The volume is higher, by a lot. More books are being published now, because the barriers are so low. The problem is that the quantity is overwhelming, no one can sift through all of it. Literary magazines were never "gatekeeping" in the sense that it's never been necessary to publish your work in a literary magazine in order to be a successful author, but they were an opportunity for authors to get their work in front of a fairly dedicated audience.
As for quality, debatable. We're living in a golden age if you're into YA fiction, that's for sure. I'm not an expert, but I've found international literature more interesting than domestic stuff for some time. Unfortunately, a lot of these magazines were also the first places foreign authors appeared in English translation, so that stuff could easily become less accessible soon.
There's always going to be some kind of gatekeeping at some point in the process--even in a purely digital marketplace, there's limited attention. Small publications like this are pretty much the least limiting form of this: relatively cheap to produce, many of them with only a few employees, publishing many short pieces, often skewing toward authors without existing followings.
There's a huge difference between controlling access to a niche audience which in large part exists because of the publication itself, and controlling access to publication in general.
> so that stuff could easily become less accessible soon
Surely if there's no lit magazine to publish them, they'll publish their stuff on the web? And then it'll be available (even if translated with Google translate).
I think you're a little behind the times here. Most of the major streaming services have features to automatically play something else when your video ends, and they have for some time--it's hardly a differentiator for Netflix. Likewise downloading content for trips. Hulu does show ads, but they've had an ad-free tier for years now. At the same time, Netflix's catalog has declined--shows that used to be big draws for them aren't there any more, from Mad Men to The Office. Their market share plunged in 2021, and I doubt that's the end of it.
Not autoplay, autopreview* , they have a lot of half finished shows which irks people but as they literally came out with new seasons of multiple shows as I just finished binging 2-3 seasons. And they do have a lot of rebranded old tv shows as well. There is simply no reason for them to be less than very profitable anytime soon. I am sure they are losing market share but they are charging more too. It's very hard to beat the first-to-market advantage.
I doubt it. A film with a muted color palette doesn't come across the same as a black and white film--even if works well, it doesn't work the same way. And the characteristics that made film noir work so well visually--dramatic, unnatural lighting and inventive composition--just aren't present in these new movies.
The forcible conversion of Jews in Spain was in fact one of the first points where Jews were treated as a racial rather than religious category. There's a bit of detail on this in the Wikipedia page for Limpieza de sangre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpieza_de_sangre
Some of this happened more towards the Renaissance than the middle ages, of course, but it certainly disproves this rosy and ahistorical view of the Spanish Inquisition.
> > First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the ultra-processed diet.
> And yet, a paragraph later:
> > Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it was the cheapest option
> So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?
The next sentence is: "But when their cupboards ran bare, they ate ramen and hot dogs, not a pan of roast chicken and vegetables, as food gurus recommend."
> > This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't feel like they're doing it all on their own.
> Wait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I can understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one solid meal in them a day, if you can call government supplied cafeteria materials food), but, what?
All of these have fairly obvious connections to food preparation time. If you do backbreaking labor all day, or work two or three jobs because none of them individually pay enough to support you, you won't have much time or energy to spend on food preparation.
And there are the sentences just a few paragraphs earlier: "At a minimum, it requires a working stove and enough money to pay the electric bill to run the stove. One family in our book experienced homelessness during the time we spent with the family. Patricia Washington, her daughter and her two grandchildren moved into a hotel room after being evicted when they couldn't keep up with both the rent and the heating bill." Point being, economic barriers are food preparation barriers.
Do ebooks cost a similar amount to print books? If you limit what you're buying to recent bestsellers and the like, sure. But many ebook sellers, including Amazon, routinely have massive sales. I've bought ebooks for $2 or $3 apiece. I don't see similar discounting for physical books unless they're secondhand and well-worn--and usually even in that case the price doesn't go so low.
I use ebooks for books I think it's less likely that I'll reread, when I can get a bargain.
It depends on the book. A few months ago I bought "Kitcen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain). Back then ISTR the ebook was similarly priced. Now it's way cheaper.
I can go on Amazon and find ebooks that are cheaper, the same price, and more expensive than the print versions.
The idea that evangelical Christians are about as dangerous as the "followers of Eris" seems like quite a stretch. I don't see Discordians bombing abortion clinics.
Even as recently as the 80s, when The Last Tempation of Jesus Christ was released, it was banned in several countries (and is still banned in several) for its "blasphemous" content. The producers were worried that people would bomb theaters. The idea that Islam is uniquely censorious or intolerant of "blasphemy" is ahistorical, in my opinion.
As for quality, debatable. We're living in a golden age if you're into YA fiction, that's for sure. I'm not an expert, but I've found international literature more interesting than domestic stuff for some time. Unfortunately, a lot of these magazines were also the first places foreign authors appeared in English translation, so that stuff could easily become less accessible soon.