“Although my calling something a gimmick registers a subjective response, it also demands agreement or invites confrontation, and more brazenly so than other judgments. Should a fan of robot chefs and Roombas question why I harbor such unwarranted suspicions about them, I will feel compelled to convince him that my suspicions ought to be felt universally. But I will also delight in a newfound sense of superiority, my belief that only I am discerning enough to see that these devices are overvalued, too good to be true.” – The New Yorker
Author: Douglas McLennan
Book Sales Soar In Australia During COVID
While business is booming for online booksellers – Booktopia reported a 28% increase in sales in the 2020 financial year, driven substantially by Covid lockdowns – bricks and mortar stores have had an uneven year. – The Guardian
What COVID Has Exposed: We Need To Rethink Schools
Pandemic school is clearly not working well, especially for younger children—and it’s all but impossible for the 20 percent of American students who lack access to the technology needed for remote learning. But what parents are coming to understand about their kids’ education—glimpsed through Zoom windows and “asynchronous” classwork—is that school was not always working so great before COVID-19 either. – The Atlantic
University of Minnesota Museum Under Fire For Keeping Indigenous Artifacts
Despite repeated attempts by affiliated tribes to return the collection to New Mexico, the funerary objects remain at the Weisman. Under a 1990 federal law, institutions that receive federal funding must create an inventory of any Native American cultural objects or funerary remains as a part of the repatriation process. The University and the Weisman have come under fire by Native American communities, anthropologists and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) for their delay of inventory. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)
The 20th Century Movies That Predicted Trump
Throughout much of the 20th Century, American pop culture warned us that something like the last four years could make the leap from cautionary fiction to all-consuming reality. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression led to a peculiar, pre-Roosevelt cycle of what became known as “the dictator craze” in American movies. – Chicago Tribune
What Our Robots Tell Us About Ourselves
Building robot versions of oneself is a thing people do a lot now, and in part because there are robots everywhere online. The majority of web traffic is driven by bots, which can send and reply to emails, answer security questions, post comments, tweet, chat, and more. Last year, Twitter estimated that up to 23 million active accounts may be automated bots. – The Atlantic
Keys To: A Long Life In Dance
When it comes to the secrets of longevity in a dance career, Linda Austin and Bobby Fouther had similar thoughts: you do what makes you happy, just keep going, and ignore the pressures to be liked. In an interview for a book called Beauty is Experience: Dancing 50 and Beyond, by Emmaly Wiederhold with photographs by Gregory Bartning, Austin said, “If you are stubborn enough and love it enough, you’ll find a way to keep going. You do need some outside validation from time to time. I’ve always gotten just enough to keep me going but not enough to make me comfortable. The carrot is always just ahead.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
The Smithsonian’s Slow Walk To Re-Opening
“The building is cleaner than it’s been since 1964. It’s fabulous,” said Anthea M. Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History. Daily attendance there is about a tenth of normal, Hartig said, creating a different experience. “Instead of doing the rush through, people are spending more time because they can.” – Washington Post
Virtual Cabaret That You Can Boss Around
“In addition to occasionally telling a performer what to do, audience members set the order in which the show’s components — short scenes (written by Bear), dances, musical bits, computer-generated poetry — were executed. We could raise a virtual hand to roll virtual dice, and the cast of six would perform whatever scene had been assigned to the resulting number.” – The New York Times
AI-Powered DeepFake Music Can Now Recreate Artists
Along with Sinatra, they’ve done what are known as “deepfakes” of Katy Perry, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, 2Pac, Céline Dion and more. Having trained the model using 1.2m songs scraped from the web, complete with the corresponding lyrics and metadata, it can output raw audio several minutes long based on whatever you feed it. Input, say, Queen or Dolly Parton or Mozart, and you’ll get an approximation out the other end. – The Guardian