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Gordon Lightfoot, Hit-Spinning Singer-Songwriter Of The 1970s, Is Dead At 84

A major presence on the US charts and an even bigger star in his native Canada, he's remembered for "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind." "Rainy Day People," and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." - Variety

Fetishizing Neutrality: The Mythologies Of Objectivity

Is neutrality even attainable? “No journalistic process is objective,” Wesley Lowery, a former Washington Post reporter, observed in a widely discussed New York Times opinion piece from 2020. “And no individual journalist is objective, because no human being is.” Given “the failures of neutral objective journalism,” he urged another ideal: “moral clarity.” - The Atlantic

Traffic Flow — A Story Of Chasing Online Audience

Most people who write for the internet have had the experience of publishing something that escapes the bounds of one’s usual audience and goes viral. The experience can be mesmerizing. - Slate

NYC’s New Museum Of Natural History Extension Is A Winner

New Yorkers live to grouse about new buildings. This one seems destined to be an instant heartthrob and colossal attraction. - The New York Times

Ground Zero For The Art Of Conspiracy Theories: Denver Airport

Earlier this year, a claim gained traction on TikTok that a “new” art installation in Concourse A legitimized the flat earth conspiracy theory. Videos attempting to assign conspiratorial meaning to the tiled global map, set beneath arching train tracks and titanium poles, have racked up more than 1.5 million views. - The New York Times

Scott Timberg’s Boom Times

That a collection is as well versed in Rechy as it is in Dudamel tells you a lot about the writer, as well as about the time and place in which he was writing. - LA Review of Books

Hollywood Writers Fear Being Replaced By AI

“We have a bunch of A.I.s that are creating a bunch of entertainment that people are kind of OK with.” In their attempts to push back, the writers have what a lot of other white-collar workers don’t: a labor union. - The New York Times

Look, Hollywood, You Don’t Have To Do This

But you probably will. "Contentious labor talks in Hollywood are rarely settled without the pressure of a contract expiration deadline bearing down. The stakes and the tension feel especially heightened this time around." - Variety

South Korean Art Student Eats Banana From Maurizio Cattelan Artwork

"Noh Huyn-soo was filmed brazenly removing the banana, which was duct-taped on to a wall at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, unpeeling it and eating it in front of stunned onlookers before reattaching the banana skin to the wall using the same tape." - The Guardian (UK)

The Night The Los Angeles Phil’s Tchaikovsky Moved An Audience Member To Moans

"Multiple people who attended the L.A. Phil concert on Friday reported hearing a woman making a moaning noise during the symphony’s second movement." - Los Angeles Times

Hollywood Is Both Frantic And Calm As The Writers Strike Looms

"It’s the first topic that comes up in every meeting, every phone call, and everyone claims to have their own inside source about how long a strike will go on and whether the directors and actors will also go out, which would truly be a disaster." - The New York Times

The Guardian Apologizes For Cartoon Of Former BBC Chair

The cartoon depicted Richard Sharp, "who is Jewish, with exaggerated features and carrying a puppet of Rishi Sunak. One Jewish group said it 'falls squarely into an antisemitic tradition.'" - BBC

Piano Fever Is (Once Again) Sweeping The UK

"For years, it seemed like the piano was disappearing from British public life. The bulky instruments were cast out of homes and schools and offered for free online. But now ... the piano seems to be making a 21st-century comeback in homes, on streets and online." - The Observer (UK)

Why Isn’t Artist Pacita Abad More Known?

One explanation: "In addition to being a woman and a woman of color, she was considered a craft artist operating on the fringes of the art scene." - The New York Times

Say Goodbye To Ad-Free Television

"Investors are no longer sure streaming is a great business; the streamers are searching desperately for new ways to make money. The golden age of high-flying, big-spending streaming seems to be over." - The Verge

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