The “bad place” has been detailed extensively – these are all the bad things that will happen to you if you don’t behave. Hell has been a moral consequence, it has been a spur to behave better. And increasingly we’re being warned of the possibilities of versions of it visiting earth. The point is, the concept of hell is a powerful idea that has framed our thinking. – The New Yorker
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Beauty Isn’t Explained By Science. But Science Needs To Understand Beauty
If there is a universal truth about beauty — some concise and elegant concept that encompasses every variety of charm and grace in existence — we do not yet understand enough about nature to articulate it. – The New York Times
New Initiative To Extend The Arts With Technology
The aim is that by using devices such as mobile phones, Extended Reality (XR) headsets and streaming into live performance environments, or even in the home, audiences will be able to experience live performance in entirely new ways. – Arts Professional
Chinese Censorship Is Complicated. It’s Why Orwell Isn’t Censored…
Here’s the rub: Monitors pay closer attention to material that might be consumed by the average person than to cultural products seen as highbrow and intended for educated groups. (An internet forum versus an old novel.) As a result, Chinese writers are watched more closely than foreign ones. — The Atlantic
Spotify Is Now Selling Sponsorship Of Its Personalized Playlists
“It feels, pretty simply, like yet another example of a tech company creating a highly personalized product in seemingly warm partnership with its users, then realizing that it can trade on this goodwill to make money.” – Vox
The Last Manhattan Arcade
Chinatown Fair Family Fun Center is a video arcade – and not a new, hip, bar-focused pinball arcade, but an old-school video arcade, which has survived Manhattan’s rising rents and the rise of personal gaming by constant reinvention. – The New York Times
The Truth About The So-Called Gig Economy
We’re all going to be driving an Uber before long, and everyone who’s not will be freelancing at something else, right? Or maybe the gig economy isn’t growing so fast – or isn’t really growing at all. Economists can’t agree. – The Atlantic
The U.S. Poet Laureate Has A Podcast, And It’s Coming To Public Radio
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars and Wade in the Water, started a podcast in November. Now it’s moving up the podcast chain to the motherlode of podcasting success, public radio. – The New York Times
An Oscar Contender Stirs Guilt – And Soul-Searching – In Mexico’s Middle Class
Roma depicts the relationship of a woman doing housekeeping and nanny work to the family for which she’s working. They like her a lot, but they treat her with an off-handed sense of ownership that may seem appalling to viewers. The film “has also prompted serious soul-searching about the plight of poorly paid and often-unprotected domestic workers in Mexico, where, nearly five decades after the period depicted in the film, inequality remains rife, racism stubbornly persists and social mobility seems to have stagnated.” – The Observer (UK)
When Contemporary Lit Professors Decided To Agree That The Author Is Dead
Whether or not most lit professors agree with that (Roland Barthes) statement now, “authors certainly had it coming.” – Los Angeles Review of Books