ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

The Industrial Revolution Completely Changed Valentine’s Day

Turns out that the mass production of cards led, in effect, to the manufacturing of emotions (not only affection) in and for the people who would buy them. - The Conversation

The Fiercely Competitive Race To Decipher Cuneiform

"At stake: the immortality conferred on those who make a once-in-a-century intellectual breakthrough. Three men — driven by boundless curiosity, a love of risk, and the distinctive demons of aspiration and ambition — were most responsible for making the contest possible." - Smithsonian Magazine

This Little Three-Letter Verb May Be The Most Complicated Word In The English Language

The word "run" has 645 definitions just as a verb (plus others as a noun), and it took an Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer nine months working them all out and writing them up. (The two runners-up for greatest number of definitions are also three-letter verbs.) - Mental Floss

The Trump Threat To Academic Research and Publication

Pressures from the Trump administration threaten an already beleaguered research enterprise that historically has thrived on doing basic research with minimal influence from partisan politics and industry profit-seeking. - Post Alley

How Poker Helped Start (And Then Nearly Snuffed Out) The New Yorker Magazine 100 Years Ago

The magazine's primary financial backer at its launch was one of founding editor Harold Ross's poker buddies, who was a yeast magnate. A few months in, Ross very nearly lost the magazine after a poker binge; fortunately, the yeast magnate (ahem) rose to the occasion. - The Conversation

The Book Blurb Announcements, Explained

One big author and one major publisher announced within weeks of each other that they were through with the practice of blurbs, and the resulting conversation threw publishing into a tizzy. In the process, it provided a new lens on who has access to clout and resources in an increasingly precarious industry. - Vox

Romance Fiction Is Hot. Here’s How It Works

According to Leah Koch, just two things make a romance novel: a central love story and a happy ending. “A criticism I hear a lot is, ‘Well, how is that interesting?’ The whole point to me is how we get from point A to point B,” she said. - The New Yorker

A Third Of The Observer’s Staff Is Taking Buyouts Before The Guardian Turns Over Ownership

"More than 20 Observer journalists are believed to have taken redundancy rather than transfer over to Tortoise Media … following the sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media, which was agreed by Guardian Media Group in December." - Press Gazette (UK)

You’re A Scientist. You’re Describing Your Work. Now You Can’t Use The Words “Diversity,” “Excluded” And…

Among them are terms that Trump and others might dislike, such as diversity, inequities, or multicultural. But there are also words that almost certainly get caught in the dragnet inadvertently, including women and historically. - Fast Company

Strike At New York Magazine Averted As Union And Vox Media Agree On Contract

"The three-year provisional deal, which is still subject to a ratification vote ..., creates guardrails around the publication’s use of AI tools and addresses inflation concerns with wage increases. While the general agreement was reached on Friday, final details were hammered out on the contract over the weekend." - The Hollywood Reporter

The Painfully Self-Conscious World Of The Alt-Fiction World

They’re trying to carve out their own space, away from the prissy bullshit of the mainstream literary world, where they can write something real. They’re enraptured by the surging raw nowness of the internet, and they think literature that tries to rise above that is blinding itself to the way we actually live today. - The Point

Scrappy Melville House Publishes Jack Smith Reports

Founder Dennis Johnson said such “crash publishing” required hard work and help from printers, retailers and more. But the Jack Smith Report, he said, would “launch into a very different book culture than the last time we were in this predicament, in 2016. People are very afraid." - The Guardian

What’s Your Writing Worth To An AI Company?

“They’re trying to establish the idea that the rights to train on books are worth $5,000. You can’t do that by going to the latest bestseller. So you do that by going to the backlist — to people who aren’t collecting royalties — and telling them, ‘Look, would you like some free money?’” - Bloomberg

That Time Hemingway And Ford Madox Ford Started A Paris Literary Journal

“The original name of the magazine was to be the Paris Review. The name was switched because the first serial advertisement was from Compagnie Transatlantique." - LitHub

How Bridget Jones Outlasted The Critics

What happens when Lizzie loses her Darcy: “How will the last cockeyed optimist in popular culture deal with such desolation? Widowhood is no laughing matter, parenting alone even less so.” - The Atlantic

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