We are at the point where real differences between populations can be scientifically engineered, we face a new challenge. As gene-altered or AI-assisted humans emerge, how can we preserve the political sense of equal citizenship that we have (imperfectly) developed? – Noema
Tag: 08.11.20
Survival: Hibernate Or Adapt?
Amid this backdrop, what are the options available to arts venues, upon which so much of the industry relies, when they find traditional spaces not fit for purpose within social distancing guidelines? Will hibernation or adaptation be the best long-term survival strategy? – Toks Dada
As We All Know Now, Time Both Is And Isn’t Real
OK, let’s get metaphysical: “‘The true present is a dimensionless speck,’ Alan Burdick writes in his book Why Time Flies. ‘The specious present, in contrast, is ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’ ’—he quotes James. The specious present, Burdick adds, ‘is a proxy measure of consciousness.’ It is what we think of as now. Not the general now, as in “the way we live now,” but right now. And how long is now?” – The Paris Review
Museum Of The Bible In Talks With Iraq Over Collection Items That May Have Been Looted
“While a final agreement is still pending, the Iraqi government has reportedly consented to a $15 million settlement over 4,000 disputed antiquities in the Museum of the Bible’s collection, which have been handed over to Iraqi control based on the suspicion that they were looted. In exchange, the museum may retain the right to display some of the objects on loan.” – Artnet
Here’s One Set Of Turf Dancers On The Subway Who Are Actual Professionals
Yung Phil and his crew Turf Feinz may work the BART trains in and around San Francisco, but only between gigs for commercials, music videos, and concert tours. “We’re using [the subways] as another outlet,” he tells Jennifer Stahl. “It’s not just about trying to get a quick dollar. We try to push the movement, we try to push the culture forward.” – Dance Magazine
So Who Was ‘Jim Crow’, Anyway?
As you might guess, that’s not the name of any real person. Jim Crow was, arguably, the original minstrel show character. The performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) didn’t invent minstrelsy, but he was its first famous practitioner, and Jim Crow was his (grotesquely stereotyped) blackface persona. – Mental Floss
Matt Herron, Photojournalist Who Documented Civil Rights Struggle In Deep South, Dead At 89
“A child of the Depression and a protégé of the Dust Bowl documentarian Dorothea Lange, Mr. Herron assembled a team of photographers to capture the clashes between white Southerners and Black protesters, aided by their white Freedom Rider allies, as they sought to claim the rights they had been legally granted a century before.” – The New York Times
Antitrust Rules Against Studios Owning Movie Theaters Struck Down (Will That Save The Theaters?)
Known as the Paramount Consent Degrees, the regulations followed from a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering Hollywood studios to sell off their national cinema chains; a US District Court judge has ruled that the current distribution landscape, including streaming, means those rules are no longer necessary. With chains reeling from the coronavirus lockdown (and AMC in particular facing bankruptcy), maybe Amazon and Netflix should just buy themselves chains? (Disney, no doubt, will.) – Wired
How The Internet Turned People Into Users
Google is, as Joanne McNeil writes, “the intermediary between my ideas and action forward, the glue between my questions and answers, a placeholder for thoughts and a way to sort my desires.” But it’s also an advertising, machine-learning, and data-collection regime, with material incentives for addressing it as an advice column rather than an algorithm. – The Nation
The End Of Second-Hand Bookstores?
Decades, even centuries, of history and tradition are disappearing because of market forces, and the pandemic that we are all suffering through has sped matters up. – The Critic