Tag: 03.25.19

TV Exec And Collector Blake Byrne, 83

Before he got into collecting, Byrne “didn’t even know what I liked,” he recalled in a 2015 interview with Art+Auction magazine. New York dealer Jack Tilton suggested that he attend Art Basel, and after two trips to Switzerland, he bought six pieces in 1988 on a budget of $60,000. “That was the beginning of the collection,” he said. “After I got those first six, I was bitten.” – The Hollywood Reporter

You Know The Straw Man Fallacy — Here’s The Burning Man Fallacy (Which You’ve Definitely Seen In Action)

“It is not composed simply of a single distortion, but rather a slew of mischaracterizations bent on representing one’s opponents in the worst light. … In deploying the burning man fallacy, one not only stuffs an opposing figure with straw, but then proceeds to surround it with more tinder and additional flammable material, with the intention of committing the view at issue to the flames, along with whole traditions, movements, and ways of thinking.” – 3 Quarks Daily

Those Kids Whose Rich Parents Bribe Their Way Into Elite Colleges? Here’s What It’s Like To Teach Them

“I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known … In this setting, where teaching quality is at a premium and students expect faculty to give them extensive personal attention, the presence of unqualified students admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster.” – The Guardian

China Allows Cinemas To Screen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, But Only With The Gay Parts Removed

“Several minutes of footage were edited out of the film, including scenes of two men kissing and the word ‘gay’. There has been significant reaction to the film’s release online. … Though some [social media] users complained of ‘half watching and half guessing’ as a result of the deleted scenes, others were pleased the film had been released at all.” – BBC

Why We Procrastinate

It’s not about self-control. Instead, it’s more like (not very good) emotion management. “Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.” – The New York Times

Artificial Intelligence Can Now Write Fiction. Should Novelists Be Worried?

Maybe not, not yet. Garbage in (this AI was fed a lot of Reddit recommendations, ahem), garbage out: “Right now, novelists don’t seem to have much to fear. Fed the opening line of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’ – the machine continued the narrative as follows: ‘I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science.'” – The Guardian (UK)

‘Affect Theory’ And How It Explains Living In 2019 America

So what is “affect theory”? “Under its influence, critics attended to affective charge [in society]. They saw our world as shaped not simply by narratives and arguments but also by nonlinguistic effects — by mood, by atmosphere, by feelings.” Writer Hua Hsu looks at the work of one of affect theory’s main proponents today: Lauren Berlant, co-founder of the Feel Tank (as opposed to think tank) Chicago, and her idea of the “cruel optimism” Americans hang on to. – The New Yorker