The woman who entered "jambusters" in the (well, her) dictionary read popular novels and listened to parliamentary debates to find the most Canadian English in the country. "To hunt for Canadian entries and the distinct Canadian meanings of words, Ms. Barber partly relied on a technique long used by Oxford. She assembled a small army of freelance 'readers,' who...
That is, the '20s that were a century ago. Princess Mysteria's columns in The Defender "presented a stark contrast with other advice writing of the time, and not only because white advice columnists tended to toe a racist line when it came to matters of segregation and racial hierarchy, and rarely printed letters from Black correspondents. The columnist believed...
And that seems like something to celebrate, and take advantage of, to a lot of museum directors. "We know that all museums’ audiences will be more local, which offers a great opportunity for arts and culture to sit at the heart of their communities, especially where those communities have experienced such hardship over the past year." - The Observer...
You might this it's Nintendo - the soundtracks to Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong sure can linger in one's brain - but instead it's Roblox, and the music (which took off in popularity with the addition of, you guessed it, TikTok), created the genre robloxcore. "Mostly made by young teenagers, it’s a strain of chaotic, profanity-laden rap that’s...
It's rare - incredibly rare - for a Hollywood actor to turn down Marvel or DC. But Blunt said recently, "I don’t know if superheroes are for me. They’re not up my alley. I think it’s been exhausted. We are inundated. It’s not that it’s only the movies, it’s all the TV shows as well." It's possible that she...
As speculative fiction from African writers starts to gain mainstream press attention in the U.S. and U.K., readers might wonder where to start. Short story anthologies? A trilogy about an alien invasion of Lagos? (Yes, definitely.) But also, says writer Lavie Tidhar, "African literature is huge and diverse — from the Francophone works of West Africa to the Arabic...
They evaporated in the span of three years. One of those was an extremely weird year, to be sure, but three years. "AT&T found itself stretched financially as it simultaneously tried to build a nationwide 5G telephone network while ramping up spending for its year-old streaming service, HBO Max. The proposed deal with Discovery comes just three months after AT&T...
If you could see a dance performance inside the theatre (with other masked, socially distanced audience members), outside (same, but less distance), or via your Wi-Fi at home, which would you choose? And how would they stack up? (Hint: The outdoors might be the way to go, at least in the summer.) - The New York Times
Well, it has issues with women, aging women, of any type, but nevertheless: "40-something actresses rarely lead action films—even though Jolie is 13 years younger than Tom Cruise, and 23 years younger than Liam Neeson. She is also the same age as Charlize Theron, one of the few female A-listers who’s managed to maintain a steady presence in the...
When WhatsApp - for years, owned by Facebook - asked users to agree to a privacy update for something that had been true since 2016, the service engendered a revolt and a massive uptick for the more private, not owned by Facebook service Signal. Why? Unclear, but "'When your users have made it clear that they would rather not...
Paris has lost 30 percent of its independent bookshops in the last 20 years, despite a lot of government intervention: "Small shops qualify for subsidies. And rents are stabilized in pricey areas of the city. To keep book prices from dropping too low, the French parliament passed a law restricting Amazon from offering free delivery and a 5% discount...
Staples once compared the Staple Singers' "effect on ecstatic church audiences to 'a miracle or the hand of God.'" Pervis Staples "attended grammar school with the future singing stars Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls. After class, Pervis and his friends would practice singing under street lamps and in Cooke’s basement." - The New York Times
Hollie McNish, who once changed her name to "Hollie Poetry" - what she now calls "a search engine name" - says that sex and writing are linked: "All energy drives are linked. I’d call it an orgasm drive – an urge to make something specific from a dream inside your head or skin." - The Guardian (UK)
The tale of Artur Rodzinski is not a charming one, and yet, "arguably no man had more of a hand in turning American orchestras into the technical marvels they became in the mid-20th century — whether through those he led himself, or through the example he set. He jolted up the standards of some of the great ensembles of...
A massive government redevelopment plan - funded and touted by Prime Minister Narenda Modi - will demand "the demolition and relocation of iconic Indian institutions: the National Museum of India, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), and the National Archives Annexe." Photographer Ram Rahman: "The suspicion of altering history by removing archival documents is something many...
