Ticket prices increased 11% in 2021 relative to 2019, and 14% in North America, according to Live Nation Entertainment Inc., the world’s largest concert promoter. And demand remains strong, the company says, with concert ticket sales up 45% through mid-February compared with 2019. - The Wall Street Journal
He sent anonymous comments and messages to Merriam-Webster, which publishes a widely used online dictionary, condemning the company for changing the definitions of words including “boy, “girl” and “trans woman.” - The New York Times
Many have taken to declaring how they don’t have dream jobs since they “don’t dream of labor.” This buzzy phrase, popularized on social media in the pandemic, rejects work as a basis for identity, framing it instead as an act to pursue out of financial necessity. - Vox
"Libraries, principals, school boards, superintendents are just fending off not only formal complaints that have been filed, which is what ALA was counting, but also informal complaints, email complaints, comments at school board meetings. The atmosphere is one that’s very difficult." - Slate
That's where you'll find the papers of Neil Simon: "7,700 manuscripts, letters and other material that Simon’s widow, Elaine Joyce, has donated to the Library of Congress." - Washington Post
Of course, "there’s a reason we put so much effort into denying regret: The feeling can be corrosive." But instead of regretting lost symphonies, paintings, hikes, books, the question remains: "How can you improve yourself in the days to come?” - The New York Times
"When you’ve written something by hand, the only person who could have done it is you. It’s unmistakable you wrote this, touched it, laid hands and eyes upon it. Something written by hand is a piece of your personality on paper. Typed words are not a fair swap." - LitHub
Yikes, says Rowan Moore: "The proposed building is, not to put too fine a point on it, a brute. ... It is out of scale with its surroundings and disconnected from them." - The Guardian UK)
Aaron Blabey "had been working a series of increasingly dissatisfying day jobs — from acting to advertising — and although his children’s books were 'warmly received' (as he put it), the earnings were not supporting his family." He gave himself an ultimatum. It worked. - The New York Times
Mark Swed: "The consequence of the current loss is enormous and hard to process because little of their music is part of the regular performing, recording or broadcasting diet. ... Nor has there been, outside of local memorials, widespread acknowledgment of, let alone tribute to, their significance." - Los Angeles Times
Think Keanu Reeves in Always Be My Maybe, Anna Faris in Keanu (unrelated to Reeves, kind of), LeBron James in Trainwreck ... the list goes way back. - Time
Tamara Lanier is fighting "to reclaim the daguerreotypes of her ancestors from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University," where they'd been since Louis Agassiz commissioned the photos in the 19th century "to 'prove' his white supremacist ideas about race." - Hyperallergic
Yes, the reclaiming started in the 1960s. But "today's new cohort of designers is going a step further – not just questioning western dress forms, but searching for and breathing new life into lost aesthetics, craft and processes." - The Observer (UK)
Much like the recent Eternals, banned in a variety of countries for a gay relationship and kiss, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness with its out lesbian superhero America Chavez won't be welcome in countries that have laws banning homosexuality. - Los Angeles Times
