Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Is Asking Smart Questions Actually Kinda Dumb?
Smart Questions are, typically, kind of dumb. And, just as typical, questions that might initially seem dumb or underinformed, or downright unintelligent, are the...
The Ridiculousness Of Trying To Pick Oscar Nominees (And Winners)
Those voters can never quite decide how much heed to pay to a movie’s popularity or accessibility. That’s how you wind up with absurd...
28 States Have Banned TikTok From State Devices. Users Are Rolling Their Eyes
Some tech experts argue that the sudden explosion of the bans, coupled with doubts over TikTok’s actual harm, is more a reflection of government...
The French Have It Right: The Right Not To Be Fun At Work
In another win for workplace dignity, one of the nation’s highest courts recently suggested that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in office...
Sure Students Could Use ChatGPT To Cheat. But Maybe We Should Be Rethinking How...
While there will always be a need for essays and written assignments – especially in the humanities, where they are essential to help students...
Repositioning Culture In Everyday Life (Warning: It’s Radical)
For Herbert Read, “culture” is capitalism’s breaking apart of life and art, and the subsequent fencing off of the poet, the architect, and the...
Expanding The Definition Of Libraries
A makerspace in a small central New York village; a network of food pantries in Canada; recording studios with instruments in the Netherlands; resources...
French Legislature Considers New Radical Laws On Cultural Restitution
In what would be a first, one of the bills also offers an opportunity to legally acknowledge crimes committed against Jews during World War...
Drinking Game: What If Alcohol Was What Sparked Civilization?
What if alcohol was not merely a vice, but one of the triggers that sparked the dawn of human civilization — in essence, the...
Hamline University’s Weird Defense Of Its Art History Controversy
The instinct to treat Muslims like toddlers, incapable of dealing with unwelcome developments, and therefore in need of protection at all times, is powerful...
What Happens When AI Bots Run Out Of Good Writing To Ingest?
A team of researchers led by Pablo Villalobos at Epoch AI recently predicted that programs such as the eerily impressive ChatGPT will run out of high-quality reading material...
US Senate To Hold Hearings On TicketMaster
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee will take place Jan. 24, the panel announced late Tuesday, and address concerns that Ticketmaster’s market control over the...
Are Secret Talks To Return Parthenon Marbles Making Progress?
Even as those disclosures have flowered into optimism that real progress will soon be made, both sides have made it clear that no deal...
Why No One Will Win In The HarperCollins Strike
Some smaller independent publishers—mostly outside of New York City—are concerned that the public nature of the strike, with wage demands made public, is raising...
AI Can Help Preserve Dying Languages. But What’s The Cost?
StoryWeaver can bring more languages into conversation with one another—but the tech is still new, and it depends on data that only speakers of...
After 32 Years, Cabrillo Festival Director To Step Down
The festival’s powerful streak of commissioning new music — a roster of more than 50 pieces both large and small since 2006 — is...
Saving Indigenous Languages In Montana
The job is not easy. Depending on how you count, there are about a dozen Indigenous languages in our state, and every one of...
MTT And Barenboim: Twilight Of The Old Guard
The recent struggles and remarkable late-career concerts of these two men will always mark for me the passing from the scene of their generation...
Sweden Proposes To Do Away With Permits To Dance
The proposal made Thursday means that venues no longer would need a license to organize dances. Instead, as a general rule, they would only...
Study: Scientific Breakthroughs Are Slowing Down. Why?
The new finding of Mr. Park and his colleagues suggests that investments in science are caught in a spiral of diminishing returns and that...
I’m An Author. My Book Is Being Published At HarperCollins. I’m Deeply Conflicted
I’ve loved my publishing experience with HarperCollins. Everyone I’ve worked with has been a smart adviser and a fierce advocate for a slightly weird...
Movie Theatres Are Forever Changed
This year's box office will tell us how much theaters must go big -- and, paradoxically, shrink down -- to make it through to...
Do We All Live In A Computer Simulation?
In recent years the idea that our universe, including ourselves and all of our innermost thoughts, is a computer simulation, running on a thinking...
Prose Style And What’s Good: Stripped And Spare Or Ornate?
Every great national prose, in just about any tongue, reaches its high meridian only by way of a prolonged and constant negotiation of just...
Glenn Lowry: Cultural Institutions On The New Cultural/Political Landscape
“We now know that our world as we thought we understood it is far more fragile... wars that seemed inconceivable now happened, we’ve...
