Where you are, what you’re looking at, and what you like is being tracked more or less constantly—either you’re doing it to yourself voluntarily, by taking a video with your phone and posting it online, say, or a corporate entity is doing it for you. - The New Yorker
We talk a lot these days about Big Data, those heaping stores of digitized information that, fueling search and recommendation engines, social media feeds, and, now, artificial intelligence models, govern so much of our lives today. But we don’t give much notice to what might be called little data... - Hedgehog Review
His entire life was built around knowing what to leave out, from both his art and his modest billets (he only ever owned a handful of books). A similar commitment to concision eludes his biographer. - Literary Review
Joshua Oppenheimer, who convinced participants of the 1965-66 mass executions to re-enact them for his Oscar-nominated films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), has just released The End, a musical (!) set in a rich family's bunker after an environmental apocalypse. - The Washington Post (MSN)
The genre’s masterworks urge us to set a slower pace, savoring what each novelist puts on the table and realizing, as we push back our chairs, how much more substantial the meal was than what we thought we wanted. - The Baffler
While she appeared in 75 movies by directors ranging from Francisco Trueba to Guillermo del Toro, she's best known outside the Spanish-speaking world for her performances in Almodóvar's Dark Habits, High Heels, The Flower of My Secret, All About My Mother, and The Skin I Live In. - Variety
Decades-old copyright legislation varies by region but is generally too outdated to be reliably applied to the new challenges presented by generative A.I. This has left both A.I. developers and artists in a state of uncertainty. - Artnet
It is not absurd to imagine another world in which he might have followed that fame toward full-time Hollywood stardom, or guest appearances on “Dancing With the Stars,” or serving as a spokesman for some topical pain-relief brand. And yet he has always been stubbornly devoted to art-making itself. - The New York Times
Under the proposals, tech companies will be allowed to freely use copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models unless creative professionals and companies opt out of the process. - The Guardian
"Since about December of last year, (the Penguin Classics little black book edition of) White Nights has been all over BookTok and its Instagram parallel, Bookstagram. Searching for the 1848 tale on these platforms will result in page after page of reviews, quotes, and moody shots of the book next to cups of coffee." - The Guardian
If you feel empty in this way, you might find that bad news doesn’t make you feel upset, that good news doesn’t make you feel happy. Some part of you knows you should feel something when important things happen, but you don’t. - Psyche
The works of art had been gathered and stored by Spain’s former government after Franco, an army general, participated in a 1936 military coup against the country’s fledgling republican government that would lead to his rise to power as the self-stylized “caudillo” of Spain within three years. - Artnet
"Portrait of Dr. Gachet," painted just weeks before van Gogh's suicide in 1890, had a clear chain of ownership, including years on display at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the Met in New York. In 1998 the painting was sold privately; almost nobody has seen it since. - The New York Times
Whether, and how well, the swirls in the painting's night sky accurately depict the phenomenon of turbulence has been a matter of interest to some researchers for quite come time, and there has been serious disagreement about it. Two scientists recently tried to settle the question. - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
Margaret Hodge, who was minister of culture under previous Labour PM Gordon Brown, will lead the review of Arts Council England, the government funding body. The focus will be on underserved regions, this after culture minister Lisa Nandy described some areas of England as "cultural deserts." - The Guardian
