“That sense of belonging you get while standing before a chorus of hundreds singing at the holidays isn’t just you feeling festive — it’s your body behaving like a body. If talking to a loved one over Zoom doesn’t feel quite the same as sharing a sofa or a coffee in person, it’s partly because — get ready for some science — you’re not feeling the same vibrations. It may be why I’m genuinely impressed but ultimately unmoved by the Zoom choruses that exploded in popularity this summer.” – Washington Post
Author: Douglas McLennan
The End Of Post-War Liberal Globalism?
“This narrative of a US-led global journey to the promised land was always implausible. Four years of Trump have finally clarified that between 2001 and 2020—and through such events as the terrorist attacks of September 11, intensified globalization, the rise of China concurrent with the failed war on terror, and the financial crisis—the world was moving into an entirely new historical period. Moreover, in this phase, many ideas and assumptions dominant for decades were rapidly becoming obsolete.” – New York Review of Books
How (And When) Humans Learned To Invent
“Something happened in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to cause an explosion of ingenuity orders of magnitude greater than anything seen in other species, including our big-brained cousins the Neanderthals. But what? And when?” – Literary Review
Netflix Files Copyright Notices Against Negative Tweets That Included Its Movie Trailer
Some of the dozens of tweets Netflix issued DMCA claims against used clips from the actual movie, TorrentFreak reports, in which case Netflix’s claims are understandable. However, many of the tweets in question shared the film’s trailer, which is widely and publicly available on YouTube for anyone to view or share. – Ars Technica
How The National Endowment for the Humanities Is Complying With An Executive Order And Restoring Statues
“The money is coming in the form of Chairman’s Grants, the NEH’s method of providing emergency funding to safeguard cultural heritage in the face of (what are typically natural) disasters. Instead of courting controversy by re-erecting downed Confederate leaders, however, the NEH will use the money to restore a selection of mostly neutral choices.” – The Architect’s Newspaper
Ralph Remington Chosen As San Francisco’s Arts Commission Director
An experienced actor, playwright, and screenwriter, Remington currently serves as the deputy director for arts and culture for the city of Tempe, Arizona. In that position, he is responsible for the performance and visual programming at the Tempe Center for the Arts. He also oversees public art, the Tempe History Museum, and municipal arts granting. – San Francisco Chronicle
How To Look (In Detail) At A Durer Self-Portrait
By the end of the 15th century, the self-portrait has become an act of self-fashioning: how I present myself to you. Dürer’s self-portraits were not the very first, but he made himself his subject with uncommon frequency. – The New York Times
Dutch Museums Launch Comprehensive Van Gogh Database
A new database called Van Gogh Worldwide allows users to access provenances, technical information, archival materials, and more related to 1,000 works on paper and paintings by the famed Post-Impressionist. Launched on Thursday, the database is a collaboration between the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, and the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History, along with the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. – ARTnews
Don DeLillo And Martin Amis Were Literary Lions Of The 1980s. Now, Not So Much
“New novels from Don DeLillo and Martin Amis, two of the remaining dons of the literary scene of the 1980s, are out within a week of each other, like some last blast of “Remember when?” just before the 2020 election further propels us into a new realm of reality. Amis has written a novel so interested in Amis that its cover — a black-and-white portrait of, you guessed it, Amis — feels less like a postmodern joke and more like a warning sign. DeLillo, whose work is usually our national harbinger of future calamities, has written a disaster thriller that forgets to thrill.” – New York Magazine
How Archaeology Regards Layers And Order
Past use doesn’t determine what we mean by uttering a word on a particular occasion, but it does shape what a speaker can intend to get across. If I am being cooperative, and I intend to make a request that you pass something on the table, I won’t use a word I know you don’t know. To do so would be to violate a tacit commitment to a basic principle of cooperation, which Grice argues underpins all communication. – Psyche