How Facebook Has Revived The Epistolary Friendship

“Thanks to the newfound abundance of text-based communications tools, and the social networks that allow us to discover or rediscover potential correspondents, friendships conducted entirely through text exchange are once again the norm. Would these friendships look familiar to the letter-writing friends of earlier centuries, when epistolary friendships were also common? Or is there something essential that we have lost – or at least changed – in moving the text-based friendship from page to screen?”

A 700-Year-Old Nutmeg Tree In The Hirshhorn Museum Lobby

“A design over two years in the making, [Hiroshi Sugimoto’s makeover] transforms the museum’s entrance and lobby area, turning the information desk into a coffee bar, and providing a more inviting seating area next to it. Sugimoto’s armchairs reference both the iconically circular shape of the building and coils of DNA, and the tables are made from the roots of a 700-year-old Japanese nutmeg tree he found 15 years ago. … Benches stand on legs of the same kid of optical glass used in camera lenses.”

Research In The Arts Is Broken

“This is not merely an idle philosophical debate. Every year, our society invests thousands of hours and millions of dollars in generating knowledge about arts and culture.1 But just when choices about how to distribute resources seem to matter more than at any time in living memory, the arts field’s system for knowledge production, dissemination, and consumption is under tremendous strain, if not entirely broken — a predicament only exacerbated by a rapidly changing media environment.”

Trending? Really? What Does That Mean And Why Should We Care?

When we sort through our feeds, “latest” has an obvious chronological sorting mechanism; even “popular” has a fairly clear and agreed-upon definition. “Trending,” however, does not. It’s similar, but not the same as “popular”; generally speaking, it means “popular, in some relative, technically defined way.” That is, the “trending” sections of major platforms are, as of now, algorithmically determined, their contents selected by formulas developed internally at those companies and kept private.

Is The Sound Of The City Around You Making You Sick?

Concerns about hearing loss largely focus on excessive noise exposure. But environmental noise is just as unsafe. People living in cities are regularly exposed (against their will) to noise above 85 decibels from sources like traffic, subways, industrial activity, and airports. That’s enough to cause significant hearing loss over time. If you have an hour-long commute at such sound levels, your hearing has probably already been affected. Urban life also sustains average background noise levels of 60 decibels, which is loud enough to raise one’s blood pressure and heart rate, and cause stress, loss of concentration, and loss of sleep.

In Search Of The Real Tom Bodett

If you don’t know him from his old pieces for NPR’s All Things Considered or as a panelist on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, you’ve surely heard his voice on ads for Motel 6, a gig he’s had for more than 30 years. And that’s hardly all he does. “There were a number of years where people thought I owned the motel chain – there’s still some of that – and that left some people confused as to what I thought I was doing publishing books and voicing cartoons.” Let alone carpentry.