AJ Four Ways:
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- The End Of Nostalgia?
What if businesses become too good at selling nostalgia? Research I carried out with colleagues suggests that digital technology is changing nostalgia itself. Ironically, by making the past permanently available, companies may be weakening the very notion they are trying to sell. – The Conversation
- All Novels Are Boring Until They’re Not
I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. – Public Books
- Missouri PBS Channel Fears It’s Lost 70 Years Of Archival Data
Nine PBS in St. Louis filed a lawsuit against information management corporation Iron Mountain Data Centers July 28, seeking to recover over 50 terabytes of archival materials stored in one of the company’s Denver-based data centers. – Current
- Mamdani Announces Free Broadway Tickets For Students
“There are so many kids growing up in our city for whom Broadway feels as if it is a world away, like something that only belongs to other people. We are together today to prove differently, to make it possible for kids from Sheepshead Bay to Morrisania (no matter how much money their parents make) to enter that different world. – Playbill
- Close The Kennedy Center? It Might Be The Best Option
Given how thoroughly Trump’s leadership has destroyed the center’s viability as a presenting organization, that is probably the best of a slew of bad options. – Washington Post
- AI Has Plunged Publishing Into Chaos
The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. – The Wall Street Journal
- Warning: Screen Time Is Having An Impact On Kids’ Cognitive Abilities
“Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.” – The Guardian
- AI News Sites Are Now Reporting (And Breaking) News
RuntimeWire has been operating since May, publishing nearly 2,000 stories that it sources by crawling the internet, including court databases, web forums, traditional and new media, company filings, social feeds, and more. – Wired
- How AI Will Damage Children’s Brain Development
During the most foundational period of brain development, social interaction of the sort that AI can now emulate isn’t entertainment for the developing brain. It’s nutrition. Once you see it that way, the right parallel snaps into focus. A more apt comparison than social media is food—more precisely, processed food. – The Atlantic
- Our Ability To Search The Internet Is Dying
Search can no longer pretend to be a neutral gateway to a stable body of knowledge. While the web has always been organized around intermediaries that shape what survives online and who sees it, the internet’s archival function is today breaking down under relentless pressure from stakeholders with very different—and often conflicting—priorities. – The Walrus
- The Anti-AI ‘Hand-Designed’ Trend Is Big, But Also Filled With Grift
“Most telling is Claude’s branding, incorporating hand-drawn illustrations and details that attempt to tell the world, ‘Hey, we’re the more human AI.’” – Fast Company
- Confirmed: Amazon Is Scanning And Then Ripping Up Rare Books
Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.” – 404 Media
- Once Again, Police Are Claiming Classical Music Soothes Crowds Of Rowdy Youth
In one British McDonald’s, a hot spot for fighting and generally antisocial behavior, “measures were brought in including a playlist of classical music in the evenings.” – BBC (Yahoo)
- The Current Guy Uses AI To Claim Ballroom Approval From A Long-Dead Leader
The 47th president shared “a series of seemingly AI-generated images … and a short video in which Trump and Washington stroll through the still-unbuilt ballroom. ‘Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas on this great Military Complex/Ballroom!’ Trump captioned the 10-second video.” – Salon
- Art Spiegelman Doesn’t See A Way Out Of The U.S. Political Mess
The man who created Maus has some worries: “The media are struggling with how to convey the stakes in this post-truth era, he explains, the courts are packed with Trump appointees, democratic norms have been destroyed, and there is no effective opposition.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Kristen Bell Joins The Savannah Bananas For One Surprise Night
“Bell … performed a medley with Savannah Bananas player Derek Klena, who’s also a Tony-nominated Broadway star. With songs from Bell’s hit film Frozen, the musical Wicked and more, the two sang their hearts out in front of a packed house of shocked fans.” – Today Show
- It’s Not Just US Booksellers Noticing A Gaping Maw Coming For Used Books
The booksellers are wondering how they’re supposed to feel. Tey’re “are “uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed – even if they admit not every title needs to be saved.” – BBC
- The Dream Of A ‘Red State Hollywood’ Usually Founders On A Couple Of Things
“No one wants more uncertainty, and certainly no one wants this chaos. And let’s face it, no one really wants to move from Beverly Hills to Nashville.” – The New York Times
- Maybe Celebrities Shouldn’t Be Recording Personal Videos For People Who Pay?
A Heated Rivalry actor had to “pause” his account on Cameo after possibly revealing that they’re filming two seasons of the hit show at once. – CBC
- Founding Literary Publications As One’s Home Is Shelled To Rubble
“I began asking myself: what will remain of this experience if it is not written down?” – LitHub
- Portland’s Newest Dance Group Performs To Tens Of Thousands Of People
That’s because the Firewerks are dancing in the Moda Center, the home of the new WNBA team the Portland Fire. “I don’t think any of us really knew what we were walking into. We were just excited about this new dance opportunity in Portland,” says one Firewerk. – Oregon ArtsWatch
- Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Gets To Tell Your Family’s Story?
“The trauma of the Holocaust has lived beneath the surface of daily life for decades, too painful to confront. But now second- and third-generation family members are getting access to archives of collaboration. In some cases, it’s opening old wounds.” – The New York Times
- Roku’s New 24 Hour Slop Channel Is An Abomination
For instance: “There’s a seven-minute … tale of a mountain biker who rushes straight from a race to support his wife who’s giving birth, only to get killed by the very ambulance carrying her—all narrated from the POV of his bike.” – Slate
- As Some Paintings Are Found, Art Thieves Hit A Sicilian Museum
In the morning, good news about an art theft from March. Then came the evening. “Thieves got past the alarm system at Messina’s Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe), and broke open a security case. They soon left with four wooden panels.” – NPR
- Zale Perry, Early Acquatic Star For Hollywood And Equally Early Acid Tripper, Has Died At 93
Perry was “a depth-defying scuba diver and underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.” – The New York Times
- American Classical Music at 250, Take Six — The Ford Foundation’s Misguided Philanthropy
Since filing a New York Times piece on the perilous state of American classical music 250 years since the nation’s
- Not Only Is The Rumpus Alive, But It’s Launching A Spanish-Language Literary Magazine
From the editors: “Rather than translating existing work from The Rumpus, El Alboroto will commission and publish original Spanish-language writing spanning cultural criticism, personal essays, interviews, fiction, poetry and comics.” – LitHub
- Ian Frazier Wrote A Humorous Piece About Wile E. Coyote In The New Yorker In 1990
And now, after an improbable path whose twists and turns even the Roadrunner would have a hard time navigating, it’s a feature film. – The New York Times
- Netflix Was Getting Into Gaming For A Bit There, But Now It’s Closing Gaming Studios All Over The Place
“Games on Netflix have had mixed results,” but the plan is to focus on kids and sports, or so it seems. So much for narrative synergy. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- Good News For News Publishers? From AI?
Well, from Apple, in any case: “The pay-as-you-go plan would see publishers paid only when Siri AI uses their content,” which is similar to the Apple News+ model for print (er, digital). – Nieman Lab
- Even In Oxford, Romantasy Books Are Taking Off
And NPR gets right down to it with the owner: What is “Monster smut,” and why is it so popular right now? – NPR
- How To Solve The So-Called Literacy Crisis, With Fun And Joy
In groups, sometimes with full-throated yawps, it’s time to take back public, communal reading. – The New York Times
- Apparently, Herman Melville Was A Total Smokeshow
At least that’s what his sculptor says. “She made him seem like the kind of guy who, in my opinion, could stare into your soul and then kiss you until you forget your own name.” – Boston Globe
- Cicero Commissioned An Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System That We Still Use
“You can still type a symbol originally invented for Cicero nearly 21 centuries ago — at least if you configure your keyboard properly.” – Open Culture
- Disney’s Plan For Generation Alpha And Beyond
The big thing is “Disney’s push into the booming vertical media space — aka microdramas and other shortform clips designed to be viewed on mobile phones .” – Variety
