“While Surrealism is figured as a style in popular imagination — trippy, dreamy, and escapist, detached from reality in every way — (the exhibition) ‘In the Very Bowels of Change: Surrealism and Antifascism’ reminds just how much the movement was formed in response to the politics of its time.” - Art in America
AI can now generate songs, images, novels and artworks in seconds. Many of these works are already being streamed, licensed and sold. This raises an increasingly important question: should works produced without direct human authorship receive copyright protection? - The Conversation
Going all the way back to before 1600, the cantankerous, pompous, book-smart nincompoop has been a figure of mockery on European stages, a target for venting people’s dislike for know-it-all behavior. Some of the stereotypes associated with the character, however, were rather nasty. - The Public Domain Review
How, then, could an automated oracle help? It cannot tell you what to feel, because feeling is not something you can summon by obedience. But neither can it settle the matter by telling you what to do. Reasons matter, and to be a morally responsible agent you must reason for yourself. - Humanist Review
Which change that happened 15 years ago was the real source of so much misery for children? “You can’t run experiments on history,” Haidt said, so we’ll never be able to prove that smartphones and social media caused the steep decline in youth mental health. - The Atlantic
Though Dmitriy Popov, now 20, was acquitted of murder, he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and other charges for attacking Sibley — a Black and visibly gay man — with a knife and puncturing his heart while Sibley and friends were dancing outside a Brooklyn gas station in 2023. - Gothamist
“Today, national programmers can distribute their programming to 100 percent of the country — either through their own streaming services or through deals they cut with nationwide ‘virtual cable companies,’ like YouTube TV. The cap no longer constrains their control over distribution in this respect,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wrote. - Variety
One of the reasons TikTok’s book-review videos, known collectively as BookTok, have become so popular—and powerful in the publishing world—is that they offer a human-based, quasi-critical recommendation portal for fans and genre devotees to connect, commiserate, and promote their favorite work. - The New Yorker
In a nationally representative survey conducted by our team at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab, 68% of Gen Z respondents reported feeling nostalgic for eras before their lifetime, and 73% said they are drawn to media, styles, hobbies, or traditions from earlier periods. - Big Think
She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1990 for playing the mother of disabled painter/writer Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) in My Left Foot. She’s remembered by a (mostly) different set of moviegoers as the Central Park Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. - The Hollywood Reporter
In 2003, older Americans read on average just under an hour each day — 58.5 minutes. By last year, that had fallen nearly by half, to roughly 32.4 minutes each day, a drop that represents the lion’s share of overall reading declines. - The New York Times
People often joke about how Trumpism would like to return us to some version of the 1950s, when America supposedly was “great.” In this report, the administration has done just that. The report would prefer that nothing had ever happened since the ’50s to mar the White House’s polished, superficial, puerile version of America’s past. - The New York...
We human beings remain stubbornly, beautifully starving for one another. More surprising — and heartening — we are looking upward and outward, and returning to one another after being tethered for so long to our screens. This all portends well for the entertainment business, no doubt. - The New York Times
Twenty years ago, the school’s acceptance rate was 38%; now it’s under 5%, roughly equivalent to Yale’s, and its undergraduates are reportedly the happiest in the country. The change is the result of deliberate, planned effort by two successive presidents over 20 years. - New York Magazine (MSN)
“Hong Kong’s top security official said Thursday that booksellers should ensure the titles they sell do not harm national security, a day after five people linked to two bookstores were arrested. The police operation on Wednesday was the third round of arrests targeting independent bookstores within four months.” - AP
