“Nielsen BookScan reports that a total of £83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas, which marks the highest since 2007.” Perhaps not entirely coincidental that the (previously) final Harry Potter book was published in … 2007.
Tag: 01.07.16
This Year’s Oscar Swag Bag Is Worth $200K
“Oscar nominees in the acting and directing categories at this month’s Academy Awards will be given a 10-day, first-class trip to Israel valued at $55,000, included among other goodies in their $200,000 gift bag.”
The Massive, And Strange, New Cultural Center That Was The Kirchners’ Parting Gift To Argentina
Housed in the handsome (and enormous) old Buenos Aires central post office, with up to 50 performance spaces, a full modern art museum, a brand-new 1,800-seat concert hall called “the Blue Whale” and resting on concrete pillars, no signs, and way too many staffers, the Centro Cultural Kirchner has divided opinion as sharply as the couple themselves did.
Is The Internet Making It Difficult For Us To Read Deeply?
“Done badly (which is to say, done cynically), the Internet reduces us to mindless clickers, racing numbly to the bottom of a bottomless feed; but done well, it has the potential to expand and augment the very contemplative space that we have prized in ourselves ever since we learned to read without moving our lips.”
How Humans Learn What Constitutes ‘Fairness’
Maria Konnikova looks at research into when – and where – children don’t accept an uneven distribution of goodies, even if the unevenness is in their favor.
How The Naming And Classification Of Clouds Transformed Landscape Painting
“The clouds in many 19th-century European paintings look drastically different than those in the 18th century. There are layers to their texture, with whisps of cirrus clouds flying over billowing cumulus, and stratus hovering low. Clouds weren’t classified by type until 1802, and their subsequent study influenced artists from John Constable to J. M. W. Turner.”
Short Stories Used To Be Able To Shock Us. No More.
“Perhaps the short story in America has matured to a point where the form can no longer be shocked.”
Does Theatre Need To Have Some Clarity, Or Is Hanging Out, Confused But Together, Cool?
“We were ushered into the New Ohio Theatre, where the seats had been replaced by red felt mats, and we lay down for an hour, while the sun (or moon) before us turned from red to orange to silver to white and back again, and the sound track offered the sound of crickets, and waves, and the occasional folk song, and perhaps the distant yelps of a dingo. It was a lovely rest period, more pleasant and certainly longer than any I spent in kindergarten.”
Netflix Used Big Data To Design ‘House Of Cards’ As A Big Hit
But big data only goes so far: “Amazon’s show wasn’t a booming success because they used data all the way. Netflix, however, looked at what users like and used that insight to think up a concept for what they believed would be a hit show, and it clearly worked.”
The Lyric Opera Gets More Renee Fleming And More New Voices
“Modeled after the ‘American Voices’ initiative Fleming brought to Washington’s Kennedy Center in 2013, ‘Chicago Voices’ will partner Lyric’s community engagement department, Lyric Unlimited, with the Chicago Public Library, Chicago History Museum and Columbia College Chicago to engage and interact with city residents in various disciplines and musical genres.”