Yearly Archives: 2021
Hollywood Celebs Are Starting Their Own Creative High Schools
With so many projects in production, “there’s an enormous amount of jobs in editing, in visual effects, in makeup and hair, that we can,...
Sondheim Placed The Musical Firmly At The Heart Of American Culture
Before the pandemic, his songs permeated U.S. media. "His primacy within wider culture came from the widest possible acknowledgement that not only had Sondheim...
Duolingo’s Weird Sentences Show Us How Our Brains Work
It's all about "reward prediction errors" and "the sweet spot between rote and nonsensical." Once you've learned the Swedish for "a clean reindeer" or...
When Non-Horror Movies Feel A Lot Like Horror
"How do you know if you’re watching a horror movie when there’s no killer or monster, exorcism or blood? It’s a decades-old question that’s...
Good Thing Library Fines Are Out Of Style
A sequel to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was checked out in 1910 and returned, anonymously, to the Garden City library near Boise, Idaho. -...
Developers In Britain Are Challenged To Stop Destroying And Start Retrofitting
That's in order to save the world - no, really. "Our throwaway building culture is one of the key reasons that UK construction has...
Virgil Abloh, A Barrier-Breaking Designer Who Was Compared To Warhol And Koons, Has Died...
Abloh was a theorist with sometimes controversial opinions on fashion. "For him clothes were not garments but fungible totems of identity that sat at...
Netflix May Dominate The First Awards Of The Season
The Gotham Awards sees Netflix's Passing and The Lost Daughter square off on the movie side, and let's not even get into what may...
Recovering From A Rough Gig At SNL, Natasha Rothwell Hit It Big On Insecure
The showrunner for Insecure, where Rothwell, post-writing gig at Saturday Night Live, has written and played Kelli: "The idea that anybody would try to...
Repatriation Of Benin’s Bronzes Should Be Only The Beginning
Museums in Europe and the U.S. have more to do to help Nigeria showcase the bronzes safely and well, argues an advisor to a...
An Ancient University Gets An Addition And A Makeover
Rowan Moore is mostly a fan of two Oxford colleges' innovations, but he adds, "All of leaves me wishing there was more work...
NPR’s Books Rec App Changes Its Name, Keeps Its Attitude
NPR's beloved books editor Petra Mayer died a few weeks ago, and so "Books We Love" is named and created "in the spirit of...
Land Acknowledgements Are Exhibitionist Pabulum
"A land acknowledgment is what you give when you have no intention of giving land. It is like a receipt provided by a highway...
Are We Truly Ready For The First Pandemic Novels?
It's not over yet, so perhaps not. "In the hospitals, there has been something like a wartime atmosphere of disaster, but for so many...
Broadway Gathers To Mourn Sondheim
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sara Bareilles, Josh Groban, members of every Broadway show up right now, and many, many other people gathered "on the red stairs...
The Republicans Who Want To Erase LGBTQ Literature And Authors
They've got a lot in common with Chinese censors, says Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree. "I had...
How Biden’s Antitrust Attitudes May Affect TV Deals
It's almost like a media long-tail development: "The sudden chill in the regulatory climate may fan the flames of another significant business trend. There’s...
Quinnipiac University Closes Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum
The museum had only been open since 2012. Donors are concerned: Where will all of their artifacts end up? - The New York Times
Our Brains Are Prediction Machines
And that's because human brains are so energy hungry that they train hard to be energy-efficient. What happens when actual machines can mimic the...
The Power Of Generating PR
Perhaps the Australian journalist who screwed up his country's only interview with Adele was trying to resist her massive PR team. But the performer...
Should Awards Abandon Male/Female Categories?
The Brit Awards announced they "would do away with gendered awards categories entirely, following in the footsteps of the Grammy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards...
Not Many Famous Children Grow Up OK, So How Did This One Manage?
Gaby Hoffman's public life began when she was five, and stepmom Cindy Sherman took photos of her dressed as the Devil. She had her...
Keeping The Coronavirus Away From The Nutcracker
At the Washington Ballet, for instance, "Dancers younger than 12 will be wearing custom-designed masks to match their party frocks, clown costumes and mouse...
If Politicians Can’t Fix A City’s Problems, Can Art Do Something?
Manchester intends to find out. - BBC
Man Convicted Of Raping Author Alice Sebold Is Exonerated
The author of The Lovely Bones wrote about her rape in her 1999 memoir, Lucky, which was in the process of being made into...