Without a change in this design, nothing else can change. Moderation is impractical when you have 3 billion users speaking hundreds of languages in dozens of political cultures. AI is hopeless at nuance. And asking society to change itself – by telling people to be more cautious about what they read and repost or adding fact-checks to posts – is like replacing plastic straws to ameliorate environmental catastrophe. It makes for good PR, but the effects are so small as to be inconsequential. – The Guardian
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How Artists Survived The (First) Great Depression
Public funding was the way. However: “Back then there was even less agreement on a public role for creatives. The Writers’ Project assigned them a public role in producing travel guidebooks, histories, and life stories of everyday Americans, including thousands of narratives of formerly enslaved people. New Deal artists created landscapes, murals, street scenes, portraits, sculptures, and abstracts inspired by American life.” – LitHub
Can Copyright Catch Up To The Coronavirus Boom In Digital Culture?
From just about everything on TikTok to Broadway performers singing Sondheim on YouTube, there’s a lot of culture on the internet right now – and very few of the creators of that culture are getting their cut. “Streaming images, video, music and books turn every interaction and event into a performance, display or broadcast of intellectual property. And the law requires licenses for such streaming to protect the content of the creators.” – Los Angeles Times
Defenders Of That (Iffy) Theodore Roosevelt Statue Descend On American Museum Of Natural History
The Federalist organized the 150-person protest at the statue. “Speakers supporting the statue used the protest to rail against a broad range of issues including abortion and religion. One woman called for the removal of ‘the feminists and the homosexuals’ from the City Council.” – The New York Times
The Rolling Stones May Have Finally Hit On A Way To Stop The President From Using Their Song At His Rallies
They’ve been trying for years to bar Trump from using “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as his walk-off music at rallies – and their efforts have always been in vain. Until now, perhaps. “The group sent out a statement saying it is enlisting BMI, the performing rights organization that oversees public use of the song, in their quest to keep the track from being used for politically partisan purposes. And the band says there’ll be a lawsuit if the president continues using the song without a license.” – Variety
Saying Goodbye To TV’s Fantasy Worlds
The world of Law & Order was so attractive, the righteousness of its heroes so, well, right. Then college happened, and a lot of getting pulled over. “Too often, cop-centered stories portray its stars as heroes and ignore the broader failures that leave black people on the receiving end of police bias. And while it would seem easy to take predominantly white police stories and diversify them with black actors—a plug-and-play approach to representation—that method becomes a double-edged sword when fictional black police bolster a status quo narrative.” – The Atlantic
Reconsidering The Art And Life Of Valerie Solanas
Solanas is most famous for having shot Andy Warhol, of course, but she had an artistic life long before that moment. In the beginning, the writer and Warhol Factory superstar Ultra Violet wrote, “beyond her overheated rhetoric, she had a truly revolutionary vision of a better world run by and for the benefit of women.” – The New York Times
How We Started Thinking Of Pandemics As Waves
It started as math, transitioned to both epidemiology and morality, and now holds sway among the public as well. But the idea of a “wave” wasn’t inevitable. – Boston Review
Reconsidering America’s Addiction To Police Dramas
TV execs hold a roundtable to discuss (tiny) ways some things might change, including centering stories written by and about African Americans. “You have to be very front and center about this and tie it to yearly goals and objectives. …So I find that when you’re talking about the goals of the team in terms of ratings and what success looks like in the organization, a conversation also needs to be tied around what the stories are that we’re telling.” – Variety
Bands Whose Names Refer To Slavery Are Changing Their Names, And Sometimes More
The band names are a symbol – just a symbol, perhaps, but a strong one. However: “The question is not, “‘hould bands whose names have ties to slavery change them?’ The question is: Are we committed to looking our awful history in the eyes, admitting that it led us to a place in which Black people in America are still systematically mistreated, and doing everything we can to fix that?” – Vice