CategoryArts & Culture
AI Slop is Invading the Culture, Replacing Writers
The antidote to AI slop is a renewal of aesthetic and literary taste
AI Generated Content May Now Be Copyrighted
AI-generated work can be copyrighted if it involves “meaningful human authorship.”
Music in the Mind
The need for poetry in totalitarian times
Ted Mosby Can Save Today’s Dating World
The modern dating landscape is abysmal
Re-enchanting the Secular West
More writers and intellectuals recognize the need for right-brain thinking
2024 Was Substack’s Year and a Win for Independent Media
The rise of independent writers and creators threatens traditional media and publishing“You are the media now.” If Oxford were to have a “phrase of the year,” it might be that single little line, which, if you kept in touch with the media’s pulse over the last few months, makes a lot of sense. 2024 was arguably the year of the meteoric rise of the independent creator and the calamitous fall of the so-called legacy media. More than any other time in the digital era, it’s obvious that people with no ties to the gatekeeping institutions of our culture can create and distribute videos, journalism, and literature. You don’t have to send a million stories to The New Yorker anymore, only to be rejected. You can post your own commentary on Substack Read More ›
The Genius of Paul Johnson: Remembering a Peerless Historian
Johnson offered penetrating critiques of the personalities, currents of thought, and events that shaped life today
The Absurdity of Our Media Moment
When crimes seem almost scripted to stoke division and speculation
Scott Galloway: Get Men Off the Screens
The conversation revolved around one big question: What happened to men?
Monday Micro Softy 3: The Wolverton Mountain Puzzle
Here’s the answer to Dead President’s Club as well — and smart STEM people often DON'T get that one rightMind Matters News is pleased to offer a new series, “Monday Micro Softies,” from our director, Robert J. Marks, a series of puzzles that illustrate the ways of thinking needed in the computer industry today. – Eds. Here’s today’s puzzle, in honor of Claude King, followed by the solution to last Monday’s puzzle, The Dead Presidents Club. In 1962, King recorded the song Wolverton Mountain. It’s the story of Claude’s love of Clifton Clowers’ daughter — we’ll call her Chloe — who lives on the top of Wolverton Mountain. (Listen here.) It’s a catchy tune. Here’s a puzzle augmenting the song’s story: Claude starts climbing to the top of Wolverton Mountain at 6 AM. There is only one road, and Read More ›
In Memoriam: Two Prophets and a President Died This Day
The prophetic artists of the past still speak
Why Do We Have So Many Live-Action Remakes?
Whether a cartoon or live-action, what we really want is a good storyA couple of days ago, I chanced upon a trailer for the live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon. The original film, based on the book of the same name, premiered in 2010 and follows the heartfelt adventure story of a young Nordic lad, Hiccup, and his friendly dragon Toothless (who does, in fact, have teeth). The original movie got great reviews and remains one of my personal favorite animated films. It has memorable and funny characters, a good storyline, and is well animated. So why do we need a live-action version of the movie? A Loss of Originality Disney led the charge with its realistic remakes with live-action representations of Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, and Cinderella, Read More ›
David Foster Wallace’s American Dream
We don’t need a grand revolution to achieve something meaningful — living a compassionate life is as American as it gets.In 2005, writer David Foster Wallace captured the ethos of a fragile America while talking to college students. The speech warrants rereading today, given the current state of free speech and thought on college campuses nationwide. Wallace delivered This is Water as a commencement speech to Kenyon College seniors seeking to inspire the next generation of thinkers, builders, and servers. It tackled cynicism and forgiveness through simple examples, like swimming fish. Yet, its enduring spirit lies in how perfectly Wallace addresses the American identity crisis. In his words, “the really significant education… isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” Wallace’s advice is a rebuke against selfishness. The ability to think is useless if you refuse to learn Read More ›
What’s Happening to Literature?
Why aren't students reading anything anymore?
As AI Bots Hit the Scene, What Will Happen to Romance and Marriage?
How fares romance and marriage in the 21st century? In America, at least, it's not looking goodIn decades past, people tended to meet each other in their local communities through church, school, family friends, and so on. Go back further and it was common for marriages to be arranged solely for economic purposes. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was subversive because Elizabeth Bennett risks her family’s economic security by marrying Mr. Darcy purely for love. But, I digress. Trae Stephens writes for Pirate Wires on how the marriage rate has gone down alongside the advent of digital technologies, and how this is, more than likely, not coincidental. Particularly with the rise of AI bots, like the ones published by Character.AI, millions of people are living out romances with digital avatars perfectly tailored to their whims Read More ›
A Big Question: Is Legacy Media Dead?
The rise of citizen journalism and considering what we lose without traditional "gatekeepers"Used to, you had to go through the media gatekeepers to put your work out there. With the advent of the internet and platforms like X, Substack, YouTube, and others, however, the masses can all create personal accounts and honk news and opinions into the world. The competition is no longer just between different outlets, but now extends to individual people. Who can speak the loudest and draw the most attention? Who can create the most effective personal “brand”? The Washington Post saw a massive drop in subscriptions following its decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the 2024 election. But its influence was already declining. The media giant responsible for breaking the vast background story of the Watergate Read More ›
John Stuart Mill: Humans Are Not Automatons
Making rational decisions takes a lot of thought and hard work, says Mill.
The Tolkien Test vs. the Turing Test
Could AI create Middle-earth?
AI is the New Political Irony Machine
We live in a world inundated with fakery and irony. Are we losing our interest in the truth?I never saw any news reports of Haitian migrants allegedly eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. At least, not for the first couple of days after the “news” hit the social media headlines. I did see, however, an AI-generated video of a kitten cradled in the arms of Donald Trump with a caption along the lines of “save the cats!” The Haitians chased him with weaponry in the background. I saw another AI video of a cat at a construction site just working to feed the family, praying that he’d live to see another day without the Haitians trying to nab his skin as a rug. The event was a meme before it was a story. It wasn’t until after I’d Read More ›