Yearly Archives: 2023
Protests Over New Orleans Museum Hiring White Curator For African Collection
On paper, Maples seemed suited for the job. But criticism quickly arose, because NOMA had selected a White person to manage the collection of...
The Boomers Never Had A Chance
The Boomers’ careers followed behind a glut of Traditionalists still in their prime. Disproportionately, the Baby Boomers never made it to the seats of...
Sarah Silverman Sues OpenAI Over Copyright
Their lawsuits each contain six counts of various types of copyright violations, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition. The authors are looking for statutory...
AI Explodes Copyright Issues
I’ve created a story using my imagination—but to do that I’ve used an AI helper. So who wrote the tale? And who gets paid...
Study: What Nobel Winners Do (Or Don’t) After Winning
Winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine tend to reduce their research output after claiming the prestigious honor, according to a new study –...
The Artistic Costs Of Censoring In Movies
Artful jump cuts can illuminate all kinds of interesting associations between images. Bad ones just create bumps in logic; they’re disorienting in a way...
How ‘In Cold Blood’ Destroyed Truman Capote
"Overnight, Capote catapulted from a mere darling of the literary world to a full-fledged global celebrity on a par with the likes of rockstars...
Shedding New Light On The Troubles
"A quarter of a century after the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles, a documentary series has scraped away the familiar narratives and...
Theatres Are Now Trying To Tempt New Audiences With Virtual Reality
"To watch a show the customer has to insert their phone into the VR device. Once the phone is place, the users strap the...
How Tracy Chapman Made Country Music History
"More than three decades after Chapman’s 'Fast Car' dropped, ... drove to the top of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart" as a Luke Combs...
Half Of Britain’s Empire Cinema Chain Shutter, With 150 Jobs Lost And Cities Losing...
"Staff apparently turned up for work at branches on Friday to find notes on windows explaining they were closing down." This leaves Sunderland (yes,...
How Do You Invent A Language That Half A Million People Want To Learn...
"You learn to say 'The woman is sweating' before that most basic greeting, 'Hello.' An incongruously cheerful cartoon asks you to translate 'All men...
A Library Book Comes Back 119 Years Late
Good thing fines are mostly a thing of the past, eh? "This came back in extremely good condition. ... Someone obviously kept this on...
The Repurposed Burlap Coffee Bags Of Henry V
The set designer for the production at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival: "It just immediately added a layer that I don't think...
A Thumbs-Up Emoji Can Be A Contract, Court Says
"The ruling shows how ingrained emojis are in modern culture, also that so much of our daily communication happens via text. The playful symbols...
The Set Used For The Banshees Of Inisherin Is Now A Real Pub, Open...
"The film set pub lay for a year-and-a-half in a yard on Achill Island - and when Luke offered to buy it from...
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Poet And Activist, Dead At 76
Pratt, originally from Alabama, "moved between the worlds of literature, scholarship and activism over nearly five decades as the LGBTQ+ community achieved gains such...
Netflix Gets Deeper Into Europe With Deal In Germany
The deal gives the streamer access to upcoming films "involving Jella Haase, Peter Saarsgard, Ben Chaplin, John Magaro, Leonie Benesch, Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens,...
A Trial May Determine Which Of Aretha Franklin’s Handwritten Wills Is Valid
Shall it be the will in the cupboard, or the will from the sofa cushions? "I think they all wish this had been settled...
Puritanical British Transport Bans Theatre Ad Featuring Wedding Cake
Just what we need: More joyless, foolish bureaucrats quashing theatrical productions. "The interactive show is set at an Italian-American wedding, with a three-course meal,...
A Documentary Of Wham In East Asia, Squelched
To watch If You Were There, director Lindsay Anderson's cut of a documentary about Wham! in China, you have to go to a university...
How ‘Fiddler’ Helped Usher In The 1960s’ Jewish Pride Movement
"In the early 1960s, the Jewish American soul was tied in knots. On the one hand, Jews knew they were outsiders. ... On the...
Writing Music For Rolling Boulders
"Composing for movies, often mischaracterized as auxiliary to the primary work of filmmaking, is an art form in its own right. At its best,...
The Woman With The Many Languages
With (far) more than 350 dialects of indigenous languages spoken across the United States, and few interpreters, vital information can fall away. "When you...
Tearing Down Old Buildings To Build New Ones Is So Pre-Climate Emergency
The second word in the three Rs of environmentalism is reuse for a reason, writes Rowan Moore of planned London construction. "The most sustainable...
