-of-the-art imaging technology has enabled the British Library to read hidden pages of William Camden's Annals for the first time. … Those pages had been either over-written or concealed beneath pieces of paper stuck down so tightly that attempting to lift them would have ripped the pages and destroyed evidence." - The Guardian
"Hungary’s right-wing government has fined a bookstore nearly €32,000 (12,000,000 forints) for displaying the award-winning young adult graphic novel Heartstopper in the children's section of the store." - Euronews
It's how people have been socialized to present themselves. "Doctors have a culture of sloppy writing; teen girls have a culture of dotting their i's with tiny hearts. Girls don't write that way because they're feminine; (it's) because they've learned that tiny hearts are associated with femininity." - MSN (The Atlantic)
The casualties are Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer. The newspaper chain says the move is part of a "continuing evolution … based on changing reader habits." - MSN (The Washington Post)
I have been experimenting with my literary automaton to see how well it accomplishes this task. Or, as Robot Kyle put it when I asked him to comment on the possibility of replacing me: “How could a machine generate the insights, observations, and unique perspectives that I provide as a human?” - The New Yorker
"A word can be a perfect fit until something I try in the next clause introduces a clumsy repetition or infelicitous echo. Meaning, connotation and subtext all matter, but so does style. Below are two attempts to show the thought processes involved in the translation I do." - The New York Times
"A multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and computer scientists has developed an artificial intelligence that can translate Akkadian almost instantly and unlock the historic record preserved in these 5,000-year-old tablets," thousands of which remain untranslated. - Big Think
This case will “likely rest on whether courts view the use of copyright material in this way as ‘fair use’”, said Lilian Edwards, professor of law, innovation and society at Newcastle University, “or as simple unauthorised copying.” - The Guardian
Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times in 2018, promising to invest in the papers the way Jeff Bezos did in The Washington Post. Now, a month after major layoffs in L.A., Soon-Shiong has sold the U-T to Alden Global Capital's MediaNews Group. - Axios
"Overnight, Capote catapulted from a mere darling of the literary world to a full-fledged global celebrity on a par with the likes of rockstars and film legends. The success was all encompassing, but the cost would prove greater than even Capote had realized." - LitHub
"You learn to say 'The woman is sweating' before that most basic greeting, 'Hello.' An incongruously cheerful cartoon asks you to translate 'All men must die, goodbye.' And, of course: 'Ñuhyz zaldrīzesse gevī issi.' ('My dragons are beautiful!')." - The Guardian (UK)
