Researchers concluded that a humbling 90% of medieval manuscripts preserving chivalric and heroic narratives – those relating to King Arthur, for example – have gone. Of the stories themselves, about a third have been lost completely, meaning that no manuscript preserving them remains. - The Guardian
The subgenre has evolved and thrived for a century with its key elements mostly intact: galactic encyclopedias of knowledge, interstellar politics, heroic journeys, and extraterrestrial encounters. Space opera remains the engine of the genre, one of its most prominent forms. - LA Review of Books
"Both (Benjamín Labatut's) When We Cease to Understand the World and (Danielle Dutton's) Margaret The First blur their relationship with historical fact, shifting between essayistic writing and vivid flights of imagination, ... (a) delicate balancing act. Both also, interestingly, explore questions of philosophical and scientific truth." - Literary Hub
This time it's about video gaming. "While some expressions find obvious translations — 'pro-gamer' becomes 'joueur professionnel' — others seem a more strained, as 'streamer' is transformed into 'joueur-animateur en direct'." - Yahoo! (AFP)
"It is a voice of intelligent curiosity; it implies that the writer has synthesized a great deal of information; it confidently takes readers by the hand. ... It is an effective voice for a lot of long-form journalism, but it was not for the book I was trying to write." - Public Books
The CEO who has made Condé Nast profitable again: "We have about 70 million people who read our magazines, but we have 300 something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media." - Nieman Lab
Translators "advocate for untranslated authors, bringing them to the attention of agents and editors. They act as de facto ambassadors for their authors, helping them navigate the press and social media — none of which, by the way, is compensated." So share their names, publishers. - The New York Times
Or rather, in French, about French. Bill 96 limits "access to public services in English and government powers to enforce compliance, despite objections from some of the province’s English speakers, Indigenous people and members of other linguistic minorities." - The New York Times
With his account, NYT Pitchbot imagines the Times formula for stories as a kind of wheezing algorithm, a bot churning out contrarian headlines and half-baked hot takes. - Columbia Journalism Review
"I argue that there's something in our human DNA that seeks the Happily Ever After (HEA). ... According to researchers, these fairytale endings can be traced as far back as the Bronze Age, long before literature had even the language to describe itself." - Literary Hub
John McWhorter: For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they merely take them on. - The New York Times
Researchers have found that a troop of 46 chimps in the Ivory Coast has 390 unique vocal sequences that they use among themselves. They employ "single vocal units," combine them into double units, and in turn combine those doubles into three-unit sequences. - Salon
The act of writing poses a predicament for anyone who recognizes the temptations of pride and self-aggrandizement. We simultaneously desire to attract recognition and seek to avoid it. We want to engage an audience, yet we see that approbation flatters our egos and that criticism is painful. - National Affairs
