> In Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane Austen added. Burning books was at least honest.
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Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#32Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#33Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
> It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books.
Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#34And of course this gets flagged. HN is very strange sometimes, sometimes even worse than the loathed reddit mods (or maybe it's just the overly-american audiance here). Maybe if this gets posted a Github gist with the changes alone it won't get removed?
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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#35Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…
> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude Where is the next Dahl? Why is there no modern Beatrix Potter? Kids still love those stories and style of writing, which is less trite than most of the modern children's books. It does feel like stagnation, with lots of content being churned out but none of it with great staying power. Instead the ol…
Maybe we have a culture have decided that we no longer value creativity in writers, artists, etc. We praise the chatgpt's et al of the world and laud their creators and evangelists, but it's pretty rare I see much about advocating for better salaries and opportunities that allow new Dahl's to exist. They're too busy being told as kids that they need to learn python.
..."oh but the market"
Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#36Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…
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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#37> A most formidable female -> A most formidable woman
What is the reasoning for this? Not following what is "wrong" in the original.
Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here ya go https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-boo...
The Guardian is directly referencing the Telegraph. Paragraph 3.
Sure, but the point is that the Guardian doesn't have the same sort of right-wing-outrage-machine reputation that the Telegraph has, so (1) the tone of the article might be less annoying to those of a leftier bent, and (2) someone inclined to expect that the Telegraph would be outright dishonest on this subject might trust the Guardian more (even if it's citing the Telegraph as a source, one might hope that they've done some fact-checking).
Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#39And of course this gets flagged. HN is very strange sometimes, sometimes even worse than the loathed reddit mods (or maybe it's just the overly-american audiance here). Maybe if this gets posted a Github gist with the changes alone it won't get removed?
I don't know the motivations of the specific people who flagged it, and some could have wanted to shut down a story they didn't support. But generally these kind of threads don't lead to new or interesting discussion on HN so they get shut down. It's not about the story being unimportant, it's just that it (and the discussion it leads to, on both sides) doesn't fit with what the site wants to achieve. I don't think t…
Neither do threads about cryptocurrency, neither do threads about attempts to ban cryptography, neither do threads, for the most part, about so-called AI research.
Most news and news sites in general are not about only things that are practically very new, and most articles around even new technologies are reiterating the same information.
HN isn't robot9000. Not everything needs to be wholely original, nor is that HNs purpose - there's pretty clear guidelines around reposting the same article in the guidelines, so why would multiple takes on the same event not be worthy of discussion, to the point of flagging?
Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books
#40Media changes, art is reshaped by new generations. Roald Dahl is dead, the rights to his books have been sold and people are updating them to keep them relevant. This happens to translations (as an example) all the time as the popular lexicon changes. This is how media and art stays relevant. The world changes. The owners of the books have a vested interest in modifying them to continue to be relevant. The tweaks have not impacted the heart of the story, so why do people care? Other than a knee-jerk reaction to 'wokeness'.