The Asian American Literary Collective got their "Ghosted World" conference together quickly after the Smithsonian canceled its huge and popular event. One organizer: "This is a healing. It is bittersweet. It is empowering." - NPR
We can't really say "feminism," but if it's feminist to start thinking of your mom as a person when she's 84 years old, then that's what Oprah did for JCO. - LitHub
A writer parent, tasked with teaching her kids in the early days of the pandemic, realizes it's not just that they don't love it - they're dyslexic. And so: "To try and salvage their enjoyment of literature, I divorced the notion of story from the printed word." - LitHub
Hockey romance fans "gravitate to players who remind them of their favorite book boyfriends, and one popular choice is Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg. His team initially courted BookTok with posts and hashtags ... and flew out a popular creator for a playoff game." Then things went way wrong. - Washington Post
"The rules of crosswords ... are intimately related to the grammar of language in general. Just as toddlers develop a deep knowledge of different classes of words without being taught what a noun or a verb is, crossword solvers develop strong intuitions about what entries are possible." - The Atlantic
Laura Lippman: "The through line in almost every book that I write is that no one is more capable of bad acts than someone absolutely convinced of their own goodness. People who identify as 'good' scare the pants off me." - Irish Times
Traffic was blocked and 1,700 desks set up by the Arc de Triomphe, for "a public dictée. Anyone who's studied French knows the importance of the ritual. A teacher reads out a passage, usually from French literature, and students have to write it out" - battling the complications of French. - NPR
In those quiet, terrifying times, lo these long three years ago, Chabon did what any nerd might do: He built a replica of the science fiction and fantasy section of his long-gone childhood bookstore. - LitHub
"If Asinius Pollio was the one who 'first by founding a library made works of genius the property of the public', it was Augustus and his successors who instilled an ideology of the public ownership of knowledge. And it didn't matter if the masses couldn't read any of it." - Aeon
I could probably come up with another DCCCLXXXIX reasons why Arabic numerals eat Neptune’s you-know-what's for breakfast, but you get the idea. - The New Yorker
"The unique program connects kids from the most populous U.S. city with teens from states where book bans are roiling communities. … Teen councilmembers say they've learned a surprising lesson from out-of-state students: Books on the required reading list in many New York City schools are being banned elsewhere." - Gothamist
he remaining bidders included KKR, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms, and News Corp, the owner of HarperCollins, a competing publishing house. - The New York Times
English alone counts for almost half the internet; add other European languages plus Chinese and Japanese and it's 95%. For other languages — even those like Arabic, Bengali, and Amharic used by many millions — AI tools have relatively tiny datasets to train on. Here are some people addressing that. - Deutsche Welle
"Some authors are using A.I. as a writing and editing assistant that can help them brainstorm, organize material, develop characters or create an outline. … Many in publishing are taking action to protect their work." - The New York Times
The board voted 4-1 to fire longtime library director Terri Lesley after months of tension surrounding her refusal to weed out the library’s shelves based on a vague new policy aimed at shielding children and teens from sexual content. - The Daily Beast
