Author: Douglas McLennan

Fake Everywhere: How Much Of What’s On The Internet Is Fake

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Timesreported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake.  – New York Magazine

Does Non-profit CEO Pay Matter?

You may be surprised to learn that those big, prominent nonprofits soliciting your holiday donations, and maybe a place in your will, are very profitable for the administrators (and in some cases, the artists) in charge. How did that happen? Mostly because executive salaries are set by boards of directors, and these boards, especially at prestigious institutions, are comprised of the richest people those same administrators can round up, folks to whom a half-million dollars sounds like, if not pocket change, nothing more than a reasonable salary. – Chicago Reader

The Ruins Of A Street – Turned Into A Museum

“We came to Greensboro to attend a group exhibition presented by a cohort of artist residents whose blend of style and performance provoked laughter one minute and tears the next. Their work offered insights into a network we knew little about, and through them, we discovered a poetic intersection that is worth revisiting: the nexus of art and travel.”

NYer Critic Michael Schulman Reflects On This Year’s Best Theatre

“I’ve noticed a common thread. It’s the theme of terra firma not being so firma—of finding cracks in a foundation you thought was rock solid, whether the U.S. Constitution, a time-tested love story, or memory itself. Perhaps I’m projecting: this year (like the year before) was one in which the world felt like an unsafe bet, and America like a bait and switch. Or maybe playwrights and directors are responding to our disorienting era by echoing the uncertainty onstage—and by pulling the rug from under our feet.” – The New Yorker

Rock ‘n Roll Has Stalled. Can It Recover?

This year, rock and roll seems bored with itself. The most successful acts of the past few years have been bands bristling at the boundaries of the guitar, bass, and drums setup. The genre’s best-selling album of 2018 was Las Vegas electro-rockers Imagine Dragons’ summer 2017 full-length Evolve, a work that prefers humming synths and suspenseful atmospherics to the growl of a six-string. – New York Magazine

The Universal Language Of Gestures

Sometimes the meaning of a gesture is obvious, but mostly we have to know the culture before we can interpret it. Many are so unconscious that there’s a pleasure of recognition when we encounter them in Francois Caradec’s list — as when, in a pub, we draw a circle with our index finger above some glasses: ‘another round, please’. We forget we might have to explain it to someone from a different culture. – The Spectator

Why Are There So Many Books Now With F*ck In The Title?

Despite the occasional marketing hurdle, clearly these books are selling just fine. That’s the surprising thing about all of these supposedly irreverent titles. The premise of their humor is that they’re shocking, but they’re now so prevalent that it’s hard to imagine being shocked by them. They are “the product of a culture in which transgressing social norms has become an agreed-on social norm.”  – Slate