A week into a federal trial over whether a law preventing Tuscon from teaching elective ethnic studies classes was racially motivated, the former head of public instruction, one of the strongest supporters of the ban, “reaffirmed things like saying that Spanish language media should be banned from the United States with a limited exception of Mexican restaurant menus.”
Tag: 07.14.17
Neuroscience Is Confirming Why Some Buildings Work And Some Don’t
“I realized that our paradigm of understanding how people experience their environments had radically shifted, and no one had really figured out what this meant. One of the things I found was that, basically, [given] what we now know about human cognition and perception, the built environments we inhabit are drastically more important than we ever thought they were.”
Turkey Has Fired 7,000 More Civil Servants, Academics, And Even Police
“The announcement comes a day before the one-year anniversary of a failed coup against the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the wake of the coup, around 150,000 officials have been dismissed from their posts and more than 50,000 people have been jailed.”
It’s Really Hard For People (Mostly, But Not All, Male) To Let Women Just Read
At least, it’s hard in the United States. In France, no such problem. “If you sit for many hours and look down at a book and then up at a city and then down at the book again, eventually the two blend into one, and there is no longer any difference between them. This is how the collapse between literature and life happens.”
China’s Artists Defy Ban To Mourn Liu Xiaobo
Praying hands and candle emojis were banned from Weibo, but artists found creative ways to post. “Some posted the works of Liu Xiaobo’s poet and artist widow Liu Xia, who remains under house arrest, depicting mutilated dolls positioned in bleak landscapes. Paintings of empty chairs referenced the empty seat at Liu Xiaobo’s 2010 ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize, which the Chinese government refused to release him to receive.”
What We Expect From Films Affects How We See Them, Says A Critic
Katie Walsh: “When studios drive a wedge between the two groups, claiming certain blockbusters are for ‘fans, not critics,’ it’s drawing a divide that shouldn’t exist. Ultimately, critics are fans. We want to like movies and we want them to be good. Just think of us as your helpful neighborhood expectation managers.”
What Happened To Jane Austen’s Characters After The Books Ended? Joan Aiken Knew
Perhaps you missed this, but “in her expansive set of prequels, concurrent fictions and sequels, published between 1984 and 2000, she is particularly adept at picking out the characters one would wonder about most, and writes them so well as almost to make Austen seem remiss for telling us only one side of the story.”
Will Netflix (And Other Streaming Service) Password-Sharing Go Away?
Uh-oh. If people can’t share passwords with their families, will they still want Hulu or Amazon? (Netflix seems safe.) “Companies say they accept some sharing as a way to promote their programming to potential customers, but they also take steps to curtail blatant freeloading.”
Millions Of Text Messages Use Emojis To Beg SFMOMA For Art
Wow, 2017, you do have some pleasant surprises: “It’s far more popular than the museum ever imagined, with people indulging in a long back-and-forth, binge texting. And it’s also revealed something surprising about its users — about how, and when, they want to interact with art, and how much they crave a personal connection with cultural authority.”
The Royal Shakespeare Company Is Launching Accessible ‘Chilled’ Performances
This is in addition to performances that reduce the sound volume and turn up the lights – so-called “relaxed” performances – and are aimed at slightly different audiences, for “people who feel more at ease knowing they are able to leave the auditorium at any time. These include people with dementia and people with babes in arms.”