The typewriter, from its birth, has been tied to a set of assumptions about gender and skill. These assumptions persist to the present and color our cultural understanding of typists’ labor. - Public Domain Review
Instead of Venice and Cyprus, Shakespeare’s setting for “Othello,” the Shanghai version takes place on an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, where an American has been hired to help fight the Taiping rebellion, a bloody revolt in the 19th century. - The New York Times
First introduced in the 1930s, mass-market books (once called “pulps”) sold in huge quantities for decades. Yet sales have been slowly-but-steadily sinking since the 1990s, displaced by ebooks and (more expensive) trade paperbacks, and the wire racks filled with the inexpensive titles in supermarkets, drugstores, and the like have almost disappeared. - The New York Times
“Judge Biery’s decision … is much more than dry judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite, at times mischievous piece of prose. … In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.” - The New York Times
Test score data presents averages. Many girls struggle to read, and many boys excel at it. But overall, boys are about three-quarters of a year behind girls in reading in fourth grade, and roughly a year behind in 12th grade. - The New York Times
“Executive Editor Matt Murray … said the Post will shutter its sports desk, while keeping some sports writers who will write feature stories. It will likewise close its Books section and suspend the signature podcast Post Reports. The international desk will shrink dramatically,” as will the Metro desk. - NPR
“Good poets exploit that musicality the same way good rappers do, favoring one word over another for the way it interacts with the words around it. But poets, unlike rappers, are not generally performers, and it shows when they recite their work for an audience.” - The New York Times
You will not find any submissions of his languishing in the LRB slush pile. Instead he posts on BookTok and BookTube, the social media planes concerned with reading, where millions of viewers watch videos about books. - New Statesman
The notion that students should mainly be acquiring “skills” or “competencies,” so prevalent in high-level discussions of education policy and in ranking school systems, rings hollow to anyone who has ever cared enough to become a teacher. - The Point
All serious intellectual work happens on the page, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. If you want to contribute to the world of ideas, if you want to entertain and manipulate complex thoughts, you have to read and write. - Persuasion
I gave the students time to read both pieces, and then asked for their comments. To my surprise, the majority told me the AI version was better. They said it was better argued, more clearly structured, more ambitious in scope, and, this was the real kick in the guts, a few even told me it was more personal than...
“The labor group’s staff union (WGSU), which includes attorneys, research analysts and other positions, claims that ‘management has dismissed staff’s needs and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining with no intent to reach a fair contract.’” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“I hadn’t investigated this term in depth, but I understood it to mean ‘a short story that is meandering, plotless, and slight — full of middle-class people discussing their relentlessly banal problems.’ … But they were also good!” Those characteristics were deliberately shaped by the different preferences of two key editors. - Woman of Letters
