“Yang Li … is a comedian in China, where homes and offices still hold fast to traditional gender roles and where a nascent #MeToo movement has been met with considerable political and social opposition. One of her lines in particular has set off fierce online debate: ‘How can he look so average and still have so much confidence?’ A lot of men didn’t find it funny. And that, said many of Ms. Yang’s defenders, is exactly the point.” – The New York Times
Blog
2020’s Most Powerless People In The Art World
“Considering it’s 2020, it was especially tough to compile since most of us have felt powerless this year as a deadly virus ravaged our communities by forcing businesses to close, upending daily life, and resulting in the illness and death of millions of people.” – Hyperallergic
The (Largely Untapped) Potential Of Reaching People With Physical Disabilities
“There is simply a lack of awareness of the need and a misunderstanding of the public benefit that could result from reaching out to this population, not to mention the financial benefit that might be gleaned from this untapped market. But fiscal considerations aside, there is simply no good reason why a person with a physical disability must also be culturally disadvantaged.” – Equal Entry
What Happens When Independent Machines Make Mistakes (And They Will)?
“Products and services that make decisions autonomously will also need to resolve ethical dilemmas—a requirement that raises additional risks and regulatory and product development challenges. Scholars have now begun to frame these challenges as problems of responsible algorithm design. They include the puzzle of how to automate moral reasoning.” – Harvard Business Review
What “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” Teaches Us About Copyright Failings
The composer of the catchy tune, South African Solomon Linda, died destitute in 1962. While US artists were at loggerheads over the lucrative melody, he had been in and out of hospitals and suffering from kidney failure. – BBC
Our Robot Overlords Have Learned To Dance… (Better Than I Can)
The video sees Boston Dynamics’ entire lineup of robots — the humanoid Atlas, the dog-shaped Spot, and the box-juggling Handle — all come together in a bopping, coordinated dance routine set to The Contours’ “Do You Love Me.” – The Verge
Are Museums An Education Or An Experience?
“It has made me unexpectedly nostalgic for an idea of museums as spaces where the individual can go and explore on their own without being told what to think; spaces to contemplate works of art which express and demonstrate a different set of ideas and beliefs from the present. I don’t want constantly to be badgered and made to feel guilty that my ancestors have travelled the world collecting objects in order better to understand and interpret the world. I don’t necessarily regard the ideas and beliefs of museums in the past as morally reprehensible, but, instead, believe that many of them were stimulated by curiosity and a passionate desire for the understanding of other cultures — a spirit not necessarily of plunder, but of awe.” – The Critic
When Boys Were Kidnapped And Forced To Sing
The Master of the Choristers at England’s Chapel Royal had the legal right to travel the land in search of the most talented young men and take them away to London to sing at the monarch’s religious services. This was, of course, a situation ripe for abuse, and in the days of Elizabeth I, Master Nathaniel Giles would conscript boys for his pal Henry Evans’s acting company at the Blackfriars Theatre — or they’d split the bribes from parents desperate to keep their families together. Then, one day in 1600, they chose the wrong target. – JSTOR Daily
How The COVID Relief Bill Will Help Performing Arts Venues
“The bill gives priority to those who have lost at least 90% of their revenue between April and December 2019 and the same period this year; they can apply for funding in the first two weeks that grants become available. Second priority goes to those who have lost at least 70% of their revenue in the same period; they can apply in the second two weeks. Administrators can allocate up to 80% of the funds during those first four weeks; after that, anyone can apply. Individual grants are capped at the lesser of 45% of an organization’s 2019 revenue or $10 million.” – San Francisco Chronicle
A Family At The Heart Of The Hawaiian Language Revival
Kekoa and Pelehonuamea Harman fell in love while undergraduates in the first class of the Hawaiian-medium degree program at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Now they’re part of a new generation of instructors teaching the language, and the associated culture, to young people across the state, leading to the first increase in the number of fluent Hawaiian speakers in generations. – Smithsonian Magazine