ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

The False Promises Of Being More Productive

Time was the problem, I assumed: There was enough of it; I just wasn’t using it right. Or maybe the problem was my attention span. I couldn’t focus. - Esquire

Today Isn’t The Only Day To Avoid Getting Tricked Online

Hinst for fake-info spotting every day of the year: “Stop when you see something that's 'too good to be true, or too crazy to be believable, or too-anger inducing.’” - NPR

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Thinks We Should Be Listening To Older Women All Year Long

In pursuit of info, the first season of the actor’s podcast “featured guests like Carol Burnett (90), Isabel Allende (81) and Darlene Love (82). The second ... includes Julie Andrews (88), Patti Smith (77) and Ina Garten (76).” That’s many years of accumulated ideas, and, sometimes, wisdom. - The New York Times

Facebook Is Cutting Its News Tab For Those In The US And Australia

The feature debuted in 2019, and has already been cut in France, Germany, and the U.K. "The change comes as tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation.” - Chicago Sun-Times (AP)

We’re In A Golden Age Of Campy TV Shows

“We are positively drowning in shows about the glitzy world of the well-to-do that I can only—facetiously, of course—describe as being catnip for a gay man with a streaming subscription." - Slate

Ten Typical Behaviors Of Creative People

Creative people are uncomfortable with the status quo. For them, a creative life is one of options, opportunities, and alternatives. They do not always accept what others do; rather, they seek multiple responses and views. - Psychology Today

The AI-Created Junk Polluting Our Culture

It’s unclear what the ethical line is between scam and regular usage. Some A.I.-generated scams are easy to identify, like the medical journal paper featuring a cartoon rat sporting enormous genitalia. Many others are more insidious, like the mislabeled and hallucinated regulatory pathway. - The New York Times

For Centuries The Dutch Have Fought Back The Water. In Climate Change Maybe Cities Float Above The Water?

 “I think some bowls should be full,” he said, suggesting that flooding the land would amount to little more than a natural evolution of a man-made system, not unlike the way skyscrapers transformed cities a century ago. “It’s just an update to the machine.” - The New Yorker

Toymakers Design Human Characteristics Into Their Work. And AI?

Large language models can seem to do more than what we ask them to; they exhibit something that we might call creativity if a human did it. What is actually happening in these moments? - The New Yorker

How Your “Digital Twin” Will Change The World

In the last decade, thanks to advances in AI, the internet of things, machine learning and sensor technologies, the fantasy of digital twins has taken off. BMW has created a digital twin of a production plant in Bavaria. Boeing is using digital twins to design airplanes. - Noema

Physical Activity Is Good For Fitness. It’s Even Better For Creativity

Often, when we hear about the benefits of physical activity, researchers are really referring to the benefits of fitness – the product of regular and repeated physical activity. But what’s interesting about creativity is that it appears to be enhanced through the very act of moving the body. - The Guardian

Spotify, Perhaps Inevitably, Has Added Video Classes

The video part seems inevitable, anyway. The classes part? It’s for UK users only, and are “video-based lessons from BBC Maestro, Skillshare, Thinkific, and PlayVirtuoso.” That’s because Spotify’s data say that people enjoy education and self-help-based podcasts. - The Verge

Large Language Models Actually Haven’t Improved That Much

It’s all in the measurement, and the tricks therein. - Wired

We’re Culturally So Into An Apocalypse, But Why?

"This is not the religious end of time, or eschaton, that has fascinated humanity for thousands of years, but the end of the world as a pervasive mood – a vibe." - The Guardian (UK)

What We’re Starting To Understand About Aging

While we think of our genes as being set from birth, DNA does accumulate changes over the years. Sometimes errors are introduced when a cell divides, a spontaneous typo emerging when the DNA is copied and pasted from one cell into another. Mutations can also occur as a result of environmental exposures. - The New York Times

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