Rania Andouni was targeted for her gender expression - and when she went to the police station to file a complaint, the police not only harassed her further, but charged her. A Tunisian "sentenced Amdouni to six months in prison on the charge of 'insulting a public officer during the performance of his duty,' which is punishable by up to one year...
A critic wonders, in the wake of two mass shootings after a year of mass death and destruction. "Every day I’m thankful for the work I get to do. I am paid to watch, to think, to write. But this week, like so many others recently, it has felt pointless, even silly, to analyze fictional stories when real people...
Sure, Gmail offers to fill in text on your messages - but things are getting more complicated. "AI’s capacity for creativity—one of those supposedly sacrosanct human attributes—is becoming more and more of an existential sticking point as humans learn to live alongside intelligent machines." - The Atlantic
Amal El-Mohtar: "While the animal-people of the game speak incomprehensible approximations of their textual dialogue — not unlike hearing language in a dream — and the jaunty soundtrack provides comedy noises when you get stung by wasps or bitten by mosquitoes, the sounds of your character moving physically through the island are astonishingly immersive. ... The visual cues may...
Amazon Prime Studio's use of a fictional woman ("a complete piece of tosh, invented by a 19th century Romantic") to bring Leonardo and his life to the small screen isn't just fiction, it's flat-out wrong. Suggestion: "Why not go to the National Gallery when it reopens and look at Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. The most hypnotic figure in it...
It all comes down to the earring. "The arresting piece of jewellery, which bursts from the borders of itself with piercing radiance like a celestial orb, transforms the static action from a callous chronicle of recurring cruelty, however impeccably wrought, to something more sympathetically mythic: a meditation on the interconnectedness of all things" - and the supposed godlike powers...
The singer Yseult, a Parisian whose parents are from Cameroon, won the award for Best Newcomer at the French Grammys in February, and she has millions of fans and YouTube views. But when she won and said, "This is not just a victory for me, it’s a victory for my brothers and sisters. We have snatched this, our freedom,...
The fact that freelancers could (finally) tap into unemployment through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programs changed, well, everything. Sarah Rose Sharp: "In my experience, the best conditions for making art involve getting paid to make art where I’ve already built the infrastructure that enables me to make art. Since March of 2020, that’s what I’ve done, and it’s been...
Ramona is messy, makes extremely normal kid mistakes, is impulsive, and always, always demands that her parents love her - not anyway, but as is. This might seem usual now, but "in 1950, when Ramona made her first appearance, they were not unremarkable; they were trailblazing. Cleary took every attribute that girls were then warned away from — bossiness,...
While the interior is idle (or getting a revamp, in some cases), the windows to the street have a thing or two to say about art, poetry, and the power of words - and, in some cases, even dance. The Brooklyn Ballet performed 20-minute "jewel-box dances" from The Nutcracker in its street-level windows in December, using barriers to prevent...
Yikes: "India Eva Rae, who joined Bafta’s Elevate programme in 2019, told the BBC that a casting director told her she was an 'exotic talent,' and that they 'can’t understand the English coming out your mouth.' Rae also said that she had been told not to report the incident by a 'mentor' on the scheme: 'This mentor told me and other...
Music was inextricably linked to Austen's creativity - she practiced, when she had access to a piano, every day, and copied friends' sheet music note by note. During the times her family didn't have a piano? As far as scholars can tell, she wasn't writing. - Colorado Public Radio
How? With weddings, quinceñeras, and life's joyful moments generally canceled, mariachi bands' calendars have filled with funerals for friends, family members, and even fellow band members. "As the caskets go into the ground, many mariachi bands in California, Texas, Illinois and elsewhere have turned to playing songs of pain and sorrow to ease the passing. Even for the bands...
That is, for most of them, because Google Translate (and Bing) relies on written translations - which works well for French, Spanish, English, German, and other often-translated languages. "No such data mountain exists, however, for languages that may be widely spoken but not as prolifically translated" - languages such as Wolof, Luganda, Twi and Ewe, not to mention many...
Some of the fashion world is really not happy with the guidelines for the in-person Oscars. One fashion writer, echoing many stylists who enjoyed their freedom: "Honestly, all it’s done is make me wish that all the invitees would show up en masse in flannel nightgowns and Ugg slippers, just to thumb their noses at it." - The Guardian...
