FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement that “by hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront.” - The Verge
Their small staffs have more tasks to juggle, they depend more on volunteers (meaning unpaid labor), the size of foundation grants is based on the size of budgets (meaning they get less), and there's little money to get word to audiences. Yet they keep soldiering on. - MSN (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
"The rule would not set a limit on the fees, but rather would require broader disclosures, including the purpose of the fees and whether they are refundable. This action comes as President Biden has made cutting down on the so-called junk fees one of the priorities of his administration." - The Hollywood Reporter
A recent study "found that 27.8% of musicians have had no work in Europe since Brexit. Nearly half of respondents had seen their work in Europe decline, 40% had work cancelled and almost as many said they had to turn down work due to costs and logistics." - The New European
“We need to protect the cultural spaces we already have. Everybody knows a pub theatre which is about to close down, or a local gallery or music venue which can’t pay its bills. If we lose those spaces, we lose the pipeline for young and emerging talent.” - The Art Newspaper
On a windy spring day on 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the venue, drawing an estimated 1 million people to the city’s streets. On 13 March 2006, she returned to open a colonnade, calling the Opera House “the symbol of the nation itself.” - The Guardian
"An oddly simple new £200m scheme will, for the first time," rather than funding only individual projects, "focus on clusters of heritage sites, including ancient monuments, protected landscapes, museums and an abbey, in specifically targeted, poorer areas of Britain." - The Observer (UK)
The damage is familiar to college faculty across disciplines: writing as a form of Frankfurtian bullshit for which it’s more important to be superficially convincing than rigorous or factually correct; the study of literature as exercise in literary device-hunting, a trick-mirror image of literary formalism from 75 years ago. - The New Republic
Much of the coastline Thoreau walked on is now under water. The land he saw was a sandy “wasteland” without trees,which had been cut down for use in building houses and boats, and making fires. - Boston Globe
The U.S.'s fervor for banning books (based, studies say, on 11 people's complaints) is being met with busloads of the censored cultural capital. - The Guardian (UK)
"(WNYC's Sean) Carlson spoke to Casey York of the Off-Broadway League, Anna Glass of Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Jake Rosenthal of Elsewhere in Bushwick. Their conversation covered everything from how fewer office workers affect the city's culture to why big stars aren’t necessarily the future of show business." - Gothamist
