“The argument for reopening our cultural institutions has been made with force: art sustains us, say the museum executives over the morning airwaves. But when I enter the exhibition, the first thing I wish is that, in the quest for sufficient sustenance, I’d brought a bottle of water—the mask dehydrates you quickly.” – Prospect
The Trump Book Industry
Taken en masse, the books paint a damning portrait of the 45th president of the United States. But the sheer volume of unflattering material they contain can have the paradoxical danger of blunting their collective impact. After the 10th time you read about Mr. Trump’s short attention span, your own attention is in danger of wandering. – The New York Times
James Silberman, Who Edited Books That Changed America, Dead At 93
Among the many important titles he midwifed over a long career at Dial, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Little Brown were James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and The Fire Next Time, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, and Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. – The New York Times
Musicians Blast Spotify CEO For Comments On Royalties
The CEO ― whose net worth is estimated at over $4 billion ― argued in an interview with Music Ally published Thursday that there was a “narrative fallacy” around claims that Spotify’s royalties were too low, saying: “Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” – HuffPost
The Weaponizing Of Free Speech
The “free speech” argument can be a useful tactic. But it’s not necessarily a successful one in the long term. Overusing it can turn real debates into insoluble meta-arguments with no room for compromise, driving a self-perpetuating dynamic in which one party exudes a feigned and slyly provocative equilibrium while the other becomes increasingly bitter and confrontational. – Washington Post
A Machine That Responds Intelligently To Queries
GPT-3 is a product of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab based in San Francisco. In essence, it’s a machine-learning system that has been fed (trained on) 45 terabytes of text data. Given that a terabyte (TB) is a trillion bytes, that’s quite a lot. Having digested all that stuff, the system can then generate all sorts of written content – stories, code, legal jargon, poems – if you prime it with a few words or sentences. – The Guardian
Neighbors Performing Music For Neighbors Hasn’t Stopped
And, in the U.S., it may be just getting started. A cellist in Pasadena who performs weekly with his wife, a pianist, says, “We thought with so much suffering, and so much anxiety, this is something very small that we can try to do to help.” – Los Angeles Times
Victor Victor, Musician Who Brought Music, Dance, And Theatre To The Underprivileged, 71
Víctor’s hit was the 1991 “Mesita de la Noche,” but before that, his son says, the Dominican singer/songwriter/producer had “lived a double life. … He was writing romantic songs and being an artist, but he was also part of the underground political movement” opposed to dictator Rafael Trujillo. – The New York Times
Putting Up A Monument To The Unknown Enslaved People Of The United States
As the Civil War raged, Kentucky was officially neutral – but it was a slave state. Freedom lay just across the river in Indiana, says poet Hannah Drake, whose nonprofit is preparing to install a kind of monument to those who dreamt of escape. “The memorial will start as a path of cast or carved footprints. That will lead people from nearby history museums to the river, where there will be limestone benches. Then there will be more footprints leading to the river’s edge.” – NPR
That Time A Research Librarian Discovered His Library Owned A First Edition Of Beethoven’s Sixth
At the Moravian Music Foundation, librarian David Blum “was doing a routine cataloging of material that the foundation has owned for years, [when] he noticed the plate number of the printing was 1809, his first clue that he was onto a first edition. He thought that would be great — but unlikely.” And yet. – Winston-Salem Journal
How Poetry Can Guide Us Through Trauma
Audre Lorde’s 1977 piece “Poetry Is not a Luxury” seems prescient right now. “Poems have alchemized death and imagined the continuation of lives cut short by racist violence. They’ve given texture to the ‘sudden strangeness’ of life brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, offering comfort to countless readers. In moments of uncertainty, poetry has illuminated bridges to the past—and shown how the act of remembering might alter the future.” – The Atlantic
Tokyo’s Kabuki-Za Theatre Has Reopened
Blocked off seats, reduced capacity, and musicians wear masks and face shields, with dancers keeping far apart as they perform onstage. – BBC
What Does It Truly Mean To ‘Decolonize’ Dance?
Ask choreographer Sarah Crowell. The artistic director emeritus of the Destiny Arts Center. “The inquiry requires that we look at all levels of society. We have a particular way of seeing beauty that leaves people out. … In dance, George Balanchine had a great deal to do with creating an aesthetic that was seen as valid and the truth. Very slender, prepubescent, long-legged women. They would have to be white females, but it doesn’t cover all white femaleness. To me, the mind of the artist is like all the minds: colonized to think in a particular way. If what is beautiful is white and thin with long legs and very little breasts, then in the ballet world, how do we break that?” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Bidding Farewell To Havana’s City Historian And Conservationist
Eusebio Leal Spengler so loved the old city that he found ways to save it. “Never a priority in the 20th century, old Havana fell into disrepair. By befriending Fidel Castro, Leal began the process of bringing it back. He managed to get the old town designated a Unesco world heritage site, and then gather enough money from Europe to start putting the buildings back together.” (Spengler died on July 31.) – The Observer (UK)
Becoming The Accidental Chronicler Of Four Ridiculously Intense Years
In December of 2015, British novelist Ali Smith proposed an idea to her publishers: Four books in four years, as close to the time news events happened as possible. “I’d try to write one a year, deliver one a year. … If we did it like this, under time conditions, a kind of experiment sourced in cyclic time but moving forward through time simultaneously, it’d surely become about not just how story works but also how form, and society, and contemporary language itself – given that the novel form one way or another is always about all of these things – move and progress over a given time.” Wow, that given time. – The Guardian (UK)
The Strange New Life Of Objects In The Coronavirus Era
There are the familiar objects that suddenly seem to glow with importance – toilet paper rolls, Lysol wipes – and then there are the new objects: the to-go cocktail pouch, the ultra-large Burger King social distance crown, the virus piñata to hit and kill, and, of course, Black Lives Matter facemasks. – The New York Times
Don’t Treat Women Writers Like Mistresses, Publishers
Novelist Kathleen McMahon says she’s tired of flowers on publication day. “MacMahon says she does not like that writers are treated ‘like show ponies . . . I’m not comfortable with that. I’d prefer to be an equal professional at the table. Everybody is doing a different job. You do your job and I’ll do mine. I sound harsh but I think it actually makes me better to work with . . . I am not trying to make friends with anybody.'” – Irish Times
The Rank Hypocrisy Of Threatening TikTok
The U.S. president’s TikTok flipout might not just be because of its security issues; indeed, there’s a lot more to it, including free speech … and Facebook. “It’s a rare feat to upturn two such fundamental democratic values—free speech and free markets—at the same time.” – Wired
Actor Wilford Brimley Of ‘Cocoon’ And So Very Much More Has Died At 85
The actor excelled at playing cantankerous characters but came to fame playing an assistant engineer at a nuclear plant in The China Syndrome. Later, he became famous for his spokesperson roles, not to mention his (very) lively Twitter presence. – The New York Times
To Cull One’s Books During Quarantine, Or To Hold All Of Those Friends Even More Tightly?
Not surprisingly, different readers had passionate (and passionately differing) opinions about their book collections and an essay recreating a cull. “While it is fine to move so-so books along, books love us and whisper their thoughts to us, as we pass their covers. Can an ereader do that? Trying to find a favorite phrase or vignette in an ebook is a time-wasting fraud. My real books fall open to what I need.” – Washington Post
The History Nobody Tells You
Morgan Jerkins wanted to know more about where her people came from: “I hated the fact that I didn’t know much about land. I didn’t know about harvest, high tide, low tide, the levees, the dikes. I didn’t know about herbal remedies. I didn’t know anything.” Learning was a journey far beyond what the author and editor thought she already knew or ever would know. – NPR
We Might Look Back On This Time As The Year Of Neverending Remakes
Classic Hollywood movies are getting spitshined and put out again, so why not video games as well? “‘Nostalgia is the major driving force for the success of a remake,’ said Doug Clinton, managing partner for the venture capitalist firm Loup Ventures, which focuses on emerging technology and gaming. ‘Any game that doesn’t have meaningful nostalgic value isn’t likely to be successful.'” Give us anything but 2020. – The New York Times