The 20 Best Food Scenes in Movies. Ratatouille, Big Night, When Harry Met Sally, Tampopo, etc. What’s missing?
How to write a LOTR bestseller (short video, with profanity).
The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Here’s what other institutions consider their Mona Lisas. For instance: the National Portrait Gallery in London has a portrait of William Shakespeare and MoMA has the Gold Marilyn Monroe.
Film adaptations
At El País Ianko López considers Insult or adaptation ? Why films still struggle to adapt novels.
However, now I am eager to see this adaptation, which I had not heard of:
Spain has also seen notable clashes between writers and filmmakers over adaptations. One of the most famous involved Javier Marías and director Gracia Querejeta after she turned his novel Todas las almas (All Souls) into the film El último viaje de Robert Rylands (Robert Rylands’ Last Journey). Marías dismissed the adaptation as a “soap‑opera melodrama” and wrote that he felt impatient and even embarrassed watching scenes that viewers might mistakenly assume came from his book. He eventually won a court ruling that granted him compensation and ordered his name removed from the credits.
Jennifer Crewe Q & A
At the Columbia University Press blog Maritza Herrera-Diaz has a Q & A with the director of the press, in Jennifer Crewe: A Legacy of Leadership at Columbia University Press.
Interesting the fairly recent change:
Herrera-Diaz: The Press became formally integrated into the university during your leadership. In what ways did this integration strengthen the Press’s role within the university, and why did you see that as a strategic priority?
Crewe: I had clear goals when I became director, and I was lucky in that the provost had similar goals. From the start, it was important to me that we become formally integrated into the university as a unit. The Press had been created in 1893 as an affiliate of the university and was a separate 501(c)(3) organization. As a result, many at the university didn’t know what we did, or even that we existed. I felt strongly that we should be clearly aligned with the university’s academic mission and priorities, and more visible to faculty and administrators. So I set about making that change.
[Note that my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction was published by Columbia University Press.]
Tomas Tranströmer's Nobel Prize medal and diploma
The heirs of Nobel laureates often flog the winners' gold Nobel medals and diplomas -- Alexander Bitar has a good overview at Collectors Weekly, Nobel Prize Medals: History, Specifics and Auction Records -- and they often get good money for them: apparently eleven have gone for more than half a million dollars, with the best-selling ones raking in considerably more. Oddly, however, literature laureates do not do well: Doris Lessing's, sold at auction for £187,500 in 2017, is only the 26th highest-grossing cash-in and the only literature-laureate to crack the top 32; among the few others that have been put up for sale both Maurice Maeterlinck's medal and diploma (Sotheby's, 2023) and those of William Faulkner (Sotheby's, 2013) were withdrawn when bidding didn't reach the reserve price.
Admirably, the wife of 2011 Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer didn't put his diploma and medal up for sale, but rather has now donated them to the Nobel Prize Museum; see their official press release.
Recent literature-diplomas have come without illustrations and hardly even seem display-worthy, but Tranströmer still got one of the good ones.
| Kenneth Koch Ten Films 1. Because Scene 1. Ted and Sally on a porch overlooking the water in Nice or some other resort. The scene is all yellow and green. Scene 2. City, street scene. All purple. SUBTITLES: So they moved. In the place where they moved, everything was purple. And they were happy. Scene 3. Yellow scene. A nursery. Everyone is happy. There are children. Smoking orange and blue SUBTITLE comes on and says “END.” 2. The Color Game The blank screen changes from one solid color to another in the following order: WHITE, GREEN, VIOLET, RED, GREEN, BLUE. This sequence is kept up as long as desired. Spoken words accompany the colors some of the time: on every fifth occurrence of WHITE, the words “The box of Wheaties” are heard; on every second occurrence of GREEN, there is laughter; on every third occurrence of BLUE, one hears the words, “Don’t take me off this boat at Corfu—No!” 3. Mountains and Electricity Panorama of mountains. A voice tells the story of electricity. At the end everything becomes dark red. 4. Sheep Harbour The scene is a harbour, filled with sheep (not in the water, but occupying all the land area). The end. 5. Oval Gold The scene shows a huge golden oval. A man reads aloud the menu for the day. The oval sways slightly as things it likes are mentioned. End. 6. Moby Dick Against a beautiful deep blue background which serves as a fairly narrow frame around it are exposed one by one selected pages of Melville’s Moby Dick. There should be music (soft), and the book should sway just the tiniest bit, as if blown by a light and gentle spring breeze. Background changes to orange and yellow. End. 7. L’Ecole normale Various architectural aspects of an ugly école normale are surveyed by the camera while a violin plays something fairly raucous and weeping (perhaps something Russian?). The color of everything is yellow. 8. The Cemetery The camera plays on tombs, graves, trees, etc. A voice says: This is the cemetery. Then there are jangling sounds of something going wrong with the projector. The film ends. Inside the theater it should start snowing. 9. The Scotty Dog Various scenes of the life of my Scotty, Andrew, are shown: he runs about, puts his rubber mouse in his food dish, etc. Meanwhile a text is read, about the construction of the buildings on the Acropolis in Athens. The text should be dramatic and should be accompanied by an appropriately rising and dramatic music. End. 10. The Apple The camera follows an APPLE as it rolls along the floor of a room, falls down a grating, and ends up rolling along in the snow outside. A SONG accompanies the action enthusiastically. This song, for example: Here’s the apple as it rolls along The floor—it seems to sing a song. What’s more It’s in danger, the apple is in trouble. Just a bubble Of doubt must cross its mind— Are apples blind? In any case As it proceeds to roll along Over the floor. Look—it may hit the chair legs, hut no more. We need not fear that, it evades them and goes on— To hit the table? No!—goes on Across the slightly not level floor. But here, alas! Apple green and white and red Your head You may injure— Oh beware, watch out— Yes—no—oh, yes— The apple has fallen in the grate— Good-bye! But no, it continues to go along. And now we see it’s fallen outside— Aren’t you cold, apple? In the snow. And it continues. Our green and red and white, to go ROLLING ALONG! (End.) |
Texting a Random Stranger Better for Loneliness Than Talking to a Chatbot
Ruo-Ning Li, Dunigan Folk, Abhay Singh, Lyle Ungar, Elizabeth Dunn, Is a random human peer better than a highly supportive chatbot in reducing loneliness over time?, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 125, 2026, 104911, ISSN 0022-1031, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2026.104911. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103126000417)
Abstract: AI chatbots are increasingly embedded in social life, offering accessible companionship. While brief interactions have been shown to provide immediate benefits, it is unclear whether repeated, daily engagement with chatbots reduces loneliness. In this pre-registered study, we tested the effectiveness of a chatbot versus a human peer in reducing loneliness among 296 students in their first semester of university.
For two weeks, participants either interacted with a chatbot or a human peer, or simply wrote a brief journal entry (control condition). Although our chatbot “Sam” was designed to offer consistent support rooted in principles from relationship science, interacting with this chatbot did not yield the same psychological benefits as interacting with a randomly selected first-year university student. The present study provides initial evidence that texting daily with a random human peer may be more effective in alleviating loneliness than texting with a highly supportive chatbot.
