That math is an art, that one of its signature qualities is its beauty—these are ideas that continue to be articulated by mathematicians, even as non-mathematicians may wonder what that could possibly mean. I myself become wary when a mathematician or scientist speaks about the beauty of her discipline, since it can seem vague and high-handed, if not wrong. – The Paris Review
Author: Douglas McLennan
Study: Immigrants Run Nearly Half Of American Fortune 500 Companies
According to a new study by New American Economy, immigrants and their children have founded 45% of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States, generating $6.1 trillion in annual revenue last year. While the organization is admittedly a pro-immigration group, the numbers are pretty convincing. – Fast Company
Observation Without Judgment: The Hidden Perils Of Machine Learning
Because most machine-learning models cannot offer reasons for their ongoing judgments, there is no way to tell when they’ve misfired if one doesn’t already have an independent judgment about the answers they provide. Misfires can be rare in a well-trained system. But they can also be triggered intentionally by someone who knows just what kind of data to feed into that system. – The New Yorker
In The 60s Publishing Consolidated And Became Big Business. Here’s How It Changed What Gets Published
“I built this model to investigate whether nonprofits are, as they claim, more literary than conglomerates. The results allow me to extend recent computational studies into literariness and answer yes.” – Public Books
What Defines An Ugly Building?
Over time, arguments and judgments about what constitutes ugliness in architecture – whether it be incompleteness, incongruity or incorrectness – have leached out beyond the profession. Staged in courtrooms, parliamentary committees and public inquiries, strident debates about ugly buildings have influenced the development of technology, the letter of the law, church teaching, the context of criticism, the role of the state and even monarchical privilege. – The Guardian
Is Audible Violating Copyright By Letting Readers Read Along While They Listen?
Although Audible said Captions was “designed primarily to fill an unmet need in education” by allowing students listening to a book to engage more fully with the work, publishers feel the intention of the program is moot and that providing the text violates their copyrights. – Publishers Weekly
Ten Years Ago A Neuroscientist Said He Could Build A Human Brain Within Ten Years. It Didn’t Happen
Henry Markram’s goal wasn’t to create a simplified version of the brain, but a gloriously complex facsimile, down to the constituent neurons, the electrical activity coursing along them, and even the genes turning on and off within them. From the outset, the criticism to this approach was very widespread, and to many other neuroscientists, its bottom-up strategy seemed implausible to the point of absurdity. – The Atlantic
Museum Workers Are Beginning To Organize For Better Pay
“Working in a museum can sometimes seem like a service industry for the wealthy. Middle people in museums used to think they were part of the top bracket. Now they’re part of the bottom bracket, or at least don’t have anywhere to go. You have this kind of perfect storm,” he added: “stagnated wages, working within an environment of great wealth inequality, job insecurity.” – The New York Times
Texas Theatre Founder Katherine Owens, 61
Thirty-five years ago, Owens and co-founder Raphael Parry established what may have been North Texas’ first, literally underground theater. They christened it the Undermain because its home was – and still is – a basement in Deep Ellum at 3200 Main. – Art & Seek
Artists Withdraw From Whitney Biennial And A Revolution Begins
Jerry Saltz: This saga is much bigger than Kanders or the Whitney. All museums are 100 percent awash in toxic philanthropy — that is the nature of the plutocracy in which we live. Kanders is no isolated case; dirty money is in the woodwork of every American museum. In fact, because it’s been so in the spotlight since its successful downtown move in 2015, is so open to change and also poorer than similar institutions, the Whitney is much more structurally fragile than other large museums. – New York Magazine