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There is something amazing and comforting and classically awe-inspiring about listening to ► the sound of the wind on Mars. || Pairs well with: The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert.
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Announcing the Winner of the 2018 Bad Sex Writing in Fiction award || See also (if you can bear it), the shortlist.
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Ironically, significantly less robotic writing can be found in this roundup of the 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition entries. Also known as IFComp, the competition is "an annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators." || See also: the full list of 2018 entries.
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The US Library of Congress’ Crowd initiative invites everyone to help transcribe and tag items from their vast collection. How can you pass up a chance to discover fascinating writing and make a contribution to historical knowledge? Campaigns right now include Civil War Reminiscences and Letters to Lincoln. Thanks, Reader C.
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Is speciesism, aka anti-animal language, really a thing? || See also: a new PSA from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Philosophers
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What if there was a war on a religious minority with more than one million detainees, constant surveillance and espionage, and a complete abrogation of human rights…and no one seemed to care? → China’s Uighurs told to share beds, meals with party members & Spying On The Uyghurs: A First-Person Account From A Han Chinese Student & China’s brutal crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, explained & China admits to locking up Uyghurs, but defends Xinjiang crackdown
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"In their latest installment of Literature vs Traffic, Spanish design collective luzinterruptus transformed a major street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, into a glowing river of 11,000 books."
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Two fantastic (in very different ways) longform pieces about technology and humanity and connection at its best → The Friendship That Made Google Huge and worst → Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche.
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The eyes have it, paper and books edition → Daria Aksenova’s narrative shadowboxes and "illusionary paper" series & Elizabeth Sagan’s book-lov(ing)(er) photos & for the DIY-ers How to make a book page wreath, and more book art ideas.
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Today in 1905, screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo is born in Montrose, Colorado, USA. Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun won one of the first National Book Awards…and so inspired the band Metallica that they not only wrote their well-known song "One" as homage, but bought the rights to the film so they could use segments from it in their iconic ► music video. But it was as a screenwriter that Trumbo would find his greatest fame, success and eventually—as a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten—heartache, writing films such as The Brave One (which won an Academy Award he couldn’t claim because he couldn’t be credited), Roman Holiday (same), Spartacus, Exodus, Papillon and the aforementioned Johnny Got His Gun.