Chinese money has been buying up Hollywood movie companies with the intent of pursuing global business. So is this a problem? “When you control the movie experience, you can subtly influence public opinion. And the Chinese government has been transparent about that goal.”
Tag: 10.04.16
Creating Online Rituals For Our Online Lives
“There is a reason that ritual is such a pervasive part of human experience that it appears in every culture, and dissected by a wide range of disciplines. … [They’re] ‘the symbolic codes for interpreting and negotiating events of everyday existence.’ In the absence of online rituals, we lack the signposts that can help us navigate difficult online experiences – or mark and appreciate the great ones. Rather than wait for rituals to gradually and organically emerge out of online life, it’s time for us to think about consciously creating [them].”
Lady Jane: Oscar Wilde Totally Took After His Mother
“Jane was a living, writing, talking paradox. She was an elitist who championed the undergo, a lover of ceremony and ritual who wanted to destroy the status quo, a republican who relished her peerage, a rebel at home in the realm, the barricades and the drawing-room were her natural habitats. … Oscar revered his mother and father, but his resemblance to his mother goes to the core of what made both of them remarkable, and prone to calamity.”
How The Insecurity Of Adjuncts Figures In To The University “Safe Spaces” Debates
“Insecurity, endemic to a profession heavily reliant on short-term labor, is usually omitted from discussions regarding safe spaces. But the instructor’s role in the construction of safe spaces is unquestioned: They hold the balance of power in the classroom, even if they know themselves to be nearly powerless in other areas of life. As a result, they need to concede a great deal of that power if a space is indeed to remain safe for their students.”
Canadian Architect Bing Thom, 75
“He was one of the people who was a key input into this thing we call the Vancouver model or ‘Vancouverism’… He was one of these people who challenged the idea that only Vancouver would be an urban place… and he was quite right about that.”
Ivan Hewitt: Is Greed Really The Cause Of American Orchestras’ Woes?
Given the precarious state of classical music in the market-place, you might think orchestras would exercise some caution in the matter of remuneration. But instead of asking “what can we afford?”, the instinct of players and management is to cast envious glances at their peers among the top-tier orchestras, and ask “are they richer than us?”
Fear Of BP: How I Dealt With Frightened Louisianans And Nervous Attorneys To Make ‘Deepwater Horizon’
The film’s director, Peter Berg: “After I came aboard [the project], I jumped into the script, went down to Louisiana – and very quickly realised this was different. We were dealing with a culture of litigation.”
Esperanto Didn’t Change The World, But It Has Changed Its Speakers
“It did not prevent a century of wars (many fought, notably, between people who spoke the same language). Instead, Esperanto’s speakers were persecuted throughout the 20th century.” (Stalinists thought they were spies; McCarthyists thought they were Commies.) “Esperanto may not have changed the world. But in both its ideals and its practice, it holds out the possibility of transforming the lives of the people who use it.”
$255 Million Worth Of Old Master Paintings May Be Fakes
“Experts now believe that there have been a recent spate of forgeries on the market, and that unwitting collectors may have spent up to £200 million ($255 million) on fakes masquerading as the work of Frans Hals, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Orazio Gentileschi, and other artists.”
Mysterious NSFW Murals Have Been Popping Up All Over Brussels
“Thanks to an anonymous street artist who specializes in explicit images, large sections of Central Brussels have essentially become NSFW. Since mid-September, unauthorized murals depicting various parts of the human anatomy started cropping upon the walls of the Belgian capital, causing both giggles and disapproval.”