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New York Times readers who ignore The Economist: Danger, groupthink ahead. Data suggests police de-escalation can work. Goats have feelings, too. (Sheep, not so much.) Babies brainwash you with their cuteness. If the Ghostbusters need props, who you gonna call? MIT professors!
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John Reed discusses Snowball’s Chance, his parody of Animal Farm, and the lawsuits, debates, and discoveries that followed the book’s publication.
...moreIt is not so surprising that so many writers have worked in intelligence. Writers create plots; spies uncover them. In a sense, all writers function like spies—observing the people around them, studying character types, becoming flies-on-the-wall for the purpose of their art. Successful writers from Christopher Marlowe to Roald Dahl have led parallel careers in […]
...moreHow many times have we been told that digital technology will fundamentally alter the way we interact with text? There was hypertext fiction, which added hyperlinks so you could choose your own path through a story. Pfft. There was the enhanced e-book, which was like a regular e-book except it might decide to play audio […]
...moreShakespeare may have felt anxiety, but he was no worrier. More from The Economist on how the word entered our lexicon, in a review of Worrying by Francis O’Gorman. O’Gorman, who traces the word’s rise through literary modernism’s focus on the inner world, believes “being a modern worrier is just… the moth-eaten sign of being […]
...moreOver at The Hairpin, Isabelle Fraser interviews Ann Wroe, obituary writer for The Economist. Wroe has written obituaries for J.D. Salinger, Aaron Swartz, and the 25-year old carp that was “England’s best-loved fish”. On Marie Smith, the last person to speak Eyak, an Alaskan language, she relates: “She was the only person left who remembered all the different […]
...moreThe Economist has a comprehensive article up about how the Internet has revolutionized the stagnant comics industry by demolishing barriers to publication and enabling artists to make a profit in new ways. Sure, they’re five or ten years late to the party, but it’s still cool to see xkcd and Dinosaur Comics get coverage from one of the foremost […]
...moreIf you’re still reading paper books—and more notably, hardbacks—you’ve probably noticed some of the pages look a little rough around the edges. Two years ago, The Millions published a piece on the “deckle edge,” a byproduct of the paper-making process that causes book pages to appear worn. Prominent until the 1800s, the deckle made its comeback in […]
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