“It’s strange to write the obvious, which is that ‘the art comes first,’ but it often doesn’t. I’m downright puritanical when it comes to visitor amenities such as restaurants, shops, and introductory video theaters. Lots of this can be distracting junk. Sometimes classrooms are good, but the best classroom is the gallery. I’m skeptical of separate entrances for schoolchildren and other groups because they’re always about processing people and consequently second-rate. Everyone should have the same exciting, art-filled, grand entrance, but preferably not like the Louvre’s, where visitors enter like rats.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Exploring The Intellectual Dark Web (How Far Will It Go?)
Over the past year, the IDW has arisen as a puzzling political force, made up of thinkers who support “Enlightenment values” and accuse the left of setting dangerously illiberal limits on acceptable thought. The IDW has defined itself mainly by diving into third-rail topics like the genetics of gender and racial difference—territory that seems even more fraught in the era of #MeToo and the Trump resistance.
Why Feedback Ratings Make Things Worse, Not Better
Today’s understanding of feedback has reversed those terms. Positive ratings are a kind of holy grail on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, and negative reviews can sink a burgeoning small business or mom-and-pop restaurant. That shift has created a misunderstanding about how feedback works. The original structure of the loop’s information regulation has been lost.
Stan Lee, Superhero Comics Pioneer, 95
Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.
The EU’s New Copyright Rules Would Kill The Internet
Right now, ContentID only filters videos’ soundtracks. Article 13 would expand the filter to consider text, music, video, still photos, software code, game mods, 3D printing files, and anything else that might be copyrighted. ContentID currently allows only a small set of trusted rightsholders to add to its blacklist; Article 13 would let all 2,000,000,000+ internet users add to these blacklists. ContentID reserves the right to cancel a rightsholder’s access to its blacklists for abusing the system — falsely claiming copyright through carelessness or malice, for example — while Article 13 would require perpetual access for rightsholders, even anonymous parties claiming to be rightsholders. Article 13 would give them the power to block anything and everything from being posted to the Internet.
The Art Of Bullshit
Bullshitters pretend to a kind of wisdom that only very few people have, but that also means that only very few people are competent to challenge the bullshitters’ pretension. And here’s the rub: if bullshit clings to any undertaking that requires an unusual degree of discernment or expertise, then calling bullshit can itself become a form of bullshitting.
Canadian Literature Is Good. But Why Is It So Safe?
We have incentivized a safe, cloying storytelling rooted in domestic perspectives and intimate conflicts. These novels generally feature a personal issue (abandonment by a parent, bereavement, breakup) processed through or alongside a traumatic historical incident (say, the clearing of the Newfoundland outports) with some vague connection to the protagonist (typically a university professor, historical researcher, or some other middle-class intellectual with enough time to visit archives). Before the story wraps up, there is certain to be a tepid love affair, several flashbacks, and a well-timed lyrical riff affirming the human spirit or the redemptive power of art. Moral questions will lend the story a patina of gravitas, but there will be no attempt to reckon with the complex roots of social or political problems.
UK Arts Groups Bail On Ambitious YouTube Channels Network
Production company Brave Bison, formerly known as Rightster, was awarded £1.8m to deliver the multi-channel network (MCN) for the arts in 2014. It was launched in September 2015, aiming to make arts content more discoverable and engaging to audiences, increase the number and range of people engaging with arts online and offline, develop both the skills and digital capacity of the arts sector, and build the volume of creative media.
Tate Modern Neighbors Sue Over Views (And Privacy)
While it may seem incredulous that buyers of a glass-walled luxury apartment would be surprised by onlookers, residents say that the amount of exposure incurred by the museum’s observation deck exceeds reasonable expectations with “near constant surveillance,” according to the filed lawsuit.
Louvre Abu Dhabi Attracts A Million Visitors In First Year
Those visitors were dominated by foreign tourists, with more than 60 percent from other countries — topped by India, along with Germany, China, England, the United States and France, according to the new museum. The crowd figures are still small in comparison to the flagship Louvre in Paris, which is lending its brand through a 30-year government accord between the United Arab Emirates and France.