The online store, which Arunga described as “Amazon for Africa, with fewer payment options,” has now sold a thousand books in Kenya and beyond—a relative handful, but, to Williams, a meaningful start. In order to support a full-time employee, he said, the store only needs to sell fifty books a day. And if that happens it could serve as a proof of concept for literary entrepreneurship in the developing world.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Research Reveals Six Story Arcs We All Respond To
They examined 1,327 stories from Project Gutenberg’s fiction collection — all English-language texts between 20,000 and 100,000 words — using three language processing filters. In the end, they found “broad support for the following six emotional arcs…”
Why It’s So Difficult To Define “Consciousness”
For most people “consciousness” will have various meanings and include awareness, self-awareness, thinking in language. But for philosophers and neuroscientists the crucial meaning is that of feeling something, having a feeling you might say, or an experience. An easy way to think about it would be pain.
Book Illustrators Demand Equal Status With Writers
Covers of novels are ‘revealed’ on social media with no mention of the illustrator, signings take place without both the author and the illustrator of a picturebook present, publishers forget to list illustrators on Amazon, and in a recent case the illustrator of Pigín of Howth by Kathleen Watkins, Margaret Anne Suggs was left off the Irish Book Awards brochure. This is not acceptable and needs to be addressed.
The “Tinder Of Square-dancing” Has Sparked A Dance Craze In China
On most mornings, loud EDM, tinged with strokes of traditional Chinese music, blasts from giant speakers in the nation’s parks. Those parks fill with grandmas and a smattering of grandpas who have forsaken tai chi for “sailor dancing.”
Big Drop In UK Arts Funding As Lottery Sales Plummet
“The arts are bracing for an £18.4m cut in funding after a significant fall in Lottery ticket sales means the amount available for the National Lottery Good Causes has fallen by £92m so far this year, compared with last.”
Artist Richard Prince Sued Again For Copyright Infringement
This time it’s professional photographer Eric McNatt suing over Prince’s use of an image he took of former Sonic Youth leader Kim Gordon. “The complaint outlines at length Prince’s brazen attitude towards appropriating works, and his disposition toward previous legal actions against him, including the case brought by photographer Patrick Cariou.”
How The Right Is Using Left-Leaning Celebrity Angst Against Itself
“While the angry tweets, therapeutic Instagram testimonials and fiery speeches may comfort their fans, these left-leaning celebrities are also inadvertently energizing the opposition. Conservative news outlets — most notably Breitbart News Network, the right-wing populist enclave — are perfecting the art of sapping Democratic stars’ name recognition and repurposing their words and actions into pro-Trump material.”
Now That Computers Dominate Chess, Some Of The Art Of The Game Has Been Lost
“Grandmasters that have grown up with most of their training in the computer era play a much more objective style of chess. They’re less willing to dismiss a move because it’s ugly, or doesn’t appeal to their aesthetics.”
Universal Translator? An Expert Weighs In On The Challenges
“I am a professional translator, having translated some 125 books from the French. One might therefore expect me to bristle at Google’s claim that its new translation engine is almost as good as a human translator, scoring 5.0 on a scale of 0 to 6, whereas humans average 5.1. But I’m also a PhD in mathematics who has developed software that ‘reads’ European newspapers in four languages and categorises the results by topic. So, rather than be defensive about the possibility of being replaced by a machine translator, I am aware of the remarkable feats of which machines are capable, and full of admiration for the technical complexity and virtuosity of Google’s work. My admiration does not blind me to the shortcomings of machine translation, however.”