Illustration by Min Gyo Chung
A Canadian couple has traded in dry land for a life aboard cruise ships, CTV News reports, tracking the growing trend of retirees with residences at sea. But these small floating cities can have a huge impact when they dock. In 2016, Eva Holland explored the ramifications in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, in “The Cruise Ship Cometh”:
A few years ago, the town produced a pamphlet, “Welcome to Pond Inlet,” to be distributed to passengers on the ships before they land. It outlines some basic etiquette: Don’t photograph children or elders without permission; leave artifacts and the natural landscape the way you find them. The pamphlet and the town’s routine for handling visitors as they disembark and explore town are both meant to prevent any resentment or conflict. The ships provoke mixed feelings among the locals: excitement and wariness at the flood of strangers; hope for the economic possibilities; and fear of the environmental and cultural threats they represent. [Read more]
The copyright for Steamboat Willie has officially expired, and Mickey Mouse is now part of the public domain. Horror movies starring the squeaky everyman are already in the works. Winnie-the-Pooh recently received a similar slasher makeover too. But before you cry “Oh bother!”, consider Simon Lewsen’s defence of Blood and Honey and its ilk:
Clearly, through crafty machinations, copyright holders are turning the laws into something they were never meant to be. If the original goal was to foster a vibrant cultural marketplace, corporations today are nurturing a type of capitalism that looks more like the oligarchic or rentier variety, in which players establish monopolies on assets, defend those monopolies shamelessly, and shake down everyone else for cash. … Warner Bros. recently won a claim against a sports charity that used Harry Potter and Gilmore Girls references in outreach campaigns. And in 2006, Disney stepped in to prevent a stonemason from carving Winnie the Pooh into a child’s tombstone. [Read more]
Are we facing a loneliness epidemic? Vox is investigating the different types of the condition. To learn more about how it’s become a health concern, read Sam Juric’s “The Science of Loneliness”:
“Not only is it not much fun to feel lonely,” says Ami Rokach, a psychologist and York University professor who has been studying loneliness for nearly 30 years. “It is also dangerous.” He agrees that loneliness is an epidemic, particularly due to the increased risks of premature mortality, but adds that the lack of popular knowledge on the subject doesn’t help either. We must be careful in how we view the actual experiences of loneliness, he adds. While it affects health, it should not be approached as an illness—it is, after all, not something that can be treated by medication—but rather as a natural, if not exactly desired, part of the human experience. [Read more]
According to Wired, beavers are being hailed as ecological saviours by scientists in California who have taken to monitoring their dam-building efforts via satellite. We prefer learning about the semi-aquatic rodents the old-fashioned way: via slightly boring Hinterland Who’s Who broadcasts. Tom Jokinen explored their enduring appeal:
These short documentaries, a joint project between the Canadian Wildlife Service and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), were first launched in 1963 and aired during commercial breaks ad nauseam. They were formally simple and utterly unironic. The voice-overs, courtesy of John Livingston, then executive director of the Audubon Society of Canada, were full of tidbits and trivia. Livingston’s monologues came across as untrained, almost accidental—he was every sweater-vested social studies teacher in every high school across the country. But there was an alchemy at work, and Hinterland added up to a national poetry of origin. [Read more]