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A study that documents how people with depression use language differently (note the first finding and #16 in Barlow’s list above).
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Some interesting reading, fully available online: Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings of All Ages, an “esoteric encyclopedia.” || Pairs with (kind of), a trove of Victorian magazines.
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JC Debroize’s Organic Typography is…unsettling.
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The New York Times explores our possible Post-Text Future…which might be a good thing given that we human paper users are losing “an elemental struggle between the natural and the mechanical” in the form of the ever-present—and possibly eternal—paper jam.
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The Disconnect is the online magazine you can only read offline. I love playful publishing experiments like these!
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How Facebook Is Killing Comedy is really about how Facebook’s omnipresence is crushing independent entertainment of all kinds.
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Thanks, Reader B. for a pointer to a conversation about consciousness, particularly the “Where Are Words?” entry.
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If you appreciate Iain M. Banks “Culture” series, Joseph Heath’s essay “Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks” is worth some time. If you don’t…I can only assume you haven’t read them.
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I don’t want to be a Linear Lungs, so without further ado, the Wikipedia list of the moment: CB slang.
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Today in 1990, Nelson Mandela, African political leader and symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, is released from prison after 27 years. Mandela served much of his time in the notorious Robben Island Prison and refused at least three offers of conditional release in those years before newly elected South African President F. W. de Klerk ordered his release as part of his dismantling of apartheid.
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Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: February 4, 2018
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A beautiful photo exploration. → Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories.
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Notes: 1) the main point is about cursive writing, not handwriting generally and, 2) education today is based more on “myth” than not (because…the art part!) → Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths
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Robin Sloan is always doing interesting things at the intersection of writing and technology. Two new projects: Penumbra’s New Fiction, featuring one story at a time in a limited edition printed on an old school Risograph (remember those?), and Music of the Mazg, about the “creative machine”-created music for the audiobook version of his fantastic novel Sourdough (that does, indeed revolve around sourdough starter).
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Behold! More technology that works for us. → Automated Voice Recognition Typewriter
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“Being on Twitter felt like being in a nonconsensual BDSM relationship with the apocalypse.” → I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great by Lindy West
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East Village Bar Boldly [and literally] Bans Customers Who Say ‘Literally’
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Well, not literally all of us… → Why do we all have balls on our hats?
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A great story about how Charles Schultz brought Franklin to his comic strip. → Guess Who’s Coming to ‘Peanuts’
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This gets a little geeky, but I can’t be the only person challenged (and often troubled) by how marginalia is represented on the web. → Interactive marginalia
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Today is World Cancer Day, which “aims to save millions of preventable deaths each year by raising awareness and education about the disease [and] pressing governments and individuals across the world to take action.” You can still get involved and, even better, think about how you might contribute a little toward this disease that has surely affected all of us.
Links: December 3, 2017
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Fake news is old news. → Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century
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I first noticed the little warnings (“to bake is to wait…”) while doing some Thanksgiving baking. Apparently, there is good reason → Thanks a Lot! New Reasons Not to Eat Cookie Dough. And it looks like the time is finally right for my manuscript, Flours of Evil.
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Scurrilous manuscript that could have undone John Donne discovered
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“[Tarrare] died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.” And that’s far from the worst part of a story of failed espionage and a pathological food obsession…among other things. → Tarrare [Thanks, Reader C.!]
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“On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.” → The Wreck [Thanks, Reader B.!]
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Last month was 2017 National Novel Generation Month again, in which participants write code that generates novels…and the results are in! Naturally, I am fond of the Edward Lear Limerick Generator, Shakespeare Summarizes Everything and Acrostic Sonnets on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
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And in the same vein, the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) winners have also been announced and some of them are amazing. See also: the IFDB (Interactive Fiction Database), “an IF game catalog and recommendation engine.”
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“After academics picked out 30 words that have been ‘lost’ from the English language, self-confessed ‘word geek’ Paul Anthony Jones reveals obscure yet delightful terms that also need to be saved from falling into disuse.” → Twenty-six words we don’t want to lose
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Today in 1926, Agatha Christie—future Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, “Queen of Crime,” and the best-selling novelist of all time—disappears. Christie’s car was quickly found abandoned at a quarry along with an expired drivers license and some clothes, but despite a massive search and front-page stories in England and the United States, it took ten days to find Christie, who was registed at a hotel in Yorkshire under the name of her husband’s lovers. Christie never provided an explanation, but many little gray cells have been applied to the real-life mystery, yielding theories ranging from amnesia, fugue states and suicidal depression to an aborted attempt to frame her unfaithful husband for murder.
Links: November 19, 2017
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FutureMe: Write a Letter to your Future Self (and read some written by others).
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My Sammelband has Frisket-Bite: A Short Glossary of Delightful Library Terms
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Legendary typographer and designer, Erik Spiekermann, is bringing new, digital life to the letterpress.
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The story of Hashima Island is almost as interesting as the ruins found there…which you can explore virtually thanks to a cool Google project using Street View cameras.
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How ‘thoughts and prayers’ became the stock phrase of tragedies. See also: an apropos clip from Bojack Horseman.
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Giant Straw Animals Invade Japanese Fields After Rice Harvest
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For your sunbathing and writing efforts: Clotilde Olyff’s Pebble Alphabet: upper and lower case versions.
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Every Second on the Internet is a compelling, creative visualization of the insane torrent of information that is the interwebz.
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And when you are tired of contributing to all those seconds, take a spin or two on the Procatinator!
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Today in 1975, Milos Forman’s film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest debuts. Based on Ken Kesey’s novel of the same name, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the 2nd film to win all five major Academy Awards, a feat that wouldn’t be achieved again until the Silence of the Lambs in 1991. The role of Randle McMurphy—intended for Kirk Douglas, who owned the movie rights, and first turned down by Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman—was just one of many iconic roles for Jack Nicholson (and his first Oscar-winner), but it was Louise Fletcher’s most famous performance, a role she accepted after it had been turned down by Angela Lansbury, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft and a number of other well-known actresses. Fletcher was so disturbed by playing the part that she refused to watch the film for many years.
Links: November 12, 2017
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Over the past seven years, Rainbow Pack (founded by a 10-year-old!) has given 20,000 backpacks of school supplies to elementary school students in need. They would like to double that total in 2018. And for \$10, you can help! → Rainbow Pack 2018
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Remember when The New York Times tried to get hip with those neato grunge cats? → When Grunge Was Fake News
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Combining, kind of, two things I love: coffee and paper. → G . F Smith launches new paper made from disposable coffee cups. See also: Kona Paper: Paper Made from Repurposed Coffee Bean Bag Fiber || EcoPaper’s Coffee Paper.
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Celebrating the “humour & creativity of Tourettes” by not just dispelling myths but sharing nearly 650 pages of funny, shocking, surreal tics, searchable by keyword and theme. → tourettes hero
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Seriously high-quality art history materials for your learning pleasure! → Smarthistory
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A free book about artificial intelligence and the future that is both fascinating and readable. → Frankenstein’s Legacy: Four Conversations About Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Modern World
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I had no idea the idea was even a thing. → Why Sign-Language Gloves Don’t Help Deaf People. And while I’m at it, here’s another Atlantic article about a previously unknown (to me) thing, this time in Japan: How to Hire Fake Friends and Family
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The Allusionist delves into some powerful stories of snail mail relationships. → “Open Me” Part 1 and Part 2
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Featuring funny, literal animals, not Louis C.K. Behold! → The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards Gallery.
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Today in 1954, Ellis Island—gateway to the United States for more than 12 million immigrants—closes. From 1892-1924, Ellis Island was the focal point of what is claimed to be the largest human migration in modern history. Apparently, Ellis Island name changes were mostly mythical (or accidental), but the sometimes terrifying health inspections, including occasional eugenic screening, were not. See also: the jigsaw puzzle that could determine a would-be immigrant’s fate || the searcahable passenger lists of more than 51 million immigrants, passengers, and crew members who came through Ellis Island and the Port of New York || Selected Images of Ellis Island and Immigration, ca. 1880-1920 || Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913 || Immigrant Number One, the story—and mystery—of the first person to arrive at Ellis Island || Ellis Island Oral Histories
Links: November 5, 2017
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Residents of the tiny Faroe Islands wanted Google to map their island. So they did…using sheep equipped with solar powered 360-degree cameras.
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Super Terrain has create a version of Fahrenheit 451 that can only be read by applying flame to the pages. Thanks, Reader B.!
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The alt-right is creating its own dialect. Here’s a complete guide. If that’s too—something—how about The IKEA Dictionary? Or The Don Martin (of Mad Magazine fame) Dictionary? Or a collection of short fiction composed entirely of example sentences from dictionaries?
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Language ridiculousness du jour → Court rules request for ‘lawyer dog’ too ‘ambiguous’
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Photos! We’ve got photos (and video)! → Photos Published of Female Librarians on Horseback Delivering Books in the 1930s || Photographer Spends Almost 10 Years Photographing the Most Beautiful Libraries Around the World || An aerial view of Chicago taken in 1914 with video from today
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A podcast assertion about the mystery of consciousness led me to the story of The Man Who Lives Normally With Damage to 90% of His Brain. The truth turns out to be a bit different…but still pretty amazing.
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Via Reader L. comes Anguish Languish, about which he writes, “Although written with a serious purpose in mind, the humorous aspects cannot be ignored, especially with Chace’s additions of phrases not in the traditional stories (‘A nervous sausage bag ice!’ for ‘I never saw such big eyes!’) and added plot twists.” See also: the Wikipedia article on this “ersatz, homophonic” language.
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Where was this when I was skimming through Clan of the Cave Bear? → Audible’s new feature lets you skip right to the most erotic part of romance novels
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Today in 1930, Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.” When a Swedish journalist called Lewis the morning of the award, Lewis thought it was a friend of his playing a joke and mocked the journalist’s accent, saying he could do better and repeating, “You haf de Nobel Brize.” In his Nobel Lecture, appropriately titled “The American Fear of Literature,” Lewis praised many other writers who he felt deserved the prize more than he, including William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather and Thomas Wolfe, but also noted that “true-blue” professors of literature in America thought that, “literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead; it is something magically produced by superhuman beings who must, if they are to be regarded as artists at all, have died at least one hundred years before the diabolical invention of the typewriter,” who liked their “their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.” I’d say Lewis was mostly correct in his assessment of others…and his implicit assessment of his own work.
Links: October 29, 2017
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Clamor favorite Marian Call’s Grand Tour continues on the West Coast through November and early December. Catch a show (or two)!
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Art and writing vending machines are a thing there should be more of (what better way to use old cigarette machines?). Check out Montreal’s Distroboto aka the zine machine and the Art-o-Mat.
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I wish I’d heard this story a long time ago. → Remembering U.S. Soldiers Who Refused To Kill Native Americans At Sand Creek
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Who knew that figuring out how to unboil an egg could lead to a revolution in cancer treatment (and make “unboil” a word)?
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Setting aside the controversy over the Booker Prize expanding its eligibility to any English-language novel, George Saunders 2017 win for Lincoln in the Bardo is well deserved. See also: George Saunders and Jason Isbell in conversation || George Saunders on life after the Man Booker Prize || A performance excerpt from the novel.
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The ampersand (aka the “commercial and” or “esperluette”) is arguably the most beautiful glyph…this is a nice bit on its history with delightful illustrations. As always, I can’t bring up the ampersand without pointing you to Keith Houston’s short, illuminating series on the character and plug, again, his book Shady Characters.
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Mansplaining is a problematic, perhaps over-used, idea…but two new words stemming from that conversation caught my eye this week: the funny (and equally problematic) mantrum and the significantly more useful, and sadly observable, hepeating.
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Nostalgia’s unexpected etymology explains why it can feel so painful.
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Woman Earns Over $70,000 a Year Showing Her Feet on Instagram.
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Today is National Cat Day in the U.S. (but why limit yourself?), a day intended to “celebrate cats and help them to find forever homes.” They’ve even got a blog with “think pieces on life with felines.” See also: 20 Ways to Celebrate National Cat Day || the “Purr-fect Purr-sonalities” photo contest. But for my allergies, I agree with Mark Twain, who wrote, “If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”
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