The question isn’t how difficult a book is, but why it’s difficult. What is it doing with its difficulty? What is it asking of the reader? Does that difficulty reward the reader’s investment of time? You’re entitled, as James Marriott did in the Times, to conclude that in this case the view from the top of Snowdon wasn’t worth the hike. But complaining about the hike per se is to give up on the idea that there might be any case for art that rewards an investment of energy and attention from its consumer.
Blog
YouTube Videos Are Getting Longer Because…
Not so long ago, YouTube videos resembled long-form Vines more than anything approaching a 22-minute sitcom. But as more people watch video via mobile, the lines between highly produced television show and a rough YouTube vlog have blurred. These days smartphone users spend a whopping 54 percent of their video-viewing time on videos over 20 minutes long—that’s up from just 29 percent in the beginning of 2016.
The Cure For Trophy Museum Projects
“It’s strange to write the obvious, which is that ‘the art comes first,’ but it often doesn’t. I’m downright puritanical when it comes to visitor amenities such as restaurants, shops, and introductory video theaters. Lots of this can be distracting junk. Sometimes classrooms are good, but the best classroom is the gallery. I’m skeptical of separate entrances for schoolchildren and other groups because they’re always about processing people and consequently second-rate. Everyone should have the same exciting, art-filled, grand entrance, but preferably not like the Louvre’s, where visitors enter like rats.”
Exploring The Intellectual Dark Web (How Far Will It Go?)
Over the past year, the IDW has arisen as a puzzling political force, made up of thinkers who support “Enlightenment values” and accuse the left of setting dangerously illiberal limits on acceptable thought. The IDW has defined itself mainly by diving into third-rail topics like the genetics of gender and racial difference—territory that seems even more fraught in the era of #MeToo and the Trump resistance.
Why Feedback Ratings Make Things Worse, Not Better
Today’s understanding of feedback has reversed those terms. Positive ratings are a kind of holy grail on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, and negative reviews can sink a burgeoning small business or mom-and-pop restaurant. That shift has created a misunderstanding about how feedback works. The original structure of the loop’s information regulation has been lost.
Stan Lee, Superhero Comics Pioneer, 95
Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.
The EU’s New Copyright Rules Would Kill The Internet
Right now, ContentID only filters videos’ soundtracks. Article 13 would expand the filter to consider text, music, video, still photos, software code, game mods, 3D printing files, and anything else that might be copyrighted. ContentID currently allows only a small set of trusted rightsholders to add to its blacklist; Article 13 would let all 2,000,000,000+ internet users add to these blacklists. ContentID reserves the right to cancel a rightsholder’s access to its blacklists for abusing the system — falsely claiming copyright through carelessness or malice, for example — while Article 13 would require perpetual access for rightsholders, even anonymous parties claiming to be rightsholders. Article 13 would give them the power to block anything and everything from being posted to the Internet.
Lord Harry Gets Mixed Results (& hurls verbal missiles) at Sotheby’s Impressionist/Modern Sale
Auctioneer Harry Dalmeny (new to me) at Sotheby’s Impressionist/Modern sale tonight had a strange way of trying to entice bidders by pelting them with barbed wisecracks
Weekend Extra: Listening With Hal Galper
I don’t often post video of people talking. The best way to understand music is to listen — often — intensively — with concentration — without preconceptions. Today, we have a departure from the Rifftides policy of letting the music speak for itself.
The Art Of Bullshit
Bullshitters pretend to a kind of wisdom that only very few people have, but that also means that only very few people are competent to challenge the bullshitters’ pretension. And here’s the rub: if bullshit clings to any undertaking that requires an unusual degree of discernment or expertise, then calling bullshit can itself become a form of bullshitting.