In June, days before the book was expected to go on sale in the United States, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt postponed the publication and recalled copies from retailers, an unusual and costly move. The publisher said at the time that “new questions have arisen that require more time to explore.” Now, it has pulled the book altogether. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
How The Language Of Emojis Evolves
Emoji sink or swim on less democratic tides. They aren’t quite words, of course, though they’re certainly word-adjacent. (Three out of four Americans regularly deploy emoji in text messages, and at least six billion emoji are sent across the major social media platforms each day.) – The New Republic
Netflix Reveals What Its Audience Is Watching. Here’s What We Learned
Although we’re still starved of the bottom end of the list and, disappointingly yet tellingly, any box-office data for its theatrical releases, we can start to see what is and isn’t working for the platform. – Irish Times
2017 Tax Law Cost Artists Because They Lost Expense Deductions. Now They Want It Changed
In the past, many actors would list these expenses as miscellaneous itemized deductions on their taxes. But the 2017 tax reform law eliminated that provision, affecting thousands of performing artists who had used those deductions for work-related expenses. Now unions representing Hollywood performers are pushing Congress to fix the problem. – Los Angeles Times
The Novel Is Dying? Please, Get Over It!
“I do not agree that the novel is doomed to become a marginal cultural force – but I can see why writers whose first successes came in the pre-digital age may think so. Gone are the days of the great advances and the pages and pages of serious, in-depth analysis the print media once used to offer to the novel and to the book-by-book progression of a novelist’s body of work.” – New Statesman
Increases In Productivity Mean We Don’t Have To Work So Hard. And Yet We Do. Why?
“If today’s advanced economies have reached (or even exceeded) the point of productivity that Keynes predicted, why are 30- to 40-hour weeks still standard in the workplace? And why doesn’t it feel like much has changed? This is a question about both human nature – our ever-increasing expectations of a good life – as well as how work is structured across societies.” – Aeon
Why America’s Professional Theatres Are Broken
“The effect of this legacy for mixed metaphors and a lack of public funding of the arts is a numbing of artistic innovation and an enlivening of artistic repetition. Companies often opt for what seems like more saleable programming—reliable commodities, you might say—to eke out new works initiatives. But commodification is a distraction from doing the real work that our mission statements claim we do.” – Howlround
US Department Of Education Allowed Student Aid To Art Institutes That Lost Accreditation
“We’ve known for a long time that the Art Institutes lied to students about losing accreditation. Now, we know that the Department of Education misled them, too,” said Eric Rothschild, an attorney at the National Student Legal Defense Network who is representing the students. – Washington Post
The Throat-Singing Mongolian Rock Band That Has Taken Worldwide Music Charts By Storm
Their first two videos, for Wolf Totem, and Yuve Yuve Yu (or How Strange, How Strange) have amassed more than 45m views on YouTube over the last year, while their debut album, The Gereg, opened at No 1 on Billboard’s Top New Artist chart and No 2 on the magazine’s Indie Label chart. – The Guardian
Conductor Raymond Leppard, 92
He was part of a generation of musicians who, aided by the burgeoning recording industry, helped revive Baroque music in concert halls after World War II. That group included Nikolaus Harnoncourt of Austria and Neville Marriner of Britain. – The New York Times