The cancellation of Big Bird and co. would be a loss, but there’s something bigger going on. Sesame Street’s fate is symptomatic of a larger shift in how corporations, governments, and, increasingly, citizens have lost faith in the spirit of solidarity that made initiatives like the PBS show possible. - The Walrus
he past several decades have seen rampant consolidation via mergers and acquisitions across creative fields, all of it backed by rivers of Wall Street equity. In visual media, for example, there are just five major players (Comcast, Disney, Sony, Paramount, and Warner Bros). The music industry, meanwhile, has the big three labels. - Public Books
It is rare to find anyone who will openly support the idea that annexing territory from another state, after forcibly conquering it, could be legitimate. Conquest exists, of course, but it is almost always disguised as something else. - Aeon
Competency checking—whether intentional or unconscious—undermines those who challenge traditional norms of leadership and success. Imposter syndrome, however, masquerades as an internal failing, leading women to pathologize themselves rather than confront the systems perpetuating their struggles. - Time
If the world was wretched, shouldn’t we be transforming it, not distracting ourselves from it?... What would happen if we didn’t soothe ourselves with imagined utopias, but instead did as John Lydon once suggested, and used anger as an energy? - The Guardian
Our mental worlds are lively with such experiences of absence, yet it’s a mystery how the mind performs the trick of seeing nothing. How can the brain perceive something when there is no something to perceive? - Aeon
One day I was perfectly fine, and now, after just a few weeks away, confidence and sureness were gone. Simply put, I had lost my professional intuition. Although that explanation may seem imprecise, intuition is real, and, without it, experts lose their bearings. - Aeon
Right now, the global landscape is shifting in ways that could have profound consequences for Canada’s creative industries. The rise of AI, the dominance of U.S. based platforms, and the economic uncertainty fueled by shifting trade policies are all forcing us to rethink how we sustain and protect cultural knowledge in a digital world. - Linked.In
Brands now flood social platforms with constant content, yet the depth and craftsmanship that once defined advertising are being drowned in an ocean of data-driven mediocrity. Information overload. Attention deficits are growing. No longer are we in the Age of Information — we're officially in the Age of Inundation. - Entrepreneur
What I discovered after many years of studying this innate survival strategy is that high sensitivity means, above all, thinking deeply about everything. - Aeon
Freedom of expression undermines authority, which is why it has no place in societies wholly based on the exercise of coercive power. The logic of censorship is the same whether those who are silenced are slaves, indigenous colonial subjects or the inhabitants of Russia and China today. - Literary Review
The Brutalist’s AI touch-up fits the broader culture’s fetishization of perfection and flattening, but image filters and technologies like Auto-Tune consciously draw attention to their artificiality, almost making a virtue of it, which is not at all the case with the film’s deployment of AI. - The Baffler
