Sunday, October 09, 2022

Lookism in TikTok

 “My real work consists neither of prose or verse, but in the recognition of my own stupidity.” So held the Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer. He had a point  literature  »


7 Thoughtful Gifts for Neighbors (Even if You Don’t Know Them That Well)


NEWS YOU CAN USE:  Weight Lifting in Old Age Does More Than Just Keep Your Muscles Strong.


HMM:  Increased risk for all-cause dementia in people who abstain from alcohol.


Why Book Covers Matter

The reading world is divided between those who care about covers (specifically paperback covers) and those who find this odder than worrying what packaging sausages come in. These are often the same people who can’t understand why anyone would keep a book they had already read. - Irish Times


New Infectious Threats Are Coming. The U.S. Probably Won’t Contain Them. New York Times 


The Australian Town Keeping Square Dancing Alive

One of the appeals of square dancing is that it can be done anywhere; once you know the moves, you can attend any club in Australia – or around the world – and dance with strangers as if you’re old friends. - The Guardian

       William Boyd: Q & A 

       Any Human Heart-author William Boyd has a new book coming out -- The Romantic -- and at The Guardian Anthony Cummins has a Q & A with the author, William Boyd: ‘The books world is much tougher now’
       Interesting (and troubling) to hear how times have changed:
How has the writing life changed since you began publishing ? 

The 1980s was a kind of boom period but the challenge for a literary novelist now is to just keep the show on the road. It used to be you could write a novel every couple of years or so and have a perfectly nice bourgeois life. Now the mid-list has gone. The brutal fact is you either sell or you don’t. Friends of mine who’ve written 12 novels can’t get published or their advances have dropped by 80%. It’s a much tougher world.
       As to Stendhal, I' m not so sure that he: "isn’t read so much in English nowadays", as Cummins has it -- recall also, that there's a new translation of Red and Black, by Raymond N. MacKenzie, just out from the University of Minnesota Press; see their publicity page


Lookism in TikTok.  Which visual features predict video success?



Why are New Yorkers eating dinner at earlier times?(NYT)


 Jacques Dreze has passed sway


Kindergarten rank matters


CIA launches first podcast


 “Its people would benefit from something approximating “state capacity libertarianism with Somali
characteristics.””


Median home value on Martha’s Vineyard rose from 700k to $1m over the span of the last year.  A local’s dissection of local NIMBYism.


How is drug decriminalization going in Oregon?



Tolkien and environmentalism


Dinner with Julia Child


Art of menus


Eating books


Wanted: book stylist


Danger of politicizing science


Life of Berkeley


Big lie v. big joke


What happens to banned books


WaPo's blues


Joyce Carol Oates


Corrections of taste


Art and the queen


Hoardiculture


Jean-Luc Godard


Life of Art Buchwald


WaPo v. NYT


Paradox of public scholarship


Math effects


On purring


Inventing the alphabet


Why chili peppers?


Bayard Rustin


Radical Rachmaninoff?


Barbara Ehrenreich, R.I.P.


On personal-finance books


Black king of songs


Diva Dickens


Music to die for


Trademarked words?


Freudian tip


Joy of math


History of the blurb


Worst book by former Trump officials


Nazis on the Nile


What is a hit piece?


Tiring thinking


Jared Kushner's memoir


Unhappy emperors


Ephron's self-narrative


Feminists and sex


Best museum bathrooms


Capitalism vs. pleasure


On maximalist novels


Social good of bookstores


David McCullough, R.I.P.


The Claremont Institute


When sports imitate art


NYT vs. U.K.


Paths to depolarization


Vacation read


Remembering Gore Vidal


Bookshelf organizers


Origin of zero


James Lovelock, R.I.P.


Polarizing media


Music for the dea
Authors vs. librarians


Culture and QR codes