Dictators fall when they’re overconfident; they stay in power when they’re paranoid. Masha Gessen Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. … | Continue reading
From The Economist: North Korea’s rulers have always had strong views on art. Kim Il Sung, the regime’s founding despot, said artists should “arouse burning hatred for the enemy through their works”. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, was such a cinema enthusiast that he kidnapp … | Continue reading
From The Literary Hub: One of the pleasures of reading 19th-century novels is that authors write openly about money. Take for instance Mr. Bennett, the patriarch in Pride and Prejudice, whose £2,000 a year makes him amongst the wealthier members of the gentry. With that sum, he c … | Continue reading
From Make a Living Writing: Let’s start with the Dictionary definition of euphemism: A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing. Dictionary.com definition Euphemism is a powe … | Continue reading
From The Paris Review: “What do you do with the old magazines when the new issues come out?” I asked the librarian. “At the end of the year, we donate them to neighborhood schools so kids can cut them up and make collages,” she replied. Our small public library is relatively new, … | Continue reading
From Publishers Weekly: As of May 2023, the American Booksellers Association’s membership included 2,185 companies with 2,599 locations; of those, 693 have opened their doors since January 2021. Many of these new booksellers see bookselling both as a career and as a means to adva … | Continue reading
From The Guardian: Scholars often say that no one doubted Shakespeare’s authorship until the 19th century. The response is a rote way of brushing off persistent questions about the attribution of the world’s most famous plays and poems – but it may not be true. New scholarship su … | Continue reading
Your first love isn’t the first person you give your heart to- it’s the first one who beaks it. Lang Leav, Sad Girls | Continue reading
From The Guardian: What do we mean when we say a novel is a “sad girl novel”? I could list a dozen popular novels published over the last few years that have had this term slapped on them. What do they have in common? Most often a protagonist who is at times miserable and disaffe … | Continue reading
From Sherwood News: Fan-fiction writers have for decades parlayed their passion for writing stories based on movies, TV shows, and books into careers as best-selling genre authors. But they haven’t often advertised to readers their pseudonymous identities as fan-fiction writers w … | Continue reading
I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. The closing lines … | Continue reading
From The Economist: Cairo, a town at the southern tip of Illinois founded in the early 19th century, was given that name because it was expected to grow into a huge metropolis. Located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it was the transport hub of a region that … | Continue reading
From The Wall Street Journal: ‘I’m a liar. I’m a thief. I’m emotionally shallow. I’m mostly immune to remorse and guilt. I’m highly manipulative. I don’t care what other people think.” Thus opens “Sociopath: A Memoir,” by Patric (short for Patricia) Gagne, psychologist, former th … | Continue reading
A short teaser for the newest Boston Dynamics humanoid robot. PG has blogged about earlier models of Boston Dynamics robots, but, even from the short video below, it’s obvious that the company has been hard at work. Thanks to several regulars on TPV or the tip. Here is a video of … | Continue reading
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition. Charles Caleb Colton | Continue reading
From The Japan Times: The Tokyo District Court on Thursday ordered the operator of a now-defunct manga piracy website to pay ¥1.7 billion in compensation to three major Japanese publishers. Presiding Judge Masaki Sugiura recognized that the site operator and his associates had up … | Continue reading
From Windows Central: It’s an open secret that Microsoft is working on a significant AI update for Windows 11 this year, timed with new “AI PCs” that are set to begin being made available in June. In fact, Microsoft is holding a special event on May 20, where it intends to unveil … | Continue reading
From Master Class: Authors employ different literary devices to create plot twists and conflicted characters. One of these devices is the unreliable narrator—a storyteller who withholds information, lies to, or misleads the reader, casting doubt on the narrative. Authors use this … | Continue reading
From The Federal Trade Commission: September 26, 2023 The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon.com, Inc. alleging that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategi … | Continue reading
From The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division: The Antitrust Laws The Antitrust Division enforces federal antitrust and competition laws. These laws prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the bene … | Continue reading
3 Body Problem April 7, 2024 by PG Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post Categories Fantasy/SciFi, Video I think a common misconception about a small town in rural America | Continue reading
I think a common misconception about a small town in rural America is that everyone believes the same way, and nothing could be further from the truth. Ree Drummond | Continue reading
From The BBC: The release of Netflix’s series 3 Body Problem has been watched millions of times around the globe since its release late last month. It has even found an audience in China where Netflix is unavailable, sparking much chatter among viewers of the series. But many fan … | Continue reading
From Publishing Perspectives: Since Publishing Perspectives first reported in September 2023 on the textbook crisis in Mexico, publishers say the situation has gone from bad to worse, with the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador now taking steps to produce its own English-l … | Continue reading
From The Atlantic: Rage is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritar … | Continue reading
From Writers Helping Writers: DESCRIPTION: This narcissistic and antisocial character lacks empathy and will cross any line to get what they want. FICTIONAL EXAMPLES: Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men), Annie Wilkes (Misery), Amy Dunne (Gone Girl), the Joker (The Dark Knight) … | Continue reading
From Ask a Bookseller: This one’s for the creatives. Used bookstores can be a treasure trove of great reads, old and new, on a huge variety of topics. Dickson St. Bookshop in Fayetteville, Ark., is one such spot. Bookseller Elaine Eckert says she gets particularly excited when sh … | Continue reading
In his experiments with AI writing programs, PG has discovered a few strengths and weaknesses. Following are the first few paragraphs of “The Sun Also Rises,” as originally written by Ernest Hemingway: Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think t … | Continue reading
From TechCrunch: If you build it, people will try to break it. Sometimes even the people building stuff are the ones breaking it. Such is the case with Anthropic and its latest research which demonstrates an interesting vulnerability in current LLM technology. More or less if you … | Continue reading
Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises | Continue reading
From The Science Fiction Writers of America: Have you ever read something that you knew was incorrect? Sometimes, research has fallen short of convincing people who know better, even though other readers might not notice anything wrong. For those who know, it can be jarring and p … | Continue reading
From Writer Unboxed: I’m writing this post in a public library. It isn’t a research library, the awesome university kind where you might go to dig up fabulous story details. It’s a humble branch library. The patrons are either kids from the nearby high school or their moms. The a … | Continue reading
From The Wall Street Journal: An appalling political effort to force the people of Scotland to express only government-approved thoughts on “gender” has so far been unable to conquer the country’s most successful expresser of thoughts. Megan Bonar and Katy Scott report for the BB … | Continue reading
From Business Insider: Apple is in the early stages of looking into making home robots, a move that appears to be an effort to create its “next big thing” after it killed its self-driving car project earlier this year, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Engineers ar … | Continue reading
From The Economist: “It’s almost a moral duty that museums should be free,” said Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). That was in 2002, when a ticket to moma cost $12 (around $19 in today’s prices). In October moma started charging $30, the latest in a series … | Continue reading
PG glanced at some site stats for TPV and discovered that, after the U.S., the second-largest location providing visitors to TPV is China. More visitors from China than Canada or Britain. He hopes his comments about China posted earlier today don’t cause problems for his Chinese … | Continue reading
From The Wall Street Journal: The Chinese Communist Party has already crushed freedom in Hong Kong. Now it’s beating a dead horse. As directors of Next Digital, we saw three years ago the jackboot effect of the security laws Beijing has imposed on Hong Kong. The company published … | Continue reading
Distracted from distraction by distraction. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets | Continue reading
From Publishing Perspectives: In its release today (March 26) of its December 2023 StatShot report, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) the year-to-date figures cover last year, with total revenues across all categories in December 2023 down 2.5 percent as compared to De … | Continue reading
From Writers in the Storm: Statistics are interesting. Statistics can provide us with valuable information. Like, right now, there are over 8 billion people on the planet and over 1 billion websites (most of which are inactive). One of my favorite teachers said that it only takes … | Continue reading
So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads. Dr. Seuss | Continue reading
From ZD Net: Several text-to-music generators are now on the market, including offerings from Meta and Google. However, the Suno AI music generator is becoming increasingly popular — likely because it creates original lyrics and vocals, and because it leverages the power of ChatG … | Continue reading
From The Economist: IN THE dystopia of George Orwell’s novel “1984”, Big Brother numbs the masses with the help of a “versificator”, a machine designed to automatically generate the lyrics to popular tunes, thereby ridding society of human creativity. Today, numerous artificial-i … | Continue reading
From BBC: The Great Gatsby is synonymous with parties, glitz and glamour – but this is just one of many misunderstandings about the book that began from its first publication. Few characters in literature or indeed life embody an era quite so tenaciously as Jay Gatsby does the Ja … | Continue reading
From Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log: This putative class action alleged that Amazon overcharged and “[d]eceived consumers by misrepresenting that it was selling them Digital Content when, in fact, it was really only licensing it to them[.]” Plaintiffs brought claims under California, … | Continue reading
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’ Erma Bombeck | Continue reading
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem | Continue reading
From The Bookseller: Hachette has reported a rise across both its mean and median gender pay gaps for the whole company group between 2022 and 2023, while the bonus pay gap for ethnicity has also deepened, though progress in other areas has been made. The group – which encompasse … | Continue reading