"The Putin regime has dealt Russian culture a crushing blow, just as the Russian state has done to its artists, musicians, and writers so many times before. People in the arts are forced to sing patriotic songs or emigrate. The regime has in effect 'canceled' culture." - The Atlantic
Sidewalk Labs had big plans for Toronto's Quay, to "transform the neighborhood with everything built on top of the tech. It would be robotaxis, autonomous trash pickup and an extensive system of data monitoring." Then "all hell broke loose." (Transcript here.) - Slate
Parents constantly provide their children with emotion concepts to disambiguate what is going on. Especially towards the second year, when children start using emotion concepts themselves, parents use emotion words very often. - LitHub
I went to a therapist. She told me (ready?) to stop consuming the news. That felt wrong. Wasn’t it important to be informed? Quitting the news felt like quitting the world. Then one day a journalist friend confided that she was avoiding the news, too. - Washington Post
Like any novel tool, generative models introduce significant changes in the process of art-making. In particular, AI art expands the multifaceted notion of curation and continues to blur the line between curation and creation. - Wired
The notion of participatory creativity has major implications for any person or organization concerned with the creation of innovative ideas or artistic expression. It means recognizing and putting in place the means to foster creativity as a collaborative process. - The Conversation
Many people draw lines in the sand when it comes to what they believe. If a narrative doesn’t fit their worldview, it’s deemed untrue, worth ignoring and sometimes re-framed entirely. - The Conversation
More than ever before, people are identifying less and less with a religious tradition. This leads some people to look for meaning and identity in the things they love most. My goal here isn’t to argue against those who consider Disney their religion. - The Conversation
As the scope of algorithm-based applications in social reality has expanded over the past decades, we have by the same measure been conditioned to approach ever more fields of human life as if they were strategy games. - Liberties Journal
I am using the word “evil” to encompass the whole range of negative human experience, from being wronged, to doing wrong, to sheer bad luck. This list of evils is also a list of the essential ingredients of narrative fiction. - The Point
Rowan Moore says let the details go and save the monument by killing its Victorian darlings. "Think the unthinkable about heritage. For a feature of the building is the sheer expanse of intricate interior detail, much of which is never seen by the public." - The Observer (UK)
In what the organizers call la République des Hyper Voisins (the Republic of Superneighbors), up to 2,000 people regularly gather for meals (including one at a 700-foot outdoor table seating 648), cultural events, oral history gatherings, etc., as well as mutual aid both in person and online. - The Guardian
At least, not for now. People using the program DALL-E, which takes human words and makes images in response, "have found that it elevates human creativity rather than making it obsolete." - Wired
