This year, rock and roll seems bored with itself. The most successful acts of the past few years have been bands bristling at the boundaries of the guitar, bass, and drums setup. The genre’s best-selling album of 2018 was Las Vegas electro-rockers Imagine Dragons’ summer 2017 full-length Evolve, a work that prefers humming synths and suspenseful atmospherics to the growl of a six-string. – New York Magazine
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The Universal Language Of Gestures
Sometimes the meaning of a gesture is obvious, but mostly we have to know the culture before we can interpret it. Many are so unconscious that there’s a pleasure of recognition when we encounter them in Francois Caradec’s list — as when, in a pub, we draw a circle with our index finger above some glasses: ‘another round, please’. We forget we might have to explain it to someone from a different culture. – The Spectator
Why Are There So Many Books Now With F*ck In The Title?
Despite the occasional marketing hurdle, clearly these books are selling just fine. That’s the surprising thing about all of these supposedly irreverent titles. The premise of their humor is that they’re shocking, but they’re now so prevalent that it’s hard to imagine being shocked by them. They are “the product of a culture in which transgressing social norms has become an agreed-on social norm.” – Slate
Doctors Perform Brain Surgery While Patient Plays The Guitar
The technique, known as “awake craniotomy,” allows doctors to operate on delicate areas of the brain — like the right frontal lobe, the site of Mr. Manzini’s tumor — without causing damage. Presumably, had he hit a wrong note, it would have been an immediate signal for the surgeons to probe elsewhere. – The New York Times
Report: Is Social Media A Threat To Democracy?
Manipulation of our media environment by foreign as well as domestic actors is now the new normal. “If anything has changed since 2016,” writes one experienced reporter, “it’s that social media is no longer seen as just a useful tool for influencing elections. It’s the terrain on which our entire political culture rests, whose peaks and valleys shape our everyday discourse, and whose possibilities for exploitation are nearly endless. – The Guardian
The Biggest Streamers In Europe Brace For Content Quota Regulations
Here it comes, specifically for Netflix and Amazon, but others will be affected too: “The crucial clause in the E.U.’s audiovisual media services directive states that member states ‘shall ensure that media service providers of on-demand audiovisual media services under their jurisdiction secure at least a 30% share of European works in their catalogues and ensure prominence of those works.'” – Variety
What Does It Mean To Be ‘Cosmopolitan’?
Bruce Robbins says that “cosmopolitanism” has implications far beyond what movies, art, food, and other culture we might enjoy from all over the world. “If you are willing to benefit from a system that systematically deprives people far away of a great deal of the product of their labor and ships that surplus over to you and makes your life more comfortable, and you’re not ready to say anything about that, that’s as bad a problem as going along with war.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
The ‘Girl Power’ Movies Of 2018 Aren’t Really About Women, Or Their Power
At least, most of them aren’t. Here’s an in-depth look at everything from Ruth Bader Ginsberg action figures to Ocean’s 8 to Halloween to Suspiria, with a final stop at Widows and Destroyer. – BuzzFeed
Photographing The Segregated South
A photographer in Durham, NC, in the early 1900s used a camera that allowed multiple, distinct pictures on one plate-glass negative. And the results are surprising. “Mangum’s glass plate negatives tell a nuanced account of this history, one that affords more agency to people of color than the average textbook. One example of this disruption is the photographic evidence that Mangum did not discriminate in the way he had his sitters pose for the camera. These poses can be seen across all clients, each experiencing a typical session.” – NPR
A Good Bookshop Is About So Much More Than The Price Of Books
Duh, right? That’s what independent booksellers have been saying for years. As a collective, we may finally be getting it. “The best booksellers are not, strangely, just there to sell books: their knowledge allows them to arrange the books you see on shelves in a concerted way, not just to pack the shelves on the offchance they’ll make a profit.” – The Guardian (UK)