How Facebook Killed Online Comedy?

The whole story is basically that Facebook gets so much traffic that they started convincing publishers to post things on Facebook. For a long time, that was fine. People posted things on Facebook, then you would click those links and go to their websites. But then, gradually, Facebook started exerting more and more control of what was being seen, to the point that they, not our website, essentially became the main publishers of everyone’s content. Today, there’s no reason to go to a comedy website that has a video if that video is just right on Facebook. And that would be fine if Facebook compensated those companies for the ad revenue that was generated from those videos, but because Facebook does not pay publishers, there quickly became no money in making high-quality content for the internet.

The ‘Netflix Of Reading’ Is Finally Taking Off

“Amazon stepped into e-book rentals in 2014 with its $10-per-month Kindle Unlimited service … But a small competitor named Scribd started even earlier and offers larger quantities of popular content – for a buck less. In the past year, it’s grown subscribers by over 40% to 700,000 (still well behind Kindle Unlimited’s estimated 2.5 million-plus) and has started making a steady monthly profit. After introducing unlimited reading and then moving away from it, the company is bringing it back, with some limitations designed to make it economically viable.”

4,400-Year-Old Tomb Of Egyptian Priestess Found Near Cairo

“The [burial chamber] was uncovered in a cemetery to the west of the Great Pyramid in October of 2017. It appears to have been built for a Priestess of Hathor identified as Hetpet. The paintings inside the tomb imagine the high-ranking priestess in various scenarios – receiving offerings from her children, hunting and fishing. There are scenes of people smelting metal and building papyrus boats on display as well as images of domesticated monkeys picking fruit and dancing in front of an orchestra.”

Does This Grammar App Actually Make You A Worse Writer?

Whatever its faults, Grammarly’s Chrome extension isn’t completely useless. It’s saved me from some basic typos in hastily composed tweets and emails, and when I ran a draft of this article through it, it noticed a missing word that I (probably) would have caught on review. Nevertheless, the company’s ostensibly advanced tools are more likely to degrade our writing than improve it, if only because they don’t reflect the ways we really write.

Agnès Varda Sends Cardboard Cutouts Of Herself To Oscar Nominees’ Lunch

The 89-year-old French filmmaker, up for Best Documentary Feature for Faces Places, is the oldest Oscar nominee in history. She wasn’t able to get to Los Angeles for this event, but she charmed everyone there nevertheless: everyone wanted a selfie with her cutout. (By the way, the best headline for this story is from The Guardian: “Flat screen legend“.)

A Dance Company For Orthodox Jewish Men

“Dance and devotion have a long, rich relationship in Judaism. And dance continues to be used by some groups, including the Hasidim, as a form of ecstatic spiritual expression. For the members of Ka’et, all of whom identify as dati leumi, or religious Zionists (akin to modern Orthodox in America), dance also offered a way into prayer. As Rabbi Schwartz said, ‘I can’t fully express myself spiritually without connecting to my body.’ But putting that body on a theatrical stage, in front of an audience, was a bold and unusual move.”

New York’s Next Big Arts Center Isn’t Waiting For Its Building To Start Programming

“Titled ‘Prelude to the Shed’, the free event” – a 12-day festival this May – “will include a mix of art, dance and live music performances, including a work by the artist Tino Sehgal. plus talks and an experimental school. The events will all be housed in a temporary structure at 10th Avenue and 30th Street, a block away from The Shed’s $500m home at the centre of the Hudson Yards development.”