Links on Mizrahi literature, the old internet, and kids' maths abilities

I'd like to also write a post with some thoughts on the unfolding golpe de estado in Bolivia, but that'll probably take a bit more effort to write up, so I thought in the meantime I'd share some other links I've found interesting.

Firstly, there's this article on Ishaq Bar-Moshe, an Iraqi Jew who started writing books in his native language, Arabic, two decades after moving to Israel. This is described as a “radical” choice, given that Mizrahim in Israel were under intense social pressure to “forget” they'd ever spoken Arabic, and there was no real market for Arabic-language books among Israeli Jews. His works now seem to be gaining a bit more recognition though. There's also some interesting historical context about the long history of Jewish contributions to Arabic literature, and the difficulty of trying to continue that in Israel.

Then I also came across this homage to a certain era of the internet, the one of MySpace and blingees and Geocities homepages. I don't know that I fully agree with it – I think there's something to be said for the greater readability and accessibility of “centralised” social media sites (for lack of a better word) that don't just let you customise your own site with 100% freedom… but I do also miss the freedom of running a personal website (and later, personal Wordpress blog) and making your own layouts and such. Maybe I can miss the freedom, without missing the truly garish things some people produced with that freedom, lol.

And finally, yet another study has confirmed that young girls and boys have indistinguishable maths skills. It does go on to talk about some of the differences that emerge later on between the genders (like that adolescent boys are more likely to be identified as high achievers in maths than girls, or that young men are more likely to pursue STEM careers than young women), but puts forth some other explanations for these than just, “Oh, but boys and girls' brains are DIFFERENT, it's NATURE!” when there's no scientific evidence for that.