Dreaming Flesh

Dreaming In More Than One Language

Sophie Hardach | BBC Future | 17th February 2023

Inconclusive but intriguing. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people who speak more than one language tend to mingle languages in their dreams, to encounter fragments of other languages while dreaming, and even to create new fantasy-languages within dreams. Could it be that the brain uses dreams to explore how languages work, and how known languages might be connected? (2,700 words)

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Flesh And Page

Bruce Holsinger | Lapham's Quarterly | 22nd February 2023

How to make parchment. First, skin your goats. Next, set aside a couple of weeks to soak, lime, dehair and scrape the hides. Expect to work mainly by trial and error. Surviving recipes from antiquity are hopelessly inexact. Medieval ones are little better, more like schematic accounts than concrete instructions. The trickiest bit is the final scraping which gives the parchment its texture (2,800 words)