Both birdsong and language are passed culturally to later generations through vocal learning. Geographically distant populations of the same bird species can make small tweaks to their songs over time, eventually resulting in a new dialect. - Smithsonian
"History textbooks are basically designed to alienate students. Instead of enlightening them, textbooks prevent students from understanding history and why it's important. ... If we want to fix history education in the U.S., we have to lean into primary and secondary sources." - Mic
The online retail behemoth has announced "it plans to close all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops carrying toys and home goods in the United States and United Kingdom, ending some of its longest-running retail experiments." - Reuters
Blackwell's, a 143-year-old family business with 18 bookshops which went up for sale last month, has been purchased by hedge fund Elliott Advisors, which owns Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US. All management and employees will be retained, as will the Blackwell's name. - The Bookseller (UK)
Cullen Murphy: "I have no idea whether the book is a parable of where we were, where we are, or where we’re heading. Maybe it’s all three." - The Atlantic
Last month, the school board in Wentzville, a suburb of St. Louis, voted 4-3 to have the book removed from all district libraries because (said members) of its themes of incest and child abuse. Faced with widespread criticism and an ACLU lawsuit, the board reconsidered. - The Guardian
This phenomenon, where the sound of a word triggers an emotion or a meaning, is referred to as “sound symbolism”. Yet the idea that there might be a link between the sound of words and their meaning flies against accepted linguistic thinking. - The Conversation
When the Academy snubs every actor, the director, and the movie - but just can't bring itself to leave the movie off the nominations list. "If you curated a film festival of 'lone screenplay' nominees, you’d have a program filled with crowd-pleasers." - The Atlantic
OK, sure, there might be better times, but The Drift has done pretty well for itself, oddly. With "a penchant for publishing lengthy essays that go through many rounds of editing, The Drift is a throwback in many ways" - a successful one. - The New York Times
Hey, why not? "Being a bad girl may mean unleashing destructive force, or simply shrugging off expectation. It could mean embracing the calamity of selfhood, or reimagining who that self is entirely. To be bad is to be your own." - The Rumpus
"It has been seven months that no one has peeked into the library. It is painful to see the distance between people and books grow.” - The Conversation
The Readers were explicit that this was not to do with any actual words on the page, but because they could tell that I personally had not done “the self-reflection and self-education that is necessary to understand the underlying reason that so many people felt harmed by work”. - Unherd
"Black Opals" had only four issues, in 1927-28, but it's now among the most requested items in the Free Library of Philadelphia's rare books collection, valuable both as literature and as evidence that the 1920s flowering of Black American creativity extended well beyond Upper Manhattan. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
While digital media completely upended industries like music, movies and newspapers, most publishers and authors still make the bulk of their money from selling bound stacks of paper. - The New York Times
"Wordplay is an embellisher. It prettifies poetry's architecture, … but it won't keep your walls and ceiling from coming down. Still, … it turns out there are moments when wordplay, taking on a structural element, does hold things together." Consider, for instance, the limerick. - Literary Hub
