and for their next trick, the techbros will reinvent phrenology
The Economist@economist.com · 11mo agoA new paper suggests a photo can tell a recruiter much about an applicant’s personality
M Lynx Qualey
@mlynxqualey.bsky.social
e.g. Author, translator, critic, founding editor of ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly.
The Economist@economist.com · 11mo ago
I guess I'm not one to comment since, at any given time, I have no idea where my phone is. But people really feel *less* lonely when hanging out with their smartphones?
Open Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 12mo agoLynda Barry on How the Smartphone Is Endangering Three Ingredients of Creativity: Loneliness, Uncertainty & Boredom
Every magazine editor I've introduced Alaa to has written me back a wondering email (or WhatsApp), days or weeks later, saying, something like, "I love Alaa." or "She is amazing." She is. She is. She is.
Jayaprakash has a mastertape@jayaprakash777.bsky.social · last yr.Alaa Alqaisi writes: "My legs tremble beneath me, and I wonder if I have become too hollow to stand before God." arablit.org/2025/07/23/b...
Our newest issue is now available for purchase! Featuring work by @feliciazamorapoet.bsky.social, @nadeemzaman.bsky.social, @mlynxqualey.bsky.social, @kgapoetwriter.bsky.social, @abbiekiefer.bsky.social, @riggstah.bsky.social, and more. Order the issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/winter...
We're pleased to share the winners of our annual literary awards for work published in Prairie Schooner in 2024. Winners include @threnody.bsky.social for the Lawrence Award and @mlynxqualey.bsky.social for the Virginia Faulkner Award. Read more on our blog: prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...
When I can't remember the word "murder"
The New York Times@nytimes.com · last yr.News Analysis: By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power.
so pleased to be in the same issue as Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. 💚
Prairie Schooner@prairie-schooner.bsky.social · last yr.Our latest issue is now available for purchase! Featuring work by @bcar.bsky.social, @lenakt.bsky.social, @ninacpelaez.bsky.social, @pagestar.bsky.social, @preetivangani.bsky.social, @michaelimossan.bsky.social, and more. Order the issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/fall-2...
please read this painful, beautiful testimony I’m trying not to be a nag but it arrived on my TL below some editorial being shared for rage bait and like. we could share things like this instead. not “we can do both” miss me with that. trash smell will always overpower what’s good when we “do both”
Adi Magazine@adimagazine.bsky.social · last yr."There is no end to the horror, no fade to black. The children here continue to age without ever growing up. The elderly speak of bread the way others speak of lost lovers." —Alaa Alqaisi for @arablit.bsky.social Read: arablit.org/2025/07/21/b...
🙄 women join an industry, salaries plummet, men leave. what is the term for it? "men drain" or something?
The Bookseller@thebookseller.com · last yr.ICYMI: Commentators are debating whether 'men are being pushed out of publishing' amid discussion of groupthink, editorial turnover and the gender split of book-prize recipients 👇 #BookSky
A small discussion of publishing & Palestine.
Radical Books Collective@radicalbooks.bsky.social · last yr.Marcia Lynx Qualey, the force behind @arablit.bsky.social in nuanced and wide-ranging conversation on the politics of publishing about Palestine for the Radical Futures podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...
The kicker... this "AI" generated summer reading list full of fake titles "appears in print opposite a house ad for the Sun-Times that exhorts readers to 'Donate your old car and fund the news you rely on.'" www.axios.com/2025/05/20/a...
Chicago paper's "reading list" full of fake, likely AI-generated titles
You have to read down the list of 15 titles to the eleventh entry before you hit a real book .
axios.com
💚Springtime Travels around the World: Translated Children’s Books Out This Spring and Summer wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
Springtime Travels around the World - Words Without Borders
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends ten new children's books in translation, from madcap picture books to YA speculative fiction.
wordswithoutborders.org
An urgent series of WhatsApps from one of our writers in Gaza who is living in a tent with her diabetic mother, and there is neither a reliable food supply nor reliable medicine, what hell is this, what hell, what hell.
Those clients who only pay up for the previous project when they have a new book they want you to agree to edit. 🫠
why at these hybrid events am I always ogre-sized? I look like I might turn and eat poor Maria.
Buyer's remorse that I made my persona literature/translation instead of making it women's basketball.
I’ve known, loved, marched with trans friends since I came out 45 years ago. The ugly campaign to erase them, and the fact that it includes gay men and lesbians, including friends, is devastating. Their erasure will be ours; same-sex marriage, equality, diversity and freedom are in the firing line
One thing I had definitely not understood about the rising tides of fascism is how much of a boost it gets from opportunism & grifterism.
Beautiful piece by author-publisher Husam Maarouf.
ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly@arablit.bsky.social · last yr.Laughter Without Joy: Between Gaza’s Reality and Beckett’s Stage
really had no idea that, to the ultrarich, "groceries" and a "grocery bag" were such foreign matter that they might code them as "old-fashioned."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2y agoTrump: "An old fashioned term that we use -- groceries. I used it on the campaign. It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It says a bag with different things in it."
Someone accidentally typoed that I was helping them slowly but surly and I thought . . . hm, yes, probably.
Was fortunate to talk to the eloquent &, well, extremely likeable Omar El Akkad for Bulaq yesterday, (whose 2017 novel "American War" featured way-way back in Bulaq episode 16. Episode coming soon, get his book where books are got.
recording an episode of BULAQ with Omar El Akkad today, but we love you (and Omar) so it will not be three hours.
M Lynx Qualey@mlynxqualey.bsky.social · 2y agoaside from why anyone needs to "sit down" to listen to a podcast, are Joe Rogan podcasts really three hours? God save us. also I love the contrast between the familiar "men/dudes" and the biologizing "females."
Well, depending. I would love to wake up and find that everything I wrote before, let's say, 2018 was magically gone.
Musa Okwonga@okwonga.bsky.social · 2y agoPlease, please archive your work. Please. I’ve recently been saving lots of my essays as pdfs just so the Internet doesn’t suddenly delete them all (this happened to a whole load of blogs I wrote for The Independent years ago). I don’t want you to wake up and suddenly find your work gone like I did.