The debate over statues—and the wider debates around the Black Lives Matter movement—have thrust the issue of our relationship to history into public consciousness. We should seize this moment to think more deeply about the complexities of the past that have shaped the present. – New York Review of Books
Tag: 09.09.20
The ‘Gentrification Font’ (There’s Really A Typeface For Rich People Taking Over Poor Neighborhoods?)
“‘Gentrification font’ applies to any stylish sans serif that decorates houses and real estate developments, especially in changing areas. Users replying to the viral Twitter thread pegged it as anything from Avenir to Futura to Century Gothic, which look identical to an untrained eye.” But the font most identified with gentrification is Neutraface, most familiar from the restaurant chain Shake Shack. Here’s a deep dive into how this phenomenon developed. – Vice
Where Do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Stand on the Arts?
“With the election less than two months away, Hyperallergic looked at the Democratic candidate and his running mate’s track record in the field, from legislative achievements to museum affiliations and general support of the industry.” – Hyperallergic
Turns Out Most Of Scots Wikipedia Is Fake. What To Do About It?
If there is any reason to think the situation with Scots Wikipedia will improve over time, it might simply be that Wikipedia editors themselves are quite industrious—and, relatively speaking, more forgiving. – Slate
Meet The New Artificial Intelligence That’s Got Everyone’s Attention
GPT-3 is a marvel of engineering due to its breathtaking scale. It contains 175 billion parameters (the weights in the connections between the “neurons” or units of the network) distributed over 96 layers. It produces embeddings in a vector space with 12,288 dimensions. And it was trained on hundreds of billions of words representing a significant subset of the Internet—including the entirety of English Wikipedia, countless books, and a dizzying number of web pages. Training the final model alone is estimated to have cost around $5 million. – Nautilus
Quick About-Face: Metropolitan Museum Follows Drastic Staff Reductions with Strategic Additions
I’ve suggested that the Met’s radical downsizing of staff (necessitated by the Virus Crisis) might give its leaders an opportunity to install their own hand-picked team “sooner and less controversially than would have otherwise been possible.” “Sooner” turns out to be immediately. – Lee Rosenbaum
Oscars’ New Diversity Rules Ignite A Debate
Predictably, the backlash has already begun. The Academy’s announcement was greeted on its own website by comments including: “You ruined the Oscars. It’s no longer about a cinema as a genre of art. Now it’s totally about politics,” and “forced diversity lowers quality of the product”. – The Guardian
Are Parking Lots A Solution For Live Venues?
There are other pop-up drive-in theaters in North Texas, but none are as focused on bringing back the performing arts as Tin Star. “I’ve lived my life in theaters,” Nolan McGahan says. “Just because there’s a pandemic doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dreams.” – Dallas News
Is Online Streaming Of Performances Here To Stay?
“While widespread live performance without social distancing remains unlikely until 2021, streaming platforms have found their moment in the spotlight, offering audiences access to a library of theatre. Key figures in the digital theatre movement tell Tom Wicker about what the future holds for streaming services.” – The Stage
Official Report On Abuse At Berlin State Ballet School Released
“The report spoke of failures in school leadership and oversight. While it did not describe individual incidents, it said physical and psychological abuse had been taking place for years without consequences. Current and former students spoke of ‘lots of drilling and physical stress’ including beatings, verbal attacks and humiliation by instructors. The expert commission demanded the SBB be fundamentally reformed and democratized.” – Deutsche Welle