Stories

EU Passes Landmark AI Legislation, And Will Regulate Use Of Copyright Material

The act places a number of legal and transparency obligations on tech companies and AI developers operating in Europe, including those working in the creative sector and music business. - Billboard

Gen-Z’s Poor Mental Health Comes From Smartphone Culture. We Should Stop It

Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. - The Atlantic

AI – Understanding Versus Finding Patterns

How can these powerful systems beat us in chess but falter on basic math? This paradox reflects more than just an idiosyncratic design quirk. It points toward something fundamental about how large language models think. - The New Yorker

Will Rethinking Liberal Arts From A Conservative Tradition Make Them Better?

Classical education is premised on the idea that there is objective truth, and that the purpose of school is to set kids on a path toward understanding it. - The New Yorker

Remembering America’s Most Notorious Art Heist

The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. - The New York Times

How Private Equity Companies Are Wrecking The Music Industry

Private equity — the industry responsible for bankrupting companies, slashing jobs and raising the mortality rates at the nursing homes it acquires — is making money by gobbling up the rights for old hits and pumping them back into our present. The result is a markedly blander music scene. - The New York Times

Spotify Promoting Audiobooks Using Some Music Industry Techniques

Combined with the promo page and countdown clock, the feature allows authors to engage in fandom in a way that is more typical of music than publishing. It’ll launch in mid-April. - The Verge

Historical Fiction Is Hot Right Now. Why?

Can historical fiction even be considered a genre of its own? Its many varieties share few common attributes other than that they all take place in the past. Even the simplest qualities are hard to pin down: for instance, how far back do you have to go? - The Drift

Libraries Struggle to Afford Access To E-Books, Which Are More Expensive Than Paper

While one hardcover copy of a novel costs the library $18, it costs $55 to lease a digital copy — a price that can't be haggled with publishers. And for that, the e-book expires after a limited time, usually after one or two years, or after 26 checkouts, whichever comes first. - ABCNews

Pianist Byron Janis, 95

In 1944, Janis became Horowitz’s first student and made his orchestral debut with conductor Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. At 18, he was signed by RCA Victor Records as its youngest artist. - The Hollywood Reporter

The Ideas Behind The Harlem Renaissance

That aggregation of talent, energy and audience created what felt like a moment of rupture and renewal, a chance to reinvent Black life and Black consciousness, to escape the self-imprisoning consciousness that Du Bois anatomized and the even more debilitating quiescence and accommodation advocated by Booker T. Washington. - Washington Post

Germany Adds Berlin’s Techno Scene To UNESCO Heritage List

A German nonprofit, Rave the Planet, hoped for years to add techno to the intangible cultural heritage list. Five other new German entries "include fruit wine and mountaineering a parade in Bavaria known as the Kirchseeoner Perchtenlauf, where attenders dress as furry monsters." - The Guardian (UK)

Tech Bros Are Such Drama Kings

"It’s hard to know whether this performative strain in tech culture reflects something essential about the industry.” But … could they just, please, for the rest of us, stop? (Maybe join a community theatre?)- The Atlantic

Publishing Should Not Rely On Gig Workers

"Look a little more closely, and ‘growing pool of freelancers’ is a terrible euphemism for ‘jobs are disappearing and more and more of us are fighting for scraps by competing for freelance gigs.’” - LitHub

Minnesota Sculpture Park Sells Sculpture For Scrap

"The artist, John Hock, said he thought it was a theft and reported it to the Chisago County Sheriff's Office.” (The Franconia Sculpture Park, unsurprisingly, has a different story.) - Minnesota Public Radio

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