IDEAS

The End Of A Cultural Era: “Hockey Night In Canada” Is No More

Some called for defunding the national public broadcaster and others bemoaned the failures of successive federal governments to properly invest in the CBC. Many other Canadians, however, mourned the loss while simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief. - The Conversation

The Knowing Beyond Knowledge

“What is the sense that something escapes the conditions of knowledge? It is, I think, the sense, or fact, that our primary relation to the world is not one of knowing it.” - The Point

What AI Is Doing To Art

Art forms that once expressed creators’ personal visions are reduced to fulfilling the audience’s cravings. In theory, I understand why some people say AI is just another creative tool, like the camera or the keyboard. In practice, that tool is filling our world with the ugly, frictionless, disposable content we’ve quickly come to call “slop.” - The Atlantic

What, Truly, Does The Statue Of Liberty Stand For?

Many, many artists have thoughts. - Hyperallergic

After Some Grim Times, The US Is Back In Love With Independent Cinemas

You can thank the young ones: there’s “a gen Z-led wave fueling a fresh resurgence of indie movie houses.” - The Guardian (UK)

If You Need Some Incredible Photographs, Not Only Of Space, NASA Probably Has Them

But how to search them up? Google won’t help as much (if at all) anymore, but there are ways. - Wired

The Two Versions Of Who We Really Are

Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, insists that for humans ‘existence precedes essence’. We do not have an essence until we give ourselves an essence. In short, ‘man first exists: he materialises in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself.’ I define myself. - Psyche

The Wrong Way To Criticize The Humanities

This poorly argued case that it may be time to restrain the principles of academic freedom and faculty autonomy is not helping the situation. - Boston Review

Do We Have A Facts Problem Or An Interpretation-Of-Facts Problem?

Citizens can agree on verifiable facts and still inhabit different worlds, because facts do not interpret themselves. To see why, we need to look beyond narrow factual disagreements to the competing systems of interpretation through which people select, categorize, frame, connect, explain, and narrate facts. - Persuasion

Why It’s So Difficult To Calculate Benefits And Costs Of Technology Innovation

When a tool reliably performs a cognitive operation, the internal capacity for that operation tends to weaken with disuse. People who know they can look up something on Google develop weaker memory for the information itself, and habitual GPS users show measurable decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial navigation. - Aeon

Why Leisure Is A Tough Gig

Give people an hour with nothing scheduled, and many fill it with thoughts of to-dos: the unanswered email, the errand that’s been put off, the project due next week. Free time is sometimes less a chance to rest than an opportunity to take inventory of our obligations. - The Atlantic

Does Listening To Music While You Work Help You Focus?

Researchers generally agree that the relationship between music and learning is complex. The effects of music on studying and other cognitively demanding tasks appear to depend on the type of task performed, the kind of music and the students themselves. - The Conversation

When Being A Critic Was Glamorous

If you look at these people—literally look at photos or watch footage—you discover that they were either beautiful or charismatic, or both. They all appeared on television. Among fiction writers of that time, maybe Philip Roth had some of that swagger, quick wit, amused air, though he also had a professorial, sweater-wearing side.  - The Ideas Letter

Oh Studios, Why Must You Undermine Women-Led Superhero Movies?

"With DC’s slate wiped clean, the studio had the chance to swing bigger with a woman-led movie than it ever has before — to make something so confident and audacious that, by the nature of its existence alone, it could be unimpeachable in a sea of superhero sameness.” - Salon

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