THE MODERN WORLD

“…last year this photograph of children looking at their smartphones by Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam [went viral.] It was often accompanied by outraged, dispirited comments such as “a perfect metaphor for our age,” “the end of civilization” or “a sad picture of our society”.

…It turns out that the Rijksmuseum has an app that, among other things, contains guided tours and further information about the works on display. As part of their visit to the museum, the children, who minutes earlier had admired the art and listened attentively to explanations by expert adults, had been instructed to complete an assignment by their school teachers, using, among other things, the museum’s excellent smartphone app….

The tragic thing is that this — the truth — will never go viral. So, I wonder, what is more likely to bring about the death of civilization, children using smartphones to learn about art or the willful ignorance of adults who are too quick to make assumptions?” José Picardo, Medium

“The truth of this shutdown is that it is not actually about a wall, it is not about the border, and it is certainly not about the well-being of everyday Americans. The truth is, this shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms. It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers’ paychecks hostage. It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want. It is not normal for public servants to run away and hide from the public that they serve. And it is certainly not normal to starve the people we serve for a proposal that is wildly unpopular among the American people.” (via DC Tribune)

Seeing the dark side of the moon is that recent to us, as a species. And here it is, just another thing to pause on for a moment, and smile at, and go, “Neat!” before we scroll on to something else.

Blockchain helps refugees gain access to financial services

Dolphins discovered ‘timesharing’ the sea for the first time

Evolution Design on an island in the Zhoushan archipelago

Since millennials first started entering the workforce, their spending habits have been blamed for killing off industries ranging from casual restaurant dining to starter houses. However, a new study by the Federal Reserve suggests it might be less about how they are spending their money and more about not having any to spend.

A study published this month by Christopher Kurz, Geng Li and Daniel J. Vine found millennials are less financially well-off than members of earlier generations when they were the same ages, with “lower earnings, fewer assets and less wealth.”

Their finances were compared with Generation X, baby boomers, the silent generation and the greatest generation.

The researchers examined spending, income, debt, net worth and demographic factors among the generations to determine “it primarily is the differences in average age and then differences in average income that explain a large and important portion of the consumption wedge between millennials and other cohorts.”

CRISPR bombshell: Chinese researcher claims to have created gene-edited twins 

On the eve of an international summit here on genome editing, a Chinese researcher has shocked many by claiming to have altered the genomes of twin baby girls born this month in a way that will pass the modification on to future generations. The alteration is intended to make the children’s cells resistant to infection by HIV, says the scientist, He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China.