“We’re all ’80s kids,” said David Dodde, co-owner and designer at House Industries. “We’re not inventing anything, we’re just stealing really well. It’s all about the honesty of the theft. In a way, we’re paying homage.”
Blog
Understanding The Arcane Process By Which The MPAA Rates Movies (By Someone Who Used To Do It)
What makes, for example, a woman kissing a man OK for G-viewers, while a man kissing another man is PG or PG-13 worthy? Howard Fridkin rated movies on the MPAA’s rating board for over a decade.
How Jack Benny And Harry Conn Figured Out The Formula For Situation Comedy
“In vaudeville you had one show and that was it. You changed it whenever you felt like it,” Benny said, years later. But, in radio, “when you realized that every week you needed a new show, this got a little bit frightening.” In another interview, he recalled, “The first show was a cinch—I used about half of all the gags I knew. The second show consumed all the rest, and I faced the third absolutely dry.”
A Podcast Case For Taking Pop Music Seriously As High Art
“Switched on Pop takes the work of pop stars like Jepsen, Justin Bieber, and Ariana Grande seriously as music. While there is a surfeit of music criticism focused on the lyrics and personal backstories of these artists, there is little that considers the role of certain chord progressions or instrumentation. Harding and Sloan believe that the people behind today’s pop music are often brilliant composers, and that the nuance of their work is too frequently missed.”
So Facebook’s AI Bots Created Their Own Language. Is That Creepy? Maybe Not…
“In their attempts to learn from each other, the bots thus began chatting back and forth in a derived shorthand – but while it might look creepy, that’s all it was.”
Why Using Shame As A Management Tactic Is A Bad Idea – The Ultimate Example
Lila MacLellan takes a terrifying recent near-miss at SFO as a departure point for a discussion of what’s called “just culture” or “psychological safety” in the workplace. “It turns out that no one wakes up in the morning and jumps out of bed because they can’t wait to get to work today to look ignorant, intrusive, incompetent or negative.”
The Instagram Dancer Who Stands Out
While Instagram has become a go-to forum for dancers recording themselves in class and rehearsal, Marlee Grace has managed to stand out, though it’s hard to pinpoint why. Maybe it’s her musical selections, which range from Justin Bieber to wind and waves; her playful, impulsive choices as a mover and iPhone videographer; or the sense that she’s not working toward anything in particular, just dancing for herself and anyone who happens to cross her virtual path.
The Obsession With Originality ‘Weakens The Power Of Architecture’
Phineas Harper: “Across architectural culture we dread the label of unoriginality like a curse. We deride the derivative, we mock mimics, we fear facsimiles. Call us dull, call us sellouts, call us gentrifiers – just don’t call us copycats. I believe this sneering snobbery of derivation is deeply flawed and at odds with the potential of architecture as a collective creative force.” (For instance, Shigeru Ban is not the only architect allowed to use cardboard tubes.)
Why Do Dystopian Science Fiction Cities Look So Much Like The Cities We Already Have?
Justin Davidson: “Most of us can imagine only what we already know, and even the fantasies of visionary filmmakers can be astonishingly earthbound. The inventors of nonexistent cities don’t have to worry about building codes, zoning, financing regulations, or even the need to make their structures stand up. Rather than use that freedom to unleash radical design or dream up darkly beautiful architecture, they simply recycle the present and make it bigger, and worse.”
Nobel Winner Svetlana Alexievich On Why She Writes About Women At War
“Everything we know about war we know with ‘a man’s voice.’ We are all captives of ‘men’s’ notions and ‘men’s’ sense of war. ‘Men’s’ words. Women are silent. No one but me ever questioned my grandmother. My mother. Even those who were at the front say nothing. If they suddenly begin to remember, they don’t talk about the ‘women’s’ war, but about the ‘men’s.'”