Stories

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Gets To Tell Your Family’s Story?

“The trauma of the Holocaust has lived beneath the surface of daily life for decades, too painful to confront. But now second- and third-generation family members are getting access to archives of collaboration. In some cases, it’s opening old wounds.” - The New York Times

Roku’s New 24 Hour Slop Channel Is An Abomination

For instance: “There’s a seven-minute ... tale of a mountain biker who rushes straight from a race to support his wife who’s giving birth, only to get killed by the very ambulance carrying her—all narrated from the POV of his bike.” - Slate

As Some Paintings Are Found, Art Thieves Hit A Sicilian Museum

In the morning, good news about an art theft from March. Then came the evening. “Thieves got past the alarm system at Messina's Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe), and broke open a security case. They soon left with four wooden panels.” - NPR

Zale Perry, Early Acquatic Star For Hollywood And Equally Early Acid Tripper, Has Died At 93

Perry was “a depth-defying scuba diver and underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.” - The New York Times

Not Only Is The Rumpus Alive, But It’s Launching A Spanish-Language Literary Magazine

From the editors: “Rather than translating existing work from The Rumpus, El Alboroto will commission and publish original Spanish-language writing spanning cultural criticism, personal essays, interviews, fiction, poetry and comics.” - LitHub

Ian Frazier Wrote A Humorous Piece About Wile E. Coyote In The New Yorker In 1990

And now, after an improbable path whose twists and turns even the Roadrunner would have a hard time navigating, it’s a feature film. - The New York Times

Netflix Was Getting Into Gaming For A Bit There, But Now It’s Closing Gaming Studios All Over The Place

"Games on Netflix have had mixed results,” but the plan is to focus on kids and sports, or so it seems. So much for narrative synergy. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Good News For News Publishers? From AI?

Well, from Apple, in any case: "The pay-as-you-go plan would see publishers paid only when Siri AI uses their content,” which is similar to the Apple News+ model for print (er, digital). - Nieman Lab

Even In Oxford, Romantasy Books Are Taking Off

And NPR gets right down to it with the owner: What is “Monster smut,” and why is it so popular right now? - NPR

How To Solve The So-Called Literacy Crisis, With Fun And Joy

In groups, sometimes with full-throated yawps, it’s time to take back public, communal reading. - The New York Times

Cicero Commissioned An Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System That We Still Use

“You can still type a symbol originally invented for Cicero nearly 21 centuries ago — at least if you configure your keyboard properly.” - Open Culture

Disney’s Plan For Generation Alpha And Beyond

The big thing is “Disney’s push into the booming vertical media space — aka microdramas and other shortform clips designed to be viewed on mobile phones .” - Variety

Is It Possible To Have A Great Series Finale?

Here are eight that did it right — landed that unwieldy plane, circled back, etc. — did whatever they needed to do to wrap things up well. - The Atlantic

Our Brains In Pop Music Concerts

A Nick Jonas concert “reminded me of an obscure phrase coined by a 19th-century sociologist – Émile Durkheim’s ‘collective effervescence.’ … Individuals who are normally preoccupied with their personal concerns get swept up into a kind of electric, communal intensity.” - The Guardian (UK)

Mary Heilmann, Who Poked Fun At Her Minimalist Colleagues With ‘Wobbly’ Lines, Has Died At 86

Heilmann, emblematic of women artists of her generation, “was in her 60s when she belatedly achieved wide acclaim for her ebulliently colored, loose-limbed, often lopsided abstract paintings.” - The New York Times

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