Spencr Kornhaber: “The reasons not to speak ill of the dead are easily understood: They can’t defend themselves, and their loved ones are already in pain. … [Yet,] in each recent shocking celebrity death there are, plausibly, lessons — about mental health, substance use, social media, domestic violence, and other things — that might help curb the darker trends in American life. Can those lessons be heard and discussed without causing offense?”
Tag: 10.22.18
Want To See How Colorful Ancient Greece Really Was? Play This Video Game
Word is finally getting around that the marble statues of ancient Greece weren’t snowy-white; they were painted in vibrant colors. Same for the Parthenon — indeed, of most buildings. It may seem hard to believe that the latest version of the game Assassin’s Creed, subtitled Odyssey and set during the Peloponnesian War, could look anything like actual 5th-century-BC Athens, but scholars have reacted very positively.
Painter Harold Gregor Dead At 89
“Gregor first gained national renown in the 1970s within the Photorealism and Abstract Expressionism movements, and his landscapes regularly feature vibrant colors and skewed perspectives. He often broke down his body of work into five categories: ‘Illinois flatscapes,’ ‘Illinois landscapes,’ ‘Illinois colorscapes,’ ‘trail paintings,’ and ‘vibrascapes.'”
Woman Rustles Candy During Mahler Performance, Fight Ensues
As Andris Nelsons, an eminent Latvian conductor, coaxed the quiet notes from the string section of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a woman in the balcony rustled a bag of gum, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported. A young man sitting next to her glared a few times and then lost his patience. He snatched the bag from her and threw it onto the floor.
Why Do We Tend To Particularly Distrust Experts?
The US has had a long history of mistrust in highly educated professionals, but we seem to have shifted to a situation in which expertise has become both a disqualification and a reason for attack.
Get Ready For The Streaming Wars. We’ll Look Back Wistfully At What We Had
Nearly every company that makes video is finding its way into the streaming media business. Disney is planning its own Netflix competitor for 2019, backed by content holdings like Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. AT&T plans to launch its own Time-Warner focused equivalent around the same time. Similar competitors from Amazon and Comcast are already taking shape. With the streaming subscription business growing this fast, everyone wants a piece — and they’re ready to fight for it.
YouTube CEO Says New EU Law Will Be Devastating For Creators
“The proposal will force platforms, like YouTube, to prioritize content from a small number of large companies. The burden of copyright proof will be too high for most independent creators to instantly demonstrate. There is a better way forward for copyright online but it’s critical you speak up now as this decision may be finalized by the end of the year.”
The Problem With Movies About Real-Life Terrorism Incidents
“You want to honour the victims, but you also want to provide a thrilling night at the movies. Maybe there is no way of squaring that circle.” Steve Rose considers the two new films about the 2011 mass murders by a white nationalist terrorist in Norway.
Philadelphia’s New Holocaust Memorial Includes Rails From Treblinka, Tree Sapling From Theresienstadt
The Nathan Rapaport sculpture Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs has been at the site, near the eastern end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, since 1964, but around it has been built a new $13 million plaza that includes those artifacts — plus testimony about them from survivors, available via a free app.
Highbrow Lit Has Been Possessed By Ghost Stories
“Literature — the top-shelf, award-winning stuff — is positively ectoplasmic these days, crawling with hauntings, haints and wraiths of every stripe and disposition. These ghosts can be nosy and lubricious, as in George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo … [or] confused by their fates, as in Martin Riker’s new novel, Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return … They terrify, instruct and enchant — sometimes all in the same book.” For instance, Lauren Groff’s Florida, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House, Hari Kunzru’s White Tears, and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Parul Sehgal looks at the genre’s hold on writers and readers alike.