“That night, it didn’t take long for some rather prominent coughing to break out, before the crowd let loose with less subtle forms of protest: boos and catcalls, the agitation growing over the course of the piece’s 15-plus minutes. At one point, an older woman approached the stage, took off a shoe, and banged it on the stage, imploring the ensemble—which included Reich and Tilson Thomas—to stop. Someone else sprinted down an aisle, yelling, “All right! I confess!” Other aggrieved patrons simply left.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
People Are Turning Against Social Media. How To Save It?
If we’re really serious about changing how social networks operate, far more radical interventions are required. Here are three possible ways to rescue social media from the market-based pressures that got us here.
Uh Oh – Young People In The UK Are Watching More Netflix Than All Of BBC’s Programming
In its 2018 Annual Plan, the broadcaster has acknowledged that young people aged 16-24 in the UK are spending more time watching Netflix than all of the BBC’s programming combined, including iPlayer.
James Baldwin’s Lonely Search For New Leadership For America
While many continued to think of Baldwin as the spokesperson for a vision of ultimate cross-racial communion such as concluded The Fire Next Time, Baldwin’s speeches and essays grew increasing direct about the impossibilities of saving the United States from itself. By the time of King’s murder, Baldwin had shifted his intellectual focus mainly away from black–white reconciliation to instead undertake a no-less-difficult project: facilitating a conversation connecting younger, more radical black leaders with those of his own generation.
The Banksy Jackpot
While known for mocking the powerful as they strive to become objects of mass appeal, many of Banksy’s illicit street artworks ultimately belong to private landlords, not the public. After a late-night visit from the anonymous artist, property owners often wake up to find they’ve won the Banksy lottery: He has “vandalized” one of their buildings by gifting it a work by a world-famous artist. And then it is up to them to decide the work’s fate.
Data: How Music Has Changed In The Streaming Era (More Music, Worse Titles)
By analyzing the kinds of songs and artists that had the most success on the Hot-100, we can see that in 9 short years, there have been major changes in music.
Lost Verdi Opera Found In Berlin Basement
Verdi set the opera, entitled Die Macht des Schicksas, to a German-language libretto by Bläuel Wittling, a poet who ran a women-only writers commune on the banks of the Spree river north of Berlin. Verdi seems to have composed this music around 1882, making it an important missing link is his late career: He wrote Aïda (1871) and the Requiem (1874), but then it was thought he turned away from composing until Arrigo Boito inspired him to write Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). [Note the date of the story before believing]
Is “Hyper-Liberalism” A Danger To Our Academies?
Practices of toleration that used to be seen as essential to freedom are being deconstructed and dismissed as structures of repression, and any ideas or beliefs that stand in the way of this process banned from public discourse. Judged by old-fashioned standards, this is the opposite of what liberals have stood for. But what has happened in higher education is not that liberalism has been supplanted by some other ruling philosophy. Instead, a hyper-liberal ideology has developed that aims to purge society of any trace of other views of the world.
Musician Plays Flute While Surgeons Operate On Her Brain
During deep brain stimulation procedures, doctors implant electrodes in the brain to try and control tremors. The patient must be awake during surgery, so doctors can see the effects of the electrodes. “It is brain surgery, but it’s a way we can really improve a patient’s life, quality of life, where otherwise they’re going to be on medications that may have a modest effect on improving their tremor.”
What Distinguishes How Humans Think
How is it that human thought is so deeply different from that of other animals, even though our brains can be quite similar? The difference is due, Andy Clark believes, to our heightened ability to incorporate props and tools into our thinking, to use them to think thoughts we could never have otherwise. If we do not see this, he writes, it is only because we are in the grip of a prejudice—“that whatever matters about my mind must depend solely on what goes on inside my own biological skin-bag, inside the ancient fortress of skin and skull.”