The major thing is that the Paris myth, in some sense, creates its own death through saturation of believers. The truly exceptional people that came to Paris pave the way for the rest of us, but, their being truly exceptional, in some way, is what made the Paris we chase in our minds what it was. – The Smart Set
Tag: 02.14.19
Let’s Delve A Bit Deeper Into How To Undermine Things You Think You Know (How Fake News Works)
“Suppose you think, as I do, that knowing that something is the case (e.g. that the MMR vaccine is safe) requires being reasonably confident that it’s the case and also having the right to be confident. In that case, anything that effectively undermines my confidence or right to be confident is a threat to my knowledge. So, for example, getting me to doubt the safety of the MMR vaccine by spreading spurious but convincing stories about links between MMR and autism can prevent me from knowing that it’s safe.” 3AM Magazine
Publishers Fight Libraries Over Scanning Books
“If you thought the controversy over library book scanning ended with the Google case, think again. This week the National Writers Union became the latest organization to join the outcry over a practice known as “controlled digital lending” (CDL), by which a library (or a nonprofit, like the Internet Archive) scans a print copy of a book they have legally acquired, then makes the scan available to be borrowed in lieu of the print book, using a DRM-protected one user/one copy model, and, crucially, taking the corresponding print book out of circulation while the digital copy is on loan.” – Publishers Weekly
Machines Can Now Write Compelling Fake Stories. Soon We Won’t Be Able To Tell What’s Real
Jack Clark says it may not be long before AI can reliably produce fake stories, bogus tweets, or duplicitous comments that are even more convincing. “It’s very clear that if this technology matures—and I’d give it one or two years—it could be used for disinformation or propaganda,” he says. “We’re trying to get ahead of this.” – MIT Technology Review
Why Do The Covers Of Novels Always Have The Phrase ‘A Novel’ On Them?
“Books have used the ‘XYZ: A Novel’ format since the 17th century, when realistic fiction started getting popular. The term ‘novel’ was a way to distinguish these more down-to-earth stories from the fanciful ‘romances’ that came before … Then, as now, it was a tag that identified the kind of literature you were getting yourself into.” – Vox
‘Queen Of The Soundies’, Tap Dancer Mable Lee, Dead At 97
“Soundies” were three-minute musical films meant to be played on jukeboxes, and Lee starred in more than 100 of them. In a career that stretched from the age of nine to this past summer, she achieved dance stardom after graduating from the Apollo Theater’s chorus line, was part of the first all-black USO tour, starred in the national tour of Bubbling Brown Sugar, and took part in the tap-dance revival that started in the 1980s, teaching the likes of Michelle Dorrance. – The New York Times
What Comedy Tells Us About Ourselves — And How We’re Changing
Scholar of comedy Matthew McMahan: “Just as Michel Foucault encourages historians to look to moments of rupture and discontinuity when trying to decipher how a culture thinks and acts, I suggest students of comedy look to the moments when a successful joke simply stops landing with its audience. The moment when a loud guffaw quickly shifts to an appalled gasp can tell us a lot about how a culture is changing.” – HowlRound
Why Jessica Lang Decided To Shut Down Her Dance Company
“We didn’t lose our funding. … It was something I did. I approached the board. I told them the last thing I felt I had time to do was create, to make ballets. They agreed. This kind of structure and organization — I know I am not the only one to say it — doesn’t work for me now.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
California Fire’s Aftermath: A Prominent Artist Loses Decades Of Work, Documentation
All of it was gone. Five decades of artwork, tools and texts — crucial components of Liz Albuquerque’s archive and artistic legacy. Within a few hours, reduced to ash-covered rubble. – Los Angeles Times
Ryan Adams Is The Tip Of An Indie Male Iceberg Of Terrible Behavior ‘Visible From Space’
And every indie music journalist knows it. “Publicists for male indie stars ask for guarantees that allegations and evidence of an artist’s bad behaviour aren’t referred to in interviews, and often receive those guarantees. Managers intimidate women at public events because they don’t like the way they have written about their male charges. Music magazine editors sideline female employees who raise red flags when plans are made to cover well-known creeps. Publications continue to write about men outed as beasts once the heat has died down.” – The Guardian (UK)