Category: people

A researcher and executive over the years at Xerox, Apple, Yahoo, and Amazon, Tesler had enormous influence over the experience most people have when using a personal computer today: in addition to cut-copy-and-paste, he developed such basics as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get, meaning what you print out should look like what was on your screen), double-clicking, and how hard you need to press a mouse button. Indeed, he was a pioneer in simply asking regular users, as opposed to programmers, how they wanted their computers to work. – The Washington Post

The Wrights became known as “the Medicis of Seattle,” especially renowned for their marvelous art collection. – Seattle Times

He has a history of handling thorny issues like cybercrime and data privacy. As a Parliamentary Secretary in Theresa May’s cabinet office, Dowden was the Minister for Implementation of the Government’s technology strategy.  Though the new BBC licence fee and rolling out gigabit broadband will be pressing tasks, Dowden’s expertise and interest in digital matters could be good news for the creative industries. – Arts Professional

She began her professional career in her native Melbourne at age 9, went to England and joined the RSC at 26, and was a founding member of Tyrone Guthrie’s theatre company in Minneapolis. Though she appeared occasionally in TV and film, she was most famous for her stage performances. She won Tonys for playing Miss Jean Brodie, Medea, Maria Callas (in Master Class), and (her first) for a double-bill of Tennessee Williams one-acts that ran for a week. – The New York Times

“[He] was a master of shaggy-dog stories set on the American frontier or just beyond the Southern border, where his characters journeyed to recoup a debt, mete out justice or track down a runaway spouse. … By 1998, when author and journalist Ron Rosenbaum called him ‘our least-known great novelist,’ four of his five books were out of print.” – The Washington Post

When the ever-provocative protest artist put online sexual images and messages sent to a woman by former Macron aide Benjamin Griveaux, thus driving him from the race for mayor of Paris, Pavlensky was violating France’s revenge-porn law, which carries penalties of up to two years in prison and a €60,000 fine. Pavlensky, who is in France on political asylum from his native Russia, and his girlfriend (the alleged recipient of Griveaux’s sexts) are being held by police. – Deutsche Welle

A conductor, pianist and composer who became the Netherlands’, and one of Europe’s, leading specialists in new classical music, de Leeuw founded what is now the Asko | Schönberg ensemble in 1974, recorded a landmark LP set of Satie’s piano works, had a remarkable late-life artistic partnership with soprano Barbara Hannigan, and worked closely with composers from Ligeti and Kurtág to Ustvolskaya and Knussen and, above all, Louis Andriessen. – Presto Classical

Yuval Noah Harari did not invent Big History, but he updated it with hints of self-help and futurology, as well as a high-altitude, almost nihilistic composure about human suffering. He attached the time frame of aeons to the time frame of punditry—of now, and soon. His narrative of flux, of revolution after revolution, ended urgently, and perhaps conveniently, with a cliffhanger. “Sapiens,” while acknowledging that “history teaches us that what seems to be just around the corner may never materialise,” suggests that our species is on the verge of a radical redesign. – The New Yorker

Its abstract questions provoked some surprising insights into the singer’s mind. Viewers learnt that Eilish used to dream of working at Jamba Juice or Trader Joe’s, and once wore a wig out to dinner to avoid attracting attention — but she doesn’t want to go back to being anonymous. – TheNextWeb