“YouTube is something that looks like reality, but it is distorted to make you spend more time online. The recommendation algorithm is not optimising for what is truthful, or balanced, or healthy for democracy.”
Category: AUDIENCE
Today’s Bands Making It By Playing More, Smaller Markets
“If you’re only playing 10 or 12 or 15 markets, and touring is the income-generator, there’s a real temptation to play markets too often. It’s a real tough balancing act between playing often enough in the same market, or market area, and playing too much.”
The Four Tribes Of Art Collectors
“The most enjoyable part of leading the art division of a private bank is working with the great characters of the art market. In my experience, serious collectors tend to fall into one of four ‘tribes,’ each with their own behaviors, insecurities, strengths, and motivations for seeking, acquiring, and appreciating art.” Herewith, Evan Beard of Bank of America taxonomizes The Connoisseur, The Enterprising Collector, The Aesthete, and The Trophy Hunter.
Ten Ways To Be The Most Obnoxious Possible Theatergoer
Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks offers a foolproof guide.
How Urban Design Polices Public Space
Hostile design–whereby public spaces are modified to deter certain activities such as rough sleeping and skateboarding–is a “stealthy way of policing public space. These designs legitimise the point of view that homeless people are the enemy. Instead they need support, often with addiction or mental health.”
How Is It We Came To Hate Talking On Our Phones?
Not only are phone calls unstable, but even when they connect and stay connected in a technical sense, you still can’t hear well enough to feel connected in a social one. By their very nature, mobile phones make telephony seem unreliable.
So What Was Manhattan’s Lincoln Plaza Cinema *Really* Like? This. (And Maybe This Is Why It’s Closing)
“Irritated cross talk and loud quarrels, whether between couples or random filmgoers, was such a mainstay of the Lincoln Plaza experience that last fall, my wife and I made a point of going there to see The Meyerowitz Stories, with Dustin Hoffman playing an ill-tempered sculptor and bad father, because we knew it would be like seeing the film in Sensurround.” And, found Bruce Handy, it was – even at a weekday matinee.
Museum Takes Down Painting Of Naked Nymphs – To ‘Prompt Conversation’
“It is a painting that shows pubescent, naked nymphs tempting a handsome young man to his doom, but is it an erotic Victorian fantasy too far, and one which, in the current climate, is unsuitable and offensive to modern audiences? Manchester Art Gallery has asked the question after removing John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs” – and visitors are leaving their answers on Post-It notes on the wall.
What If The Met Museum Did Less With More?
Serious attention to these areas alone would negate the need for a $25 admission charge, which incidentally is more than three times America’s minimum hourly wage. Given that the trustees didn’t put the brakes on the spending spree long ago, isn’t a penitential boost in their annual giving appropriate?
Remember When The iPad Was Going To Transform Publishing?
“I’m not saying News Corp. or Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue and GQ, would have been worth as much as Google if they hadn’t bought into the iPad hype. But they did lose precious time and money following Apple down the iPad rabbit hole when they could have focused on Facebook, internet video, smartphone apps, mobile websites, their own subscription products or other promising areas. Newspaper and magazine publishers no longer treat the iPad as a priority, if they devote resources to it at all.”