‘Do we really need copyediting? I don’t mean the basic clean-up that reverses typos, reinstates skipped words, and otherwise ensures that spelling and punctuation marks are as an author intends. Such copyediting makes an unintentionally “messy” manuscript easier to read, sure.
But the argument that texts ought to read “easily” slips too readily into justification for insisting a text working outside dominant Englishes better reflect the English of a dominant-culture reader—the kind of reader who might mirror the majority of those at the helm of the publishing industry, but not the kind of reader who reflects a potential readership (or writership) at large….’
‘…All of this should be the encouragement studios need to return to more traditional release strategies. The alternative is a frightening one for anything not made on the biggest scale: a world where seeing movies in theaters becomes a boutique option in only the biggest cities, and where streaming deals are the only way to fund non-blockbuster projects. This would be immensely damaging to the art form and to the diversity of projects on offer for audiences, and it’s a path Hollywood can reject by putting its faith back in cinemas—and in the viewers who love going to them….’
‘…[A]fter George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.
D.E.I. training is designed to help organizations become more welcoming to members of traditionally marginalized groups. Advocates make bold promises: Diversity workshops can foster better intergroup relations, improve the retention of minority employees, close recruitment gaps and so on.
The only problem? There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory training that blames dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about….’
— Jesse Singal, author of “The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills.” via New York Times.
‘The remains of more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Natives’ ancestors are still held by museums, universities and federal agencies.
A 1990 federal law called for remains to be returned to descendants or tribal nations.
‘Through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, aliens could be transmitting signals using the sun, but a quick scan for such signals has turned up nothing….’
‘Buildworld curated a long list of buildings from around the world, the UK and the U.S. that are often said to be ugly. We identified all the design-themed tweets about these buildings on Twitter. Then we used a sentiment analysis tool called HuggingFace to analyse the percentage of tweets that were negative about each building’s design.
Key Findings:
The Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh is the world’s ugliest building, according to Twitter users.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., is America’s ugliest building.
The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, is the ugliest building outside of the UK and U.S….’
‘Italian start-up Cap_able is offering its first collection of knitted garments that shields the wearer from the facial recognition software in AI cameras without the need to cover their face.
Called the Manifesto Collection, the clothing line includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts, and dresses.
Each garment sports a pattern, known as an “adversarial patch,” which was developed by AI algorithms to confuse facial recognition software in real-time and protect the wearer’s privacy….’
‘Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes.
The mind-boggling results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a periodic cycle lasting about 60 to 70 years, a discovery that might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena that occur on a similar timeframe, and that affect life on our planet….’
‘Amazon is launching RxPass in the US, a new drug subscription exclusive to Prime members that charges users a $5 monthly fee to ship eligible prescription medications to their doorstep. Announced on Tuesday in a press release, the Amazon RxPass subscription program provides generic medications to treat over 80 common health conditions, including high blood pressure, hair loss, anxiety, and acid reflux.
The $5 charge includes the cost of delivery and is added to Prime customers’ existing monthly subscription fee. The RxPass fee is a flat rate and doesn’t increase even if users require multiple prescriptions each month. Medications can be delivered on either a monthly or quarterly basis depending on the prescription requirements. Conditions covered by the service also include allergies, diabetes (excluding insulin), and anemia. Amazon says that more than 150 million Americans already take one or more of the medications available through RxPass. A full list of generic medications covered by the RxPass subscription can be found on the Amazon pharmacy website….’
‘It remains a powerful reminder that self-inflicted disaster is never far away. But it also undercuts the complexity of climate change and the way that risks spread across time and bleed into one another. Viewed from a time when we face a multitude of possible catastrophes—pandemics, rogue AI, and a rapidly warming planet—the Doomsday Clock is a warning from a much simpler era….’
‘If a new variant of concern were to materialize, a version of the virus that fundamentally eroded our immune systems’ ability to fend off SARS-2 requiring a rapid updating of Covid vaccines, the public would need to take note… But in the absence of that, it’s really hard to see how it is actionable, or it’s useful, really, to anybody to know that oh, well, XBB.1.5 is taking over when we thought it might be BQ.1.1….’
‘Analyses have found that 12 people—coined the “disinformation dozen”—are responsible for 65% of misleading claims, rumors, and lies about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Their impact is most effective on Facebook (account for up to 73% of Facebook rumors), but also bleed into Instagram and Twitter. A scientific study published in Nature found that 1 in 4 anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweets originated from the so-called Children’s Health Defense—which is controlled by one man….’
‘For the first time, a radio signal sent from a galaxy, which is almost 9 billion light-years away from the Earth, has been captured, media reports said on Friday.
The signal was captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India. It means that scientists can begin probing the formation of some earliest stars and galaxies, the report said.
The signal was emitted from a “star-forming galaxy”, which is titled SDSSJ0826+5630. It was emitted when the 13.8 billion-year-old Milky Way, where Earth is located, was just 4.9 billion years old, it said citing the researchers.
In a statement this week, Arnab Chakraborty, who is author and McGill University Department of Physics post-doctoral cosmologist, said, “It’s the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years.” …’
‘If it’s a clear night in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to spot a giant, green comet passing by our planet from your backyard.
It’s an exceedingly rare event. According to astronomers, it won’t stop by again for roughly another 50,000 years — and now is the best time to see it on its current visit, as Insider reports.
According to NASA, the comet — with the catchy name C/2022 E3 (ZTF) — was first spotted in March last year. Ever since, it’s been screaming through the solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun last week. It will be closest to Earth on February 2. But you may get a good chance to spot it before then as well. According to Space.com, the Moon will provide the perfect lighting to illuminate ZTF on January 21, depending on local weather conditions of course….’
‘Donald trump’s inability to stop talking about his legal problems, and his penchant for floating possible defenses on his social media accounts, will likely come back to haunt him, explained one legal expert.
During an appearance on MSNBC early Sunday morning, former Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner was asked by host Katie Phang about the former president’s inability to keep quiet while he is under multiple investigations….’
‘Brazil’s ministry of health has declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, the country’s largest indigenous reservation bordering Venezuela, following reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases caused by illegal gold mining.
A decree published on Friday by the incoming government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the aim of the declaration was to restore health services to the Yanomami people that had been dismantled by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro….’
‘Based upon new allegations of sexual impropriety committed by sitting now-sitting Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former career prosecutor stated there is no reason why a new investigation should not be undertaken by the Justice Department.
Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, Glenn Kirschner hammered the FBI for the poor handling of tips that came in before Kavanaugh was given a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court….’
‘North America is home to nearly three billion fewer birds today compared to 1970. It is essential we do everything we can to protect the birds that bring us joy — and that work can begin right at home.
Keep your feeder clean and windows visible. Reduce window collisions by making glass visible with densely spaced decals or patterns, placing physical barriers in front of the glass, and positioning your feeders directly on or within three feet from windows. Don’t forget to clean feeders every two weeks.
Keep your cats indoors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services estimates that outdoor cats kill 2.4 billion wild birds each year in this country alone.
Garden smarter, not harder. Growing native plants is one of the best ways to provide food and shelter to birds, plus they require less maintenance. Unraked leaves, plants with old flowers, and fallen branches all help birds forage for food and provide shelter.
Make any space a garden: You don’t need a backyard to provide nutrients for birds. Plant native plants on your windowsill, balcony, and in containers.
Pledge to take these steps to make your home and community more bird-friendly….’
‘”The Girl from Ipanema” is the second most recorded song in the history of recorded songs, next to “Summertime” by George Gerwin. Then 22-year-old Astrud Gilbertomade the song (about the male gaze of an underage girl), and Bossa Nova, galactically famous on the album Getz/Gilberto recorded in March of 1963 and released in 1964. With much of the music written by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Gilberto’s song performance was impromptu and suggested by Astrud herself in the studio.
The guitarist João Gilberto was Astrud’s husband, and her participation in this song and “Corcovado” made the single and the album a worldwide wonder. Yet, as you might imagine from the headline, the men in this scenario—particularly Stan Getz—took credit for Astrud Gilberto’s vocal performance and her transformation of the song.
‘Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — of respondents who are not deaf or hard of hearing, 57 percent said they use subtitles, while just 12 percent said they generally don’t.
But why do so many of us feel that we need subtitles to understand the dialogue in the things we watch?
The answer to that question is complex — and we get straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick….’
‘In the Chinese horoscope, 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit or, more specifically, the Year of the Water Rabbit. The rabbit is believed to be the luckiest of the 12 animals to be born under and considered a gentle animal that thinks before acting. The Year of the Rabbit represents peaceful and patient energy. The water element suggests tapping into inner wisdom and trusting instincts. Together, the Water Rabbit indicates focusing on relationships, diplomacy, and building bridges in professional and personal relationships. Those born in years associated with the Rabbit, specifically 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, and 2023, should have good fortune, patience, and prosperity in 2023, according to one Chinese horoscope….’
‘The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China. Each year is named after one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac in a repeating cycle, with this year being the Year of the Rabbit. For the past three years, celebrations were muted in the shadow of the pandemic.
With the easing of most Covid-19 restrictions that had confined millions to their homes, people could finally make their first trip back to their hometowns to reunite with their families without worrying about the hassles of quarantine, potential lockdowns and suspension of travel. Larger public celebrations also returned for what is known as the Spring Festival in China, with the capital hosting thousands of cultural events — on a larger scale than a year ago….’
‘…[I]t was a college writing center from Sioux Falls, S.D., that nailed the word of the year with its choice: FAFO. In case you don’t already know, FAFO is an acronym for “eff around and find out.” It’s a cheeky way to tell people that if they play with fire, they might get burned — or to announce they already have been. The Sioux Falls gang put a positive spin on FAFO, citing it as representing the “gumption” of their fellow students “when encountering a novel challenge” and noting that the Urban Dictionary calls the phrase an “exclamation of confidence.” It is that — but it’s also a whole lot more….’
Not only have I never heard the term FAFO in the wild but I am unlikely to ever use it. Its cachet, according to the article, arises from Elon Musk’s use of the term in December 2022 to comment on kicking Kanye West off Twitter for dissing him. Just as many people I know will never consider giving Musk any of their money by buying a Tesla, the word is tainted by association. The idea of learning from one’s experiences and paying the price for one’s mistakes, invoking both the pluck involved and a little bit of satisfaction at someone getting their comeuppance, already has lots of linguistic code. There’s an element of “YOLO” and an element of chiding someone with “once burned, twice shy”, an element of “schadenfreude” (a sentiment to which I gravitate too frequently) and a sense of “stepping into it.”
But, as the article points out, we can celebrate the fact that 2022 was
‘…a year when maybe, just maybe, people who did dumb or awful things (coups, tax scams, attacking smaller countries, making overinflated weed-meme offers for social media sites) would finally face some consequences. “Can you do that?” many asked during the Trump era. Could you just lie, cheat, swindle, funnel taxpayer dollars to your businesses, grab people’s genitalia with impunity? Well, 2022 suggested that you couldn’t, or at least not entirely. “Eff around, find out” was a bratty, satisfying way to reclaim the high ground…’
Not that I have any objection to regaining the high ground! And Musk himself, it seems clear, is effing around and, hopefully, finding out, although I don’t really expect him to learn from the experience, both because of his character and his net worth.
(In contrast, the more scholarly linguists of the American Dialect Society polled their members and came up with the suffix “-ussy” as the 2022 Word of the Year. I’ve never heard that in the wild either. I guess it’s pretty clear I don’t frequent Tik Tok.)
‘In what the New York Times describes as a “scathing ruling”, a Florida judge has ordered donald trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1m in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton there….’
I am very saddened by the passing of David Crosby (see Chris Morris and Chris Willman’s obituary in Variety), although it was not unexpected. Even in 2019, in Cameron Crowe’s absorbing documentary Remember My Name, he grappled with his mortality. Most retrospective writing about Crosby focuses on his personal foibles, difficult personality, and breakups with famous bandmates in the Byrds and CSN(Y), but the postmortem remembrances and testimonials from those with whom he collaborated, like this collection here in Variety, are heartfelt and generous.
I will always cherish, particularly, his 1971 albumIf I Could Only Remember My Name, one of the most gorgeous to come out of that decade, perfectly evocative of the Dreamtime. I always marveled that Crosby had the magnetism and magic to meld the very different late ‘60s- early ‘70s California scenes of jangly LA and Laurel Canyon and the trippy psychedelia of the Bay Area. IICORMN was made with the contributions of Graham Nash, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell alongside my first musical loves, members of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead as well as Santana. Putting it on and playing it loudly this evening…
‘On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.
After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”
Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.
He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”
People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.
Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.
Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2023….’
‘Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields. Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric—the CD index—that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields and is robust across multiple different citation- and text-based metrics. Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the ‘shoulders of giants’ view. We find that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology….’
Graphic artist Chris Barker’s Sgt Pepper-like montage of the notable people who passed last year. (The linked Instagram post has a key if you want to play the name-game.)
A MetaFilter thread discusses several year-end posts on news to be happy about (here, here and here). While some are more exciting than others (and some downright debatable), they touch on:
Asteroid redirection (Proof of concept of planetary defense)
‘…The putsch called for… a massive army of veterans – funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms – to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.
…[T]he coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country’s wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn’t backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. …[T]he coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets – about $800bn today – and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money – the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions.
…The planned coup was thwarted when …reported… to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the “Wall Street putsch” endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a “gigantic hoax” and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising “the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable” and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation’s wealthiest men – Republicans and Democrats alike – were so threatened by FDR’s policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup…’
‘During a Monday night game against the Cincinnati Bengals, 24-year-old Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after tackling another player. Medical personnel administered CPR on the field and restored his heartbeat, after which he was transferred to a nearby hospital, where he remains in critical condition.
As players and coaches of both teams gathered, some shedding tears and others circling in prayer, and fans expressed concern over Hamlin’s condition, figures on the far right immediately began spreading unproven claims that the COVID-19 vaccine was responsible for Hamlin’s collapse.
“This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” said Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Twitter, referencing a conspiracy theory that has been spread by right-wing pundits and Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) that COVID vaccines are causing athletes to die on the field.
Other far right figures — including conservative former candidates for political office, pundits and anti-vaccine figures — also joined in spreading the lies. “Prior to 2021, Athletes collapsing on the field was NOT a normal event. This is becoming an undeniable (and extremely concerning) pattern,” wrote far right activist Lauren Witzke, the failed Republican nominee for Senate in Delaware in 2020.
Platforms like Telegram were flooded with similar comments, with some accounts citing disgraced cardiologist Peter McCullough, who has falsely touted ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19, after McCullough said in an interview that the vaccine was related to Hamlin’s collapse….’
A thoughtful history of the rise and fall of the TED talk phenomenon, and why, by Melbourne-based writer and journalist Oscar Schwartz, himself a TED veteran.
It is common knowledge that, beginning in the early 2000’s, TED talks began to take on a particular rhetorical style codified by its entrepreneur owner Chris Anderson. In his book,
‘…Anderson insists anyone is capable of giving a TED-esque talk. You just need an interesting topic and then you need to attach that topic to an inspirational story. Robots are interesting. Using them to eat trash in Nairobi is inspiring. Put the two together, and you have a TED talk. ‘
Schwartz calls this fusion the “inspiresting,” finding it
‘earnest and contrived. It is smart but not quite intellectual, personal but not sincere, jokey but not funny. It is an aesthetic of populist elitism. Politically, the inspiresting performs a certain kind of progressivism, as it is concerned with making the world a better place, however vaguely.’
The problem is that, in Anderson’s view, all of this can be achieved without any serious transfers of power. Politics is dismissed as toxic “tribal thinking” destroying the world changing potential of the free movement of ideas. And TED was not the sole purveyor of the Inspiresting. As Swartz cited:
Suddenly, circa 2010, everyone was sharing TED talks and TED (a not-for-profit) revenues were exploding. Fortune and fame were made from TED talks and the book contracts and speaking engagements they precipitated. But, soon enough, quality control was compromised, not the least through the 2009 creation of the TEDx franchise allowing licensees to use the brand platform to stage independent events around the world. But it became increasingly clear that the ’emperor had no clothes.’ “Inspiresting” reasoning and rhetoric began to be pilloried by science bloggers and social critics. Evgeny Morozov wrote in The New Republic, “TED is no longer a responsible curator of ideas worth spreading. Instead it has become something ludicrous.” A long profile of Anderson in TheNew York Times Magazine called TED “the Starbucks of intellectual conglomerates.”
By 2013, Benjamin Bratton, a scientist giving a pitch for research funding before a donor, described — in a TED talk! — being dismissed because his complex presentation (not in the TED-publicized rhetorical style) was criticized by the recipient as “uninspiring”, “not enough like Malcolm Gladwell”. Bratton described TED’s influence on intellectual culture as “taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing.” He opined, “this is not the solution to our most frightening problems. Rather this is one of our most frightening problems.”
TED became, some would say, little more than an ironic meme. For instance, you might post something banal in email, social media or your blog and close by saying, “Thank you for listening to my TED talk.”
The backlash against TED broadened to embrace the increasingly evident fact that the technocratic elite was just not playing a part in solving the world’s big problems. Twitter had failed to bring democracy to the Middle East. Social media were only free because our personal data was being mined and sold to advertisers. Obama was not the political savior many had hoped him to be, especially around the banking crisis. Upward mobility, social equality, and the utopian promises of technology were empty. TED talks continued, endlessly re-articulating Tech’s promise without any serious reflection, as if they could create the world out of nothing, with willpower and well-crafted oratory alone. Boldness of vision was not tempered by much if any recognition of realities, particularly political realities, and the TED philosophy became little more than a magnet for overblown ambition and narcissism.
And in the meantime Trump became the US president.
‘Yet the TED progeny continued to offer bold, tech-centric predictions with unfaltering confidence. And they have continued to do so.…
[A]s the most visible and influential public speaking platform of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, it has been deeply implicated in broadcasting and championing the Silicon Valley version of the future. TED is probably best understood as the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy.’
‘…[T]here is an argument, albeit one that would only comfort an economist, that today’s crises are both rarer and less severe than those of even the recent past. Consider the mid-1990s, a time that Americans tend to remember as one of global stability and optimism. If today were really a time of exceptional turmoil, then surely that world would look better in comparison?
In reality, the opposite is true. The mid-1990s saw genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. Years of war in Europe amid Yugoslavia’s collapse. Devastating famines in Sudan, Somalia and North Korea. Civil wars in over a dozen countries. Crackdowns and coups too numerous to mention.Such events were in fact more common in the 1990s than today. Prior decades were, in most ways, even worse.
But you are unlikely to remember every decades-old disaster as vividly as you might be able to recount, say, a terror attack or political crisis from this week.And reductions in such crises have only reduced the world’s problems, not erased them. No one wants to cheer a famine that is less severe than it might have been in the past, especially not the families whom it puts at risk, and especially knowing that future conflicts or climate-related crises could always cause another.
Still, the feeling that the world is getting worse is not universal. In fact, it is mostly held by residents of rich countries like the United States. Survey after survey has found that a majority of people in low-income and middle-income countries like Kenya or Indonesia tend to express optimism about the future, for both themselves and their societies…’
Some of these are so second-nature I never stopped to think about them:‘Schools are struggling to keep their shelves stocked as oversight by parents and school boards intensifies…’
‘Do we really need copyediting? I don’t mean the basic clean-up that reverses typos, reinstates skipped words, and otherwise ensures that spelling and punctuation marks are as an author intends. Such copyediting makes an unintentionally “messy” manuscript easier to read, sure.
‘…All of this should be the encouragement studios need to return to more traditional release strategies. The alternative is a frightening one for anything not made on the biggest scale: a world where seeing movies in theaters becomes a boutique option in only the biggest cities, and where streaming deals are the only way to fund non-blockbuster projects. This would be immensely damaging to the art form and to the diversity of projects on offer for audiences, and it’s a path Hollywood can reject by putting its faith back in cinemas—and in the viewers who love going to them….’
‘…[A]fter George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.
‘The remains of more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Natives’ ancestors are still held by museums, universities and federal agencies.
‘If a new variant of concern were to materialize, a version of the virus that fundamentally eroded our immune systems’ ability to fend off SARS-2 requiring a rapid updating of Covid vaccines, the public would need to take note… But in the absence of that, it’s really hard to see how it is actionable, or it’s useful, really, to anybody to know that oh, well, XBB.1.5 is taking over when we thought it might be BQ.1.1….’
‘Analyses have found that 12 people—coined the “disinformation dozen”—are responsible for 65% of misleading claims, rumors, and lies about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Their impact is most effective on Facebook (account for up to 73% of Facebook rumors), but also bleed into Instagram and Twitter. A scientific study published in Nature found that 1 in 4 anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweets originated from the so-called Children’s Health Defense—which is controlled by one man….’
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