The crude rainbows and stick figures of early personal computing will soon be forgotten. Microsoft has marked its Paint program, a popular piece of software…
WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS
Germany has ended a century-long debate over a missing letter in its alphabet
Picture your last name written in all caps. Now imagine one letter in the middle is in lowercase. Now imagine this is the only way…
IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN
Things are getting ugly between Disney and Kermit the Frog
For 27 years, Steve Whitmire’s livelihood was being Kermit the Frog. Now, at age 58, the puppeteer is out of a job. Whitmire has performed…
FROM THE FILES OF
James Comey, the thorn in Donald Trump’s side, is now writing a book about ethical leadership
After three and a half years at the top of the US’s law enforcement food chain, James Comey has a few stories to tell. The…
HEIGHT OF EXCESS
UK students are losing points on standardized tests for the way they draw semi-colons
Punctuation already causes English-speakers enough headaches. Imagine being criticized for the way you draw them, too. One recent quibble has educators in the United Kingdom…
NOVEL IDEA
The case for taking forever to finish reading books
For a long time I’ve been reading one book. It’s been five years since I started In Search of Lost Time, and I’m only two-thirds…
WHAT IS THIS
A dazzling new piece of experimental fiction is being serialized on a sports news site
This story contains spoilers for the short story “17776.” It’s 15,759 years in the future, and nobody dies—or is born—anymore. Instead the human race has…
PRESTO!
Maurice Sendak joins the ranks of Beatrix Potter and Dr. Seuss with a book discovered posthumously in a drawer
The man who spread monstrous, magical nighttime adventures to millions is about to embark on one of his own. Maurice Sendak, author of Where the…
HOLD THE DRESSING
Hodor from “Game of Thrones” is back, selling chicken for KFC in a new ad
This story contains spoilers for the HBO TV series Game of Thrones. Hodor is a man of very few words. The character from George RR…
COMPLAIN HERE
A US state now lets anyone—not just parents—request to ban books in schools
Nosy Floridians now have another outlet for their moral outrage. Now anybody in the US state can formally complain about books used in public schools,…
RIP
The creator of Britain’s most beloved immigrant character has died
For decades one of England’s most iconic characters has been a very polite bear from Peru. Michael Bond, the creator of the beloved immigrant bear,…
SNOWFLAKE
Milo Yiannopoulos’s self-published book is all about how mean everyone is to him
Milo Yiannopoulos doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that the mainstream media hates him, that the alt-right hates him, that feminists hate him. He’s so over…
