What does transgression mean now – and what are artists transgressing against? Laura Miller: “Much of what transgressive art rebels against is politeness, but politeness has many dimensions. It may dictate that you never swear or discuss sex, religion, or politics in ‘mixed company.’ And it also decrees that you don’t use racial slurs when referring to groups you don’t belong to.” Some (not so great) artists can’t figure out the distinction. – Slate
Category: ideas
Why Do Reboots Attract Such Cultural Anxiety ?
And yes, we are talking (again) about Ghostbusters, but “every rebooted franchise plays off our longing for the past—the implicit promise that it can make us feel just like we did the first time. We know, if only subconsciously, that this isn’t possible. Deep down, we resent it.” – AV Club
Can Happiness Be Measured (By Economists)?
Some are trying. One, who has written a book called Happiness, thinks that “happiness should become the goal of policy and the progress of national happiness should be measured and analyzed.” – LitHub
Google Ethicist: Here’s How Technology Hijacks Your Mind
“Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how those choices are manipulated upstream by menus we didn’t choose in the first place. This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize enough how deep this insight is.” – Medium
How The MAGA Teen Video Crystallizes America’s Culture Wars, Despite Meaning (In The End) Almost Nothing In Itself
“This is just the latest instance of a phenomenon you could call ‘event politics’ — that familiar flurry of knee-jerk responses sparked by a single image or clip that a little too perfectly illustrates one side’s worldview.” Lili Loofbourow looks at what event politics signifies (“a response to uncertainty”) and why it spreads so fast (“we’re in a moment when so much is truly bananas — the president can’t spell hamburgers and was investigated by the FBI for being a possible Russian agent, to pick two examples at random — that reassuring framings are welcome.”) — Slate
What Happened When Oslo Banned Cars
“There are basically no cars,” says Axel Bentsen, CEO of Urban Sharing, the company that runs Oslo City Bike, the local bike-share system. The city’s changes are designed, in part, to help improve air quality and fight climate change, but the difference in the quality of life is more immediate. — Fast Company
Why You Might Want To Use Paper Maps In The Age Of GPS
A glance at the research reveals that the paper map still thrives in the digital era, and there are distinct advantages to using print maps. – CityLab
Humanity’s Cognitive Diversity Is Narrowing. This May Be A Big Problem
On all continents, even in the world’s remotest regions, indigenous people are swapping their distinctive ways of parsing the world for Western, globalised ones. As a result, human cognitive diversity is dwindling – and, sadly, those of us who study the mind had only just begun to appreciate it. – Aeon
The Internet Broke Journalism… And It Can’t Be Fixed
Clay Shirky back in 2009: “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke. With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem. – Clay Shirky
All-Or-Nothing? Following Dreams Is Fine, But It’s Not Everything
Advocates of dream-following, of commitment and career leaps of faith, often say: ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’ They might be right about that (actually, they almost certainly are). But here’s the rub: regret is not the sole preserve of the cautious compromiser. A failure to compromise can also beget future unhappiness. – Aeon