"Just as modern-day government workers suffer neck and spinal injuries from sitting at desks and arching forward to stare at screens, ancient Egyptian scribes endured comparable physical stresses from hunching over papyrus for prolonged sessions." Scribe skeletons show evidence of serious osteoarthritis in the neck, collarbone, arm, thigh, and spine. - Artnet
Especially cruel realities face a struggling field like literary studies, with its disappearing majors, budgetary pressures, abysmal job market, fears about academic freedom, and more. Literary critics have good reasons to be downcast. Downcast and, at times, spiteful. - LA Review of Books
"Works targeted for banning typically involve race, gender and the LGBTQ+ communities. … Although scattered through different states and cities, the cases have a common factor: there are usually politicians behind them, and in most cases, they support the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro." - The Guardian
Steven Monte talks about Ariosto's Orlando furioso, finding an equivalent to the original's eight-liner rhyme scheme in relatively rhyme-poor English, and the episode he chose to translate, a character's voyage to the moon. - Asymptote
Many “rules” beloved of self-appointed grammar constables were simply made up quite recently by irritable ink-stained wretches. Using “hopefully” as a modal adjunct, for example. - The Guardian
She learned “to express my thoughts and opinions. I wasn’t used to that. I was never asked my opinion in India; I just kept quiet and listened to others. And then I’d go back to India and ... they’d all look at me and say, what’s happened?” - The Guardian (UK)
“In an effort calls ‘Books Not Bans,’ she sends titles about queer history, sexuality, romance and more — many of which are increasingly hard to come by in the face of a rapidly growing movement by conservative advocacy groups and lawmakers to ban them.” - NPR
The bill "provides subsidies for renting space to open bookstores and the introduction of book certificates (worth 908 hryvnia, or about $22) for 18-year-olds starting this year.” - LitHub
Molly Templeton’s desire is “for us to have the time, the space, the mental bandwidth to welcome uncertainty, to crank up our curiosity and give the weird or confusing or just slightly unexpected books a chance. And I want it to be totally okay and acceptable and normal.” - Reactor Mag
The cuts to the more than 200 library branches had become a political thorn in the mayor’s side. In the weeks leading up to the budget agreement, Council members and library leaders mounted an aggressive pressure campaign. - Gothamist
At the request of right-wing Christianist activists who describe the books as “very sexually explicit” and “filthy and evil,” the superintendent of schools in Mission, a city in the Rio Grande Valley, promptly agreed to withdraw from library shelves specified books about gender/sexuality, race, and Jewishness. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
"The data show that implicitly-measured attitudes are revealed in and perhaps reinforced by language, which is a key vehicle of transmitting culture. If we want to durably address and reduce implicit bias in society, we will likely need interventions that adopt a more cultural (or macro level) focus." - Phys
Mirror-writing, after all, isn't that hard to read once you figure out the idea, and a genius like Leonardo could easily have come up with an encrypted code. Some have suggested that the mirror-writing was an act of resistance, which seems like presentism. The likely reason is actually a practical one. - Artnet
"If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, Tamerlane and Other Poems, is that book. Known as the Black Tulip, only twelve copies appear to have survived since its publication in July 1827." - Literary Hub
The situation has created a language crisis, in which Americans of all types and backgrounds use expressions of every provenance, destroying the power of slang to perform its basic function: to signal membership in a group. - The Atlantic
