“ No professional photographers ever have their photos on Wikipedia, because they want to make money from the photos,” said Jay Dixit, a writing professor and amateur Wikipedia photographer. “It’s actually the norm that most celebrities have poor photos on Wikipedia, if they have photos at all. It’s just some civilian at an airport being like, ‘Oh my god, it’s Pete Davidson,’ click with an iPhone.”
Dixit is part of a team of volunteer photographers, called WikiPortraits, that’s trying to fix that problem.
Author: Patrick
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Wikiportraits
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Speed in 4K
Pop quiz hotshot. What 90s action movie starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, and Dennis Hopper holds up nearly 30 years later?
It check all the boxes you want in in action movie:
✔️ a cool underdog to root for
✔️ a charismatic villain
✔️ a diverse cast of side characters adding life to the story
✔️ tight pacing with just enough breaks to catch your breath
✔️ snappy dialogue
✔️ thrilling action sequences that defy physics
✔️ explosions
✔️ a satisfying endingThe cinematography and camera work look excellent in 4K. One thing I appreciated was the sound mixing. The dialogue wasn’t drowned out by music or action, something that seems to be rare these days.
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Princesses Over 40 Publishing House
Life hits different after 40, even for princesses. Edith Zimmerman illustrates the covers, such as Silver Linings: Embracing Your Naturally Aging Hair by Rapunzel.
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A School District Rejected a Black Author’s Book About Tulsa for Its Curriculum. Then the Community Decided to Act
From Phil Lewis: A School District Rejected a Black Author’s Book About Tulsa for Its Curriculum. Then the Community Decided to Act
After the school board voted against adding Pink’s book to the Pine-Richland School District’s ninth-grade curriculum, the community decided it was time to act.
Macmillan, the publisher of “Angel of Greenwood,” sent Pine-Richland students 100 copies of the book to distribute to the community. Pink also traveled from her small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, to come to Richland to meet with the community that had so fiercely supported her work.
“The supporters in the community were relentless in making sure I got there. Some people put in $5, $10, even $600. I waived my fee, but the community said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re going to pay you.’ I’m a single mother, so I had to bring my babies with me,” she said. “They said, ‘we’re going to pay for all your way.’
We need more communities to push back on book bans.
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The Biggest Live Game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Ever Played
Dimension 20 is a show where Dungeons and Dragons plays out for an audience in real time. They recently sold out Madison Square Garden.
t’s a frosty January night in New York City, but Madison Square Garden is red hot. You feel the heat when pillars of flame spit out from black butane tanks that encircle a half-domed stage. The thunder of swag rock is drowned out by the dog-whistle cheers of 20,000 people alive with electricity. Under the tiled roof where Knicks and Rangers banners hang, between walls that often echo with Billy Joel and Taylor Swift, an epic game of Dungeons & Dragons played by Dimension 20 is about to get rolling.
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The Cobain 50
When Kurt Cobain’s journals were released, they contained a list of his 50 top/favorite albums. KEXP has been doing podcast series, The Cobain 50, releasing an episode a week for each album. The series is now in the final stretch.
Each week, The Cobain 50 podcast digs into albums from this famous list and how they may have influenced Cobain and Nirvana. While learning the individual histories of the different albums on the list, we gain new insights into artists on the fringes as well as some of the biggest groups of all time. The podcast takes us through the legacies of acts like Sonic Youth, Pixies, The Breeders, Public Enemy, PJ Harvey, Black Flag, Mazzy Star, The Shaggs, Shonen Knife, and more.
What’s great is how the hosts tie the albums to elements in Nirvana’s history or catalog.
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Quordle
Merriam Webster hosts their own Wordle clone, Quordle. The usual Wordle rules apply, but solve for 4 words at once in 9 attempts. Those first two or three guesses are key to knowing what vowels and common consonants you’re working with. As you can see, I didn’t solve this one. *sad trombone noises*
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Visualizing all the books
Recently, Anna’s Archive, perhaps one of the largest online shadow libraries, put out a call for visualizing all the books that have an ISBN. This would be helpful to understand how complete their coverage is.
Here’s a comprehensive explainer as to how the winning entry was designed.