Scholars knew the work about Guillaume d’Orange and the bloody siege of his city existed, but until now believed it had been lost completely https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/18/fragment-of-lost-12th-century-epic-poem-found-in-another-books-binding

Shelby Foote said, “A writer’s like anybody else except when he’s writing.” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/931/the-art-of-fiction-no-158-shelby-foote

>>Everything I have to say about the writing of history was summoned up by John Keats in ten words in a letter, more or less like a telegram put on the wire nearly two hundred years ago. He said, “A fact is not a truth until you love it.” You have to become attached to the thing you’re writing about—in other words, “love it”—for it to have any real meaning.

Let's play a game of What If:

What if you could get any book rewritten by another author? What book and author would you pick?

Me: Ready Player One by Connie Willis

The world's hardest cheese? https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20211005-chhurpi-the-worlds-hardest-cheese

No modern musical can approach the absolute spectacle of the royal costume parties that played out on stage during the English Renaissance. https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/10/21/there-was-no-business-like-show-business-in-ye-olde-english-royal-court/

Icey what they did there: Vermont school students participated in the state's Name a Plow contest. Among the names that will appear on snowplows this year: Captain Snowpants; Yo Bro, No Snow; and Jennifer Snowpez.
https://apnews.com/article/oddities-education-vermont-04ad486b6fde64ff46b6b01de3199990

There's a link between being kind to others and happiness, UBC researcher says
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/world-kindness-day-1.6245696

Julian Fellowes: Think Downton, but in New...
HBO: Do it.
Fellowes: My budget is pretty hi...
HBO: Here's the credit card
Me: I'm IN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYBuU32B8PI

Epidemiologists analyze the health risks in all the James Bond films. As one does. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/you-only-live-once-epidemiologists-analyze-health-risks-in-all-the-james-bond-films/

This is a great story. Worth your time. https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/qwgut4/the_case_of_the_missing_server/

TV and movies are finally celebrating older women. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/tv-movies-hollywood-women.html

Manufacturers sold almost 204 billion cigarettes in the United States last year, a 0.4% increase on 2019, marking the first year that cigarette sales have grown in almost 20 years. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/10/27/1049638567/cigarette-sales-increase-smoking-pandemic

Munchy, a search engine to discover recipes... a work in progress, but interesting https://joinmunchy.com

Your wayback machine to 1994, and the Microsoft new employee orientation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmW4JjR2-_8

My wife yelled from the bedroom asking, "Do you ever get a shooting pain across your body like someone's got a voodoo doll of you and they're stabbing it?"

I replied, "No."

She yelled back, "How about now?" #jokes

"Penguin Random House has taken on a truly ambitious project to re-record all 40 audiobooks from Sir Terry Pratchett’s bestselling Discworld series, featuring a cast of leading names from British stage and screen, with the first subseries publishing in April 2022." Starring Bill Nighy.
https://discworld.com/bill-night-stars-as-the-voice-of-terry-pratchett-new-recording-entire-discworld/

Fact check: Editors do not, in fact, do this. https://twitter.com/TheAdamSass/status/1460869236264296448