"Essay: The digital death of collecting: How platforms mess with our tastes" by Kyle Chayka

Snip:

The shifting sands of digital technology have robbed these collections of their meaning; the context in which they originally existed can no longer be experienced and they only appear as nostalgic ruins, the remains of once-inhabited metropolises gone ( Read more... )

 Dr. Eric Lander, Science Advisor to the President, has an interesting statement on the five hundred year old text he chose to be sworn in on. Very much worth reading in full if you have any kind of interest in books or the usage of books, but above all here is the snippet on his choice:

So, that is the story behind my choice of book on which to ( Read more... )

 The Power of a Skeptical Captain America by Sophie Gilbert

Snip:

From the first episode, in which Sam’s bank manager tried to place where he knew this telegenic Black man from (“Did you used to play for LSU?”), to the end, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has wrestled with an idea: Who are superheroes for? And can a nationalist symbol be reclaimed ( Read more... )

Reviewing the Book Review


As the publication celebrates its 125th anniversary, Parul Sehgal, a staff critic and former editor at the Book Review, delves into the archives to critically examine its legacy in full.
Journalist goes through 125 years of book reviews looking for women, people of color, queerness.

Revisiting the midcentury: "I’d innocently ( Read more... )

 BLACK, LATINX, AND MILLENNIAL READERS ARE THE BACKBONE OF THE BOOK WORLD by Kelly Jensen

Snip:

The research, undertaken amid the COVID-19 pandemic, involved surveying over 4,300 qualified individuals across an array of age groups, races, and locales in the United States. To qualify, individuals have to have indicated engaging with one book over the ( Read more... )

Bookmark: He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive? By Rachel Poser

Snippets:

If one were intentionally to design a discipline whose institutional organs and gatekeeping protocols were explicitly aimed at disavowing the legitimate status of scholars of color,” he said, “one could not do better than what classics has done.” ( Read more... )

 
Is This the End of Writing in Cafés? On the Appeal of Lingering During (and After) a Pandemic by Emily Temple
snip:

One obvious problem that comes up with the loss of free or cheap public spaces to sit and write-and this includes cafés as well as libraries and train station lobbies and wherever else one might scribble-is that it further narrows the ( Read more... )

 Socknography, if you will.

Bookmarking for later when my brain works.

I feel like this concludes the debate about whether or not I am a millennial. (Apparently I am.)

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/millennials-coffee-shop-fanfiction/

Snip:

“Coffee shops have become a highly influential space that’s poised somewhere between the public and the private: it’s obviously a business, but it mimics the comfort of home. ( Read more... )

The White House chief calligrapher has a higher clearance than Jared Kushner

Snip:

The calligrapher's office plays a key role in White House diplomacy. The East Wing, which oversees the calligrapher's office, declined to comment on the role of the chief calligrapher or why a top secret clearance is necessary.

But former chief calligrapher Rick Paulus ( Read more... )