Category: issues

“A handful of self-proclaimed white nationalists interrupted an appearance by an author at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Northwest Washington on Saturday afternoon, chanted ‘This land is our land’ and then exited to a chorus of loud boos.” – The Washington Post

Media were removed from the courtroom for a while during Friday’s proceedings as well. Why? “Prosecutors want to call additional women with similar allegations to help establish a pattern of misconduct. The number and identities of those women has been kept secret. The defense has argued that calling such witnesses would prejudice the case, and asked the court to close Friday’s hearing on the subject to avoid tainting the jury pool. The prosecution also asked that the hearing be closed.” – Variety

Final Draft, a widely used software for screenwriters, now has a free add-on to help writers measure everything from gender and race to age, ability, and more The software can even analyze whether the film would pass the Bechdel Test. – The New York Times

Earlier this month, the country’s government introduced a draft of the Protection From Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. It would authorize any minister in Singapore to order “corrections” to online content hosted anywhere in the world if the minister deemed that a statement is “false or misleading” in whole or in part, when that statement is made available online to one or more users in Singapore and it is deemed to be in the public interest to issue such a correction. – Inside Higher Ed

“[The Italian capital is] a city in a perennial state of disrepair, from its rubbish-strewn streets, potholes, scrappy parks and medieval buildings marred by graffiti to closed metro stations and buses that either never come or occasionally combust.” Yet taxes are high, and the per-night levy on tourists is the highest in Europe. Now people are demanding that the city government start giving them their money’s worth. – The Guardian

“Influential medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Erasmus, John Calvin, several popes and many other intellectual luminaries studied or taught [at the cathedral’s school] in its early centuries. The opportunity to study with famous scholars drew students from across Europe.” Indeed, it was Notre-Dame’s school that grew to become the University of Paris. – The Conversation

“Initiatives to promote arts engagement in children may provide a practical and efficient way to improve children’s self-esteem,” report Hei Wan Makand Daisy Fancourt of University College London. Importantly, they found that kids didn’t have to be good at their chosen creative activity for these positive effects to blossom. – Pacific Standard