Movie productions require lots of household items to fill their sets. But then the movie is over and where does all that stuff go? It’s a headache for the production team to get rid of it. A Massachusetts organization offers a service to quickly break down the sets and make them available to families in need, working with 400+ social workers. – WGBH
Author: Douglas McLennan
Quality Versus Quantity: Has “Engagement” Become A Meaningless Measure?
The quantity-vs.-quality debate is now meaningless. Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. We may yearn for a narrative to explain how and why, but that’s not how the digital world works. The algorithmic curation that controls what you do or do not see on every social media company’s newsfeed isn’t programmed to provide you with an emotionally satisfying narrative; it is continuously tuned to keep you engaged and clicking or tapping. So if your key metric is engagement or completed views, “5 Ways to Bounce a Quarter Off of Kim Kardashian’s Butt” or a video of a horrible disaster will always outperform less clickbaity titles or subjects. – Shelly Palmer
The Disney/Fox Merger Has Forever Changed Hollywood
Disney and Netflix offer the two clearest visions of Hollywood’s future. The former is a media company that’s as old-fashioned as they come, trying to make movies that will pull audiences en masse to the theater. The latter is a tech company that’s largely uninterested in the theater business but has won subscriber loyalty by offering a wealth of viewing options. As the cinema business continues to evolve, perhaps only the biggest films will survive as in-theater experiences, with streaming becoming an equally profitable venue. – The Atlantic
UK’s Sackler Trust Suspends Further Giving
The growing unease amongst British museums to accept money from Sackler family members implicated in the sale of the opioid painkiller OxyContin comes in the wake of several US lawsuits filed in recent months against Purdue Pharma, the family’s US drugs company. – The Art Newspaper
How Video Game Addiction Works
Many gamers seemed to struggle to find their place in society. “In our modern meritocratic society, you don’t have an obvious place in the way people used to have. You have to create it for yourself. That’s complicated. Fleeing into the more regulated world of the game—a Manichaean populist worldview—is an easy way out.” – The Atlantic
The Most-Visited Museum Exhibitions Of 2018
And New York’s Metropolitan Museum leads the way. The largest exhibition ever mounted by the museum, Heavenly Bodies was seen by around 1.43 million people at the Met’s main Fifth Avenue location and a further 230,000 trekked uptown to Washington Heights to see its continuation at the comparatively sleepy Met Cloisters. – The Art Newspaper
A Revolution In Foodie Culture
Josephine Livingstone: “I am not a foodie. I don’t even know the difference between a meuniere and a mirepoix. But from the outside looking in, it’s clear that foodie culture is roiling with a new awareness of social politics, undermining some of that culture’s unspoken tenets: that taste and pleasure are neutral, universal concepts; that the kitchen is an apolitical zone. Being a foodie now, in 2019, requires thinking with more than your tongue.” – The New Republic
Thomas Heatherwick Projects Are Everywhere These Days. We Deserve Better
“This high-profile intercontinental spread has made Heatherwick all but ubiquitous. It has also earned him a heavy dose of suspicion mixed with contempt, both from critics and the public. His name is often used as something of a synonym for everything that’s wrong with contemporary urban design.” – CityLab
Might Our Morality Change With Artificial Intelligence? (Is That Even The Right Question?)
Because AI might ‘think’ differently to how humans think, and because of the general tendency to get swept up in its allure, its use could well change how we approach tasks and make decisions. The seductive allure that tends to surround AI in fact represents one of its dangers. Those working in the field despair that almost every article about AI hypes its powers, and even those about banal uses of AI are illustrated with killer robots. – Aeon
How Rome Is Using Technology To Make Its Amazing History Visible In The Streets
There’s a digital renaissance underway in the Eternal City and it is helping to shed a light on the past – quite literally. From video projections cast upon ancient walls and multimedia light shows to virtual reconstructions revealed through 3D visors, technology is being used to help tell the story of Rome in a more concrete and compelling way. – Forbes