Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Dancers Who Escaped Russia
If the war has made refugees out of some Ukrainian dancers, it's made soldiers out of others. - 60 Minutes
Intriguing Questions About How AI Trains On Large Language Models
Do they merely memorize training data and reread it out loud, or are they picking up the rules of English grammar and the syntax...
As Deepfakes Proliferate, Countries Struggle With What’s Real
The worst abusers of the technology tend to be the hardest to catch, operating anonymously, adapting quickly and sharing their synthetic creations through borderless...
Archaeologists Find 9000-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Structure On The Bottom Of Lake Michigan
They uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner. -...
Kids Want Books. Increasingly Librarians Aren’t Allowed To Provide Them
States and districts nationwide have begun to constrain what librarians can order. At least 10 states have passed laws giving parents more power over...
What If Diversity Training Exercises Are Making Things Worse?
There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory trainings...
Can ChatGPT Replace Human Writers? No, But It Can Make Them Better
I decided to try a combination of tools to see if the AI-assisted work product would outperform my purely original work. Unsurprisingly, the work...
The Battle Over Redesigning Wikipedia
Some Wikipedia contributors have a hard time trusting Wikimedia Foundation designers. No one on the paid design team was around 12 years ago when...
Canada’s Griffin Prize Decided To Reinvent. Poets Are Furious
The prize’s founder, Scott Griffin, had anticipated some controversy, if not this degree of fury. He maintains trustees made the right call. After twenty-two...
The Downsides Of Super-Fandom
At the end of the day, fandoms are grey areas: on the one hand, they can be a place where you can really belong...
AI Might Doom The College Essay, But Students Have Already Moved On
The current generation of students has moved on from writing. Literally. Most students fail to see the relevance of writing in a world—their world—that...
After Humans Come The “Trans-humans”
Transhumanism emerged as a distinct school of thought in the 1980s, when philosophers, scientists, and artists began to think intensively about how technology might...
Miami City Ballet Gets A New Executive Director
Currently, he serves as the executive director of the National Dance Institute, a non-profit arts education organization in New York that has impacted more...
Lebrecht: Why I Hate Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony
‘Nothing,’ Beethoven once said, ‘is more intolerable than having to admit to yourself your own errors.’ In the Pastoral he lets us into that furtive admission....
What A Decades-Long Study Tells Us About Happiness
Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants the study incorporated the spouses of...
How Supply Chain Issues Are Affecting Artists
When China shut down manufacturing and shipping ports due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many artists felt it before American cities followed suit. Subsequent labor...
Canada’s National Gallery Lays Off Staff As Outside Consultant Makes More Than CEO
The National Gallery of Canada’s interim chief operating officer and human resources director is being paid annual fees potentially worth up to a third more...
An Intriguing Business Model For Presenting Concerts In London
Noisenights are run via a crowdfunding model—events are announced, artists and venues secured, and when audience members buy tickets, they are helping to create a...
Banned From Schools, Afghan Girls And Women Go Online
There were 40 Afghan female students before the Taliban’s takeover back in mid-August 2021. Now there are 382 girls at Rumi Academy amid increasing...
Australian Arts Institutions In Funding Crisis
“We’re not start-ups. We have massive long-term responsibilities. And for that, we really need to have sustainable long-term funding, rather than the short-term injections.”...
Is Asking Smart Questions Actually Kinda Dumb?
Smart Questions are, typically, kind of dumb. And, just as typical, questions that might initially seem dumb or underinformed, or downright unintelligent, are the...
The Ridiculousness Of Trying To Pick Oscar Nominees (And Winners)
Those voters can never quite decide how much heed to pay to a movie’s popularity or accessibility. That’s how you wind up with absurd...
28 States Have Banned TikTok From State Devices. Users Are Rolling Their Eyes
Some tech experts argue that the sudden explosion of the bans, coupled with doubts over TikTok’s actual harm, is more a reflection of government...
The French Have It Right: The Right Not To Be Fun At Work
In another win for workplace dignity, one of the nation’s highest courts recently suggested that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in office...
Sure Students Could Use ChatGPT To Cheat. But Maybe We Should Be Rethinking How...
While there will always be a need for essays and written assignments – especially in the humanities, where they are essential to help students...
