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Updating books with modern pop culture references
Updating a piece of media to adapt the to modern culture can be done well. Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew transformed into 10 Things I Hate About You quite well. But there’s a growing trend of updating contemporary books with dated references to more modern ones.
“You guys want to come over and watch this cool TikTok I found?”
This line, from a recent reprint of Sara Shepard’s young adult thriller “Pretty Little Liars,” drew criticism online this spring after a reader said it “ruined the whole book.”
In the original edition, from 2006, the same passage referred to the reality show “Fear Factor.” The updated version, from 2022, replaces it — and other early-2000s markers — with references to Instagram, Snapchat and artists like Billie Eilish and Doja Cat.
In publishing, the practice of updating cultural and technological references in older books is called modernization. It is most common in, but not exclusive to, middle-grade and Y.A. fiction, and is distinct from sensitivity editing, which targets language deemed offensive and became a subject of debate following revisions to Roald Dahl’s novels.
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Geography is 4 dimensional
Derek Sivers makes the case that geography can also be mentioned by time.
When someone speaks of a place, you have to ask, “When?” Geography is four-dimensional. You can’t know a place – only a place as it was at a time. Where is bound to when. Unless you are in a place right now, you can only speak of it in past-tense.
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The AI Bubble
This is such a good analysis of the practical constraints around AI: the financial, physical, technical and how they all come together.
The buyers have not learned to manage and the sellers have not learned to price, the two failures meeting in the middle and being reported, in the aggregate, as demand. The buildout is being sized against consumption figures that include their own inefficiency — and the revenue projections required to justify it assume this inflated consumption will grow, not contract, as teams mature and architectures stabilize.
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Art but make it sports
L J Rader is the person behind the account that pairs sports photography with fine art in startling similar juxtaposition.
@artbutmakeitsports started in 2019. When did you realize that you had this gift?
I don’t know if there was an exact moment. I think the account first started as me captioning art—I would say, “This Francis Bacon painting looks like Philip Rivers screaming.” Then it was like, “Wait, I’m gonna just put up the picture of Philip Rivers screaming.” I always knew in my head, this is what this thing looked like. But it started taking off when I put the actual image next to the actual artwork. And it was a steady burn—steady growth, but never really something that I cared about. I’m gonna, you know, post it to however many people, and I’ll post however many more in the future. But it is fun to see the community that’s grown around it.
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Band camp for adults
Adults relive the musical camaraderie of their youth.
“I was thrilled because I love this place,” said Guess, 71, of Baltimore, a retired lawyer for the U.S. Department of Defense who plans to return to the New England Adult Music Camp in August. “It is serene, beautiful, a perfect setting. And it’s not all that different from what it was 50-some years ago.”
Whether they are looking to make friends, improve their skills or just take some time out for themselves after sending their own kids to camp and college, adults can find a variety of summer music programs across the United States, ranging from electronic, folk, rock ‘n’ roll and jazz to chamber and opera.
For many campers, it offers a way to relive the nostalgic musical experiences of their youth and make new social connections.
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Astrophotography, a barred spiral galaxy
This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before. At the heart of M77 is a compact region filled with hot gas that handily outshines the rest of the galaxy put together, even overcoming the light-gathering capacity of Webb’s cameras. This is an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and it’s powered by M77’s central supermassive black hole, which is eight million times as massive as our Sun. Gas in the galaxy’s central regions is pulled by the strong gravity into a tight and rapid orbit around the black hole, where it crashes together and heats up, releasing tremendous amounts of radiation. The bright orange lines appearing to radiate out from the centre of M77 are not actually a feature of the galaxy: they are a type of distortion that arises from the optical design of the telescope. Called diffraction spikes, they are created because the intense light from the unresolved AGN is bent (“diffracted”) very slightly at the edges of Webb’s hexagonal mirror panels and around one of the struts that hold up its secondary mirror. This distinctive six-plus-two-pointed pattern is the same for any image taken by Webb. For diffraction spikes to appear, the light source has to be very bright and very concentrated, so they’re most often seen on stars. But in some galaxies, as here, the nucleus is bright and compact enough to make diffraction spikes appear as well. M77 is not just known for its easily visible AGN, but also as a prolific star-forming galaxy. The near-infrared image of M77 reveals a bar spanning across the central r -
Lunar hummus
Chickpeas grown in moon dirt may bring us lunar hummus.
Chickpeas of a variety called “Myles” were raised in a climate-controlled growth chamber at Texas A&M University. Seeds were coated with beneficial fungi and planted in a mix of the simulated lunar soil, made by Florida-based company Space Resource Technologies, and a nutrient-rich substance called vermicompost produced when earthworms break down organic waste.
Harvestable chickpeas grew in soil mixtures of up to 75% lunar simulant. As the percentage of simulated moon soil – known as regolith – increased, the number of harvestable chickpeas decreased, though the size of the chickpeas remained stable. Seeds planted in 100% lunar simulant failed to produce flowers and seeds, experiencing early death.
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Pickleball’s best player
Like any sport in its infancy, they’re weird. Pickleball is still growing, and talented players are beginning to make a name for themselves. 19 year old Anna Leigh Waters is one such name.
“When I was younger, I didn’t really understand it, but a lot of people were treating me poorly on the court or would get pretty upset [and] call me names,” Waters told NBC News. “But now that I’m older, I realize the feelings they must have been going through losing to a 12-year-old. I could see how that could get people to maybe do things that they characteristically wouldn’t do.”
Seven years since her debut, Waters, 19, is the No. 1-ranked female singles and doubles player in the world and widely considered the greatest to ever compete.
