One wood turner: "Well, you know, tradition is not just something in the past. It’s something that we’re making. ... I hope that I’m making things that 100 years from now people will say are traditional." - Slate
The legendary studio are hosting, live, the Davids - Italy's Oscars. "There are symbolic elements of various types: the Italian film community is back together in person at Cinecittà ... when we’ve managed to fill up the studios." Now Italian movies just need their audience back. - Variety
We are so quick to equate pessimism with passivity or fatalism or despair, and to reject it on that basis – for, of course, we do not want a philosophy that tells us to give up. But is that really what pessimism means? - Aeon
Children are sophisticated thinkers, more than capable of abstract thought. They’re creative too. Indeed, in some ways, kids make better philosophers than adults. They question things grown-ups take for granted. And they’re open to new ideas. We can learn a lot from listening to kids—and from thinking with them. - The Atlantic
Invoking Moses is easy shorthand for a legacy of racist urban planning—a shameful history but, like legal residential segregation, one many view as consigned to the past. The problem with this narrow obsession is that while Moses may be the paradigmatic racist urban planner, he was certainly no outlier. - The Baffler
The question of the intrinsic value of art is one he never expected to need to address. For him, it is a given. For others, it has become a questionable hypothesis. - The Bulwark
For the first time in more than a half-century, scientists are in the throes of changing the definition of the second, because a new generation of clocks is capable of measuring it more precisely. - The New York Times
New tools could include an AI-powered virtual teaching assistants that help teachers to grade homework and provide real-time feedback to students, or that assist teachers in “orchestrating and organizing social activity in the classroom.” - The Hechinger Report
Can people who live in fantasy worlds at such steep odds with reality be good friends and citizens themselves? At the very least, maintaining such worldviews means vigilance about rejecting facts—and the perceptions of other, clearer minds. This estranges others. - Wired
It’s essentially a turf war. Only Latino authors can write novels about Latinos. Only Holocaust survivors can convey the truth of the Holocaust. Only disabled people can portray disabled people. Everyone else is out. - The New York Times
There are ways in which the internet really does seem to work like a possessing demon. We tend to think that the internet is a communications network we use to speak to one another—but in a sense, we’re not doing anything of the sort. Instead, we are the ones being spoken through. - Damage Magazine
Many have taken to declaring how they don’t have dream jobs since they “don’t dream of labor.” This buzzy phrase, popularized on social media in the pandemic, rejects work as a basis for identity, framing it instead as an act to pursue out of financial necessity. - Vox
Of course, "there’s a reason we put so much effort into denying regret: The feeling can be corrosive." But instead of regretting lost symphonies, paintings, hikes, books, the question remains: "How can you improve yourself in the days to come?” - The New York Times
If people want to be happier, there are research-backed ways to do it - including "Search for transcendent truths beyond your narrow day-to-day life," and "Be active mentally," which both sound like great motivations to make, and experience, art. - The Atlantic
And that includes using - and celebrating - the space around the library. They're people places (even if the use of library apps has shot up during the pandemic). - The New York Times
