“The participants in these psychodramas [as the makers called them], which continued to air on public access channels into the ’90s, were not professional actors, but members of a UFO cult re-enacting their memories of past lives on film. They were part of Unarius, a self-described ‘spiritual school’ that offers self-improvement ‘based on the interdimensional understanding of energy.'”
Tag: 09.15.16
I No Longer Get Typecast As A Muslim Radical Terrorist – Except At The Airport
“To begin with, auditions taught me to get through airports. In the end, it was the other way around.” Actor Riz Ahmed’s career may be flourishing, but his experiences with immigration officials, in both the US and his native UK, have gone from frightening (and illegal) to tedious to humorous.
How Enlightenment Philosophers Wrestled With New Ideas About The Mind – And Reality
“The question was: How complete an account of the nature of reality could the new physical science in principle provide? Do our minds necessarily escape its reach, even if our bodies are part of the physical world?”
Gramophone’s Recording Of The Year Goes To …
“Igor Levit’s recording of the Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated! for Sony Classical has taken the top prize.”
How Silicon Valley Is Killing Its Non-Profits
“One might then assume that Silicon Valley and the surrounding Bay Area would be the ideal place for a tech-focused nonprofit to set up shop. After all, the region is packed with tech talent, and its local tech companies regularly boast about their commitment to helping nonprofit organizations in their communities, as it helps attract talent and can be good for business overall. But in reality, the skyrocketing cost of living is taking its toll on vital community institutions, while a war for talent continues to drive tech workers’ salaries beyond the reach of the nonprofit sector.”
The Book Publisher That Has Borrowed The Serial TV Model
“The company is essentially a book publisher, but instead of releasing whole novels by lone authors, it rolls out stories like a TV network: one “episode” a week, each penned by a different writer. Every installment, much like every episode of The Night Of, will take a little under an hour of your time, and for those who keep up with their shows on iTunes, the options to buy will be familiar.”
Publishers Think They’ve Figured Out The Algorithm That Will Make Us Buy. So What Does That Mean For What Gets Published?
“A handful of startups in the US and abroad claim to have created their own algorithms or other data-driven approaches that can help them pick novels and nonfiction topics that readers will love, as well as understand which books work for which audiences. Meanwhile, traditional publishers are doing their own experiments: Simon & Schuster hired its first data scientist last year; in May, Macmillan Publishers acquired the digital book publishing platform Pronoun, in part for its data and analytics capabilities.”
Could The Building You Live In Be Damaging Your Mental Health?
“The issue is hotly debated. For example, it’s often believed that open plan offices promote pro-social working and avoid the drab monotony of cubicle working, but other studies claim that it can instead be bad for productivity and wellbeing.”
MoMA To Make Thousands Of Archival Images Of Exhibitions Available Online
“Beginning Thursday, after years of planning and digitizing, much of that archive will now be available on the museum’s website, moma.org, searchable so that visitors can time-travel to see what the museum looked like during its first big show (‘Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh,’ in the fall of 1929); during seminal exhibitions (Kynaston McShine’s ‘Information’ show in 1970, one of the earliest surveys of Conceptual art); and during its moments of high-minded glamour (Audrey Hepburn, in 1957, admiring a Picasso with Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum’s domineering first director).”
Cleveland Orchestra Launches Flexible Not-Exactly-A-Subscription Plan
“The ‘Members Club,’ a new style of subscription plan …, now active and deployed through a new smartphone app, is open to all but targets young and middle-aged people who would like to attend more frequently but choose not to commit to traditional subscriptions.”