Blog

The AOL Decision That Ruined The Internet, Way Back In 1993

“For nearly 30 years, the internet’s culture has been defined by a corporation’s move that seemed to, without any care about what was left behind, ensure that a sense of order would never again drive the growth of this series of tubes. This phenomenon is, in many ways, the central tension on which the modern internet is built. And it’s a tension that most people aren’t aware of, even though it is an undercurrent secretly framing our online interactions.” – Tedium

Footnotes Are A Pain. But For Historians, Essential

Proper referencing is important; it creates a breadcrumb trail for your reader so that your footsteps can be followed. It means providing your academic genealogy and giving credit for ideas you’ve adopted. It means that your factual assertions can be verified and it works to keep us all operating in good faith. If you make an honest mistake, it means that your reader can steadily work their way back along the path to find out where you took the wrong fork. – History Today

How Do You Teach A Kids’ Choir Class When You Can’t Let Them Sing?

“Music teachers in Canada are being forced to improvise. Choir classes, for example, either must meet outdoors to rehearse or they simply hum and chant their way through class. Host Marco Werman speaks with Toronto-based Anita Elash about how music teachers are managing to keep music programs alive during the pandemic.” (audio) – PRX’s The World

The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since World War II

The list includes comments on each work by the panelists who did the choosing: artists Dread Scott, Catherine Opie and Shirin Neshat, journalist Nikil Saval and Whitney Museum of American Art assistant curator Rujeko Hockley. (First on the list, which is in no particular order, is the now-graffiti-bombed and co-opted statue of Robert E. Lee on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.) – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

How The NYT’s 1619 Project Ignited An Ideological Fight

At the nation’s most significant moment of racial reckoning since the 1960s, it’s become one of the hottest culture-war battlefields, where the combatants include turf-guarding academics, political ideologues angling for an election-year advantage — and the fearlessly spiky journalism superstar who willed the entire thing into existence. All of this can make it easy to forget what the 1619 Project was — basically, a collection of smart, provocative magazine articles about the ways slavery shaped our nation. – Washington Post