Author: NY TIMES

When Augustin Lignier, a professional photographer in Paris, was in graduate school, he began to ponder the point of picture-taking in the modern world: Why did so many of us feel compelled to photograph our lives and share those images online?It was not a novel question, but it led Mr. Lignier to a surprising place, and before long he found himself building what was, in essence, a photo booth for rats.He took inspiration from B.F. Skinner, the famous behaviorist who had devised a test chamber to study learning in rats. The Skinner box, as it became known, dispensed food pellets…

Felicities abounded in the programming. The first concert paired Ernst Krenek’s “Little Symphony,” a Neo-Classical mishmash of Mozart and jazz, with the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony, whose score Krenek completed at the request of Mahler’s widow, Alma. The second concert juxtaposed two symphonies that utilize a theme-and-variations form, Prokofiev’s Second and Webern’s Op. 21. Both concerts ended with some drama, with the suite from Bartok’s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” and Prokofiev’s Fifth, which incorporates music from his stage works.The concerts gestured at the historical context on either side of the Weimar era. Prokofiev’s Fifth represented a time when…

Europeans, insisting on Palestinian statehood, are frustrated by Israel’s opposition and lack of a postwar plan for the devastated Gaza Strip. Source link

The United States and Britain carried out large-scale military strikes on Monday against eight sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, according to the two countries. The strikes signaled that the Biden administration intends to wage a sustained and, at least for now, open-ended campaign against the Iran-backed group that has disrupted traffic in vital international sea lanes.The strikes — the eighth in nearly two weeks — hit multiple targets at each site, and were bigger and broader than a recent series of more limited attacks against individual Houthi missiles that the Americans said popped up on short notice. Those…

Every August, after the NBA releases next season’s schedule, Miami Heat chief marketing officer Michael McCullough thinks about the next 82 games. Not only did he think about ticket sales and promotions, he also held meetings with the team’s equipment managers to focus on an important part of his job: the uniforms.Across the NBA, putting together the right uniforms used to be a no-brainer. There are only two options. When Heat equipment manager and travel coordinator Rob Pimental started his career with the Sacramento Kings in the 1980s, the team’s uniforms were only white and blue: white at home, Wear…

Macy’s rejected a $5.8 billion takeover bid late Sunday that valued the struggling department store chain at roughly 20 percent above its closing share price on Friday, but suggested it was “open to opportunities.”The bidders, Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital, are seeking to acquire Macy’s stock that they do not already own at $21 a share and have threatened to take the offer to shareholders.With a potential hostile bid looming, questions are rising over how Arkhouse and Brigade could pull off a deal and whether additional suitors could appear, potentially setting off a bidding war.In a statement released Sunday night,…

The Federal Aviation Administration recommended late Sunday night that airlines begin visual inspections of door plugs installed on Boeing 737-900ER planes, the second Boeing model to come under scrutiny this month.The F.A.A. said the plane has the same door plug design as the 737 Max 9, which had 171 jets from its fleet grounded after a door panel was blown off one of the jets shortly after an Alaska Airlines flight left Portland, Ore., on Jan. 5., forcing an emergency landing.The door plugs are placed as a panel where an emergency door would otherwise be if a plane had more…

“Were you burned out,” I asked.Her face was flat. “I still am,” she said. “Yeah. Yes, and I still am.” Worcester is famous for the snow dumps it receives in the winter. It has something to do with where the city is in relation to the Appalachian Mountains. The clouds bear down when the temperature drops, and then the snow is relentless and the weather is brutal. All winter, it’s brutal, brutal, brutal, and then somehow, slowly, it’s not anymore. That’s kind of how the end of W.P.I.’s crisis arrived. No one I spoke to could quite explain how they…

Kelli O’Hara and Brain d’Arcy James didn’t let the door close on their new Broadway musical about a couple undone by addiction. Source link

The U.S. military said on Sunday that it had declared two Navy SEALs dead after they went missing 10 days ago during an operation at sea to intercept weapons from Iran headed to Houthi fighters.They are among the first known U.S. fatalities in Washington’s campaign against the Houthis, who have launched dozens of attacks on ships in the Red Sea since November, roiling the global shipping industry.In recent weeks, the United States and its allies have launched a barrage of strikes on the Houthis inside Yemen, in a bid to deter future attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. The…