In 1895 Ladies’ Home Journal began to offer unfrilly, family-friendly architectural plans in its pages. They were mainly colonial, Craftsman, or modern ranch-style houses, and many still stand today. The Cosmopolitan, as it was then known, advertised the Cosmopolitan University, a custom-designed college degree—for free!—by correspondence course. McClure’s magazine, the juggernaut of investigative journalism—home to Ida Tarbell’s landmark investigation of Standard Oil, among many other muckraking articles of the Gilded Age—began to plot an array of ventures, including a model town called McClure’s Ideal Settlement. – Lapham’s Quarterly
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A Critic Of Big Tech Starts His Own Project To Sort And Rank Information
Essentially, it’s a site that recommends the very best and most relevant books, podcasts, scientific articles, videos and journalism to anyone who wants a better understanding of the world. But there’s more to The Syllabus. Evgeny Morozov wants to make people think. The Syllabus criticises how information and knowledge are discovered and disseminated online, based as they currently are on clicks, likes and shares. In other words, based on popularity. Morozov is building a system that determines the relevance of information in a new way – a way that might even be better than Google. – The Correspondent
The Art World Pre-COVID Is Dead
Jerry Saltz: “Even an art-lover lifer like me has to admit much of the art world infrastructure feels like it’s already in the balance. Some of it may be gone even now. In three months, or six months, or — God forbid — 12 or 18 (there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus)? There will be galleries on the other side of this chasm, and museums, and artists making work, of course. But I worry that such a sundering will only exacerbate the inequalities that more and more dominate this universe, with megagalleries and art stars surviving and the gap between them and everyone else only widening, rendering the scrappier artists and galleries something close to invisible.” – New York Magazine
How To Suspend Live Events Without Wrecking The Human Talent?
Live events and entertainment are people-based businesses that rely on the creation of emotional experiences and human interactions. Shedding too many employees, or the wrong employees, may impede the ability to resume operations when the crisis ends. – The Conversation
Is Spatial Awareness Our Superpower?
In the age of GPS, we tend to take our navigation and spatial abilities for granted, until they – or the technology – let us down. It is easy to forget that they have sustained us for tens of thousands of years. Over the course of our evolution, Homo sapiens developed an appetite for exploration and a wayfinding spirit that set us apart from previous human species. It had a huge effect on our future. One of the most intriguing recent ideas in anthropology is that our ability to navigate was essential to our success as a species, because it allowed us to cultivate extensive social networks. – Aeon
Safety, Solvency, Service
These past few weeks, a whole world of arts organizations have been searching for, revisiting, or assembling-on-the-fly their emergency readiness plans as the pandemic turns that world upside down. Many are finding that “pandemic” wasn’t among the expected disasters in their plans, so they’re diving into action as best they can. – Andrew Taylor
Joy in the afternoon
This is, first of all, an expression of profound gratitude for the innumerable messages of sympathy I have received. I thought you might like to read about Hilary’s last good day. – Terry Teachout
A letter to unknown friends
A few days after my beloved Hilary received her double-lung transplant, I published an open letter in The Wall Street Journal addressed to the family of the anonymous organ donor whose lungs she used to breathe during the last month of her life. – Terry Teachout
Recent Listening: Ernesto Cervini’s ‘Tetrahedron’
The Canadian drummer’s new album manages to meld elements of contemporary electronica with references to developments in the six decades since John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman turned the music in new directions. – Doug Ramsey
Hungarian Strongman Uses Virus Emergency To Seize Control Of Museums, Theatres
As the undemocratic features of the Orbán regime became increasingly obvious, the cunning liberal directors would choose productions that, with even minimum sensibility, could be interpreted as critical of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal regime. Thus, these theaters became irritants to the Fidesz officeholders. And, after “Budapest fell” in October 2019, the government wanted to rein in “rogue” theaters. – Hungarian Spectrum