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Via Reader O. comes news that the Art Institute of Chicago has put more than 50,000 hi-res images online and into the public domain (“using CC0 licenses for copyright nerds in The Clamor”).
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In the latest “they’re coming for you” news, the ‘world’s first’ A.I. news anchor has gone live in China.
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The eternal readers’ debate about readability and literary value continues in Sam Leith’s “Pretentious, impenetrable, hard work … better?” I say: yes, and we need unpretentious, penetrable books too. And all kinds in between.
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“Once a television comfort for preschoolers, ‘Look for the helpers’ has become a consolation meme for tragedy.” I wanted to write off Ian Bogost’s article as typical backlash (no one is taking Mr. Rogers away from me) but…I couldn’t. → The Fetishization of Mr. Rogers’s ‘Look for the Helpers’
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A “snapshot of our time,” a “global selfie,” whatever you want to call it, the Memory of Mankind (MOM) project is a fascinating project creating a million-year time capsule. Learn more about the project and its founder.
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In celebration of my birthday (or something) on October 23, Starbucks opened up its first ASL store. So cool.
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Disease sniffing dogs could soon be an important part of the fight against malaria and more.
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Not that long ago, something like the GIPHY Animated Gif Film Fest would have existed only as Zoolander level parody. Confession: I spent too much time enjoying the results of the Fest’s prompt: “Can you compel an audience with an engaging story in under 18 seconds?”
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A fascinating story of (in)human endurance, human (in)sanity, a Camel-smoking contrarian, and Courtney Dauwalter winning and losing a kind of race I can’t even begin to understand. → Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Takes On The World’s Most Sadistic Endurance Race
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Today at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, an armistice is signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, ending World War I. Described at the time as “the war to end all wars,” an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians would die as a direct result of the violence and up to 100 million deaths are attributed indirectly through various genocides and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Though the generals on the Western Front knew the armistice was coming, the fighting continued, with more than 11,000 casualties that morning: the last British soldier killed in action had survived four years in the trenches only to die 90 minutes before the Armistice took effect; the last American would die just one minute before hostilities ceased. Despite the scale and the sheer brutality of the combat, World War I is (amongst Americans, at least) arguably a forgotten war. See also: War Is Done! The sights and sounds of the final hours of World War I & In Photos Unpublished for 100 Years, the Joy of War’s End on Armistice Day & World War 1: Harrowing pictures show France still scarred by First World War trenches & Thomas Hardy’s poem “There Was a Great Calm” & listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent Ending World War I.