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What’s Going To Happen To TikTok Now That An Appeals Court Has Supported A Ban?

A lot depends on the incoming administration. “The TikTok ban could take effect as soon as one day before Trump is inaugurated next month. In reality, the app is most likely to survive a few more months.” - Wired

Why Is A Ten-Year-Old Movie Suddenly Hot Again?

It’s because Interstellar was super good, right? Maybe, or maybe it’s because Christopher Nolan sure knows how to train his audiences to find, watch, and enjoy his movies (and then obsessively share about them online). - Slate

How We Got To Brain Rot

Brain rot is marked by a “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” - The Atlantic

Americans Aren’t Reading Memoirs. Why?

This paucity of first-person storytelling is striking. Among the best writing of our current century, have so few people written well enough about their lives to qualify? Where are all the memoirs? - The Walrus

Deal Close On Return Of Parthenon Marbles To Greece?

It came as Sir Keir Starmer and his Greek counterpart met for talks in Downing Street on Tuesday - though it is unclear whether the Elgin Marbles were discussed. - BBC

The Life Of Simone Weil — And How It’s Put To Use In America

In the late 20th century she was seen as an exemplar of well-meaning but extreme ascetic mysticism. Now she's either a prophet of, and antidote for, American political and spiritual malaise or "a mascot for misguided youths seeking to blend a fetishized Catholic ritualism with aestheticized eating disorders." - The Drift

The Amazon Review Artist

Kevin Killian published over a million words on Amazon, across almost twenty-four hundred reviews, before his death, in 2019. The products he evaluated included DVDs of classic twentieth-century cinema, literary biographies, and experimental poetry collections—but also toiletries, Halloween costumes, and a chestnut tree. - The New Yorker

How Games Are Shaping Our World

Play is something that predates humans. It’s fundamental to how animals engage in and understand the world. It’s how we test and figure out the rules of our environment, how social relationships work. - LA Review of Books

A Theatre Troupe Struggles On Amid The Murderous Chaos Of Port-au-Prince

"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. 'But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.'" - The Guardian

Writers Demand Giller Prize Funder Divest From Arms Company

Some Giller winners state that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders of so many arts prizes and organizations in Canada — banks such as Scotiabank — to divest from companies whose products are currently being used in mass killing.” - The Conversation

How Did We Lose Our Excitement For The Future?

As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. - Works in Progress

Is The Era Of AI, Is There A Future Teaching Writing?

It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces you to think. Which is anyway your job, if you’re a teacher. As Samuel Johnson said of the death penalty, it concentrates the mind. - Plough

Italian Police Present An Exhibition Of Artworks Seized From The Mafia

"Eighty works, confiscated by the Italian authorities, went on show at Milan‘s Palazzo Reale this week. The exhibition, 'Save Arts: From Confiscations to Public Collections,' features paintings, graphic works, and sculptures by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, and other prominent artists." - ARTnews

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Law Requiring Sale Or Ban of TikTok

"A three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that a law designed to force a TikTok sale or ban is constitutional." - Business Insider

If You Can’t Tell If The Music Is Created By AI, It Doesn’t Matter

Background music for commercials, once the domain of human composers, can now be generated by AI in minutes, meeting technical and emotional requirements at a fraction of the cost. Why would a business pay a premium for human creators if AI can deliver similar or better metrics? - Shelly Palmer

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