We have more culture available to us than any humans in history, and The Guardian wants to know why the dominant feeling is boredom. Its answer is that frictionless pleasure erodes the appetite it feeds.
College students have stopped reading whole books (The Conversation), though a sharp rebuttal argues the panic is aimed in the wrong direction (Trevor Aleo) — we built an excerpt economy, and now are blaming 19-year-olds for living in it. Video’s format keeps turning vertical because that’s how a hand holds a phone (The Verge). Pop’s big transformations now happen in the fan apparatus rather than in the music (The Conversation). Form follows medium.
Then the literal version: AI companies are buying rare books and cutting the spines off to scan them (Futurism). The books are destroyed so the text can be ingested.
Against all that, 32 Vancouver arts organizations just proposed four new concert halls (Daily Hive), and Pacific Northwest Ballet’s school is taking a big new space in SODO (Seattle Times).
Hadestown‘s filmed version did surprisingly well enough in theaters to earn an extended run (Deadline). The return to theatres continues.
All of our stories below.