Archives: Bookmarks

Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co. | 188 U.S. 239 (1903) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center

Saved on January 28, 2025

It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations, outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits. At the one extreme, some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke. It may be more than doubted, for instance, whether the etchings of Goya or the paintings of Manet would have been sure of protection when seen for the first time.

Camera Obscura — Jane Morris Pack

Saved on January 27, 2025

I often work with second term students on special projects studying master works. After seeing and studying that Rome exhibition I suggested we put our energies into discovering what makes Vermeer unique. His subject matter is neither original nor particular to him. His power lies in his method. My students and I experimented with the idea proposed by Steadman that Vermeer in some way worked directly from the image projected. The first step was building our own camera obscura which would enable us to trace the steps of Vermeer. I had no idea what we would discover but I was sure we would see a new world.

Are Cell Phones Really Destroying Kids’ Mental Health? | The New Republic

Saved on January 24, 2025

If we want to make Americans less reliant on smartphones, we have to address the problems of misery among all Americans. Parental stress reflects on children and young adults, who often witness all the ugly consequences of a cruel society and economy. Direct stresses on youth, enhanced by diminishing promises of a flourishing future, a sense of planetary demise, tightening social restrictions, educational failure, and the rise of public cruelty in real life and social media, demand a much more comprehensive—and political—approach than Haidt can offer with his laser-focus on phones. The danger of emphasizing a single cause for such a widespread and deadly problem is that there is a good chance we would fail to address the range of the real contributing factors.

[2405.06087] When combinations of humans and AI are useful: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Saved on January 21, 2025

“First, we found that, on average, human-AI combinations performed significantly worse than the best of humans or AI alone. Second, we found performance losses in tasks that involved making decisions and significantly greater gains in tasks that involved creating content. Finally, when humans outperformed AI alone, we found performance gains in the combination, but when the AI outperformed humans alone we found losses.”