Tag: large audiences
What Do We Lose If We Lose Twitter?
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, the suggestion that he might run the platform into the ground was, for many, including me, a shorthand. Many supposed that Musk would roll back key moderation policies or reinstate some banned accounts, or that his ownership would be some kind of anti-woke Bat-Signal, flooding the platform with people who are attracted to social media for its capacity to alienate people.
Instead, less than a month into Musk’s tenure, he seems to be doing everything
‘Antiques Roadshow’ Has a Renegade Message
Superficially, Antiques Roadshow is an hour-long report on a traveling fair where locals ask specialists how much money their possessions are worth. Peppered in among familiar objects of uncertain value—books, furniture, toys—viewers also see the clearly precious: Chinese-rhinoceros-horn cups, an 18th-century dollhouse, a one-of-a-kind Patek Philippe pocket watch, a long-lost old-master painting. In each segment, the appraiser asks what the guest knows about their item and then tells them and the audience about its history and, ultimately, its estimated value.
What Germany Can Teach America About Polarization
When Edmund Schechter, a Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis, arrived in postwar Germany in 1945, he encountered a “wasteland”—not just physically, he said, but “psychologically.”
All newspapers had ceased publication. Radio stations were destroyed and devoid of their Nazi staff. The “silent” media landscape provided “virgin territory” to “do all sorts of things really from scratch,” recalled Schechter, who had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp to the United States only to head to Germany after World War II