To summarize the BeReal user experience: once a day, at a random time, the app sends a push notification to its users, granting them two minutes to snap a two-way photo using their phones’ front- and rear-facing cameras. Only after posting the daily photo can users see what their friends have posted. - The New Yorker
The idea of intelligence without a brain can sound mystical or speculative, but the initiative has attracted quite a lot of human intelligence so I was intrigued. - The New Yorker
So far, of 56 US institutions surveyed, 16 museums are in the process of returning Benin Court artworks, and five more would do so if requested. Added to similar efforts in other countries, there are now more repatriation requests than Nigerian officials can promptly process. - MSN (The Washington Post)
This is not a radical rethinking of copyright. It is regression as a meme, a fart in the wind, an empty and cynical gesture meant for a future fundraising email. All because Disney is the latest punching bag for a Republican party. - The Verge
"During the 1910s and '20s, Millay achieved the kind of fame that was unusual for a poet then and unthinkable now. ... But fame is rarely an unmixed blessing, particularly when it arrives early in life. Like Judy Garland or Britney Spears, Millay had to grow up in public." - The New Yorker
We all know what we're doing in a classroom; we're putting on a class and we all share the same script as to what this is. But what began to happen in 2015—and I now realize it's because of social media—is that it's very difficult to have everyone in the same story. - Persuasion
Dozens of websites, with names like Poetry Ninja or Bored Human, can now generate poems with a click of a key. One tool is able to free-associate images and ideas from any word “donated” to it. - The Walrus
All told, an online auction of 150 of items owned by the late justice raised $803,650 for Washington National Opera, one of the late justice’s passions. - Toronto Star
Joshua Hammer traveled to Lviv to look into the history of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis, a 36'-by-42' wall of delicately painted icons in a lavishly decorated wooden framework, and the dangers it has survived over its 317 years. - Smithsonian Magazine
There are blind auditions, special fellowships for Black musicians in particular, prep and financial aid for auditions as well as other programs from the Sphinx Organization. Writer Tim Diovanni looks into the efforts, focusing on the Detroit, Dallas, and Fort Worth Symphonies. - The Dallas Morning News
Whether or not you have a “future-oriented mindset” – in other words, how much money you save and how likely you are to invest in your education – can, he argues, be partly traced to what kinds of crops grew well in your ancestral homelands. - The Guardian
When The Lark's board announced the company's closure last October, they said there was no way to keep the company financially sustainable. Former staffers say the problem was really the departure of some unusually dynamic executives and a well-intentioned experiment in shared management that didn't work out. - American Theatre
I can imagine the internet hot take: Why punish people who can afford to buy books by making them free to read for everyone? Or: Government giveaways: why we shouldn’t let people who can afford books read them for free. - Chicago Tribune
As far as I can tell, most writing about music is built on analogies and cliches. This is understandable; you can’t describe music literally because it wouldn’t give an accurate representation of what it is you’re hearing. - 3 Quarks Daily
China's growing clout in global media extends beyond movies to the entertainment industry generally. Capital investments by U.S. firms in ventures such as the Shanghai Disney Resort and the Universal Beijing Resort give Chinese officials still more levers with which to control U.S. media conglomerates. - Journal of Democracy
The furious response that Yanktonai Dakota artist Oscar Howe wrote when rejected for the 1958 Philbrook Indian Annual competition because the abstract painting he submitted was "a fine painting, but not Indian" still resonates today, while Howe himself went on to produce a very impressive body of work. - Smithsonian Magazine
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
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
The composer, who has accrued reputational capital on the open market, exchanges some of it for an ever-dwindling share of institutional security. The institution in exchange acquires not so much her music or her services as a teacher—though these come in the bargain—as a stake in her brand. - The Baffler
"From automated audiobooks to digital avatars, AI systems are now replacing skilled professional performers" the union says. It warns of "dystopian" consequences unless copyright law adapts. Equity highlights a number of different ways actors' voices and likenesses may be used. - BBC
