The issues: "The company wanted to have it both ways: to exert the cultural influence of a major media company without shouldering any more responsibility (or economic burden) than is expected of a mere service provider, such as Gmail.-" The Atlantic
Both "wokeism" and "wokery" refer to culture war issues, though "wokery" has as a second definition cooking with a wok. Among other terms newly added are "safe word", "talkboard", "PFAS", "Gradgrindian", "taliswoman", "hypnic jerk", and "-splaining" as a suffix ("straightsplaining", "mumsplaining"). - The Guardian
The main version of ChatGPT has, since its launch last year, been able to write a children's story, but GPTs allow parents—or anyone, really—to constrain the topic and start with specific prompts, such as a child's name. This means anyone can generate personalized stories starring their kid and their favorite character. Wired
Up to the immediate post-WWII period, publishing was a fairly local, personal business, with houses founded by whiskered men shipping out books to stores on an irregular basis. Today we have the Big Five—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Penguin Random House. - The Bulwark
The LAPL, which manages 73 branches and houses more than 8 million books, has lately been much more ambitious than even the average big-city library system, aggressively expanding its special collections in recent years. But acquiring an entire press takes the system to a whole new level. - Los Angeles Times
After she discovered the work of African-American spoken-word poets, Vanessa Chisakula co-founded Word Smash Poetry in Lusaka, Zambia's capital, and she's seen poetry events spread across the country in the years since. - The Guardian
"Helped by a 1.7% increase in the fourth quarter, unit sales of print books fell only 2.6% in 2023 from 2022. ... The dip was less than many industry members had feared this summer, when sales were steadily declining and were down 4.1% after the first nine months of the year." - Publishers Weekly
"Just under 300 people responded to the survey, which was intended to collect data about copyright, payment, royalties, and other labor issues. … Only 11.5% of respondents reported earning 100% of their income from literary translation work, and … 63.5% reported an annual income of less than $10,000 from literary translation." - Publishers Weekly
For all its newfound task as “knowledge navigator and facilitator” in an increasingly complex and connected world, the library’s traditional role has also benefited from its new home: library book loans, far from declining, have risen by almost 10%. - The Guardian
“Libraries are places where people from all different backgrounds can interact,” Buzzy Nielsen, a program manager for the State Library of Oregon, said. “You see a big cross-section of your community.” - Oregon ArtsWatch
Sure, Google Translate can help out with ordering a coffee in another language, but "neural machine-translation models can translate only about 30 percent of novel excerpts—usually simple passages—with acceptable quality, as determined by native speakers." - The Atlantic
Evie Woods's The Lost Bookshop is her fourth novel, and it's outselling nearly everyone else's novels at the moment. But don't ask her to talk about the next one. "A lot of writers are a bit secretive; if you tell other people they might ruin it." - Irish Times
After the fire, the artist went to the American Academy in Rome. "I always say Rome was a great place to be depressed. I could not paint in my airy Academy studio with its spectacular views over the city. Instead, I went to museums" - and started a novel. - LitHub
Quantifying my reading, whether by titles finished, pages read, or another metric, doesn’t capture the quality of my attention to each book. - The Atlantic
