Efforts to grow and embrace diversity at America’s great research universities have made them better than ever. If you want excellence, you need to find, attract, and support talent from every sector of society, not just from privileged groups and social classes. - The Atlantic
This young century, Americans have collectively submitted to a national experiment to deprive ourselves of camaraderie in the world of flesh and steel, choosing instead to grow (and grow and grow) the time we spend by ourselves, gazing into screens. It’s been a weird experiment. And the results haven’t been pretty. - The Atlantic
The vocation of theory to give us perspective on the production of ideas—on their historical conjuncture, their class interests, their philosophical deficiencies, their determined style—flounders in the current anti-idea immediatism. - e-flux
Music preferences can reflect emotional states and change with life experiences, suggesting a deep psychological connection to the types of music individuals choose. - Neuroscience News
"Oftentimes, you will see on social media people post a photo from a sports event and say, ‘Hang it in the Louvre,' as a indication that they can see something that's artistic about it. And then I come in and actually find the piece of art that sports image actually resembles.” - PBS
Instead, it’s the casting directors’ hard work that makes a great movie - and that will soon be recognized by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In short, the Casting Oscar is coming. - MSN (The Atlantic)
People are increasingly turning to gossip forums like Tattle Life, Guru Gossip, GOMI (“Get Off My Internets”) and the Blogsnark subreddit to critique the influencers they follow. On these forums, users pick apart everything from the influencer’s social media content to their appearance. - The Conversation
It's "what’s known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated areas of the brain that activate when you’re not doing much at all. Its discovery has offered insights into how the brain functions outside of well-defined tasks and has also prompted research into the role of brain networks. - Quanta
They ‘must not be far-fetched, or they will be difficult to grasp, nor obvious, or they will have no effect’, as Aristotle already noted nearly 2,500 years ago. For this reason, artists – those skilled enhancers of experience – are generally thought to be the expert users of metaphors, poets and writers in particular. - Aeon
Whether you want to write a book, run a marathon, or play a Beethoven sonata, here are three rules that can supercharge your effort—inspired by the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and backed up by modern social science. - The Atlantic (MSN)
Researchers "wanted to find out whether having certain personality traits was related to how people perceived their friendships and to how they were perceived as friends. The researchers also wanted to explore whether the chemistry between two friends’ traits made a difference." - Psyche
Trained on human-generated data, large language models are very adept at noticing patterns in that data. But learning from existing written material – even massive quantities of it – might not be enough for AI to come up with solutions to problems that they’ve never encountered before, something that children can do. - Psyche
The accusation of plagiarism can feel formidable. Denying intent allows one to try to sidestep the accusation. ‘Perhaps I’m guilty in some technical sense, but I’m not dishonest!’ But does a lack of intent matter? - Psyche
Is art for one thing only? Do we need—why do I feel the need?—to formulate a Grand Unified Theory of art, one that would reconcile its various and sometimes contradictory purposes, that would proclaim, finally, that art may be for this or that, but this is what it’s really for? - Salmagundi
