Eleanor & Park embroidery fan art! Wow wow wow wow wow!
(by yadykates)
Uh, John? Something you wanna tell us?
What did Chinese authorities do in July 2009 when tensions between the predominantly Muslim population of China’s Xinjiang province and authorities escalated into violent riots? They turned off the Internet in Xinjiang. This inspired China scholar Jason Q. Ng to devise a computer script to test all 700,000 terms in Chinese Wikipedia to see which ones are routinely censored on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, which currently has over 300 million users.
The result was the groundbreaking and highly praised Blocked on Weibo blog, expanded here into a book. Ranging from fairly obvious words, such as “tank” (a reference to the “Tank Man” who stared down the Chinese army in Tiananmen Square) and the names of top government officials (if they can’t be found online, they can’t be criticized), to deeply obscure terms, such as “The Four Gentlemen” (though it means a set of four traditional flowers, it can also refer to various quartets of dissidents) and “hairy bacon” (a coded insult for Mao’s embalmed body), Blocked on Weibo collects many of the phrases that could get a Chinese Internet user invited to the local police station “for a cup of tea”—a euphemism for being illegally detained by the authorities.
An invaluable guide to sensitive topics in modern-day China, Blocked on Weibo exposes the fissures between the idealized society that Chinese authorities dream of having and the actual one that Chinese netizens are creating each day.
(via The New Press - “Blocked on Weibo” by Jason Q. Ng)
A serious nonfiction Tumblr book deal — congrats, Jason!
According to Rachel Fershleiser, who handles Tumblr’s literary strategic outreach, “Your URL might be a reference to what you love. The focus is less on who you are than on your passions. The culture on Tumblr is a little bit intellectual, a little bit nerdy. We’ve got a huge community of teens who spend their spare time reading.”
(via Teenage Tweetland)
I just called you all nerds in Publishers Weekly. Nyah nyah.
“Thank you for talking about it so much on tumblr that it stuck and I remembered it!” — Y’all give me the loveliest compliments about my book recs/verbal diarrhea.
Favorite Swear Words of Famous People is an awesome Tumblr by the author of an Oxford University Press book about the history of swearing called, I shit you not, Holy Sh*t.
(Source: favoriteswearwordsoffamouspeople)
I made some more fan art, this one from my favorite line in Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins. I loved Edie, and even though food was ultimately her downfall, there was something beautiful about her hearty enjoyment of it, which this line sums up perfectly.
(I know the pub date for The Middlesteins isn’t until the end of October, but this was too good not to share immediately.)
Just a reminder that Ami + Jami = Bliss
[video]
EAT YOUR FEELINGS: Stories of Jews, Food & Your Mom -
Paperback launch party June 6.
Free drinks from Tumblr!
Featuring THE MIDDLESTEINS ALL-STARS:
Jason Diamond (Vol 1. Brooklyn/Flavorpill)
Ophira Eisenberg (Screw Everyone, NPR’s Ask Me Another)
Emily Gould (And the Heart Says Whatever, Emily Books)
Rachel Fershleiser (Tumblr Lit Goddess, Six-Word Memoirs)
Maris Kreizman (Slaughterhouse 90210)
Beth Lisick (Everybody into the Pool)
Rosie Schaap (Drinking with Men, NYT Mag’s Drink Columnist)
Bex Schwartz (TeenNick)
Hoooooooly AMAZING WOMEN! (and Jason.)
Don’t miss it!
[video]