“I had about 24 hours where I hovered under my covers and was like: ‘I killed feminism. Why did I do that? Rats. I did not mean to do that.’ And then I very quickly kind of felt comfortable with what I had written.”
Tag: 11.19.14
Rave Reviews Mean A Lot Of Disappointed Audiences
“The price of the tickets, the commitment to giving up an entire afternoon and evening, and the glowing reviews had all piled on the anticipation to such an extent that this was going to have to be a really astonishing piece of theatre for it to really deliver.”
Should We Care About The Disappearance Of Marginalia With Digital Books?
“Kindle did launch a public notes feature in 2011, which allows people to make their notes and highlights available to others, but some still worry digital marginalia won’t be preserved as technology advances, leaving future historians without the kind of marginalia penned by people like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and other historical figures. Others wonder whether there’s a point in trying to preserve marginalia at all.”
Hiding Behind Falsifiability
“Basically, it refers to whether or not a belief can be proven wrong. If I tell you that I weigh 70 pounds, this is a claim that can be easily tested and promptly thrown out by bringing me to a scale — that is, it’s falsifiable. If, on the other hand, I tell you that everything in the universe is controlled by an invisible astral monkey with a million arms, then there’s little you can do to prove, empirically, that this is a zany notion.”
Police Raid Paris Manuscript Museum Over Alleged Ponzi Scheme
“Paris’s Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits, an institution devoted to ancient manuscripts and historic letters, was raided by French authorities on Tuesday for its apparent role in a fraudulent investment scheme masterminded by the museum’s founder, financier Gérard Lhéritier.”
Becoming The World’s Tallest Ballet Dancer Wasn’t Easy
Fabrice Calmels (6’6″): “I knew I had the technique and could do a lot of things principal dancers could do and I wanted my chance. But everyone was like, ‘You know, I think you’re really tall. I don’t think you’ll ever have a career. I think you should be doing something else from ballet.’ And when you’re young, that really f***s with you.”
Peter Sellars: To Examine Difficult Things In Art Is Not To Endorse Them
“Looking at something does not mean you’re endorsing it. One can abhor an event, yes, but one also needs to understand it. Yet the US today is coming close to censorship.”
Billboard Music Charts Will Now Count Streams
“Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan, the agency that supplies its data, will start adding streams and downloads of tracks to the formula behind the Billboard 200, which, since 1956 has functioned as the music world’s weekly scorecard. It is the biggest change since 1991, when the magazine began using hard sales data from SoundScan, a revolutionary change in a music industry that had long based its charts on highly fudgeable surveys of record stores.”
Baghdad Ballet School Carries On While All Around It Changes
“The Iraqi capital’s past as a Middle East center of culture is a distant memory, but the school has carved out a tiny island of creativity amid the violence that is an inescapable part of daily life and the religious conservatism that now defines public life.”
The New Republic Celebrates Its 100th Birthday
The magazine has substantially reinvented itself in recent years. “These days, The New Republic’s goal of parting its hair down the middle, starting with its decision to stop running editorials, strikes some as a diminishment.”