AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Things You Can Hold
Good Morning,
Nostalgia is big. Physical game discs are all but gone, with preservationists bracing for what that means (The Verge). Meanwhile twentysomethings are hunting down grainy, flash-blown digital cameras from 2003 (NPR), and the mail-order catalog is staging a comeback aimed at shoppers who want to browse deliberately instead of reflexively (Salon). This isn’t just retro fetish, though. Turns out we may actually want to invest is getting to the things we want.
The platforms keep making the opposite bet. Spotify now auto-plays music videos at users who mostly want to hear albums (Wired), and Netflix stock is down 49% in a year (Los Angeles Times). Infinite frictionless content, it turns out, can get old.
The day’s hardest news comes from Nebraska, where the state is clawing back a third of a cultural endowment built on philanthropic gifts matched dollar-for-dollar with public money (NPR). The match was the innovation. It’s also the vulnerability: what a state gives, a state can take back.
And the Hollywood Bowl has a new sound system so good audiences can’t quite believe they’re outdoors (Los Angeles Times). Nobody misses the old version.
All of our stories below.
- Will Videogamers Lose All Access To Physical Games?
Looks like that future is not just coming but nearly here. “Game stores and preservationists also have to adjust to the fact that physical games are going to be harder to come by.” – The Verge
- Spotify’s Weird New User Experience Design Flaw
“There are a number of panels in the app, and the layout is confusing. The service constantly tracks your activity. The app also seems to have an odd hostility to playing actual albums.” And now? Auto-playing music videos. – Wired
- A Little Too Ironic That The Awards For Best TV Are Quite Hard To Find On TV
“The new leaned-down Emmys will only broadcast 19 categories, compared to last year’s 26.” And the word Primetime has been, well, removed. – Vulture
- Ghana’s Handpainted, Sensationalist, Often Inaccurate Film Posters Have Become Collectible Art
“Heavy J was creating a poster … for the animated fairytale The Little Mermaid. The man with the knife wasn’t a killer but the film’s kind-hearted prince, Eric. The skull was also unrelated to the story. ‘We add more to make people interested,’ said Heavy J.” – The Guardian (UK)
ISSUES
- Ghana’s Handpainted, Sensationalist, Often Inaccurate Film Posters Have Become Collectible Art
“Heavy J was creating a poster … for the animated fairytale The Little Mermaid. The man with the knife wasn’t a killer but the film’s kind-hearted prince, Eric. The skull was also unrelated to the story. ‘We add more to make people interested,’ said Heavy J.” – The Guardian (UK)
- As New Yorkers Brace For Flooding, The New New Museum Has Sprung A Pretty Big Leak
Yikes: “Video footage … shows water pooling on the gallery floor as staff members move quickly to place buckets beneath active leaks, as well as water streaming down the didactic for ‘New Humans: Memories of the Future.’” – ARTnews
- Speaking Of Nostalgia, Younger Adults Are Really Into Digital Cameras
What the actual heck? “The turn-of-the-millennium digital photo is hard to mistake: a bit grainy, sometimes fuzzy, overexposed in the center with a blinding flash, often date-stamped in red or orange. A nostalgic haze gives photos the feel of an instant memory.” – NPR
- Surrealists Were The Original Antifa
“While Surrealism is figured as a style in popular imagination — trippy, dreamy, and escapist, detached from reality in every way — (the exhibition) ‘In the Very Bowels of Change: Surrealism and Antifascism’ reminds just how much the movement was formed in response to the politics of its time.” – Art in America
- Oh, Great — Now They’ve Found Legionnaires’ Disease Bacteria At The Met Museum, Too
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has tested positive for traces of the bacteria linked to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, health officials announced Tuesday. The bacteria were previously detected at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, as authorities continue searching for the source of the outbreak.” – ARTnews
MEDIA
- Music Publishers Drop Lawsuits Against X, Which Drops Lawsuits Against Music Publishers
Why? No one’s saying: “In their legal papers, the companies gave no reason for the stipulation of dismissal and did not mention any settlement.” – The New York Times
- Nebraska’s Cultural Endowment Did Decades Of Great Work, But The State’s Finances May Kill It Off
“This unusual, public-private fund is made up of philanthropic donations matched dollar-for-dollar by the state” – and now the state has snatched back one third of the endowment to help balance the budget. – NPR
- Why Trump Is Fixated On Smithsonian History
People often joke about how Trumpism would like to return us to some version of the 1950s, when America supposedly was “great.” In this report, the administration has done just that. The report would prefer that nothing had ever happened since the ’50s to mar the White House’s polished, superficial, puerile version of America’s past. – The New York Times
- How Vanderbilt University Made Itself Competitive With The Ivy League
Twenty years ago, the school’s acceptance rate was 38%; now it’s under 5%, roughly equivalent to Yale’s, and its undergraduates are reportedly the happiest in the country. The change is the result of deliberate, planned effort by two successive presidents over 20 years. – New York Magazine (MSN)
- How Madrid Renters Are Using Art To Protest Landlords
When their homes came under threat, they instinctively reached for the tools they had to hand: their social and cultural capital. That’s how an apartment block in Madrid became a stage, broadcast on every news channel. – The Guardian
MUSIC
- Turning A Podcast Into A Graphic Novel Isn’t Cheap
But a $2 million Kickstarter probably helped a little. – CBR
- Why TikTok Has Become A Force In Book Buying
One of the reasons TikTok’s book-review videos, known collectively as BookTok, have become so popular—and powerful in the publishing world—is that they offer a human-based, quasi-critical recommendation portal for fans and genre devotees to connect, commiserate, and promote their favorite work. – The New Yorker
- Who’s Reading Less? It’s Older Americans, Not Younger
In 2003, older Americans read on average just under an hour each day — 58.5 minutes. By last year, that had fallen nearly by half, to roughly 32.4 minutes each day, a drop that represents the lion’s share of overall reading declines. – The New York Times
- Hong Kong Government Gives Ominous Warning To Booksellers
“Hong Kong’s top security official said Thursday that booksellers should ensure the titles they sell do not harm national security, a day after five people linked to two bookstores were arrested. The police operation on Wednesday was the third round of arrests targeting independent bookstores within four months.” – AP
- The Difference Between A Book And The Idea Of A Book
There is the book a writer writes, which is to say the actual words on the page, and then there is what I call its hologram—the shimmering, ethereal version of the book that the author must pitch to their publisher, and which their publisher then pitches to the public. – LitHub
PEOPLE
- Things You Can Hold
Good Morning,
Nostalgia is big. Physical game discs are all but gone, with preservationists bracing for what that means (The Verge). Meanwhile twentysomethings are hunting down grainy, flash-blown digital cameras from 2003 (NPR), and the mail-order catalog is staging a comeback aimed at shoppers who want to browse deliberately instead of reflexively (Salon). This isn’t just retro fetish, though. Turns out we may actually want to invest is getting to the things we want.
The platforms keep making the opposite bet. Spotify now auto-plays music videos at users who mostly want to hear albums (Wired), and Netflix stock is down 49% in a year (Los Angeles Times). Infinite frictionless content, it turns out, can get old.
The day’s hardest news comes from Nebraska, where the state is clawing back a third of a cultural endowment built on philanthropic gifts matched dollar-for-dollar with public money (NPR). The match was the innovation. It’s also the vulnerability: what a state gives, a state can take back.
And the Hollywood Bowl has a new sound system so good audiences can’t quite believe they’re outdoors (Los Angeles Times). Nobody misses the old version.
All of our stories below.
- Will Videogamers Lose All Access To Physical Games?
Looks like that future is not just coming but nearly here. “Game stores and preservationists also have to adjust to the fact that physical games are going to be harder to come by.” – The Verge
- Spotify’s Weird New User Experience Design Flaw
“There are a number of panels in the app, and the layout is confusing. The service constantly tracks your activity. The app also seems to have an odd hostility to playing actual albums.” And now? Auto-playing music videos. – Wired
- A Little Too Ironic That The Awards For Best TV Are Quite Hard To Find On TV
“The new leaned-down Emmys will only broadcast 19 categories, compared to last year’s 26.” And the word Primetime has been, well, removed. – Vulture
- Ghana’s Handpainted, Sensationalist, Often Inaccurate Film Posters Have Become Collectible Art
“Heavy J was creating a poster … for the animated fairytale The Little Mermaid. The man with the knife wasn’t a killer but the film’s kind-hearted prince, Eric. The skull was also unrelated to the story. ‘We add more to make people interested,’ said Heavy J.” – The Guardian (UK)
PEOPLE
- Things You Can Hold
Good Morning,
Nostalgia is big. Physical game discs are all but gone, with preservationists bracing for what that means (The Verge). Meanwhile twentysomethings are hunting down grainy, flash-blown digital cameras from 2003 (NPR), and the mail-order catalog is staging a comeback aimed at shoppers who want to browse deliberately instead of reflexively (Salon). This isn’t just retro fetish, though. Turns out we may actually want to invest is getting to the things we want.
The platforms keep making the opposite bet. Spotify now auto-plays music videos at users who mostly want to hear albums (Wired), and Netflix stock is down 49% in a year (Los Angeles Times). Infinite frictionless content, it turns out, can get old.
The day’s hardest news comes from Nebraska, where the state is clawing back a third of a cultural endowment built on philanthropic gifts matched dollar-for-dollar with public money (NPR). The match was the innovation. It’s also the vulnerability: what a state gives, a state can take back.
And the Hollywood Bowl has a new sound system so good audiences can’t quite believe they’re outdoors (Los Angeles Times). Nobody misses the old version.
All of our stories below.
- Will Videogamers Lose All Access To Physical Games?
Looks like that future is not just coming but nearly here. “Game stores and preservationists also have to adjust to the fact that physical games are going to be harder to come by.” – The Verge
- Spotify’s Weird New User Experience Design Flaw
“There are a number of panels in the app, and the layout is confusing. The service constantly tracks your activity. The app also seems to have an odd hostility to playing actual albums.” And now? Auto-playing music videos. – Wired
- A Little Too Ironic That The Awards For Best TV Are Quite Hard To Find On TV
“The new leaned-down Emmys will only broadcast 19 categories, compared to last year’s 26.” And the word Primetime has been, well, removed. – Vulture
- Ghana’s Handpainted, Sensationalist, Often Inaccurate Film Posters Have Become Collectible Art
“Heavy J was creating a poster … for the animated fairytale The Little Mermaid. The man with the knife wasn’t a killer but the film’s kind-hearted prince, Eric. The skull was also unrelated to the story. ‘We add more to make people interested,’ said Heavy J.” – The Guardian (UK)
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Spotify’s Weird New User Experience Design Flaw
“There are a number of panels in the app, and the layout is confusing. The service constantly tracks your activity. The app also seems to have an odd hostility to playing actual albums.” And now? Auto-playing music videos. – Wired
- The Internet Killed The Mail-Order Catalog
But mail-order catalogs might make a comeback, thanks to Millennial and Gen-Z nostalgia. “There’s a stark contrast between the frantic sense of urgency online retail often whips up … and the catalog’s invitation to flip, peruse, think, rethink — basically, to shop deliberately rather than reflexively.” – Salon
- AI-Created Music – What We Can Learn From Copyright History
AI can now generate songs, images, novels and artworks in seconds. Many of these works are already being streamed, licensed and sold. This raises an increasingly important question: should works produced without direct human authorship receive copyright protection? – The Conversation
- We Should Worry About How AI Might Change Us With Its Use
How, then, could an automated oracle help? It cannot tell you what to feel, because feeling is not something you can summon by obedience. But neither can it settle the matter by telling you what to do. Reasons matter, and to be a morally responsible agent you must reason for yourself. – Humanist Review
- What If Smartphones Are Not Responsible For What Ails Our Kids?
Which change that happened 15 years ago was the real source of so much misery for children? “You can’t run experiments on history,” Haidt said, so we’ll never be able to prove that smartphones and social media caused the steep decline in youth mental health. – The Atlantic