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From restitution to confronting authoritarian regimes, here are five ways museums can be more ethical. This list is from Gareth Harris, author of the book Towards the Ethical Art Museum.
“As a clinical psychologist, I was curious: Could ChatGPT function like a thinking partner? A therapist in miniature? I gave it three months to test the idea. A year later, I’m still using ChatGPT like an interactive journal.”
Molly White: Curate your own newspaper with RSS. “What if you could take all your favorite newsletters, ditch the data collection, and curate your own newspaper?”
Philip Bump on the results of a recent poll. What Makes an American? Three in 10 Republicans Say: Being White.
In this video, Maurice Moves highlights a pair of flashlights that are extremely useful & well-designed but also shockingly affordable.
Most people never think about flashlights, but as someone who uses one daily for work, it’s always top of mind, and the tech, value, and products are proof that modern flashlights are absolutely insane and defy logic and manufacturing economics.
The two flashlights he featured are the WUBEN G5 Rechargeable EDC Flashlight ($20) and the Nitecore EDC37 8000 ($140) — the Wuben in particular would be affordable at twice the price given how nicely designed and engineered it is.
I feel like this about Apple’s M4 Macbook Airs; as I wrote last week, “$800 is an absurdly low price for so much computer”.
See also No One Knows How to Make a Pencil. (thx, dunstan)
Jon Batiste & Randy Newman team up for a song called Lonely Avenue. This is lovely. (via craig mod)
Tags: Jon Batiste · music · Randy Newman · video
I’d like to say that I’m a proud member of The Great I Haven’t Economy™ — “owning zero Labubus, consuming zero matchas, having zero dating profiles, eating zero Dubai Chocolates, owning zero Stanley Cups” — but more likely I’m just old.
Cory Doctorow is coming out with a book on enshittification in the fall: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
“If the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don’t know how we will get it back.”
In a review of City of Angels, the 1998 Hollywood remake of Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders, Roger Ebert says:
To compare the two films is really beside the point, since “Wings of Desire” exists on its own level as a visionary and original film, and “City of Angels” exists squarely in the pop mainstream.
In his latest video, Evan Puschak leans into the vast gulf between the two films to “explore the differences in cinematic cultures and styles”. He takes a close look at the same scene in both films and what they reveal about Hollywood on the one hand and European art cinema on the other.
Tags: City of Angels · Evan Puschak · film school · movies · video · Wings of Desire
1787: “Caroline Lucretia Herschel became the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and hold a government position in the UK.” 2025: “Professor Michele Dougherty CBE FRS FRAS became the first woman appointed Astronomer Royal in the UK.”
