Elsewhere for January 12, 2019

You should read this for 12/12/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

H/T Lisa Carnell: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

I’ve got no interest in establishing any personal connection between their culture and mine. That’s for the historians and the fantasists. I’m just interested in the words. There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. 

Original Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien Are Coming to New York’s Morgan Library

A collection of British fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s original drawings and illustrations will make a rare appearance in the U.S. this month. As AM New York reports, works from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries will be traveling across the pond to New York City, where they’ll go on display at The Morgan Library & Museum.

This is a really wonderful opportunity; go if you can. January 25 to May 12, 2019.

Does It Pay to Be a Writer? “The decline in earnings are largely because of Amazon’s lion’s share of the self-publishing, e-book and resale market.”

Writing has never been a lucrative career choice, but a recent study by the Authors Guild, a professional organization for book writers, shows that it may not even be a livable one anymore. According to the survey results, the median pay for full-time writers was $20,300 in 2017, and that number decreased to $6,080 when part-time writers were considered. The latter figure reflects a 42 percent drop since 2009, when the median was $10,500. These findings are the result of an expansive 2018 study of more than 5,000 published book authors, across genres and including both traditional and self-published writers.

7 Publishing Insights Revealed By Last Year’s Top 100 Bestselling Books See also The 100 bestselling books of 2018 which partly inspired the previous link; it’s an article about 2018 publishing trends based on Nielsen Bookscan 31/12/17-8/12/18

Food and Drink

Real Maine Baked Beans

Baked beans, cooked slowly in the oven for hours in a covered bean pot, are a Maine tradition. So are yellow-eye beans.

First, let’s just say that Yellow Eyes won the most votes, if you will, for the best bean to use. In Maine, those come from State of Maine Beans in a two pound bag at most grocery stores. There were a smattering of Jacobs Cattle, Soldier Beans, Great Northerns, and a few will favor Marafax. A couple mentioned pea beans, but for the most part, Mainers like big beans.

History and Archaeology

Bath Tiles “Brightly colored tiles have been uncovered during excavations in advance of restoration of England’s Bath Abbey.”

Easter Island statues: mystery behind their location revealed

Researchers say they have analysed the locations of the megalithic platforms, or ahu, on which many of the statues known as moai sit, as well as scrutinising sites of the island’s resources, and have discovered the structures are typically found close to sources of fresh water.

Science and Nature

VIA NPR’s Bird Note (H/T Anne B): House Sparrows Can Open Doors

Clues into early development of autism spectrum disorder Neurons from people with autism exhibit different patterns of growth and develop at a faster rate”

Society

One easy New Year’s resolution to help save democracy in 2019: Go to the library

Technology

Via Nieman Lab: Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A Long, Slow Slog, With No One Coming To The Rescue

“Much of the news currently published online is simply not worth paying for. Some of it is hardly worth our fleeting attention, let alone hard-earned cash.”

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

“I love my Mac!” Zoë Smith’s spouse is a new Mac user and as she writes:

I love my Mac, of course. But seeing someone else fall in love too, again, today? Pretty sweet.

Facebook Shared User Data with Other Tech Giants

Women’s Work

Via NPR: What It Looks Like To Have A Record Number Of Women In The House Of Representatives

I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman

“Black babies in the United States die at just over two times the rate of white babies in the first year of their life,” says Arthur James, an OB-GYN at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. When my daughter died, she and I became statistics.

H/T: Lisa Carnell via NPR: A Blue Clue In Medieval Teeth May Bespeak A Woman’s Artistry Circa A.D. 1000

Work pants and my fight for pocket equality.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Medievalist Matthew Gabriele: Trump says medieval walls worked. They didn’t. And from another historian, David Perry: Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Muslim youth group cleans up national parks amid government shutdown

Across the country, dozens of their colleagues in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association were doing the same at national parks closed or partially closed by the shutdown. They cleaned up litter, emptied garbage cans and swept the grounds — from the Everglades National Park in Florida to Joshua Tree, California and the Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio.

Via NPR: Florida Law Restoring The Vote To Former Felons Takes Effect Before the referendum passed

more than 10 percent of Florida’s adult population was not eligible to vote. Desmond Meade who helped organize the referendum campaign says that changed Nov. 6. “We had over 5.1 million voters that voted yes on Amendment 4,” he says. “Not one of those votes was based on hate. Not one of those votes was based on fear, but rather votes of love.”