In America, "chai" has become known as a flavor of tea with predominantly cinnamon or cardamom notes.  But in India, chai is not a flavor of tea; it is tea—chai literally translates to "tea" in Hindi, so when you are saying "chai tea," you are basically saying, "tea tea."  Chai culture in India developed out of British colonization.  During this time, the British East India Company was thriving, with tea from Assam, India being one of its biggest commodities.  Tea consumption in India grew, and eventually, Indians took the British preparation of tea—black with milk and sugar—and put their own spin on it, with the addition of spices such as ginger, cinnamon and cloves.  Chai can include a number of different spices.  Cardamom is the most common ingredient, followed by some mixture of cinnamon, ginger, star anise and cloves.  Pepper, coriander, nutmeg and fennel are also used, but they are slightly less common.  Every family has a blend to suit its tastes.  Priya Krishna  https://www.foodandwine.com/tea/chai-tea/what-is-chai-how-to-make-chai  

Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language.  Created by Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia).  Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto:  Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto.  Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language.  The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".  Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and a priori (where features are not based on existing languages).  Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax, and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group.  The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages.  Slavic languages also influenced the grammar and phonology.  One of the language's most notable features is its extensive system of derivation, where prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate words, making it possible to communicate effectively with a smaller set of words.  Esperanto is the most successful international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand.  Usage estimates are difficult, but two recent estimates put the number of active speakers at around 100,000.  Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America.  Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, but now part of Poland.  In the 1870s, just a few years before Zamenhof created Esperanto, Polish was banned in public places in Białystok.  According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labor we spend in learning foreign tongues", and to foster harmony between people from different countries.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto  

In Esperanto nouns do not have a grammatical gender, so you never have to wonder whether a table is masculine or feminine.  There are no irregular verbs, so you don’t have to memorize complex conjugation tables.  Also, the spelling is entirely phonetic, so you’ll never be confused by silent letters or letters that make different sounds in different contexts.  Unesco declared 2017 the year of Zamenhof, and since then, its flagship journal, the Unesco Courier, has had an Esperanto-language edition published quarterly.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-hitler-and-stalin-hated-esperanto-the-135-year-old-language-of-peace-180980472/

Thomas Nigel Kneale (1922–2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay.  Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass.  Quatermass was an heroic scientist who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC, Hammer Film Productions and Thames Television between 1953 and 1996.  Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells and Susan Hill.  He was most active in television, joining BBC Television in 1951; his final script was transmitted on ITV in 1997.  Kneale wrote well-received television dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) and The Stone Tape (1972) in addition to the Quatermass serials.  He has been described as "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century", and as "having invented popular TV".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Kneale

August 2, 2022  Horror novelist Stephen King was the star witness in an anti-trust trial to block the two biggest US publishers' $2.2bn merger.  The US Department of Justice called on King to testify about how the proposed tie-up of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster could affect authors.  King, 75, told the court in Washington DC that he felt "the move would be bad for competition in the industry".  Both publishing houses have argued the merger would not hinder competition because the companies would continue to bid against each other for the rights to publish novels, even after the transaction is finalised.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62402141

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  2547  August 3, 2022