memory preservation

French media are focused on smells this week. Le Figaro reports that researchers say global warming is changing the odours the planet once gave off, and teams are working to preserve humanity's olfactory memory before scents linked to forests, flowers and other environments disappear. Separately, Ouest-France covered a department store evacuated and closed for several hours after staff reported a strange burning smell. Together the stories have sparked wide discussion about how scent shapes memory and daily life.

The Trinitonian, the student newspaper of Trinity University in San Antonio, is featuring the idea of art as an act of remembering. The piece frames artistic practice as a way communities preserve memory and honor the past, positioning creativity as a tool for collective reflection rather than simple expression or decoration.

Wired explores what happens when a Wikipedia article is deleted, examining the human and informational costs of losing pages from the world's largest encyclopedia. Deletion decisions by volunteer editors can erase notable subjects from public record, affecting reputation, discoverability and historical memory.

After the Holocaust, Eastern European Jewish survivors collaborated on memorial books known as 'yizker bikher' to preserve the memories of murdered relatives, neighbors and the communities they came from. A new examination of these volumes highlights how they recorded not only deaths, but the daily life, culture and personalities of destroyed hometowns, fulfilling survivors' vow to 'let nothing be forgotten'.

A new review examines a book about Marina Abramović, the Serbian performance artist famous for endurance-based works that test the limits of body and audience. The review frames her career through the theme of memory — how performance art, inherently fleeting, survives through documentation, retelling and the audience's own recollection.

A new project is documenting the individual lives of people in Gaza who have been killed in the conflict, aiming to put names, faces and personal stories behind casualty statistics. The effort seeks to preserve the memory of victims as the death toll continues to rise and journalists and families work to ensure those lost are not reduced to figures.

Canadian institutions are marking Holocaust Education Month throughout November, with commemorations and educational programming dedicated to remembrance and teaching about the Holocaust. The observance highlights ongoing efforts in Canada to preserve Holocaust memory and combat antisemitism through education.

A newly published piece in Alta Journal examines the revival of Indigenous languages, connecting the tradition of star quilts with the history of broken treaties between Native nations and the United States. The work highlights how cultural practices like quilting carry language, memory and identity, and how communities are working to bring endangered Indigenous languages back into daily use.

Honolulu Civil Beat's Sunshine Blog spotlights an AI agent built around Lahaina, the Maui town devastated by the 2023 wildfire. The feature highlights how artificial intelligence is being used to share the community's story, drawing attention to questions about technology's role in preserving memory and recounting local history.

A tech podcast episode titled 'Sam Altman: All Your RAM Are Belong To Us!' is drawing attention with a retro gaming meme aimed at OpenAI's CEO. The episode taps into ongoing concerns about data privacy, cloud computing and cybersecurity, asking how much of users' personal memory and data AI companies can claim access to.

A call for expressions of interest has been issued for the 'Remembering Democratic Transitions and Rebuilding Democratic Institutions' program, which will support initiatives focused on preserving the memory of democratic transitions and helping societies rebuild democratic institutions after periods of authoritarian rule or political disruption.

Holocaust survivors compiled memorial books, known as yizkor books, to record the lives of relatives, neighbors and entire communities destroyed in the Holocaust. The books preserved not only the memory of the dead but also portraits of the vibrant Jewish hometowns that existed before the war, an act of remembrance captured in the phrase 'Let nothing be forgotten.'

A World War II museum is reaching out to a younger audience with new efforts to convey the lessons of the war, according to a New York Times report. As the generation that lived through the conflict fades, museums are rethinking how they present its history so its meaning endures for visitors with no living memory of it.

The Wisconsin Historical Society's political art collection spans from World War I-era works to the present, showing how artists have responded to conflict, propaganda and protest across a century. The piece argues such art still shapes public memory and political debate today, with the society preserving posters, prints and other materials as historical records.

Holocaust survivors created memorial books, known as Yizkor books, to record the lives of family, friends and entire communities destroyed in the Holocaust. The volumes documented not only how victims died but how they lived, preserving details of daily life in Jewish towns across Eastern Europe. The books remain an important act of remembrance, echoing the plea 'let nothing be forgotten' for future generations.

A recent paper on how sleep consolidates memory is drawing attention. Its central finding is that sleep does not simply preserve or erase memories, but actively selects what matters, reorganising information across brain systems. Readers discussing the work have highlighted the idea of offline rest shaping which experiences resonate forward, connecting it to their own reflections on rest and coherence.

Attention is turning to how images from Gaza are being recorded and remembered globally, with discussion focused on the role of photography and visual documentation in shaping the world's collective memory of the war. Commentators reflect on which pictures endure, who preserves them, and what they will mean for future accounts of the conflict.

Business Insider takes a look at Route 66, the historic US highway that connected Chicago to Santa Monica and became a symbol of American road travel before being bypassed by the interstate system and officially decommissioned in 1985. The piece traces how the route boomed mid-century with motels and diners, then declined, and how preservation efforts keep its memory alive.

The Church History Symposium will examine how members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remember and interpret their past. The event will bring together discussions on collective memory, historical narrative and faith, looking at how the church's history is preserved, retold and understood by its members today.