English #etymology of the day: the word "mocha" (as in coffee) is ultimately from the name of the city of Mocha or المخا al-Mukhā in Yemen. A port city on the Red Sea, Mocha played an important role in the historic coffee trade. "Moka pot" also has the same etymology.

Just a little more gold and it will be perfect

I've created a calculator that gives you the right answer 80% of the time and I believe it will change the world

Folks, if you are hungry, please contact your local Sikh gurdwara. Or just show up for langar, which most gurdwaras do several times a week, for a free meal. Lots also do weekly or monthly drives giving out groceries. No conversion necessary. Feeding anyone who is hungry is a key part of Sikhism.

Olivia Rodrigo blasts the White House and Department of Homeland Security for using her song ‘all american b*tch’ in an ICE-related post: “don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda”

My essay on the word “Nepali” in Granta 173 is part of a symposium on 13 Indian languages. Here’s the link to the symposium for lit & language lovers. granta.com/thirteen-ind...

Good literary translation requires understanding (language, culture, genre--on both sides of the translation) and an ability to write well. "AI" can't do that. There are no shortcuts. Treat your work and foreign language readers with the respect they deserve. You won't fool anyone with this.

DHS stole Rockwell’s work and then misrepresented his legacy according the living members of his family. Read their oped. @shreedaisy.bsky.social www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Norman Rockwell was an anti-racist, as you can see from this 1962 celebrity questionnaire in Esquire.

Amazon here, targeting the market consisting of people who for some reason buy books but don't actually like books, or writers, or reading. (Authors, please have nothing to do with this slop-dispenser, which will mangle your prose and put translators — your allies — out of work.)

Norman Rockwell was an anti-racist, as you can see from this 1962 celebrity questionnaire in Esquire.

This little bird survived a volcanic eruption! Buried by volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, this Roman fresco of a little bird pecking at fruit re-emerged looking as delightful as it did some 2,000 years ago! Villa Poppaea, ancient Oplontis, Italy 📷 by me #FrescoFriday #Archaeology

Descendants of Norman Rockwell have accused the Trump administration of misrepresenting the painter’s beliefs through unauthorized social media posts of his work aimed at framing the administration's mass deportation agenda with classic American imagery.

Yayoi Kusama, Fish (+ Depth of the sea, silkscreen; 2 works), 1988 #WomensArt

Friends of SALT in the Chicago area! Please join us on Monday, November 10th, at the South Asia Institute for an evening of readings in translation! Featuring award-winning translators Daisy Rockwell, Shabnam Nadiya, Srinath Perur and more!

‘On the surface, everything had continued as it always had, so why would it occur to anyone to pay any special attention?’ Fiction by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell. granta.com/all-at-once/

Kenyan artist Thandiwe Muriu’s photographic portraits cloaking models in patterned fabric #WomensArt

"If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see ... that his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color," writes the family of late artist Norman Rockwell. bit.ly/47P4SQz

🤢

good morning specifically to the FBI agent who introduced Mamdani’s dad to Marx

Oh, look, after refusing to run our op-ed on DHS’s unauthorized use of Norman Rockwell’s artwork, the @nytimes.com is now reporting on the letter published in @usatoday.com as a news item www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/a...

If you are going to American Literary Translators Association conference in Tucson, I'll be reading from Flores raras, 55 Uruguayan women poets at the off-site reading below and a panel on translating the work, New Visions, New Versions: Uruguayan Women Poets, Friday at 3:45 in Copper C.

50% of SNAP may or may not be available tomorrow or months from now but they have made certain to choke out any potential localized mercy: "The (USDA) emailed grocery stores prohibiting them from offering discounts to (SNAP) recipients amid the government shutdown." www.yahoo.com/news/article...

On DHS’s unauthorized use of Norman Rockwell’s paintings across social media, an op-ed from our family today in @usatoday.com www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

I really love them www.ramaduwaji.com/ceramics

Anyhow, have you seen Rama Duwaji's illustrated ceramics? They are so moving! www.ramaduwaji.com/ceramics

The origin of group texts

One week left to submit your poetry manuscript, translators! $1500 prize, publication by University of Wisconsin Press in their prestigious Wisconsin Poetry Series. You can submit more than one year (different judge) and more than one manuscript.

if lore is to be believed, fred astaire used to dance and glide around his tailor's workshop before taking a suit home to make sure the collar always stayed glued to his neck

The Rockwell family: “If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that (his) work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution towards immigrant communities and people of color.”

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If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color. The Rockwell family 🧵

I learned recently that the Saturday Evening Post content rules didn't allow for Black people as main characters, they had to be servants, tradespeople, etc. The help, basically. So he left! Went to Look magazine, where the Ruby Bridges painting ran. He would be so pissed at this.

"If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that not only does the problem Ruby Bridges confronted 65 yrs ago still plague us ... his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities & people of color." www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

"The scarcity of people of color in Rockwell’s paintings has led those who are not familiar w/his entire oeuvre to draw the conclusion that his vision was of a White America, free of immigrants & people of color. But nothing could have been further from the truth." www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

On DHS’s unauthorized use of Norman Rockwell’s paintings across social media, an op-ed from our family today in @usatoday.com www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Absolutely delighted to announce that my translation of Alok Dhanwa's cult Hindi poetry collection The World is Made Up Every Day is now available worldwide. Preorder now on Amazon or directly on University of Chicago Press. Published by Seagull Books. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Welcome!

Equator is live today. Read about our mission and our first pieces, which include works of reportage, essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction from around the world: www.equator.org

Over millennia, we have inadvertently selected the spiders that would better imitate a human shape. When threatened, they will stridulate together, creating the illusion of whispers. Some colonies have also been seen creating hand shapes on windows to warn of their presence.

Many stories of haunted houses may be related to Cyclosa imago, also known as the Haunting Spider. When a colony settles an abandoned building, they collectively defend against human intrusion by forming dense webs, which have been interpreted as ghostly apparitions.

How is dark data the fault of cat fanciers?? 🐈‍⬛

The concept of invading Venezuela on Halloween

Headed to the ALTA Conference Nov. 5-8? We invite you to share your ideas on the future of literary translation with us. Stop by a CAT-sponsored 10:15-10:45 am beverage break in the Foyers any day of the conference & ask us about our lunchtime roundtables for translators. DM us here with questions!

interesting to see that the supermarket publications have had significantly more courage to speak plainly than the prestige press this time around

I keep banging the drum that genAI doesn't save time but creates it. Even if you personally save a couple minutes, that time gets kicked down the road and compounded, sometimes back to you but often to someone else who now has to do their job *and* deal with yours.

We're sad to hear of the death of David Bellos, a wonderfully witty writer, professor, translator and judge of the 2016 International Booker Prize.

Finally someone bold enough to ask, is new york ready for a mayor who opposes slavery? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...