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
“I think everybody should do what he can do best for the country. The snipers should kill the enemy. The singers should sing for the soldiers and the refugees. What I can do is write and tell things, and that is what I am doing.” - The New York Times
"People tend to converge toward the language they observe around them, whether it's copying word choices, mirroring sentence structures or mimicking pronunciations. ... In fact, people converge toward speech sounds they expect to hear – even if they never actually hear them." - The Conversation
Roger Lynch: "We have 70 million people who read our magazines, but 300-something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media. Our audience is already telling us that's not the way they interact with us." (podcast with transcript) - The New York Times
Adam Gopnik considers how "slant rhyme" (English teachers call it assonance) and rap's constant use of it have revivified verse, both sung and spoken — and how long a history slant rhyme really has in the true-rhyme-impoverished English Language. - The New Yorker
Goodreads, BookTube, Bookstagram, and #LitTwit have been around for many years now. Do the denizens of BookTok talk about or choose what they're reading any differently? Here's a look at what has and hasn't been scrambled on the newer platform. - Book Riot
It may not inspire political campaign ads the way critical race theory does, but the debate over how to teach children to read — perhaps the foundational skill of all schooling — has been just as consuming for some parents, educators and policymakers. - The New York Times
Running from one free trial to another, even news junkies often think information demands to be free - to the consumer, that is. "Only 17% of respondents said they had paid for online news in the past year. ... This was, in fact, an improvement." - Nieman Lab
"Let’s start with his Italian (or non-Italian) identity, an Italianness always tilting toward the Other. These are some biographical facts (with which he loved to play): he was born in Cuba, raised in San Remo—an extremely cosmopolitan city at the time—and married an Argentine translator." - LitHub
