“Since my boyhood, the rise of digital connectivity has transformed every human interaction, from buying a sandwich to anal sex. The period has coincided with a crisis of intimacy. A recent survey of 20,000 Americans found that almost half suffered from loneliness, which now qualifies as a chronic public health problem. Narcissism, a related condition, has been rising over 30 years of clinical studies and has become so widespread and so fundamental to all aspects of culture that the question is whether it can properly be identified as a pathology any longer.”
Tag: 10.10.18
The Indestructible Placido Domingo At 77
At the point in his career — in his 50s, maybe, or early 60s — at which anyone might reasonably expect his voice to have run its course, Domingo politely but firmly declined to step down. And with that, the curtain gradually went up on one of the most astonishing second acts the opera world has ever known.
Ambient Literature: The Latest High-Tech Hack Of The Reading Experience
“Using data from your smartphone such as weather, location and time, the programme interacts with the reader to tell the narrative in a unique and individualised way. No two stories will ever be the same experience. The technology enables the narrative to sync to the reader’s surroundings. So if it’s raining in real life, it will start raining in the story, if you’re sitting in a cafe, the action will take place in a cafe.”
‘Automation Divine’: Early Computer Music And The Selling Of The Cold War
“Matthew Guerrieri dives deep into something particular about the early days of computer music in the United States. It got its start, quite literally, in the off-hour downtime of the military-industrial complex.”
Have We Screwed Up The Balance Between Idleness And Work?
Like Montaigne, who played a diffident but competent role in politics—he was mayor of Bordeaux—most of us forge a rotten compromise between idleness and industry. What else can we do? We see the flourishing of life in the little moments, as we see the scale of its shirked responsibilities. To manage our ambivalence is necessary work.
Music That Explores What Gentrification “Sounds” Like
With an ensemble of six vocalists and 18 instrumentalists, the 80-minute “Place” obliquely yet obsessively mulls gentrification; displacement; the powers and limitations of white male privilege; and the intersection of shifts in communities and families, including the birth of Mr. Hearne’s children and the breakup of his marriage.
Power Of Speech: How Credibility Gets Assigned
The Kavanaugh hearings bring up an interesting linguistic phenomenon. Without thinking, we might assume a nebulous, unquestionable power belongs to the words of the person who succeeds to some office, whether it be the President, a Senator, or a Supreme Court Justice. Authority is almost godlike in this way. This power sometimes seems vast and immovable. But many people are waking up to the fact that this power is very much constructed, through laws and authority agreed upon and given by a very human collective, within a system of their making, in order for a community to work together to perform extraordinary, almost miraculous feats (such as building a civilization or society).
How Two New Films Take On The 2011 Oslo Massacres
On 22 July 2011, the far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik used a car bomb to kill eight people and injure 209 in downtown Oslo, then took a ferry to a youth camp on Utøya island, where he shot 102 people, 69 of whom died. Paul Greengrass’s 22 July is a docudrama depicting the attacks and Breivik’s trial; Erik Poppe, who wanted to keep Breivik off the screen entirely, made his Utøya – July 22 as “one long, seemingly unbroken take that follows one young girl on Utøya experiencing the attack in 90 minutes of real time.”
Ovid, Patron Saint Of Pickup Artists: How The ‘Red Pill’ Guys Are (Mis-)Appropriating Classical Lit
Ashley Fetters talks with classics scholar Donna Zuckerberg (yes, Mark’s sister) about what the “Red Pill” community — “the corner of the internet dominated by men’s-rights activists, the alt-right, pickup artists, and the sex-eschewing communities known as Men Going Their Own Way” — finds in these ancient Latin books (e.g., Ovid’s Ars Amatoria) and how they misread and misuse the texts.
Can We Just Admit That Banksy’s Self-Shredding Painting Did Its Job(s) Extremely Well?
Ben Davis argues that all those folks fulminating over this event — and there are a lot of them, with many different takes (“There are full-on Truthers out there, scrutinizing every frame and angle of the whole thing, as well as Denialists, doubting that it even happened at all”) — are missing the Banksyan genius of it. “A very important concept in street art is placement. Street art fans will be very impressed by where and how a tag was placed … Obviously, the Sotheby’s prank has to be appreciated mainly, simply, as a great placement.” What’s more, it has placed the auction house smack in the middle of the Liar’s Paradox.