In actuality, Facebook is basically spending $10 billion on a prayer that, in the short run, it might change the conversation. It gives them an opportunity to talk about the metaverse instead of insurrection and teen depression. - New York Magazine
If spending this kind of money on something as flimsy as a JPEG seems absurd, recall that collectors have bought empty space, a closed gallery, and a duct-taped banana. The fine art world hasn’t been held back by such concerns. - Wired
NFTs have fundamentally changed the market for digital assets. Historically there was no way to separate the “owner” of a digital artwork from someone who just saved a copy to their desktop. - Harvard Business Review
The dynamic nature of Beeple’s art speaks to an emerging paradigm in both art and crypto, where the artist and the buyer are in prolonged conversation—and the transaction is just the start of the deal. - Quartz
Perhaps the ultimate postmodern irony is to be both – to sell out to the system while sending it up. It becomes impossible to distinguish the boss from the bohemian. - The Guardian
In a widely cited paper from 2007, on a number of common measures of innovation and wealth creation, cities deliver benefits that exceed what we would expect by a simple scaling up of the numbers of people involved, and at lower cost in terms of the infrastructure required. - Aeon
“Powers and Thrones” reminds us why modern scholars cringe at any reference to the term “Dark Ages.” The idea that the early Middle Ages were an era of barbarism and ignorance is refuted by Dan Jones’s vast array of evidence to the contrary. - The New York Times
While depressed people are not literally in a different world, they are in a different state of consciousness – one they can become awake to and, hopefully, awake from. - Psyche
Previously philosophy was a kind of luxury: You can indulge in it or not. Now you really need to answer crucial philosophical questions about what humanity is or the nature of the good in order to decide what to do with, for example, new biotechnologies. - The New York Times
Sound familiar? "Collective narcissists tend to respond to the perceived threats of other groups in outsize, often aggressive ways. ... Meanwhile, group narcissists glorify positively valued in-group members and tend to overlook their moral transgressions." - The Atlantic
Daniel Heath Justice's "podcast, which will be peer-reviewed before its release—a first in North America—is part of a bold new take on research that treats new media as scholarship, defying the traditionally rigid informational hierarchies in academia." - MacLean's (Canada)
"The lives of buchonas, their flamboyant styles and their taste for plastic surgery are regularly chronicled in Spanish-language media outlets. Vloggers do roundups devoted to top buchonas. And internationally, people have adopted the style." Then there's the music. - Los Angeles Times
Not entirely clear, but "Diana’s posthumous framing as a rebel against the establishment with an undercurrent of feminine fragility resonates — even among those who weren’t old enough to witness her dancing to Uptown Girl ... the first time around." - Hyperallergic
In the early years of the 18th century a select group of philosophers began to conceive of laughter as something that might police the boundaries of sociable conduct. - History Today
We are at a critical juncture: a relatively long period of stability in mainstream thinking about economic globalisation has given way to a situation of dramatic flux. - Aeon
