“Being smart meant you knew about things that you didn’t experience. If you were a student of history, it meant that you understood the expanse of history. Anyone can know what’s going on right now. To be smart you have to know what came before you, and that no longer seems to exist. Now the belief is sort of: Any of that stuff can be found on the internet in five seconds. I don’t want someone telling me what the past was supposed to mean and have that inform the way I listen to music now or I watch film now. I want to eliminate the past and only exist in this perpetual state of the present.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
America’s Librarians Pressed Into The Drug War
The opioid epidemic is reshaping life in America, including at the local public library, where librarians are considering whether to carry naloxone to battle overdoses. At a time when the public is debating arming teachers, it is another example of an unlikely group being enlisted to fight a national crisis.
How Facebook’s Algorithm Tweak Wiped Out A Thriving Digital Publisher
The site Little Things, which had amassed 12 million Facebook followers, said the recent algorithm shift, which Facebook has said was designed to tamp down content that is consumed passively — and would instead emphasize posts from people’s friends and family — took out roughly 75% of LittleThings’ organic traffic while hammering its profit margins.”
New Half-Billion-Dollar Performing Arts Campus For Anaheim
The $500 million, 500,000-square-foot cultural campus will contain three theaters and a range of culture and entertainment program elements, housed within striking buildings inspired by the orange tree.
In Ranking Of The World’s Top Universities, UK Comes Out On Top (Particularly In Humanities)
Seven UK universities lead the world rankings in 10 areas, with the University of Oxford top of the list for four subjects: anatomy and physiology, archaeology, English language and literature and geography. This makes it one of just three universities to perform best in more than one subject, alongside Harvard University, which comes first in 14 subjects, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which comes first in 12 subjects.
When Machines Are Reporting The News You’re Consuming
In the not-so-distant future, we will be presented with the version of the news we wish to read — not the news that some reporter, columnist or editorial board decides we need to read. And it will be entirely written by artificial intelligence (AI).
Does Anyone Really Care About The Oscars Anymore?
To revisit that stat about how few people have seen any of this year’s nominees: I keep wondering why at this point, with so many ways to watch movies on-demand or stream them, the Academy hasn’t just made the movies available for everyone to see on some platform ahead of the Oscars for some sort of fee. People are genuinely curious about, say, Lady Bird or Call Me by Your Name by the time the Oscars roll around, but don’t necessarily have access to seeing them. Sure, the devil’s advocate could argue they might have had their chance to see them when they were in wide release. But there’s also something to be said for the way our habits have changed to be conditioned to streaming from home, and that interest often isn’t piqued until, basically, right now, when the Oscars are about to happen.
Can Blockbuster “Panther” Movie Save Movie Theatre Business?
A movie with this type of drawing power couldn’t come at a better time for movie theater investors. Changing consumer demand has pummeled theater investments in recent times. While the S&P 500 gained 29% over the past three years, stocks for the largest film exhibitors have taken it on the chin.
How ABT’s Isabella Boylston Became Jennifer Lawrence’s Dance Stand-In
“I think they were really committed to being as accurate as possible, so they wanted a principal dancer, a real ballerina,” Boylston says. “Justin Peck, the choreographer, is a good friend of mine — we had worked together before on our own film that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival a couple of years ago. He called me and was like, ‘I think you’d be a great fit for this project.’ And I was like, Francis Lawrence? Jen Lawrence? Sign me up.”
BBC Takes On Kenneth Clark’s Classic “Civilisation” Series With An Update By Simon Schama
At the start of his series, Clark asked: “What is civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it.” Turning to Notre Dame, he added: “And I’m looking at it now.” Schama, shaken by Isis brutality, is certain: “We can spend a lot of time debating what civilisation is or isn’t,” he says, “but when its opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilisation is, we know it from the shock of its imminent loss, as a mutilation on the body of humanity.”