Roger Ebert explains how the time-consuming process of changing the lenses on complicated new 3d projectors is diminishing the theater-going experience.
How 3d Projectors Make 2d Movies Worse
Facebook’s Fakery
Facebook's amended S-1 to its IPO was filed this week, and the details confirm some of the doubts raised in the last filing. The company estimates that between 5-6% of its most active users could in fact be "duplicate" (read: fake) accounts. Put in more concrete terms, of Facebook's estimated 850 million users, 46,475,000 may be like this one. (46 million, by the way, is roughly the population of Colombia, Spain, or Ukraine.)
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8Bits and Ottoman arts
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Richard Wright, 106
Richard Wright's 106th birthday passed this last week, and in celebration The Paris Review posted an excerpt from a 2003 remembrance. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling's review of Wright's Native Son.
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You’d like to think that you’re immune to the stuff…
The lights are on / but you're not home. / Your mind / is not your own. / Your heart sweats (?) / Your teeth grind. . . . You might as well face it / You're addicted to Twitter.
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Vera, or Verdure
Over the course of a half-century, Vladimir Nabokov wrote hundreds of letters to his wife Vera, which are being published in book form this week for the first time. Among other things, they reveal the absurd pet names he invented for her (such as Goosykins and Monkeykins) and display Nabokov musing over whether or not to borrow a friend’s castle for the summer. Also worth reading: our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor.
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Everything is Political
Recommended Reading: Amy King, Shane McCrae, Ken Chen, and fifteen other poets and activists on political poetry and literary activism.
Books without Covers
In the New York Times, Mokoto Rich highlights the superfluousness of book covers in the digital age and the marketing challenges that result. cf. "Ether Between the Covers: Gifting Books in a Digital Age."