This economic catastrophe is blowing up the myth of the worker robot and AI takeover. We’ve been led to believe that a new wave of automation is here, made possible by smarter AI and more sophisticated robots. Yet our economy still craters without human workers, because the machines are far, far away from matching our intelligence and dexterity. You’re more likely to have a machine automate part of your job, not destroy your job entirely. – Wired
Blog
What Houdini Understood About Our Fascination With Magic
Magic challenges our sense of what’s real; Houdini wanted to challenge the ultimate reality of death, by risking it over and over. That risk, he later wrote, is what “attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the ‘human fly,’ who scales the walls of the same building. If we knew that there was no possibility of either one of them falling or, if they did fall, that they wouldn’t injure themselves in any way, we wouldn’t pay any more attention to them than we do a nursemaid wheeling a baby carriage. – The New Yorker
The Aggressive Critic (And Why One Needs To Be)
“I continue to believe that any critic who wants to write something lasting—who believes that criticism can be a species of literature—must write partly out of aggression. Or perhaps a better word is animus, in the sense of a fixed intention, a partiality. Literary journalism describes and explains literature and ideas as they are.” – New Criterion
JazzOnLockdown: Musicians, venues, .orgs — writers? — turn to live-streaming
Since most jazz musicians (and jazz journalists) are self-employed freelancers, it’s probably essential to rely on ourselves and do it ourselves.. Adapting or heightening one’s media game may seem tiresome if not daunting, but in reality it’s no longer so time intensive and difficult. – Howard Mandel
Fred Hersch Addresses The Virus Threat
Concerned about the advance of the coronavirus, pianist Fred Hersch has announced his approach to providing, if not relief from the threat, a way to get it off your mind for a while: a live-streamed concert each day. – Doug Ramsey
“Inspire us to be brave”
Thanks to a kind-hearted, quick-witted nurse in New York-Presbyterian’s cardio-thoracic ICU, I was able to see and speak to Mrs. T via Skype on Sunday night. – Terry Teachout
Why Do People Read/Watch Apocalyptic Fiction In Crises?
No one seems to fully agree on why reading books or watching movies about apocalyptic pandemics feels appealing during a real crisis with an actual contagious disease. Some readers claim that contagion fiction provides comfort, but others argue the opposite. – The Conversation
Movie Theatres Reopen In China As Threat Recedes For Now
No one is comfortable buying tickets yet (literally no one, as in zero people, in two of the provinces where theatres reopened), but the distributors had a plan for that: “Most of the films currently available are re-runs of recent and popular Chinese movies, a move that is intended to minimize risk.” – Variety
The Art Of Taking A Walk
How many of us today are able to free ourselves from the page and head out the door when we rise from our desks? Even abiding by the dictates of nature, breathing deeply out in the open air as we set our legs into motion, it’s likely we need to accomplish the undertaking as quickly and efficiently as possible. But in so doing, perhaps we still miss the essence of the activity itself. We forego the art of walking. – Aeon
Are We Making Our Decisions Or Are We Physically Reacting?
Is it possible that our experience of decision-making – the impression we have of making choices, indeed of having choices to make, sometimes hard ones – is entirely illusory? Is it possible that a chain of physical events in our bodies and brains must cause us to act in the way we do, whatever our experience of the process might be? – Aeon