Musical genres have long had a peculiar imaginative power and participatory quality. They aren’t just labels imposed by an industry; they’re shaped by passions and arguments, love and disgust, allegiances and disavowals. - The Atlantic
When Hollywood technicians debated how to make movies sound natural, they were unwittingly following a trail blazed by 18th-century architects, who spent decades working out the acoustic conventions of modern theatres. - Aeon
The city’s leaders are acquiring the cellphone data of unwitting tourists and using hundreds of surveillance cameras to monitor visitors and prevent crowding. Next summer, they plan to install long-debated gates at key entry points... - The New York Times
It’s a common topic of conversation among creatives of color: Can we afford to make mediocre art? Black, brown, Indigenous, East Asian and South Asian — all of us carry a burden of representation that renders our individual failures representative of the group. - The New York Times
A science fiction trope becoming real, "It doesn’t necessarily exist . It’s partly a dream for the future of the internet and partly a neat way to encapsulate some current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds." - The Verge
"It is hard to get perspective on your surroundings when your face is being ground into the dirt, or as Van Peebles might have put it, when the Man’s foot is stuck in your ass." - The Atlantic
Those 17 months—marked by the pandemic, remote teaching, protests against systemic racism and police brutality, and economic hardship for millions of people—made it clear to educators that their students will enter a changed world after graduation. - Harvard Magazine
The “mere urgency effect” describes our tendency to prioritize tasks we perceive as time-sensitive over tasks that aren’t time-sensitive, even when the rewards of the non-time-sensitive task are objectively greater. In other words, urgency trumps importance every time. - Fast Company
We know from research that purchasing an experience leads to more enduring happiness than purchasing a possession. But a study from Cornell found that this bias also applies to the anticipation of the upcoming purchase. - Fast Company
The results of around a dozen psychological studies, published between 2018 and 2021, are remarkably consistent: trigger warnings do not seem to lessen negative reactions to disturbing material in students. Some studies suggest that the opposite may be true. - The New Yorker
Just as our entertainment culture encourages us to self-objectify physically, our work culture pushes us to self-objectify professionally. - The Atlantic
The Institution handed out weather monitoring equipment to 150 volunteer observers across the country. Each day their reports arrived by telegraph, and the Smithsonian generated a national weather map displayed on the National Mall. The map became a popular attraction. - Smithsonian
Science fiction is clearly a leaping-off point for Amazon's next wave of product ideas. Suri Maddhula, director of software for Amazon's Astro, even said as much: "It's taking science fiction and making it a reality." - CNet
