Stuart Murphy recalled joining the company and and finding it “really shocking” that 39 of ENO’s 40-strong chorus were white. “We weren’t true to our values, we didn’t represent Britain,” he said. “It just felt strange to me … Young white audiences also think it is weird.” – The Guardian
Author: Douglas McLennan
Some Frank Talk About Truth And Science
Let us start with some genuine philosophical questions about truth in science. Here are three: 1) Does science aim at truth? 2) Does science tell us the truth? 3) Should we expect science to tell us the truth? – Aeon
How HBO Plans To Keep Up In The Age Of Streaming Giants
Time Warner had kept HBO on a tight leash, allowing an estimated $1.5 billion annual budget for original content in 2018—play money when compared with Netflix’s reported $10 to $11 billion. That forced HBO to pass on the very shows and show-runners that put the streamers in the cultural conversation and in direct contention with HBO as the rulers of cinema-quality television. – Vanity Fair
How The Sundance Festival Is Evolving
In stepping back, Robert Redford is acknowledging the welcome ways in which the festival continues to evolve: Some 40 percent of this year’s movies were directed by women, and 36 percent were made by people of color. Meanwhile, 63 percent of the accredited press come from “underrepresented groups.” – The Atlantic
DeepFakes Explained – How Seeing-Is-Believing Is Going Away
CNN offers some great demonstrations of how fake videos in which people can now say and do things they never did will challenge one of the bedrock truths of our time – that you can believe what you see. – CNN
Provocation: Was Modernism Intended To Exclude The Masses?
“If more and more working people were reading the classics, if they were closing the cultural gap between themselves and the middle classes, how could intellectuals preserve their elite status as arbiters of taste and custodians of rare knowledge? They had to create a new body of modernist literature which was deliberately made so difficult and obscure that the average reader did not understand it.” – JSTOR Daily
Your TV Is Now A Computer – And You’ve Lost Control Of It
Analysts estimate that smart TVs now make up about 70 percent of all new TV sales. The television is no longer a mere display, but a full-fledged computer, for good and for ill. And what is a computer now? On the one hand, it’s something companies sell to consumers for money. But after you’ve purchased an internet-connected device of any kind, it begins to generate information that the company can use itself or sell to third parties. – The Atlantic
A Balanchine Original: Patricia McBride Lousada, 89
Ms. Lousada was a cast member of many central works created by Balanchine, including “The Four Temperaments,” which had its premiere on City Ballet’s opening night, Nov. 20, 1946, at the Central High School of Needle Trades. — The New York Times
Despite Attempts To Improve, YouTube’s Recommendation Engine Is Still A Rabbit Hole
That YouTube can be a petri dish of divisive, conspiratorial, and sometimes hateful content is well-documented. Yet the recommendation systems that surface and promote videos to the platform’s users, the majority of whom report clicking on recommended videos, are frustratingly opaque. – Buzzfeed
#Rentkindalive – When A Live TV Event Isn’t (Mostly) Live At All
“It feels a bit weird to critique what was almost entirely a recorded dress rehearsal. How do you measure three hours of chaotic visuals and middling audio most of us were never meant to see and hear? Mostly in disappointment, I guess, though this is what Fox gave us.” – The New York Times